Moral Education: The Korean Experience

According to a Korean maxim, If there are three persons, including me, the other two persons must be moral exemplars for me. This maxim emphasizes that we learn from both a bad exemplar and a good exemplar. We learn from a good exemplar when a person gives us an opportunity to imitate his or her good behaviors. We also learn from a bad exemplar when a person gives us an opportunity to reflect on immoral behaviors

The prevalence of common mental disorders and PTSD in the UK military: using data from a clinical interview-based study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The mental health of the Armed Forces is an important issue of both academic and public interest. The aims of this study are to: a) assess the prevalence and risk factors for common mental disorders and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, during the main fighting period of the Iraq War (TELIC 1) and later deployments to Iraq or elsewhere and enlistment status (regular or reserve), and b) compare the prevalence of depression, PTSD symptoms and suicidal ideation in regular and reserve UK Army personnel who deployed to Iraq with their US counterparts.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Participants were drawn from a large UK military health study using a standard two phase survey technique stratified by deployment status and engagement type. Participants undertook a structured telephone interview including the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) and a short measure of PTSD (Primary Care PTSD, PC-PTSD). The response rate was 76% (821 participants).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The weighted prevalence of common mental disorders and PTSD symptoms was 27.2% and 4.8%, respectively. The most common diagnoses were alcohol abuse (18.0%) and neurotic disorders (13.5%). There was no health effect of deploying for regular personnel, but an increased risk of PTSD for reservists who deployed to Iraq and other recent deployments compared to reservists who did not deploy. The prevalence of depression, PTSD symptoms and subjective poor health were similar between regular US and UK Iraq combatants.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The most common mental disorders in the UK military are alcohol abuse and neurotic disorders. The prevalence of PTSD symptoms remains low in the UK military, but reservists are at greater risk of psychiatric injury than regular personnel.</p

A study of indoor carbon dioxide levels and sick leave among office workers

BACKGROUND: A previous observational study detected a strong positive relationship between sick leave absences and carbon dioxide (CO(2)) concentrations in office buildings in the Boston area. The authors speculated that the observed association was due to a causal effect associated with low dilution ventilation, perhaps increased airborne transmission of respiratory infections. This study was undertaken to explore this association. METHODS: We conducted an intervention study of indoor CO(2) levels and sick leave among hourly office workers employed by a large corporation. Outdoor air supply rates were adjusted periodically to increase the range of CO(2) concentrations. We recorded indoor CO(2) concentrations every 10 minutes and calculated a CO(2) concentration differential as a measure of outdoor air supply per person by subtracting the 1–3 a.m. average CO(2) concentration from the same-day 9 a.m. – 5 a.m. average concentration. The metric of CO(2) differential was used as a surrogate for the concentration of exhaled breath and for potential exposure to human source airborne respiratory pathogens. RESULTS: The weekly mean, workday, CO(2) concentration differential ranged from 37 to 250 ppm with a peak CO(2) concentration above background of 312 ppm as compared with the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommended maximum differential of 700 ppm. We determined the frequency of sick leave among 294 hourly workers scheduled to work approximately 49,804.2 days in the study areas using company records. We found no association between sick leave and CO(2) differential CONCLUSIONS: The CO(2) differential was in the range of very low values, as compared with the ASHRAE recommended maximum differential of 700 ppm. Although no effect was found, this study was unable to test whether higher CO(2) differentials may be associated with increased sick leave

Nest Making and Oxytocin Comparably Promote Wound Healing in Isolation Reared Rats

