Individual differences in anxiety and automatic amygdala response to fearful faces: A replication and extension of Etkin et al. (2004)

Trait anxiety refers to the stable tendency to attend to threats and experience fears and worries across many situations. According to the widely noticed, pioneering investigation by Etkin et al. (2004) trait anxiety is strongly associated with reactivity in the right basolateral amygdala to non-conscious threat. Although this observation was based on a sample of only 17 individuals, no replication effort has been reported yet. We reexamined automatic amygdala responsiveness as a function of anxiety in a large sample of 107 participants. Besides self-report instruments, we administered an indirect test to assess implicit anxiety. To assess early, automatic stages of emotion processing, we used a color-decision paradigm presenting brief (33 ms) and backward-masked fearful facial expressions. N = 56 participants were unaware of the presence of masked faces. In this subset of unaware participants, the relationship between trait anxiety and basolateral amygdala activation by fearful faces was successfully replicated in region of interest analyses. Additionally, a relation of implicit anxiety with masked fear processing in the amygdala and temporal gyrus was observed. We provide evidence that implicit measures of affect can be valuable predictors of automatic brain responsiveness and may represent useful additions to explicit measures. Our findings support a central role of amygdala reactivity to non-consciously perceived threat in understanding and predicting dispositional anxiety, i.e. the frequency of spontaneously occurring anxiety in everyday life

Impact of brief prewarming on anesthesia-related core-temperature drop, hemodynamics, microperfusion and postoperative ventilation in cytoreductive surgery of ovarian cancer: a randomized trial

Background: General (GA)- and epidural-anesthesia may cause a drop in body-core-temperature (BCT(drop)), and hypothermia, which may alter tissue oxygenation (StO(2)) and microperfusion after cytoreductive surgery for ovarian cancer. Cell metabolism of subcutaneous fat- or skeletal muscle cells, measured in microdialysis, may be affected. We hypothesized that forced-air prewarming during epidural catheter placement and induction of GA maintains normothermia and improves microperfusion. Methods: After ethics approval 47 women scheduled for cytoreductive surgery were prospectively enrolled. Women in the study group were treated with a prewarming of 43 °C during epidural catheter placement. BCT (Spot on®, 3 M) was measured before (T(1)), after induction of GA (T(2)) at 15 min (T(3)) after start of surgery, and until 2 h after ICU admission (T(ICU2h)). Primary endpoint was BCT(drop) between T(1) and T(2). Microperfusion-, hemodynamic- and clinical outcomes were defined as secondary outcomes. Statistical analysis used the Mann-Whitney-U- and non-parametric-longitudinal tests. Results: BCT(drop) was 0.35 °C with prewarming and 0.9 °C without prewarming (p < 0.005) and BCT remained higher over the observation period (ΔT(4) = 0.9 °C up to ΔT(7) = 0.95 °C, p < 0.001). No significant differences in hemodynamic parameters, transfusion, arterial lactate and dCO(2) were measured. In microdialysis the ethanol ratio was temporarily, but not significantly, reduced after prewarming. Lactate, glucose and glycerol after PW tended to be more constant over the entire period. Postoperatively, six women without prewarming, but none after prewarming were mechanical ventilated (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Prewarming at 43 °C reduces the BCT(drop) and maintains normothermia without impeding the perioperative routine patient flow. Microdialysis indicate better preserved parameters of microperfusion. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov; ID: NCT02364219; Date of registration: 18-febr-2015

Random noise in Diffusion Tensor Imaging, its Destructive Impact and Some Corrections

The empirical origin of random noise is described, its influence on DTI variables is illustrated by a review of numerical and in vivo studies supplemented by new simulations investigating high noise levels. A stochastic model of noise propagation is presented to structure noise impact in DTI. Finally, basics of voxelwise and spatial denoising procedures are presented. Recent denoising procedures are reviewed and consequences of the stochastic model for convenient denoising strategies are discussed

INFLUENCE OF LINEAR ALKYLBENZENE SULFONATE (LAS) AS ORGANIC COSOLVENT ON LEACHING BEHAVIOR OF PCDD/FS FROM FLY-ASH AND SOIL

The leaching of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) was measured in soil and standard fly ash column eluted with pure water and linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS)- water. The data obtained were used to evaluate the leachability of PCDD/Fs from waste dump like incineration residual slag and fly ash deposition. The leaching rate was shown to be increased significantly by using LAS water. The leachate contents of PCDD/Fs were above their known water solubility. Concentration of PCDD/Fs in the leachates as well as the relative leaching (calculated on the fly ash content) increased with increasing chlorinating degree and decreasing water solubility. LAS above the critical micelle concentration (CMC) probably enhances PCDD/Fs solubility

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Search for direct stau production in events with two hadronic tau-leptons in root s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of the supersymmetric partners ofτ-leptons (staus) in final stateswith two hadronically decayingτ-leptons is presented. The analysis uses a dataset of pp collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of139fb−1, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LargeHadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant deviation from the expected StandardModel background is observed. Limits are derived in scenarios of direct production of stau pairs with eachstau decaying into the stable lightest neutralino and oneτ-lepton in simplified models where the two staumass eigenstates are degenerate. Stau masses from 120 GeV to 390 GeV are excluded at 95% confidencelevel for a massless lightest neutralino

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente