Intranasal oxytocin, testosterone reactivity, and human competitiveness.

Competitiveness is an essential feature of human social interactions. Despite an extensive body of research on the underlying psychological and cultural factors regulating competitive behavior, the role of biological factors remains poorly understood. Extant research has focused primarily on sex hormones, with equivocal findings. Here, we examined if intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) - a key regulator of human social behavior and cognition - interacts with changes in endogenous testosterone (T) levels in regulating the willingness to engage in competition. In a double-blind placebo-control design, 204 subjects (102 females) self-administrated OT or placebo and were assessed for their willingness to compete via an extensively-validated economic laboratory competition paradigm, in which, before completing a set of incentivized arithmetic tasks, subjects are asked to decide what percentage of their payoffs will be based on tournament paying-scheme. Salivary T concentrations (n = 197) were measured throughout the task to assess endogenous reactivity. Under both OT and placebo, T-reactivity during competition was not associated with competitiveness in females. However, in males, the association between T-reactivity and competitiveness was OT-dependent. That is, males under placebo demonstrated a positive correlation between T-reactivity and the willingness to engage in competition, while no association was observed in males receiving OT. The interaction between OT, T-reactivity, and sex on competitive preferences remained significant even after controlling for potential mediators such as performance, self-confidence, and risk-aversion, suggesting that this three-way interaction effect was specific to competitive motivation rather than to other generalized processes. These findings deepen our understanding of the biological processes underlying human preferences for competition and extend the evidence base for the interplay between hormones in affecting human social behavior.

"Help! I Need Somebody": Music as a Global Resource for Obtaining Wellbeing Goals in Times of Crisis.

Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural (individualistic vs. collectivistic) variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the UK, and USA, N = 5,619), participants rated the relevance of wellbeing goals during the pandemic, and the effectiveness of different activities in obtaining these goals. Music was found to be the most effective activity for three out of five wellbeing goals: enjoyment, venting negative emotions, and self-connection. For diversion, music was equally good as entertainment, while it was second best to create a sense of togetherness, after socialization. This result was evident across different countries and gender, with minor effects of age on specific goals, and a clear effect of the importance of music in people's lives. Cultural effects were generally small and surfaced mainly in the use of music to obtain a sense of togetherness. Interestingly, culture moderated the use of negatively valenced and nostalgic music for those higher in distress.

Integration of animal health and public health surveillance sources to exhaustively inform the risk of zoonosis: An application to echinococcosis in Rio Negro, Argentina.

The analysis of zoonotic disease risk requires the consideration of both human and animal geo-referenced disease incidence data. Here we show an application of joint Bayesian analyses to the study of echinococcosis granulosus (EG) in the province of Rio Negro, Argentina. We focus on merging passive and active surveillance data sources of animal and human EG cases using joint Bayesian spatial and spatio-temporal models. While similar spatial clustering and temporal trending was apparent, there appears to be limited lagged dependence between animal and human outcomes. Beyond the data quality issues relating to missingness at different times, we were able to identify relations between dog and human data and the highest 'at risk' areas for echinococcosis within the province.

Integration of animal health and public health surveillance sources to exhaustively inform the risk of zoonosis: An application to visceral leishmaniasis data in Brazil.

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a parasitic disease that is endemic in more than 80 countries, and leads to high fatality rates when left untreated. We investigate the relationship of VL cases in dogs and human cases, specifically for evidence of VL in dogs leading to excess cases in humans. We use surveillance data for dogs and humans for the years 2007-2011 to conduct both spatial and spatio-temporal analyses. Several models are evaluated incorporating varying levels of dependency between dog and human data. Models including dog data show marginal improvement over models without; however, for a subset of spatial units with ample data, models provide concordant risk classification for dogs and humans at high rates (∼70%). Limited reported dog case surveillance data may contribute to the results suggesting little explanatory value in the dog data, as excess human risk was only explained by dog risk in 5% of regions in the spatial analysis.

Multivariate Air Pollution Prediction Modeling with partial Missingness.

