Inhibitory Deficits in reading disability depend on subtype: guessers but not spellers

In this study, children with the guessing subtype of dyslexia (who read fast and inaccurately) were compared with children with the spelling subtype (who read slowly and accurately) on three aspects of executive functioning (EF): response inhibition, susceptibility to interference from irrelevant information, and planning. It was found that guessers were impaired in their ability to inhibit inappropriate responding on all tasks used to assess EF (the stop signal task, the Stroop task, and the Tower of London task). This raises the question of whether the specific reading disorder of guessers may be linked to the same executive deficits which underlie ADHD. In order to unite a fast/inaccurate reading style with executive deficiencies, an attempt is made to incorporate the concept of executive control into models of lexical activation

Inhibitory control during sentence reading in dyslexic children

The present study focused on the nature of the reading disability of children with the guessing subtype of dyslexia (who read fast and inaccurately). The objective was to separate the excitatory account of their reading disturbance (i.e., in guessers the words' resting levels of activation are oversensitive to semantic context) from the inhibitory account (i.e., guessers tend to react prematurely to (false) candidate words that are activated in the lexicon). To disentangle the above accounts, guessers and normal readers were presented with a sentential priming task (SPT). In the SPT, subjects had to determine whether the final word of a sentence was semantically congruent or incongruent with the sentence, but had to inhibit their 'congruent' or 'incongruent' response in case of an occasionally presented pseudoword. To evoke guessing, each pseudoword closely resembled either a valid congruent or incongruent word. Guessing referred to prematurely accepting a pseudoword as a word that either appropriately or inappropriately completed the sentence. The extent to which subjects guessed at word meaning was evidenced by the false recognition rates (FRR) of the misspelled terminal words. Analyses on the FRRs of the pseudowords showed that guessers had significantly more difficulty in suppressing the 'go tendency' triggered by the pseudowords. It was concluded that the impulsive reading style of guessers should be ascribed to a less efficient suppression mechanism rather than to excessive reliance on contextual information. Specifically, the data were explained by assuming that the availability of the pseudoword's candidate meaning activated the hand to respond with, and that guessers found difficulty in suspending this response until they analyzed all letters in the stimulus and they could be sure of its spelling

Ecological patterns and processes of temporal turnover within lung infection microbiota

Background: Chronic infection and consequent airway inflammation are the leading causes of morbidity and early mortality for people living with cystic fibrosis (CF). However, lower airway infections across a range of chronic respiratory diseases, including in CF, do not follow classical ‘one microbe, one disease’ concepts of infection pathogenesis. Instead, they are comprised of diverse and temporally dynamic lung infection microbiota. Consequently, temporal dynamics need to be considered when attempting to associate lung microbiota with changes in disease status. Set within an island biogeography framework, we aimed to determine the ecological patterns and processes of temporal turnover within the lung microbiota of 30 paediatric and adult CF patients prospectively sampled over a 3-year period. Moreover, we aimed to ascertain the contributions of constituent chronic and intermittent colonizers on turnover within the wider microbiota. Results: The lung microbiota within individual patients was partitioned into constituent chronic and intermittent colonizing groups using the Leeds criteria and visualised with persistence-abundance relationships. This revealed bacteria chronically infecting a patient were both persistent and common through time, whereas intermittently infecting taxa were infrequent and rare; respectively representing the resident and transient portions of the wider microbiota. It also indicated that the extent of chronic colonization was far greater than could be appreciated with microbiological culture alone. Using species-time relationships to measure temporal turnover and Vellend’s rationalized ecological processes demonstrated turnover in the resident chronic infecting groups was conserved and underpinned principally by the deterministic process of homogenizing dispersal. Conversely, intermittent colonizing groups, representing newly arrived immigrants and transient species, drove turnover in the wider microbiota and were predominately underpinned by the stochastic process of drift. For adult patients, homogenizing dispersal and drift were found to be significantly associated with lung function. Where a greater frequency of homogenizing dispersal was observed with worsening lung function and conversely drift increased with better lung function. Conclusions: Our work provides a novel ecological framework for understanding the temporal dynamics of polymicrobial infection in CF that has translational potential to guide and improve therapeutic targeting of lung microbiota in CF and across a range of chronic airway diseases. AWnQWdeG2wJZnAAmwW9_w- Video Abstrac

