Can Messages Make a Difference? The Association Between E‐Mail Messages and Health Outcomes in Diabetes Patients

This investigation examined the impact of social support messages on patient health outcomes. Forty‐one American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian patients received a total of 618 e‐mail messages from their healthcare provider (HCP). The e‐mail messages were divided into 3,565 message units and coded for instances of emotional social support. Patient glycosulated hemoglobin scores (HbA1c) showed significantly improved glycemic control and emotional social support messages were associated with significant decreases in HbA1c values. Patient involvement with the system, measured by system login frequency and the frequency of uploaded blood glucose scores to the HCP, did not predict change in HbA1c.     

A rat's first bite: the nongenetic, cross-generational transfer of information.

Weanling rats, when first exposed to solid food, showed relatively elevated intake if offered the same diet as eaten by their foster dams. Maternal caretakers pass some specific food-related information to their offspring.     

Peripheral control of drinking: gastrointestinal filling as a negative feedback signal, a theoretical and experimental analysis.

The studies described here investigated the hypothesis that the osmotic postingestional satiety signal proposed by McCleary operates through a mechanism related to gut filling rather than by osmotically induced shifts of fluid from osmoreceptors in the brain. A control theory model is presented, which was designed to make quantitatively explicit the hypothesis under question. The results showed that when mannitol, which is not absorbed from the intestine, is added to a highly palatable saccharin-glucose mixture, the amount of fluid consumed decreased in inverse proportion to the mannitol concentration. Mannitol was also shown to block fluid absorption from the intestine at a low concentration (approximately .070 M) and at higher concentrations to lead to a net flux of fluid into the intestinal lumen. It was also shown that mannitol in concentrations that reduced the intake of the palatable solution did not induce thirst when the animals were in water balance. It did induce thirst, however, when the animals were tested in a state of negative water balance. The results of these studies, considered as a whole, support the view that McCleary's osmotic postingestional satiety signal acts as an intestinal distention signal rather than by inducing thirst. The model is found to be reasonably accurate as a first approximation, and suggestions are made for improvements.     

Transforming curves into curves with the same shape

Curves are considered to have the same shape when they are related by a similarity transformation of a certain kind. This paper extends earlier work on parallel curves to curves with the same shape. Some examples are given more or less explicitly. A generalization is used to show that the theory is ordinal and to show how the theory may be applied to measure sensation. The problem of actually transforming curves into curves with the same shape is reduced to the problem of rendering another set of curves parallel. Connections with groups and rings are developed to place the work in a familiar context. These connections and the earlier work on parallel curves are used to obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of transformations, to study the uniqueness of transformations and to show how transformations can be calculated.     

Inheriting the Shadow: Unlived Lives,Unshed Tears

The determination and courage of those whose lives were destroyed by terror, whether the Holocaust or extermination, to move forward in a new life modeled for us, the children, an unspoken mandate to live in the present and to bury the shadows of the past. It has left many of us to face the challenge of finding our center, the anchoring of our being in our lives: personally, professionally, collectively, and culturally. The next generation is not able to mourn lives lost, and being in the present without a past, without links to ethnic cultures or heritage, isolates individuals and affects the collective—indeed, there is no collective except in the communal silences. This article explores the impact of dismembered personal and collective bonds and the need to re-member, resulting in relationships that can move into the future, into the center.     

Spatial Proportional Reasoning Is Associated With Formal Knowledge About Fractions

Proportional reasoning involves thinking about parts and wholes (i.e., about fractional quantities). Yet, research on proportional reasoning and fraction learning has proceeded separately. This study assessed proportional reasoning and formal fraction knowledge in 8- to 10-year-olds. Participants (N = 52) saw combinations of cherry juice and water in displays that highlighted either part–whole or part–part relations. Their task was to indicate on a continuous rating scale how much each mixture would taste of cherries. Ratings suggested the use of a proportional integration rule for both kinds of displays, although more robustly and accurately for part–whole displays. The findings indicate that children may be more likely to scale proportional components when being presented with part–whole as compared with part–part displays. Crucially, ratings for part–whole problems correlated with fraction knowledge, even after controlling for age, suggesting that a sense of spatial proportions is associated with an understanding of fractional quantities.     

Simple discrimination in stingless bees (Melipona quadrifasciata): Probing for select‐ and reject‐stimulus control

Simple and conditional discrimination training may produce various types of controlling relations. Responses may be controlled primarily by the positive stimulus (select–control relation) or by the negative stimulus (reject–control relation; the subject excludes the negative stimulus and chooses the positive). Bees learn to respond in simple and conditional discriminations. However, no study has searched for reject–control responding in Melipona bees. We trained Melipona quadrifasciata on a simple discrimination task (S+ vs. S‐; e.g., blue vs. yellow) and then probed for stimulus control with two types of probe trials, S+ versus a new stimulus (Select–control probes) and S‐ versus a new stimulus (Reject–control probes). For Group Different, a new‐stimulus color (e.g., white) was used in one type of probe and another color (e.g., black) was used in the other type. For Group Same, a single new‐stimulus color was used in both types of probes. On Select probes, the bees always preferred S+ to the new stimulus. On Reject probes, results were mixed. Depending on the colors used in training and probing, bees responded to both stimuli, and even preferred the S‐. The data suggest no control by the negative function of the S‐ and support the select‐stimulus control hypothesis of responding.     

Preschool children's control of action outcomes

Naturalistic goal‐directed behaviours require the engagement and maintenance of appropriate levels of cognitive control over relatively extended intervals of time. In two experiments, we examined preschool children's abilities to maintain top‐down control throughout the course of a sequential task. Both 3‐ and 5‐year‐olds demonstrated good abilities to access goals at the lowest level of the representational hierarchy. However, only 5‐year‐olds consistently aligned their response choices with goals at superordinate levels. These findings suggest that the ability to maintain top‐down control and adjust behavioural responses according to goals at multiple levels of abstraction undergoes a marked improvement throughout the preschool period. Results are discussed in relation to current accounts of cognitive control and the monitoring of conflict in sequential action.