Missing observations from air pollution monitoring networks have posed a longstanding problem for health investigators of air pollution. Growing interest in mixtures of air pollutants has further complicated this problem, as many new challenges have arisen that require development of novel methods. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology for multivariate prediction of air pollution. We focus specifically on tackling different forms of missing data, such as: spatial (sparse sites), outcome (pollutants not measured at some sites), and temporal (varieties of interrupted time series). To address these challenges, we develop a novel multivariate fusion framework, which leverages the observed inter-pollutant correlation structure to reduce error in the simultaneous prediction of multiple air pollutants. Our joint fusion model employs predictions from the Environmental Protection Agency's Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model along with spatio-temporal error terms. We have implemented our models on both simulated data and a case study in South Carolina for 8 pollutants over a 28-day period in June 2006. We found that our model, which uses a multivariate correlated error in a Bayesian framework, showed promising predictive accuracy particularly for gaseous pollutants.

Cutaneous metastasis of renal cell carcinoma masquerading as an infected sebaceous cyst.

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the third most common genitourinary malignancy with an estimated one third of cases with metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis. Though rare, cutaneous metastasis from RCC is more frequent than any other genitourinary malignancy. Metastasis of RCC to skin carries poor prognosis as coexistent visceral spread is the norm. A 38-year-old man presented one year after radical nephrectomy for clear cell carcinoma of the left kidney with a submental lesion that proved to be metastatic. Clinical appearance of cutaneous RCC metastasis is varied and can closely mimic other skin lesions. It is incumbent on general practitioners, dermatologists and urologists to exercise diligence in clinical diagnosis of skin lesions in the background of previous oncological diagnosis.

Intestinal permeability in normally nourished and malnourished children with and without diarrhea.

We evaluated the association between diarrhea, malnutrition and intestinal function using the lactulose-mannitol test. Our study showed that a third of all children have abnormal intestinal permeability, there was an expected increase of permeability in children with acute diarrhea and alteration in intestinal permeability was greater in children with concurrent malnutrition and diarrhea.

The transfer of resources from middle-aged children to functionally limited elderly parents: providing time, giving money, sharing space.

The transfer of resources from middle-aged children to their functionally limited elderly parents is addressed from the perspective of the children who may allocate time to caregiving, share household space, and give money to parents. A simultaneous-equations model estimates the extent to which the three modes of transfer are interdependent, given the parents' needs for resources and the children's ability to provide them. Caregiving is the primary mode of resource transfer and is of overriding importance for individuals who depend daily on help from other persons. Coresidence and financial assistance complement direct human assistance and, at the margin, have a substantially large effect on caregiving time. It is, therefore, relevant to consider all modes of transfer in order to better understand how families accommodate the needs of their frail and disabled members.

Determining the amount of help used by disabled elderly persons at home: the role of coping resources.

The purpose of this study is to quantify the effects of coping resources on the amount (hours) of help used by disabled elderly persons in their home. The findings are based on the 1989 National Long-Term Care Survey. The distribution of help-hours is very skewed, mirroring the skewness of limitations in physical and cognitive functioning. Controlling for these limitations, the most important coping resources are the combinations of helpers who join forces, and coresidence with a helper. The effect of helpers' networks is large and consistent across marital status and living arrangements. The networks are more extensive for married than for unmarried persons. In reference to persons who rely only on nonrelatives: (a) a network of a spouse and children enables a married person to have 40 additional weekly hours of help, (b) a network of children and others enables an unmarried person to have 29 additional help-hours per week if he/she coresides with other adults and 10 additional weekly help-hours if he/she does not. The issue of concern for public policy is whether such family networks will be preserved and, if not, how to obtain the funds for the alternative of sufficient paid help in the community.

Full-time employment and informal caregiving in the 1980s.

