Setting a trap for aging-related genes in Drosophila

In the October 2002 issue of Aging Cell, Seroude et al. used an enhancer trap technique to identify Drosophila genes whose expression changes with age. In this Perspective, the author discusses the implications of these results, including the possibility of using the enhancer trap lines to identify biomarkers of aging.     

The psychological contract: retaining newly employed physicians

You spend lots of time and money recruiting the best candidates to fill your physician positions. But sometimes you lose those physicians after only a year or two on the job. Discover ways to help stop the turnover and keep valued employees happy.     

Do unintended pregnancies carried to term lead to adverse outcomes for mother and child? An assessment in five developing countries

This paper investigates whether children later reported as having been unwanted or mistimed at conception will, when compared with children reported as wanted, show adverse effects when the following criteria are applied: receipt of antenatal care before the sixth month of gestation, supervised delivery, full vaccination of the child, and child growth (stunting). The study uses data from five recent Demographic and Health Survey enquiries in Bolivia, Egypt, Kenya, Peru, and the Philippines. In Peru, children unwanted at conception were found to have significantly worse outcomes than other children, but in the other countries, a systematic effect was found only for receipt of antenatal care. Weak measurement of the complex concept of wantedness may have contributed to these results. Birth order of the child, with which wantedness is inextricably linked, has more powerful and pervasive effects, with first-born and second-born children being much less likely to show adverse effects.     

Transgender DeKalb: observations of an advocacy campaign

In September 2000, the Community Members Against Discrimination (CMAD), a grassroots LGBT organization in DeKalb, Illinois, convinced their city council to add protection against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression. Written as an autoethnography, this essay considers the events of the campaign in terms of queer theory and the study of public argument by isolating a set of episodes that bring the reader closer to the experiences of transgender citizens who act in a public culture. The author also explores his own responsibilities as a scholar of communication, an activist, and a member of the LGBT community.     

Perceptions of drinking and related findings from the Nationwide Campuses Study

Proponents of social norms approaches maintain that correcting misperceptions of alcohol use among college students may reduce drinking and its consequences. The author used aggregate campus-level data from the Nationwide Campuses Study to test this hypothesis. He defined the misperceptions ratio as the ratio of the frequency of the "average student's" perceived alcohol use to the frequency of self-use at each campus. Each of the 57 colleges reported misperceptions ratios greater than unity. At campuses where students had more accurate perceptions of alcohol use, students were more likely to desire alcohol availability at campus events and to drink on more days throughout the year than at campuses where students had greater misperceptions of alcohol use. The author found no data to support the preferential use of social norms programming on campuses with high levels of self-reported alcohol use or binge drinking. These findings raise questions about potentially unexpected and unintended effects of social norms approaches.     

Partnering with the 21st century workplace: leveraging workplace ecology

The 'accessible' job market of the 1990's has given way to a challenging job market in a climate of economic uncertainty in the early Twenty-First Century. For vocational rehabilitation professionals this change requires the strategic use of workplace supports to increase the value and sustainability of work performed by people with disabilities in competitive jobs. An analytical framework for leveraging the natural supports of the workplace is provided by the workplace ecology as a bounded environment in which relationships between workers and supervisors promote learning and enhanced performance. The dynamics of the workplace ecology are explored with particular reference to workers with disabilities receiving supported employment services. Recommendations are made for leveraging the workplace ecology to the benefit of the supported worker. Implications for supported employment services in the new millennium are discussed.     

Definition and Measurement of Chasing in Off-Course Betting and Gaming Machine Play

The attempt to recover gambling losses by continuing to gamble (chasing) has featured prominently in accounts of excessive gambling. This research represents the first attempt to operationalize and measure chasing in terms of its cognitive (behavioral intention), emotive (urges) and behavioral components, and to investigate the role of chasing in relation to impaired control over gambling. Two survey samples of 84 male off-course (betting shop) race gamblers (mean age 41, SD = 15) and 137 gaming machine players (73 females, mean age 48, SD = 15 and 64 males, mean age 43, SD = 16) were recruited at gambling venues. Respondents completed a structured questionnaire that investigated retrospective report of chasing and an impaired control scale (The Scale of Gambling Choices). It was found that the various components of chasing formed a composite measure with high internal reliability that was strongly related to indicators of excessive gambling (e.g. time spent gambling, expenditure as a proportion of income) and to impaired control scores. Reacting to large wins by further betting was almost as strongly related to impaired control as was persistence after losing. Those who returned later to chase had significantly higher impaired control scores than those who only chased within a session. Alcohol-related chasing was associated with impaired control over gambling. Chasing of losses and impaired control appear to be generic processes in evidence across both forms of gambling and gender (most format and sex differences were of minor significance).     

Alzheimer's disease,neuropeptides, neuropeptidase,and amyloid-beta peptide metabolism

Amyloid-beta peptide (Abeta), the pathogenic agent of Alzheimer's disease (AD), is a physiological metabolite in the brain. We have focused our attention and effort on elucidating the unresolved aspect of Abeta metabolism: proteolytic degradation. Among a number of Abeta-degrading enzyme candidates, we used a novel in vivo paradigm to identify a member of the neutral endopeptidase family, neprilysin, as the major Abeta catabolic enzyme. Neprilysin deficiency results in defects in the metabolism of endogenous Abeta 40 and 42 in a gene dose-dependent manner. Our observations suggest that even partial down-regulation of neprilysin activity, which could be caused by aging, can contribute to AD development by promoting Abeta accumulation. Moreover, we discuss the fact that an aging-dependent decline of neprilysin activity, which leads to elevation of Abeta concentrations in the brain, is a natural process that precedes AD pathology. In this Perspective, we hypothesize that neprilysin down-regulation has a role in sporadic AD (SAD) pathogenesis, and we propose that this knowledge be used for developing preventive and therapeutic strategies through use of a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR).