Coemployed spouses: differences,strategies, and discrimination

The authors explore linkages between family and work roles. They examine patterns of apparent economic strategies of spouses working at a southern university located in a rural area. Their research focuses on spousal economic behavior and specifically addresses the effects of spouses' dual employment on the job status of women, differences between spouses in the timing of education and 1st hire at the university, status consistencies in husband and wife employment levels, and sexual discrimination in job levels and income of coemployed spouses. The study uses data extracted from a personnel data set. Cases from a computerized file were identified in 1980-1981, analyzed with 1981-1982 data, and compared with total work force data for 1982-1983. Slightly more than 1/2, or 123 identified cases, were analyzed. Some study findings follow. 1) Marriage to a coemployed spouse is associated with high occupational levels for female employees. 2) It is the husband's career that generally dictates the entry of a couple into the university's internal labor market. 3) There seems to be a strain toward consistency in the status levels of married pairs. 4) Collaborative strategies are being used to secure economic advances for the family unit. Major efforts regarding education and job selection are directed toward advancing the husband's career preference. However, some exceptions suggest that the pattern is flexible and that economic factors will take precedence over stereotyped sex roles when family needs come into consideration. 5) There is employment discrimination by sex at all levels of the internal labor market being studied. Status and income differentials still exist between males and females. Males in the same occupational statuses are paid more than their female counterparts. Females are concentrated at the lower levels of occupational ranks, males toward the top. Although this study is preliminary, it provides partial support for previous research on coemployed spouses' patterns of educational and occupational attainment, and the persistence of sex discrimination in earnings and occupational prestige.     

Motor control and the role of occupational therapy: past, present, and future

Human motor behavior continues to evolve and, therefore, may never be fully understood. Still, occupational therapy treatment approaches that are based on neurophysiological principles are fairly well accepted, and there is much potential for the development of treatments that will facilitate recovery of function. Occupational therapy must face and confront its roles in relation to the field of motor control; a health care profession involved with performance and motor control issues cannot afford to ignore the rapid advances in neuroscience information and the parallel developments in the field of motor control. Rood (1980) stated that many people want a "womb with a view," so that they remain protected and yet passively observe the outside world. However, if occupational therapy is to remain current with new developments in the field of motor control, it cannot afford to be passive.     

Beta-defensin genomic copy number is not a modifier locus for cystic fibrosis

Human beta-defensin 2 (DEFB4, also known as DEFB2 or hBD-2) is a salt-sensitive antimicrobial protein that is expressed in lung epithelia. Previous work has shown that it is encoded in a cluster of beta-defensin genes at 8p23.1, which varies in copy number between 2 and 12 in different individuals. We determined the copy number of this locus in 355 patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), and tested for correlation between beta-defensin cluster genomic copy number and lung disease associated with CF. No significant association was found.     

Linkage of the MHC to familial multiple sclerosis suggests genetic heterogeneity. The Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Group

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. While its etiology is not well understood, genetic factors are clearly involved. Until recently, most genetic studies in MS have been association studies using the case-control design testing specific candidate genes and studying only sporadic cases. The only consistently replicated finding has been an association with the HLA-DR2 allele within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) on chromosome 6. Using the genetic linkage design, however, evidence for and against linkage of the MHC to MS has been found, fostering suggestions that sporadic and familial MS have different etiologies. Most recently, two of four genomic screens demonstrated linkage to the MHC, although specific allelic associations were not tested. Here, a dataset of 98 multiplex families was studied to test for an association to the HLA-DR2 allele in familial MS and to determine if genetic linkage to the MHC was due solely to such an association. Three highly polymorphic markers (HLA-DR, D6S273 and TNFbeta) in the MHC demonstrated strong genetic linkage (parametric lod scores of 4.60, 2.20 and 1.24, respectively) and a specific association with the HLA-DR2 allele was confirmed (TDT; P < 0.001). Stratifying the results by HLA-DR2 status showed that the linkage results were limited to families segregating HLA-DR2 alleles. These results demonstrate that genetic linkage to the MHC can be explained by the HLA-DR2 allelic association. They also indicate that sporadic and familial MS share a common genetic susceptibility. In addition, preliminary calculations suggest that the MHC explains between 17 and 62% of the genetic etiology of MS. This heterogeneity is also supported by the minority of families showing no linkage or association with loci within the MHC.      

Adoptive transfer of protection against Trypanosoma cruzi with lymphocytes and macrophages.

