State anxiety modulates the return of fear

Current treatments for anxiety disorders are effective but limited by the high frequency of clinical relapse. Processes underlying relapse are thought to be experimentally modeled in fear conditioning experiments with return fear (ROF) inductions. Thereby reinstatement-induced ROF might be considered a model to study mechanisms underlying adversity-induced relapse. Previous studies have reported differential ROF (i.e. specific for the danger stimulus) but also generalized ROF (i.e. for safe and danger stimuli), but reasons for these divergent findings are not clear yet. Hence, the response pattern (i.e. differential or generalized) following reinstatement may be of importance for the prediction of risk or resilience for ROF. The aim of this study was to investigate state anxiety as a potential individual difference factor contributing to differentiability or generalization of return of fear. Thirty-six participants underwent instructed fear expression, extinction and ROF induction through reinstatement while physiological (skin conductance response, fear potentiated startle) and subjective measures of fear and US expectancy were acquired. Our data show that, as expected, high state anxious individuals show deficits in SCR discrimination between dangerous and safe cues after reinstatement induced ROF (i.e. generalization) as compared to low state anxious individuals. The ability to maintain discrimination under aversive circumstances is negatively associated with pathological anxiety and predictive of resilient responding while excessive generalization is a hallmark of anxiety disorders. Therefore, we suggest that experimentally induced ROF might prove useful in predicting relapse risk in clinical settings and might have implications for possible interventions for relapse prevention

Fear expression and return of fear following threat instruction with or without direct contingency experience

Prior research showed that mere instructions about the contingency between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) can generate fear reactions to the CS. Little is known, however, about the extent to which actual CS US contingency experience adds anything beyond the effect of contingency instructions. Our results extend previous studies on this topic in that it included fear potentiated startle as an additional dependent variable and examined return of fear (ROF) following reinstatement. We observed that CS US pairings can enhance fear reactions beyond the effect of contingency instructions. Moreover, for all measures of fear, instructions elicited immediate fear reactions that could not be completely overridden by subsequent situational safety information. Finally, ROF following reinstatement for instructed CS+s was unaffected by actual experience. In summary, our results demonstrate the power of contingency instructions and reveal the additional impact of actual experience of CS US pairings

Prevalence of Urinary Schistosomiasis among School Aged Children in Wushishi Local Government Area of Niger State, Nigeria

An investigation was conducted to determine the prevalence of urinary Schistosomiasis in two localities namely,Wushishi and Zungeru of Wushishi local government of Niger State. Urine samples were collected from 100 school children of each of the two localities and investigated for eggs of Shistosoma haematobium using standard filtration techniques. The water contact activities of the inhabitants whose samples were collected were also obtained, using questionnaire method. Result obtained showed that 80 (40.0%) inhabitants were infected with a mean egg count. The infection rate was found to be higher among males (47.5%) than the females (28.75%) but the mean eggs count tend to be higher among the females (7.5 eggs/10ml of urine) than males (5.8 eggs/ml of urine). The results also showed that children aged 10 – 15 yrs old had the highest infection rate of 48.75% with 16.0 eggs/10ml of urine.Key words: prevalence, urinary schistosomiasi

Phytochemical Determinations and Antibacterial Activities of the Leaf Extracts of Combretum molle and Gossypium arboretum

An investigation was carried out to screen the leaf extracts of Combratum mole and Gossypium arboreum for the presence of phytochemical components and antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus strain OE5, Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain OE9, Klebsiella pneumoniae strain OE8 and Escherichia coli strain OE7 isolated from cases of otitis externa, using the agar diffusion procedure. The results indicated that the two medicinal plants contained alkaloids, tannins, saponins, anthracene, phenols and sesquiterpenes. Volatile oil was detected only in G. arboreum. The aqueous, ethanol and methanol extracts of the plants inhibited the growth of all the test organisms to varying degrees with the exception of E. coli, which was resistant to aqueous extract of C. mole. However, overall, the extracts of G.arboreum showed a higher degree of inhibition of the test bacteria than C.mole. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) values of G. arboreum and C.mole varied and ranged from 0.31mg/ml to 2.5mg/ml and 2.5mg/ml to 5.0mg/ml respectively. Synergistic effect of the ethanol and methanol extracts of the two plants resulted in enhanced antibacterial activity (large zones of inhibition, lower MIC, 0.31 – 1.25mg/ml, MBC, 0.63-2.5mg/ml).Keywords: Extracts, inhibition, plants, pathogens, screening

