Fire, climate and vegetation linkages in the Bolivian Chiquitano seasonally dry tropical forest.

South American seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) are critically endangered, with only a small proportion of their original distribution remaining. This paper presents a 12 000 year reconstruction of climate change, fire and vegetation dynamics in the Bolivian Chiquitano SDTF, based upon pollen and charcoal analysis, to examine the resilience of this ecosystem to drought and fire. Our analysis demonstrates a complex relationship between climate, fire and floristic composition over multi-millennial time scales, and reveals that moisture variability is the dominant control upon community turnover in this ecosystem. Maximum drought during the Early Holocene, consistent with regional drought reconstructions, correlates with a period of significant fire activity between 8000 and 7000 cal yr BP which resulted in a decrease in SDTF diversity. As fire activity declined but severe regional droughts persisted through the Middle Holocene, SDTFs, including Anadenanthera and Astronium, became firmly established in the Bolivian lowlands. The trend of decreasing fire activity during the last two millennia promotes the idea among forest ecologists that SDTFs are threatened by fire. Our analysis shows that the Chiquitano seasonally dry biome has been more resilient to Holocene changes in climate and fire regime than previously assumed, but raises questions over whether this resilience will continue in the future under increased temperatures and drought coupled with a higher frequency anthropogenic fire regime.This article is part of the themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'.

The Attitudes to Disability Scale (ADS): development and psychometric properties.

BACKGROUND: This paper describes the development of an Attitudes to Disability Scale for use with adults with physical or intellectual disabilities (ID). The aim of the research was to design a scale that could be used to assess the personal attitudes of individuals with either physical or ID. METHOD: The measure was derived following standard WHOQOL methodology as part of an international trial. In the pilot phase of the study, 12 centres from around the world carried out focus groups with people with physical disabilities, people with ID, with their carers, and with relevant professionals in order to identify themes relevant for attitudes to disability. Items generated from the focus groups were then tested in a pilot study with 1400 respondents from 15 different centres worldwide, with items being tested and reduced using both classical and modern psychometric methods. A field trial study was then carried out with 3772 respondents, again with the use of both classical and modern psychometric methods. RESULTS: The outcome of the second round of data collection and analysis is a 16-item scale that can be used for assessment of attitudes to disability in physically or intellectually disabled people and in healthy respondents. CONCLUSIONS: The Attitudes to Disability Scale is a new psychometrically sound scale that can be used to assess attitudes in both physically and intellectually disabled groups. The scale is also available in both personal and general forms and in a number of different language versions.

Development of the WHOQOL disabilities module.

PURPOSE: This paper describes the development of an add-on module for the World Health Organization WHOQOL measures of quality of life for use with adults with physical or intellectual disabilities. The add-on module, known as the WHOQOL-DIS, was derived following standard WHOQOL methodology and is designed to assess people with disabilities. RESULTS: In the pilot phase of the study, 12 centres from around the world carried out focus groups with people with physical disabilities, people with intellectual disabilities, with their carers, and with relevant professionals in order to identify gaps in the coverage of the WHOQOL-BREF that were relevant for their quality of life. Items generated from the focus groups were then tested in a pilot study with 1,400 respondents from 15 different centres worldwide, with items being tested and reduced using both classical and modern psychometric methods. A field trial study was then carried out with almost 3,800 respondents, again with the use of both classical and modern psychometric methods. CONCLUSIONS: The outcome of the two rounds of data collection and analysis is a 12-item module that can be used in conjunction with the WHOQOL-BREF or the WHOQOL-100 for assessment of quality of life in physically or intellectually disabled people. Further modifications are also proposed for the use of the WHOQOL-BREF with adults with intellectual disabilities, including simplification of wording of some of the items, the use of a three-point response scale, and the inclusion of smiley faces.

Wildfire responses to abrupt climate change in North America.

It is widely accepted, based on data from the last few decades and on model simulations, that anthropogenic climate change will cause increased fire activity. However, less attention has been paid to the relationship between abrupt climate changes and heightened fire activity in the paleorecord. We use 35 charcoal and pollen records to assess how fire regimes in North America changed during the last glacial-interglacial transition (15 to 10 ka), a time of large and rapid climate changes. We also test the hypothesis that a comet impact initiated continental-scale wildfires at 12.9 ka; the data do not support this idea, nor are continent-wide fires indicated at any time during deglaciation. There are, however, clear links between large climate changes and fire activity. Biomass burning gradually increased from the glacial period to the beginning of the Younger Dryas. Although there are changes in biomass burning during the Younger Dryas, there is no systematic trend. There is a further increase in biomass burning after the Younger Dryas. Intervals of rapid climate change at 13.9, 13.2, and 11.7 ka are marked by large increases in fire activity. The timing of changes in fire is not coincident with changes in human population density or the timing of the extinction of the megafauna. Although these factors could have contributed to fire-regime changes at individual sites or at specific times, the charcoal data indicate an important role for climate, and particularly rapid climate change, in determining broad-scale levels of fire activity.

