Rapid adaptive evolution of photoperiodic response during invasion and range expansion across a climatic gradient.

Abstract Understanding the mechanisms of adaptation to spatiotemporal environmental variation is a fundamental goal of evolutionary biology. This issue also has important implications for anticipating biological responses to contemporary climate warming and determining the processes by which invasive species are able to spread rapidly across broad geographic ranges. Here, we compare data from a historical study of latitudinal variation in photoperiodic response among Japanese and U.S. populations of the invasive Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus with contemporary data obtained using comparable methods. Our results demonstrated rapid adaptive evolution of the photoperiodic response during invasion and range expansion across ∼15° of latitude in the United States. In contrast to the photoperiodic response, size-based morphological traits implicated in climatic adaptation in a wide range of other insects did not show evidence of adaptive variation in Ae. albopictus across either the U.S. (invasive) or Japanese (native) range. These results show that photoperiodism has been an important adaptation to climatic variation across the U.S. range of Ae. albopictus and, in conjunction with previous studies, strongly implicate the photoperiodic control of seasonal development as a critical evolutionary response to ongoing contemporary climate change. These results also emphasize that photoperiodism warrants increased attention in studies of the evolution of invasive species.

Community violence exposure and post-traumatic stress reactions among Gambian youth: the moderating role of positive school climate.

BACKGROUND: Community violence exposure among youth can lead to various negative outcomes, including post-traumatic stress symptoms. Research in the Western world indicates that a number of social support factors may moderate the relation between violence exposure and internalizing symptoms. Little research has been carried out in non-Western countries. This study aimed to fill this gap by exploring the relations among violence exposure, parental warmth, positive school climate, and post-traumatic stress reactions among youth in The Republic of The Gambia, Africa. METHODS: A school-based survey of youth behaviors, feelings, attitudes, and perceptions was administered to 653 students at senior secondary schools in four Gambian communities. RESULTS: Students reported high levels of exposure to violence. Over half of students reported witnessing someone threatened with serious physical harm, beaten up or mugged, attacked or stabbed with a knife/piece of glass, or seriously wounded in an incident of violence. Nearly half of students reported being beaten up or mugged during the past year, and nearly a quarter reported being threatened with serious physical harm. There were no sex differences in levels of exposure. Traumatic stress symptoms were common, especially among females. Both violence witnessing and violent victimization significantly predicted post-traumatic stress symptoms, and positive school climate moderated the relationship. Among youth victimized by violence, positive school climate was most strongly correlated with lower levels of post-traumatic stress at low levels of exposure. Among youth who had witnessed violence, positive school climate was most strongly correlated with lower levels of post-traumatic stress at high levels of exposure. CONCLUSION: Community-based programs that bring together parents, schools, and youth may play an important role in combating the negative effects of some types of violence exposure among Gambian youth. Youth experiencing high levels of violent victimization represent a sample of particular concern and merit special research and clinical attention.

Ethical issues in local, national, and international disaster psychiatry.

The world as we know it is plagued with conflict, yet little attention is paid to the inherent ethical issues and challenges related to trauma work. It is important to be aware of these issues because they are bound to raise questions about how medical practitioners confer neutrality in the face of political agendas and war on one hand and maintain a commitment to a person's well-being on the other. When engaged in local, national, or international trauma work, cultural, ethnic, and political literacy is crucial, and an acknowledgment of one's subjectivity is paramount. There are contradictory points of view about practicing value-free psychiatry. Psychosocial programs should examine the long-term political consequences of their work as well as the short- and long-term humanitarian impact.

Innovations: child & adolescent psychiatry: Training in developmental responses to trauma for child service providers.

Youths most at risk of exposure to community violence are often those who are least likely to receive the attention of mental health professionals. The column describes the development and testing of training about trauma for school personnel and other community providers of children's services. The curriculum was developed with input from focus groups of school nurses. The one-day training sessions address nine areas: normal responses to stress, abnormal responses to stress, posttraumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder, stage theories of loss and grief, risk and protective factors, crisis and disaster planning, resilience, mental health referral sources, and self-care techniques.

The influence of first ray mobility on forefoot plantar pressure and hindfoot kinematics during walking.

BACKGROUND: Hypomobility and hypermobility of the first ray have been implicated in the literature as a primary cause of mechanical foot problems because of proposed obligatory and compensatory movements. Despite these theoretical links, research is sparse regarding the effect on kinematic and plantar pressure patterns as a result of altered first ray mobility. The purpose of this study was to determine whether hypomobility or hypermobility of the first ray alters hindfoot kinematics or the distribution of plantar pressures during walking. METHODS: The magnitude of dorsal first ray mobility in 82 individuals was measured and then classified as being hypomobile, normal, or hypermobile. The plantar pressure under the first and second metatarsal heads, as well as hindfoot kinematics during walking, were then compared between the three categories of first ray mobility. RESULTS: The results of this study indicate that those feet with a hypomobile first ray had significantly decreased plantar force and pressure values under the first metatarsal compared to the second metatarsal. In addition, feet with a hypomobile first ray showed significantly more hindfoot eversion compared to those with either normal or hypermobile first rays. CONCLUSION: The results of this study do not support the common theoretical implications of altered mobility of the first ray related to plantar pressure and hindfoot kinematics.

Consequences of child exposure to war and terrorism.

Acts of war and terrorism are increasingly prevalent in contemporary society. Throughout history, weaponry has become more efficient, accurate, and powerful, resulting in more devastation and loss of human life. Children are often overlooked as victims of such violence. Around the world, children are exposed to violence in multiple forms, frequently developing traumatic stress reactions. Such reactions are best understood within the context of social-emotional and cognitive development, as children respond differently to the stress of violence depending on their developmental level. Furthermore, the violence of war and terrorism often results in a multitiered cascade of negative life events including loss of loved ones, displacement, lack of educational structure, and drastic changes in daily routine and community values. These numerous losses, challenges, and stresses affect children's brains, minds, and bodies in an orchestrated whole-organism response. This paper describes these effects, synthesizing the current state of research on childhood traumatic stress reactions from the fields of neuroscience, clinical psychology, and pediatric diagnostic epidemiology.

Reliability of visual measurement of forefoot alignment.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to determine the interrater reliability of visual rating of forefoot frontal plane deformities among clinicians with different training. METHODS: Thirty individuals (16 men and 14 women) between the ages of 22 and 52 years of age participated in the study. None of the patients had a history of congenital deformity, pain, or trauma in the lower extremities during the 6 months before the study. Three clinicians of different educational backgrounds and experience visually evaluated each of the patients and rated forefoot alignment. None of the clinicians knew the rating assigned by either of the other two clinicians. RESULTS: The results of this study showed that two of the clinical raters agreed 61.7% of the time, but neither of them agreed with the third clinician more than 15% of the time. CONCLUSION: This study indicates that the commonplace method of visually rating forefoot frontal plane deformities is unreliable and of questionable clinical value.

Reliability and validity of clinically assessing first-ray mobility of the foot.

The objective of the present study was to determine the amount of agreement among three clinicians in the clinical assessment of dorsal mobility of the foot's first ray and the agreement between their assessments and that of a mechanical device designed to quantify first-ray mobility. Sixty feet from 30 individuals evaluated clinically by three health-care professionals were classified as having a hypomobile, normal, or hypermobile first ray. The amount of first-ray dorsal mobility of each participant's foot was then measured using a device specifically constructed for that purpose. The results of this study show generally poor agreement among the three clinicians on whether a foot should be classified as having hypomobility, hypermobility, or normal mobility of the first ray. The amount of agreement with the quantitative device was poor for two of the clinicians and moderate for the third clinician.

Sociocultural differences, medicolegal implications, and risk management issues in the medical care of an elderly Chinese woman.

Large urban hospitals and their physicians confronted with unanticipated admissions involving international patients may often experience cross-cultural conflicts arising in the course of a patient's medical care. Conflicts of this nature can place the healthcare team, the patient, and the family at odds due to their respective traditions and the laws, regulations, and guidelines upheld and followed in the United States. The following is a complicated case illustrating a variety of legal, ethical, and clinical issues for Patient XX, an international patient emergently presenting to a large US medical health system for diagnosis and treatment.

Inbreeding depression affects life-history traits but not infection by Plasmodium gallinaceum in the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus.

