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Assessment of Stress Effects on Cognitive Flexibility using an Operant Strategy Shifting Paradigm
Get PDFStress affects cognitive function. Whether stress enhances or impairs cognitive function depends on several factors, including the 1) type, intensity, and duration of the stressor; 2) type of cognitive function under study; and 3) timing of the stressor in relation to learning or executing the cognitive task. Furthermore, sex differences among the effects of stress on cognitive function have been widely documented. Described here is an adaptation of an automated operant strategy shifting paradigm to assess how variations in stress affect cognitive flexibility in male and female Sprague Dawley rats. Specifically, restraint stress is used before or after training in this operant-based task to examine how stress affects cognitive performance in both sexes. Particular brain areas associated with each task in this automated paradigm have been well-established (i.e., the medial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex). This allows for targeted manipulations during the experiment or the assessment of particular genes and proteins in these regions upon completion of the paradigm. This paradigm also allows for the detection of different types of performance errors that occur after stress, each of which has defined neural substrates. Also identified are distinct sex differences in perseverative errors after a repeated restraint stress paradigm. The use of these techniques in a preclinical model may reveal how stress affects the brain and impairs cognition in psychiatric disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD), which display marked sex differences in prevalence
Incorporating temporal and spatial variability of salt-marsh foraminifera into sea-level reconstructions
Get PDFForaminifera from salt-marsh environments have been used extensively in quantitative relative sea-level reconstructions due to their strong relationship with tidal level. However, the influence of temporal and spatial variability of salt-marsh foraminifera on quantitative reconstructions remains unconstrained. Here, we conducted a monitoring study of foraminifera from four intertidal monitoring stations in New Jersey from high marsh environments over three years that included several extreme weather (temperature, precipitation, and storm surge) events. We sampled four replicates from each station seasonally (four times per year) for a total of 188 samples. The dead foraminiferal assemblages were separated into four site-specific assemblages. After accounting for systematic trends in changes in foraminifera over time among stations, the distribution of foraminiferal assemblages across monitoring stations explained ~87% of the remaining variation, while ~13% can be explained by temporal and/or spatial variability among the replicate samples. We applied a Bayesian transfer function to estimate the elevation of the four monitoring stations. All samples from each station predicted an elevation estimate within a 95% uncertainty interval consistent with the observed elevation of that station. Combining samples into replicate- and seasonal-aggregate datasets decreased elevation estimate uncertainty, with the greatest decrease in aggregate datasets from Fall and Winter. Information about the temporal and spatial variability of modern foraminiferal distributions was formally incorporated into the Bayesian transfer function through informative foraminifera variability priors and was applied to a Common Era relative sea-level record in New Jersey. The average difference in paleomarsh elevation estimates and uncertainties using an informative vs uninformative prior was minimal
A different interpretation of dental development stages in Xujiayao 1 Middle to Late Pleistocene \u3ci\u3eHomo\u3c/i\u3e
Get PDFSentimientos encontrados: los epistolarios ficcionales de La novela semanaly sus flirteos cosmopolitas [Contradictory Feelings: the Fictional Epistolary Narratives in La novela semanal and their Cosmopolitan Flirtations
Get PDFEn marzo de 1924, la revista La novela semanal (Argentina, 1917-1953) inauguró una sección titulada “La carta que se quema” que incluiría cartas ficcionales, en su mayoría traducciones de exitosos autores de la belle époque europea. Durante más de cien números de la revista, las lectoras—principales destinatarias de esta sección—leerían semanalmente misivas imaginadas por autores franceses de tendencia conservadora (Marcel Prévost y Michel Provins) y autoras italianas afines al feminismo (Matilde Serao, Ester Lombardo y Amalia Guglielminetti). Lejos de presentar un “imperio de los sentimientos” conformista y coherente (Sarlo), en esta sección La novela semanal yuxtaponía alternativas incompatibles de conducta . En esta ponencia, me propongo rastrear las divergentes concepciones de feminidad (y masculinidad) que se presentan en estas ficciones epistolares traducidas a partir de uno de sus topoi: el flirteo. Para dar especificidad al análisis y sacar conclusiones, situaré estas cartas en su contexto dentro de la revista, haciendo referencia en particular a una serie de artículos y narraciones sobre el tema del divorcio aparecidos en la primera mitad de la década de 1920
Old Walled Politics or New Pandemic Peace? Lessons from South Korea’s Fight against Covid-19
Get PDFAmong the global pandemic’s effects is the way it has exposed the re-emergence of medieval-style walled politics, where countries reject international or regional co-operation and retreat into nationalist, go-it-alone approaches. At the same time, the crisis has revealed unusual opportunities to forge common approaches to battling this invisible enemy. South Korea, as a middle power that stood out as an early success story in the pandemic fight, has played an important role in countering the politics of the past
The utmost strength I can bear : Strategies and psychological costs of mothering within political violence
Get PDFThough certainly not women’s only identity or set of responsibilities for women in conflict settings, political violence creates distinct challenges for mothers due to the additional burdens of care-taking in these contexts. Yet, given the paucity of research on the topic, we still are operating without a clear understanding of how political violence jeopardizes maternal well-being and care-taking practices. Drawing on feminist perspectives on mothering, in the analyses presented here, authors use content analysis to explore mothering and political violence from five focus groups with women in Palestine. Results demonstrate the considerable suffering mothers and children endure in war; the work mothers do to promote children’s well-being in this context; and how these efforts exhaust the psychological resources of mothers. Findings enhance a relatively small body of knowledge about the lived experiences of mothers within conflict settings, and point to the importance of tending to the strategies and needs of mothers who navigate political violence with and for their children
“An American Sun Shines Brighter”: Art, Science, and the American Reinvention of Photography
No full textWhen and where was photography invented? Received knowledge tells us that a few European men of distinction invented the medium sometime around 1839. This dissertation de-centers this origin story to include the United States, where artisans, chemists, and instrument-makers effectively reinvented photography, transforming it from a scientific curiosity into an instantaneous image and a mass-reproducible commodity. In the antebellum US, a culture of public science and democratic network building cultivated a collaborative community of artisans and scientists skilled at the manipulation of the material world as federal projects like the US Mint and the postal service encouraged the circulation of images and information also fostered crucial developments in photographic technology. This history illustrates how cultures of American science and art were less dialectical pairs than mutually imbricated practices and how, in this context, we may conceive of the daguerreotype as a product of artisanal labor and as part of a democratic community of instruments deployed in order to connect an ever-expanding United States.
The dissertation consists of five chapters arranged chronologically. Chapters One and Two examine the work of figures including the instrument-maker Joseph Saxton, metallurgist Robert Cornelius, and the chemist John W. Draper, who buttressed photographic development through photochemical experimentation and artisanal refinements. Chapters Three and Four address the American art of portrait photography and how the professional portrait studio served as both a site of racial suppression and democratic relationality. In these chapters I examine the images and writings of the craniologist Samuel Morton, the photographer Marcus Aurelius Root, and the orator and anti-slavery advocate Frederick Douglass. Chapter Five examines Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion (1887) as a key moment of departure from an understanding of photographic practice as a skilled craft, to a new perception of the medium as an amateur pastime and scientific tool in the form of the instantaneous snapshot. Finally, in a gesture toward the present, I offer a coda examining Chris McCaw’s Sunburn series, which I suggest illustrates how the medium’s chemical and artisanal past has come to serve a renewed aesthetics of fine art photography in the twenty-first century
