Three studies tested a stereotype inoculation model, which proposed that contact with same-sex experts (advanced peers, professionals, professors) in academic environments involving science, ...technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enhances women's self-concept in STEM, attitudes toward STEM, and motivation to pursue STEM careers. Two cross-sectional controlled experiments and 1 longitudinal naturalistic study in a calculus class revealed that exposure to female STEM experts promoted positive implicit attitudes and stronger implicit identification with STEM (Studies 1-3), greater self-efficacy in STEM (Study 3), and more effort on STEM tests (Study 1). Studies 2 and 3 suggested that the benefit of seeing same-sex experts is driven by greater subjective identification and connectedness with these individuals, which in turn predicts enhanced self-efficacy, domain identification, and commitment to pursue STEM careers. Importantly, women's own self-concept benefited from contact with female experts even though negative stereotypes about their gender and STEM remained active.
Background
Early parenting practices, such as infant feeding, can affect children's physical health. Additionally, negative prenatal maternal affect can influence feeding choices, such as ...breast‐feeding, and can have a detrimental effect on children's health. Little is known, however, about the contribution of positive maternal affect during pregnancy on feeding practices and children's health.
Methods
This study explored whether positive prenatal feelings influenced children's health during the first 18 months, and whether early feeding practices mediated the relationship between these two variables. Low‐income, ethnically diverse, primiparous women (n = 114) reported their feelings of pregnancy uplifts and hassles during their third trimester. These women were interviewed again at 2, 4, 6, 9, 12, and 18 months post‐partum about their feeding practices. A retrospective audit of their infants’ medical charts was completed from birth to 18 months.
Results
Using structural equation modeling, having more uplifts than hassles during pregnancy was associated with longer breast‐feeding duration and greater adherence to recommended schedules for introducing fruits and vegetables, solids, and baby cereal. These feeding practices were linked to better child health outcomes, including reduced risk of upper respiratory tract infections, conjunctivitis, otitis media, and thrush.
Conclusions
Positive maternal feelings during pregnancy were associated with better feeding practices, and these better feeding practices were associated with fewer common childhood illnesses. Helping expectant women focus on the positive aspects of their pregnancy may lead to postnatal care methods that are fiscally advantageous, preventive of detrimental postnatal choices, and medically beneficial for children.
The 2023 VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of PTSD recommends individual, manualized trauma-focused such as Prolonged Exposure (PE) over pharmacologic interventions for the ...primary treatment of PTSD. Unfortunately, clinical trials of trauma-based therapies in the military and veteran population showed that 30% to 50% of patients did not demonstrate clinically meaningful symptom change. Ketamine, an FDA-approved anesthetic with potent non-competitive glutamatergic N-methyl-d-aspartate antagonistic properties, has demonstrated to enhance the recall of extinction learning and decrease fear renewal without interference of extinction training in preclinical studies.
We plan to conduct a single site RCT comparing three ketamine treatment vs. active placebo (midazolam) adjunct to PE therapy among Veterans with PTSD. Pharmacological phase will start simultaneously with PE session 1. Infusions will be administered 24 h. prior to PE session for the first 3 weeks. After PE is completed (session 10), patients will be assessed during a 3-month follow-up period at various time points. We estimate that out of 100 veterans, 80 will reach time point for primary outcome measure and will be considered for primary analysis. Secondary outcomes include severity of depression and anxiety scores, safety and tolerability of ketamine-enhanced PE therapy, cognitive performance during treatment and early improvement during PE related to the rate of dropouts during PE therapy.
Results of the proposed RCT could provide scientific foundation to distinguish the essential components of this approach, enhance the methodology, elucidate the mechanisms involved, and identify sub-PTSD populations that most likely benefit from this intervention.
•Self-management for trauma-focused therapy completers was acceptable and feasible.•Self-management may increase self-efficacy after trauma-focused therapy for PTSD.•Self-management may promote ...community engagement.•Additional study of post-trauma-focused therapy self-management is needed.
