Attention Performance in an Epidemiological Sample of Urban Children: The Role of Gender and Verbal Intelligence

We administered a comprehensive attentional battery to an epidemiologically defined sample of 435 first and second-grade children to assess the influence of gender and verbal intelligence on attention. The battery included three versions of the continuous performance test (CPT), two digit cancellation tasks, three subtests from the WISC-R, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The results indicated that both gender and intelligence had an impact on attentional performance. Girls performed better than boys; they made fewer errors on the CPT and obtained higher scores on the digit cancellation task and the Coding subtest of the WISC-R. Children with higher verbal intelligence also performed better on the attentional tests, but this advantage was not observed across measures or levels of performance. For example, children with limited verbal skills performed significantly worse than their peers only in measures with high processing demands(the degraded CPT and the distraction version of the digit cancellation task)

“There was something very peculiar about Doc…”: Deciphering Queer Intimacy in Representations of Doc Holliday

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in American Nineteenth-Century History on 8-12-14, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2014.971481This essay discusses representations of male intimacy in life-writing about consumptive gunfighter John Henry “Doc” Holliday (1851-1887). I argue that twentieth-century commentators rarely appreciated the historical specificity of Holliday’s friendships in a frontier culture that not only normalized but actively celebrated same-sex intimacy. Indeed, Holliday lived on the frayed edges of known nineteenth-century socio-sexual norms, and his interactions with other men were further complicated by his vicious reputation and his disability. His short life and eventful afterlife exposes the gaps in available evidence – and the flaws in our ability to interpret it. Yet something may still be gleaned from the early newspaper accounts of Holliday. Having argued that there is insufficient evidence to justify positioning him within modern categories of hetero/homosexuality, I analyze the language used in pre-1900 descriptions of first-hand encounters with Holliday to illuminate the consumptive gunfighter’s experience of intimacy, if not its meaning

RANTES/CCL5 and risk for coronary events: Results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg case-cohort, Athero-express and CARDIoGRAM studies

Background: The chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted)/CCL5 is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in mice, whereas less is known in humans. We hypothesised that its relevance for atherosclerosis should be reflected by associations between CCL5 gene variants, RANTES serum concentrations and protein levels in atherosclerotic plaques and risk for coronary events. Methods and Findings: We conducted a case-cohort study within the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Baseline RANTES serum levels were measured in 363 individuals with incident coronary events and 1,908 non-cases (mean follow-up: 10.2±

Balanced-force shim system for correcting magnetic-field inhomogeneities in the heart due to implanted cardioverter defibrillators

BackgroundIn the US, 1.4 million people have implanted ICDs for reducing the risk of sudden death due to ventricular arrhythmias. Cardiac MRI (cMR) is of particular interest in the ICD patient population as cMR is the optimal imaging modality for distinguishing cardiac conditions that predispose to sudden death, and it is the best method to plan and guide therapy. However, all ICDs contain a ferromagnetic transformer which imposes a large inhomogeneous magnetic field in sections of the heart, creating large image voids that can mask important pathology. A shim system was devised to resolve these ICD issues. A shim coil system (CSS) that corrects ICD artifacts over a user-selected Region-of-Interest (ROI), was constructed and validated.MethodsA shim coil was constructed that can project a large magnetic field for distances of ~15 cm. The shim-coil can be positioned safely anywhere within the scanner bore. The CSS includes a cantilevered beam to hold the shim coil. Remotely controlled MR-conditional motors allow 2 mm-accuracy three-dimensional shim-coil position. The shim coil is located above the subjects and the imaging surface-coils. Interaction of the shim coil with the scanner’s gradients was eliminated with an amplifier that is in a constant current mode. Coupling with the scanners’ radio-frequency (rf) coils, was reduced with shielding, low-pass filters, and cable shield traps. Software, which utilizes magnetic field (B0) mapping of the ICD inhomogeneity, computes the optimal location for the shim coil and its corrective current. ECG gated single- and multiple-cardiac-phase 2D GRE and SSFP sequences, as well as 3D ECG-gated respiratory-navigated IR-GRE (LGE) sequences were tested in phantoms and N = 3 swine with overlaid ICDs.ResultsWith all cMR sequences, the system reduced artifacts from >100 ppm to <25 ppm inhomogeneity, which permitted imaging of the entire left ventricle in swine with ICD-related voids. Continuously acquired Gradient recalled echo or Steady State Free Precession images were used to interactively adjust the shim current and coil location.ConclusionThe shim system reduced large field inhomogeneities due to implanted ICDs and corrected most ICD-related image distortions. Externally-controlled motorized translation of the shim coil simplified its utilization, supporting an efficient cardiac MRI workflow

Pupillary Light Reflexes are Associated with Autonomic Dysfunction in Bolivian Diabetics But Not Chagas Disease Patients

