Media Review: 'Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives and Future,' by Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry

In Nurturing Our Humanity, Eisler and Fry address the neuroscientific-biological and social-relational aspects of brain development in human children, as well as the ways brain growth in children is either promoted or inhibited, depending upon the relative degrees of domination or partnership systems existing within the social structures of families and cultures. Fry brings an anthropological perspective covering human prehistory, history and present-day humans, while Eisler brings a dynamic social-relational and systems science perspective. The effect of joining these perspectives is the dawning of a deeper understanding from which a plan can be made and carried out to raise new and successive generations of kinder, more peaceful, creative and intelligent humans. Nurturing Our Humanity winds up with Eisler’s plan, developed out of her own Cultural Transformation Theory. The plan calls for instilling  partnership system values and practices into family cultures during earliest childhood, so that partnership values and practices can grow, endure, and replace domination values and practices in the family. As the family goes, so follows all the rest: schools, towns, cities, states, and nations

Directed evolution of Vibrio fischeri LuxR for increased sensitivity to a broad spectrum of acyl-homoserine lactones

LuxR-type transcriptional regulators play key roles in quorum-sensing systems that employ acyl-homoserine lactones (acyl-HSLs) as signal molecules. These proteins mediate quorum control by changing their interactions with RNA polymerase and DNA in response to binding their cognate acyl-HSL. The evolutionarily related LuxR-type proteins exhibit considerable diversity in primary sequence and in their response to acyl-HSLs having acyl groups of differing length and composition. Little is known about which residues determine acyl-HSL specificity, and less about the evolutionary time scales required to forge new ones. To begin to examine such issues, we have focused on the LuxR protein from Vibrio fischeri, which activates gene transcription in response to binding its cognate quorum signal, 3-oxohexanoyl-homoserine lactone (3OC6HSL). Libraries of luxR mutants were screened for variants exhibiting increased gene activation in response to octanoyl-HSL (C8HSL), with which wild-type LuxR interacts only weakly. Eight LuxR variants were identified that showed a 100-fold increase in sensitivity to C8HSL; these variants also displayed increased sensitivities to pentanoyl-HSL and tetradecanoyl-HSL, while maintaining a wild-type or greater response to 3OC6HSL. The most sensitive variants activated gene transcription as strongly with C8HSL as the wild type did with 3OC6HSL. With one exception, the amino acid residues involved were restricted to the N-terminal, 'signal-binding' domain of LuxR. These residue positions differed from critical positions previously identified via 'loss-of-function' mutagenesis. We have demonstrated that acyl-HSL-dependent quorum-sensing systems can evolve rapidly to respond to new acyl-HSLs, suggesting that there may be an evolutionary advantage to maintaining such plasticity

Book Notes

An Introduction to World Methodism Kenneth Cracknell and Susan J. White New York: Cambridge University Press 2005, 298 pp., paper, $24.99 Reviewed by Kenneth J Collins Methodism: Empire of the Spirit David Hempton New Haven: Yale University Press 2005, 304 pp., paper,$18.00 Reviewed by Kenneth J Collins Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities Roger E. Olson Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press 2006, 250 pp., paper, $25.00 Reviewed by Kenneth J Collins Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act Mark W. T. Harvey Seattle: University of Washington Press 2005, 325 pp., cloth,$35.00 Reviewed by Frances S. Adeney Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminar

Massachusetts Population Health Information Tools: Tools for Community Health Needs Assessment and Planning

Overview Staff from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) will conduct a training and discussion on available MDPH data and in-development tools for accessing those data for community engagement, planning and assessment efforts. The workshop will include the sharing of practical information on MDPH data and demonstrations of tools (for those with laptops, hands-on opportunities for data access may be possible). Learning Objectives -To learn about available MDPH data and data tools for community engaged research -To understand possible MDPH roles in community engaged research - To contribute to MDPH data access planning for meeting the needs of groups conducting community engaged research Background In the spring of 2016, a partnership between two Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) bureaus, the Bureau of Environmental Health and the Bureau of Community Health and Prevention, and several MA hospital associations, embarked on a new project to make data more available for the purpose of helping to guide community partners in identifying community health needs and making decisions on resource allocation. The resulting Public Health Information Tool (PHIT) helps respond to two specific mandates requiring regular community needs assessments: (1) the Public Health Accreditation Board’s requirement of certified local health departments and (2) Affordable Care Act’s requirements of non-profit hospitals. The current vision of PHIT will incorporate expanded data and functionality so that it is applicable to local health, community health advocates, and academic institutions, among others. The project allows for the inclusion of many MDPH health indicators, including a focus on social determinants of health and identifying health disparities. PHIT is currently in beta-test mode and is not yet available to the public. However, PHIT is built on the infrastructure for an existing BEH web tool, the Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) portal, which is a web-based data system available to the public. EPHT is part of a national effort by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make environmental and health data readily available to the public in customizable maps, tables and charts at the county, community and census tract levels. Currently, the EPHT website includes the latest available health data for asthma, birth defects, cancer, carbon monoxide poisoning, childhood lead poisoning, heart attack, heat stress, pediatric diabetes and reproductive outcomes. In addition, Community Profiles for all 351 cities and towns are available that present a compilation of select indicators. EPHT reflects over a decade of program development, which has been easily adapted into the PHIT system. Both EPHT and PHIT will continually evolve to add content, improve performance, and enhance system capabilities to best fit the needs of an expanding array of external stakeholders. To that end, this session not only provides an opportunity to introduce these tools to an interested audience, but also serves as a forum for gathering critical feedback from potential users

