Self-concealment, Psychological Flexibility, and Severity of Eating Disorders

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between psychological flexibility, self-concealment, and eating disorder severity. This study also sought to explore the relationship between these variables in a clinical sample. Existing literature has demonstrated that diminished psychological flexibility is likely to play a key role in eating pathology. Additionally, self-concealment has been found to be a common and treatment-interfering aspect of the clinical presentation of eating-disordered individuals. Preliminary evidence has been found linking these variables to severity of eating-disorder pathology. However, this relationship needs further clarification to understand fully the implications for treatment and relapse prevention, for these often treatment-resistant disorders. Participants were 182 respondents to an online survey including demographic information, the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q), the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-16), and the Self-Concealment Scale (SCS). Data were collected via Qualtrics software and analyzed in SPSS using Hayes PROCESS models. Findings included the following. Among a sample of eating-disordered individuals, the less (more diminished) psychological flexibility they reported, the more severe the reported eating-disorder symptoms; in other words, an inverse relationship was found. Additionally, the greater self-concealment participants reported, the more severe were their reported eating-disorder symptoms. These findings held up for overall severity of reported symptoms and also for subscale severity for eating restraint, eating concern, weight concern, and shape concern. Additionally, a moderated mediation model found that greater self-concealment, diminished psychological flexibility, and no treatment were all significantly related to increases in eating-disorder severity. This model also found a significant interaction between psychological flexibility and eating-disorder severity moderated by treatment condition. That is, the extent to which someone self-conceals helps to explain the relationship between psychological flexibility and severity. Furthermore, whether a patient has been in treatment significantly relates to the relationship between psychological flexibility and severity. Implications of these findings are discussed, including a focus on emotion-regulation models of eating disorders and the rationale for adopting a transdiagnostic understanding of eating pathology. Recommendations are proposed for clinical practice, including expanding the utilization of therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) for eating disorders, which specifically target psychological flexibility and self-concealment in the hope of preventing future relapse

Retired Librarian Revises List of Best Books on the Indians of Georgia

The article reports on the revisions made in the list of best books on the Indians of North America in Georgia at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library. The list was compiled by retired librarian Louise S. White in collaboration with the members of the Georgia Library Media Association (GLMA)

Black-flanked rock-wallaby: Potential for dietary competition with sympatric western grey kangaroo

Overabundant western grey kangaroo Macropus fuliginosus are known to impact agriculture, but how are they impacting threatened fauna sharing their habitat? In Paruna Wildlife Sanctuary, southwest Western Australia, kangaroos are suspected of competing with the sympatric and endangered black-flanked rock-wallaby Petrogale lateralis lateralis, however there is no research to support this. If kangaroos are negatively impacting rock-wallabies, kangaroo densities may need to be managed to ameliorate competitive pressures on rock-wallabies. We investigated the potential for dietary competition between M. fuliginosus and P. l. lateralis by measuring the overlap in their diets and foraging patches, as well as food resource availability. A combination of scat analysis, motion sensor camera trapping and vegetation surveys were employed. Petrogale lateralis lateralis diets were dominated by forbs and overlapped with those of M. fuliginosus which featured mostly browse and forbs (Schoener index: 0.56). Some of their shared preferred food resources were spatially and/or temporally limited. Their foraging patches also overlapped (33.9%), however these macropod species predominantly used different areas of the outcrop. Evidence over the duration of the study indicates potential for low levels of dietary competition, however the availability of shared food resources and resource partitioning suggest that P. l. lateralis were not being adversely impacted. In terms of the threatening processes limiting P. l. lateralis recovery, predation has been ranked higher than competition, a finding that is likely supported by the present study. This will likely remain true even if M. fuliginosus densities increase in the future. Conservation actions should therefore continue to prioritise the mitigation of predation threats to P. l. lateralis populations

MALA Members Meet, Tour GSU’s Library Renovations

The article discusses the May 2007 spring meeting of MALA (Metro-Atlanta Library Association). The meeting highlights included an overview of the recent renovations of the Georgia State University and a tour of the facility

Spatial Modeling of Coastal Landscapes: Methodological and Scientific Applications.

A number of issues related to landscape scale ecological modeling of the wetlands of southern Louisiana are examined in this study. First, using geostatistical methods, a new contour map of the wetland habitats in the Terrebonne basin of southern Louisiana is constructed from data collected in 1994. This map is proposed as the best field verified habitat map of the Terrebonne basin and contains statistical confidence intervals associated with the habitat contours. Second, the problem of how to evaluate the success of a landscape model prediction is investigated. The multiple resolution goodness of fit parameter Ft(k) is evaluated in detail and an alternate formulation, Ft(mu, sigma) based on a Gaussian distribution is proposed as an alternative. A perfect simulation model would predict a multiple resolution goodness of fit index of 100, but in reality it can only approach 91--92 when applied to the base maps available for southern Louisiana. The unit models that best predict the biomass production and the habitat succession are investigated and tested on independent data from nearby wetland sites. Seasonal patterns of biomass production are well reproduced, biomass values fall within literature values, and predicted habitats match observed field habitats. Sensitivity analysis shows parameterization of these unit models to be most sensitive to the translocation rate of biomass between above and below ground biomass, hours of flooding, temperature, salinity, and photosynthetic production rate, in that order. Finally, the unit models are inserted into a spatially articulated landscape model framework. The results of the landscape simulations are less successful than the unit model simulations. In order to maximize the fit between the simulated habitat map and the reference habitat map, the rate of photosynthetic production has to be increased by an order of magnitude. Possible reasons for this scale dependent change in parameterization are proposed. This study has an immediate application in the science of wetland restoration because management alternatives can now be analyzed in a scientific and systematic way to evaluate landscape scale cumulative impacts in the context of global climate change

An analysis of the relevance of illustrations to text in five basal reading series for grade three

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University, 1951. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

Holy dwarves and devil babies : An anthropological world-survey of stigmatization of the disabled

Disability exists as a human universal based upon conceptual categorizations. Positive and negative forms of stigmatization exist cross-culturally, and are examined in a world-survey format in terms of emic socio-cultural level, subsistence economy, and religion. I suggest that responses to disability are cultural specific, and that these individualized responses are filtered through cultural perceptions of reality and transformed into various treatment strategies of care, euthanasia, and abandonment, in addition to common discriminatory customs, such as limitations on marriage eligibility

Cocaine Self-Administration: Adaptations to the Glutamatergic System and Consequences for Offspring Emotional Control

Cocaine abuse and relapse remain a major public health concern in the United States and worldwide for which there is currently no approved pharmacotherapeutic intervention. Rodent cocaine self-administration, extinction, and priming-induced reinstatement can be used to model human cocaine seeking. A growing body of evidence indicates that the transport and stabilization of calcium-permeable (CP) AMPA glutamate receptors to synapses in the accumbens, a process involving CaMKII, is associated with the reinstatement of cocaine seeking. Additional evidence indicates that the dorsal striatum contributes to aspects of cocaine addiction. Moreover, relapse to cocaine abuse has been connected to elevated levels of anxiety during withdrawal and anxiolytic agents decrease the latency for animals to self-administer cocaine. A growing body of evidence indicates that environmental information can be inherited. We have previously described a cocaine-resistance phenotype in the offspring of animals that have self-administered cocaine. The enhancement of cocaine\u27s anxiogenic effects may contribute to reduced cocaine self-administration among male cocaine-sired rats. Here, a variety of behavioral, cellular, molecular, and electrophysiological techniques are used to examine how cocaine experience directly affects the glutamatergic system in the dorsal striatum and accumbens, as well as its indirect consequences for drug-naïve offspring. Acute exposure to cocaine in drug naïve rats increased CaMKII-mediated phosphorylation of GluA1-containing AMPA receptors in the DL striatum, an effect that was not observed during cocaine priming-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. The increased phosphorylation of CaMKII and GluA1 following acute cocaine may be a compensatory mechanism in the DL striatum. Accumbens shell CP-AMPAR receptor transmission, mediated through interactions of GluA1-containing AMPARs with accessory protein SAP97, is necessary for cocaine reinstatement. Consideration of GluA1 subunit accessory proteins as potential novel targets for pharmacotherapeutic interventions in cocaine craving and addiction is warranted. Male offspring of cocaine-experienced sires exhibit baseline anxiety-like behaviors that are unaltered by subsequent cocaine exposure and dysregulation of hippocampal cellular and molecular correlates of anxiety. This identifies impairments of male offspring emotional control due to sire cocaine exposure independent of the cocaine-resistance phenotype. Collectively, these findings advance our knowledge of the direct and intergeneration effects of cocaine experience on the brain and behaviors

Non-transferrin-bound iron and protein glycation in type 2 diabetes

Background and Methods The involvement of iron in the risk for, and complications of, type 2 diabetes has generated substantial interest over the past 15 years, initially sparked by an association with raised serum ferritin, and the observation that people with iron overload diseases frequently develop diabetes. Considerable advances have since been made in understanding the effect glucose has on molecules, cells, and tissues; and the role that oxidative stress plays in the development of the pathologies of long-term diabetes. Poorly liganded iron is potentially both a contributor to, and consequence of, these complications. In vitro experiments with glucose-incubated transferrin by earlier workers have demonstrated loss of function with increasing glycation, leading to the suggestion that the failure of this key iron-binding protein may contribute to diabetic pathology, via the presence of redox active non-transferrin-bound iron (NTBI). In vitro glycated transferrin is examined here by ultrafiltration, to assess loss of function and possible oxidative fragmentation. Mass spectrometry is used to identify a range of amino acid glycation sites on in vitro glycated transferrin for the first time. Finally, several groups have previously measured NTBI in people with diabetes, finding little agreement in results. NTBI is measured here in a cohort of people with type 2 diabetes, using a new adaptation of earlier NTBI assays. NTBI is also assessed in pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease (CKD) stages I to III for the first time. Results and Conclusions Experiments with glycated transferrin in vitro demonstrate oxidative fragmentation, explaining the loss of function reported by earlier groups. In vitro glycated transferrin examined by mass spectrometry reveals a substantial number and range of amino acids subject to glycation. Comparison with in vivo glycated transferrin suggests that many of the in vitro glycation sites are not glycated in vivo, and that there are many oxidized methionine residues which are potential artefacts, or likely to be repaired by methionine sulphoxide reductases in vivo. A study of people with type 2 diabetes finds no direct association between NTBI and protein glycation. Unexpected correlations between NTBI and LDL, and LDL and haemoglobin with increasing protein glycation, are reported for the first time. NTBI is suggested to be iron sourced from haemoglobin or haem, from erythrocyte haemolysis prior to sample collection. In people with pre-dialysis CKD stages I to III no significant difference in NTBI level compared to controls is seen, or correlations with markers of renal function. No link between NTBI and kidney function at this stage of disease is indicated

Benito Perez Galdos and some of his ideas on the religious problem in Spain ..

Typewritten sheets in cover. Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University Bibliography: 3 p. at end