Background: Environmental enrichment (EE) fosters attachment behavior through its effect on brain oxytocin levels in the hippocampus and other brain regions, which in turn modulate the hypothalamic-pituitary axis (HPA). Social isolation and other stressors negatively impact physical healing through their effect on the HPA. Therefore, we reasoned that: 1) provision of a rat EE (nest building with Nestlets®) would improve wound healing in rats undergoing stress due to isolation rearing and 2) that oxytocin would have a similar beneficial effect on wound healing. Methodology/Principal Findings: In the first two experiments, we provided isolation reared rats with either EE or oxytocin and compared their wound healing to group reared rats and isolation reared rats that did not receive Nestlets or oxytocin. In the third experiment, we examined the effect of Nestlets on open field locomotion and immediate early gene (IEG) expression. We found that isolation reared rats treated with Nestlets a) healed significantly better than without Nestlets, 2) healed at a similar rate to rats treated with oxytocin, 3) had decreased hyperactivity in the open field test, and 4) had normalized IEG expression in brain hippocampus. Conclusions/Significance: This study shows that when an EE strategy or oxytocin is given to isolation reared rats, the peripheral stress response, as measured by burn injury healing, is decreased. The findings indicate an association between the effect of nest making on wound healing and administration of the pro-bonding hormone oxytocin. Further elucidation of this animal model should lead to improved understanding of how EE strategies can ameliorate poor wound healing and other symptoms that result from isolation stress

Mesoscale Eddies Are Oases for Higher Trophic Marine Life

Mesoscale eddies stimulate biological production in the ocean, but knowledge of energy transfers to higher trophic levels within eddies remains fragmented and not quantified. Increasing the knowledge base is constrained by the inability of traditional sampling methods to adequately sample biological processes at the spatio-temporal scales at which they occur

An Exploration of Formal and Informal Mindfulness Practice and Associations with Wellbeing

Mindfulness has transdiagnostic applicability, but little is known about how people first begin to practice mindfulness and what sustains practice in the long term. The aim of the present research was to explore the experiences of a large sample of people practicing mindfulness, including difficulties with practice and associations between formal and informal mindfulness practice and wellbeing. In this cross-sectional study, 218 participants who were practicing mindfulness or had practiced in the past completed an online survey about how they first began to practice mindfulness, difficulties and supportive factors for continuing to practice, current wellbeing, and psychological flexibility. Participants had practiced mindfulness from under a year up to 43 years. There was no significant difference in the frequency of formal mindfulness practice between those who had attended a face-to-face taught course and those who had not. Common difficulties included finding time to practice formally and falling asleep during formal practice. Content analysis revealed “practical resources,” “time/routine,” “support from others,” and “attitudes and beliefs,” which were supportive factors for maintaining mindfulness practice. Informal mindfulness practice was related to positive wellbeing and psychological flexibility. Frequency (but not duration) of formal mindfulness practice was associated with positive wellbeing; however, neither frequency nor duration of formal mindfulness practice was significantly associated with psychological flexibility. Mindfulness teachers will be able to use the present findings to further support their students by reminding them of the benefits as well as normalising some of the challenges of mindfulness practice including falling asleep

First Sagittarius A* Event Horizon Telescope Results. II. EHT and Multiwavelength Observations, Data Processing, and Calibration

We present Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) 1.3 mm measurements of the radio source located at the position of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), collected during the 2017 April 5-11 campaign. The observations were carried out with eight facilities at six locations across the globe. Novel calibration methods are employed to account for Sgr A*'s flux variability. The majority of the 1.3 mm emission arises from horizon scales, where intrinsic structural source variability is detected on timescales of minutes to hours. The effects of interstellar scattering on the image and its variability are found to be subdominant to intrinsic source structure. The calibrated visibility amplitudes, particularly the locations of the visibility minima, are broadly consistent with a blurred ring with a diameter of similar to 50 mu as, as determined in later works in this series. Contemporaneous multiwavelength monitoring of Sgr A* was performed at 22, 43, and 86 GHz and at near-infrared and X-ray wavelengths. Several X-ray flares from Sgr A* are detected by Chandra, one at low significance jointly with Swift on 2017 April 7 and the other at higher significance jointly with NuSTAR on 2017 April 11. The brighter April 11 flare is not observed simultaneously by the EHT but is followed by a significant increase in millimeter flux variability immediately after the X-ray outburst, indicating a likely connection in the emission physics near the event horizon. We compare Sgr A*'s broadband flux during the EHT campaign to its historical spectral energy distribution and find that both the quiescent emission and flare emission are consistent with its long-term behavior