How Humboldt County Native Populations Reacted and Rebounded from COVID-19

COVID had an immeasurable affect on businesses and life as we know it. That is no surprise, however, studies about COVID have focused far too long on the long-term economic and cultural impact that this pandemic has wrought upon the world. The human impact is far greater, and in the bubble of Humboldt country, the local population has felt that impact to a great degree, no more than the local native populations in and around Humboldt County, like the Karuk of Happy Camp, CA. I spoke to tribal chairman Buster Attebery, in order to discover how experiences of the Karuk people and the lives of other local native populations have changed drastically through the COVID-19 pandemic. I also spoke with youth advocate at Two Feathers and HSU Grad student, Amada Lang, in order to ascertain how native health and family services reacted to the pandemic, as well as how they are attempting to return to normalc

Evidence to practice: treatment of anxiety in individuals with autism spectrum disorders

Russell Lang, Richard Mahoney, Farah El Zein, Elizabeth Delaune, Megan AmidonTexas State University-San Marcos, TX, USADate of preparation: 23rd December 2010 Conflict of interest: None declaredClinical question: What treatment improves social interactions and reduces reports of anxiety symptoms in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a co-occurring anxiety disorder? Results: Systematic reviews and randomized clinical trials suggest that cognitive behavior therapy in tandem with direct instruction of social skills using applied behavior analysis intervention components may be effective for treating anxiety in individuals with high functioning ASD. For individuals with ASD, an anxiety disorder, and an intellectual disability, systematic desensitization may be effective.Implementation: Intervention should emphasize teaching social skills. Reinforcers (ie, rewards based upon the client's interests) should be used to encourage participation in therapy. Treatment should incorporate visual aides and family involvement. Intervention components involving abstract concepts, visualization, and discussions of emotions are less useful given difficulties in abstract reasoning and communication inherent to ASD.Keywords: autism, ASD, Asperger's, anxiety, cognitive behavior therapy, applied behavior analysi

The boss is watching : how monitoring decisions hurt black workers

African Americans face shorter employment durations than similar whites. We hypothesize that employers discriminate in acquiring or acting on ability-relevant information. In our model, monitoring black but not white workers is self-sustaining. New black hires were more likely fired by previous employers after monitoring. This reduces firms’ beliefs about ability, incentivizing discriminatory monitoring. We confirm our predictions that layoffs are initially higher for black than non-black workers but that they converge with seniority and decline more with AFQT for black workers. Two additional predictions, lower lifetime incomes and longer unemployment durations for black workers, have known empirical support

Increasing Play and Decreasing the Challenging Behavior of Children With Autism During Recess With Activity Schedules and Task Correspondence Training

This article examines the effects of a teacher-implemented playground intervention consisting of activity schedules and task correspondence training on the challenging behaviors and play of three school-age children with moderate to severe autism. Researchers used a multiple-baseline design across participants to evaluate the intervention effects. Results indicated that each of the participants learned to use an activity schedule to follow a schedule of play activities and demonstrated improved play. Moreover, challenging behavior decreased for two participants during the intervention and remained at low levels for the third participant. The findings from this study provide support for the use of activity schedules and task correspondence training to reinforce appropriate play and decrease challenging behaviors during recess.Educatio

A Simple Explanation for DAMA with Moderate Channeling

We consider the possibility that the DAMA signal arises from channeled events in simple models where the dark matter interaction with nuclei is suppressed at small momenta. As with the standard WIMP, these models have two parameters (the dark matter mass and the size of the cross-section), without the need to introduce an additional energy threshold type of parameter. We find that they can be consistent with channeling fractions as low as about ~ 15%, so long as at least ~70% of the nuclear recoil energy for channeled events is deposited electronically. Given that there are reasons not to expect very large channeling fractions, these scenarios make the channeling explanation of DAMA much more compelling.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Pattern classification of valence in depression

