Focus: Addiction: Relapse Prevention and the Five Rules of Recovery

There are four main ideas in relapse prevention. First, relapse is a gradual process with distinct stages. The goal of treatment is to help individuals recognize the early stages, in which the chances of success are greatest. Second, recovery is a process of personal growth with developmental milestones. Each stage of recovery has its own risks of relapse. Third, the main tools of relapse prevention are cognitive therapy and mind-body relaxation, which are used to develop healthy coping skills. Fourth, most relapses can be explained in terms of a few basic rules. Educating clients in these rules can help them focus on what is important: 1) change your life (recovery involves creating a new life where it is easier to not use); 2) be completely honest; 3) ask for help; 4) practice self-care; and 5) don’t bend the rules.     

Species co‐occurrence patterns and dietary resource competition in primates

Diamond (Assembly of species communities. In: Cody ML, Diamond JM, editors. Ecology and evolution of communities. Cambridge: Belknap. p 342–444 ( 1975 )) argued that interspecific competition between species occupying similar niches results in a nonrandom pattern of species distributions. In particular, some species pairs may never be found in the same community due to competitive exclusion. Rigorous analytical methods have been developed to investigate the possible role that interspecific competition has on the evolution of communities. Many studies that have implemented these methods have shown support for Diamond's assembly rules, yet there are numerous exceptions. We build on this previous research by examining the co‐occurrence patterns of primate species in 109 communities from across the world. We used EcoSim to calculate a checkerboard (C) score for each region. The C score provides a measure of the proportion of species pairs that do not co‐occur in a set of communities. High C scores indicate that species are nonrandomly distributed throughout a region, and interspecific competition may be driving patterns of competitive exclusion. We conducted two sets of analyses. One included all primate species per region, and the second analysis assigned each species to one of four dietary guilds: frugivores, folivores, insectivores, and frugivore‐insectivores. Using all species per region, we found significantly high C scores in 9 of 10 regions examined. For frugivores, we found significantly high‐C scores in more than 50% of regions. In contrast, only 23% of regions exhibited significantly high‐C scores for folivores. Our results suggest that communities are nonrandomly structured and may be the result of greater levels of interspecific competition between frugivores compared to folivores. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Longitudinal changes of dominance rank among the females of the Koshima group of Japanese monkeys

The changes of dominance rank among female Japanese monkeys of the Koshima group over a period of 29 years from 1957 were studied. The dominance rank order was relatively stable in the early population growing phase, while large scale-changes of dominance rank order occurred successively in the phase of population decrease brought about by the severe control of artificial feeding after 1972. Nevertheless, the rank order of several females of the highest status was stable. Furthermore, the reproductive success of these highest status females was high (Mori, 1979a;Watanabe et al., in prep.). Divergence of the dominance rank order fromKawamura's rules (Kawamura, 1958) was observed in the following respects: (1) Some females significantly elevated their rank depending on the leader males. (2) If mothers died when their daughters were still juveniles or nulliparous, the dominance rank of some of these offspring females was significantly lower than the mother's one. However 55% of daughters which lost their mothers at a young age inherited the mother's rank. (3) Dominance among sisters whose mother had died when at least one of the daughters was under 6 years old followed the rule of youngest ascendancy in 60% (Kawamura, 1958), and in 80% when both of the daughters were nulliparous at the mother's death. The mean rate of aggressive interactions for each female with subordinates to her was calculated by dividing the total aggressive interactions between the female in question and her subordinates by the number of subordinate females to the female in question. A female which showed a high rate of aggressive interactions with her subordinates was categorized as an “Attacker”, and a female showing a lower rate was categorized as a “Non-attacker”. Similarly, categories of “Attacked”, and “Non-attacked” were distinguished by using the rate of aggressive interactions with dominant females. Several females which were once categorized in one category in a year were repeatedly categorized in the same category over different years. The “Attacked” tended to be females of higher rank, and “Non-attackers” tended to be females of lower rank. “The second-higher-status females”, were “Attacked”, and their rank was unstable. In particular, females of lower rank within the lineage of the highest rank suffered this kind of severe status. Most of the daughters of these females showed a sharp drop of rank, and died when they were still at a young age, i.e. “the second-higher-status females” displayed low fitness. “Non-attackers” were significantly “Non-attacked”; i.e. they were females which showed a non-social attitude. Females which underwent a drop of rank tended to be “Non-attackers”. The most important factor which determined the females' rank was the memory of their dominance relations under the influence of their mother [dependent rank (Kawai, 1958)] in their early life during development. This finding corresponds well with the results in baboons obtained byWalter (1980); the target females of aggressive interactions by adolescent females were determined by the rank of the mothers when these adolescent females were born.     