Improved Quenched QCD on Large Lattices - First Results

Continuing our investigations of quenched QCD with improved fermions we have started simulations for lattice size 32^3 x 64 at beta=6.2. We present first results for light hadron masses at kappa=0.13520, 0.13540, and 0.13555. Moreover we compare our initial experiences on the T3E with those for APE/Quadrics systems.Comment: 3 pages, Latex2e, 4 figures, espcrc2, epsfig and latexsym require

The Light Hadron Mass Spectrum with Non-Perturbatively O(a) Improved Wilson Fermions

We compute the light hadron mass spectrum in quenched lattice QCD at $\beta = 6.0$ using the Sheikholeslami-Wohlert fermionic action. The calculation is done for several choices of the coefficient $c_{SW}$, including $c_{SW} = 0$ and the recently proposed optimal value $c_{SW} = 1.769$. We find that the individual masses change by up to 30\% under $O(a)$ improvement. The spectrum calculation suggests $c_{SW} \approx 1.4$ for the optimal value of the coefficient.Comment: 15 pages, uuencoded Z-compressed postscript file. Also available from http://www.desy.de/pub/preprints/desy/199

Urinary ATP as an indicator of infection and inflammation of the urinary tract in patients with lower urinary tract symptoms

BACKGROUND: Adenosine-5'-triphosphate (ATP) is a neurotransmitter and inflammatory cytokine implicated in the pathophysiology of lower urinary tract disease. ATP additionally reflects microbial biomass thus has potential as a surrogate marker of urinary tract infection (UTI). The optimum clinical sampling method for ATP urinalysis has not been established. We tested the potential of urinary ATP in the assessment of lower urinary tract symptoms, infection and inflammation, and validated sampling methods for clinical practice. METHODS: A prospective, blinded, cross-sectional observational study of adult patients presenting with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and asymptomatic controls, was conducted between October 2009 and October 2012. Urinary ATP was assayed by a luciferin-luciferase method, pyuria counted by microscopy of fresh unspun urine and symptoms assessed using validated questionnaires. The sample collection, storage and processing methods were also validated. RESULTS: 75 controls and 340 patients with LUTS were grouped as without pyuria (n = 100), pyuria 1-9 wbc ?l(-1) (n = 120) and pyuria ?10 wbc ?l(-1) (n = 120). Urinary ATP was higher in association with female gender, voiding symptoms, pyuria greater than 10 wbc ?l(-1) and negative MSU culture. ROC curve analysis showed no evidence of diagnostic test potential. The urinary ATP signal decayed with storage at 23°C but was prevented by immediate freezing at ??-20°C, without boric acid preservative and without the need to centrifuge urine prior to freezing. CONCLUSIONS: Urinary ATP may have a role as a research tool but is unconvincing as a surrogate, clinical diagnostic marker

Bacterial culture underestimates lung pathogen detection and infection status in cystic fibrosis

