Updates on the antiphospholipid syndrome

Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is an acquired autoimmune thrombophilia characterized by venous or arterial thrombosis, and/or pregnancy loss or complications in the presence of persistently positive antiphospholipid antibodies. Organ involvement, referred to as non-criteria manifestations, includes livedo reticularis, thrombocytopenia and nephropathy. Non-thrombotic inflammatory mechanisms are increasingly identified in the pathogenesis of APS, alongside a recognition that obstetric APS might be a specific subset of APS. Treatment remains focused on life-long anticoagulation and prevention of further thrombosis or obstetric complications. Identification of novel mechanisms is, however, leading the development of diagnostic tests and more targeted therapies to improve disease management

Regime fatigue : a cognitive-psychological model for identifying a socialized negativity effect in U.S. Senatorial and Gubernatorial elections from 1960-2008

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)This research project proposes to try to isolate and measure the influence of “regime fatigue” on gubernatorial elections and senatorial elections in the United States where there is no incumbent running. The research begins with a review of the negativity effect and its potential influence on schema-based impression forming by voters. Applicable literature on the topics of social clustering and homophily is then highlighted as it provides the vehicle through which the negativity effect disseminates across collections of socially-clustered individuals and ultimately contributes to changing tides of public opinion despite the fact that the political party identification can remain relatively fixed in the aggregate

Antiphospholipid syndrome

Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is an acquired autoimmune thrombophilia characterized by venous or arterial thrombosis, and/or pregnancy loss or complications in the presence of persistently positive antiphospholipid antibodies. Patients can also develop other organ involvement, referred to as non-criteria manifestations, including livedo reticularis, thrombocytopenia and nephropathy. Non-thrombotic inflammatory mechanisms are increasingly identified in the pathogenesis of APS, alongside a recognition that obstetric APS may be a specific subset of APS. Treatment remains focused on lifelong anticoagulation and prevention of further thrombosis or obstetric complications. Identification of novel mechanisms is, however, leading the development of diagnostic tests and more targeted therapies to improve disease management

Consumer acceptance of and willingness to pay for food nanotechnology: a systematic review

Consumer’s attitudes to, and acceptance of, emerging technologies and their applications, are important determinants of their successful implementation and commercialisation. Understanding the range of socio-psychological, cultural and affective factors which may influence consumer responses to applications of nanotechnology will help “fine-tune” the development of consumer products in line with their expectations and preferences. This is particularly true of applications in the food area, where consumer concerns about technologies applied to food production may be elevated. This research applied systematic review methodology to synthesise current knowledge regarding societal acceptance or rejection of nanotechnology applied to agri-food production. The objective was to aggregate knowledge derived from different research areas to gain an overall picture of consumer responses to nanotechnology applied to food production. Relevant electronic databases of peer-reviewed literature were searched from the earliest date available, for peer-reviewed papers which reported primary empirical data on consumer and expert acceptance of agri-food nanotechnology, using a formal systematic review protocol. Inclusion criteria for papers to be included in the review were: empirical peer-reviewed papers written in English; a population sample of adults aged 18 years and over used in the research; a research focus on consumer and expert acceptance of agri-food nanotechnology; and research on attitudes towards, and willingness to pay for, different applications of agri-food nanotechnology. Two researchers independently appraised the papers using NVivo 10 QSR software. Studies examining consumer and expert acceptance were thematically analysed, and key information was collated. The results were synthesised in order to identify trends in information relevant to consumer acceptance of nanotechnology applied to food production. Eight key themes were identified from the 32 papers which were extracted from the literature. These themes were applied to understand the determinants of consumer acceptance of agri-food nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is more likely to be accepted by consumers when applied to development of novel packaging with distinct benefits rather than when integrated directly into agri-food products. Trust and confidence in agri-food nanotechnology and its governance need to be fostered through transparent regulation and development of societally beneficial impacts to increase consumer acceptance. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11051-015-3270-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users

Expression of c-myc is not critical for cell proliferation in established human leukemia lines

BACKGROUND: A study was undertaken to resolve preliminary conflicting results on the proliferation of leukemia cells observed with different c-myc antisense oligonucleotides. RESULTS: RNase H-active, chimeric methylphosphonodiester / phosphodiester antisense oligodeoxynucleotides targeting bases 1147–1166 of c-myc mRNA downregulated c-Myc protein and induced apoptosis and cell cycle arrest respectively in cultures of MOLT-4 and KYO1 human leukemia cells. In contrast, an RNase H-inactive, morpholino antisense oligonucleotide analogue 28-mer, simultaneously targeting the exon 2 splice acceptor site and initiation codon, reduced c-Myc protein to barely detectable levels but did not affect cell proliferation in these or other leukemia lines. The RNase H-active oligodeoxynucleotide 20-mers contained the phosphodiester linked motif CGTTG, which as an apoptosis inducing CpG oligodeoxynucleotide 5-mer of sequence type CGNNN (N = A, G, C, or T) had potent activity against MOLT-4 cells. The 5-mer mimicked the antiproliferative effects of the 20-mer in the absence of any antisense activity against c-myc mRNA, while the latter still reduced expression of c-myc in a subline of MOLT-4 cells that had been selected for resistance to CGTTA, but in this case the oligodeoxynucleotide failed to induce apoptosis or cell cycle arrest. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the biological activity of the chimeric c-myc antisense 20-mers resulted from a non-antisense mechanism related to the CGTTG motif contained within the sequence, and not through downregulation of c-myc. Although the oncogene may have been implicated in the etiology of the original leukemias, expression of c-myc is apparently no longer required to sustain continuous cell proliferation in these culture lines

Accelerating dedispersion using many-core architectures

Astrophysical radio signals are excellent probes of extreme physical processes that emit them. However, to reach Earth, electromagnetic radiation passes through the ionized interstellar medium, introducing a frequency-dependent time delay (dispersion) to the emitted signal. Removing dispersion enables searches for transient signals like fast radio bursts or repeating signals from isolated pulsars or those in orbit around other compact objects. The sheer volume and high resolution of data that next-generation radio telescopes will produce require high-performance computing solutions and algorithms to be used in time-domain data-processing pipelines to extract scientifically valuable results in real time. This paper presents a state-of-the-art implementation of brute force incoherent dedispersion on NVIDIA graphics-processing units and on Intel and AMD central-processing units. We show that our implementation is 4× faster (8-bit 8192 channels input) than other available solutions, and we demonstrate, using 11 existing telescopes, that our implementation is at least 20× faster than real time. This work is part of the AstroAccelerate package

Factors influencing community case management and care hours for clients with traumatic brain injury living in the UK

Objective: To investigate the relationship between deficits associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and case management (CM) and care/support (CS) in two UK community samples. Research design: Prospective descriptive study. Method: Case managers across the UK and from a single UK CM service contributed client profiles to two data sets (Groups 1 and 2, respectively). Data were entered on demographics, injury severity, functional skills, functional-cognition (including executive functions), behaviour and CM and CS hours. Relationships were explored between areas of disability and service provision. Results: Clients in Group 2 were more severely injured, longer post-injury and had less family support than clients in Group 1. There were few significant differences between Groups 1 and 2 on measures of Functionalskill, Functional-cognition and Behaviour disorder. Deficits in Functionalskills were associated with CS, but not CM. Deficits in measures of executive functions (impulsivity, predictability, response to direction) were related to CM, but not to CS. Insight was related to both CM and CS. Variables related to behaviour disorder were related to CM, but were less often correlated to CS. Conclusions: The need for community support is related not only to Functionalskills (CS), but also to behaviour disorder, self-regulatory skills and impaired insight (CM)