Family, Unvalued: Discrimination, Denial, and the Fate of Binational Same-Sex Couples under U.S. Law

"Family, Unvalued" documents the crippling barriers same-sex binational couples face in pursuing a goal enshrined in America's founding document -- happiness. One fact sets them apart from other binational families. A heterosexual couple where one partner is foreign, one a U.S. citizen, can claim the right to enter the U.S. with a few strokes of a pen. But a lesbian or gay couple's relationship -- even if they have lived together for decades, even if their commitment is incontrovertible--is irrelevant. Instead they face a long limbo of legal indifference, harassment, and fear. Delays, bureaucracy, inconsistency, and injustice make the U.S. immigration system a nightmare for millions. Debate over that system is intensifying. Family, Unvalued shows how its failures affect, and sometimes destroy, families which prejudice has deprived of any legal protection. This report reveals how today's discrimination grows from a long history of anti-immigrant campaigns. Most of all, Family, Unvalued lets the reader hear the sometimes horrifying, always enlightening testimony of lesbian and gay families: people simply seeking to build a better future ... together

Small Groups Find Fatal Purpose Through the Web

Press Release Terrorism: Suicide attackers spurred by Internet and lack of ties (p620) Would-be suicide bombers are encouraged to carry out their plans because they tend to live in small groups with fervent political opinions, say the authors of a Correspondence in this week's Nature. Previous analyses have tended to assume that such attackers are focused on clear political aims, such as the emancipation of their native country, but many militants cite more general reasons for their actions, such as fighting against a perceived global evil. Scott Atran and Jessica Stern point to interviews with would-be suicide bombers and their supporters, and conclude that terrorist inclinations are fostered in people who feel humiliated, either through their own experiences or by empathizing with perceived victims of ill-treatment, such as the Abu Ghraib prisoners frequently depicted in the media. These drives can overcome rational self-interest and are not consistent with the dispassionate cost-benefit analyses often attributed to organized suicide bombers, Atran and Stern argue. Instead these impulses are fostered through isolation from the host society, perhaps through emigration, which leads to a situation in which people can be influenced by a small, strongly ideological social network. The effect is strengthened by access to the Internet, the authors point out - over the past five years, Islamic 'jihadi' websites have swelled in number from fewer than 20 to more than 4,000

Moderating Role of Social Problem-Solving Regarding the Predictive Relationship between Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Substance Use in U.S. Military Veterans

Substance use disorders (SUDs) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are two clinically significant and commonly co-occurring psychopathologies among military Veterans (Back, et al., 2014; Erbes, Westermeyer, Engdahl, & Johnsen, 2007; Hoge, Auchterlonie, & Milliken, 2006; Hoge et al., 2004). More specifically, the prevalence rates for PTSD and SUDs in Veterans are at approximately 29% and 18%, respectively, and at rates of approximately three and five times that of the general population (Bagalman, 2013; APA, 2013; SAMHSA, 2007). It is largely recognized that among many such Veterans, substances are used as coping mechanisms for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms due to a lack of adaptive coping mechanisms. One particular study examined coping skills in male Veterans with PTSD and SUD symptoms through a variety of different coping models, generally finding avoidance to be a primary coping mechanism among substance users (Boden et al., 2014). Due to the fact that this study investigated only males, and other such studies on the psychological coping styles associated with the relationship between PTSD and SUD symptoms are sparse, additional exploration as to how existent or non-existent, adaptive or maladaptive coping skills affect the relationship between PTSD and SUD symptomology need be conducted. The primary aim of this study is to assess whether or not social problem-solving, a cognitive-behavioral construct of problem-solving and stress management, moderates the prediction of substance abuse from posttraumatic stress symptoms. One hundred and sixty individuals who have completed service in the United States Military were in a survey- based study. Assessment measures included (a) a comprehensive demographic questionnaire assessing psychological and medical health, socioeconomic status, family system, occupational history, and military history, (b) the Social Problem-Solving Inventory – Revised: Short Form (SPSI-R:SF), (c) a DSM-5 Alcohol Checklist, (d) the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), (e) the Drug Use Disorders Identification Test (DUDIT), and (f) the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Results suggested that rational, impulsive-careless, and avoidant problem-solving styles significantly moderate the prediction of alcohol use from PTSD symptoms, while, SPS did not moderate PTSD on drug use.Ph.D., Clinical Psychology -- Drexel University, 201

