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Reports on the development and application of a Salmonid EST database and complementary DNA microarray in the U.S. Importance of understanding the evolutionary phenomena of duplicate gene silencing; Presentation of the gene ontology statistics; Increase of the rates of gene discovery associated with libraries.

What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in U.S. states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism. We report a positive association between infection levels and conservative ideology in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. However, this correlation reduces from the 1980s onwards. These results suggest that the ecological influence of infectious diseases may be larger for older people who grew up (or whose parents grew up) during earlier time periods. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the political affiliation of 45,000 Facebook users, and find a positive association between self-reported political affiliation and regional pathogen stress for older (>40 years) but not younger individuals. It is concluded that the influence of environmental pathogen stress on ideology may have reduced over time., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The parasite stress hypothesis predicts that individuals living in regions with higher infectious disease rates will show lower openness, agreeableness, and extraversion, but higher conscientiousness. This article, using data from more than 250,000 U.S. Facebook users, reports tests of these predictions at the level of both U.S. states and individuals and evaluates criticisms of previous findings. State-level results for agreeableness and conscientiousness are consistent with previously reported cross-national findings, but others (a significant positive correlation with extraversion and no correlation with openness) are not. However, effects of parasite stress on conscientiousness and agreeableness are not found when analyses account for the data's hierarchical structure and include controls. We find that only openness is robustly related to parasite stress in these analyses, and we also find a significant interaction with age: Older, but not younger, inhabitants of areas of high parasite stress show lower openness. Interpretations of the findings are discussed.

Background: A prevailing blame culture in health care has been suggested as a major source of an unacceptably high number of medical errors. A just culture has emerged as an imperative for improving the quality and safety of patient care. However, health care organizations are finding it hard to move from a culture of blame to a just culture., Purpose: We argue that moving from a blame culture to a just culture requires a comprehensive understanding of organizational attributes or antecedents that cause blame or just cultures. Health care organizations need to build organizational capacity in the form of human resource (HR) management capabilities to achieve a just culture., Methodology: This is a conceptual article. Health care management literature was reviewed with twin objectives: (a) to ascertain if a consistent pattern existed in organizational attributes that lead to either blame or just cultures and (2) to find out ways to reform a blame culture., Conclusions: On the basis of the review of related literature, we conclude that (a) a blame culture is more likely to occur in health care organizations that rely predominantly on hierarchical, compliance-based functional management systems; (b) a just or learning culture is more likely to occur in health organizations that elicit greater employee involvement in decision making; and (c) human resource management capabilities play an important role in moving from a blame culture to a just culture., Practice Implications: Organizational culture or human resource management practices play a critical role in the health care delivery process. Health care organizations need to develop a culture that harnesses the ideas and ingenuity of health care professional by employing a commitment-based management philosophy rather than strangling them by overregulating their behaviors using a control-based philosophy. They cannot simply wish away the deeply entrenched culture of blame nor can they outsource their way out of it. Health care organizations need to build internal human resource management capabilities to bring about the necessary changes in their culture and management systems and to become learning organizations.

Purpose: To describe the design and development process for an information network that meets the complex needs for information exchange by persons with disabilities. This paper describes the needs assessment and design processes that drove the selection of specific system features, and discusses the range of entities with whom persons with disabilities must exchange information. The authors delineate the design goals and their associated specifications for a network of local resource information that serves the needs of persons with disabilities. A model program has been specified and is currently under development. It will enable users to exchange personal, health, and resource information with service entities and with other members of the disability community who depend on detailed information to support their performance of everyday tasks. As an outcome this activity, a highly portable, replicable, sustainable, scalable, and secure model of consumer-driven information exchange will become available to persons with disabilities and to those who provide services to them. The impact of this system will be amplified when it is launched and replicated in interested communities nationwide.

People with chronic illness or disability share similar information needs that are not routinely handled by a system designed for traditional health services. Recent historical initiatives to provide alternate information systems for sharing information or coordinating services have been highly centralized, were expensive to set up and were not sustainable. We propose a novel application of peer-to-peer networking to provide an infrastructure for information exchange and service coordination. The peer-to-peer model empowers the user (citizen with disabilities) with control over the type and extent of information about themselves that is communicated and to whom. Further, the peer-to-peer model leads to a decentralized resource that grows incrementally, supported by the users, and is potentially more sustainable.