Effects of age on motor excitability measures from children and adolescents with Tourette syndrome

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder characterised by vocal and motor tics. It is associated with cortical–striatal–thalamic–cortical circuit [CSTC] dysfunction and hyper-excitability of cortical motor regions. TS follows a developmental time course, in which tics often become increasingly more controlled during adolescence. Importantly, however, a substantial minority of patients continue to have debilitating tics into adulthood. This indicates that there may be important differences between adult TS patients and children and adolescents with the disorder. We use TMS to examine cortical motor excitability in a sample of children, adolescents and young adults with TS. We demonstrate that, in contrast to studies of adult patients, resting motor threshold and the variability of MEP responses are increased in children with TS, while the gain of motor excitability in reduced. Importantly, we demonstrate that these differences normalise with age over adolescence. We conclude that these effects are likely due to a developmental delay in the maturation of key brain networks in TS, consistent with recent brain imaging studies of structural and functional brain connectivity. Importantly, these findings suggest that the alterations in brain network structure and function associated with TS may be quite different in children and adult patients with the condition

Sisterhood and After: Individualism, Ethics and The Oral History of Women's Liberation

In this article, we address the question of ethics in the study of social movements from the perspective of 'Sisterhood and After: The Women's Liberation Oral History Project'. This three-year project will record life history interviews of fifty key activists in the UK for the British Library Sound Archive. Our research is inspired by the democratic ideals of oral historical method and of feminism itself. As we shall show, both of these provide tools for answering the ethical challenges of studying of a social movement. Yet, while many have seen a natural alliance between feminism and oral history's ideals, we have discovered possible tensions that echo classic debates within the movement itself, particularly in relation to the status and meaning of individual experience. We analyse this in relation to two practical questions: the selection of interviewees, and our life history method. Turning to other feminist scholars of women's movements, we identify four broad justifications for focusing on the individual: a political understanding of the personal; situated knowledge; an investment in interview relationships and a psycho-social framework of analysis. Testing these justifications against some of the oral histories we have gathered, we conclude that they go a long way to answering the paradox of studying a movement through a few individuals' stories. But we are frank about the ethical as well as intellectual limits that a life history method imposes on capturing social movements. Examples from interviews with Mia Morris, Beatrix Campbell, Lesley Abdela, Ellen Malos and Juliet Mitchell will illuminate the history at stake

An escherichia coli nissle 1917 missense mutant colonizes the streptomycin-treated mouse intestine better than the wild type but is not a better probiotic

10.1128/IAI.01149-13Infection and Immunity822670-682INFI

Isolation of epithelial cells from acrylic removable dentures and gender identification by amplification of SRY gene using real time PCR

This study evaluates the usefulness of acrylic dentures as the source of DNA for forensic analysis. Thirty-eight samples (21 males and 17 females) were collected and stored for different time periods. The epithelial cells adhered to the dentures were retrieved and the genomic DNA was extracted. All the samples yielded sufficient amount of DNA for analysis irrespective of the storage time. Gender determination was done by amplification of the sex determining region on the Y chromosome (SRY) using real-time polymerase chain reaction with 100% accuracy, within minimal time. With this study, we conclude that saliva-stained acrylic dentures can act as a source of forensic DNA and co-amplification of SRY gene with other routine sex typing markers will give unambiguous gender identification