Empathy in parents and children: Links to preschoolers' attachment and aggression

Though theory suggests that parents’ empathy is important for children’s empathic development, the transmission of empathy from parent to child remains poorly understood. The goals of this investigation were to test an intergenerational model of empathy with child attachment as a potential mediating mechanism and to replicate findings linking child empathy to reduced risk for aggression. Eighty-nine preschoolers and their mothers completed measures of parent empathy, as well as child attachment, empathy, and aggression. Parent empathy predicted child empathy, but associations varied by the measure of empathy employed. Attachment did not mediate the association between parent and child empathy, although secure attachment predicted greater child empathy. Child empathy predicted aggression, but the direction of the effect varied by the measure of child empathy and by child sex. Findings shed light on the intergenerational transmission of empathy and highlight the importance of multi-method assessment in the study of empathy

Documenting Queer Community Histories: Whose History Is It?

What does it mean to be a member of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) community? When did LGBTQ community history begin? Where do queer communities differ? How do we broach these questions to document communities\u27 experiences? And significantly, why is it important to document the histories of those who are defined as LGBTQ

The Moderating Role of Emotional Regulation Regarding the Predictive Relationship Between Two Forms of Stress and Depressive Symptoms Among a College Sample

It has long been shown that varying types of stress can predict and precipitate the onset of a depressive episode. Much research has illustrated that there is an increased frequency and severity of premorbid stressors in depressed individuals as compared with controls (Hammen, 2005). However, not all individuals who experience stressful life events, irrespective of how severe they may be, experience psychopathological symptomology (Monroe & Simons, 1991). It is for this reason that the diathesis-stress model, in which certain factors, such as premorbid vulnerabilities, interact with stress and trigger depressive symptoms, has been studied and expanded upon extensively. Contrary to the earlier biological perspective of the model, researchers are increasingly recognizing psychological factors such as cognitive and behavioral styles and personality traits, as diatheses (Monroe & Simons, 1991). While cognitive, behavioral and personality factors may be important, few investigators have studied the moderating role of emotional regulation. In Gross and Munoz's (1995) model of emotion, emotions are a response to, or interpretation of, events or intrapsychic processes. Furthermore, Gross (1998) described emotion regulation as "the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions." Not surprisingly, it has been shown that there are many negative implications regarding the inability to successfully regulate emotions such as the increased risk for developing depression. Whereas there is growing literature on the effects of emotion dysregulation on depression, there has been little research regarding how emotion regulatory processes fit into the stress-depression relationship. The aim of this study is to test whether emotion regulatory styles serve to moderate stress in predicting depressive symptoms. More specifically, 160 undergraduate students were recruited to complete the following measures: Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies - Depression-10, the Perceived Stress Scale and the Survey of Recent Life Experiences. In analyzing the data, two hierarchical linear regressions were conducted to test the hypotheses that two measures of stress, perceived stress and experienced life stress will each be moderated by emotion regulation. In the present study, experience life stress (as measured by the SRLE) was significantly moderated by emotion regulation while perceived stress was not. This suggests that stress measurements differentially interact with emotion regulation to predict depressive symptoms.M.S., Psychology -- Drexel University, 201

Evolution of multiple additive loci caused divergence between Drosophila yakuba and D. santomea in wing rowing during male courtship

International audienceIn Drosophila, male flies perform innate, stereotyped courtship behavior. This innate behavior evolves rapidly between fly species, and is likely to have contributed to reproductive isolation and species divergence. We currently understand little about the neurobiological and genetic mechanisms that contributed to the evolution of courtship behavior. Here we describe a novel behavioral difference between the two closely related species D. yakuba and D. santomea: the frequency of wing rowing during courtship. During courtship, D. santomea males repeatedly rotate their wing blades to face forward and then back (rowing), while D. yakuba males rarely row their wings. We found little intraspecific variation in the frequency of wing rowing for both species. We exploited multiplexed shotgun genotyping (MSG) to genotype two backcross populations with a single lane of Illumina sequencing. We performed quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping using the ancestry information estimated by MSG and found that the species difference in wing rowing mapped to four or five genetically separable regions. We found no evidence that these loci display epistasis. The identified loci all act in the same direction and can account for most of the species difference