Adolescent Psychological Health and School Attitudes: The Impact of Attachment Relationships

The simultaneous and differential effects of parental, peer, and intimate friendship attachment on attitudes to school and psychological health were examined in a sample of 520 adolescents aged from 13 to 19 years. Based on recent extensions to attachment theory it was predicted that parental, peer and intimate friend attachment would impact on psychological health variables, while peer attachment and intimate friendship attachment along with depression and self-esteem would influence attitudes towards school. The hypothesised pattern of relationships was evaluated using structural equation modelling techniques. Overall, there was only partial support for the hypotheses. Results showed that parental attachment and peer attachment were related to psychological health but intimate friendship attachment was not. Intimate friendship was the only attachment variable that directly influenced school attitudes. The three attachment variables were only weakly inter-correlated. Implications with regard to extensions of attachment theory are discussed

Noise in the operating theatre: how much is too much?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79245/1/j.1445-2197.2010.05320.x.pd

Genetically engineered cotton in northwest Texas: Implications for farmers and rural communities.

The purpose of this research is to examine how genetically, engineered cotton has impacted northwest Texas farmers and the communities in which they live. Accounting for over 30% of the nation's total, Texas is the leading producer of cotton in the United States. The majority of Texas cotton is produced atop the Ogallala Aquifer on the northwest Texas plains. I use an applied community approach to examine two cotton-farming communities in this region. Farmers from Hale Center grow predominantly irrigated cotton whereas farmers in Elliott, my home community, raise dryland cotton. Over 90% of cotton farmers surveyed in these communities grow genetically engineered cotton.Transgenic technologies initially made cotton production easier and appear to have very few immediate or perceived costs. But the true costs of these technologies have threatened the long-term viability of Texas farm families and rural communities. Cotton-growing farmers and their communities are at risk from biotechnology corporations and genetically engineered seeds in that they limit and control farmers' choices in seed, increase their dependency on agribusinesses, especially agribiotechnology and chemical corporations, increase the use of pesticides, encourage monoculture practices, further the consolidation of land, and reduce the number of cotton-related jobs in rural areas.Most often, concern about GE crops and food revolves around the environment or human health. My research is different in that it examines the social implications of the technology. It asks: What are farmers' key motivations for planting GE cotton? How do they understand the risks and benefits of adoption? And my key concern, how have farmers' adoption of genetically engineered crops (specifically cotton) changed the ways in which they manage their land, and have these changes threatened the vitality of family farms and rural communities in northwest Texas

What is the functional/organic distinction actually doing in psychiatry and neurology? [version 1; peer review: 3 approved]

The functional-organic distinction aims to distinguish symptoms, signs, and syndromes that can be explained by diagnosable biological changes, from those that cannot. The distinction is central to clinical practice and is a key organising principle in diagnostic systems. Following a pragmatist approach that examines meaning through use, we examine how the functional-organic distinction is deployed and conceptualised in psychiatry and neurology. We note that the conceptual scope of the terms ‘functional’ and ‘organic’ varies considerably by context. Techniques for differentially diagnosing ‘functional’ and ‘organic’ diverge in the strength of evidence they produce as a necessary function of the syndrome in question. Clinicians do not agree on the meaning of the terms and report using them strategically. The distinction often relies on an implied model of ‘zero sum’ causality and encourages classification of syndromes into discrete ‘functional’ and ‘organic’ versions. Although this clearly applies in some instances, this is often in contrast to our best scientific understanding of neuropsychiatric disorders as arising from a dynamic interaction between personal, social and neuropathological factors. We also note ‘functional’ and ‘organic’ have loaded social meanings, creating the potential for social disempowerment. Given this, we argue for a better understanding of how strategic simplification and complex scientific reality limit each other in neuropsychiatric thinking. We also note that the contribution of people who experience the interaction between ‘functional’ and ‘organic’ factors has rarely informed the validity of this distinction and the dilemmas arising from it, and we highlight this as a research priority

Exploring the Reasons for Labour Market Gender Inequality a Year into the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from the UK Cohort Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unexpected disruptions to Western countries which affected women more adversely than men. Previous studies suggest that gender differences are attributable to: women being over-represented in the most affected sectors of the economy, women’s labour market disadvantage as compared to their partners, and mothers taking a bigger share childcare responsibilities following school closures. Using the data from four British nationally representative cohort studies, we test these propositions. Our findings confirm that the adverse labour market effects were still experienced by women a year into the COVID-19 pandemic and that these effects were the most severe for women who lived with a partner and children, even if they worked in critical occupations. We show that adjusting for pre-pandemic job characteristics attenuates the gaps, suggesting that women were over-represented in jobs disproportionately affected by COVID-19 pandemic. However, the remaining gaps are not further attenuated by adjusting for the partner’s job and children characteristics, suggesting that the adversities experienced by women were not driven by their relative labour market position, as compared to their partners or childcare responsibilities. The residual gender differences observed in the rates of active, paid work and furlough for those who live with partner and children point to the importance of unobserved factors such as social norms, preferences, or discrimination. These effects may be long-lasting and jeopardise women’s longer-term position through the loss of experience, leading to reinforcement of gender inequalities or even reversal of the progress towards gender equality

Isoniazid concentrations in hair and plasma area-under-the-curve exposure among children with tuberculosis.

