Assertiveness,self-actualization,and locus of control in women

An intervention program designed to facilitate psychological growth in middle-aged women was implemented and evaluated. Specifically, the study examined the program's effects on the participants in the areas of assertiveness, externality, and self-actualization at the end of the program and five months later. The results showed significant increases in assertiveness and self-actualization in the women at the posttest and five months later. There was no change in locus of control; most of the women were internally oriented at the pretest and remained the same over time.     

Beyond Postmodernism: Restoring the Primal Quest for Meaning to Political Inquiry

My paper picks up a long ignored suggestion of Sheldon Wolin - that we use Thomas Kuhn's analysis of scientific revolutions to examine the crisis of "normal" political science. This approach allows us to see the connection between the state of the discipline and the larger crisis of meaning afflicting modernity. I then use Eric Voegelin's notion of a multicivilizational "truth quest" - or search for meaning - to make a case for institutionalizing "extraordinary" or "revolutionary" political science. I attempt such a discipline by following Voegelin - reflecting on "the full amplitude of human experience." Such a meditation takes place within the "first reality of existence" - Plato's metaxy or the "in-between" - the experience of human existence between the sacred and the mundane. I bring to Voegelin's exploration of the metaxy the realm of experience which is most radically "other" for modernity - the primal political order of paleolithic and contemporary hunting gathering societies. I argue that shamanic "Urreligion" and Socratic discussion share a boundary crossing logic which provides a basis for a discipline of "extraordinary political science." Finally I suggest that such a discipline is both the quest for, and, in a sense, a realization of, the Good Life - a source of order for the individual and society.     

Arecoline via Miniosmotic Pump Improves AF64A-Impaired Radial Maze Performance in Rats: A Possible Model of Alzheimer's Disease

Male Sprague–Dawley rats, preoperatively trained in a 1-h delay non-match-to-position radial maze task, received bilateral stereotaxic injections of a selective cholinotoxin, ethylcholine aziridinium ion (AF64A: 3 nmol/3 μl/lateral ventricle). Animals treated with AF64A made significantly more total postdelay errors than vehicle controls. Sustained delivery, via miniosmotic pumps, of arecoline (0.1, 0.3, 1, 3, 10, or 30 mg/kg/day sc for 14 days) attenuated the AF64A-induced cognitive impairment in a dose-dependent manner, producing an inverted U-shaped dose–response function which was optimal at 1.0 mg/kg/day. Following these studies, choline acetyltransferase activity was significantly reduced in hippocampi extracted from the AF64A-treated rats, indicating successful cholinotoxicity. This paradigm may be useful as a possible screen for potential Alzheimer's disease therapeutic agents. This conclusion is supported by published reports of beneficial arecoline effects observed following 2-week intravenous infusions in patients with Alzheimer's disease (Soncrant, Raffaele, Asthana, Berardi, Morris, & Haxby, 1993).