Dual selection enhances the signaling specificity of a variant of the quorum-sensing transcriptional activator LuxR

The transcription factor LuxR activates gene expression in response to binding the signaling molecule 3-oxo-hexanoyl-homoserine lactone (3OC6HSL), an acyl-HSL with a carbonyl substituent at the third carbon of the acyl chain. We previously described a LuxR variant, LuxR-G2E, that activates gene expression by binding a broader range of acyl-HSLs, including straight-chain acyl-HSLs to which LuxR does not respond. Here, we use a dual positive-negative selection system to identify a variant of LuxR-G2E that retains the response to straight-chain acyl-HSLs, but no longer responds to 3OC6HSL. A single mutation, R67M, reduces LuxR-G2E's response to acyl-HSLs having a carbonyl substituent at the third carbon of the acyl chain. This specificity-enhancing mutation would not have been identified by positive selection alone. The dual selection system provides a rapid and reliable method for identifying LuxR variants that have or lack the desired response to a given set of acyl-HSL signals. LuxR variants with altered signaling specificities might become useful components for constructing artificial cell-cell communication systems that program population level behaviors

Aquaculture Thesaurus: Descriptors Used in the National Aquaculture Information System

The Aquaculture Thesaurus consists of the descriptors used in entering material into the National Aquaculture Information System {NAIS). Terms have been arranged in a format similar to that used in the Thesaurus of Water Resources Terms published by the U. S. Department of the Interior. The National Aquaculture Information System is a NOAA project which provides computer assisted access to a broad range of information on growing marine, brackish and freshwater organisms. It was developed to answer the need for a centralized source of information in the U.S., and anyone with a need for information on aquaculture can use it

A synthetic Escherichia coli predator–prey ecosystem

We have constructed a synthetic ecosystem consisting of two Escherichia coli populations, which communicate bi-directionally through quorum sensing and regulate each other's gene expression and survival via engineered gene circuits. Our synthetic ecosystem resembles canonical predator–prey systems in terms of logic and dynamics. The predator cells kill the prey by inducing expression of a killer protein in the prey, while the prey rescue the predators by eliciting expression of an antidote protein in the predator. Extinction, coexistence and oscillatory dynamics of the predator and prey populations are possible depending on the operating conditions as experimentally validated by long-term culturing of the system in microchemostats. A simple mathematical model is developed to capture these system dynamics. Coherent interplay between experiments and mathematical analysis enables exploration of the dynamics of interacting populations in a predictable manner

Development and validation of a short-form Pain Medication Attitudes Questionnaire (PMAQ-14)

Attitudes to pain medication are important aspects of adjustment to chronic pain. They are measured by the 47-item Pain Medication Attitudes Questionnaire (PMAQ). To measure those attitudes more quickly and easily, we developed and evaluated a 14-item PMAQ using data from three separate surveys of people with pain in the general population. In survey 1, participants (n=295) completed the 47-item PMAQ and measures of pain, analgesic use, analgesic dependence and attitudes to self-medication. For each of the seven PMAQ scales, the two items that best preserved the content of the parent scales were identified using correlation and regression. The 2-item and parent scales had very similar relationships with other measures, indicating validity had been maintained. The resulting 14-item PMAQ was then completed by participants in survey 2 (n=241) and survey 3 (n=147), along with the same other measures as in survey 1. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the 14-item PMAQ retained the 7-factor structure of the 47-item version, and correlations with other measures showed it retained the validity of the 47-item version. The PMAQ scale Need was the most significant independent predictor of analgesic dependence in each of four separate multiple regression analyses. This short form of the PMAQ allows attitudes to pain medications to be measured in a valid and more efficient way.Survey 1 was part of Doctoral research undertaken by Omimah Said. Survey 2 was part of a study funded by a small grant awarded to James Elander and Omimah Said from the University of Derby’s Research for Learning and Teaching Fund. Survey 3 was part of a study funded by a British Psychological Society Undergraduate Research Assistantship bursary awarded to Ada Dys, and by a University of Derby Undergraduate Research Scholarship Scheme bursary awarded to Hannah Collins