No abstract

As students increasingly opt for online classes, it becomes more important for administrators to predict levels of potential academic success. This study examined the intrinsic factors of emotional intelligence (EI) and personality to determine the extent to which they predict grade point average (GPA), a measure of academic success, among students attending community college. Stepwise multiple regression revealed that EI emerged as the most significant direct predictor of GPA. The addition of personality to EI significantly increased the amount of variance accounted for in GPA. Main conclusions are that soft skills are pertinent to academic success and may constitute a useful profile of the successful online student that could be applied to marketing, advisement, quality assessment, and retention efforts.

Mother-offspring (MO) relationship quality was investigated to determine its influence on the development of reconciliation--affiliation between opponents shortly after a fight--because it influenceswhat distressed youngsters learn about calming down. Data were longitudinal and cross-sectional observational samples of 38 MO pairs of monkeys across 24 months. An MO relationship quality index (RQI) classified each pair as secure or insecure. Reconciliation emerged in infancy. Secure youngsters had an appeasing conciliatory style, and insecure youngsters had an agitated conciliatory style. Conclusions are that reconciliation develops from the attachment behavior system and MO RQI is related to the particular conciliatory style youngsters develop by affecting how aroused they are by conflict and the subsequent socializing they seek to calm down.

Recent attention has been focused on the role of glomerular haemodynamic alterations in the progression of IgA nephropathy (IgAN) and other forms of chronic glomerulonephritis. In particular, glomerular capillary hypertension has been suggested to play an important role in this process [I]. Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEI) preferentially dilate the efferent glomerular arteriole thereby lowering glomerular capillary pressure and studies in experimental animals [2] and man [3] have now documented improvement in the rate of decline of renal function after treatment with ACE!. However, it is not clear whether such benefits of ACEI on renal failure in man is disease specific. Recent evidence has demonstrated that the correlation between improved renal function and lowering of glomerular capillary pressure is not consistent and indeed the protective effects of ACEI do not necessarily correlate with either control of systemic blood pressure [4] or with glomerular capillary pressure [5]. Moreover, ACEI appear to stop hypertrophy of nonrenal blood vessels independent of their vasodilatory effects [6]. Glomerular capillary hypertension may therefore be a consequence of glomerular damage rather than the reverse.Most trials of ACEI therapy aimed at assessing the effect on progressive renal disease have used conventional 'triple' therapy (~-blocker, diuretic, vasodilator) as a control group. However, relatively few prospective, randomized, control studies have compared ACEI with calcium antagonists (CA) which have many properties of an 'ideal' antihypertensive, particularly in view of their lack of adverse metabolic effects. These drugs lower blood pressure by reducing calcium

Two measures are reported of the nature or quality of a mother-offspring (MO) relationship during development using brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) as models. One is a qualitative classification of MO relationships as secure, resistant, or avoidant attachments. The other is an empirical ratio of relative affiliation to agonism called the MO relationship quality, or MORQ, Index. The two methods tapped similar relationship features so relationships high or low of a median split of MORQ values were heuristically labeled secure (n = 22) or insecure (n = 16), respectively. A comparison revealed extensive behavioral differences between secure and insecure MO relationships and suggested MORQ provided an objective, continuous measure of attachment security.