Papers

Recent advances in technology have allowed scientists to gain important insights into the mechanisms responsible for the psychobiological response to stress; however, despite impressive scientific progress in biology, little headway has been made toward the understanding of stress in its wider, environmental context. As a result, the present study evaluates an ample selection of traditional and emerging paradigms on the subject of stress, and posits a new research method; broad enough in scope to concurrently address the specificity of biological mechanisms and the abstract dynamics of natural systems. To that end, a new model based on meta-landscape architecture is introduced and demonstrated via a recent survey by the American Psychological Association entitled Stress in America. Results confirm that using meta-landscape architecture, an integrated model of dissimilar systems can be successfully conceptualized, built and tested with statistical data.

Asthma is generally described as an immunological reaction to a broad range of apparently irreconcilable, environmental triggers. Among these are, airborne particulate matter, greenhouse gases, biological pathogens, as well as social and psychological stressors. Epidemiological research of asthma among such a broad range of etiological agents and possible triggers, has produced an assortment of conflicting correlations; to be sure, the quest to find the single-cause of asthma has drowned in a sea of confounding variables. The present study attempts to rationalize the otherwise chaotic elements at work within the asthmatic space, via a theoretical model that proposes a plausible mediating mechanism between the environment and the individual asthma sufferer. It is specifically argued, that the fight or flight response is the mediating instrument that unifies the presentation of asthma.