Emerging and re-emerging vector-borne diseases represent an increasingly significant public health challenge. While geographic variation among populations of vector species for susceptibility to pathogen infection and vector competence has been thoroughly documented, relatively little attention has been devoted to understanding the ultimate evolutionary causes of this intraspecific variation. Local genetic drift is known to influence genetic differentiation among populations for a variety of container-inhabiting mosquito species, including Aedes albopictus. Because genetic drift is expected to reduce genetic variation and lead to the accumulation of (partially) recessive deleterious alleles, we hypothesized that reduced genetic variation might affect susceptibility to pathogen infection in a model pathogen-vector system. We therefore created replicate inbred (two generations of full-sib mating, expected f=0.375) and control (expected f approximately 0.07) lines of Ae. albopictus and measured life-history traits including larval survivorship, adult longevity, and female wing length (body size) as well as susceptibility to infection by a model pathogen, Plasmodium gallinaceum. Inbred mosquitoes had significantly reduced larval survivorship and female adult longevity but inbreeding did not affect male adult longevity or female wing length (body size). Furthermore, there was no effect of inbreeding on susceptibility to infection by P. gallinaceum. Therefore, while our results did not support the hypothesis that reduced genetic variation influences susceptibility to pathogen infection in this system, we did find evidence for an effect of reduced genetic variation on female adult longevity, an important component of vectorial capacity. We suggest that additional research is needed to elucidate the genetic underpinnings of intraspecific variation in traits related to disease transmission and discuss the implications of our results for the efficacy of creating transgenic strains refractory to disease transmission.

The mediating role of alienation in the development of maladjustment in youth exposed to community violence.

A study was conducted to determine predictors of high risk/delinquent behavior and psychoemotional maladjustment in 1,478 sixth and eighth graders who took part in a survey of high-risk and adaptive behaviors. The first goal was to determine the extent to which two distinct dimensions of alienation, normlessness, and isolation/self-estrangement mediated the emergence of maladjustment in youth exposed to community violence. The second goal was to distinguish between violence witnessing and violence victimization, and determine whether these subtypes of violence exposure may differentially affect the proposed mediational factors. The results indicated that normlessness partially mediated the relationship between violence exposure and high-risk/delinquent behavior and between violence exposure and psychoemotional maladjustment. Isolation/self-estrangement partially mediated the relation between violence exposure and psychoemotional maladjustment. Although witnessing of, and victimization by, violence were both significant predictors of normlessness, only violent victimization was significantly linked to isolation/self-estrangement. These results elucidate the mechanisms by which community violence exposure may exert negative influences on youth and suggest that there are distinct patterns of risk associated with different forms of exposure.

An investigation of the ability of orally primed and tolerised T cells to help B cells upon mucosal challenge.

The oral delivery of soluble antigens induces unresponsiveness to systemic challenge that can be demonstrated as a reduced ability of tolerised T cells to support B-cell expansion and antibody production. However, it remains controversial whether previously induced oral tolerance results in suppression or priming, or has no effect on B-cell responses upon oral challenge. Using a double adoptive transfer system, we primed or tolerised T cells (independently of B cells) with a high dose of fed antigen, and examined the ability of these primed or tolerised T cells to support B-cell clonal expansion in response to orally delivered conjugated antigen. We demonstrated directly in vivo that, in contrast to orally primed T cells, transgenic T cells tolerised by feeding a high dose of antigen are incapable of providing cognate help to support B-cell clonal expansion and antibody production in response to oral challenge. This defect appears to be a result of a reduced ability of orally tolerised transgenic T cells to clonally expand and migrate to B-cell follicles after oral challenge.

Multidimensional resilience in urban children exposed to community violence.

The extent to which parent, school, and peer support differentially affected multiple domains of resilience was examined among 2,600 sixth, eighth, and tenth graders from an urban public school system who took part in a comprehensive survey of high-risk and adaptive behaviors. Structural equation modeling was used to specify the relation among seven domains of resilience and parent, school, and peer support among children who had been victimized by community violence, those who had witnessed such violence, and a no-exposure control group. Results upheld the validity of a multidimensional conceptualization of childhood resilience, and indicated that although both parent and school support factors were significantly positively associated with resilience in children who had been exposed to community violence, peer support was negatively associated with resilience in the domains of substance abuse and school misconduct/ delinquency. These results were most robust among victimized children, followed by children who had witnessed violence. Implications for social policy and community violence research are discussed.