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Strawberries w/o methyl bromide + Mindfulness & depression + Doubt on over-optimism

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What will California's strawberry industry do without methyl bromide?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...153354.htm

RELEASE: For many years, California growers relied on methyl bromide to kill a wide range of soil-borne pests, from fungi to insects to weeds, before planting crops. 2016 marks the last year in which the highly effective soil fumigant will be available.

The University of California's peer-reviewed journal California Agriculture examines the impact of the methyl bromide phaseout on strawberries, California's third most valuable crop, behind only almonds and grapes, with annual farmgate sales of $2.5 billion.

First identified as an ozone-depleting compound in 1991, methyl bromide was scheduled for phaseout in the United States by 2005 under the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to protect the stratospheric ozone layer.

While methyl bromide was used for many crops, California strawberry growers found it irreplaceable, which helped the industry win exemptions that have allowed a significant, though declining, quantity of the chemical to be used through 2016. Despite years of research into alternatives, no equally effective replacement has emerged.

Seven articles in the July-September issue of California Agriculture discuss methyl bromide alternatives and economic and production effects on the California strawberry industry.

Berry industry grows dramatically

In the first research article, UC Cooperative Extension advisors Laura Tourte and Mark Bolda and Karen Klonsky, emeritus UC Cooperative Extension economics specialist, review economic data on the berry sector -- blackberries and raspberries as well as strawberries -- in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. They look ahead to factors, including water, consumer demands, labor, invasive pests, and the full phaseout of methyl bromide, that are likely to shape future growth.

Methyl iodide controversy

In a paper chronicling events leading up to the 2012 withdrawal of methyl iodide, once promoted as a viable methyl bromide substitute, Julie Guthman, UC Santa Cruz professor in the Department of Social Sciences, reports survey findings that point to a variety of reasons why strawberry growers did not move quickly to adopt the chemical after it was approved by state regulators. Concerns about public opposition topped the list, followed by a variety of other factors, including concern about methyl iodide's toxicity, and a lack of strong incentive to switch to the new chemical because of the availability of other fumigants, including methyl bromide.

Managing soilborne pests

Three articles look at new approaches to managing soilborne pests without methyl bromide.

"It now seems likely that no single measure will suffice to meet the challenge of soilborne pathogens," write Margaret Lloyd, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, and Tom Gordon, UC Davis professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, in this issue's Outlook. "Rather, a multi-faceted approach will be required, one that integrates advances in disease resistance through breeding with closer attention to the factors that influence the survival, activity and spread of pathogen populations in soil." They make the case for using a suite of strategies to manage soilborne pathogens -- including collective action among growers to help limit the spread of pathogens between fields.

A news item on research at the UC ANR Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center covers ongoing research on anaerobic soil disinfestation, a chemical-free technique that is being used in a growing number of commercial fields. Project scientist Amanda Hodson and UC Davis professor Edwin Lewis, both in the Department of Entomology and Nematology, review a variety of approaches to managing for soil health -- in strawberries and other crops -- as a pest suppression strategy.

Other soil fumigants

Fumigants other than methyl bromide, such as chloropicrin, remain widely used in California strawberry production. Rachael Goodhue, UC Davis professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis, examines how increasingly stringent buffer zone requirements for chloropicrin application have an uneven impact on growers, depending on their proximity to developed land. In another article, a group of UC Cooperative Extension and U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists report on the effectiveness of several fumigants at dosages lower than the maximum label rate.

Food safety and nutrient management on the farm

The issue also includes two research papers focused on general production practices for crops. One report discusses on-farm food safety practices based on a survey of produce growers. The researchers found that practices such as exclusion fencing and vegetation clearing, which may negatively impact wildlife, remain widespread despite a lack of clear evidence that they enhance food safety. Finally, Daniel Geisseler, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis, and Gene Miyao, UC Cooperative Extension advisor, review the use of soil testing to guide the management of soil phosphorus and potassium in California cropping systems.




Mindfulness combats depression for disadvantaged black women: Participants learn to handle daily stresses and gain more control through yoga, breathing, body scans
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...185922.htm

RELEASE: African-American women with lower socio-economic status have an increased risk of depressive disorders, yet they rarely seek out antidepressants or psychotherapy because of negative attitudes and stigma associated with conventional mental health treatments.

A new pilot Northwestern Medicine study showed that eight weeks of mindfulness training helped alleviate their depressive symptoms and reduce stress, providing an effective alternative to more conventional treatment.

"Many women are in need of help with their depression and coping with daily life, but they don't seek it out because of limited access to high-quality mental health services and the stigma within their families and communities," said the study's principal investigator Inger Burnett-Zeigler, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "Our study shows that there are alternatives to traditional mental health treatment, such as mind-body approaches, that effectively alleviate symptoms and can be done autonomously in the comfort of their own home."