Copyright @ The authors, 2013. This is an open access article available under Creative Commons Licence, CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0.Neuroimaging biomarkers of depression have potential to aid diagnosis, identify individuals at risk and predict treatment response or course of illness. Nevertheless none have been identified so far, potentially because no single brain parameter captures the complexity of the pathophysiology of depression. Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) may overcome this issue as it can identify patterns of voxels that are spatially distributed across the brain. Here we present the results of an MVPA to investigate the neuronal patterns underlying passive viewing of positive, negative and neutral pictures in depressed patients. A linear support vector machine (SVM) was trained to discriminate different valence conditions based on the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data of nine unipolar depressed patients. A similar dataset obtained in nine healthy individuals was included to conduct a group classification analysis via linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Accuracy scores of 86% or higher were obtained for each valence contrast via patterns that included limbic areas such as the amygdala and frontal areas such as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. The LDA identified two areas (the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and caudate nucleus) that allowed group classification with 72.2% accuracy. Our preliminary findings suggest that MVPA can identify stable valence patterns, with more sensitivity than univariate analysis, in depressed participants and that it may be possible to discriminate between healthy and depressed individuals based on differences in the brain's response to emotional cues.This work was supported by a PhD studentship to I.H. from the National Institute for Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR) HS/10/25 and MRC grant G 1100629

Measuring Future Time Perspective across Adulthood: Development and Evaluation of a Brief Multidimensional Questionnaire.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: Despite calls for the consideration of future time perspective (FTP) as a multidimensional construct, mostly unidimensional measurement instruments have been used. This study had two objectives: (a) to develop a brief multidimensional questionnaire for assessing FTP in adulthood and evaluate its psychometric properties; and (b) to examine age associations and age-group differences of the dimensions of FTP. DESIGN AND METHODS: Data were collected from 625 community-residing adults between the ages of 18 and 93, representing young, middle-aged, and older adults. The psychometric evaluation involved exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and confirmatory FA (CFA), reliability and validity analyses, and measurement invariance testing. Zero-order and partial correlations were used to examine the association of the dimensions of FTP with age, and multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine age-group differences. RESULTS: EFA and CFA supported a three-factor solution: Future as Open, Future as Limited, and Future as Ambiguous. Metric measurement invariance for this factor structure was confirmed across the three age groups. Reliability and validity analyses provided evidence of sound psychometric properties of the brief questionnaire. Age was negatively associated with Future as Open and positively associated with Future as Limited. Young adults exhibited significantly greater ambiguity toward the future than middle-aged or older adults. IMPLICATIONS: This study provides evidence in support of the psychometric properties of a new brief multidimensional FTP scale. It also provides evidence for a pattern of age associations and age-group differences consistent with life-span developmental theory

Enforced Bcl-2 Expression Inhibits Antigen-mediated Clonal Elimination of Peripheral B Cells in an Antigen Dose–dependent Manner and Promotes Receptor Editing in Autoreactive, Immature B Cells

The mechanisms that establish immune tolerance in immature and mature B cells appear to be distinct. Membrane-bound autoantigen is thought to induce developmental arrest and receptor editing in immature B cells, whereas mature B cells have shortened lifespans when exposed to the same stimulus. In this study, we used Eμ–bcl-2-22 transgenic (Tg) mice to test the prediction that enforced expression of the Bcl-2 apoptotic inhibitor in B cells would rescue mature, but not immature, B cells from tolerance induction. To monitor tolerance to the natural membrane autoantigen H-2Kb, we bred 3–83μδ (anti-Kk,b) Ig Tg mice to H-2b mice or to mice expressing transgene-driven Kb in the periphery. In 3–83μδ/bcl-2 Tg mice, deletion of autoreactive B cells induced by peripheral Kb antigen expression in the liver (MT-Kb Tg) or epithelia (KerIV-Kb Tg), was partly or completely inhibited, respectively. Furthermore, Bcl-2 protected peritoneal B-2 B cells from deletion mediated by acute antigen exposure, but this protection could be overcome by higher antigen dose. In contrast to its ability to block peripheral self-tolerance, Bcl-2 overexpression failed to inhibit central tolerance induced by bone marrow antigen expression, but instead, enhanced the receptor editing process. These studies indicate that apoptosis plays distinct roles in central and peripheral B cell tolerance

Methodological checklists for improving research quality and reporting consistency

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this recor