Metastatic calcification of the cardiac conduction system with heart block: an under-reported entity in chronic renal failure patients

Systemic metastatic calcification is a common complication of chronic renal failure. Cardiac involvement is particularly ominous, especially when the cardiac conduction system is affected. Conduction defects, arrhythmias, and sudden death have all been reported with conduction system calcification; however, these are relatively under-reported or unrecognized causes of cardiac morbidity and mortality. We describe a 40-year-old man with Von Hippel-Lindau disease who had been maintained on hemodialysis for two years following bilateral nephrectomies for renal cell carcinoma. The patient presented with symptomatic complete heart block that had progressed from Mobitz type I atrioventricular block. Two months later, while being internally paced, the patient died unexpectedly after a complicated hospital admission. Postmortem revealed extensive vascular, myocardial, and conduction system calcification. Conduction system calcification may cause sudden death in chronic renal failure patients during hospital admission, or unexpectedly while the patient is in the community. Knowledge of this condition is necessary to detect it, as the conduction system is not routinely examined. A routine abbreviated conduction system examination is warranted for patients with systemic metastatic calcification, especially if they have sudden death or a known history of heart block.     

Motivational maturity and helping behavior

This study was undertaken to examine the independent influences of conative development (the Maslow needs hierarchy) upon behavioral aspects of prosocial orientations. It provides a behavioral demonstration of conative effects in a helping paradigm, among college-age men. A comparison of the conative data across the ages of 15–22 provided a cross-sectional view of conative development itself. Conative maturity was found to be predictive of greater helping among college-age men. Situational demands were demonstrated which tended to mask, but not override, these predispositional influences on helping. The cross-sectional data on conative development point to probable movement to early esteem concerns among high school men who have reached the conative level of love and belonging. On the other hand, the stability across the years of 15–22 of proportion of safety concerns suggests fixation of such concerns in those exhibiting them in high school. Results are discussed in terms of conative growth for development of prosocial orientations.Ordering of author's names was determined by random procedure and is not indicative of disproportionate contribution to the overall research.Received his Ph. D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, specializing in developmental psychology. Current interests are child, clinical, and the development of prosocial behavior.Received his Ph.D. specializing in human development from the University of Chicago, Faculty of Educational Psychology. Current interests are the investigation of cognitive developmental approach to moral education, statistics, and prosocial behavior.     

The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire: a self-report measure for predicting recidivism versus clinician-administered measures: a 5-year follow-up study

In this study, the effectiveness of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ), a self-report measure for predicting release outcome, is examined as compared to clinician-administered and widely used risk prediction measures, over a 5-year period. The SAQ was administered along with four similar, but clinician-administered, measures to 91 federally sentenced Canadian male offenders prior to their release to the community. Follow-up data were collected for a 60-month period. Outcome criteria measures were violent and general recidivism. Results indicated that the SAQ is at least as effective as the four other measures in predicting postrelease outcome. The advantages of using the SAQ as a self-report measure as opposed to clinician-administered measures are discussed.     

When Voters and Parties Agree: Valence Issues and Party Competition

There has been much talk of valence, consensus or competence politics but little theoretical explanation or empirical investigation of how this has arisen. In this article I argue that British political competition has become competence-based because the major parties and the electorate have converged on the dominant left–right dimension of British voting behaviour. As a result, commonly cited core vote explanations for party polarisation have only limited application. The electorate has converged on left–right issues, narrowing the policy space and the available positional strategies of political parties. A different pattern is found for the issue of Europe, and this is interpreted in light of possible causal mechanisms. The article offers a formal model for a rise in valence politics as parties and voters converge, and the implications are discussed for theories of party competition. I argue in favour of competence and salience-based theories of party strategy in place of a reliance on traditional spatial models.     

Body Morph: Feasibility Testing of an Interactive CD-ROM to Teach Young Adolescents about Puberty

The aim of this pilot study was to examine the feasibility of an interactive computer program among 34 sixth and seventh grade children and to assess the potential for knowledge acquisition about puberty. Based on a developmental self-esteem approach to teach children about their bodies, the Body Morph program was designed to maximize the educational experience by: (1) tailoring puberty information to boys or girls, and (2) creating a confidential experience. Preliminary results indicated that students significantly improved their knowledge about puberty after using the program. Satisfaction among boys and girls for this type of educational approach suggests that it is a compelling format from which to learn about puberty.This research project was funded with the support of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) 1R43DK061269-01A2 to develop an educational computer program to improve body image in middle schoolers.     