Autonomic dysfunction is common in Chagas disease and diabetes. Patients with either condition complicated by cardiac autonomic dysfunction face increased mortality, but no clinical predictors of autonomic dysfunction exist. Pupillary light reflexes (PLRs) may identify such patients early, allowing for intensified treatment. To evaluate the significance of PLRs, adults were recruited from the outpatient endocrine, cardiology, and surgical clinics at a Bolivian teaching hospital. After testing for Chagas disease and diabetes, participants completed conventional autonomic testing (CAT) evaluating their cardiovascular responses to Valsalva, deep breathing, and orthostatic changes. PLRs were measured using specially designed goggles, then CAT and PLRs were compared as measures of autonomic dysfunction. This study analyzed 163 adults, including 96 with Chagas disease, 35 patients with diabetes, and 32 controls. PLRs were not significantly different between Chagas disease patients and controls. Patients with diabetes had longer latency to onset of pupil constriction, slower maximum constriction velocities, and smaller orthostatic ratios than nonpatients with diabetes. PLRs correlated poorly with CAT results. A PLR-based clinical risk score demonstrated a 2.27-fold increased likelihood of diabetes complicated by autonomic dysfunction compared with the combination of blood tests, CAT, and PLRs (sensitivity 87.9%, specificity 61.3%). PLRs represent a promising tool for evaluating subclinical neuropathy in patients with diabetes without symptomatic autonomic dysfunction. Pupillometry does not have a role in the evaluation of Chagas disease patients

Discovering pathways by orienting edges in protein interaction networks

Modern experimental technology enables the identification of the sensory proteins that interact with the cells’ environment or various pathogens. Expression and knockdown studies can determine the downstream effects of these interactions. However, when attempting to reconstruct the signaling networks and pathways between these sources and targets, one faces a substantial challenge. Although pathways are directed, high-throughput protein interaction data are undirected. In order to utilize the available data, we need methods that can orient protein interaction edges and discover high-confidence pathways that explain the observed experimental outcomes. We formalize the orientation problem in weighted protein interaction graphs as an optimization problem and present three approximation algorithms based on either weighted Boolean satisfiability solvers or probabilistic assignments. We use these algorithms to identify pathways in yeast. Our approach recovers twice as many known signaling cascades as a recent unoriented signaling pathway prediction technique and over 13 times as many as an existing network orientation algorithm. The discovered paths match several known signaling pathways and suggest new mechanisms that are not currently present in signaling databases. For some pathways, including the pheromone signaling pathway and the high-osmolarity glycerol pathway, our method suggests interesting and novel components that extend current annotations

A study of the relationships between oligonucleotide properties and hybridization signal intensities from NimbleGen microarray datasets

Well-defined relationships between oligonucleotide properties and hybridization signal intensities (HSI) can aid chip design, data normalization and true biological knowledge discovery. We clarify these relationships using the data from two microarray experiments containing over three million probes from 48 high-density chips. We find that melting temperature (Tm) has the most significant effect on HSI while length for the long oligonucleotides studied has very little effect. Analysis of positional effect using a linear model provides evidence that the protruding ends of probes contribute more than tethered ends to HSI, which is further validated by specifically designed match fragment sliding and extension experiments. The impact of sequence similarity (SeqS) on HSI is not significant in comparison with other oligonucleotide properties. Using regression and regression tree analysis, we prioritize these oligonucleotide properties based on their effects on HSI. The implications of our discoveries for the design of unbiased oligonucleotides are discussed. We propose that isothermal probes designed by varying the length is a viable strategy to reduce sequence bias, though imposing selection constraints on other oligonucleotide properties is also essential

RANTES/CCL5 and Risk for Coronary Events: Results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg Case-Cohort, Athero-Express and CARDIoGRAM Studies

BACKGROUND: The chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted)/CCL5 is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in mice, whereas less is known in humans. We hypothesised that its relevance for atherosclerosis should be reflected by associations between CCL5 gene variants, RANTES serum concentrations and protein levels in atherosclerotic plaques and risk for coronary events. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a case-cohort study within the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Baseline RANTES serum levels were measured in 363 individuals with incident coronary events and 1,908 non-cases (mean follow-up: 10.2±4.8 years). Cox proportional hazard models adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, metabolic factors and lifestyle factors revealed no significant association between RANTES and incident coronary events (HR [95% CI] for increasing RANTES tertiles 1.0, 1.03 [0.75-1.42] and 1.11 [0.81-1.54]). None of six CCL5 single nucleotide polymorphisms and no common haplotype showed significant associations with coronary events. Also in the CARDIoGRAM study (>22,000 cases, >60,000 controls), none of these CCL5 SNPs was significantly associated with coronary artery disease. In the prospective Athero-Express biobank study, RANTES plaque levels were measured in 606 atherosclerotic lesions from patients who underwent carotid endarterectomy. RANTES content in atherosclerotic plaques was positively associated with macrophage infiltration and inversely associated with plaque calcification. However, there was no significant association between RANTES content in plaques and risk for coronary events (mean follow-up 2.8±0.8 years). CONCLUSIONS: High RANTES plaque levels were associated with an unstable plaque phenotype. However, the absence of associations between (i) RANTES serum levels, (ii) CCL5 genotypes and (iii) RANTES content in carotid plaques and either coronary artery disease or incident coronary events in our cohorts suggests that RANTES may not be a novel coronary risk biomarker. However, the potential relevance of RANTES levels in platelet-poor plasma needs to be investigated in further studies