The influence of partnership centrality on organizational perceptions of support: a case study of the AHLN structure

Background  

Knowledge of the structure and character of inter-organizational relationships found among health promotion organizations is a prerequisite for the development of evidence-based network-level intervention activities. The Alberta Healthy Living Network (AHLN) mapped the inter-organizational structure of its members to examine the effects of the network environment on organizational-level perceptions. This exploratory analysis examines whether network structure, specifically partnership ties among AHLN members, influences organizational perceptions of support after controlling for organizational-level attributes.     

Inhibitory effect of dimethyl sulfoxide on nuclear factor-kappa B activation and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 gene expression in septic rats

Antioxidants are potent radical scavengers that protect against endotoxemia and septic shock in animal models. Using a rat model of peritonitis sepsis induced by cecal incision we studied the effect of the free radical scavenger dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) on hepatic nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappa B) activation, hepatic intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) gene expression, serum tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF) formation, and serum glucose concentration. Five groups of rats (N = 5) were treated as follows: (1) untreated control (Untreated), (2) sham operated with laparotomies (Sham), (3) pretreated with 6 ml/kg DMSO followed by sham operation (DMSO/Sham), (4) cecal incision (Sepsis), and (5) pretreated with DMSO followed by cecal incision (DMSO/Sepsis). In the DMSO/Sham group, DMSO did not affect NF-kappa B activation, ICAM-1 gene expression, and TNF formation. At 3 h postcecal incision, DMSO inhibited sepsis-induced hepatic NF-kappa B activation and hepatic ICAM-1 gene expression to control levels and suppressed serum TNF by 75%. In the late (6 h) septic phase, DMSO inhibited NF-kappa B activation (32%), ICAM-1 gene expression (27%), and TNF formation (71%). These findings suggest that the protective mechanism of antioxidants in septic rats may be partly due to the inhibition of NF-kappa B activation and NF-kappa B-mediated events.     

The acquisition of language skills by autistic children: Can parents do the job?

The mothers and fathers of 11 preschool autistic children were taught operant procedures used in teaching speech to nonverbal children. The children's speech skills were assessed twice before and once after their parents were trained. At posttreatment, the children showed significant gains in prespeech and speech skills as measured by a 21-step hierarchy of speech behaviors. Those children who had acquired at least verbal imitative skill after training made greater progress than those who had not. Although children maintained their gains in a 1-year follow-up assessment, there was no evidence of significant improvement beyond that achieved at the end of training. The importance of support for parents in continuing to do formal teaching after the training program ends was stressed.Support for this research came in part from a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 29897-04) to the first author. Our thanks to Elayne Weitz, who co-led one of the groups, to Beverly Brysk for data processing, and to Rona Milch for statistical consultation.     

The Effect of Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity on Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

This study explores the interaction between working memory systems and language processing by examining how differences in working memory capacity (WMC) modulates neural activation levels and functional connectivity during sentence comprehension. The results indicate that two working memory systems may be involved in sentence comprehension, the verbal working memory system and the episodic buffer, but during different phases of the task. A sub-region of the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45) was correlated with WMC during the probe and not during sentence reading while the only region to reveal a correlation with WMC during sentence reading was the posterior cingulate/precuneus area, a region linked to event representation. In addition, functional connectivity analysis suggests that there were two distinct networks affected by WMC. The first was a semantic network that included the middle temporal cortex, an anterior region of the inferior frontal gyrus and the inferior parietal region. The second included the posterior cingulate and BA 45 of the inferior frontal gyrus. We propose here that high capacity readers may generate an event representation of the sentence during reading that aids in comprehension and that this event representation involves the processing of the posterior cingulate cortex.