Veterans who complete an evidence-based trauma-focused therapy (TFT) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) report continued treatment needs to build self-efficacy, promote continued skill application, and bolster engagement in valued activities. This paper describes the rationale, development, and treatment structure of a novel 4-session therapist-assisted self-management program, named EMPOWER, for TFT completers. A mixed methods approach was used to evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of the intervention in an open pilot trial with 12 veterans. Therapists delivered the treatment with fidelity and participants reported high acceptability and satisfaction with EMPOWER. Quantitatively, participants reported meaningful improvements in quality of life and small improvements in community engagement; however, there were no clinically meaningful changes in self-efficacy, PTSD symptoms, depression, or functioning pre- to postintervention. Qualitatively, participants noted EMPOWER met their post TFT needs and that the structure of treatment was helpful in continuing to practice TFT skills. They also noted improvements in self-efficacy for self-managing PTSD symptoms and an increase in valued activities. Findings suggest EMPOWER is feasible, acceptable, and meets veterans’ post-TFT treatment needs. A larger-scale, randomized trial of EMPOWER is warranted to evaluate the impact of EMPOWER on self-efficacy, clinical symptoms, functioning, and quality of life.
For years, public discourse in science education, technology, and policy-making has focused on the “leaky pipeline” problem: the observation that fewer women than men enter science, technology, ...engineering, and mathematics fields and more women than men leave. Less attention has focused on experimentally testing solutions to this problem. We report an experiment investigating one solution: we created “microenvironments” (small groups) in engineering with varying proportions of women to identify which environment increases motivation and participation, and whether outcomes depend on students’ academic stage. Female engineering students were randomly assigned to one of three engineering groups of varying sex composition: 75% women, 50% women, or 25% women. For first-years, group composition had a large effect: women in female-majority and sex-parity groups felt less anxious than women in female-minority groups. However, among advanced students, sex composition had no effect on anxiety. Importantly, group composition significantly affected verbal participation, regardless of women’s academic seniority: women participated more in female-majority groups than sex-parity or female-minority groups. Additionally, when assigned to female-minority groups, women who harbored implicit masculine stereotypes about engineering reported less confidence and engineering career aspirations. However, in sex-parity and female-majority groups, confidence and career aspirations remained high regardless of implicit stereotypes. These data suggest that creating small groups with high proportions of women in otherwise male-dominated fields is one way to keep women engaged and aspiring toward engineering careers. Although sex parity works sometimes, it is insufficient to boost women’s verbal participation in group work, which often affects learning and mastery.
Significance Advances in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are critical to the American economy and require a robust workforce. The scarcity of women in this workforce is a well-recognized problem, but data-driven solutions to this problem are less common. We provide experimental evidence showing that gender composition of small groups in engineering has a substantial impact on undergraduate women’s persistence. Women participate more actively in engineering groups when members are mostly female vs. mostly male or in equal gender proportions. Women feel less anxious in female-majority groups vs. minority groups, especially as first-year students. Gender-parity groups are less effective than female-majority groups in promoting verbal participation. Female peers protect women’s confidence and engineering career aspirations despite masculine stereotypes about engineering.
Two studies were conducted to explore the effects of the sociopolitical ideologies colorblindness and multiculturalism on perceivers’ (1) automatic awareness of race and (2) automatic racial ...stereotyping. Study 1 showed that a colorblind prime caused White perceivers to notice White targets’ race more compared to a no prime condition, although non-White perceivers were able to ignore race when primed with colorblindness. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, caused individuals to notice race no differently than the control. In terms of stereotyping, Study 2 showed that a colorblind prime did not change automatic stereotyping of Black or White targets. In contrast, multiculturalism increased automatic positive stereotyping of Black targets compared to the control condition, but did not affect stereotyping of White targets. Implications discussed include why colorblindness might affect White and non-White perceivers differently as well as whether or not decreased positive stereotyping of Whites (in the case of colorblindness) and increased positive stereotyping of both Blacks (in the case of multiculturalism) are beneficial ways to attain national unity.
