Interictal epileptiform discharges have an independent association with cognitive impairment in children with lesional epilepsy

OBJECTIVES: The relative contribution of interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) to cognitive dysfunction in comparison with the underlying brain pathology is not yet understood in children with lesional focal epilepsy. METHODS: The current study investigated the association of IEDs with intellectual functioning in 103 children with medication-resistant focal epilepsy. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to determine the independent contribution of IED features on intellectual functioning, after controlling for effects of lesional pathology, epilepsy duration, and medication. Exploratory analyses were conducted for language and memory scores as well as academic skills available in a subset of participants. RESULTS: The results reveal that IEDs have a negative association with IQ with independent, additive effects documented for frequent and bilaterally distributed IEDs as well as discharge enhancement in sleep. Left-lateralized IEDs had a prominent effect on verbal intelligence, in excess of the influence of left-sided brain pathology. These effects extended to other cognitive functions, most prominently for sleep-enhanced IEDs to be associated with deficits in expressive and receptive language, reading, spelling and numerical skills. SIGNIFICANCE: Overall, IED effects on cognition were of a magnitude similar to lesional influences or drug effects (topiramate use). This study demonstrates an association between IEDs and cognitive dysfunction, independent of the underlying focal brain pathology

Does sleep benefit memory consolidation in children with focal epilepsy?

OBJECTIVE: Children with epilepsy have high rates of both cognitive impairment and sleep disruption. It is thus assumed that sleep-dependent memory consolidation is vulnerable to ongoing epileptic activity, but direct evidence of this is limited. METHODS: We performed a within-subject comparison of memory retention across intervals of wake or overnight sleep. Healthy children (n = 21, 6-16 years, 12 female) and children with focal epilepsy (n = 22, 6-16 years, 9 female) performed verbal and visuospatial memory tasks under each condition. Sleep was assessed with electroencephalography (EEG) polysomnography during the overnight interval. Interictal discharges were quantified manually. RESULTS: Memory retention was greater in the sleep condition in both the verbal (F1,39 = 10.8, p = 0.002, Cohen's d = 0.67) and the visuospatial (F1,36 = 4.23, p = 0.05, Cohen's d = 0.40) tasks, with no significant interaction of group by condition in either task. Across the total sample, gain in memory retention with sleep in the verbal task correlated with duration of slow wave sleep (r = 0.4, p = 0.01). In patients, sleep-dependent memory consolidation was negatively correlated with interictal discharge rate in both the verbal (ρ = -0.49, p = 0.04) and visuospatial (ρ = -0.45, p = 0.08) tasks. On post hoc analysis, a longer history of epilepsy (r = 0.53, p = 0.01) and a temporal (t10 = 1.8, p = 0.1, Cohen's d = 0.86) rather than an extratemporal seizure focus (t10 = 0.8, p = 0.4, Cohen's d = 0.30) was associated with greater contribution of sleep to verbal memory retention. SIGNIFICANCE: We have demonstrated that memory consolidation in children with focal epilepsy benefits from sleep, showing the same correlation with slow wave sleep as in healthy children, but an inverse relationship with the interictal discharge load during sleep. This mechanism appears to be increasingly recruited with longer duration of illness, indicating a resilient homeostatic function which may be harnessed to aid learning

Auditory processing following infantile spasms: An event-related potential study

OBJECTIVES: To investigate acoustic auditory processing in patients with recent infantile spasms (IS). METHODS: Patients (n = 22; 12 female; median age 8 months; range 5–11 months) had normal preceding development, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and neurometabolic testing (West syndrome of unknown cause, uWS). Controls were healthy babies (n = 22; 11 female; median age 6 months; range 3–12 months). Event-related potentials (ERPs) and psychometry (Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Second Edition, BSID-II) took place at a month following IS remission. RESULTS: Following a repeated pure tone, uWS patients showed less suppression of the N100 at the mid-temporal electrodes (p = 0.006), and a prolonged response latency (p = 0.019). Their novelty P300 amplitude over the mid-temporal electrodes was halved (p = 0.001). The peak of the novelty P300 to environmental broadband sounds emerged later over the left temporal lobe in patients (p = 0.015), the lag correlating with duration of spasms (r = 0.547, p = 0.015). BSID-II scores were lower in patients (p < 0.001), with no correlation to ERP. SIGNIFICANCE: Complex acoustic information is processed poorly following IS. This would impair language. Treatment did not reverse this phenomenon, but may have limited its severity. The data are most consistent with altered connectivity of the cortical acoustic processing areas induced by IS

Exploring mechanisms for spring bloom evolution: contrasting 2008 and 2012 blooms in the southwest Pacific Ocean

Observations from two research cruises made in 2008 and 2012 to east of New Zealand are put into context with satellite data to contrast and compare surface chlorophyll a evolution in the two years in order to explore mechanisms of phytoplankton bloom development in the southwest Pacific Ocean. In 2008, surface chlorophyll a largely followed the long-term climatological cycle, and 2008 can be considered a canonical year, where the autumn bloom is triggered by increasing vertical mixing at the end of summer and the spring bloom is triggered by decreasing vertical mixing at the end of winter. In contrast, 2012 was anomalous in that there was no autumn bloom, and in early spring there were several periods of sustained increase in surface chlorophyll a that did not become fully developed spring blooms. (In this region, we consider spring blooms to occur when surface chlorophyll a exceeds 0.5 mg m-3). These events can be related to alternating episodes of increased or decreased vertical mixing. The eventual spring bloom in October was driven by increased ocean cooling and wind stress (i.e. increased mixing) and paradoxically was driven by mechanisms considered more appropriate for autumn rather than spring blooms.New Zealand Government (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research to S.M.C., K.S. and P.W.B.); Australian Research Council (DP110100108, DP0770820 and DP130100679 to R.S. and M.J.E.); Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC NE/H004475/1 awarded to Maeve Lohan to support A.M.); Government of the Principality of Monaco (S.G.S.)

Weighted Banach spaces of harmonic functions

“The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13398-012-0109-z."We study Banach spaces of harmonic functions on open sets of or endowed with weighted supremum norms. We investigate the harmonic associated weight defined naturally as the analogue of the holomorphic associated weight introduced by Bierstedt, Bonet, and Taskinen and we compare them. We study composition operators with holomorphic symbol between weighted Banach spaces of pluriharmonic functions characterizing the continuity, the compactness and the essential norm of composition operators among these spaces in terms of associated weights.The research of the first author was partially supported by MEC and FEDER Project MTM2010-15200 and by GV project ACOMP/2012/090.Jorda Mora, E.; Zarco García, AM. (2014). Weighted Banach spaces of harmonic functions. Revista de la Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales. Serie A. Matematicas. 108(2):405-418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13398-012-0109-zS4054181082Axler, S., Bourdon, P., Ramey, W.: Harmonic Function Theory, 2nd edn. Springer, Berlin (2001)Bierstedt, K.D., Bonet, J., Galbis, A.: Weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on balanced domains. Mich. Math. J. 40(2), 271–297 (1993)Bierstedt, K.D., Bonet, J., Taskinen, J.: Associated weights and spaces of holomorphic functions. Stud. Math. 127(2), 137–168 (1998)Bierstedt, K.D., Summers, W.H.: Biduals of weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 54(1), 70–79 (1993)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M.: Essential norm and weak compactness of composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. Can. Math. Bull. 42(2), 139–148 (1999)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M.: Weakly compact composition operators on weighted vector-valued Banach spaces of analytic mappings. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. Ser. A I 26, 233–248 (2001)Bonet, J., Domański, P., Lindström, M., Taskinen, J.: Composition operators between weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 64, 101–118 (1998)Bonet, J., Friz, M., Jordá, E.: Composition operators between weighted inductive limits of spaces of holomorphic functions. Publ. Math. Debr. Ser. A 67, 333–348 (2005)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: The v-boundary of weighted spaces of holomorphic functions. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 30, 337–352 (2005)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: Complete weights and v-peak points of spaces of weighted holomorphic functions. Isr. J. Math. 155, 57–80 (2006)Boyd, C., Rueda, P.: Isometries of weighted spaces of harmonic functions. Potential Anal. 29(1), 37–48 (2008)Carando, D., Sevilla-Peris, P.: Spectra of weighted algebras of holomorphic functions. Math. Z. 263, 887–902 (2009)Contreras, M.D., Hernández-Díaz, G.: Weighted composition operators in weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Aust. Math. Soc. Ser. A 69(1), 41–60 (2000)García, D., Maestre, M., Rueda, P.: Weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on Banach spaces. Stud. Math. 138(1), 1–24 (2000)García, D., Maestre, M., Sevilla-Peris, P.: Composition operators between weighted spaces of holomorphic functions on Banach spaces. Ann. Acad. Sci. Fenn. Math. 29, 81–98 (2004)Gunning, R., Rossi, H.: Analytic Functions of Several Complex Variables. AMS Chelsea Publishing, Providence (2009)Hoffman, K.: Banach Spaces of Analytic Functions. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1962)Krantz, S.G.: Function Theory of Several Complex Variables. AMS, Providence (2001)Lusky, W.: On weighted spaces of harmonic and holomorphic functions. J. Lond. Math. Soc. 51, 309–320 (1995)Lusky, W.: On the isomorphism classes of weighted spaces of harmonic and holomorphic functions. Stud. Math. 175(1), 19–45 (2006)Meise, R., Vogt, D.: Introduction to Functional Analysis. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1997)Montes-Rodríguez, A.: Weight composition operators on weighted Banach spaces of analytic functions. J. Lond. Math. Soc. 61(2), 872–884 (2000)Ng, K.F.: On a theorem of Diximier. Math. Scand. 29, 279–280 (1972)Rudin, W.: Real and Complex Analysis. MacGraw-Hill, NY (1970)Rudin, W.: Functional analysis. In: International series in pure and applied mathematics, 2nd edn. McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York (1991)Shields, A.L., Williams, D.L.: Bounded projections, duality and multipliers in spaces of harmonic functions. J. Reine Angew. Math. 299(300), 256–279 (1978)Shields, A.L., Williams, D.L.: Bounded projections and the growth of harmonic conjugates in the unit disc. Mich. Math. J. 29, 3–25 (1982)Zheng, L.: The essential norms and spectra of composition operators on $$H^\infty$$ . Pac. J. Math. 203(2), 503–510 (2002

The epistemological model of disability, and its role in understanding passive exclusion in eighteenth and nineteenth century protestant educational asylums

This article examines how the process of constructing knowledge on impairment has affected the institutional construction of an ethic of disability. Its primary finding is that the process of creating knowledge in a number of historical contexts was influenced more by traditions and the biases of philosophers and educators in order to signify moral and intellectual superiority, than by a desire to improve the lives of disabled people through education. The article illustrates this epistemological process in a case study of the development of Protestant asylums in the latter years of the nineteenth century

The phylogenetically-related pattern recognition receptors EFR and XA21 recruit similar immune signaling components in monocots and dicots

During plant immunity, surface-localized pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) recognize pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). The transfer of PRRs between plant species is a promising strategy for engineering broad-spectrum disease resistance. Thus, there is a great interest in understanding the mechanisms of PRR-mediated resistance across different plant species. Two well-characterized plant PRRs are the leucine-rich repeat receptor kinases (LRR-RKs) EFR and XA21 from Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) and rice, respectively. Interestingly, despite being evolutionary distant, EFR and XA21 are phylogenetically closely related and are both members of the sub-family XII of LRR-RKs that contains numerous potential PRRs. Here, we compared the ability of these related PRRs to engage immune signaling across the monocots-dicots taxonomic divide. Using chimera between Arabidopsis EFR and rice XA21, we show that the kinase domain of the rice XA21 is functional in triggering elf18-induced signaling and quantitative immunity to the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pto) DC3000 and Agrobacterium tumefaciens in Arabidopsis. Furthermore, the EFR:XA21 chimera associates dynamically in a ligand-dependent manner with known components of the EFR complex. Conversely, EFR associates with Arabidopsis orthologues of rice XA21-interacting proteins, which appear to be involved in EFR-mediated signaling and immunity in Arabidopsis. Our work indicates the overall functional conservation of immune components acting downstream of distinct LRR-RK-type PRRs between monocots and dicots

Detection of Prion Protein in Urine-Derived Injectable Fertility Products by a Targeted Proteomic Approach

BACKGROUND: Iatrogenic transmission of human prion disease can occur through medical or surgical procedures, including injection of hormones such as gonadotropins extracted from cadaver pituitaries. Annually, more than 300,000 women in the United States and Canada are prescribed urine-derived gonadotropins for infertility. Although menopausal urine donors are screened for symptomatic neurological disease, incubation of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is impossible to exclude by non-invasive testing. Risk of carrier status of variant CJD (vCJD), a disease associated with decades-long peripheral incubation, is estimated to be on the order of 100 per million population in the United Kingdom. Studies showing infectious prions in the urine of experimental animals with and without renal disease suggest that prions could be present in asymptomatic urine donors. Several human fertility products are derived from donated urine; recently prion protein has been detected in preparations of human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a classical proteomic approach, 33 and 34 non-gonadotropin proteins were identified in urinary human chorionic gonadotropin (u-hCG) and highly-purified urinary human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG-HP) products, respectively. Prion protein was identified as a major contaminant in u-hCG preparations for the first time. An advanced prion protein targeted proteomic approach was subsequently used to conduct a survey of gonadotropin products; this approach detected human prion protein peptides in urine-derived injectable fertility products containing hCG, hMG and hMG-HP, but not in recombinant products. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The presence of protease-sensitive prion protein in urinary-derived injectable fertility products containing hCG, hMG, and hMG-HP suggests that prions may co-purify in these products. Intramuscular injection is a relatively efficient route of transmission of human prion disease, and young women exposed to prions can be expected to survive an incubation period associated with a minimal inoculum. The risks of urine-derived fertility products could now outweigh their benefits, particularly considering the availability of recombinant products

On Pseudorandom Encodings

We initiate a study of pseudorandom encodings: efficiently computable and decodable encoding functions that map messages from a given distribution to a random-looking distribution. For instance, every distribution that can be perfectly and efficiently compressed admits such a pseudorandom encoding. Pseudorandom encodings are motivated by a variety of cryptographic applications, including password-authenticated key exchange, “honey encryption” and steganography. The main question we ask is whether every efficiently samplable distribution admits a pseudorandom encoding. Under different cryptographic assumptions, we obtain positive and negative answers for different flavors of pseudorandom encodings, and relate this question to problems in other areas of cryptography. In particular, by establishing a twoway relation between pseudorandom encoding schemes and efficient invertible sampling algorithms, we reveal a connection between adaptively secure multiparty computation for randomized functionalities and questions in the domain of steganography