The Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (SEPP) program at Delaware Biotechnology Institute serves as the major fountainhead for discourse concerning scientific research and its implications for human conduct.   The SEPP web page serves as the Science, Ethics, and Public Policy program's "cyber-infrastructure".  During the summer of 2008, Andrew Martin made a number of changes and additions to the SEPP website.  Cosmetic Changes included touching up images and adding new pictures and logos for projects and events, e.g, a November 2008 conference, Environmental Nanoparticles: Science, Ethics, and Policy and the Public Communication of Life Sciences project.  Formatting changes included rewriting all of the article links for uniformity.  The Content of the website was also improved with many new articles having been added.   Beyond his work in the information technologies, Andrew was able to aid in the research of two talks given by Dr. Thomas Powers in July.  They are titled "The Ethics of Biofuels" at Plants and Soils Montreal 08, and "Neuroimaging and Philosophical Moral Psychology" at the Institute of Clinical Research in Montreal.  Delaware EPSCOR (NSF) funded this work.

Oxytocin, is a nonapeptide known for its role in parturition, maternal behavior, affiliative behavior, and trustworthiness. Additionally it may have anti-anxiety effects, but these are not well documented. The present study investigated the anti-anxiety effect of oxytocin using fear-potentiated startle (FPS) in male rats, an animal model of post-traumatic stress disorder. The experiments used a Pavlovian fear-conditioning paradigm that conditioned light stimulus with unconditioned footshock. Anticipatory anxiety was then measured by presenting an acoustic startle stimulus in the presence or absence of the fear-conditioned light. Enhanced startle in the presence of the light compared to the absence of the light indicated FPS. In the first experiment subcutaneous injections of 0, 0.01, 0.1, or 1.0 µg/kg oxytocin were given thirty minutes prior to conditioning to test the effects on the acquisition of fear. In the second experiment the same doses were given thirty minutes prior to FPS testing to measure the effects on retrieval and expression of fear. The 0.01 and 0.1µg/kg doses of oxytocin given before either fear conditioning or FPS testing reduced startle both in the presence and absence of the light, but there was no decrease in FPS with any dose of oxytocin. The results indicate that rather than having an effect of reducing fear-potentiated startle there was a global decrease in startle, suggesting a decrease in non-specific anxiety and not a specific effect on learned fear. Funded by the Department of Defense Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder/Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program and the Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

Previous research has shown that the success of marriages can be predicted by examining positive and negative emotions during conflict tasks (Gottman & Levenson 2000). The Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) was developed and refined for coding a range of positive and negative affects predictive of marital outcomes (Coan & Gottman 2007). Based on observing marital interactions, Gottman and Levenson (2000) used SPAFF codes to predict early divorce based on the presence of negative affect and later divorce based on the absence of positive affect. The current study utilized behavioral observation of couple interactions to examine emotions that may be predictive of relationship outcomes (e.g., relationship satisfaction, divorce) two years later. Participants consisted of 120 heterosexual newlywed couples (married < 6 months) from Miami-Dade, Florida. Couples were videotaped participating in a warm-up task, two conflict tasks, and a love task, which are in the process of being coded using the SPAFF. The first step to analyzing this data is to train the coders to be reliable with each other as well as with an expert SPAFF researcher. Most research of this kind has focused on positive and negative affects in the context of conflict interactions, whereas the current study will also focus on the presence of positive and negative affects in a positive (i.e., love) task. While still in the training stages, we expect to replicate past findings focusing solely on affects from newlywed conflict discussions and extend findings by including a positive, loving discussion.