Other supportive and anecdotal treatments are often applied throughout the post-concussive recovery process to address persistent symptoms. The need for empirical research to translate current guidelines for rest into evidence-based treatment protocols is essential. A recent study evaluated the efficacy of comprehensive rest and concluded that such rest may be helpful whether applied soon after a concussion or weeks to months later (Moser et al., Over the past decade, there has been a considerable increase in research on, and media attention to, sports-related concussion. However, despite accurate diagnosis, effective treatment and management of sports-related concussion have remained a challenge. There are approximately 1.8 million traumatic brain injuries in the United States annually (Faul et al.,  Sports concussion has become a public health concern, especially for youth participating in sports activities Moser, . From 19Since the most recent 2008 Zurich International Conference on Concussion in Sport , defined by any alteration in consciousness due to a blow or strong force to the head. The pathophysiology of concussion has been well documented as a neurometabolic cascade that results in altered cerebral blood flow and glucose metabolism preceded by axonal depolarization and ionic changes  are sobering  and use of balance and physical exertional testing are of significant value in diagnostic clinical decision-making  was a 14 year old basketball player who arrived for a neuropsychological consultation with presenting complaints of “memory loss, anxiety, irritability, reading difficulty,” mental slowness, fatigue, decline in school grades, and a recent school suspension for a prank. Prior to her injuries she had been a “straight A student…in a special school leadership program.” She had a previous history of four concussions, prior to her first visit for neuropsychological consultation at the Sports Concussion Center of New Jersey.Concussion 1: 13 months prior to exam, Lindsay’s head hit the floor during a basketball game. There was no loss of consciousness (LOC), but possible amnesia was described. Symptoms of headache, balance problems, nausea, and confusion were reported with symptoms that persisted “for weeks.” She was examined by her primary care physician and advised to avoid gym for 4 days and basketball for 2 weeks. There were no other cognitive or physical restrictions, but her symptoms lingered.Concussion 2: Approximately 2 weeks later, Lindsay sustained an elbow to the head during a basketball game. Again, no LOC was reported, although there was possible amnesia. Her headaches continued along with memory problems, and Lindsay was kept out of sports for 2 weeks with no other restrictions. Despite this, symptoms did not completely resolve.Concussion 3: Approximately 2 weeks later, Lindsay fell in gym class and hit her head to floor. This time there was a brief LOC. Her mother indicated that Lindsay’s anxiety “came on like a storm…almost impossible to speak to her logically…” Thus, Lindsay was referred for psychiatric treatment and started on a regimen of Zoloft.Concussion 4: Approximately 10 months later, Lindsay hit her head on the floor during a basketball game, with no LOC reported. However, she continued to experience post-concussion symptoms that had not previously resolved.Prior to the neuropsychological consultation, Lindsay had been followed by her pediatrician, had had multiple visits to the hospital Emergency Department, and had undergone MRI that was interpreted with negative findings. Lindsay had never taken any time off from school and was never provided any academic accommodations. There was no reported history of significant medical difficulties/disorders/diseases, early childhood or developmental difficulties, mental health difficulties, alcohol/substance use issues, attention deficit disorder, learning disorder, or behavioral problems.Her parents were not knowledgeable about sports concussion and current identification and management guidelines for youth. They were led to believe by her health care providers and the school that her recent cognitive, emotional, and behavioral difficulties (which had not existed premorbidly) were due to a psychological condition and she was provided psychiatric treatment and prescribed Zoloft.At the time of the initial neuropsychological consultation at our Center, the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT), a computerized neuropsychological test battery, was performed . In addition, a consultation with a neurologist was recommended. Lindsay and her parents were skeptical of what they perceived as such a drastic recommendation for a medical leave from school and academics. They were then educated about the need for the brain to recover from the neurometabolic cascade that takes place in response to concussion  and that this is accomplished with strict rest, instead of continued brain activation that might further deplete available cerebral energy stores. They were explained that the neurometabolic cascade typically occurs early in the post-concussion stage and that given her complex case, there was no guarantee for her recovery, but that perhaps rest could still help her.Lindsay returned for a second consultation after 2 weeks of compliant rest. By that time, her ImPACT scores were now remarkably better, and well within in the normal range . At that time, athletic activities with a low risk of contact were then recommended. Lindsay continued on a less frequent basis with her psychiatrist, aiming toward termination.Figures The above case may be exceptional in its resolution of a longstanding post-concussion syndrome with multiple concussions. The use of neurocognitive testing in this case, even without baseline test results for comparison, provided evidence of improvement and helped to guide clinical management. When test scores seemed stable and symptom scores were normal, the patient could then be progressed to physical exertional testing.It could well be argued that her improvement was due to a placebo effect or mental health issues. However, Lindsay was just one of a number of patients who improved following delayed comprehensive rest that were included  in the Moser et al.  study deWith the increased prevalence of sports concussion in youth, and the potentially enduring effects that have been correlated with repeated concussions , no physical activities , no driving, no or very limited TV, no travel outside of the home, no family/social visits in or outside the home, and plenty of rest and sleep. Unfortunately, in the present authors’ experience, concussed individuals’ are often prescribed an undefined period of rest during which they unwittingly continue to perform academic or work duties at home while on “medical” leave.type of rest , length of rest period, and degree or nature of rest  should be considered in any research design. In addition, variables such as time since the concussion before rest is administered, severity of concussion symptoms at rest onset, and number of previous concussions in the patient’s history could very well determine the efficacy of rest as a treatment. Consideration of these kinds of variables, in addition to typically considered variables of age, gender, learning disorders/ADHD, intellectual ability, and years playing sports, will hopefully aid in more accurate predictions for the recovery period.Nevertheless, rest as a construct will need to be more accurately defined in order to inform research investigation. Factors such as The case presented here as an example of the application of rest may be illustrative and instructional, however it is only an “N of 1” and, as such, prohibits generalization. Although rest was effective at such a delayed point in the concussion history, one cannot reliably expect rest to be as successful in all cases of prolonged post-concussion syndrome. We will need to identify what variables, if any, will modify the efficacy of rest. Neuroimaging and electrophysiological assessment tools may assist us in better understanding the mechanisms of rest and help identify the brain activation patterns associated with different kinds of rest. With so little currently known about rest from a research perspective, it is hoped that this case study will stir interest in this deceptively simple, yet really complex, construct and important treatment for concussion, even months after the impact.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


This paper proposes to analyse the relationships between depression and high intellectual potential through a multidisciplinary and original approach. Based on their respective experience in psychology and child psychiatry, the authors will focus their analysis on creative potential. First, relationships between creativity  and melancholy (“melancholy” comes from the Greek words for “black” (“melas”) and “bile” (“khole”)) will be examined from antiquity to modern times. Aristotle introduced a quantitative factor, asserting that levels of melancholy and black bile are positively correlated; however, under a given threshold of black bile, it can give rise to an exceptional being. Second, the case study of Blaise Pascal  will be presented and discussed. This case study sheds light on the paradoxical role of depression in the overinvestment in intellectual and creative spheres as well as on the impact of traumatic events on high intellectual potential. Third, observations will be reported based on a study conducted on 100 children with high intellectual potential (6–12 years old). Finally, based on these different levels of analysis, it appears that heterogeneity of mental functioning in children with high intellectual potential is at the center of the creative process and it has related psychological vulnerability. Childhood depression is still a relatively taboo subject in clinical practice, its existence long denied by parents and professionals alike. High intellectual potential is another, idealizing measure leading to both resistance and fascination. Whereas childhood depression is now recognized as a distinct pathopsychological entity, its descriptions are many and various, changing with each new classification and epistemology. As for high intellectual potential, although a consensus has been reached over its psychometric definition—an intelligence quotient (IQ) above 130, according to the criterion of the World Health Organization (WHO)—different conceptions continue to exist, depending on the intellectual, developmental, cognitive, factorial, or dimensional model to which one refers. There is a very wide gap between authors who adopt a descriptive and symptomatic approach to these two “dimensions” and those who seek instead to understand their underlying psychological processes from a holistic perspective. Diagnoses of depression and/or high intellectual potential may thus be clinical, psychiatric, or psychodynamic. It should be noted that the terms “depression” and “high intellectual potential” are not found in the vocabulary of psychoanalysts, who prefer to talk about melancholy and loss on the one hand, and thought-cathexis, epistemophilic impulse, or sublimation on the other. Whereas we seek to define these various conceptions in the present paper, above all we discuss the implicit link that is frequently drawn between depression/anxiety and high intellectual potential, not just in the minds of lay people and the media, but in the specialist literature, too. Paradoxically, studies of high potential often focus on young people attending special clinics and who are therefore subject to psychological problems, even though a large proportion of such children seemingly experience no particular difficulties. This introduces a definite research bias and means that there is little empirical research conducted on the latter population [We explore the implicit link drawn between depression and high potential both longitudinally (from antiquity to the present day) and transversally looking at the various parallels and interactions that can be established between these two entities. We examine causality in a nonlinear manner, deeming that high potential and depression, far from being “superstructures” encompassing the whole of an individual's psychological organization, are actually aspects of the developing personality that are modified and colored in a nonstandard way according to that person's individual characteristics. We cannot regard depression as a manifestation of high potential without immediately evoking the opposite hypothesis whereby high potential is a (defensive?) manifestation of depression. According to Tordjman  high potCan atypical and precocious cognitive development disturb affective development? Or is it the other way round, with disturbed socio-affective development resulting in cognitive overinvestment? It may well be that early social interaction deficits lead children to become socially isolated which, in turn, triggers intellectual hypercathexis. Conversely, because of their differencenot least their “gifted” status and identity, possibly maintained by their immediate circle—precocious children may be rejected by their social environment and find themselves isolated. This may lead to the feelings of persecution that are exhibited by many children with high potential in situations of exclusion or victimization. It is difficult to disentangle the respective contributions of cognitive and affective factors to the development and expression of high intellectual potential, not least because these two aspects may start to feed into each other over time, creating a veritable vicious circle.” [“circle.” , page 12We therefore highlight the reciprocal incidences of high potential and depression, describing the characteristics of the underlying defensive organization in accordance with the psychodynamic model of child development: impulse—reaction formation (defense mechanisms)—character formation sublimation. Above and beyond the extreme or overdeveloped nature of certain aptitudes and certain components of these children's psychological organization, we underscore the heterogeneity of their mental functioning, in terms of excess and deficit, pressure and depression.mal du siècle” of the 19th century Romantics were all variations on a theme of despondency giving rise to dark and sorrowful thoughts. Since Antiquity, the accepted term for this condition has been “melancholy”, a term made up of the Greek words for “black” (“melas”) and “bile” (“ēkhol”) [A link between depressive disorders and literary, artistic, or scientific genius has been drawn since Antiquity. Hippocrates' “black bile” in the 4th century B.C., the “acedia” of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the “spleen” or ““kholē”)  who obseThe dyssynchrony said to characterize the conduct of children with high potential is, in fact, extremely polymorphous. While it sometimes signals a cognitive dysfunction, more often than not, it masks a heterogeneity inherent to the development of high-level intelligence. The heterogeneity of mental functioning in children with high potential is thus akin to the teenage crisis or to the un-leveling observed in creative individuals” [“The commentaries on the Aristotle's text on melancholy and genius  asks “whHe begins by emphasizing the existence of a basic “state” that is activated by events. Thus, wine may call forth a wide variety of moods, ranging from mania (hyperthymia) to despondency (dysthymia), “making men, for instance, irritable, benevolent, compassionate or reckless.” This is the arousal of a potential for trauma that can be observed in children of high potential. Aristotle then introduces a quantitative factor, asserting that the more concentrated the “admixture” of black bile, the more melancholic a person will be. Providing it does not exceed a given concentration, however, this black bile will give rise to an exceptional being. Way ahead of his time, Aristotle introduces the distinction between state and disposition that is now part of our “high potential” terminology, with its assumption of unactualized dispositions, and concludes that this natural and lasting state, wherein melancholy is associated with exception, is one of paradoxical constancy.He goes on to highlight a further paradox, in that this constancy holds within it an inconstancy, for this potential partakes of a “natural” state that makes it easier for individuals to identify themselves with other people. The gifted melancholic thus has a propensity to become “the others, all the others.” Aristotle  associatCurrent theories of trauma stemming from excess or deficitfactors which some authors, such as Jean Bergeret , have liAccording to my conception, the first stage in the trauma is characterized by a failure to respect these patients' needs as children and results in narcissistic injury: this is the cold nucleus of the trauma that has not been assimilated by the ego. The second stage consists of the sexualization of the first traumatic stage, and may take different forms in different patients […, this I have named the hot nucleus.” Claude Janin continues, “The third stage of the trauma takes place during puberty and consists of the constitution of a paradoxical trauma made up of these two hot and cold nuclei, which then become indistinguishable.” “Wunsch”). “Burning sister to an icy mother” is what he writes on the subject of the Wolf Man, underlining the frequency with which seductive sisters make up for austere mothers.Aristotle's quantitative and medical model has thus become an economic model, in which his “basic state” can be equated with the constitutional strength of the drive. This excitability potentially opens up breaches that can become traumatic places, but which are necessary if individuals are to be even minimally receptive to relationships, to the world and indeed to their own selves. Whether it stems from lack or from excess, whether it is internal or external, narcissistic or sexual, trauma faces, both the past with the lost object and also the future with the realization of desiresits “afterwardsness” (theory of deferred action). These two perspectives are not as diametrically opposed as one might think and apply not just to trauma, but to the whole of clinical psycho-pathopsychology, as well as to the various depressive disorders. For affects, too, have a history, with anxiety anticipating a disquieting future and depression arising from the loss of a previous satisfaction. Still on the subject of history, Golse  argues tThis brings us to Blaise Pascal, as we know that he enjoyed a passionate and possibly even incestuous relationship with his sister, after losing his mother at an early age. Blaise's childhood prefigured a destiny of excess and lack. He was a puny, delicate infant in whom the notion of “helplessness” took its full traumatic meaning, as he fell into “mesenteric disease” at the age of one year. Anzieu  linked tThe baby is in his cradle, expecting his mother to come whenever he wishes. He babbles, but she does not come. He cries, but she does not come. He screams, but she does not come. She no longer comes. She will never come again.”“Pensées [According to Bailly this type of traumatic loss questions sometimes even damages infantile sexual theories. However, these theories can also be intensified by the omnipotence of thought. From a very early age, Pascal displayed true scientific and philosophical genius. A precocious mathematician, he developed the theory of probability, which he later applied to his metaphysical concerns about the existence of God, in his famous Wager. It should be pointed out that children with high potential perform particularly well on the Piagetian-type “Probability Quantification” cognitive tests, on account of their tremendous need for certainty and anticipation . Pascal Pensées .According to Ferenczi , 17, chiOn the emotional but also the intellectual level, the shock may allow part of the individual suddenly to mature. I wish to remind you of the typical ‘dream of the wise baby' described by me several years ago, where a newborn, a child still in the cradle, suddenly starts to talk and in fact teaches wisdom to the entire family. The fear of the uninhibited, almost mad adults, changes the child, so to speak, into a psychiatrist. To protect himself from the danger represented by the uninhibited adults, he must know how to identify himself completely with them.”“The dangers of this lability of identification, which Aristotle evoked in rather different terms, are all to easy to see in high potential children with problems, and include the risk of overadapting to others, if not adopting a “false self” that stifles one's desires and genuine personality, and the risk of becoming diluted in these multiple identifications and experiencing feelings of emptiness, lack of consistency, and even depersonalization. The mortification that the adult Blaise Pascal inflicted upon himself was doubtless a way of recentering himself and containing his anxieties .As we do not see high intellectual potential as a distinct nosographic entity, we selected our participants on the basis of a single criterion and did not prejudge the homogeneity of our sample. This criterion was psychometric and quantitative, namely an IQ above 130, even though researchers have started to make a distinction between academic and nonacademic  high potential , 19. EveBy focusing on “anachronisms” as the vectors of pathology and sublimation, we have so far been able to identify several shared characteristics, with a variability ranging from the normal to the pathological :intense questioning about origins and finitude versus emptiness, lack, and castration, which continues to nourish relatively unrepressed infantile sexual theories for a considerable length of time, and a particular relationship with time, colored by existential anxiety about separation, loss, and death;a counterphobic use of thought and language in an attempt to shore up a libidinal impulse in search of self-soothing or a protective shield to contain fears of loss. Object relations are traumatic in nature, characterized by excess/lack in a way that is reminiscent of the game of hide and seek in which the child burns if he or she gets close to the desired object and freezes if he or she moves away from it;avoidance/refusal of models in all fields, in an illusory attempt to elude dependency on reality and objects. These children favor their own mental representations, which not only form the bedrock of their identity and identification, with all its attendant vagaries, but also constitute one of the conditions for creativity, if not genius. At the clinical level, the rejection of models may manifest itself in poor writing and copying skills, noncompliance with school rules, and a reluctance to draw or to play symbolic games. Trial and error is not permitted, as it represents the gap between the model to be attained—the ideal—and the limitations of the child's ego.Ours is a heterogeneous population covering the whole range of psychopathological classifications, from variations of normality to the most severe disorders. This same transnosographic “cross-border” dimension of high potential can be found in siblings containing several individuals with overdeveloped intelligence, as the latter may present with a variety of disorders, including what are currently labeled dyspraxia, ADHD, and high-functioning autism. Our experience shows also that most of the requests for consultations we receive from families with high potential children concern separation difficulties, ranging from very slight to extremely severe. The symptoms presented are