The study examines the extent to which the effect of full-time employment on informal caregiving has changed over time. Such a change could be expected because women, who constitute the majority of unpaid caregivers, have been increasing their commitment to career employment. Full-time market work by an increasing proportion of successive cohorts of women means that proportionally fewer will be available to provide the amount of assistance needed by persons with disabilities that require the constant presence of a caregiver. This study is based on the National Informal Caregiver Surveys that are linked to the National Long-Term Care Surveys of 1982 and 1989. To achieve comparability between the 1982 and 1989 data, the analysis is based on primary caregivers whose care-recipients were disabled in performing the activities of daily living (ADLs): 1,489 in 1982 and 597 in 1989. A simultaneous-equations model estimates the number of weekly hours of unpaid help and the probability of full-time work for pay. The principal finding is that, compared with nonemployment, full-time employment reduced caregiving by 25 hours a week in 1982 and by 22 hours a week in 1989, but the difference of 3 hours is not statistically significant. The proportion of primary caregivers engaged in market work full time increased from 15.8%, in 1982 to 19.3% in 1989, but this difference is not statistically significant. These findings suggest that full-time employment reduces caregiving time substantially but that the effect of full-time employment on informal caregiving by primary caregivers of ADL-disabled elderly did not change during the 1980s. Primary caregivers with full-time jobs were more likely to assist individuals disabled in bathing and dressing, two activities that do not require the constant presence of a caregiver. The primary caregivers of individuals with more than two ADL disabilities frequently were the spouses of the care-recipients, themselves elderly persons who were not expected to be engaged in market work. The data from the 1980s appear to be reassuring in the sense that full-time employment by primary caregivers of ADL-disabled elderly did not further reduce the amount of time that they devoted to caregiving. In 1989, only about one fifth of these caregivers were engaged in market work full time. But this proportion is likely to increase in the future. As these future increases materialize, proportionally fewer caregivers will be available to provide the amount of help needed by persons with ADL disabilities that require the constant presence of a caregiver.

Predicting the risk of "permanent" nursing home residence: the role of community help as indicated by family helpers and prior living arrangements.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines the difference between permanent and transitory residence in a nursing home with special emphasis on the extent to which the risk of a long nursing home stay is reduced by the availability of informal help in the community. DATA SOURCE: Secondary data were used, taken from the National Long-Term Care Surveys of 1982 and 1984. The 1982 NLTCS samples disabled elderly living in the community. For these community dwellers, the 1984 NLTCS provides information on continued residence in the community and on their nursing home episodes between 1982 and 1984. METHOD OF ANALYSIS: The analysis is based on estimates from a multinomial logit regression with three explicit categories: persons with at least one long nursing home stay (n = 292), persons with only short stays (n = 227), and persons who died without ever having had a nursing home stay (n = 945). The implicit category: persons living in the community in 1984 without having had any nursing home stay (n = 3,368). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: This study demonstrates the systematic differences in the personal characteristics that predict the risk of long stays from those that predict short stays in a nursing home. Controlling for limitations in physical and cognitive functioning, the regression analysis shows that indicators of informal help in the community have a statistically significant and relatively large effect on the risk of long stays; but the effects of these indicators on the risk of short stays is numerically smaller and not statistically significant. Specifically, when the burden of caregiving is shared by a spouse and children, the risk of a long stay in a nursing home is reduced by 9.3 percentage points; in contrast, the risk is increased by 18 percentage points for childless elders who are living alone and by 45.8 percentage points for elders living with adults other than a spouse or children. CONCLUSION: The relatively strong effects of family helpers and living arrangements on the risk of long nursing home stays confirm the hypothesis that, after controlling for the effects of physical and cognitive functioning, adequate help in the community reduces the risk of permanent nursing home residence. But help in the community has no effect on the risk of short nursing home episodes because these episodes are likely to be extensions of acute hospital care. The findings provide essential information for designing a long-term care program because they suggest the magnitudes of the effects that such a program can have on reducing the risk of permanent nursing home residence.

A dominant mutation in the bacteriophage lambda S gene causes premature lysis and an absolute defective plating phenotype.

The S and R genes of the bacteriophage lambda are required for lysis of the host. R encodes 'endolysin', a soluble transglycosylase which accumulates in the cytoplasm during late protein synthesis. S encodes a 'holin', a small membrane protein which, at a precisely scheduled time, terminates the vegetative cycle by forming a lethal lesion in the membrane through which gpR gains access to the peptidoglycan. A missense allele of S, Ala52Gly, causes lysis to occur prematurely at about 19-20 min after induction of a lysogen, compared to 45 min for the wild type. This allele has a severe plaque-forming defect which appears to be entirely a consequence of the early lysis and resultant severe reduction in particle burst size. The early-lysis phenotype is dominant and is aggravated, in terms of an even more reduced burst size, at both 30 degrees C and 42 degrees C. The mutation maps in the middle of a putative membrane-spanning helical domain of S, near the sites of other S- mutations with recessive non-lytic phenotypes. The mutation has no effect on S-protein accumulation or on the ratio of S107 and S105 products in the membrane. The mutation appears to affect the intrinsic timing function by which the S protein controls the lysis schedule.