Elimination of arctic variant rabies in red foxes, metropolitan Toronto.

To control the Arctic variant of rabies virus in red foxes, 332,257 bait doses containing live, attenuated Evelyn-Rokitnicki-Abelseth rabies vaccine were distributed in greater metropolitan Toronto during 1989-1999. Human and pet contact with bait was minimal, and no adverse reactions to the vaccine were noted. Significantly fewer rabid foxes were found during the 17 years after fox baiting (5 cases during 1990-2006) than in the 17 years before (96 cases during 1973-1989). The last report of a rabid fox in metropolitan Toronto was in 1996 (reporting period through September 2006), which confirms that distributing oral rabies vaccine bait is a feasible tactic for the control of rabies in foxes in urban environments.

The Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire (AAQ): development and psychometric properties.

OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the development of the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire (AAQ) which is a self-report measure with which older people themselves can express their attitudes to the process of ageing. METHOD: The development of the AAQ followed a coherent, logical and empirical process taking full account of relevant gerontological knowledge and modern and classical psychometric analytical methods. Pilot testing with 1,356 participants from 15 centres worldwide refined the scale and provided the basis for a field test. A total of 5,566 participants from 20 centres worldwide contributed to the further development of this new scale with the derivation involving both classical and modern psychometric methods. RESULTS: The result is a 24-item cross-cultural attitudes to ageing questionnaire consisting of a three-factor model encompassing psychological growth, psychosocial loss, and physical change. The three-factor model suggests a way of conceptualizing and measuring successful ageing in individuals. CONCLUSIONS: The AAQ provides researchers, clinicians and policy makers with a unique scale to measure the impact of successful ageing interventions. It also provides a vehicle for the measurement of how individuals age across cultures and under different economic, political and social circumstances.

The multistory self: why the self is more than the sum of its autoparts.

A summary is presented of both the theoretical and clinical points made by the contributors to this issue of Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session on the multiplicity of self. It is argued that there are many theoretical and clinical commonalities in the diverse range of psychotherapies that have been developed and that have been used in work with problems in the self-concept. Core problems encountered in clinical practice include an apparent self-integration that is attained through the exclusion of important parts of the self. The key to opening up clients who present such problems is through the use of experienced emotions and the therapeutic relationship. More extreme problems in the self-concept can be seen in the personality and psychotic disorders, in which the self may be chaotic or disintegrated. Such clients may need help with the development of a reflective self that can integrate and regulate the separate parts of the self-concept.

Reliability and validity of the Japanese version of the 24-item Dysfunctional Attitude Scale.

BACKGROUND: The 24-item Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS-24) is a short version of the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale, which is a self-report inventory for depressogenic schemata. OBJECTIVE: The object of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the Japanese version of the DAS-24 (DAS-24-J). METHODS: Subjects consisted of non-clinical sample 1 (248 university students), non-clinical sample 2 (872 Japanese company employees) and a clinical sample (59 depressed out-patients). RESULTS: Internal consistency was satisfactory in all three samples, Cronbach's α coefficient being higher than 0.85. Test-retest reliability was satisfactory in non-clinical sample 1. The interclass correlation coefficient was 0.79 and there was no significant difference in the average score of DAS-24-J between the two points. The DAS-24-J showed satisfactory concurrent validity with the Japanese Irrational Belief Test-20 (r= 0.76); Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire - Revised total (r= 0.46), negative (r= 0.53) and positive (r=-0.41); and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (r= 0.44 for non-clinical sample, r= 0.63 for clinical sample). The clinical sample showed a significantly higher DAS-24-J score than non-clinical sample 2. According to a factor analysis combining all three samples, three factors were extracted: factor 1 (11 items) corresponded with 'achievement' in the original version, factor 2 (6 items) with 'self-control' and factor 3 (5 items) with 'dependency'. CONCLUSION: The DAS-24-J is a reliable and valid instrument to measure depressogenic schemata in Japanese.

