Association of meteorological and geographical factors and risk of initial Pseudomonas aeruginosa acquisition in young children with cystic fibrosis.

Initial infection with the sentinel respiratory pathogen in children with cystic fibrosis (CF), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Pa), is generally with environmental strains of this ubiquitous organism. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the associations between meteorological and geographical factors and risk of initial Pa acquisition in young children with CF. Using the U.S. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry from 2003 to 2009, 3463 patients met inclusion criteria, of which 48% (n = 1659) acquired Pa during follow-up. From multivariable Weibull regression, increased risk of Pa acquisition was associated with increasing temperature [hazard ratio (HR) per 1 °C: 1·13; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1·08-1·13], dew point (HR per 1 °C: 1·10, 95% CI 1·07-1·13), rainfall (HR per cm: 1·10, 95% CI 1·07-1·12), latitude (HR per 1 °C northing: 1·15, 95% CI 1·11-1·20), longitude (HR per 1 °C easting: 1·01, 95% CI 1·01-1·02) and elevation (HR per 100 m: 1·05, 95% CI 1·03-1·07). These results suggest that environmental factors may play a previously unrecognized role in the aetiology of initial Pa acquisition.

Prospectively surveying health-related quality of life and symptom relief in a lot-based sample of medical cannabis-using patients in urban Washington State reveals managed chronic illness and debility.

OBJECTIVES: To characterize health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in medical cannabis patients. METHODS: Short Form 36 (SF-36) Physical Health Component Score and Mental Health Component Score (MCS) surveys as well has CDC (Centers for Disease Control) HRQoL-14 surveys were completed by 37 qualified patients. RESULTS: Mean SF-36 PCS and MCS, normalized at 50, were 37.4 and 44.2, respectively. Eighty percent of participants reported activity/functional limitations secondary to impairments or health problems. Patients reported using medical cannabis to treat a wide array of symptoms across multiple body systems with relief ratings consistently in the 7-10/10 range. CONCLUSION: The HRQoL results in this sample of medical cannabis-using patients are comparable with published norms in other chronically ill populations. Data presented provide insight into medical cannabis-using patients' self-rated health, HRQoL, disease incidences, and cannabis-related symptom relief.

Emotional intelligence as a standard intelligence.

The authors have claimed that emotional intelligence (EI) meets traditional standards for an intelligence (J. D. Mayer, D. R. Caruso, & P. Salovey, 1999). R. D. Roberts, M. Zeidner, and G. Matthews (2001) questioned whether that claim was warranted. The central issue raised by Roberts et al. concerning Mayer et al. (1999) is whether there are correct answers to questions on tests purporting to measure EI as a set of abilities. To address this issue (and others), the present authors briefly restate their view of intelligence, emotion, and EI. They then present arguments for the reasonableness of measuring EI as an ability, indicate that correct answers exist, and summarize recent data suggesting that such measures are, indeed, reliable.

Geography, ecology and emerging infectious diseases.

Emerging infectious diseases are the focus of increased attention and even alarm in the scholarly and popular literature. The emergence of new diseases and the resurgence of older and previously recognized infectious diseases both in developing and developed country poses challenges for understanding the ecological web of causation, including social, economic, environmental and biological components. This paper is a synthesis of the major characteristics of emerging diseases, in an interdisciplinary context. Political ecology is one framework for analysis that is promising in developing a modified ecology of disease.

Asthma deaths in Washington State, 1980-1989: geographic and demographic distributions.

BACKGROUND: Asthma prevalence and mortality rates have been increasing for the past two decades for reasons that are not definitively known. Few studies of asthma mortality rates have concentrated on subnational regions, such as individual states. OBJECTIVE: To determine geographic and demographic patterns of asthma mortality in Washington State during 1980 through 1989 and to compare aggregated data with patterns of chronic bronchitis mortality. METHODS: Age-adjusted mortality rates for asthma and chronic bronchitis were calculated from 1980 through 1989 for all age groups. Rates were then disaggregated by county, gender, age, and race. Rates were calculated from death certificates listed by the Washington State Center for Health Statistics as either asthma (ICD9-493) or chronic bronchitis (ICD9-490 and 491) and census data. RESULTS: During the period 1980-1989, age-adjusted mortality rates for asthma increased by 15% while those for bronchitis decreased by 43%. There was no consistent geographic pattern in the increase, though one county with a very small population had the highest rate of increase. Female asthma mortality rates increased during the decade, while male asthma mortality rates and both male and female bronchitis rates decreased. Two populations demonstrated pronounced increases in asthma mortality rates: females between ages 40 and 69 years and non-whites. CONCLUSIONS: While increased asthma mortality rates have been noted elsewhere for non-whites, this is the first study to demonstrate elevated mortality rates for middle aged women. The explanation for this remains a mystery.