Improved versus deteriorated physical functioning among long-term disabled elderly.

The usual prognosis for long-term disabled elderly is that they are not likely to improve or regain independent functioning. But computed transition probabilities reveal a significant proportion of improvement. Based on the National Long-Term Care Surveys of 1982 and 1984, this study identifies the personal characteristics that are associated with changed functional status between these 2 years and estimates how much each characteristic contributes to this change. The study distinguishes four mutually exclusive statuses of disabled older persons: improved, remaining unchanged, deteriorated-alive, and deteriorated-dead. It shows that cognitive impairment reported in 1982, high-risk medical events that occurred during the year before the 1982 interview, and hospitalization between 1982 and 1984 predict an increased risk of deterioration by 1984. However, similar estimates do not predict improvement. Yet, data compatible with reported improvement suggest that acute medical problems might have caused a temporary worsening of functional status. When the recovery from this status takes more than 3 months, the ensuing change may be recorded as a long-term disability in the initial survey and as an improvement over time. However, long-term disabled elderly seldom improve to such an extent that they regain complete independence in physical functioning. In this study, most of the elderly who improved ended with a functional status similar to that of persons whose ADL disabilities remained unchanged over time.

Paid work and unpaid help by caregivers of the disabled and frail elders.

Informal caregiving by women, and to a lesser extent by men, is a major source of assistance for the chronically disabled and most dependent older persons living in the community. However, because women's commitment to career employment may diminish, this source of help at the time when (according to demographic trends) the number of very old Americans will increase, the effect of employment on the time they devote to informal caregiving is an important social and economic issue. This study examines two related research questions: 1) how the time allocated to paid work affects the time devoted to unpaid caregiving and 2) how caregiving responsibilities affect work outside the home. The results differ for full-time and part-time work. Estimating a simultaneous equation model, it was found that 1) full-time employment by caregivers reduces the time they allocate to providing unpaid help by 20 hours a week and 2) female caregivers were much less likely than their male counterparts to have full-time jobs. Results also indicate that 1) part-time employment by caregivers has no statistically significant effect on caregiving and 2) caregiving has no effect on women's part-time employment.

Why do some caregivers of disabled and frail elderly quit?

In this study, the authors examine the extent to which the characteristics of caregivers or recipients determine the probability that caregivers stop being caregivers. We find that caregivers' characteristics such as working outside their homes, raising children, or having their own health problems do not increase this probability. Nor does the emotional distress of caregiving increase the probability of quitting. However, caregivers are more likely to quit when recipients have six to seven disabilities in activities of daily living and need help on demand around the clock. This study also determines that assistive equipment, home modifications, and attendance at senior centers do not reduce the probability that caregivers quit.

The validity of health limitations as a reason for deciding to retire.

Many studies of the decision to retire have found that self-reported poor health increases the probability of retirement. Yet doubts have been expressed about whether such reported health problems constitute a genuine reason rather than a socially acceptable justification for not working. Our analysis shows conclusively that the probability of dying within two years after retiring and the probability of seeking medical care at the time of retiring are much higher for all retirees who report work-limiting health problems and especially for those who report such problems and retire before age 65. These findings, which imply that those retirees who report work-limiting health problems do not use health as an excuse for retiring, have important implications for public policy. The 1983 Amendments to the Social Security Act specified a gradual increase in the age of entitlement to the full amount of annual benefits, from age 65 to age 67. This delay in benefits is likely to cause financial hardship for workers whose health problems impair their ability to work because they will not be able to offset their loss of benefits through earnings from continued work.

Does having more time after retirement change the demand for physician services?

Various aspects of the demand for ambulatory services of physicians have been studied by researchers, but so far the effect of increased availability of nonwork time due to retirement on demand has not been examined. This study investigated whether discouraging early retirement (which was the intent of the 1983 Amendments to the Social Security Act) will reduce the use of medical services because persons who continue to work have less time than retirees for visits to doctors. This study found that, for men whose health does not interfere with work and who have had no in-hospital care in the study year, retirement does not increase the demand for ambulatory services when compared with being a part-time or full-time employee. However, compared with full-time self-employment, retirement increases the probability of using any physician services in the year by 14% and the number of physician visits by two visits. Although the self-employed have more control over their work time than employees, they may be more affected than employees by the loss of output and earnings associated with absence from the workplace.