Schistosomiasis continues to be an important cause of parasitic morbidity and mortality world-wide. Determining the molecular mechanisms regulating the development of granulomas and fibrosis will be ...essential for understanding how schistosome antigens interact with the host environment. We report here the first whole genome microarray analysis of the murine liver during the progression of Schistosoma japonicum egg-induced granuloma formation and hepatic fibrosis. Our results reveal a distinct temporal relationship between the expression of chemokine subsets and the recruitment of cells to the infected liver. Genes up-regulated earlier in the response included T- and B-cell chemoattractants, reflecting the early recruitment of these cells illustrated by flow cytometry. The later phases of the response corresponded with peak recruitment of eosinophils, neutrophils, macrophages and myofibroblasts/hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) and the expression of chemokines with activity for these cells including CCL11 (eotaxin 1), members of the Monocyte-chemoattractant protein family (CCL7, CCL8, CCL12) and the Hepatic Stellate Cell/Fibrocyte chemoattractant CXCL1. Peak expression of macrophage chemoattractants (CCL6, CXCL14) and markers of alternatively activated macrophages (e.g. Retnla) during this later phase provides further evidence of a role for these cells in schistosome-induced pathology. Additionally, we demonstrate that CCL7 immunolocalises to the fibrotic zone of granulomas. Furthermore, striking up-regulation of neutrophil markers and the localisation of neutrophils and the neutrophil chemokine S100A8 to fibrotic areas suggest the involvement of neutrophils in S. japonicum-induced hepatic fibrosis. These results further our understanding of the immunopathogenic and, especially, chemokine signalling pathways that regulate the development of S. japonicum-induced granulomas and fibrosis and may provide correlative insight into the pathogenesis of other chronic inflammatory diseases of the liver where fibrosis is a common feature.
Highlights • Hepatic granulomas induced by different schistosome species show unique cellularity. • Schistosome egg secretions selectively control granuloma cellular infiltration. • Chemokines ...regulate the migration of immune cells to schistosome-induced granuloma. • A promising strategy for neutrophils and macrophages in granulofibrotic treatment.
Autophagy is essential to maintaining cellular homeostasis in all eukaryotic cells and to tolerance of acute stressors such as starvation, heat, and recovery after exercise. Limited information ...exists regarding the exercise intensity-dependent autophagic response in humans, and it is unknown how environmental heat stress may modulate this response. Therefore, we evaluated autophagy and accompanying pathways of cellular stress the heat-shock response (HSR), apoptosis, and acute inflammation in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 10 young men (mean SD; 22 2 years) before, immediately after and up to 6-h postexercise recovery from 30 min of low-, moderate-, and high-intensity semirecumbent cycling 40%, 55%, and 70% of maximal oxygen consumption (V̇o
), respectively in a temperate environment (25°C) and at 70% of V̇o
in a hot environment (40°C). Changes in protein content were analyzed via Western blot. Each increase in exercise intensity was associated with elevations in mean body temperature. LC3-II increased after moderate-intensity exercise, with further increases after high-intensity exercise (
< 0.05). However, an increase in beclin-2 and ULK1, with a decrease in p62 was only observed after high-intensity exercise, which was paralleled by elevated TNF-α and cleaved-caspase-3, with the HSR peaking at 6 h after exercise (
< 0.05). When exercise was performed in the heat, greater LC3-II and cleaved-caspase-3 accumulation were observed; however, beclin-2 declined in recovery (
< 0.05). Therefore, our findings indicate that autophagy in PBMCs during exercise may be associated with greater heat strain exhibited during increasing exercise intensities, which is modulated by exposure to heat.
A novel dual role for neutrophils in the mediation of tissue damage and repair in Schistosoma japonicum egg‐induced hepatic granulomatous lesions.
The severity of schistosome egg‐induced hepatic ...granulomatous pathology depends markedly on the nature of the host immune responses. In this study, we used LMM and microarray analysis to compare gene expression profiles of histologically distinct zones within, and directly proximal to, hepatic granulomas that developed in C57BL/6 mice infected with Schistosoma japonicum. There was significant up‐regulation of type‐1, type‐2, and type‐17 immune‐associated genes within the granuloma core (adjacent to eggs), followed by increased expression of type‐2 and fibrotic genes at the outer zones of granulomas. Neutrophil‐associated genes were also found to be expressed differentially in the core and at the peripheral zone of granulomas, present at 7 weeks p.i., demonstrating a significant role of neutrophils in S. japonicum granulomatous pathology. The release of NETs was observed microscopically in granulomas obtained from the livers of infected mice and when human neutrophils were incubated in vitro in the presence of S. japonicum eggs. These finding are the first to suggest a novel, dual role for neutrophils in the mediation of tissue damage and repair in S. japonicum egg‐induced hepatic granulomatous lesions. Together, these results provide an overview of the local events occurring within the granuloma microenvironment.
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