The system-topics framework and the structural arrangement of systems within and around personality.

The field of personality psychology possesses rich theories and excellent research, but few good means to communicate them. The system-topics framework is an integratory approach that divides the study of personality into three central topics and their subdivisions: (a) the components of personality, (b) the organization of those components, and (c) the development of those components and their organization over time. The present article describes the system-topics framework and then examines the addition of a potential new topic useful to an improved exposition of the field: the structural arrangement of the component systems in and around personality. A three-dimensional model of these systems is created that can synthesize the many spatial metaphors used in earlier personality theory and research. The reasons for integrating this structural model within the system-topics framework and how such integration can be accomplished are discussed.

Assessment of basic cognitive abilities in relation to cognitive deficits.

A modal model of information-processing was used to select a battery of nine tasks of basic cognitive ability (learning, relearning, reaction time, probe recall, Sternberg search, self-paced probe, stimulus discrimination, tachistoscopic full report, tachistoscopic partial report). Parameters from these tasks operationalized the model. After extensive pilot testing of the tasks to establish reliability, we tested 40 subjects (20 with mental retardation and 20 college students) on all tasks and the WAIS-R. The parameters from the tasks were generally reliable (.7 through .9) and had low correlations with IQ (average about .37). Nearly all of the major cognitive parameters differentiated significantly between groups. A subset of the basic cognitive parameters predicted IQ with an estimated multiple correlation in the general population of .72. Prediction of IQ using basic cognitive parameters was better for subjects with mental retardation than for college students. A modified version of the modal model was supported. Results show that individual differences in higher mental processes are highly dependent on basic cognitive abilities and can be predicted from them. These findings have substantial implications for the development of models of information-processing.

Challenges to understanding spatial patterns of disease: philosophical alternatives to logical positivism.

Most studies of disease distribution, in medical geography and other related disciplines, have been empirical in nature and rooted in the assumptions of logical positivism. However, some of the more newly articulated philosophies of the social sciences, and of social theory, have much to add in the understanding of the processes and mechanisms underlying disease distribution. This paper represents a plea for creative synthesis between logical positivism and realism or structuration, and uses specific examples to suggest how disease distribution, as a surface phenomenon, can be explained using deeper analysis.

A broader conception of mood experience.

The experience of a mood consists of more than emotional states such as happiness, anger, sadness, or fear. It also includes mood management processes that can facilitate or inhibit the experience of the mood reaction. A multidomain framework is described for organizing such experience, and 2 studies are reported that analyzed separately emotion-related and emotion-management-related mood experiences. In both studies, emotion-related experience, including physical, emotional, and cognitive subdomains, could be characterized by Pleasant-Unpleasant and Arousal-Calm dimensions. Also, both studies yielded evidence for the emotion-management dimensions of Plans of Action, Suppression, and Denial. These broader dimensions of mood experience predicted criterion variables such as empathy better than Pleasant-Unpleasant and Arousal-Calm dimensions alone.

Perceiving affective content in ambiguous visual stimuli: a component of emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence involves the accurate appraisal and expression of emotions in oneself and others and the regulation of emotion in a way that enhances living. One aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize the consensually agreed upon emotional qualities of objects in the environment. One hundred thirty-nine adults viewed 18 reproductions of faces, color swatches, and abstract designs and rated the emotional content of these visual stimuli. Three scores were extracted, including consensual accuracy, amount, and range of emotion perceived. These scores were compared with other aspects of emotional intelligence such as empathy and related to constructs such as alexithymia and neuroticism. A general ability to perceive consensual emotional content in visual stimuli was found, and it was most strongly associated with the ability to respond empathically to others.

Doing interdisciplinary research in social sciences and medicine.

Research themes of interest to both clinical and social sciences have been proliferating in recent years. While the personal experiences of individuals who conduct interdisciplinary research probably vary widely, several general models of research and its conduct seem to be quite common. This is illustrated using the author's personal experiences, beginning from his disciplinary roots in medical geography.

Cognitive domains of the mood system.

