Suspensions of cultured primary human embryonic kidney cells were subjected to continuous flow electrophoresis on Space Shuttle flight STS-8. The objectives of the experiments were to obtain ...electrophoretically separated fractions of the original cell populations and to test these fractions for the amount and kind of urokinase (a kidney plasminogen activator that is used medically for digesting blood clots), the morphologies of cells in the individual fractions, and their cellular electrophoretic mobilities after separation and subsequent proliferation. Individual fractions were successfully cultured after return from orbit, and they were found to differ substantially from one another and from the starting sample with respect to all of these properties.
Predisposition to violence Mednick, Sarnoff A.; Brennan, Patricia; Kandel, Elizabeth
Aggressive behavior,
1988, 1988-00-00, Volume:
14, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This paper asks whether biological factors play a causal role in violent criminal offending. We consider the research on genetic influence and find no evidence of hereditary transmission of violent ...criminal behavior. There is considerable evidence, however, that violent delinquent and adult offenders exhibit an elevated frequency of brain damage. Potential sources of this brain damage exist in the prenatal and perinatal course of development.
Data on punishment and criminal arrests in a total birth cohort of men in Denmark (
N
= 28,879) was used to test the following hypotheses derived from learning theory: (a) the imposition of sanctions ...reduces rates of subsequent criminal arrest; (b) the more severe the sanction received for an arrest, the lower the rate of recidivism; (c) different types of sanctions have similar effects on recidivism; (d) the higher the proportion of sanctions received for past arrests, the lower the rates of future arrest; (e) continuous sanctions reduce arrest rates more than intermittent sanctions; and (f) discontinuation of punishment results in recovery of criminal arrests. Results support the above hypotheses, except Hypothesis b; our results suggest that sanctions have similar effects on recidivism regardless of their severity.
This study investigates the impact of the recent welfare and immigration changes on the use of Medicaid by low-income pregnant immigrant women in California. The study presents findings from ...interviews with government officials, safety-net prenatal care providers, and immigrant advocates who serve low-income pregnant Asian and Latina immigrants at the national, state, or local levels. These informants spoke of policy actions that affect immigrants' abilities to use Medicaid for coverage of prenatal care. These actions include (1) the sharing of information between the California Department of Health Services and the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, (2) the slow and confusing implementation of the reforms, and (3) the intimidating Medicaid eligibility process. The findings demonstrate how the policies changed the immigrant women's relationship with safety-net prenatal care providers, and sparked intense actions on the part of their advocates to sustain the women's access to perinatal care.
Response : Criminality and Adoption Mednick, Sarnoff A.; Gabrielli, William F.; Hutchings, Barry
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
03/1985, Volume:
227, Issue:
4690
Journal Article
Heart rate activity and computed tomographic measures of structural brain abnormalities were evaluated in 32 individuals with a genetic risk for schizophrenia (offspring of schizophrenic mothers). ...Heart rate activity was assessed in 1962 when the subjects were a mean age of 15.1 years. Diagnostic and computed tomography assessments were conducted in 1980. Compared to individuals with normal third ventricles, individuals with enlarged third ventricles evidenced significantly lower heart rate levels overall and significantly lower heart rate during rest and during the periods preceding conditioning and test for conditioning stimulus trials. These effects were independent of age, psychiatric diagnosis, and abnormalities in other brain regions. Difficulties in interpretation posed by the index of brain abnormality employed and by the 18-year time interval between the heart rate and computed tomography assessments are discussed. Together with prior evidence of a relationship between third ventricle enlargement and reduced electrodermal responsiveness in the same subjects, these findings provide a preliminary indication that enlargement of the third ventricle may involve damage to diencephalic structures involved in autonomic nervous system activity.
We examined differences in ventricular and sulcal cerebrospinal fluid-to-brain ratios as a function of lifetime psychiatric diagnosis in the offspring of schizophrenic mothers (high-risk sample) and ...in the offspring of normal parents (low-risk sample).
We used a cohort analytic study of 17 high-risk individuals with schizophrenia, 31 high-risk individuals with schizotypal personality disorder, 33 high-risk individuals with nonschizophrenia-spectrum psychiatric disorders, 45 high-risk individuals with no disorders, 31 low-risk individuals with psychiatric disorders of all types, and 46 low-risk individuals with no disorders, evaluated initially in 1962 when they were a mean age of 15 years, and reexamined from 1986 through 1989 with psychiatric interviews and computed tomographic scans of the brain.
High-risk individuals with schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder evidenced an equivalent degree of cortical sulcal enlargement, and both groups evidenced significantly greater sulcal enlargement than did high-risk individuals with nonschizophrenia-spectrum disorders and no disorders and low-risk individuals with psychiatric disorders and no disorders. High-risk individuals with schizophrenia evidenced significantly greater ventricular enlargement than did high-risk and low-risk subjects with other disorders and no disorders, including those with schizotypal personality disorder. These differences were independent of age, gender, history of substance dependence, and history of organic brain syndromes and head injuries.
Among the offspring of schizophrenic parents, cortical abnormalities are expressed equally across the range of syndromes in the schizophrenia spectrum. Subcortical abnormalities (ie, ventricular enlargement) are more pronounced in the more severe syndrome (ie, schizophrenia).
