The Ageing Gut-Brain Study : Exploring the role of the gut microbiota in dementia

Alex Johnstone, Alison Donaldson, Karen Scott and Phyo Myint all contributed equally to the writing and preparation of the manuscript. This study is funded by Tenovus Scotland Research Project No. G16‐08 (start 1 June 2017, end date 31 January 2019) and NHS‐Grampian Research and Development Endowment Research Grants Project No: 16/11/043 (start date 1 April 2017, end date 31 January, 2019) and the Scottish government as part of the Strategic Research Programme at the Rowett Institute (start date 1 April 2016–31 March 2021).Peer reviewedPostprin

Reducing vortex density in superconductors using the ratchet effect

A serious obstacle that impedes the application of low and high temperature superconductor (SC) devices is the presence of trapped flux. Flux lines or vortices are induced by fields as small as the Earth's magnetic field. Once present, vortices dissipate energy and generate internal noise, limiting the operation of numerous superconducting devices. Methods used to overcome this difficulty include the pinning of vortices by the incorporation of impurities and defects, the construction of flux dams, slots and holes and magnetic shields which block the penetration of new flux lines in the bulk of the SC or reduce the magnetic field in the immediate vicinity of the superconducting device. Naturally, the most desirable would be to remove the vortices from the bulk of the SC. There is no known phenomenon, however, that could form the basis for such a process. Here we show that the application of an ac current to a SC that is patterned with an asymmetric pinning potential can induce vortex motion whose direction is determined only by the asymmetry of the pattern. The mechanism responsible for this phenomenon is the so called ratchet effect, and its working principle applies to both low and high temperature SCs. As a first step here we demonstrate that with an appropriate choice of the pinning potential the ratchet effect can be used to remove vortices from low temperature SCs in the parameter range required for various applications.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, Nature (in press

UDP-glucose promotes neutrophil recruitment in the lung

In addition to their role in glycosylation reactions, UDP-sugars are released from cells and activate widely distributed cell surface P2Y 14 receptors (P2Y 14 R). However, the physiological/pathophysiological consequences of UDP-sugar release are incompletely defined. Here, we report that UDP-glucose levels are abnormally elevated in lung secretions from patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) as well as in a mouse model of CF-like disease, the βENaC transgenic (Tg) mouse. Instillation of UDP-glucose into wild-type mouse tracheas resulted in enhanced neutrophil lung recruitment, and this effect was nearly abolished when UDP-glucose was co-instilled with the P2Y 14 R antagonist PPTN [4-(piperidin-4-yl)-phenyl)-7-(4-(trifluoromethyl)-phenyl-2-naphthoic acid]. Importantly, administration of PPTN to βENaC-Tg mice reduced neutrophil lung inflammation. These results suggest that UDP-glucose released into the airways acts as a local mediator of neutrophil inflammation

Professional psychology associations in the GCC: positive institutions whose time has come

Permission to archive article granted by Dr. Louise Lambert, editor of Middle East Journal of Positive PsychologyProfessional associations have a mandate to protect and regulate those members deemed qualified to provide mental health services to the public. This is accomplished through supervision and policing of practitioners’ conduct, informed by an understanding of the application of ethics. Yet, in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, many hurdles preclude the development and maintenance of professional organizations, such as a lack of understanding of the range of services available within psychology, little professional oversight and no legal mandate for it, as well as a disinterest in professionalizing the field. Yet, by adopting a positive psychology framework, the current view from a focus on wrongdoing to an approach that encourages psychologists to reach a state of professional excellence can be accomplished via the notion of positive supervision, positive ethics, and organizational virtuousness. We explore how this can be done in the region.Ye

Teachers matter for metacognition : facilitating metacognition in the primary school through teacher-pupil interactions

Despite the ubiquity of Structured Thinking Activities (STAs) throughout primary school education in the UK and beyond, little is known about the ways that activities such as learning logs are used to support pupils to think about and manage their own thinking (i.e., engage with metacognition). Here we investigated how pupils engaged with STAs throughout a school year by conducting an in-depth case study of one Scottish primary four classroom, examining factors that facilitated and/or inhibited pupil metacognition. By triangulating data from participant observation, interviews and document analysis, we found that pupils were often un-motivated to engage with STAs, with responses provided during written and oral activities typically revealing superficial references to classroom topics of interest. Whilst factors such as the classroom culture and the timing of activities were found to influence pupil engagement with STAs, observational data indicated that teacher-pupil interactions are essential for eliciting metacognition from pupils (i.e., via discussions that occurred as part of the STAs). Our findings suggest that teachers play a critical role in encouraging elaboration from pupils in relation to descriptions of their own thinking and learning, particularly when pupils’ initial responses are broad or superficial. We discuss the critical importance of teacher talk for metacognition, emphasising the ‘dual role’ that teachers must play when facilitating metacognition within the classroom.PostprintPeer reviewe

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research

Curation of complex, context-dependent immunological data

BACKGROUND: The Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource (IEDB) is dedicated to capturing, housing and analyzing complex immune epitope related data . DESCRIPTION: To identify and extract relevant data from the scientific literature in an efficient and accurate manner, novel processes were developed for manual and semi-automated annotation. CONCLUSION: Formalized curation strategies enable the processing of a large volume of context-dependent data, which are now available to the scientific community in an accessible and transparent format. The experiences described herein are applicable to other databases housing complex biological data and requiring a high level of curation expertise