Speech audiometry test with picture-related sentence lists in Modern Greek for partially hearing children

Objective: The aim of this study was to develop Greek Sentence Based Speech Audiometry Test in quiet test for Hearing Impaired (HI) children (G-SEBSAT). Methods: Seventy-six children were recruited following approval by the local ethics committee and after obtaining informed consent from their parents. The collection of vocabulary was based on showing pictures selected from popular reading materials in Greek to hearing impaired HI children. A grammatical content analysis was carried out to determine the average syntactic and morphological structures of the sentences used by the HI children. Ten picture related sentence lists were developed based on the vocabulary and the grammatical analysis, and recorded by a male native speaker of standard Modern Greek. These were presented to both normal hearing (NH) and HI children, and the average speech response threshold (SRT) as well as the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses (S50) were recorded in both groups. Sentence lists were validated with respect to the variability of their difficulty within each group, as well the test-retest variability of the respective SRT scores. Results: The average speech response threshold (SRT) across all lists for HI children was 65.27 dB and the slope of the SRT curve at the SRT level of 50% correct responses was 3.11%/dB. The corresponding results across all lists for NH children were 17.66 dB and 9.7%/dB, respectively. The SRT of HI children were strongly positively correlated, in a statistically significant manner with the PTA in both the test and the retest sessions (test: r=0.750, P < 0.0005; retest: r=0.753, P < 0.0005). The Spearman correlation of the rankings of SRT values and the slope values was 0.998 and 0.997 respectively for the HI and 0.939 and 0.88, for the NH group, indicating very low variability across the test and retest sessions. In addition, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the average SRT in NH children and the SRT residuals in the HI group indicated that the different sentences were of the same difficulty within each group. ((F(9,81)=0.401, p=0.930 and (F(9,93)=2.241, p=0.025 respectively). Conclusions: A validated sentence based speech audiometry test was created in Greek for the first time. SRT and S50 values for both NH and HI children are comparable to similar tests developed in other languages

The Conservatives and the Union: The 'New English Toryism' and the Origins of Anglo-Britishness

The Union has for over a century been one of the cornerstones of Conservative politics, but with the changes to the old union state in the last 20 years, its value has been increasingly questioned. While the Conservative Party remains committed to maintaining the Union, a new English Toryism is emerging, which has a strong continuity with an older English Toryism which was partially buried by the ascendancy of Unionism. English Tories have always considered the Union to be desirable, but it comes second in their thinking to the need to protect the sovereignty of the British state, the core of which is England and its traditional institutions. What is new about the contemporary Conservative Party is that there is within it the revival of an English Toryism which is happy to discard the older clothes of Empire and Union once so important to Conservative identity and which is unabashedly English in its focus. For an increasing number of contemporary Conservatives, there no longer seems to be any passion about defending the Union or even of continuing to think about the United Kingdom in Unionist terms

Naturally derived phenethyl isothiocyanate modulates induction of oxidative stress via Its N-acetylated cysteine conjugated form in malignant melanoma

This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this record. Data Availability Statement: Data are contained within the article.Phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC) is a secondary metabolic product yielded upon the hydrolysis of gluconasturtiin and it is highly accumulated in the flowers of watercress. The aim of the current study was to assess the role of a naturally derived PEITC-enriched extract in the induction of oxidative stress and to evaluate its anti-melanoma potency through the regulation of its metabolism with the concurrent production of the N-acetyl cysteine conjugated by-product. For this purpose, an in vitro melanoma model was utilized consisting of human primary (A375) cells as well as metastatic (COLO-679) malignant melanoma cells together with non-tumorigenic immortalized keratinocytes (HaCaT). Cytotoxicity was assessed via the Alamar Blue assay whereas the antioxidant/prooxidant activity of PEITC was determined via spectrophotometric assays. Finally, kinetic characterization of the end-product of PEITC metabolism was monitored via UPLC coupled to a tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Our results indicate that although PhEF showed very minor antioxidant activity in a cell-free system, in a cell-based system, it can modulate the activity of key enzyme(s) involved in cellular antioxidant defense mechanism(s). In addition, we have shown that PhEF induces lipid and protein oxidation in a concentration-dependent manner, while its cytotoxicity is not only dependent on PEITC itself but also on its N-acetylated cysteine conjugated form.Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.)Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics (Telethon Cyprus

Quantification of the Dental Morphology of Orangutans

Orangutans are believed to have close biological affinities to humans. Teeth being the hardest tissue provide useful information on primate evolution. Furthermore, knowledge of the pulp chamber and root canal morphology is important for dental treatment. A female Bornean orangutan and a Sumatran male orangutan skull were available for this study. Both of their dentitions, comprising 50 teeth, were scanned employing the cone-beam computed tomography for both metrical and nonmetrical analyses. Measurements included tooth and crown length, root length, enamel covered crown height, root canal length (posterior teeth), length of pulpal space (anterior teeth), and root canal width. Nonmetrical parameters included number of canals per root, number of foramina in each root, and root canal morphology according to Vertucci’s classification. It was found that the enamel covered crown height was the longest in the upper central incisors although the canine was the longest amongst the anterior teeth. Both the upper premolars were three-rooted while the lower second premolar of the Sumatran orangutan was two-rooted, with two foramina. The mandibular lateral incisors of the Bornean orangutan were longer than the central incisors, a feature similar to humans. In addition, secondary dentine deposition was noticed, a feature consistent with aged humans

