Responding to Worldview Threats in the Classroom: An Exploratory Study of Preservice Teachers

This study used two training sessions and two focus groups with 17 preservice teachers (aged 20–36) completing their first teaching practicum placement during their Bachelor of Education program at an urban research university in western Canada. The aim was to implement ideas from terror management theory (TMT) during their teaching practicum. Participants explored how to facilitate contentious issues so as to prevent defensive reactions when worldviews clash in the classroom. A dramaturgical analysis identified participant objectives, conflicts, tactics, attitudes, emotions, and subtexts as they explored how to anticipate and avoid worldview and self-esteem threat, navigate tense pedagogical spaces, build capacity for expressing uncomfortable emotions, and diffuse threat with humor. Because difficult emotions are central to teaching potentially polarizing content, participating preservice teachers explored when compensatory reactions might emerge and, as a result, developed their own emotional awareness—TMT became both an experience and a teachable theory.

Changing public opinion about gender activates group threat and opposition to feminist social movements among men

Two studies examined whether men’s perception of the declining value of traditional masculinity activates social status, realistic, and symbolic threat, and in turn motivates opposition to feminist social movements. In Study 1, men’s perception that their ingroup is losing value across several social spheres was associated with social status and realistic threat, both of which were associated with opposition to feminist movements. Study 2, an experiment, presented men with public opinion data showing a 30-year decline in the degree to which Americans value traditional masculinity or no decline. Information about the declining value of masculinity activated status threat, which motivated less support for feminist movements. Among men who highly identified as masculine, this same information reduced support for feminist movements through symbolic threat. In sum, perceived decline in the social value of traditional masculinity creates status anxiety about the ingroup’s future and motivates compensatory reactions against gender equality.

Peculiarities of transformation of psychophysiological characteristics of military pilots, practically healthy and patients with stage I hypertension. Message I. Restructuring of performance correlates related to the health status of military pilots

Annotation. The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the transformation of professionally important psychophysiological qualities of military pilots, practically healthy and with stage I hypertension (80 people). Statistical analysis of the data was performed using the methods of variation statistics, nonparametric statistics – correlation (Spearman’s correlation coefficient), cluster analysis (k-means method) using the software package STATISTICA 13.3. It has been established that hypertension affects the structure of correlations of psychophysiological functions of the body, which indicates a difference in the mechanisms of regulation of these functions during the development of the disease. It is shown that even healthy military pilots have different levels of mental capacity and can show their psychophysiological qualities in different ways, especially in extreme conditions. In addition, it was found that in the presence of hypertension in the body of a third of pilots show compensatory reactions to increase the activation of body functions, which, in turn, increases the physiological cost of professional activity, to reduce which must periodically apply treatment and rehabilitation measures.

Age peculiarities of the cardiovascular system and blood microcirculation in students under the influence of dosed physical training

We investigated the adaptive capabilities of the cardiovascular system and blood microcirculation in 18–21-year-old students under the influence of dosed physical training. It was shown that there are significant age-related differences in the indicators of the cardiovascular system function at rest. By the 21-th year the majority of the studied parameters have reached the level characteristic of adult young men. After dosed physical training the indices of the cardiovascular system function increased to a greater or lesser extent, and the greatest increase was observed in 21-year-old students. In younger age groups the changes were less effective, which characterizes the adaptive capabilities of the cardiovascular system depending on age. A marker indicator of the blood microcirculation system functioning — a microcirculation parameter that determines the direction of the microcirculation response to a dosed physical training — has been identified. It was found that among students of the 1st subgroup (low level of the microcirculation parameter) after physical activity it increased, and among students of the 2nd subgroup (high level of the microcirculation parameter) it mainly decreased, which characterizes the inclusion of various regulatory mechanisms in the blood microcirculation system. A decrease in the index of microcirculation efficiency under the influence of physical training was shown (the most significant in younger students). Such features can be explained by the lack of development of compensatory reactions in the microcirculation system.

Connexin 43 and Connexin 26 Involvement in the Ponatinib-Induced Cardiomyopathy: Sex-Related Differences in a Murine Model

Cardiac connexins (Cxs) are proteins responsible for proper heart function. They form gap junctions that mediate electrical and chemical signalling throughout the cardiac system, and thus enable a synchronized contraction. Connexins can also individually participate in many signal transduction pathways, interacting with intracellular proteins at various cellular compartments. Altered connexin expression and localization have been described in diseased myocardium and the aim of this study is to assess the involvement of Cx43, Cx26, and some related molecules in ponatinib-induced cardiac toxicity. Ponatinib is a new multi-tyrosine kinase inhibitor that has been successfully used against human malignancies, but its cardiotoxicity remains worrisome. Therefore, understanding its signaling mechanism is important to adopt potential anti cardiac damage strategies. Our experiments were performed on hearts from male and female mice treated with ponatinib and with ponatinib plus siRNA-Notch1 by using immunofluorescence, Western blotting, and proteomic analyses. The altered cardiac function and the change in Cxs expression observed in mice after ponatinib treatment, were results dependent on the Notch1 pathway and sex. Females showed a lower susceptibility to ponatinib than males. The downmodulation of cardiac Cx43, Cx26 and miR-122, high pS368-Cx43 phosphorylation, cell viability and survival activation could represent some of the female adaptative/compensatory reactions to ponatinib cardiotoxicity.