We measured hair and plasma concentrations of isoniazid among sixteen children with tuberculosis who underwent personal or video-assisted directly observed therapy and thus had 100% adherence. This study therefore defined typical isoniazid exposure parameters after two months of treatment among fully-adherent patients in both hair and plasma (plasma area under the concentration-time curve, AUC, estimated using pharmacokinetic data collected 0, 2, 4, and 6 hours after drug administration). We found that INH levels in hair among highly-adherent individuals did not correlate well with plasma AUC or trough concentrations, suggesting that each measure may provide incremental and complementary information regarding drug exposure in the context of TB treatment

A mouse chromosome 4 balancer ENU-mutagenesis screen isolates eleven lethal lines.

BACKGROUND: ENU-mutagenesis is a powerful technique to identify genes regulating mammalian development. To functionally annotate the distal region of mouse chromosome 4, we performed an ENU-mutagenesis screen using a balancer chromosome targeted to this region of the genome. RESULTS: We isolated 11 lethal lines that map to the region of chromosome 4 between D4Mit117 and D4Mit281. These lines form 10 complementation groups. The majority of lines die during embryonic development between E5.5 and E12.5 and display defects in gastrulation, cardiac development, and craniofacial development. One line displayed postnatal lethality and neurological defects, including ataxia and seizures. CONCLUSION: These eleven mutants allow us to query gene function within the distal region of mouse chromosome 4 and demonstrate that new mouse models of mammalian developmental defects can easily and quickly be generated and mapped with the use of ENU-mutagenesis in combination with balancer chromosomes. The low number of mutations isolated in this screen compared with other balancer chromosome screens indicates that the functions of genes in different regions of the genome vary widely

A CCR4 antagonist reverses the tumor-promoting microenvironment of renal cancer

CRUK programme grant C587/A16354 and a research grant from Affitech AS.The study was supported by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) programme grant C587/A16354 and a research grant from Affitech AS

Analyzing Patterns of Community Interest at a Legacy Mining Waste Site to Assess and Inform Environmental Health Literacy Efforts

Understanding a community’s concerns and infor-mational needs is crucial to conducting and improving envi-ronmental health research and literacy initiatives. We hypoth-esized that analysis of community inquiries over time at alegacy mining site would be an effective method for assessingenvironmental health literacy efforts and determining whethercommunity concerns were thoroughly addressed. Through aqualitative analysis, we determined community concerns atthe time of being listed as a Superfund site. We analyzedhow community concerns changed from this starting pointover the subsequent years, and whether: (1) communicationmaterials produced by the U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency and other media were aligned with community con-cerns; and (2) these changes demonstrated a progression of thecommunity’s understanding resulting from community in-volvement and engaged research efforts. We observed thatwhen the Superfund site was first listed, community memberswere most concerned with USEPA management, remediation,site-specific issues, health effects, and environmental monitor-ing efforts related to air/dust and water. Over the next 5 years,community inquiries shifted significantly to include exposureassessment and reduction methods and issues unrelated to thesite, particularly the local public water supply and home watertreatment systems. Such documentation of community inqui-ries over time at contaminated sites is a novel method to assessenvironmental health literacy efforts and determine whethercommunity concerns were thoroughly addressed.12 month embargo; published online: 21 July 2015This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Utility of interferon-γ ELISPOT assay responses in highly tuberculosis-exposed patients with advanced HIV infection in South Africa

BACKGROUND: Interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) ELISPOT assays incorporating Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific antigens are useful in the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) or latent infection. However, their utility in patients with advanced HIV is unknown. We studied determinants of ELISPOT responses among patients with advanced HIV infection (but without active TB) living in a South African community with very high TB notification rates. METHODS: IFN-gamma responses to ESAT-6 and CFP-10 in overnight ELISPOT assays and in 7-day whole blood assays (WBA) were compared in HIV-infected patients (HIV+, n = 40) and healthy HIV-negative controls (HIV-, n = 30) without active TB. Tuberculin skin tests (TSTs) were also done. RESULTS: ELISPOTs, WBAs and TSTs were each positive in >70% of HIV- controls, reflecting very high community exposure to M. tuberculosis. Among HIV+ patients, quantitative WBA responses and TSTs (but not the proportion of positive ELISPOT responses) were significantly impaired in those with CD4 cell counts <100 cells/mul compared to those with higher counts. In contrast, ELISPOT responses (but not WBA or TST) were strongly related to history of TB treatment; a much lower proportion of HIV+ patients who had recently completed treatment for TB (n = 19) had positive responses compared to those who had not been treated (11% versus 62%, respectively; P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis confirmed that ELISPOT responses had a strong inverse association with a history of recent TB treatment (adjusted OR = 0.06, 95%CI = 0.10-0.40, P < 0.01) and that they were independent of CD4 cell count and viral load. Among HIV+ individuals who had not received TB treatment both the magnitude and proportion of positive ELISPOT responses (but not TST or WBA) were similar to those of HIV-negative controls. CONCLUSION: The proportion of positive ELISPOT responses in patients with advanced HIV infection was independent of CD4 cell count but had a strong inverse association with history of TB treatment. This concurs with the previously documented low TB risk among patients in this cohort with a history of recent treatment for TB. These data suggest ELISPOT assays may be useful for patient assessment and as an immuno-epidemiological research tool among patients with advanced HIV and warrant larger scale prospective evaluation