The Effects of Estrogen and Arousal on Latent Inhibition

The behaviors of humans and animals are dependent on neurotransmitters and hormones that affect attention, alertness, and associative learning. These include the hormone estrogen (which plays an interesting role in cognition and attentional processes) and the neurotransmitter orexin (involved in wakefulness, arousal and goal-directed behaviors). Here we evaluated the roles of orexin receptors and estrogen in Latent Inhibition (LI), a measure of attention and associative learning. Latent inhibition is a behavioral phenomenon in which an organism\u27s ability to associate new meaning to a familiar previously inconsequential (pre-exposed) stimulus is reduced when compared to associating meaning to a novel stimulus (non pre-exposed) in a classical conditioning paradigm. We hypothesize that orexin and estrogen have synergistic effects on latent inhibition (LI). Two-month-old female mice (OXR2-KO and WT) underwent aseptic ovariectomies and subsequently received subcutaneous placebo or estrogen treatment throughout the 10-day test. The mice underwent shaping, pre-exposure, conditioning, re-baseline, and testing. During pre-exposure approximately half the mice were exposed to a tone, while the other half were not. This stimulus was later paired with a foot shock on the conditioning day for all animals. On test-day the reaction (freezing response) to the tone stimulus was measured for both pre-exposed and non-preexposed animals. With the unfortunate circumstances of the current pandemic and inability to adequately increase the sample size, the effect of group (non-pre-exposed and pre-exposed), genotype (OXR2-KO and WT), and treatment (estrogen vs. placebo), all failed to reach statistical significance. However, both KO and WT placebo-treated animals exhibited increased freezing in the non-pre-exposed condition when compared to the pre-exposed condition, indicating a trend towards a normal LI response. There exists a necessity to further clarify the roles that orexin and estrogen play in a latent inhibition paradigm.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/fsrs2020/1026/thumbnail.jp

Gerrymanders and Theories of Law Making: A Study of Legislative Redistricting in Illinois

Redistricting politics in Illinois provide a novel opportunity for testing competing theories of law making. With this in mind, we demonstrate that the post-2000 Census redistricters in Illinois, dominated by Democrats, strategically reshuffled district demographic profiles in an attempt to convert relatively liberal Republican districts to conservative Democratic districts in the state Senate while decreasing and increasing the ideological diversity of the Democrats and Republicans, respectively, in the House. Such reshufflings suggest that legislative politics in Illinois are conducted in a manner consistent with vote-buying theories of coalition formation

Race, Shelby County, and the Voter Information Verification Act in North Carolina

Shortly after the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the State of North Carolina enacted an omnibus piece of election- reform legislation known as the Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA). Prior to Shelby, portions of North Carolina were covered jurisdictions per the VRA’s sections 4 and 5—meaning that they had to seek federal preclearance for changes to their election procedures— and this motivates our assessment of whether VIVA’s many alterations to North Carolina’s election procedures are race-neutral. We show that in presidential elections in North Carolina black early voters have cast their ballots disproportionately in the first week of early voting, which was eliminated by VIVA; that blacks disproportionately have registered to vote during early voting and in the immediate run-up to Election Day, something VIVA now prohibits; that registered voters in the state who lack two VIVA-acceptable forms of voter identification, driver’s licenses and non-operator identification cards, are disproportionately black; that VIVA’s identification dispensation for voters at least seventy years old disproportionately benefits white registered voters; and, that preregistered sixteen and seventeen year old voters in North Carolina, a category of registrants that VIVA prohibits, are disproportionately black. These results illustrate how VIVA will have a disparate effect on black voters in North Carolina

Black Candidates and Black Voters: Assessing the Impact of Candidate Race on Uncounted Vote Rates

Numerous studies show that the rate at which African‐Americans cast ballots with missing or invalid votes, i.e., the African‐American residual vote rate, is higher than the corresponding white rate. While existing literature argues that the plethora of African‐American residual votes is caused by administrative problems or socioeconomic factors, we show using precinct‐level data from two recent elections in Cook County, Illinois, that the African‐American residual vote rate in electoral contests with black candidates is less than half the rate in contests without black candidates. African Americans, therefore, are able to reduce their residual vote rate when they wish to do so. We present complementary findings for white voters, whose residual vote rate often substantially increases in contests which feature dominant black candidates

Applying the Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences (VR-CoDES) in the dental context involving patients with complex communication needs : an exploratory study

This study was conducted as part of a larger collaborative study funded by the EPSRC, between the University of St Andrews and the University of Dundee.Objective The VR-CoDES has been previously applied in the dental context. However, we know little about how dental patients with intellectual disabilities (ID) and complex communication needs express their emotional distress during dental visits. This is the first study explored the applicability of the VR-CoDES to a dental context involving patients with ID. Methods Fourteen dental consultations were video recorded and coded using the VR-CoDES, assisted with the additional guidelines for the VR-CoDES in a dental context. Both inter- and intra-coder reliabilities were checked on the seven consultations where cues were observed. Results Sixteen cues (eight non-verbal) were identified within seven of the 14 consultations. Twenty responses were observed (12 reducing space) with four multiple responses. Cohen's Kappa were 0.76 (inter-coder) and 0.88 (intra-coder). Conclusion With the additional guidelines, cues and responses were reliably identified. Cue expression was exhibited by non-verbal expression of emotion with people with ID in the literature. Further guidance is needed to improve the coding accuracy on multiple providers’ responses and to investigate potential impacts of conflicting responses on patients. Practice implications The findings provided a useful initial step towards an ongoing exploration of how healthcare providers identify and manage emotional distress of patients with ID.PostprintPeer reviewe

A Consensus on Second Stage Analyses in Ecological Inference Models

Statistic

Partisan impacts on the economy: evidence from prediction markets and close elections

Analyses of the effects of election outcomes on the economy have been hampered by the problem that economic outcomes also influence elections. We sidestep these problems by analyzing movements in economic indicators caused by clearly exogenous changes in expectations about the likely winner during election day. Analyzing high frequency financial fluctuations following the release of flawed exit poll data on election day 2004, and then during the vote count we find that markets anticipated higher equity prices, interest rates and oil prices, and a stronger dollar under a George W. Bush presidency than under John Kerry. A similar Republican–Democrat differential was also observed for the 2000 Bush–Gore contest. Prediction market based analyses of all presidential elections since 1880 also reveal a similar pattern of partisan impacts, suggesting that electing a Republican president raises equity valuations by 2–3 percent, and that since Ronald Reagan, Republican presidents have tended to raise bond yields