The use of information technology in assessing the health of human capital as a factor of environmental justice and sustainable development

The cumulative nature of various types of xenobiotics and pollutants requires long-term comprehensive environmental protection measures, including in the territories of the petrochemical industry. Due to its high sensitivity, the child’s body is a “marker” of hypersensitivity to xenobiotics. The article clarifies the concept of “environmental justice”. The essence of its use lies in the ethical organization of the ecological environment. As safe as possible for the health of every person and the biosphere as a whole. The use of information technologies can use to monitor and correct the health of children and adults at the regional level, taking into account the characteristics of the ethnic group and their adaptive-compensatory reactions.

INFLUENCE OF HYPOXIC ENVIRONMENT ON BLOOD INDICATORS IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS

The role of the natural hypoxic environment of the middle mountains in the growth of the erythrocyte link of the blood - erythrocytes, hemoglobin and the level of the average concentration of hemoglobin in erythrocytes, reflecting the level of iron sufficiency in the blood in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is shown. The results of clinical blood tests showed that after 10-day courses of recovery in the mountains in the blood of children there are compensatory reactions associated with the restructuring of the body's blood supply - an increase in the number of red blood cells due to their intake from blood depots, which allows an increase in the level of hemoglobin and the volume of oxygen carried and improves blood circulation in the body of children.

Menopausal transition: risks and their prevention

The period of the menopausal transition from 40–45 years to menopause – is the crucial period of a woman’s life, in which, against the background of increasing estrogen deficiency, in addition to the appearance of vasomotor, psychological, and urogenital symptoms, complications and exacerbations of accumulated extagenital diseases occur. The loss of the natural balance of sex hormones leads to hyperplastic processes in hormone-dependent tissues, which leads to cancer risks. In solving this problem, menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) can play a crucial role, but this will become possible if, when choosing drugs for MHT, preference will be given to the safest dosage forms that provide the whole spectrum of compensatory reactions, including the prevention of dramatic situations of this age.

The subjective concept of morbidity: its assessment and connection with the motivation for treatment in persons who underwent psychosis

Medication compliance and motivation for treatment, as adaptive- compensatory reactions of patients to the awareness of the fact of their own ill- being, are based on subjective perception of the disorder. To date, there is a shortage of objective methods for assessing the subjective concept of morbidity in psychotic patients.160 inpatients with psychosis in anamnesis were examined: nosologically according ICD-10 80%—F2, 11%—F3, 9%—F0. A self-questionnaire was adapted to the Russian language for determining the subjective meaning and significance of psychosis (Susi). The results of its internal and external (when compared with data on the severity of productive and negative symptoms, subjective assessment of the severity of the condition and treatment motivation of patients) validation are presented.Conclusions. The applicability of the concept of subjective morbidity in patients with mental disorders is shown. The role of the subjective attitude to the disease in case of its perception as a destructive life event is associated in patients with a violation of the structure of motivation for treatment. On the contrary, the ability of patients to form a subjective meaning of the disease can be considered as a guarantee of more intense therapeutic motivation.

MinReact: a systematic approach for identifying minimal metabolic networks

Motivation Genome-scale metabolic models are widely constructed and studied for understanding various design principles underlying metabolism, predominantly redundancy. Metabolic networks are highly redundant and it is possible to minimize the metabolic networks into smaller networks that retain the functionality of the original network. Results Here, we establish a new method, MinReact that systematically removes reactions from a given network to identify minimal reactome(s). We show that our method identifies smaller minimal reactomes than existing methods and also scales well to larger metabolic networks. Notably, our method exploits known aspects of network structure and redundancy to identify multiple minimal metabolic networks. We illustrate the utility of MinReact by identifying multiple minimal networks for 77 organisms from the BiGG database. We show that these multiple minimal reactomes arise due to the presence of compensatory reactions/pathways. We further employed MinReact for a case study to identify the minimal reactomes of different organisms in both glucose and xylose minimal environments. Identification of minimal reactomes of these different organisms elucidate that they exhibit varying levels of redundancy. A comparison of the minimal reactomes on glucose and xylose illustrates that the differences in the reactions required to sustain growth on either medium. Overall, our algorithm provides a rapid and reliable way to identify minimal subsets of reactions that are essential for survival, in a systematic manner. Availability and implementation Algorithm is available from https://github.com/RamanLab/MinReact. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.