An ideology of rights: Support for civil liberties among political activists

This paper examines support for civil liberties among a large and diverse set of political activists during the Reagan era: financial donors to party and political action committees (PACs). While these activists are more tolerant than the mass public, support for civil liberties is not evenly distributed among them. Liberals and Democrats are far more tolerant than their conservative and Republican counterparts. Tolerance is related to support for substantive rights and rooted in cosmopolitan demography, and it is not linked to greater political or social participation. Thus, among political activists, tolerance is associated with broader political alignments and not elite statusper se.     

Menarcheal status and parent-child relations in families of seventh-grade girls

The associations between menarcheal status and several child-rearing and outcome variables were examined for mother-daughter and father-daughter dyads. All variables were assessed with questionnaires as an extension of earlier observational studies. Analyses were conducted via multiple regression analyses wherein menarcheal status was treated as a continuous variable and was entered into the regression equation as a set of power polynomial terms. The results indicated that most of the significant relations occurred for the mother-daughter dyad, and most of these relations were curvilinear. When menarche occurs at or around the modal time, changes in parent-child relations may be best thought of as temporary perturbations, but when menarche occurs early the effects may persist.The research reported here was funded by Father Flanagan's Boys Home, Inc., and by a grant to the senior author from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Family Relations in Early Adolescence.Received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University.Received his M.S. from Virginia Commonwealth University.Received her M.S. in counseling psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University.Received his M.S. from the University of Nebraska.She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Cornell University.     

Postmortem interval estimation from body temperature data only

One of the most consistently used methods of postmortem interval estimation (PMIE) is by means of body temperature measurements. Several variations of this method exist, from simple 'rules of the thumb' to quite complex equations requiring a knowledge of body mass and height. All of these methods employ a certain degree of approximation and perhaps the use of standard values and tables, and all of them are susceptible to some degree of error. The present study, at the Department of Forensic Medicine, Leeds, was initiated by the Home Office to investigate the extent of the errors which might be encountered in the use of these methods, and to devise a more simple and accurate method. The method devised is called the time-dependent-z equation, for purely theoretical reasons. It will be referred to as the TDZE method. The TDZE method requires the measurement of two rectal temperatures, about 1 h apart, a little mental arithmetic and reference to a single standard curve. The method is valid for all bodies, obese or emaciated, clothed or naked, in all environmental conditions, without modification. Results of the use of the method on data collected from 67 coroner's cases compare favourably with the results obtained by the use of other methods on the same data.     

Delayed ethanol analysis of breath specimens: long-term field experience with commercial silica gel tubes and breathalyzer collection

Delayed ethanol analysis was performed on breath specimens collected with commercial silica gel tubes using multiple Breathalyzer instruments. Eleven hundred and nine results were obtained from an ethanol testing program over a five-year period. Only 2.5% of the specimens had apparent collection errors. For the valid specimens, the most frequent result was 0.11 g/210 L and the mean result was 0.14 g/210 L. For 642 specimens, delayed results were compared with direct results. Direct results were greater than delayed results for 55%, less than for 27%, and equal to for 18% of the pairs. When fixed tolerance limits of +/- 0.03 were used, 81% of the direct results were confirmed. The confirmation percentage was best in the critical range of direct results, 0.05 to 0.15 g/210 L. The collection tubes showed no substantial variability in retaining ethanol during storage and releasing ethanol for analysis.     

Nationalism and patriotism as predictors of immigration attitudes in Switzerland: A municipality‐level analysis

Abstract: Using Swiss data from the 2003 International Social Survey Programme (N = 902), this multilevel study combined individual and municipality levels of analysis in the explanation of nationalism, patriotism and exclusionary immigration attitudes. On the individual level, the results show that in line with previous research nationalism (uncritical and blind attachment to the nation) increased exclusionary immigration attitudes, while patriotism (pride in national democratic institutions) was related to greater tolerance towards immigration. On the municipality level, urbanization, socioeconomic status and immigrant proportion (and their interaction effects) were found to affect nationalism, patriotism and immigration attitudes. Nationalist and patriotic forms of national attachment were stronger in German‐speaking municipalities than in the French‐speaking municipalities. Path analyses further revealed that living in a Swiss‐German municipality indirectly led to more negative immigration attitudes through an increase in nationalism. The research is discussed in light of social psychological and political science literature on political attitudes.