Parenting a child with congenital cytomegalovirus infection: a qualitative study.

Background: Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the most common infectious cause of congenital disability, which can cause lifelong impairments including sensorineural hearing loss and developmental delay. This study aimed to explore the experiences of parenting a child with congenital CMV and the impact this has on families. Methods: Ten parents living with a child with congenital CMV in the UK participated in semistructured interviews and data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The findings illustrate that delays in making the diagnosis of congenital CMV are associated with parental distress and lack of knowledge about CMV among medical professionals can exacerbate this distress. Parents expressed frustration about not knowing about CMV infection during their pregnancies and therefore not having the opportunity to take measures to reduce their risk of acquiring CMV while pregnant. The uncertainty about the long-term outcomes of children with congenital CMV adds additional emotional burden for parents. Family and wider societal networks have the potential to facilitate coping and alleviate stress, but the lack of awareness of CMV acts as a barrier to receiving support from family and friends. Conclusions: There is a need to increase awareness of CMV among medical professionals, pregnant women and wider society to improve the diagnostic process and to provide better support for families caring for children with congenital CMV infection

Charged Particles in a 2+1 Curved Background

The coupling to a 2+1 background geometry of a quantized charged test particle in a strong magnetic field is analyzed. Canonical operators adapting to the fast and slow freedoms produce a natural expansion in the inverse square root of the magnetic field strength. The fast freedom is solved to the second order. At any given time, space is parameterized by a couple of conjugate operators and effectively behaves as the `phase space' of the slow freedom. The slow Hamiltonian depends on the magnetic field norm, its covariant derivatives, the scalar curvature and presents a peculiar coupling with the spin-connection.Comment: 22 page

Psychological distress in cancer patients assessed with an expert rating scale

The purpose of this study was to investigate psychosocial stress in a large sample of cancer patients using an expert rating scale. Specific aims were to analyse the relevance of setting variables (type of clinic, contact initiative, therapy) and gender. A total of 6365 patients were assessed in 105 institutions. Univariate and multivariate statistical analysis of setting variables indicated that patients treated in palliative care settings showed highest distress scores compared to patients recruited from hospitals and outpatient clinics (P<0.001). Significant differences were also found for contact initiative (P<0.001); lowest distress was found in patients who were recruited by routine contact. Patients who asked for psychosocial support or who were recruited by the medical staff showed the highest distress scores. The analysis of therapy groups showed that patients receiving radiotherapy or surgery were not more distressed than patients without therapy. The most distressing treatment was chemotherapy. Gender had differential effects on clinic type (P<0.001) and contact initiative (P<0.001) but not on treatment and diagnosis. Expert rating scales are an important complement for self-assessment questionnaires to evaluate psychological distress of cancer patients in psychosocial studies as well as in routine medical care

Two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76 TeV

The first measurement of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. We observe a growing trend with energy now not only for the longitudinal and the outward but also for the sideward pion source radius. The pion homogeneity volume and the decoupling time are significantly larger than those measured at RHIC.Comment: 17 pages, 5 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 12, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/388

The 'antisocial' person: an insight in to biology, classification and current evidence on treatment

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This review analyses and summarises the recent advances in understanding the neurobiology of violence and empathy, taxonomical issues on defining personality disorders characterised by disregard for social norms, evidence for efficacy of different treatment modalities and ethical implications in defining 'at-risk' individuals for preventive interventions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>PubMed was searched with the keywords 'antisocial personality disorder', 'dissocial personality disorder' and 'psychopathy'. The search was limited to articles published in English over the last 10 years (1999 to 2009)</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Both diagnostic manuals used in modern psychiatry, the <it>Diagnostic and Statistical Manual </it>published by the American Psychiatric Association and the <it>International Classification of Diseases </it>published by the World Health Organization, identify a personality disorder sharing similar traits. It is termed antisocial personality disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual and dissocial personality disorder in the <it>International Classification of Diseases</it>. However, some authors query the ability of the existing manuals to identify a special category termed 'psychopathy', which in their opinion deserves special attention. On treatment-related issues, many psychological and behavioural therapies have shown success rates ranging from 25% to 62% in different cohorts. Multisystemic therapy and cognitive behaviour therapy have been proven efficacious in many trials. There is no substantial evidence for the efficacy of pharmacological therapy. Currently, the emphasis is on early identification and prevention of antisocial behaviour despite the ethical implications of defining at-risk children.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Further research is needed in the areas of neuroendocrinological associations of violent behaviour, taxonomic existence of psychopathy and efficacy of treatment modalities.</p

Student politics, teaching politics, black politics: an interview with Ansel Wong

Ansel Wong is the quiet man of British black politics, rarely in the limelight and never seeking political office. And yet his ‘career’ here – from Black Power firebrand to managing a multimillion budget as head of the Greater London Council’s Ethnic Minority Unit in the 1980s – spells out some of the most important developments in black educational and cultural projects. In this interview, he discusses his identification with Pan-Africanism, his involvement in student politics, his role in the establishment of youth projects and supplementary schools in the late 1960s and 1970s, and his involvement in black radical politics in London in the same period, all of which took place against the background of revolutionary ferment in the Third World and the world of ideas, and were not without their own internal class and ethnic conflicts

Evolution of sex-specific pace-of-life syndromes: genetic architecture and physiological mechanisms

Sex differences in life history, physiology, and behavior are nearly ubiquitous across taxa, owing to sex-specific selection that arises from different reproductive strategies of the sexes. The pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis predicts that most variation in such traits among individuals, populations, and species falls along a slow-fast pace-of-life continuum. As a result of their different reproductive roles and environment, the sexes also commonly differ in pace-of-life, with important consequences for the evolution of POLS. Here, we outline mechanisms for how males and females can evolve differences in POLS traits and in how such traits can covary differently despite constraints resulting from a shared genome. We review the current knowledge of the genetic basis of POLS traits and suggest candidate genes and pathways for future studies. Pleiotropic effects may govern many of the genetic correlations, but little is still known about the mechanisms involved in trade-offs between current and future reproduction and their integration with behavioral variation. We highlight the importance of metabolic and hormonal pathways in mediating sex differences in POLS traits; however, there is still a shortage of studies that test for sex specificity in molecular effects and their evolutionary causes. Considering whether and how sexual dimorphism evolves in POLS traits provides a more holistic framework to understand how behavioral variation is integrated with life histories and physiology, and we call for studies that focus on examining the sex-specific genetic architecture of this integration

Cellulose-Enriched Microbial Communities from Leaf-Cutter Ant (Atta colombica) Refuse Dumps Vary in Taxonomic Composition and Degradation Ability

Deconstruction of the cellulose in plant cell walls is critical for carbon flow through ecosystems and for the production of sustainable cellulosic biofuels. Our understanding of cellulose deconstruction is largely limited to the study of microbes in isolation, but in nature, this process is driven by microbes within complex communities. In Neotropical forests, microbes in leaf-cutter ant refuse dumps are important for carbon turnover. These dumps consist of decaying plant material and a diverse bacterial community, as shown here by electron microscopy. To study the portion of the community capable of cellulose degradation, we performed enrichments on cellulose using material from five Atta colombica refuse dumps. The ability of enriched communities to degrade cellulose varied significantly across refuse dumps. 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing of enriched samples identified that the community structure correlated with refuse dump and with degradation ability. Overall, samples were dominated by Bacteroidetes, Gammaproteobacteria, and Betaproteobacteria. Half of abundant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) across samples were classified within genera containing known cellulose degraders, including Acidovorax, the most abundant OTU detected across samples, which was positively correlated with cellulolytic ability. A representative Acidovorax strain was isolated, but did not grow on cellulose alone. Phenotypic and compositional analyses of enrichment cultures, such as those presented here, help link community composition with cellulolytic ability and provide insight into the complexity of community-based cellulose degradation.Biological and Environmental Research/[DE-FC02-07ER64494]/BER/Estados UnidosNational Science Foundation/[DGE-1256259]/NSF/Estados UnidosNational Science Foundation/[DEB-0747002]/NSF/Estados UnidosNational Science Foundation/[MCB-0702025]/NSF/Estados UnidosNational Institutes of Health/[T32 GM07215]/NIH/Estados UnidosUniversidad de Costa Rica/[]/UCR/Costa RicaMinisterio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Telecomunicaciones/[]/MICITT/Costa RicaUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison's Hilldale Undergraduate Faculty Research Fellowship/[]//Estados UnidosUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigación en Biología Celular y Molecular (CIBCM

Particle identification in ALICE : a Bayesian approach

Peer reviewe