Signal anxiety from the adaptive point of view.

The adaptive importance of anxiety is obvious from its role in the avoidance of danger. Attenuation of the anxiety response is adaptive because extreme anxiety may impede effective coping behavior and because extreme anxiety has harmful physiological effects. This attenuation has traditionally been explained in terms of "taming," "structuralization," and "turning passive into active." The present article argues for the explanation provided by the double-prediction theory over traditional explanations because of its logical connection to the concept of the impulse-defense equilibrium. An innate mechanism is postulated that communicates information on the status of the impulse-defense balance to the censor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Caveolae: from a morphological point of view

The protective effect of quercetin against oxidant-induced cell injury (hypoxanthine/xanthine oxidase system) was studied in the renal tubular epithelial cell line LLC-PK1. Pretreatment with quercetin provided protection from structural and functional cell damage in a concentration-dependent manner (10-100 microM). Comparison with structural variants revealed that the protective property of quercetin depends on the number of hydroxyl substituents in the B-ring, the presence of an extended C-ring chromophore, 3-D-planarity and lipophilicity, indicating that membrane affinity is essential for protection. The hypothesis that quercetin exerts its protective effects via inhibition of lipid peroxidation was further examined. Protection by quercetin was found when lipid peroxidation, assessed by the release of malondialdehyde, was initiated by H2O2 or by the combination of 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene and aminotriazole. In contrast, the bioflavonoid was not protective when oxidative cell damage was induced by menadione and occurred in the absence of lipid peroxidation. These data suggest that cytoprotective effects of quercetin are related to membrane affinity and may be explained by interruption of membrane lipid peroxidation rather than by intracellular scavenging of oxygen free radicals.     

Long-term placement of dependent children from the client's point of view

This article presents data regarding the backgrounds and attitudes of 396 dependent children in Israel who had been living in boarding institutions for almost three years, and were at least 10 years old at the time of the research interview. Parents of the children were also interviewed, and background [corrected] information regarding the family and its experience with placement was abstracted from welfare department records. This detailed information, collected nearly a decade ago, was then compared with several very recent Israeli studies of institutionalized dependent children and it was found that many problematic features of placement still persist. Among these are lack of long or short-term planning by welfare agencies, poor agency follow-up after placement, and little personal contact with either the child or his family. More older children were accepting placement than were younger children, and the majority of the parents did not contemplate the child's return home, being quite satisfied with placement in the institution. The findings from this study should have direct implications for child welfare policy and practices.