Female C57BL/6J mice were infected with Trypanosoma cruzi and subsequently given macrophages or lymphocytes from syngeneic donors which had recovered from the acute infection. Mice which received immune peritoneal macrophages, splenic lymphocytes, or lymph node lymphocytes developed lower mean parasitemias and cumulative mortalities than did recipients of nonimmune cells. Neither peritoneal lymphocytes nor splenic macrophages were protective, however. These studies indicate that splenic and lymph node lymphocytes are effective in transferring protection against T. cruzi, whereas the macrophage is somewhat less effective.     

Irreversible neutrophil aggregation. A mechanism of decreased newborn neutrophil chemotactic response.

To investigate the neutrophil-neutrophil interactions of the newborn for possible clues to the etiology of decreased newborn neutrophil (PMN) chemotaxis, the authors compared adult and newborn C5a-induced PMN aggregation and chemotaxis at various PMN concentrations. Using Craddock's technique of C5a-induced aggregation, the authors found that the newborn lacks the normal biphasic aggregation-deaggregation seen in the adult, suggesting irreversible aggregation similar to that seen when adult PMNs are pretreated with cytochalasin-B. Chemotaxis of adult and newborn PMNs was studied with a modified Gallin radiolabel technique. A linear correlation between PMN concentration and corrected chemotactic response was found with both adult (r2 = 0.93) and newborn (r2 = 0.90) PMNs in the range 0.1 X 10(6) to 20 X 10(6) PMNs/ml. Random migration was not augmented by increased PMN concentration. The augmentation of newborn PMN chemotaxis was less than that of the adult (adult slope = 2426; newborn slope = 983). Irreversible newborn PMN aggregation may be the underlying event producing decreased PMN chemotaxis and interfering with the normal chemotactic augmentation caused by increased PMN concentration.     

Human observer detection experiments with mammograms and power-law noise

We determined contrast thresholds for lesion detection as a function of lesion size in both mammograms and filtered noise backgrounds with the same average power spectrum, P(f)=B/f3. Experiments were done using hybrid images with digital images of tumors added to digitized normal backgrounds, displayed on a monochrome monitor. Four tumors were extracted from digitized specimen radiographs. The lesion sizes were varied by digital rescaling to cover the range from 0.5 to 16 mm. Amplitudes were varied to determine the value required for 92% correct detection in two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) and 90% for search experiments. Three observers participated, two physicists and a radiologist. The 2AFC mammographic results demonstrated a novel contrast-detail (CD) diagram with threshold amplitudes that increased steadily (with slope of 0.3) with increasing size for lesions larger than 1 mm. The slopes for prewhitening model observers were about 0.4. Human efficiency relative to these models was as high as 90%. The CD diagram slopes for the 2AFC experiments with filtered noise were 0.44 for humans and 0.5 for models. Human efficiency relative to the ideal observer was about 40%. The difference in efficiencies for the two types of backgrounds indicates that breast structure cannot be considered to be pure random noise for 2AFC experiments. Instead, 2AFC human detection with mammographic backgrounds is limited by a combination of noise and deterministic masking effects. The search experiments also gave thresholds that increased with lesion size. However, there was no difference in human results for mammographic and filtered noise backgrounds, suggesting that breast structure can be considered to be pure random noise for this task. Our conclusion is that, in spite of the fact that mammographic backgrounds have nonstationary statistics, models based on statistical decision theory can still be applied successfully to estimate human performance.     

Immunoblot analysis of immunoglobulin G response to the Lyme disease agent (Borrelia burgdorferi) in experimentally and naturally exposed dogs.

Immunoblots were used to study the immunoglobulin G response to Borrelia burgdorferi in experimentally and naturally exposed dogs. Adsorption studies confirmed that the antibodies were specific for B. burgdorferi. Experimentally exposed dogs were asymptomatic. Naturally exposed dogs included both asymptomatic animals and animals showing signs compatible with Lyme disease. Naturally exposed dogs were from four geographic regions of the country. No differences were detected between immunoblot patterns of naturally exposed symptomatic or asymptomatic dogs from different areas of the country. The immunoblot patterns obtained with sera from experimentally exposed dogs were different from those obtained with sera from naturally exposed dogs and were characterized by reactivity to fewer and different protein bands. Immunoblot analysis using an OspA-protein-producing Escherichia coli recombinant showed that experimentally exposed dogs produced antibodies to OspA, whereas naturally exposed dogs did not. Modifications of the immune response over time, different routes of antigen presentation, and strain variation are factors postulated to account for the observed differences.