Stress, reactivity, and immune function in healthy men.

Examined the effects of acute psychological stress on lymphocyte proliferation and circulating levels of interleukin-1 and -2. 20 healthy men were exposed to 2 viewings of a gruesome surgery film and were asked to recall details of the film twice during a 20-min period. These Ss were compared to a nonstress control group of 9 Ss. Lymphocyte proliferation to the mitogen concanavalin-A was decreased during and after exposure to the stressor when compared to the control group. This decrease was more pronounced in Ss exhibiting greater blood pressure reactivity while viewing the film than in Ss showing smaller blood pressure responses. None of the other immunological measures was significantly affected by the stressor. Cortisol was not correlated with lymphocyte responsiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mammalian protein RAP46: an interaction partner and modulator of 70 kDa heat shock proteins

A ubiquitously expressed nuclear receptor-associating protein of approximately 46 kDa (RAP46) was identified recently. Interaction experiments with in vitro-translated proteins and proteins contained in cell extracts revealed that a great variety of cellular regulators associate with RAP46. However, in direct interaction tests by the far-Western technique, only 70 kDa proteins showed up and were identified as members of the 70 kDa heat shock protein (hsp70) family. Interaction is specific since not all members of the hsp70 family bind to RAP46; interaction occurs through their ATP-binding domain. RAP46 forms complexes with hsp70 in mammalian cells and interacts with hsp70 in the yeast two-hybrid system. Consistent with the fact that hsp70 can bind a multitude of proteins, we identified heteromeric complexes of RAP46-hsp70 with some selected proteins, most notably c-Jun. Complex formation is increased significantly by pre-treatment with alkaline phosphatase, thus suggesting modulation of interactions by protein phosphorylation. We observed that RAP46 interferes with efficient refolding of thermally denatured luciferase. Moreover, ATP-dependent binding of misfolded proteins to hsp70 was greatly inhibited by RAP46. These data suggest that RAP46 functions as a regulator of hsp70 in higher eukaryotes.     

Spatial attention does not require preattentive grouping.

Does spatial attention follow a full preattentive analysis of the visual field, or can attention select from ungrouped regions of the visual field? We addressed this question by testing an apperceptive agnosic patient, J. W., in tasks involving both spatial selection and preattentive grouping. Results suggest that J. W. had intact spatial attention: He was faster to detect targets appearing at cued locations relative to targets appearing at uncued locations. However, his preattentive processes were severely disrupted. Gestalt grouping and symmetry perception, both thought to involve preattentive processes, were impaired in J. W. Also, he could not use gestalt grouping cues to guide spatial attention. These results suggest that spatial attention is not completely dependent on preattentive grouping processes. We argue that preattentive grouping processes and spatial attention may mutually constrain one another in guiding the attentional selection of visual stimuli but that these 2 processes are isolated from one another. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antimicrobial Activity of Natural Agents against Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The antimicrobial (AM) activity of starch‐based films coated with linalool, carvacrol or thymol against Saccharomyces cerevisiae in vitro and/or inoculated on the surface of Cheddar cheese was investigated. In solid medium using the agar diffusion method and in experiments involving the inoculation of the microorganism on the surface of Cheddar cheese, all the films containing these AM agents in coatings demonstrated an inhibitory effect against S. cerevisiae. The results suggest that the overall inhibitory effect of linalool, carvacrol or thymol increased significantly (p ≤ 0.05) with the concentration of each of the AM agents in the film coating and that the response is linear in the concentration range of 1 to 5% (w/w) of the AM agent. Thymol had the highest AM efficacy followed by carvacrol, whereas linalool had the lowest efficacy amongst the three systems. The zones of inhibition in the agar diffusion test method at 25°C for S. cerevisiae were found to be 7.6, 7.1 and 6.1 mm for thymol, carvacrol and linalool at 1% (w/w) loading and 13.2, 12.2 and 11.2 mm at 5% (w/w) loading of the AM agents, respectively. The death rates of S. cerevisiae on Cheddar cheese wrapped in films coated with thymol, carvacrol and linalool and stored for up to 28 days at 15°C were found to be 0.044, 0.043 and 0.038 per day at 1% (w/w) loading and 0.077, 0.073 and 0.063 per day at 5% (w/w) loading of the AM agents, respectively. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social competence promotion with inner-city and suburban young adolescents: Effects on social adjustment and alcohol use.

Assessed the impact of school-based social competence training on skills, social adjustment, and self-reported substance use of 282 6th and 7th graders. Training emphasized broad-based competence promotion in conjunction with domain-specific application to substance abuse prevention. The 20-session program comprised 6 units: stress management, self-esteem, problem solving, substances and health information, assertiveness, and social networks. Findings indicated positive training effects on Ss' skills in handling interpersonal problems and coping with anxiety. Teacher ratings revealed improvements in Ss' constructive conflict resolution with peers, impulse control, and popularity. Self-report ratings indicated gains in problem-solving efficacy. Results suggest some preventive impact on self-reported substance use intentions and excessive alcohol use. In general, the program was found to be beneficial for both inner-city and suburban students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linguistic Attention Control: Attention Shifting Governed by Grammaticized Elements of Language.

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated attention control for tasks involving the processing of grammaticized linguistic stimuli (function words) contextualized in sentence fragments. Attention control was operationalized as shift costs obtained with adult speakers of English in an alternating-runs experimental design (R. D. Rogers & S. Monsell, 1995). Experiment 1 yielded significant attention shift costs between tasks involving judgments about the meanings of grammatical function words. The authors used a 3-stage experimental design (G. Wylie & A. Allport, 2000), and the emerging pattern of results implicated task set reconfiguration and not task set inertia in these shift costs. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that shift costs were lower when the tasks involved shared attentional resources (processing the same grammatical dimension) versus unshared resources (different grammatical dimensions). The authors discuss the results from a cognitive linguistic perspective and for their implications for the view that language itself can serve a special attention-directing function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are epistemological beliefs similar across domains?

Investigators of students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning, or epistemological beliefs, have generally assumed that epistemological beliefs are domain independent (i.e., they generalize across domains). The purpose of this research was to test this assumption. College students completed an epistemological questionnaire with a specific domain in mind (either social sciences or mathematics), read a passage (either social sciences or mathematics), answered a passage test, and completed another epistemological questionnaire with the alternative domain in mind. Results support the idea that individuals' epistemological beliefs tend to be domain independent. Mathematical epistemological factors correlated with the corresponding social science epistemological factors. Epistemological beliefs in both domains predicted passage comprehension similarly, and most students showed a consistent level of epistemological sophistication across domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What does visual agnosia tell us about perceptual organization and its relationship to object perception?

The authors studied 2 patients, S.M. and R.N., to examine perceptual organization and its relationship to object recognition. Both patients had normal, low-level vision and performed simple grouping operations normally but were unable to apprehend a multielement stimulus as a whole. R.N. failed to derive global structure even under optimal stimulus conditions, was less sensitive to grouping by closure, and was more impaired in object recognition than S.M. These findings suggest that perceptual organization involves a multiplicity of processes, some of which are simpler and are instantiated in lower order areas of visual cortex (e.g., collinearity). Other processes are more complex and rely on higher order visual areas (e.g., closure and shape formation). The failure to exploit these latter configural processes adversely affects object recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multidimensional ERDA measurements and depth profiling of medium-heavy elements

A multiparameter kinematic-coincidence setup installed earlier at the VICKSI heavy-ion accelerator for nuclear reaction studies was used for elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA) and depth profiling of medium-heavy elements. With Ar beams of 90 and 180 MeV, two large-area bidimensional position- and time-of-flight resolving counters (one of these a detector telescope delivering additional element and energy resolution) detected target recoils and scattered ions in kinematic coincidence. The depth distributions of e.g. C,O, Si or Fe in various multilayer matrices with up to 20 μm thicknesses were determined simultaneously. To compare resolutions, a single-detector experiment with a 365 MeV ¹²⁹Xe beam, detecting recoils in the telescope, was performed with e.g. SiO₂ and GaAs targets. The preliminary results show that the application of ERDA with heavy ions in the energy range between 2 and 5 MeV/amu is worthwhile to obtain unambiguous identification and depth distributions of medium-heavy elements.     

An analysis of sex differences in depression: The search continues.

Maintains that J. M. Stoppard's (see record 1989-29654-001) discussion of the adequacy of cognitive/behavioral theories for understanding depression in women (1) fails to adequately consider methodological issues in investigating sex differences in psychopathology and (2) misreads the cognitive/behavioral theories as having a stagnant, simplistic view of psychopathology. (0 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)