One possible outline of the interrelationship between mood and cognition makes use of a fourfold framework: mood-state introspections yield a report of the mood, mood-sensitive judgments are influenced by mood, metamood experiences include thoughts about the mood, and mood-related traits predict the likelihood of being in a mood. Three studies were conducted to investigate the relation between mood introspection and mood-sensitive judgment (e.g., mood-related changes in judgments about "objective" events such as belief in the probability of a nuclear war). These same studies also examined the metamood experiences and mood-related traits occurring simultaneously with the above moods and judgments. Judgment was mood-sensitive across all studies. Factor analysis of the various measures was supportive of the partial independence of the four domains. Mood introspection, mood-sensitive judgment, and mood-related traits appeared on separate factors. Metamood experience was factorially complex and was distributed across factors. Interrelations among the domains were described. The relevance of the framework for representing personality and psychopathology was discussed, as was the influence of mood on everyday judgments.

The experience and meta-experience of mood.

Mood experience is comprised of at least two elements: the direct experience of the mood and a meta-level of experience that consists of thoughts and feelings about the mood. In Study 1, a two-dimensional structure for the direct experience of mood (Watson & Tellegen, 1985) was tested for its fit to the responses of 1,572 subjects who each completed one of three different mood scales, including a brief scale developed to assist future research. The Watson and Tellegen structure was supported across all three scales. In Study 2, meta-mood experience was conceptualized as the product of a mood regulatory process that monitors, evaluates, and at times changes mood. A scale to measure meta-mood experience was administered to 160 participants along with the brief mood scale. People's levels on the meta-mood dimensions were found to differ across moods. Meta-mood experiences may also constitute an important part of the phenomenology of the personal experience of mood.

Patterns of rural hospital closure in the United States.

This is a case-control study of rural hospitals which closed between 1970 and 1980. Nonmetropolitan hospitals which closed were matched with a comparable set of hospitals which remained open, yielding 148 closures (cases) and 310 controls. Univariate and multivariate analyses indicate that closed hospitals differ from open hospitals in their internal characteristics, and that their geographical service areas also are significantly different. At the multivariate level, the most significant variables, as determined by stepwise discriminant analysis, are the ownership (profit) status of the hospital, occupancy rate, competitive beds within the county, scope of service, and county population change during the preceding decade. The nature of the discriminant functions differed between counties which were adjacent to metropolitan areas, and those which were not adjacent to metropolitan areas. Closed hospitals differ from open hospitals, as ascertained by standard data sources. Hospital closure reflects the interaction of internal hospital characteristics, and the characteristics of the hospital's service area.

Learning and memory for personality prototypes.

Although personality traits are commonly assumed to be represented in memory as schemata, little research has addressed whether such schemata can be learned from observation. Subjects in three studies classified 60 person instances into group members and nonmembers as defined by the instances' match to a complex personality prototype. To simulate learning of fuzzy categories, each person instance provided conflicting cues to group membership. Learning for instances' group membership was excellent across studies. In Study 1, frequency of cues indicating group membership was greatly overestimated among nongroup instances. In Study 2, schema-consistent memory bias was revealed for person instances. In Study 3, schemata of consistently positive (or negative) traits were learned faster than arbitrary schemata. The findings implicated frequency sensitivity of memory (Estes, 1986), and a model of probabilistic cued-memory retrieval was developed to account for the effects. The findings were then discussed in relation to everyday cognitive performance.

International perspectives on the health care crisis in the United States.

The American health care system is confronting a crisis: one consisting of severe problems of cost and access, and the other consisting of significant qualitative changes in structure, systemic behavior and operation. Some of these factors may be understood better in comparison with how systems in other nations have responded to similar problems. The United States had adopted solutions which are significantly different from those of other countries, including more limited government involvement in health care and planning, and the development of corporatized medicine. These solutions pose significant ethical and operational problems.

Naturally occurring mood and learning: comment on Hasher, Rose, Zacks, Sanft, and Doren.

We comment on the article by Hasher, Rose, Zacks, Sanft, & Doren (1985) in which they failed to find mood-congruent learning (MCL). MCL occurs whenever subjects learn more about materials that are congruent with their moods (e.g., depressed subjects learn more sad material). Hasher et al. failed to observe MCL with normal college students who scored high versus low on the Beck Depression Inventory and an affect checklist; in contrast, positive MCL has been observed with clinically depressed patients and with normals given laboratory mood inductions. Hasher et al. argue that moderately depressed normal students may be qualitatively different from clinically depressed patients and mood-induced subjects. Although we accept the findings of Hasher et al., we think it is also plausible that MCL may be a general though small effect which is present among normal college students as well.