Microbiological surveillance of airway secretions is central to clinical care in cystic fibrosis (CF). However, the efficacy of microbiological culture, the diagnostic gold standard for pathogen detection, has been increasingly questioned. Here we compared culture with targeted quantitative PCR (QPCR) for longitudinal detection of 2 key pathogens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. Prospectively collected respiratory samples taken from 20 pediatric and 20 adult CF patients over a period of 3-years were analyzed. Patients were eligible if considered free of chronic Pseudomonas infection within 12-months prior to start of study. QPCR revealed high levels of infection with both pathogens not apparent from culture alone. Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus were detected by culture on at least one sampling occasion in 12 and 29 of the patients, respectively. Conversely, both pathogens were detected in all 40 patients by QPCR. Classification of infection status also significantly altered in both pediatric and adult patients, where the number of patients deemed chronically infected with Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus increased from 1 to 28 and 9 to 34, respectively. Overall, Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus infection status classification changed respectively for 36 and 27 of all patients. In no cases did molecular identification lead to a patient being in a less clinically serious infection category. Pathogen detection and infection status classification significantly increased when assessed by QPCR in comparison to culture. This could have implications for clinical care of CF patients, including accuracy of infection diagnosis, relevant and timely antibiotic selection, antimicrobial resistance development, establishment of chronic infection, and cross-infection control. IMPORTANCE Chronic lung infection is the leading cause of morbidity and early mortality for people with cystic fibrosis (pwCF). Microbiological surveillance to detect lung pathogens is recommended as best practise in CF patient care. Here we studied pathogen detection in 40 pwCF over several years. We found that microbiological culture, the diagnostic gold standard, was significantly disparate to targeted culture-independent approaches for detection and determination of chronic infection status of two important pathogens in CF. Pathogen detection was significantly lower by culture and consequently infection status was also misclassified in most cases. In particular, the extent of chronic infection by both P. aeruginosa and S. aureus not realized with culture was striking. Our findings have implications for the development of infection and clinical care of pwCF. Future longitudinal studies with greater patient numbers will be needed to establish the full extent of the clinical implications indicated from this study

Effects of postage on recovery of pathogens from cystic fibrosis sputum samples

Background: Regular surveillance microbiology of sputum is used in cystic fibrosis (CF) to monitor for new pathogens and target treatments. A move to remote clinics has meant greater reliance on samples collected at home and posted back. The impact of delays and sample disruption caused by posting has not been systematically assessed but could have significant implications for CF microbiology. Methods: Sputum samples collected from adult CF patients were mixed, split, and either processed immediately or posted back to laboratory. Processing involved a further split into aliquots for culture-dependant and-independent microbiology (quantitative PCR [QPCR] and microbiota sequencing). We calculated retrieval by both approaches for five typical CF pathogens: Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Burkholderia cepacia complex, Achromobacter xylosoxidans, Staphylococcus aureus and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. Results: 93 paired samples were collected from 73 CF patients. Median interval between sample posting and receipt was 5 days (range 1–10). For culture, overall concordance for posted and fresh samples was 86% across the five targeted pathogens (ranging from 57 to 100% for different organisms), with no bias towards either sample type. For QPCR, overall concordance was 62% (range 39–84%), again with no bias towards fresh or posted samples. There were no significant differences in culture or QPCR for samples with short (≤3days) versus extended (≥7days) postal delays. Posting had no significant impact on pathogen abundance nor on microbiota characteristics. Conclusions: Posted sputum samples reliably reproduced culture-based and molecular microbiology of freshly collected samples, even after prolonged delays at ambient conditions. This supports use of posted samples during remote monitoring

Fish and fishing in the Roman world

This article focuses on two aspects related to fish and fishing. It first discusses the social context for the consumption of preserved and fresh fish, showing that generally consumption of certain types of fresh fish conferred status, whereas consumption of preserved fish, being more affordable, was attested across social strata. The paper then moves on to examine the organization of the ‘fishing industry’, specifically the relationship between fish-salting establishments and the fishermen who provided the fish. Although we have many literary, documentary, and archaeological sources for fish preservation and fishing techniques in classical antiquity, the fishermen engaged in large-scale fishing remain rather elusive

The Talmud, the Hippocratic Corpus and Mark’s healing Jesus on infectious diseases

Through interacting with the sick, did Jesus contract infectious diseases or did he take preventive herbs to avoid them? During biblical times, infectious diseases were fatal. Diarrhoea, cough, pneumonia and skin diseases would quickly spread across villages or cities. Underscoring the seriousness with which prevention of infectious diseases was taken, 213 of the 613 biblical commandments concern hygiene. This study has two tasks: firstly, exploring the various techniques undertaken to avoid infectious diseases by looking at daily preventive hygienic activities. Secondly, given that Jesus was always in the company of sick crowds, the study re-describes Mark 1:4–45, where Jesus, after healing the leper, was forbidden from entering the city as indicative of fear against infectious diseases. Furthermore, the story (Mk 3:7–12) whereby Jesus requested a boat to create a gap between himself and the people is plausible from the perspective of infectious diseases