recurrent “boredom,” “loneliness,” “lack of self-confidence” and “sleep disturbances.” Separation difficulties, notably lack of self-confidence, generally manifest themselves at nursery school entry, when forced socialization and classroom learning bring to light a lack of wellbeing which the child's family had either not picked up on or had assumed to be a token of eccentricity or exception, as high potential can easily mask underlying depressive features with its precocious logic and rationalization .The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, for “nongifted” children with depression, for the younger the child, the more the symptoms express his or her struggle against depression. In line with Aristotle's observation that “the young are more cheerful, the old more despondent, the former being hot and the latter cold,” the symptoms they display are agitation, aggression, and oppositionalitythe very opposite of downheartedness and neurasthenia. Sets of depressive symptoms may also vary according to the children's personality development and organization, taking the form of action and oppositionality, withdrawal and inhibition, or somatic disorders and school, social, or familial maladjustment. These categories can be divided further into depressive behavior, antidepressive behavior, depressive equivalents, masked depressions, and so on, regardless of whether the depression is neurotic, psychotic, or borderline, or takes the form of a major depressive episode. One of the hotly debated topics at the present time concerns the nature of depressive affect. Should it be viewed as a basic affect, in line with John Bowlby's attachment model or, as Denis claims , as workDepression is just as difficult to diagnose in adolescents as it is in individuals of high potential, as depressed mood is “normal" in this age group and brings with it a risk of transition to more typical disorders. To complicate matters further, we have shown that high intellectual potential is accompanied by precocious psychosexual development, with children displaying the affective characteristics of adolescents , 15. In A descriptive and symptomatic approach, identifying those symptoms that are suggestive of a “depressive state” , bearing in mind that children's depressive symptomatology is both broad and varied. In a previous study , we exambehavior and conduct disorders; separation anxiety disorders: prolonged and intense manifestations of anxiety, such as crying, boredom, disturbed social functioning, and sleep disturbances;CFTMEA-R 2000 Axis I (7.4) DSM-IV-TR: loss of pleasure, feelings of worthlessness, inability to concentrate and thoughts of death.A clinical pathopsychological approach, whereby an explanation for this “depressive episode” is sought in the individual's history, without neglecting his or her environment. This investigation may bring depressive aspects to light that were hitherto masked by what can be extremely polymorphous symptoms. Adopting a psychoanalytic angle, an attempt is made to link the depressive disorder to a neurotic, borderline, or psychotic organization. Bergeret's model , 23 provIn children with high potential, fear of loss emerges at an early age. Both intense and longlasting, it is accompanied by an acute awareness of the passage of time. Children with high potential are nostalgic creatures, extremely conscious of the fact that each present moment slips through their fingers before they have had a chance to experience it. “The next second is already the future” exclaimed one six-year-old boy, and there are all those who want to be paleontologists, geologists or archeologists when they grow up, or who want to invent time machines or antipollution devices that will restore Earth to its primal, pristine condition. This “search for lost time” is also reflected in an interest in planets, prehistory, mythology, and other topics relating to the mysteries of appearance and disappearance. This nostalgia can lead to genuine bouts of depression, as in the nine-year-old boy of high potential who experienced crying spells and even suicidal thoughts at the end of every weekend, especially if there had been a large family gathering or celebration. Anxiety about growing up, growing old, and dying is frequent, and children sometimes see their worst fears confirmed, with the death of a loved one. This is certainly what happened to Blaise Pascal, and the biographies of other men and women famed for their intellectual, artistic or scientific prowess often make mention of the early loss of a beloved mother, father or sibling—a phenomenon that Brenot  has dubbŒdipus, who solved the Sphinx's riddles so intelligently, or initiatory, as in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, who is said to have received many passionate kisses from his mother, or Freud, the beloved son of Amalia, whose own experience prompted him to write that [Loss may also occur within relationships, in the shape of irregular and even chaotic psychological availability. In the course of the consultations we provide for children and adolescents with high potential, we have found that maternal depression and a family history of bipolar disorders are relatively frequent, and Tordjman  has undeite that : If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling, he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it.”“Wunsch”; Freud, 1926).For Anzieu and Besdine  the mothIn conclusion, the depression observed in children with high potential would seem to be characterized by narcissistic vulnerability associated with genuine traumatophilia, which Lowenfeld  defined


This article records the traditional knowledge of crab gatherers in the city of Conde, in the North Coast Region of Bahia State, Northeastern Brazil.in loco observations conducted from September 2007 to December 2009. A total of 57 fishermen of both genders, aged between 10 and 78 years have been interviewed  in different contexts; interviewees were asked about aspects such as external morphology, life cycle, trophic ecology, and spatial and temporal distribution of the major economically important brachyuran crustaceans in the region. Seven fishing communities were visited: Siribinha, Sítio do Conde, Poças, Ilha das Ostras, Cobó, Buri and Sempre Viva. Data were analyzed by comparing the information provided by participants with those from the specialized academic literature.Data on biological and ecological aspects of economically important brachyuran crustaceans have been obtained from semi-structured interviews and The results show that artisanal fishermen have a wide ranging and well-grounded knowledge on the ecological and biological aspects of crustaceans. Crab gatherers of Conde know about growth and reproductive behavior of the animals they interact with, especially with regard to the three major biological aspects: “molt”, “walking dance” and “spawning”.This knowledge constitutes an important source of information that should be considered in studies of management and sustainable use of fishery resources in the North Coast Region of Bahia State. Mangrove ecosystems are typical of tropical and subtropical regions, in areas influenced by tidal movements . They coCrustaceans play a role in the ecosystem dynamics not only by their function in the food chain, but also because some of them – the decapod brachyurans – constantly modify the substrate as they dig holes and bring organic matter from the lower stratum to the surface . BrachyuUcides cordatus , Cardisoma guanhumi (Latreille 1825), Goniopsis cruentata (Latreille 1802), and swimming crabs of the family Portunidae. In addition to serving as food, some species are also used for medicine, as craft, and leisure (18).In Bahia State, Northeastern Brazil, fishing activities are especially characterized by familiar work, where all members of the family are directly involved with the collecting and processing of those resources . SpecifiUcides cordatus in Acupe beach; Saraiva the fingers of males are hairy, different from the females” . Pinheiro and Fiscarelli  I myself can differentiate them even by their feces. It’s because the feces of females are tiny and thick. So, if the feces are like that, it is a female. If it is a long and thin, it is a male” ."U. cordatus and Cardisoma guanhumi is the physiognomy of the mangrove where the animal lives; that is confirmed by the following reports: “Much depends on the part of the mangrove where it lives, because there is a drier area in the mangrove. There’s a drier area and the crabs living there have another color. Those living in moister areas have different colors” . This information is correlated with the concept of Pinto-Coelho  this time of the year they are all puddled because that is to change the hull […]. It's all puddled. You can go through and see their holes all over there. Then, nobody can catch them at that time. Only in October and November” ."""During the neap tides we get them more often. During neap tides it is better, because the soil is dry, the mud is hard and they cannot dig as much, right? And when the tide is high it becomes harder, because it seems like they sink deeper; as the ground is softer, they sink” ."It is during ecdysis that crabs burrow into the substrate and undergo carapace change. Ecdysis, or “molt”, is necessary for crabs to grow, since their exoskeleton is not alive and do not grow with the animal . This phU. cordatus and C. guanhumi usually cover the months from December to March (summer) and occur when the moon is full and the tide starts to “lower”. That stage affects the reproductive behavior of these animals, which become disturbed . This phenomenon is not observed for “aratu” (Goniopsis cruentata) and swimming crabs (Portunidae), which, according to local reports are “wanderers by nature”, despite spawning occurs in the same period. The following reports exemplify the local knowledge about the “walking dance” behavior:The periods of “walking dance” (mating) and spawning of ""In January, the walking dance occurs during high tide. When it drains, they do not leave, because they are reproducing” .""“He [referring to the aratu crab] is a wanderer by nature, right? They scuttle back and forth. It is not like the other crabs, which have holes. They are constantly walking” ."""Ii begins in December. From December to March, four walking dances occur when the moon is full” .""“When the tide comes at 2 a.m. and it falls three times, it’s when they start to walk. No matter if it is day-time, but they prefer the night-time" ."U. cordatus as they leave their burrows and walk on the mangrove sediments [.[“Walking dance” is a designation used by coastal communities by referring to the behavior of male and female ediments ; this isediments . Góes etiments [. have obsiments [..Ucides cordatus occurs from December to May. These authors have found that after reproduction in the summer, this crab undergoes ecdysis, with a peak in autumn; on the other hand, females with gonads in maturation process were only found in late winter. According to Hartnoll and Gould [According to Sastry , crustacnd Gould , this fand Gould  and fromnd Gould . Dalabonnd Gould  mention Knowledge of the artisanal fishermen interviewed on the trophic ecology of crabs involves two major aspects: diet composition and food chain they belong to. According to Marques , this kn""I live from fishing. I only make money from fishing” ""“We live here from fishing, right?” .""“It is because fishing is our art, right? We know that because we live here” ."U. cordatus and the “gaiamum” C. guanhumi have a very restricted diet that largely consists of leaves and roots of trees that live in the mangrove. Analogue ethnoecological studies have reported similar data [Laguncularia racemosa) are part of the diet of U. cordatus crabs.According to crab gatherers from Conde, the “uçá” lar data ,22,50. IU. cordatus in a mangrove forest of Santa Catarina State, Branco [Zoological studies on the trophic ecology of crabs, particularly the land crab, indicate that these animals are omnivorous, instead of obligatory herbivorous ,47,51,52, Branco  has foun, Branco ,53.Goniopsis cruentata is broader, since it includes vegetable matter (leaves and fruits of mangrove trees) and decomposing organic matter, including dead animals. According to Conde’s artisanal fishermen, these crustaceans are omnivorous; this knowledge is therefore consistent with information contained in the specialized scientific literature [On the other hand, the diet of swimming crabs and terature ,52,54-57"“They (referring to the Portunidae family crabs) eat the things of the river, fish. They like something more than bad, rotten. Even shrimps may be eaten by them” .""“Aratu (eats) dead and rotten things there in the mangrove” ."Portunus spinimanus Latreille, 1819 (Portunidae), where crustaceans and fishes were observed to be the most abundant resources. Gaspar [In Armação do Itapocoroy , Branco and Lunardon-Branco  have rec. Gaspar  asserts G. cruentata) in the trophic web of mangroves, further bio-ecological studies are needed to strengthen this knowledge, including primary herbivory, predation, and exportation of biomass and energy [With respect to the role of “aratu” , otters (Lontra longicaudis Olfers 1818), monkeys and the opossum (Didelphis sp.) are of great importance. These animals and humans can be considered direct competitors within the food chain, since they compete for resources available in the same environment; this can be verified in the following reports:As pointed out by artisanal fishermen in the city of Conde, some of the major predators of brachyuran crustaceans in the region are fishes, mammals and humans . Animals such as raccoons .""“This one, there is one we call it otter. So it goes there and drills a hole, right? Then, when we come here, the damage is done. But what can we do? It is the work of nature. They also need to eat, right?”."Nomura  has madeThe knowledge of fishermen of Conde on the temporal and spatial distribution of brachyuran crustaceans with important role in local economy is closely related to other ecological knowledge regarding these animals, such as migratory flow, habitat types, life cycle, and foraging areas.There are two major seasons as determinants in the distribution of crabs along mangroves and adjacent areas: “summer” and “winter”, which, as pointed out by Marques , do not Fishermen of Conde directly associate the seasonality of brachyuran crustaceans gathered for commercial purposes with the local economic productivity. According to them, summer is generally the most productive season , except for swimming crabs, which “are more common in the winter”, as mentioned in the following excerpts:"“It is available from December to March. After the walking dance, in March, there is a tendency to reduce .""“Yeah, the swimming crabs can be caught the whole year, but I am quite sure it can be found in winter. In summer it reduces even a hundred percent. On the other hand, the aratu can always be found. But the aratu also reduces in winter because it disappears, right?” .""“The swimming crab can be found all year long, but this time of the year, in August there is a lot of if, but there is not much in summer. It keeps on available, but there is not much” ."The definition and perception of these two major seasons are associated with the understanding of gatherers of Conde on the variations of water salinity in mangroves, which causes changes in the spatial distribution of species and consequently seasonal variations; the following testimonials corroborate that:Ucides cordatus) can be more easily found in December. I think it is because of the time, right?” .""“The land crab ."U. cordatus), the blue crab  and the mangrove crab (G. cruentata) are the crustaceans of the “mangrove”; the other swimming crabs inhabit the “river”, whereas the “marsh” is the habitat of “gaiamum” crabs. Within a single “ecozone”, there are different areas of distribution of faunistic resources. Thus, for example, U. cordatus lives “holed up” (“under the mud”), in holes whose depths are approximately a hundred or a hundred and twenty centimeters, according to the locals ; G. cruentata lives in “stock hollows” or “mangrove swamps”, although it may occasionally invade the burrows of U. cordatus when the tides are “neap”; in turn, the blue crab inhabits the banks of the rivers that flow through the mangrove, although it can be also found “holed up”. Yet, these spatial distributions may change occasionally; as an example, the “gaiamum” crabs may leave their burrows in the “marshes” and move to the mangroves  when the “ground is hard”. The following testimonials corroborate this information:According to Posey , the spaU. cordatus) lives hidden in the mud. The swimming crabs can also be found in burrows. The “aratu” sometimes gets in, but they are often found in stock hollows. Those old mangrove woods that are hollow, they go there, and go inside them” .""“The uçá ."G. cruentata was widely found in the soil of intertidal zones and edges of rivers and canals where it builds burrows along the mangrove roots (peaks in summer); on the other hand Cardisoma guanhumi were more frequently observed in “apicum” , where they build burrows above the high tide mark, with predominance in spring; finally, Ucides cordatus was more abundant in intertidal and infratidal zones, where they preferred to dig burrows due to lower variation in water salinity [U. cordatus, depending on the area and the season; also, a higher average number of burrows per square meter was observed in the sandy bottom shoreline, which was directly related to fluctuations in water salinity in the burrows.The identification of ecological zones in fishing communities is a fairly common practice ,65,67-69salinity , also prsalinity , in the Artisanal fishermen of Conde have an established knowledge on biological and ecological aspects related to brachyuran crustaceans of economic importance in the region, as well as the environment where they live, which covers the external morphology, life cycle associated with tidal dynamics, reproduction, trophic ecology and spatial and temporal distribution. Much of this knowledge is supported by data from the specialized scientific literature.Although the creation of the Marine Extractive Reserve, a sort of marine protected area, IUCN category VI, to preserve both scenarios environmental and socio-cultural region of Earl is still a future possibility, this study, and other ethnobiological to be performed, should be used for ordering the management of local resources. In the case of the use of the crustaceans by local communities, the establishment of rules of use to the zones identified – “mangrove”, “river” and “marsh” should be incorporated into the protected area management, ensuring the sustainability of the resource and recognizing traditional knowledge.With this interaction ensures the perpetuation of social local way of life and biodiversity conservation on the north coast of Bahia.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.HFM carried out the field research and drafted the manuscript. EMCN participated in its design and coordination, and helped to draft the manuscript. AS helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.


This paper is concerned with complex macroscopic behaviour arising in many-body systems through the combinations of competitive interactions and disorder, even with simple ingredients at the microscopic level. It attempts to indicate and illustrate the richness that has arisen, in conceptual understanding, in methodology and in application, across a large range of scientific disciplines, together with a hint of some of the further opportunities that remain to be tapped. In doing so, it takes the perspective of physics and tries to show, albeit rather briefly, how physics has contributed and been stimulated. Here, however, I shall discuss the emergence of a different phenomenon, known as ‘complexity’, concentrating on the new concepts that have arisen from its discovery and study and particularly the role of physics as a mindset and a methodology in its exploration and application.Already for more than 50 years, particularly since the theoretical explanation of superconductivity by The story has its origin in an attempt to understand the behaviour of some relatively obscure magnetic alloys that have never themselves had any technological application, but whose study has led to highly non-trivial insights of considerable subtlety, new methods of thinking, new mathematical, experimental and simulational techniques, and, in some cases, important applications, not only in many areas of physics itself, but also in information processing, hard combinatorial optimization, biology, mathematics and economics, with much further and broader potential.N≫1) similar individual units, with the concern the cooperative behaviour of the whole. The descriptor ‘complex’ is used to describe collective behaviour that cannot be anticipated simply from the properties of isolated individual units or from interactions among only a few of them, but arises from conflicts when large numbers of individuals have mutually incompletely satisfiable few-body rules, a feature known as ‘frustration’; indeed, complex cooperative behaviour can arise with even very simple individual units and very simple interactions. Among the consequences of this frustration and the resultant compromise are that optima and equilibria are difficult to achieve and that responses to perturbations are slow, in part extremely so, and often chaotic.As noted earlier, the systems of interest are ‘many-body’, made up of many , only to be faced by further barriers. In fact, the space of the landscape is very high-dimensional and the difficulty extremely much greater than for a mountain range on our three-dimensional Earth. Changing an external influence parameter, such as temperature, magnetic field or other ‘pressure’, can lead to ‘chaotic’ transformation of the whole landscape, removing the option of straightfoward iteration to a solution.A ‘cartoon’ to illustrate the character of a complex system is of a rugged landscape with many hills and valleys and the system’s dynamics imagined as movement on the landscape with only local vision, simple moves being downward,This paper is organized as follows: §2 introduces the issues and some of the concepts derived in the context of spin glasses (in condensed matter physics) and compares a related optimization problem that is simple to formulate but difficult to solve; §3 considers further hard combinatorial optimization in computer science, particularly in the context of satisfiability; §4 is devoted to some examples from biology, in the form of neural networks and proteins; §5 addresses problems involving speculative agents in finance/economics and opens the way to other social sciences; §6 considers growing networks; §7 gives some typical magnitudes; and §8 collects some conclusions and hints at the future.2.2 If, for any three students, the number of pairing preferences for being apart is odd, then not all these preferences can be satisfied simultaneously. This is frustration and there is no unique best choice. With a large number of students, finding the best compromise is very difficult, indeed in general NP-complete3 (http://www.claymath.org/millennium/P_vs_NP/).A simple illustration is provided by the so-called Dean’s problem in which a College Dean is faced with the task of placing students into two dormitories in such a way as to ensure that the students are as happy as possible, given that any individual pair of students might want to be in the same dormitory or in different ones.x) and, as