A general principle for the allocation of limited resources

Summary A marginal fitness theorem is derived for the allocation of a limited resource among alternative activities that have effects on the fitness of an individual. The marginal advantage theorem states that at the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), the marginal gains from increasing each of the allocations (expressed as partial derivatives of the fitness advantage of a rare mutant) are equal. The theorem is true for all proportional allocations (a + b + c + ...=j), regardless of the number of allocations, the nature of the response curves describing the direct effects of the allocations [f(a), etc.], or the way the effects of different allocations combine into fitness. The theorem is extended to size-number compromises and packaging strategies. The marginal advantage theorem is used to derive general theorems about the marginal effects of allocations [f (a), etc.] at the ESS and matching rules concerned with the total fitness to cost ratios of allocations at the ESS. The marginal advantage theorem is applicable to diverse allocation strategies, and provides a method for obtaining ESS allocations for any number of allocations and their components.     

Effects of prolonged exercise at a similar percentage of maximal oxygen consumption in trained and untrained subjects

Six trained male cyclists and six untrained but physically active men participated in this study to test the hypothesis that the use of percentage maximal oxygen consumption (%VO2max) as a normalising independent variable is valid despite significant differences in the absolute VO2max of trained and untrained subjects. The subjects underwent an exercise test to exhaustion on a cycle ergometer to determine VO2max and lactate threshold. The subjects were grouped as trained (T) if their VO2max exceeded 60 ml.kg-1.min-1, and untrained (UT) if their VO2max was less than 50 ml.kg-1.min-1. The subjects were required to exercise on the ergometer for up to 40 min at power outputs that corresponded to approximately 50% and 70% VO2max. The allocation of each exercise session (50% or 70% VO2max) was random and each session was separated by at least 5 days. During these tests venous blood was taken 10 min before exercise (- 10 min), just prior to the commencement of exercise (0 min), after 20 min of exercise (20 min), at the end of exercise and 10 min postexercise (+ 10 min) and analysed for concentrations of cortisol, [Na+], [K+], [Cl-], glucose, free fatty acid, lactate [la-], [NH3], haemoglobin [Hb] and for packed cell volume. The oxygen consumption (VO2) and related variables were measured at two time intervals (14-15 and 34-35 min) during the prolonged exercise tests. Rectal temperature was measured throughout both exercise sessions. There was a significant interaction effect between the level of training and exercise time at 50% VO2max for heart rate (fc) and venous [la-].(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Conserved organization of an avian histone gene cluster with inverted duplications of H3 and H4 genes

Summary The organization of histone gene clusters of the duckCairina moschata was studied in the DNA inserts of two recombinant phage that overlap and feature identical histone gene arrangements but differ in sequence details and in the extent of repetition of an AT-rich motif in one of the nontranscribed spacer regions. These few but substantial differences between otherwise nearly identical histone gene groups suggest that we have independently isolated alleles of the same site of the duck genome or that this gene arrangement occurs (with slight variations) more than once per haploid genome. Within the histone gene cluster described, H3 and H4 genes are duplicated (with inverted orientation), whereas one H1 gene is flanked by single H2A and H2B genes. The arrangement of duck histone genes described here is identical to a subsection of the chicken genome but differs from any other published histone gene cluster.