There are 17 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites:
Adult-Young Ratio, a Major Factor Regulating Social Behaviour of Young: A Horse Study:
Adults play an important role in regulating the social behaviour of young individuals. However, a few pioneer studies suggest that, more than the mere presence of adults, their proportions in social groups affect the social development of young. Here, we hypothesized that aggression rates and social cohesion were correlated to adult-young ratios. Our biological model was naturally-formed groups of Przewalski horses, Equus f. przewalskii, varying in composition. We investigated the social interactions and spatial relationships of 12 one- and two-year-old Przewalski horses belonging to five families with adult-young ratios (AYR) ranging from 0.67 to 1.33. We found striking variations of aggression rates and spatial relationships related to the adult-young ratio: the lower this ratio, the more the young were aggressive, the more young and adults segregated and the tighter the young bonded to other young. This is the first study demonstrating a correlation between adult-young ratios and aggression rates and social cohesion of young individuals in a naturalistic setting. The increase of aggression and the emergence of social segregation in groups with lower proportions of adults could reflect a related decrease of the influence of adults as regulators of the behaviour of young. This social regulation has both theoretical and practical implications for understanding the modalities of the influence of adults during ontogeny and for recommending optimal settings, as for instance, for schooling or animal group management.
I Feel what You Feel if You Are Similar to Me:
Social interactions are influenced by the perception of others as similar or dissimilar to the self. Such judgements could depend on physical and semantic characteristics, such as membership in an ethnic or political group. In the present study we tested whether social representations of the self and of others could affect the perception of touch. To this aim, we assessed tactile perception on the face when subjects observed a face being touched by fingers. In different conditions we manipulated the identity of the shown face. In a first experiment, Caucasian and Maghrebian participants viewed a face belonging either to their own or to a different ethnic group; in a second experiment, Liberal and Conservative politically active participants viewed faces of politicians belonging to their own or to the opposite political party. The results showed that viewing a touched face most strongly enhanced the perception of touch on the observer's face when the observed face belonged to his/her own ethnic or political group.
Despite increasing recognition of the importance of human rights in the protection and promotion of health, formal human rights education has been lacking in schools of medicine and public health. Our objectives were: 1) to determine the nature and extent of health and human rights (HHR) education among schools of medicine (SOMs) and public health (SPHs); 2) to identify perceived barriers to implementing HHR curricula; 3) to learn about deans' interests and attitudes toward HHR education, and; 4) to identify factors associated with offering HHR education. We conducted a cross-sectional survey among deans of all accredited allopathic SOMs and SPHs in the United States and Puerto Rico. Seventy-one percent of U.S. SOMs and SPHs responded. Thirty-seven percent of respondents indicated that their schools offered some form of HHR education. Main barriers to offering HHR education included competition for time, lack of qualified instructors and lack of funding. Among schools not offering HHR education, 35% of deans were interested in offering HHR education. Seventy-six percent of all deans believed that it was very important or important to offer HHR education. Multiple regression analysis revealed that deans' attitudes were the most important factor associated with offering any HHR education. Findings indicate that though a majority of deans of SOMs and SPHs believe that knowledge about human rights is important in health practice and support the inclusion of HHR studies in their schools, HHR education is lacking at most of their institutions. These results and the growing recognition of the critical interdependence between health and human rights indicate a need for SOMs and SPHs to work towards formal inclusion of HHR studies in their curricula, and that HHR competency requirements be considered to overcome barriers to its inclusion.
Media Reporting of Health Interventions: Signs of Improvement, but Major Problems Persist:
Studies have persistently shown deficiencies in medical reporting by the mainstream media. We have been monitoring the accuracy and comprehensiveness of medical news reporting in Australia since mid 2004. This analysis of more than 1200 stories in the Australian media compares different types of media outlets and examines reporting trends over time. Between March 2004 and June 2008 1230 news stories were rated on a national medical news monitoring web site, Media Doctor Australia. These covered a variety of health interventions ranging from drugs, diagnostic tests and surgery to dietary and complementary therapies. Each story was independently assessed by two reviewers using ten criteria. Scores were expressed as percentages of total assessable items deemed satisfactory according to a coding guide. Analysis of variance was used to compare mean scores and Fishers exact test to compare proportions. Trends over time were analysed using un-weighted linear regression analysis. Broadsheet newspapers had the highest average satisfactory scores: 58% (95% CI 56-60%), compared with tabloid newspapers and online news outlets, 48% (95% CI 44-52) and 48% (95% CI 46-50) respectively. The lowest scores were assigned to stories broadcast by human interest/current affairs television programmes (average score 33% (95% CI 28-38)). While there was a non- significant increase in average scores for all outlets, a significant improvement was seen in the online news media: a rise of 5.1% (95%CI 1.32, 8.97; P 0.009). Statistically significant improvements were seen in coverage of the potential harms of interventions, the availability of treatment or diagnostic options, and accurate quantification of benefits. Although the overall quality of medical reporting in the general media remains poor, this study showed modest improvements in some areas. However, the most striking finding was the continuing very poor coverage of health news by commercial current affairs television programs.
Professional soccer players have a lengthy playing season, throughout which high levels of physical stress are maintained. The following recuperation period, before starting the next pre-season training phase, is generally considered short but sufficient to allow a decrease in these stress levels and therefore a reduction in the propensity for injury or musculoskeletal tissue damage. We hypothesised that these physical extremes influence the body composition, blood flow, and endothelial/immune function, but that the recuperation may be insufficient to allow a reduction of tissue stress damage. Ten professional football players were examined at the end of the playing season, at the end of the season intermission, and after the next pre-season endurance training. Peripheral blood flow and body composition were assessed using venous occlusion plethysmography and DEXA scanning respectively. In addition, selected inflammatory and immune parameters were analysed from blood samples. Following the recuperation period a significant decrease of lean body mass from 74.4±4.2 kg to 72.2±3.9 kg was observed, but an increase of fat mass from 10.3±5.6 kg to 11.1±5.4 kg, almost completely reversed the changes seen in the pre-season training phase. Remarkably, both resting and post-ischemic blood flow (7.3±3.4 and 26.0±6.3 ml/100 ml/min) respectively, were strongly reduced during the playing and training stress phases, but both parameters increased to normal levels (9.0±2.7 and 33.9±7.6 ml/100 ml/min) during the season intermission. Recovery was also characterized by rising levels of serum creatinine, granulocytes count, total IL-8, serum nitrate, ferritin, and bilirubin. These data suggest a compensated hypo-perfusion of muscle during the playing season, followed by an intramuscular ischemia/reperfusion syndrome during the recovery phase that is associated with muscle protein turnover and inflammatory endothelial reaction, as demonstrated by iNOS and HO-1 activation, as well as IL-8 release. The data provided from this study suggest that the immune system is not able to function fully during periods of high physical stress. The implications of this study are that recuperation should be carefully monitored in athletes who undergo intensive training over extended periods, but that these parameters may also prove useful for determining an individual's risk of tissue stress and possibly their susceptibility to progressive tissue damage or injury.
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