a function of their separation, their pairwise interactions are a mixture of ferromagnetic, trying to align the two spins, and antiferromagnetic, trying to make them point in opposite directions. Experimentally , σ=±1 indicates spin-up/down (dormitory A/B) and the interactions (preferences) {Jij=Jji} are chosen randomly and independently from a distribution Pexch(J). In the case of the Dean’s problem, H is a cost function to be minimized. In the case of the spin glass, H is the Hamiltonian energy function and in thermodynamic equilibrium at a temperature T, the probability of a microscopic state {σi} is given byT=0, the problems coincide,5 while equation , there results a complex behaviour. A similar complexity is present in many other systems described by a combination of competitive interaction and disorder, including situations where the disorder is effectively self-induced through ‘sticking’ of the dynamics.When the temperature Having already noted that the Dean’s problem is NP-complete, one might reasonably ask how one knows much about the properties of these systems. One answer is through computer simulation and another is through rather subtle mathematics and physical interpretation. Also, an important point in these developments is that, in physics, one is normally interested in typical systems and their statistical properties, rather than the ‘worst case’, and the NP-hard label strictly applies to the worst-case problem. One expects the properties of a ‘good’ large many-body system to depend on the statistical distribution from which its elements are drawn, rather than the specific instances that result. This does not, however, mean that the typical case problem is trivial—indeed, the situation is very much the contrary, both technically and conceptually—and, in fact, the insight gained from typical case study has been very influential in explaining several intriguing empirical features found in several optimization problems and in predicting others, as well as in stimulating the development of new powerful techniques applicable even for specific (non-averaged) instances of hard problems. Typical behaviour study enables a powerful (and novel) set of tools to be applied and often allows the determination of the value of the best achievable average cost without the need of an actual algorithm to achieve it in specific cases.7 most of these results have recently been proven with rigorous mathematics.8 However, some subtle aspects remain controversial for spin glasses with short-range interactions . Perhaps, most importantly, however, these studies have also led to wide conceptual insights and technical applications in an enormous range of complex systems.The detailed theoretical methodologies devised to study spin glasses are beyond the scope of this article; the reader is referred instead to books such as S. In macrostate S, the thermal average of microscopic variable σi is denoted by 〈σi〉S, which, in general, can be either positive or negative and varies for different i or S. One defines the ‘overlap’ between two macrostates S and S′ asWS is the probability of macrostate S. In general, the macrostates depend on the specific choice of the {Jij}, but for the SK model, both the averaged P(q) and its higher moments can be calculated, as also other more complicated distributions of the qSS′, such as the correlation of pairwise overlap distributions for three macrostates S,S′ and S′′. The first interesting observation is that beneath a critical ‘spin-glass ordering’ temperature, the average P(q) has structure, with weight at more than one value of |q|, indicating that there are many non-equivalent relevant macrostates, in contrast to the situation in normal single-phase systems , where P(|q|) is a single delta function. This structure is also known as ‘replica symmetry breaking’ (RSB), following the mathematical method first employed to investigate it  cannot yet be measured directly in normal thermodynamic experiments, but it can in computer simulations  e.g.xi denotes xi=1 (or true) and xi=0 . Here, the sections between round brackets are the clauses and the number of x alternatives to be satisfied within a clause is usually denoted K  and the problem is referred to as K-SAT. In random K-SAT, the choices of the allocations of the xi and K≥3  for α greater than a critical value αc.The topic of combinatorial optimization has already been introduced through the Dean’s problem, but in fact there are a very great many hard optimization problems of considerable interest and intrigue. One such class, much considered in computer science, is known as ‘satisfiability’. Here, the task is to find the values of  for K≥3 . The intσi1,…,σip where 1≤p≤K and the i are chosen from 1,…,N; this yields a graph structure that is a ‘cactus’ extension of the random graphs of 10 Already, therefore, one can expect analogous glassy effects in an attempt to solve the random K-SAT problem using a computer algorithm based on local operations. In fact, however, the p-spin version of the SK model exhibits further interesting behaviour beyond the p=2 SK original. In particular, there are several transitions as the temperature of this p-spin model is reduced. Two of these are thermodynamic; the higher, at T1G, is to a state known as ‘one-step replica symmetry broken’ (1RSB), corresponding to the onset of many non-equivalent macrostates {S} that are mutually orthogonal   , at whicαc separating SAT from UNSAT, in practice, computer programs based on local dynamical algorithms are unable to reach this limit but stick at a lower αD, the analogue of TD. The recognition of the existence and quantification of the resultant intermediate HARD-SAT region came through the application and extension to K-SAT of statistical-physics techniques developed for spin glassses  neurons  and, in the spirit of T characterizes a sigmoidal rounding of the response of an afferent neuron’s firing to the sum of its inputs from all its many feeding efferent neurons, via their corresponding synapses  are determined by the synapses, it follows that such synaptic response to external stimuli is essential to learn for future recognition and generalization—12Other examples of systems with some frustration and with both fast and slow dynamics can be found in other aspects of biological behaviour. For example, proteins are heteropolymers with competing interactions between their amino acids and both hydrophilic and hydrophobic elements. These competitions give rise to frustration. Consequently, random heteropolymers are, in general, poor folders , in contrast to proteins which must fold quickly. It has been suggested  that pro5.N ‘agents’ play a game in which, at each step, each agent makes one of the two choices (‘buy’ or ‘sell’) with the aim to make the minority choice over all agents.13 They make their choices based on a commonly available piece of ‘information’ but acted upon using personal strategies. In the original version, the information is the sequence of minority choices over the previous m time steps and each agent has two strategies, Boolean operators which, acting on the information string, yield an action decision, and the choice of which strategy to employ is determined through a personal point tally which, at each time step, rewards strategies that give the actual minority choice; in a deterministic version, each agent plays his/her strategy with the highest point tally at the time. The minority requirement corresponds to frustration, while disorder arises through quenched random choices of strategies allocated to the agents. Simulational studies of the ‘volatility’, the standard deviation of the number buying minus the number selling at each time step, show that, over many time steps, agents are effectively correlated with one another . Rather, the volatility has a cusp minimum at a critical value of the ratio of the information dimension to the number of agents α=D/N=2m/N, suggesting a phase transition at αc. Furthermore, the system is ergodic for α>αc, non-ergodic for α<αc.14 Another interesting observation is that the behaviour is almost identical if the true history of the last m time steps is replaced by a purely fictitious ‘random’ history, provided that each agent acts as though that fictitious history were true and additionally that it spans the same information space. Collective behaviour is determined by universal belief rather than truth!More interesting examples of complex systems are found in economic and financial systems, the topic of the new science of econophysics. In these systems, the ‘units’ are people (or groups of people or institutions), speculators, producers and consumers, competing and cooperating, having different individual strategies and inclinations  and effectively interacting through information, much of it commonly available . The full economic system is complicated, but an interesting minimalist model inspired by stockmarkets is provided by the ‘minority game’ (MG) . HoweveHMG can be minimized using methods devised for spin-glass thermodynamics, but for more general behaviour, both ergodic and non-ergodic, it is necessary to use techniques developed for spin-glass macrodynamics. At least, part of this procedure is possible using a generating functional method  is coloured noise determined self-consistently over the corresponding ensemble byG and C are ensemble-self-consistently determined response and correlation functions. Note that this ensemble has both memory and stochastic noise, whereas the original many-body problem had neither, and also that this mapping is valid for both ergodic and non-ergodic regimes  the inclusion of some of these effects will result in there never being any ‘equilibrium’, although there might be periods of relative stochastic quasi-steady state, albeit probably also punctuated by catastrophic crises, (iv) many of the drivers of cooperation involve information with no spatial-range restriction, thereby justifying mean-field theory treatment as a good approximation, and (v) one could investigate the introduction of global ‘friction’ and ‘bias’ mechanisms, as, for example, through the imposition of trading taxes and/or other political and legal constraints and incentives.The real world of finance and economics is significantly more complicated than the simplistic MG. However, (i) already one sees several conceptually important aspects that are likely to extend to reality; one is the inadequacy of the doctrine of ‘rational expectations’ in which it is assumed that, given the same information, every agent will make the same deduction and achieve equilibrium—it has already been pointed out that, even for the MG, there is no representative agent, but only a representative stochastic ensemble—and another is clear from the recognition that, even if agents could change their strategies, there is no optimal solution in which all have the same strategy, as, by definition, not everyone can be in the minority, (ii) the model could be extended in increments of ‘reality’ or complication, for example, including the accumulation and expenditure/gambling of varying degrees of capital, the effects of market impact, allowing for producers, who must both buy and sell in order to carry out their business, and for consumers,Indeed, one can imagine many other social-science problems involving many individuals, often grouped into intermediate local, political or national groups, where the interest is in collective behaviour under the influence of both heterogeneous inherent/cultural inclinations and national and international laws. Clearly, anticipated reactions to variation of the laws are of crucial importance in trying to anticipate the resultant ‘health’ of the whole. Minimal models and their incremental complication play an important role in separating the essential from the peripheral, in