Multivariate Base Rates of Low Score on Neuropsychological Tests of Individuals with Coca Paste Use Disorder

Objective The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of low scores on eight commonly used neuropsychological tests to evaluate learning and memory, language, and executive functions in individuals with coca paste use disorders (CPUD) and to identify the differences with respect to a group of healthy nonconsuming subjects (HCs). Methods 162 Colombian adults with CPUD and a group of 162 Colombian adult HCs participated in this comparative study. Eight tests (eighteen test scores) were grouped into three categories: learning and memory, language, and executive functions. Each participant was categorized based on the number of low scoring tests in specific percentile cut-off groups (25th, 16th, 10th, 5th, and 2nd). Results In the learning and memory domain, 89.5% of individuals with CPUD and 55.6% of HCs scored below the 25th percentile on at least one of the five test scores, in the language domain, 80.7% of individuals with CPUD and 58% of HCs and in the executive function domain, 92% of individuals with CPUD and 67.3% of HCs. Having two or more scores below the 10th percentile or 10 or more at the 5th percentile shows an optimal cut-off for determining the sensitivity and specificity for discriminating between the two groups. Conclusions The individuals with CPUD had a higher percentage of low scores than the HCs in the domains of learning and memory, language, and executive function. It is important for clinicians to be aware of low scores in individuals with CPUD to avoid false-positive diagnoses of cognitive impairment

Aerosol size distribution and radiative forcing response to anthropogenically driven historical changes in biogenic secondary organic aerosol formation

Emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) have changed in the past millennium due to changes in land use, temperature, and CO2 concentrations. Recent reconstructions of BVOC emissions have predicted that global isoprene emissions have decreased, while monoterpene and sesquiterpene emissions have increased; however, all three show regional variability due to competition between the various influencing factors. In this work, we use two modeled estimates of BVOC emissions from the years 1000 to 2000 to test the effect of anthropogenic changes to BVOC emissions on secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation, global aerosol size distributions, and radiative effects using the GEOS-Chem-TOMAS (Goddard Earth Observing System; TwO-Moment Aerosol Sectional) global aerosol microphysics model. With anthropogenic emissions (e.g., SO2, NOx, primary aerosols) turned off and BVOC emissions changed from year 1000 to year 2000 values, decreases in the number concentration of particles of size Dp > 80 nm (N80) of > 25% in year 2000 relative to year 1000 were predicted in regions with extensive land-use changes since year 1000 which led to regional increases in the combined aerosol radiative effect (direct and indirect) of > 0.5 W m−2 in these regions. We test the sensitivity of our results to BVOC emissions inventory, SOA yields, and the presence of anthropogenic emissions; however, the qualitative response of the model to historic BVOC changes remains the same in all cases. Accounting for these uncertainties, we estimate millennial changes in BVOC emissions cause a global mean direct effect of between +0.022 and +0.163 W m−2 and the global mean cloud-albedo aerosol indirect effect of between −0.008 and −0.056 W m−2. This change in aerosols, and the associated radiative forcing, could be a largely overlooked and important anthropogenic aerosol effect on regional climates

Chaos around Holographic Regge Trajectories

Using methods of Hamiltonian dynamical systems, we show analytically that a dynamical system connected to the classical spinning string solution holographically dual to the principal Regge trajectory is non-integrable. The Regge trajectories themselves form an integrable island in the total phase space of the dynamical system. Our argument applies to any gravity background dual to confining field theories and we verify it explicitly in various supergravity backgrounds: Klebanov-Strassler, Maldacena-Nunez, Witten QCD and the AdS soliton. Having established non-integrability for this general class of supergravity backgrounds, we show explicitly by direct computation of the Poincare sections and the largest Lyapunov exponent, that such strings have chaotic motion.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures. V3: Minor changes complying to referee's suggestions. Typos correcte

The innate immune sensor Toll-like receptor 2 controls the senescence-associated secretory phenotype

Cellular senescence is a stress response program characterized by a robust cell cycle arrest and the induction of a proinflammatory senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) that is triggered through an unknown mechanism. Here, we show that, during oncogene-induced senescence (OIS), the Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) and its partner TLR10 are key mediators of senescence in vitro and in murine models. TLR2 promotes cell cycle arrest by regulating the tumor suppressors p53-p21 , p16 , and p15 and regulates the SASP through the induction of the acute-phase serum amyloids A1 and A2 (A-SAAs) that, in turn, function as the damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) signaling through TLR2 in OIS. Last, we found evidence that the cGAS-STING cytosolic DNA sensing pathway primes TLR2 and A-SAAs expression in OIS. In summary, we report that innate immune sensing of senescence-associated DAMPs by TLR2 controls the SASP and reinforces the cell cycle arrest program in OIS

Uneventful Disappearance of a Large Left Atrial Ball Thrombus with Enoxaparin in a Patient with Mitral Stenosis Associated with Pregnancy

An atrial thrombus is a relatively common echocardiographic finding in patients with mitral valve stenosis (MVS) and atrial fibrillation (AF). However, a “ball thrombus” or floating thrombus in the left atrium is a rare and specific entity associated with MVS. A 24-year-old woman with rheumatic MVS presented with complaints of progressive dyspnea and inferior limbs edema that began 23 days earlier after a caesarean operation for stillbirth carried out at 8 months of pregnancy. At the time of hospitalization, she was in New York Heart Association functional class III and the ECG showed sinus rhythm. Transthoracic color-flow Doppler echocardiography revealed a thick, stenotic mitral valve with a valvular area of 0.9 cm2, and an echogenic large left-atrial mass diagnosed as a free-floating left-atrial thrombus that was corroborated by transesophageal echocardiography. She refused surgery and was treated medically, and low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) (enoxaparin 80 mg/12 h) was given for 14 days and was discharged uneventfully on coumarin. Two days before discharge, a transthoracic and transesophageal ecocardiography showed disappearance of the ball thrombus uneventfully leaving spontaneous echo contrast inside the left atrium. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case showing disappearance of a giant left atrial ball thrombus with LMWH treatment in a patient with severe MVS during sinus rhythm associated with pregnancy

LHC Predictions from a Tevatron Anomaly in the Top Quark Forward-Backward Asymmetry

We examine the implications of the recent CDF measurement of the top-quark forward-backward asymmetry, focusing on a scenario with a new color octet vector boson at 1-3 TeV. We study several models, as well as a general effective field theory, and determine the parameter space which provides the best simultaneous fit to the CDF asymmetry, the Tevatron top pair production cross section, and the exclusion regions from LHC dijet resonance and contact interaction searches. Flavor constraints on these models are more subtle and less severe than the literature indicates. We find a large region of allowed parameter space at high axigluon mass and a smaller region at low mass; we match the latter to an SU(3)xSU(3)/SU(3) coset model with a heavy vector-like fermion. Our scenario produces discoverable effects at the LHC with only 1-2 inverse femtobarns of luminosity at 7-8 TeV. Lastly, we point out that a Tevatron measurement of the b-quark forward-backward asymmetry would be very helpful in characterizing the physics underlying the top-quark asymmetry.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures, 4 table

Paracrine cellular senescence exacerbates biliary injury and impairs regeneration

Senescence has been suggested as causing biliary cholangiopathies but how this is regulated is unclear. Here, the authors generate a mouse model of biliary senescence by deleting Mdm2 in bile ducts and show that inhibiting TGFβ limits senescence-dependent aggravation of cholangiopathies