Chlamydia psittaci st24: clonal strains of one health importance dominate in Australian horse, bird and human infections

Chlamydia psittaci is traditionally regarded as a globally distributed avian pathogen that can cause zoonotic spill-over. Molecular research has identified an extended global host range and significant genetic diversity. However, Australia has reported a reduced host range (avian, horse, and human) with a dominance of clonal strains, denoted ST24. To better understand the widespread of this strain type in Australia, multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and ompA genotyping were applied on samples from a range of hosts (avian, equine, marsupial, and bovine) from Australia. MLST confirms that clonal ST24 strains dominate infections of Australian psittacine and equine hosts (82/88; 93.18%). However, this study also found novel hosts (Australian white ibis, King parrots, racing pigeon, bovine, and a wallaby) and demonstrated that strain diversity does exist in Australia. The discovery of a C. psittaci novel strain (ST306) in a novel host, the Western brush wallaby, is the first detection in a marsupial. Analysis of the results of this study applied a multidisciplinary approach regarding Chlamydia infections, equine infectious disease, ecology, and One Health. Recommendations include an update for the descriptive framework of C. psittaci disease and cell biology work to inform pathogenicity and complement molecular epidemiologySusan I. Anstey, Vasilli Kasimov, Cheryl Jenkins, Alistair Legione, Joanne Devlin, Jemima Amery-Gale ... et al

Affine Gravity, Palatini Formalism and Charges

Affine gravity and the Palatini formalism contribute both to produce a simple and unique formula for calculating charges at spatial and null infinity for Lovelock type Lagrangians whose variational derivatives do not depend on second-order derivatives of the field components. The method is based on the covariant generalization due to Julia and Silva of the Regge-Teitelboim procedure that was used to define properly the mass in the classical formulation of Einstein's theory of gravity. Numerous applications reproduce standard results obtained by other secure but mostly specialized methods. As a novel application we calculate the Bondi energy loss in five dimensional gravity, based on the asymptotic solution given by Tanabe, Tanahashi and Shiromizu, and obtain, as expected, the same result. We also give the superpotential for Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity and find the superpotential for Lovelock theories of gravity when the number of dimensions tends to infinity with maximally symmetrical boundaries. The paper is written in standard component formalism.Comment: The work is dedicated to Joshua Goldberg from whom I learned and got interested in conservation laws in General Relativity (J.K

Transboundary water interaction III: contest and compliance

This paper serves international water conflict resolution efforts by examining the ways that states contest hegemonic transboundary water arrangements. The conceptual framework of dynamic transboundary water interaction that it presents integrates theories about change and counter-hegemony to ascertain coercive, leverage, and liberating mechanisms through which contest and transformation of an arrangement occur. While the mechanisms can be active through sociopolitical processes either of compliance or of contest of the arrangement, most transboundary water interaction is found to contain elements of both. The role of power asymmetry is interpreted through classification of intervention strategies that seek to either influence or challenge the arrangements. Coexisting contest and compliance serve to explain in part the stasis on the Jordan and Ganges rivers (where the non-hegemons have in effect consented to the arrangement), as well as the changes on the Tigris and Mekong rivers, and even more rapid changes on the Amu Darya and Nile rivers (where the non-hegemons have confronted power asymmetry through influence and challenge). The framework also stresses how transboundary water events that may appear isolated are more accurately read within the many sociopolitical processes and arrangements they are shaped by. By clarifying the typically murky dynamics of interstate relations over transboundary waters, furthermore, the framework exposes a new suite of entry points for hydro-diplomatic initiatives

Preserved cognitive functions with age are determined by domain-dependent shifts in network responsivity

Healthy ageing has disparate effects on different cognitive domains. The neural basis of these differences, however, is largely unknown. We investigated this question by using Independent Components Analysis to obtain functional brain components from 98 healthy participants aged 23-87 years from the population-based Cam-CAN cohort. Participants performed two cognitive tasks that show age-related decrease (fluid intelligence and object naming) and a syntactic comprehension task that shows age-related preservation. We report that activation of task-positive neural components predicts inter-individual differences in performance in each task across the adult lifespan. Furthermore, only the two tasks that show performance declines with age show age-related decreases in task-positive activation of neural components and decreasing default mode (DM) suppression. Our results suggest that distributed, multi-component brain responsivity supports cognition across the adult lifespan, and the maintenance of this, along with maintained DM deactivation, characterizes successful ageing and may explain differential ageing trajectories across cognitive domains

Multiple determinants of lifespan memory differences

Memory problems are among the most common complaints as people grow older. Using structural equation modeling of commensurate scores of anterograde memory from a large (N = 315), population-derived sample (www.cam-can.org), we provide evidence for three memory factors that are supported by distinct brain regions and show differential sensitivity to age. Associative memory and item memory are dramatically affected by age, even after adjusting for education level and fluid intelligence, whereas visual priming is not. Associative memory and item memory are differentially affected by emotional valence, and the age-related decline in associative memory is faster for negative than for positive or neutral stimuli. Gray-matter volume in the hippocampus, parahippocampus and fusiform cortex, and a white-matter index for the fornix, uncinate fasciculus and inferior longitudinal fasciculus, show differential contributions to the three memory factors. Together, these data demonstrate the extent to which differential ageing of the brain leads to differential patterns of memory loss