anticipating the likelihood of catrastrophes and trying to devise ‘dampers’ to avoid or minimize them. Disorder, in the guise of different inherited and culturally nurtured inclinations, such as risk aversion, honesty and emotionality, as well as mental and physical abilities, is part of the natural make-up of individuals, while frustration is a feature of their collective coexistence requiring a degree of compromise to better the whole.6.p-spin and Hopfield models) and Erdös–Rényi graph structures (K-SAT). Simple extensions within the same general classes would include amorphous solid structures and random graphs with probabilistic occupation of bonds ≈kγ−, where k is the degree of connectivity (number of other nodes connected directly to the one under consideration) and P(k) is its statistical distribution. A further extension concerns ‘networks under churn’ in which nodes both enter and leave dynamically—an example is found in peer-to-peer computer networks. In these networks, varying the relative rates of entry and leaving can lead to topological changes of global structure from scale-free to exponential , fully connected ), while α is of the order 10 and the range is usually finite; in the brain, there are of the order 1010 neurons, α is of the order 105 and the synaptic range is (relatively) long; in economics/finance, the number of interacting agents or trading units can be large, the number of effective interactions enormous18 and the range infinite, but effects of finiteness of N can be relevant;19 proteins vary in length from a few hundred amino acids  to the order of tens of thousands (e.g. titins in muscle).As emphasized earlier, our interest is in systems of a large number of individuals. Some models are analytically soluble, at least in principle or in part, in limits where the number of individuals 8.In this brief perspective, I have attempted to give an impression of the conceptual, mathematical, experimental and simulational challenges and novel discoveries that the combination of disorder and frustration in many-body systems has yielded, together with hints of some of the application opportunities their recognition has offered and continues to offer. The scientific journey of discovery has been highly interdisciplinary, and there is much more scope, in many directions.This paper has emphasized the start from and perspective of physics, but there have been other starts (and are surely other perspectives) in other subjects; for example, in evolutionary biology, the early work of Kauffman , 1993 onThese developments have also relied on a mutually supportive and productive interplay of three different modes of study. Two of these were previously established as methodologies, namely mathematical theory and experimentation on real systems, although the types of studies discussed above have led to many new approaches within these areas. But it has also seen the birth of and helped to drive as an equally important partner in the quest another mode of investigation that was previously little represented. This is computer simulation as an investigatory tool on idealized models, able to make observations not possible in real experiments; this is to be contrasted with the use of computers to simulate complicated ‘realistic models’ to emulate real experiments and with numerical analysis of theoretical expressions or experimental data, both of which have, of course, grown with the corresponding increase in technical computing power. For example, one can effectively perform experiments on systems whose microscopic properties are known exactly, typically corresponding to the same minimalist models as studied theoretically, without the complications of real nature and with the possibility to vary from real nature (e.g. different microscopic dynamics) and to employ probes (measurement methods) for which no analogue currently exists in the ‘real’ laboratory, but whose knowledge could check and/or guide theory. Complementarily, the need for such simplifications of ‘quasi-experimental’ systems and unphysical probes to understand complex systems has led to simulational techniques that might not otherwise have been developed, but which have proven very valuable.There remain many further opportunities for both scientific understanding and practical application. Some can already be anticipated, but others are yet to be thought of; the developments of the last three decades have led to so many remarkable and unanticipated discoveries that it seems inevitable that many more will arise. The next few decades offer the prospect of much richness for the scientific explorer and technological applier alike.


Throughout history, people have soothed their fear of disease outbreaks by searching for someone to blame. Such was the case with the April 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak. Mexicans and other Latinos living in the US were quickly stigmatized by non-Latinos as carriers of the virus, partly because of news reports on the outbreak’s alleged origin in Mexican pig farms.cue convergence and associative priming, through which many people likely conflated news of the H1N1 outbreak with pre-existing cognitive scripts that blamed Latino immigrants for a variety of social problems. We also used a transactional model of stress and coping to analyze the transcripts from five focus groups, in order to examine the ways in which a diverse collection of New England residents appraised the threat of H1N1, processed information about stereotypes and stigmas, and devised personal strategies to cope with these stressors.In this exploratory study we examined the psychological processes of Primary and secondary appraisals were mostly stressful or negative, with participants born in the USA reporting more stressful responses than those who were not. Latino participants reported no stressful primary appraisals, but spoke much more often than Whites or Non-Hispanic Blacks about negative secondary appraisals. When interactions between participants dealt with stigmas regarding Latinos and H1N1, Latinos in our focus groups reported using far more negative coping strategies than Whites or Non-Hispanic Blacks. When discussions did not focus on stereotypes or stigmas, Latino participants spoke much more often about positive coping strategies compared to members of these same groups.Twelve themes emerged in the final wave of coding, with most of them appearing at distinctive points in the stress and coping trajectories of focus group participants. Participants in all five focus groups went through a similar process of stress and coping in response to the threat of H1N1, though individual responses varied by race and ethnicity. Stigmatization has often been common during pandemics, and public health and emergency preparedness practitioners can help to mitigate its impacts by developing interventions to address the social stressors that occur during outbreaks in highly-localized geographic regions. I think that fear is not good for things. What fear does… is it causes one to make mistakes.— Latino focus group participanta immigrants from that country, and others, were often pronounced guilty by association. Soon, Mexican nationals and the products they produced were shunned across the globe; in the United States, some talk show hosts portrayed Mexican immigrants as disease vectors who threatened the health and security of other citizens  with a lot of other things, I think the government is just tryin’ to get people worked up.An African-American woman from City A, who listened more carefully to the news, complained about mixed messages from the highest echelon of federal government.Other people were sayin’, “Oh, it’s safe. It’s … I’m not gonna’ worry about it. And then Joe Biden comes on and he’s sayin’ “I’m not gettin’ on a… if it was my family member, I’m not… I wouldn’t put ‘em on a plane, or train or anything.” So then you’re like, “Well, who am I supposed to believe?”At one level, these comments provide evidence of an involuntary sort of rumination about the ultimate meaning of conflicting news reports. At another level, they suggest a fraying of trust for some focus group participants regarding the ability of government officials to adequately protect US residents during pandemic flu outbreaks – or, at very least, to communicate with them in a manner that is clear, concise, and sufficiently useful.Many people in our groups were skeptical about traveling to Mexico anytime soon. In most cases they simply shared an understandable impulse to stay away from the epicenter of a threatening disease. But the tone of the discussion shifted, at times, in ways that suggested an aversive response – a subtle form of stereotyping with respect to Latinos, including the propagation of lay theories about differing lifestyles in the US and Mexico. One interesting thread developed in the focus group that met in City B  when an anxious woman grilled another participant – a local health official – about the severity of the 2009 pandemic.F:The mass amounts of people dying. It’s, it goes back to my whole thing of… why is it that this country [USA] didn’t have the amount of deaths that other countries did? Are we doing something different? Are we more, um… do we have better resources through the CDC or something…M:We have… we have better resources.F:…to do that? But… how could we use that to be able to, to… to keep that from being as bad as, per se, Mexico the NEXT time it comes around… if it does?At another point in the discussion, this same woman confessed a sudden aversion to continuing with routine family outings at restaurants and other public facilities in a large city, located about an hour’s drive away.I kind of looked at it and said, “Well you know somethin’? That, that little evening out doesn’t have to happen this month or next month. We can push it off and wait… till later.”, “White America”) to that of people who live near Mexican pig farms, and then by physically avoiding places she deemed to be risky. The lone Latino participant in City B listened attentively to these comments and offered a bit of “push-back” regarding the economic impact of such behavior on restaurateurs and other Latino businessmen.Taken as a whole, these comments provide evidence of the speaker’s desire to avoid uncomfortable feelings about the threat of contamination – first by favorably comparing her own social reference group (i.e.cognitive restructuringnot the same as H1N1, most notably because the ASF virus has no direct impact on humans  the Father.F1:That’s true.F2:Amen.M1: I’ll always feel safe. Yes.Moderator:And the rest of you? Do you know what to do in case of an emergency?F1:Love God.F2:Love God and then call 911.F1:God can make a miracle right there.et al lost revenue because a trip that [F2] normally takes into [City A] to do something, she chose not to do. And, and that’s happening… because people are concerned about what happens at the restaurant. Yeah, we’re talking health here… but definitely, an impact on the economy.These exchanges in City B are significant because of the unexpected opportunity they offered participants to actively confront and contest certain implicit racial/ethnic biases that link Latinos to the spread of H1N1. This narrative took shape based on the comments of the group’s only Latino member, a well-educated and well-traveled businessman. Safe within the confines of the focus group setting, he had an opportunity to voice his concerns calmly and effectively – a discursive avenue that is often unavailable to members of racial/ethnic minority groups when discussing these matters in public.Our study has attempted to explain the ways in which two separate strands of concern about disease, and the “exotic others” who threaten to spread it, came together in the spring of 2009 to make it seem as though Mexican and other Latino immigrants were largely responsible for the spread of H1N1 onto US soil. It has also attempted to explain the ways in which some US residents either created, or coped with, the stigmas and stereotypes that soon became evident in this charged emotional environment. Our focus group data do not contain direct evidence of the involuntary stress responses that developed when participants first encountered news reports about H1N1. But comments about primary appraisals – their initial assessments about whether H1N1 would pose a threat to themselves or to loved ones – suggest that most participants did become emotionally aroused by H1N1 news. There were subtle differences in the precise kinds of stress these people mentioned, depending on their race and ethnicity. For instance, we found little evidence that Latino participants first considered the spread of H1N1 to be a significant threat to themselves or their loved ones. It is possible that respondents from City C found it difficult to discern such a threat, given the many stressors that people in their community face on a daily basis. Some Whites, on the other hand, became aroused by H1N1 news in a manner that suggested fear, disgust and anger. In terms of secondary appraisals, our focus group participants reported having more negative experiences than positive ones – and this trend was most pronounced among Latinos. While they did not perceive an immediate or outsized threat from the flu, these participants did question whether they had enough resources to combat it – noting the ubiquity of airborne viruses and the lack of social support mechanisms in the event that one actually becomes ill.did not focus on flu-related stereotypes or stigmas, Latino participants reported much greater use of positive-engaged coping strategies than Whites or Non-Hispanic Blacks. When stereotypes were part of the conversation, Latinos reported fewer positive strategies and many more negative-disengaged strategies. This observation can be interpreted, perhaps, by way of reference to David Williams’ assertion that we humans “tend to think with our hearts” – that the emotional context which surrounds sensitive public conversations has a powerful impact on whether participants feel empathy or antipathy toward people from other social groups.e Interestingly, Hispanic participants engaged in cognitive restructuring in order to make sense of H1N1 (and related stigma) within their own cultural framework. This allowed them to understand the prospect of present-day discrimination in light of their perceptions of historical discrimination at the hands of Whites. This coping strategy also became manifest when Latinos fused their sense of natural self-efficacy with strong religious beliefs, embodying the culturally-specific trait known as destino.In terms of voluntary coping strategies, both Whites and Hispanics addressed their anxiety over H1N1 news, at times, through affirmative problem-solving strategies. People from both groups also made conscious efforts to balance their desire to express feelings about H1N1 with a perceived need to do so in an even-handed way. When focus group discussions social stressors – threatening stimuli that can activate a set of latent fears some people may hold about members of other racial/ethnic groups. Finally, our work has implications for public health and emergency management officials who want to mitigate the impact of stigmatization during future outbreaks. It is important to note that anti-stigma interventions are not likely to curb this problem completely. Since subgroup identification is an important basis for sifting one’s way through a sea of complex interpersonal interactions, it is likely that these interactions will always embody some sense “us” and “them” [before the next pandemic hits. For example, they can teach their staff members about the harm that results from stigmatization; work with the media to tell their story in a way that does not single-out one group or location as the “source” of disease; create mechanisms for the rapid portrayal of accurate information on disease risk; and ensure that people who feel stigmatized have a means of expressing their concerns [While our results cannot be broadly generalized, they do contribute to the scholarly literature in at least three important ways. First, our work corroborates other studies that describe the racial and ethnic tensions that sometimes lurk beneath the surface of public discourse on H1N1. Second, we demonstrate that two strands of social-psychological theory, cue convergence/associative priming and a transactional model of stress and coping, can help public health practitioners understand more clearly that disease outbreaks are d “them” . Despiteconcerns . Second,concerns . These gconcerns ,57.psychological flexibility of all parties involved. According to Masuda et al, psychological flexibility is “the process of engaging with private thoughts and feelings without trying to judge, evaluate, alter, fix, down-regulate or change them”. These authors, and others, suggest that a psychologically flexible person is less likely to respond to negative thoughts or feelings with maladaptive coping strategies. Interventions based on these principles attempt to undermine the psychological impact of stigmatization for all parties involved by increasing mindfulness, acceptance and perspective-taking – including the development of empathy toward self and others [stigmatizer’s own psychological distress [et al have found that perceptions of “reverse discrimination” by White people may have significant health consequences, including the hastening of inflammatory processes that could increase the risk of cardiovascular disease [“this hurts you, too!” This notion is consistent with one of the basic tenets of stigma theory, which suggests that “undermining the distance or distinction between self and others is an important process in stigma reduction interventions” [Many individual-level interventions have been developed to combat stigma against certain population subgroups, including people with AIDS or mental illness. In general, these interventions have focused on educating people about the impact of stereotypes and stigmas, and on ways in which people can overcome their fears of social out-groups through sustained contact with members of those groups. Recent reviews of these studies suggest mixed results, especially in terms of sustainable effects over the long term ,37,58. Hd others -63. Effodistress . And Fri disease . Armed wentions” ,59. It ientions” ,64.destino seems important; suggesting, perhaps, that pandemic planners should direct more effort to supporting the religious and community organizations that can help local residents cultivate this resilient quality.With respect to traditionally vulnerable population groups, local practitioners should also take care to understand the particular coping resources that group members may soon be required to use; resources that may enhance their experience of self-control, optimism and social support. This is especially important when considering the case of Latino immigrants, as a prevailing backdrop of immigration-based stigma can hasten the choice of maladaptive coping strategies, including self-enforced social isolation. In addition, perceived discrimination and other psychosocial stressors may impact the body’s ability to ward off viruses, or to gain full protection from antiviral vaccines . When thIt is important to acknowledge the limitations of our study. Again, a small sample size means that our conclusions cannot be broadly generalized to other people and groups. And though we argue strongly for the validity of our results, we must note that they are based upon a fraction of the content available in our focus group transcripts; simply put, these groups were not designed to elicit discussion about stigmas or stereotypes. With all of this said, our study design was entirely appropriate for the task at hand. The focus group is an optimal research method for exploring people’s knowledge and experiences in their own language ,67. ThisOur study has highlighted some of the ways in which flu pandemics can be significant sources of individual and social stress. Apart from anxiety over personal and family health, and disruptions to jobs and social relations, flu-related stress can also lead to the stigmatization of marginalized social groups. Our data show how certain elements of stigmatization – perceived and actual – were present in four Massachusetts communities shortly after the onset of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. And apart from simply illustrating these problems, the data also suggest ways in which public health and emergency management officials can anticipate and mitigate the negative impacts of future pandemics. Armed with a thorough understanding the racial/ethnic makeup of a community – including historical patterns of stress responses and coping behaviors during emergencies – local officials can develop community-wide efforts to prepare for the possibility of stigmatization and, in some cases, to prevent it. They can work with churches and community groups to communicate about the coming threat in a way that eases social tensions and helps members of traditionally marginalized groups to draw upon their own unique resources in crafting resilient responses to pandemic outbreaks. Recent studies have also shown the importance of anti-stigma interventions that go beyond simple community-wide education about stereotypes and prejudice, and developing these interventions should be a key focus of future research. In particular, it seems important to address the underlying social and psychological factors that permit stigma to surface and persist – hence, the importance of interventions that bolster the psychological flexibility of both stigmatizers and the stigmatized.Community resilience during pandemics and other disasters is, in the words of Shoch-Spana, “a complex process of adaptation – a collective roll with the punches – that taps into a locality’s social and material strengths” and communal stories . The tasTo protect the health of all Americans, public health officials must do more to combat the historical tendency to conflate the spread of infectious disease with the innate characteristics of foreigners and members of racial/ethnic minority groups. When outbreaks occur, officials must hold this tendency in check until scientists are able to convey a more accurate picture regarding the etiology of the disease in question . ResearcaIn the present study, we use the terms Latino and Hispanic interchangeably.bIn labeling various coping strategies as positive or negative, we do not mean to pass judgment on any particular strategy or to imply that individual strategies are invariably good or bad.cSee Viswanath K, Minsky S, Ramamurthi D, Kontos EZ: Communication under uncertainty: communication behaviors of diverse audiences during the H1N1 incidence of spring and summer 2009. Unpublished report, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health, 2009.dIn the following sections, we use the letter F to refer to female focus group participants and the letter M to refer to males. In passages that reproduce dialogic interactions between three or more participants, we also use numbers to distinguish between various male and female speakers.eThese comments come from a keynote address by David R. Williams titled Taking Action to the Next Level: Needed Steps to Effectively Tackle Social Disparities in Health. This address was given on September 27, 2012 at the Leading the Way Joint Conference in Milwaukee, WI, co-sponsored by the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. For more on Williams’ assertions, see Pettigrew TF, Meertens RW: Subtle and blatant prejudice in Western Europe.Eur J Soc Psychol 1995; 25:57-75 and Williams DR, Jackson JS, Brown TN, Tones M, Forman TA, Brown K: Traditional and Contemporary Prejudice and Urban Whites’ Support for Affirmative Action and Government Help.Social Problems 1999; 46:503-527.The authors declare they have no competing interests.MM designed the present study, was the primary focus group analyst, and conceptualized the manuscript. VV is Principal Investigator for the LAMPS project (see Acknowledgements); he supervised all aspects of the present study and provided scientific direction and guidance. SM is Project Director for the LAMPS study; she was responsible for study implementation and supervised data gathering throughout the focus group process. All authors reviewed MM’s analyses and contributed to successive drafts of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/13/1116/prepubFocus group script.Click here for file


