Sensitivity In Women Research Articles

A fasting glucose to insulin ratio is a useful measure of insulin sensitivity in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are profoundly insulin resistant, and the resultant hyperinsulinemia exacerbates the reproductive abnormalities of the syndrome. Agents that ameliorate insulin resistance and reduce circulating insulin levels could provide a new therapeutic modality for PCOS. Identifying the subset of PCOS women who are most insulin resistant may therefore be useful for selecting women who will respond to this therapy. We examined the correlation of basal and oral glucose-stimulated glucose and insulin levels and fasting and stimulated glucose/insulin (G:I) ratios with parameters of insulin sensitivity obtained by frequently sampled i.v. glucose tolerance test (FSIGT) to assess whether there is a simple screening test for insulin resistance in PCOS. Forty PCOS women (aged 18-40 yr; body mass index, >26 kg/m2) and 15 control women matched for age, weight, and ethnicity underwent both a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) and a FSIGT. The insulin sensitivity index (S(I)) was calculated by application of the minimal model of glucose kinetics to the dynamics of plasma glucose and insulin levels during the FSIGT. The best correlation in PCOS between S(I) and a fasting level was found with fasting G:I ratios (r = 0.73; P < 0.0001). A less substantial, but significant, correlation was found with fasting insulin levels (r = 0.50; P < 0.001), and no significant correlation was found with fasting glucose levels (r = 0.24; P = NS). The fasting G:I was more strongly correlated with S(I) than with integrated glucose and insulin responses during the OGTT. The only stronger correlation was with the OGTT 2 h G:I ratio (r = 0.74; P < 0.001). Stepwise regression analysis with S(I) as the dependent variable and fasting glucose and insulin levels, area under the curve for glucose and insulin, and a fasting G:I ratio showed that only the fasting G:I ratio was significantly predictive of S(I) in the model (F to remove value = 38.1; P < 0.001). When viewed as a screening test for insulin resistance in PCOS, setting a value of the fasting G:I ratio of less than 4.5 as abnormal (using an S(I) value below the 10th percentile of our control population as evidence for insulin resistance), the sensitivity of a fasting G:I ratio was 95%, the specificity was 84%, the positive predictive value was 87%, and the negative predictive value was 94%. Receiver operator curve analysis showed that this fasting G:I ratio was the single best screening measure for detecting insulin resistance. We conclude that a fasting G:I ratio may be useful as a screening test for insulin resistance in obese non-Hispanic white PCOS women. This may be a clinically useful parameter for selecting PCOS women most likely to respond to therapeutic interventions that improve insulin sensitivity.

Commuting and Gender in a Lifestyle Perspective

This article examines gender differences in the context of the relationship between residential relocation and commuting distance. Traditional theories stress women's higher sensitivity to distance, and expect women to quit their jobs more often in the event of a residential move. This appears to be true. However, the gender difference in quitting is constant by distance. Also, women who move over very short distances quit their jobs more often than men. Furthermore, women who remained working at the same job saw their commuting distance increase even more substantially than that of men. Therefore, there is no evidence for the sensitivity hypothesis. Instead, significant effects of lifestyle are found. In some ways, gender differences are almost absent for the most 'modern' lifestyle group.

Women's perceptions and labeling of sexual harassment in academia before and after the Hill-Thomas hearings

Two years before the Hill—Thomas sexual harassment hearings, Jaschik and Fretz (1991) had sixty female undergraduates view videotapes of a male teaching assistant sexually harassing a female undergraduate as he evaluated her term paper. Seventy percent of subjects were Caucasian, 8% were African-American, 20% were Asian-American, and 2% were identified as of another race. Following the videos, subjects completed measures of perceptions of the teaching assistant. To explore the effects of the hearings on women's perceptions of sexual harassment, this study replicated the earlier one. In this study, 81% of subjects were Caucasian, 10% were African-American, 6% were Asian-American, and 2% were identified as of another race. Using Fisher's Exact Probability Test, results indicated that while women in 1992 were as likely as women in 1989 to label behaviors as harassment when directly asked about it (p= .16), women in 1992 were significantly more likely to spontaneously label the behaviors as harassment (p= .02), suggesting that publicity from the hearings may have increased women's sensitivity to the issue of sexual harassment, although other possible explanations for the changes are also explored.

Antenatal care in general practice. 1: A questionnaire as a clinical tool for collection of information on psychosocial conditions.

In pregnancy the woman's emotional sensitivity and also her receptiveness of emotional support increase. Antenatal care that is exclusively focused on somatic conditions may lead to ignorance of pregnant women's psychosocial problems, thus missing a chance of intervention. A psychosocial questionnaire, used as a clinical tool in history taking during the first two antenatal consultations, is described and evaluated. The purpose of the questionnaire was to elucidate the pregnant woman's psychosocial assets as well as problems. The information collected by means of this questionnaire is compared with the information on psychosocial conditions collected by means of the traditional antenatal care form. Screening for psychosocial conditions in pregnant women may reveal information about important life aspects that are not detected in the antenatal care form.

Gender Differences in Apparent Motion Perception

Distance disparity is a strong cue to element correspondence in apparent motion. Using a 2-AFC paradigm we have previously shown that shape similarity also plays a role. We now demonstrate a small gender difference in these effects: women are more sensitive to distance disparity, whereas men are more sensitive to differences in shape. Furthermore, in the competing presence of a shape cue, women's sensitivity to distance decreases while men's sensitivity is unaffected. These observations may be related to putative gender differences in the 'form' and 'motion-spatial relations' cortical pathways.

Attention and Disordered Eating Behavior: II. Disattention to Turbulent Inner Sensations as a Risk Factor in the Development of Anorexia Nervosa

The Slade model for development of anorexia nervosa proposes that the female may seek success and control in her life by pursuing a thin body through dieting when faced with serious personal problems. Extending upon this model, the present program of research has sought to identify those characteristics of women generally at-risk for anorexia nervosa that would make dieting behavior especially successful, permitting the progression from food restraint into food aversion. The present studies considered whether heightened and stress-related inner stimulation could interfere with the at-risk woman's sensitivity to hunger sensations, thereby decreasing her motivation to eat. A series of analyses conducted within two studies indicated: (1) a relationship between elevated daily stress, concern over being over-whelmed by inner feelings, and a loss of discrimination regarding sources of inner feelings, (2) a tendency to narrow attentional focus when overloaded with excessive internal stimulation, and (3) diminished sensitivity to hunger sensations for women generally at-risk for anorexia nervosa given a narrowed attentional focus.

A Gas chromatographic (GLPC) model for the sense of smell. Variation of olfactory sensitivity with conditions of stimulation

Computer simulation of an olfactory detector has been developed using a chemical kinetic scheme originally proposed by McNab and Koshland for bacterial chemotaxis. This model describes response as a function of two opposed reactions, both of which are activated by odorant. One reaction turns on response, while its opponent shuts it off. Net response to various stimulus profiles is compared to psychophysical experiments, with particular attention paid to simulating magnitude estimation and odor adaptation results. Effects of the access route to this detector are evaluated. Transport of odorant molecules is treated as having two sequential steps: step (i), airborne odorant is carried parallel to a retentive layer (mucus) into the detector region; step (ii), molecules diffuse through the retentive layer to the detector. Step (i) is represented as analogous to GLPC on an open tubular column. Each step has a characteristic time constant, which is proportional to (distance) 2/diffusion coefficient. Response to highly volatile odorants tends to be limited by step (ii), while odorants of low volatility approach the step (i) limit. Sensitivity at both limits is attenuated by increasing the thickness of the retentive layer, but sensitivity at the step (i) limit is also affected by changes in air passageway and airflow characteristics. This picture can be used to explain variations in women's sensitivity to odorants of low volatility with the menstrual cycle, while their detection of volatile odorants fluctuates to a much lesser extent.

Oneida Community: An Autobiography, 1851-1876 (review)

book reviews277 He presents all this and more in an informative, carefully researched, and clearly written narrative. Merton L. Duxon Ohio State University Oneida Community: An Autobiography, 1851-1876. Edited, with an Introduction and Prefaces, by Constance Noyes Robertson. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1970. Pp. xviii, 364. $11.50.) The publication of this volume is opportune, coming as it does at a time when experiments in communal living are in a state of resurgence and there is lively interest in such subjects as women's liberation, day-care centers, unisex, and sensitivity training. The experience of the Oneida Community, which tiirived in central New York during the third quarter of the nineteenth century under the leadership of John Humphrey Noyes, is relevant to these and other current social phenomena, indicating that many ostensibly avant-garde ideas are in fact deeply rooted in the American past. Constance Noyes Robertson, a lineal descendant of the remarkable reformer who founded the Oneida venture, has assembled a variety of selections from primary sources connected with its development and arranged them under such headings as "How They Lived and Worked," "What They Thought," "How They Played," and "Complex Marriage," with brief comments preceding each section. The book makes no new contribution to existing knowledge, for most of the unprinted materials pertaining to the early history of the experiment were destroyed after the death of George Wallingford Noyes in 1941 and die journals and other publications drawn upon here are reasonably well known to specialists in the evolution of American utopianism . Nevertheless, it is good to have this judiciously chosen and well organized compilation, particularly because little has been written on the subject since the appearance in 1935 of Robert Allerton Parker's A Yankee Saint: John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community. The doctrines underlying the Oneida project and the results to which they led can be readily followed under the format which Mrs. Robertson has chosen. Taking quite literally the perfectionist ideas that were widespread in American religion at the time of Charles Grandison Finney , Noyes held that it was possible to attain sinlessness in this world and claimed on February 24, 1834 (the anniversary of which was celebrated in the Oneida Community as the "High Tide of the Spirit") that he had actually reached such a state. Furthermore, he believed that the sanctified Christian had passed through a form of deatìi which enabled him to take part without guilt in certain relationships forbidden to those who had not progressed spiritually to this point. Combining these tenets with a concept of "Bible Communism," involving the unselfish sharing of earthly possessions and rewards, he developed a social and economic system whose adherents practiced, among other things, plural marriage. Sexual relations under this system were of two types: the 278civil war history merely amative, wherein the avoidance of a male climax resulted in no progeny, and the propagative, entered into for the purpose of deliberate procreation. Both types were closely regulated by the Community, especially the latter, for Noyes advocated the systematic improvement of the human species through "Stirpiculture," a form of selective breeding. Although Oneidans insisted that they did not endorse "free love" or promiscuous sex, their ideas and practices aroused periodic attempts at interference by outsiders. Partly for this reason, and also because of dissension from within, the Community gave up its most distinctive customs by die late 1870's and became a joint-stock company which still exists today as a well-known manufacturer of silverplate. The notoriety of the sexual and eugenic experiments carried on at Oneida has tended partially to obscure other aspects of its corporate life, and it is one of the merits of Mrs. Robertson's book that she includes a great deal of information on a wide range of facets which permit the reader to place plural marriage and Stirpiculture in their proper perspective . Noyes and his followers preached female equality and believed that their system, which allowed women a veto in the matter of physical relationships, actually gave members of that sex greater dignity and freedom than monogamous marriage as normally practiced. Children were taken from the custody of their natural parents at an early age...