Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses; Abstracts of the 10th Indonesian Society of Interventional Cardiology Annual Meeting Jakarta, 23-25 November 201

Temporal perception deficits in schizophrenia: integration is the problem, not deployment of attentions

Patients with schizophrenia are known to have impairments in sensory processing. In order to understand the specific temporal perception deficits of schizophrenia, we investigated and determined to what extent impairments in temporal integration can be dissociated from attention deployment using Attentional Blink (AB). Our findings showed that there was no evident deficit in the deployment of attention in patients with schizophrenia. However, patients showed an increased temporal integration deficit within a hundred-millisecond timescale. The degree of such integration dysfunction was correlated with the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. There was no difference between individuals with/without schizotypal personality disorder in temporal integration. Differently from previous studies using the AB, we did not find a significant impairment in deployment of attention in schizophrenia. Instead, we used both theoretical and empirical approaches to show that previous findings (using the suppression ratio to correct for the baseline difference) produced a systematic exaggeration of the attention deficits. Instead, we modulated the perceptual difficulty of the task to bring the baseline levels of target detection between the groups into closer alignment. We found that the integration dysfunction rather than deployment of attention is clinically relevant, and thus should be an additional focus of research in schizophrenia

The structure of a resuscitation-promoting factor domain from Mycobacterium tuberculosis shows homology to lysozymes

Resuscitation-promoting factor (RPF) proteins reactivate stationary-phase cultures of (G+C)-rich Gram-positive bacteria including the causative agent of tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We report the solution structure of the RPF domain from M. tuberculosis Rv1009 (RpfB) solved by heteronuclear multidimensional NMR. Structural homology with various glycoside hydrolases suggested that RpfB cleaved oligosaccharides. Biochemical studies indicate that a conserved active site glutamate is important for resuscitation activity. These data, as well as the presence of a clear binding pocket for a large molecule, indicate that oligosaccharide cleavage is probably the signal for revival from dormancy

Access to improved water, human capital and economic activity in Africa

This paper examines the correlation between access to improved water, human capital and economic activity in Africa. It shows that countries with higher access to improved water tend to have lower mortality rate than those with lower access to improved water even they have the same per capita GDP, population characteristics and other time-invariant characteristics. One percentage point increase in the proportion of population accessing improved water is associated with a decrease of 0.45 and 0.89 in the mortality rate (calculated as per mil). Although there is a very small correlation between the access to improved water and GDP per capita, there is a strong correlation between the access to improved water and poverty. Countries with higher proportion of population with access to improved water are more likely to have lower poverty

Dynamic Carboniferous tropical forests: new views of plant function and potential for physiological forcing of climate

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138385/1/nph14700_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138385/2/nph14700.pd

Ceramide synthase TLCD3B is a novel gene associated with human recessive retinal dystrophy

PURPOSE: Previous studies suggest that ceramide is a proapoptotic lipid as high levels of ceramides can lead to apoptosis of neuronal cells, including photoreceptors. However, no pathogenic variant in ceramide synthases has been identified in human patients and knockout of various ceramide synthases in mice has not led to photoreceptor degeneration. METHODS: Exome sequencing was used to identify candidate disease genes in patients with vision loss as confirmed by standard evaluation methods, including electroretinography (ERG) and optical coherence tomography. The vision loss phenotype in mice was evaluated by ERG and histological analyses. RESULTS: Here we have identified four patients with cone-rod dystrophy or maculopathy from three families carrying pathogenic variants in TLCD3B. Consistent with the phenotype observed in patients, the Tlcd3bKO/KO mice exhibited a significant reduction of the cone photoreceptor light responses, thinning of the outer nuclear layer, and loss of cone photoreceptors across the retina. CONCLUSION: Our results provide a link between loss-of-function variants in a ceramide synthase gene and human retinal dystrophy. Establishment of the Tlcd3b knockout murine model, an in vivo photoreceptor cell degeneration model due to loss of a ceramide synthase, will provide a unique opportunity in probing the role of ceramide in survival and function of photoreceptor cells

Packing and covering immersion models of planar subcubic graphs

A graph $H$ is an immersion of a graph $G$ if $H$ can be obtained by some sugraph $G$ after lifting incident edges. We prove that there is a polynomial function $f:\Bbb{N}\times\Bbb{N}\rightarrow\Bbb{N}$, such that if $H$ is a connected planar subcubic graph on $h>0$ edges, $G$ is a graph, and $k$ is a non-negative integer, then either $G$ contains $k$ vertex/edge-disjoint subgraphs, each containing $H$ as an immersion, or $G$ contains a set $F$ of $f(k,h)$ vertices/edges such that $G\setminus F$ does not contain $H$ as an immersion

Topiramate in the treatment of compulsive sexual behavior: case report

BACKGROUND: Among the multiple mechanisms of action of topiramate, AMPA/kainate antagonism may be particularly interesting for the treatment of disorders characterized by conditioned cognitive and behavioral cue reactivity. CASE PRESENTATION: We report the case of a patient consulting primarily for obesity and cue triggered snacking, who responded well on topiramate at doses up to 50 mg. Coincidentally he reported on an improvement of compulsive nonparaphilic sexual behaviors (consumption of prostitution), which was also strongly triggered by environmental cues. Both addictive behaviors (snacking and consumption of prostitution) reoccurred after discontinuation of topiramate and again responded reintroduction of the drug. CONCLUSION: The present case report of topiramate's effect on comorbid obesity and nonparaphilic addiction could be interpreted as a further indication that topiramate acts on the common pathway underlying conditioned behaviors and seems to be a treatment of behavioral disorders associated with environmental cues

Osteoarticular Infection in Three Young Thoroughbred Horses Caused by a Novel Gram Negative Cocco-Bacillus

© 2020 Bernard J. Hudson et al. We describe three cases of osteoarticular infection (OAI) in young thoroughbred horses in which the causative organism was identified by MALDI-TOF as Kingella species. The pattern of OAI resembled that reported with Kingella infection in humans. Analysis by 16S rRNA PCR enabled construction of a phylogenetic tree that placed the isolates closer to Simonsiella and Alysiella species, rather than Kingella species. Average nucleotide identity (ANI) comparison between the new isolate and Kingella kingae and Alysiella crassa however revealed low probability that the new isolate belonged to either of these species. This preliminary analysis suggests the organism isolated is a previously unrecognised species