The area is just one of 32 across Toronto slated for storm sewer upgrades with a stringent new design standard. Whereas the old pipes were meant to capture the volume of water rushing off roofs, driveways, and streets during the kind of storm that would occur on average every 2–5 years, the new ones are tailored to so-called 100-year storms.“That’s an extreme design standard, no matter how you look at it,” D’Andrea says, and shoehorning the necessary infrastructure into a densely developed city like Toronto is technically challenging and expensive—especially considering that the old pipes were still well within their useful life spans. “We’re rebuilding systems in an area of the city that, all things being equal, we shouldn’t have had to worry about for several decades to come,” he says.But extreme weather calls for extreme plans. City officials deemed the new standard necessary after two huge soakers, one in May 2000 and an even bigger one in August 2005, lit up the city’s switchboards with thousands of complaints of flooding and raw sewage backing up into basements. In fact, no fewer than eight so-called extreme weather events, with rainfall exceeding that of 25-year storms,“There’s no denying that in this particular area we’re seeing these extreme storms more frequently than we have in the past,” D’Andrea says. “It’s basically a call into action.”Climate change is already affecting water utilities, according to a 2009 report from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, industry advocacy groups based in Washington, DC.Although managers typically think first of the effects on drinking water supplies, many are realizing that their wastewater systems (the focus of this article) also will be keenly affected, with profound potential consequences for public health. In many places, these systems are already under strain from population growth, development, underfunding, and maintenance backlogs.Hundreds of cities are already addressing climate change by reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases.This kind of planning is no easy task, and the stakes are particularly high when it comes to expensive water infrastructure. In a 2009 report, the U.S. Global Change Research Program predicted that over the coming decades many coastal areas will experience rising sea levels and increasing storm surges and that by and large the West and Southwest will grow drier, the Northeast and Midwest will grow wetter, and the entire nation can expect more severe storms.Changing conditions could affect waste-water systems in a variety of ways. Sea-level rise is one obvious concern in coastal areas, with waters having climbed up most U.S. shorelines by as much as 8 inches since 1958 and even more in a few places.Drinking water supply systems are completely separate from storm and sanitary sewer systems. Newer cities often also have separate storm and sanitary sewer systems. These usually route raw residential and industrial sewage to treatment plants, while stormwater is funneled, untreated, into local waterways. However, some 772 U.S. cities—particularly older ones in the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest—have combined storm and sanitary sewer systems.CSOs are regulated and permitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, which requires municipal permittees to design and implement long-term CSO-control programs with the goal of gradually coming into compliance with the federal Clean Water Act. The increased heavy rainfall predicted for many parts of the continent is likely to make it harder for cities to meet their CSO reduction goals.Sandra McLellan, an associate scientist with the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, has quantified the potential impact for Milwaukee. She and colleagues conducted a modeling study predicting that heavier rainstorms forecast for the region during the mid-twenty-first century could unleash up to 20% more untreated wastewater via CSOs.Failing wastewater infrastructure poses another problem: The EPA predicts that the percentage of U.S. wastewater pipe that will be in “poor,” “very poor,” or “life elapsed” (older than its predicted life span) condition will rise from 23% in 2000 to 45% in 2020.McLellan and colleagues have demonstrated one unexpected way that failing infrastructure is already causing pollution problems. In an article published in August 2011 the team reported finding very high human fecal pathogen levels in all 45 stormwater outfalls they sampled in an area of Milwaukee with a separate sewer system.The bottom line, according to McLellan, is that, between CSOs and failing infrastructure, climate change will not be good for water quality. “If we see on average more intense rainfalls or more extreme rainfalls or a higher number of rainfalls, we’re going to have more pathogens entering our waterways,” she says.People can be exposed to waterborne pathogens recreationally by swimming, beachgoing, boating, and other activities. Drinking water supplies can also be contaminated. For instance, an outbreak of some 1,450 cases of gasteroenteritis occurred on Ohio’s South Bass Island in Lake Erie during the summer of 2004. Judging by the menagerie of human pathogens detected, groundwater drinking supplies had become contaminated with sewage from local wastewater treatment plants and septic tanks after record-high rains earlier in the spring.A sizeable body of research, including some by McLellan, has shown a clear association between heavy rainfall and disease outbreaks.Toronto’s effort to prevent basement flooding during extreme rains is just one aspect of an ambitious 25-year plan focused on complying with provincial law to control CSOs, cleaning up the city’s waterways and beaches, and shaking off its unwelcome designation as an Area of Concern under the Canada–United States Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a title it has held since 1987.The plan, called the Wet Weather Flow Master Plan, originated in 2003 with a billion-dollar price tag, but in August 2011 the Toronto city council approved its next phase at nearly Can$3.5 billion. The plan includes many “green infrastructure” approaches that mimic natural processes, letting stormwater evaporate or percolate into the ground and avoid the wastewater system altogether.The plan also includes major “grey infrastructure” projects—that is, engineered facilities and structures. The biggest of these will duplicate a major, aging sanitary sewer artery to serve as a backup and provide additional stormwater capacity, as well as install tunnels, underground storage tanks, and a new treatment facility. This huge venture, which involves more than 14 miles of new tunnel, should virtually eliminate CSOs to the city’s beautiful central waterfront area and its stretch of the Don River—now among the most degraded rivers in Canada, according to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.Toronto’s efforts are already paying off. Eight of its 11 beaches have made a remarkable turnaround, earning “blue flag” status from the Canadian nonprofit Environ-mental Defence for meeting strict water quality standards.Other North American cities are on the same path, although only a handful have gone so far as to specifically account for climate change conditions in project designs. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, for instance, got into the game early with Boston’s immense Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant, completed in 2001. In designing the plant, engineers elevated it an additional 1.9 feet to accommodate sea-level rise predicted by 2050, the end of the facility’s planned life span.Rainy Seattle added 6% to the volume of planned immense underground CSO storage tanks to handle extra precipitation expected with climate change, according to Paul Fleming, manager of Seattle Public Utilities’ Climate and Sustainability Group. But with little certainty about exactly how much more rain will come, the city is also investing in a number of “no-regrets” meas-ures that will improve stormwater management no matter what, Fleming says. These include hiring a meteorologist and developing a real-time weather system called RainWatchLike many cities, Seattle is tackling its CSO problem on a variety of fronts to meet EPA water-quality mandates, and climate change has become one more compelling reason to do so, Fleming says. Numerous other cities have adopted that logic regardless of where they may be in the process of studying how climate change could affect them and what they might do to adapt. Among them are major metropolises such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and many are investing aggressively in green stormwater-control initiatives as a hedge against climatic uncertainty.Philadelphia may be unique in its heavy emphasis on green infrastructure.The city regards the plan not only as a solution to its formidable water-quality problems but also as a climate change adaptation measure, says Paula Conolly, a consultant at the Philadelphia Water Department. “Green stormwater infrastructure is certainly easier and more feasible to tweak to changing conditions than is a more traditional grey solution, like a tunnel. If our capacity needs to increase, if we need more infrastructure to handle increased frequency or intensity of storms, for example, then green stormwater infrastructure is the way to do that,” she explains. “Every dollar we’re spending there is a dollar spent toward climate change adaptation.”Green stormwater initiatives can offer other benefits, too. Green roofs reduce energy use and keep cities cooler, and parks and tree-lined streets improve property values and air quality.When it comes to improving water quality, traditional grey wastewater infrastructure undoubtedly works, says Tiffany Ledesma Groll, a consultant to the Philadelphia Water Department on the Green City, Clean Waters plan. But with a green approach, she says, “You have all these [positive] impacts on society on a social, economic, and environmental level. . . . Why wouldn’t you want to do it this way?”As researchers, city officials, and utility managers grapple with an environment that is changing around them, a new way of thinking about sewage and stormwater is emerging. Wastewater is coming to be viewed as a resource and not just a polluting nuisance. After all, it’s loaded with potentially revenue-generating nutrients,New technology is needed to harvest those resources efficiently as well as to eliminate such newly recognized forms of water pollution as active pharmaceutical ingredients and pathogens that can creep through treatment unscathed, says Rose, who coauthored the 2001 paper correlating disease outbreaks and heavy rainfall in the United States“Germany actually led the revolution in wastewater treatment in the 1800s,” Rose says. “What if the United States led the new revolution in technology that the world needs? It’s just an incredible opportunity.”