Over the course of the 16-week study, the average depressive symptoms and stress scores decreased across the 31 participants. They also reported an increase in well-being and were able to recognize stressful triggers in their lives, notice how their bodies react to triggers and learn how to gain more control over their physiological responses to stress.

"It felt good to be in control of my emotions for the first time in my life," one participant said. Another said, "We are always superwomen [and] we have to be able to do everything, and that brings out a lot of stress. ...This helped me to reorganize and put [these stressful events] in the proper perspective and understand I have an opportunity to learn how to calm myself down and recognize what is going on."

The study, which was published in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice Aug. 13, is the first to examine the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions to combat depression among disadvantaged women in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), which provides comprehensive community-based medical care to low-income individuals.

Burnett-Zeigler and her co-authors recruited women from the Komed Holman Health Center, an FQHC on Chicago's South Side. At the time of recruitment, 91 percent of the women at the center were eligible for the study, which demonstrates the high level of mental health need among adult women in the FQHC. Thirty-one women ended up participating in the study.

Burnett-Zeigler said there is great potential to expand mindfulness-based interventions nationally based on this growing need to provide low-cost, effective mental health services in community-based settings. Her future studies aim to examine the feasibility of national implementation and dissemination.

The mindfulness techniques Burnett-Zeigler teaches include sitting meditation, yoga, mental body scans and taking a mindful pause to be in the moment. Patients are encouraged to increase their awareness of everyday activities, such as taking a shower or drinking a cup of coffee.

"These practices help them take a step back and live in the moment versus worrying about what's already happened or what's to come," Burnett-Zeigler said. "People who are depressed or who have depressive symptoms often have tunnel vision, whereby they're only seeing information in the environment that supports their negative beliefs."

Study participants also were encouraged to engage in daily practice at home, in addition to the guided sessions in the clinic. On average, participants practiced meditation, yoga and mental body scans four days per week and spent an average of 2.5 hours practicing a week.

Before participating in the study, 45 percent of the women reported no prior experience with meditation, and 71 percent reported no past experience with yoga. All of the women who participated in the study reported symptoms of depression, however 87 percent had not received any mental health treatment in the past year.




Study casts doubt on claim that people are over-optimistic
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...182618.htm

RELEASE: A new study by King's College London, UCL and Birkbeck, University of London, casts doubt over claims that people are inherently over-optimistic or 'optimistically biased' about the future.

For many decades scientists have believed that people have an 'irrational optimism bias' -- a tendency to underestimate their chances of negative experiences, while overestimating their chances of positive events.

Optimism bias is thought to have contributed to past financial crises and the failure of individuals to look after themselves (e.g. eating healthily to avoid obesity) or their environment (e.g. fighting climate change). The UK government even considers optimism bias when planning large infrastructure projects and deciding which projects should be funded (HM Treasury Green Book).

Research has most recently claimed that people fail to learn from bad news when told the actual chance of experiencing a negative life event (such as cancer). Such a failure to learn from bad news would result in an optimistic outlook (The Optimism Bias; Sharot, 2012). However, this new study, published in Cognitive Psychology, demonstrates major flaws in this research supporting the existence of this optimism bias. According to the authors, prior studies have generated data patterns that look like people are being over-optimistic, when no such bias exists.

The researchers first found that people's failure to learn from bad news was reversed when they were considering their chance of experiencing a positive event (e.g. living past 90 years old). For these events, people learnt less from good news (i.e. learning their chance of living past 90 years old is higher than they originally thought).

The researchers subsequently created computerised simulations designed to behave in a completely rational way when faced with the same psychological tests used in previous research (e.g. learning from good vs bad news about future events). By definition, these simulations are not optimistic and thus will not show bias. However, these computer simulations produced the same pattern of data that is usually interpreted as showing optimism bias, due to the fact that belief scores changed more in response to good than bad news.

The study therefore shows how apparent optimism for negative events (and pessimism for positive events) can arise as a result of purely statistical processes. According to the authors, this supposed optimism bias is an artefact of the tests used to assess it, in conjunction with the rarity of negative events.

In addition to their simulations and analytical work, the researchers conducted five studies in which they corrected for these methodological problems as far as possible. In these improved studies they observed no evidence whatsoever for people learning more from good than bad news (i.e. no evidence for optimism bias).

Punit Shah from the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre at King's College London, said: 'There is ample evidence for optimism bias in various real-world situations -- England football fans for example -- but these instances simply show that certain people might be optimistic in certain situations; not that they are generally optimistic.'

Dr Adam Harris from UCL said: 'Previous studies, which have used flawed methodologies to claim that people are optimistic across all situations and that this bias is 'normal', are now in serious doubt. We need to look for new ways of studying optimism bias to establish whether it is a universal feature of human cognition or not.

'This assumption that people are optimistically biased is being used to guide large infrastructure projects, with the aim of managing expectations around how much projects will cost and how long they will take to complete. Our research supports a reexamination of optimism bias before allowing it to guide clinical research and policy.'
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