Psychological approaches to bipolar disorders: a theoretical critique.

An outline is presented of five main psychological models of the bipolar disorders. These approaches include the Behavioural Activation/Inhibition Systems model, the Cognitive Therapy model, the Interpersonal and Social Rhythm Therapy model, the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems model, and the SPAARS model. Strengths and weaknesses are highlighted for each approach. It is concluded that although there is no model that can adequately account for even the key features of the bipolar disorders (such as periodicity, shifts in the valence of the self-concept, mixed affective states, and patterns of recovery and relapse), nevertheless, more recently developed multi-level approaches to emotion offer more sophisticated possibilities for modeling these complex disorders.

The directed forgetting task: application to emotionally valent material.

Three experiments are reported which investigate the application of the directed forgetting task to emotionally valent material and to different mood states. In this task, some subjects are told when halfway through an intentional or incidental learning task that the trials presented so far are to be forgotten because they were merely practice. However, at the end of the subsequent list, the subjects are then asked to recall all of the previous items including those that they were instructed to forget. The results typically show that significantly fewer directed forgetting items are recalled whether the task is an intentional or incidental learning one. In the first experiment, normal and 'depressed' students rated positive and negative material for pleasantness; although directed forgetting effects were obtained, there were no differential effects of mood state nor of valence of the material. In order to investigate this effect further, a variant of this task was used in Experiment 2 in which the positive and negative material had to be processed in relation to the self. The results showed that differential forgetting now occurred; healthy students recalled more positive than negative information, but this positive bias was not obtained for 'depressed' students who showed an even-handed level of recall. In Experiment 3, groups of clinically depressed, clinically anxious, and normal controls were presented with the directed forgetting task. The key finding showed that the depressed subjects showed a retrieval facilitation for to-be-forgotten negative adjectives, an effect that was not present for the other two groups. It is concluded therefore, that the directed forgetting task could be usefully extended to investigate cognition-emotion interactions in clinical populations.

Integrating psychological therapies: processes of meaning transformation.

We review the role played by meaning in different schools of psychotherapy, and propose that the systematic study of meaning transformation has the potential to unify understanding of the scientific basis of psychotherapy. We describe some of the most important innate and social origins of meaning, and identify seven major themes that characterize the thinking of people with psychological disorders. We also describe how these themes are processed cognitively on multiple levels, and propose common change processes that are consistent with research in cognitive psychology. These core sets of themes and processes are offered as a first step toward a systematic study of meaning and psychotherapeutic change.

Effects of exercise on cognitive and motor function in chronic fatigue syndrome and depression.

OBJECTIVES: Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome complain of physical and mental fatigue that is worsened by exertion. It was predicted that the cognitive and motor responses to vigorous exercise in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome would differ from those in depressed and healthy controls. METHODS: Ten patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, 10 with depressive illness, and 10 healthy controls completed cognitive and muscle strength testing before and after a treadmill exercise test. Measures of cardiovascular functioning and perceived effort, fatigue, and mood were taken during each stage of testing. RESULTS: Depressed patients performed worst on cognitive tests at baseline. During the treadmill test, patients with chronic fatigue syndrome had higher ratings of perceived effort and fatigue than both control groups, whereas patients with depression reported lower mood. After exertion, patients with chronic fatigue syndrome showed a greater decrease than healthy controls on everyday tests of focused (p=0.02) and sustained (p=0.001) attention, as well as greater deterioration than depressed patients on the focused attention task (p=0.03). No between group differences were found in cardiovascular or symptom measures taken during the cognitive testing. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome show a specific sensitivity to the effects of exertion on effortful cognitive functioning. This occurs despite subjective and objective evidence of effort allocation in chronic fatigue syndrome, suggesting that patients have reduced working memory capacity, or a greater demand to monitor cognitive processes, or both. Further insight into the pathophysiology of the core complaints in chronic fatigue syndrome is likely to be realised by studying the effects of exercise on other aspects of everyday functioning.

Repressive coping and the directed forgetting of emotional material.

Using a directed forgetting task, the authors tested in 2 experiments the hypothesis that repressors would be superior to controls in forgetting negative experimental material. Consistent with previous studies, there was an overall directed forgetting effect, with significantly more to-be-remembered material recalled than to-be-forgotten (TBF) material. In both experiments, repressors forgot more negatively valenced words in the TBF set than did nonrepressors, suggesting that repressors have an enhanced capability for using retrieval inhibition. The data offer preliminary support for a cognitive account of repressors' deficits in recalling negative autobiographical memories.