Etika Publik Pejabat Negara Dalam Penyelenggaraan Pemerintahan Yang Bersih

The public ethics of state official in clean governance has an important position and role as a guide to good behavior in carrying out their duties. Political corruption is not only caused by the size of the authority possessed, but also because it violated the ethics of state officials. By using qualitative research methods to approach the literature that examines the question of how writers are fenomologis , which means how to collect data in the form of spoken words, and writing, speech, gestures, thoughts and behaviors that need to be and can be observed, it is concluded that a violation of law begins with ethics violations by state officials. Through case studies Hambalang Political Corruption are being handled by the KPK, ethical violations occurred at the level of officials of the state executive and legislative. Ethical violations of state officials is due to the struggle of interests in order to find sources of funding for the winning candidate of a political party chairman. In addition to involving the executive and the legislature, also involving the private sector in the political corruption. Budget preparation of legal loopholes exploited to increase the value Hambalang project in order to obtain large budgets and greater profits, so the fund of corruption is also getting bigger. The case studies show a violation of a state ethics official dishonest behavior, manipulate data and non-transparent so that the project can be approved Hambalang. The ethics violation accompanied by violation of law, which implies a decline in public confidence in the efforts to create a clean governance, especially the official from the political parties

Nanoscale zero-valent iron particles for the remediation of plutonium and uranium contaminated solutions

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.In the current work the uptake of plutonium onto nanoscale zero-valent iron nanoparticles (nZVI) under anoxic conditions has been investigated. A uranyl solution was also studied under similar geochemical conditions to provide a comparative dataset. Following nZVI addition, a rapid and significant decrease in aqueous actinide concentration was recorded for both systems. The removal rate recorded for plutonium was slower, with 77% removal recorded after 1 h of reaction, compared to 99% recorded for uranium. Low aqueous contaminant concentrations (<25%) were then recorded for both systems until the end of the 7 day reaction period. XPS confirmed contaminant uptake onto the nZVI. For the plutonium system, the recorded photoelectron spectra exhibited Pu 4f lines centred at ∼439 and ∼427 eV, characteristic of Pu4+ and implying that chemical reduction of the sorbed plutonium had occurred, ascribed to the formation of PuO2. Similarly, with the U-system, the recorded U 4f photoelectron peaks were centred at energies of ∼380 and ∼391 eV, characteristic of U4+ in UO2. Results provide clear evidence that nZVI may be used as an effective material for the removal of plutonium from contaminated waters.AWE plcEngineering and Physical Sciences Research Counci

Struktur Politik Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa

As a unique party from ideology, it becomes so interesting to examine PKB from its political structure. Hence, by using Maurice Duverger\u27s point of view about political structure and qualitative methods, therefore the writer analyses the political structure of PKB based on their Nadhatul Ulama\u27s people, so that by ideology, PKB can negotiate between moderate Islam and Indonesia with its pluralist people. Those combinations soon are reflected in the principle and Party foundation which prefer Pancasila to Islam

Quantification of long-term precipitation use efficiencies of different maize production practices on a semi-arid ecotope in the Free State Province

Precipitation use efficiency (PUE) was estimated for four production practices, i.e. conventional tillage with November planting (CTN), conventional tillage with January planting (CTJ), in-field rainwater harvesting with November planting (WHBN), and in-field rainwater harvesting with January planting (WHBJ), over 80 maize seasons for a semi-arid ecotope in the central Free State Province of South Africa. An empirical yield prediction model was used to obtain maize grain yields. PUE was expressed as the ratio of transpiration: rainfall for each growing season (PUET), while transpiration was calculated from total biomass yield, vapour pressure deficit and a transpiration efficiency coefficient for maize. The following equation, based on 10 years of measured data, was developed to estimate daily vapour deficit pressure for the 80 seasons from daily maximum temperature: Vd = 0.163 x Tmax – 2.88 (R2 = 0. 73). Mean PUET values over the 80 seasons were: 0.260 for CTN, 0.320 for WHBN, 0.334 for CTJ, and 0.400 for WHBJ. These results confirmed and quantified the advantage of in-field rainwater harvesting over conventional tillage, and the advantage of January planting over November planting. PUET results were also expressed as cumulative probability functions. Significance tests showed that PUET for in-field rainwater harvesting was significantly better than PUET for conventional tillage, and that January planting was significantly better than November planting. It was concluded that the advantage of in-field rainwater harvesting over conventional tillage was mainly due to the absence of runoff and reduced evaporation in the former practice. The use of a short-growing cultivar, which flowers during the month with the most favourable climate, i.e. March, probably resulted in the advantage of January planting over November planting