Being Grateful for My Stupid Little Life : Why We Need Movies

More and more I’m convinced the current cultural paradigm leaves us too thin. The practical and objective approach to reality doesn’t attend to the complexity and mystery of the created world; it doesn’t attend to the complexity and mystery of our humanity. Posting about how movies help make sense of our experiences from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world. http://inallthings.org/being-grateful-for-my-stupid-little-life-why-we-need-movies

Decontamination of 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence datasets based on bacterial load assessment by qPCR

Identification of unexpected taxa in 16S rRNA surveys of low-density microbiota, diluted mock communities and cultures demonstrated that a variable fraction of sequence reads originated from exogenous DNA. The sources of these contaminants are reagents used in DNA extraction, PCR, and next-generation sequencing library preparation, and human (skin, oral and respiratory) microbiota from the investigators

Joint Endeavor Toward Sustainable Mountain Development: Research at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

The sustainable development of mountain regions requires inter-and transdisciplinary knowledge. The Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research contributes to this global endeavor as part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and as a member of international scientific networks, together with local partners and stakeholders. As a joint effort of individual researchers covering multiple fields, this article highlights our views on mountains as research objects, the phenomena we investigate as parts of entire mountain systems, and the synergies and differences of the disciplinary frames within which we work

Developmental Hippocampal Neuroplasticity in a Model of Nicotine Replacement Therapy during Pregnancy and Breastfeeding

The influence of developmental nicotine exposure on the brain represents an important health topic in light of the popularity of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) as a smoking cessation method during pregnancy.In this study, we used a model of NRT during pregnancy and breastfeeding to explore the consequences of chronic developmental nicotine exposure on cerebral neuroplasticity in the offspring. We focused on two dynamic lifelong phenomena in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus that are highly sensitive to the environment: granule cell neurogenesis and long-term potentiation (LTP).Pregnant rats were implanted with osmotic mini-pumps delivering either nicotine or saline solutions. Plasma nicotine and metabolite levels were measured in dams and offspring. Corticosterone levels, DG neurogenesis (cell proliferation, survival and differentiation) and glutamatergic electrophysiological activity were measured in pups.Juvenile (P15) and adolescent (P41) offspring exposed to nicotine throughout prenatal and postnatal development displayed no significant alteration in DG neurogenesis compared to control offspring. However, NRT-like nicotine exposure significantly increased LTP in the DG of juvenile offspring as measured in vitro from hippocampal slices, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying nicotine-induced LTP enhancement previously described in adult rats are already functional in pups.These results indicate that synaptic plasticity is disrupted in offspring breastfed by dams passively exposed to nicotine in an NRT-like fashion

Systematic Review of the Empirical Evidence of Study Publication Bias and Outcome Reporting Bias

BACKGROUND: The increased use of meta-analysis in systematic reviews of healthcare interventions has highlighted several types of bias that can arise during the completion of a randomised controlled trial. Study publication bias has been recognised as a potential threat to the validity of meta-analysis and can make the readily available evidence unreliable for decision making. Until recently, outcome reporting bias has received less attention. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We review and summarise the evidence from a series of cohort studies that have assessed study publication bias and outcome reporting bias in randomised controlled trials. Sixteen studies were eligible of which only two followed the cohort all the way through from protocol approval to information regarding publication of outcomes. Eleven of the studies investigated study publication bias and five investigated outcome reporting bias. Three studies have found that statistically significant outcomes had a higher odds of being fully reported compared to non-significant outcomes (range of odds ratios: 2.2 to 4.7). In comparing trial publications to protocols, we found that 40-62% of studies had at least one primary outcome that was changed, introduced, or omitted. We decided not to undertake meta-analysis due to the differences between studies. CONCLUSIONS: Recent work provides direct empirical evidence for the existence of study publication bias and outcome reporting bias. There is strong evidence of an association between significant results and publication; studies that report positive or significant results are more likely to be published and outcomes that are statistically significant have higher odds of being fully reported. Publications have been found to be inconsistent with their protocols. Researchers need to be aware of the problems of both types of bias and efforts should be concentrated on improving the reporting of trials

Reporting bias in medical research - a narrative review

Reporting bias represents a major problem in the assessment of health care interventions. Several prominent cases have been described in the literature, for example, in the reporting of trials of antidepressants, Class I anti-arrhythmic drugs, and selective COX-2 inhibitors. The aim of this narrative review is to gain an overview of reporting bias in the medical literature, focussing on publication bias and selective outcome reporting. We explore whether these types of bias have been shown in areas beyond the well-known cases noted above, in order to gain an impression of how widespread the problem is. For this purpose, we screened relevant articles on reporting bias that had previously been obtained by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care in the context of its health technology assessment reports and other research work, together with the reference lists of these articles

Modeling psychiatric disorders: from genomic findings to cellular phenotypes

Major programs in psychiatric genetics have identified 4150 risk loci for psychiatric disorders. These loci converge on a small number of functional pathways, which span conventional diagnostic criteria, suggesting a partly common biology underlying schizophrenia, autism and other psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, the cellular phenotypes that capture the fundamental features of psychiatric disorders have not yet been determined. Recent advances in genetics and stem cell biology offer new prospects for cell-based modeling of psychiatric disorders. The advent of cell reprogramming and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) provides an opportunity to translate genetic findings into patient-specific in vitro models. iPSC technology is less than a decade old but holds great promise for bridging the gaps between patients, genetics and biology. Despite many obvious advantages, iPSC studies still present multiple challenges. In this expert review, we critically review the challenges for modeling of psychiatric disorders, potential solutions and how iPSC technology can be used to develop an analytical framework for the evaluation and therapeutic manipulation of fundamental disease processes