Validation of a high-performance liquid chromatographic assay for lysylpyridinoline in urine: a potential biomarker of bone resorption.

We developed and validated a high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for quantifying the bone-specific collagen crosslink, lysylpyridinoline (LP), in urine, LP was purified from cortical bone and characterized by spectrophotometry, HPLC, and 1H NMR spectroscopy. Our HPLC detected urinary LP independently of the sample volume and the range of quantification was between 63 nM and 1 microM. Average recovery of added LP standard to human urine samples was 106 +/- 21%. Mean inter- and intraassay CVs, respectively, for urines containing low, medium, and high concentrations of the crosslink LP were 7.4 and 6.3%. This analytical method is more efficient than previously published HPLC assays for LP because of the significant 24-h reduction in urinary sample preparation time. There was agreement between urinary LP concentrations measured with this method and the Metra Pyrilinks-D enzyme immunoassay (r2 = 0.714). These results emphasize the importance of using a thoroughly standardized HPLC assay as the "gold standard" for comparison of results with newly developed immunoassays.

Chronic fatigue in the community: 'a question of attribution'.

Thirty-eight subjects identified in a large community survey were found to attribute their fatigue to 'myalgic encephalomyelitis' (ME). They were matched randomly to two other groups of subjects who attributed their fatigue to either psychological or social factors. All three groups were followed up 18 months later and were asked to complete a series of questionnaires that examined fatigue, psychological distress, number of symptoms, attributional style and levels of disability. At onset the 'ME' group were found to be more fatigued, had been tired for longer but were less psychologically distressed than the other two groups. At follow-up the 'ME' group were more handicapped in relation to home, work, social and private leisure activities, even when controlling for both duration of fatigue and fatigue at time 1, but were less psychologically distressed. The relationships between psychological distress, specific illness attributions, attributional style and their effect on the experience of illness and its prognosis are discussed. Attributing fatigue to social reasons appears to be most protective.

Dependency, matching adversities, length of survival and relapse in major depression.

This paper reports the 1-year follow-up of a sample of depressed patients. Social cognitive variables obtained during the index episode, including ideal emotional support, roles and goals investment in various domains and dysfunctional attitudes were used to predict subjects' likelihood for subsequent relapse. More subjects who experienced severe life events in the year were found to have relapsed. However, the predictive value of life events was improved if adversity was in the most invested domain according to the roles and goals questionnaire that subjects filled in during their index episode (matching adversity). Subjects who experienced matching adversity had a 3-fold chance of relapse compared with subjects with nonmatching adversity. The majority of the matching events were in the interpersonal domain. Levels of dysfunctional attitudes alone did not predict relapse. However, matching adversity and the dependency subscale of the dysfunctional attitude scale contributed significantly both to whether or not subjects relapsed and to the number of weeks subjects survived before they relapsed. The higher the level of dependency dysfunctional attitudes, the sooner subjects relapsed. The findings of the follow-up study supported the importance of psychological and social factors in determining relapse.

Emotional priming in clinically depressed subjects.

A study is described in which the Emotional Priming Paradigm (Power and Brewin (1990) Cogn. Emotion 4, 39-51) was used with a group of currently depressed patients and a group of nondepressed controls. The results for the depressed patients showed significant facilitation effects on both the speed and rate of endorsement of negative trait adjectives when these were preceded by negative emotional primes. These results contrast with those obtained with the control subjects who failed to show such facilitation effects. The results are discussed in relation to the role of cognitive biases in depression.

Social and cognitive approaches to depression: towards a new synthesis.

A description of a social-cognitive theory of depression is presented which combines the concepts of mental models, personal goals and social roles. An analysis is made of how a number of proposals about the onset of depression can be summarized as the loss of a valued goal or social role in an individual who has few other sources of self-worth. In subsequent sections, limitations of the theory are outlined, and the relationship between the present theory and other theories of depression is briefly considered.

The role of social support in HIV infection.

A study was carried out in a group of 91 HIV positive gay men to investigate the relationship between social support, measures of affect and health; the changing nature of support over time; and the causal direction of this relationship. Overall levels of support for this group were found to be moderately high and consistent over 6 months and were associated with greater psychological well-being. Individuals in receipt of quantitatively different levels of support were found to differ on measures of depression, stress, coping efficacy and self-esteem, while individuals in receipt of deficient levels of support were found to be more depressed. However, initial support levels were found to be the most powerful predictors of subsequent support levels. The implications of these findings are discussed.