Validity of Type D personality in Iceland: association with disease severity and risk markers in cardiac patients

Type D personality has been associated with poor prognosis in cardiac patients. This study investigated the validity of the Type D construct in Iceland and its association with disease severity and health-related risk markers in cardiac patients. A sample of 1,452 cardiac patients completed the Type D scale (DS14), and a subgroup of 161 patients completed measurements for the five-factor model of personality, emotional control, anxiety, depression, stress and lifestyle factors. The Icelandic DS14 had good psychometric properties and its construct validity was confirmed. Prevalence of Type D was 26–29%, and assessment of Type D personality was not confounded by severity of underlying coronary artery disease. Regarding risk markers, Type D patients reported more psychopharmacological medication use and smoking, but frequency of previous mental problems was similar across groups. Type D is a valid personality construct in Iceland, and is associated with health-related risk markers, but not cardiac disease severity

Reduction in Structural Disorder and Functional Complexity in the Thermal Adaptation of Prokaryotes

Genomic correlates of evolutionary adaptation to very low or very high optimal growth temperature (OGT) values have been the subject of many studies. Whereas these provided a protein-structural rationale of the activity and stability of globular proteins/enzymes, the point has been neglected that adaptation to extreme temperatures could also have resulted from an increased use of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), which are resistant to these conditions in vitro. Contrary to these expectations, we found a conspicuously low level of structural disorder in bacteria of very high (and very low) OGT values. This paucity of disorder does not reflect phylogenetic relatedness, i.e. it is a result of genuine adaptation to extreme conditions. Because intrinsic disorder correlates with important regulatory functions, we asked how these bacteria could exist without IDPs by studying transcription factors, known to harbor a lot of function-related intrinsic disorder. Hyperthermophiles have much less transcription factors, which have reduced disorder compared to their mesophilic counterparts. On the other hand, we found by systematic categorization of proteins with long disordered regions that there are certain functions, such as translation and ribosome biogenesis that depend on structural disorder even in hyperthermophiles. In all, our observations suggest that adaptation to extreme conditions is achieved by a significant functional simplification, apparent at both the level of the genome and individual genes/proteins

The Pathway Coexpression Network: Revealing pathway relationships.

A goal of genomics is to understand the relationships between biological processes. Pathways contribute to functional interplay within biological processes through complex but poorly understood interactions. However, limited functional references for global pathway relationships exist. Pathways from databases such as KEGG and Reactome provide discrete annotations of biological processes. Their relationships are currently either inferred from gene set enrichment within specific experiments, or by simple overlap, linking pathway annotations that have genes in common. Here, we provide a unifying interpretation of functional interaction between pathways by systematically quantifying coexpression between 1,330 canonical pathways from the Molecular Signatures Database (MSigDB) to establish the Pathway Coexpression Network (PCxN). We estimated the correlation between canonical pathways valid in a broad context using a curated collection of 3,207 microarrays from 72 normal human tissues. PCxN accounts for shared genes between annotations to estimate significant correlations between pathways with related functions rather than with similar annotations. We demonstrate that PCxN provides novel insight into mechanisms of complex diseases using an Alzheimer's Disease (AD) case study. PCxN retrieved pathways significantly correlated with an expert curated AD gene list. These pathways have known associations with AD and were significantly enriched for genes independently associated with AD. As a further step, we show how PCxN complements the results of gene set enrichment methods by revealing relationships between enriched pathways, and by identifying additional highly correlated pathways. PCxN revealed that correlated pathways from an AD expression profiling study include functional clusters involved in cell adhesion and oxidative stress. PCxN provides expanded connections to pathways from the extracellular matrix. PCxN provides a powerful new framework for interrogation of global pathway relationships. Comprehensive exploration of PCxN can be performed at http://pcxn.org/

Expanding the Paradigms of Plant Pathogen Life History and Evolution of Parasitic Fitness beyond Agricultural Boundaries

International audienc

Postmedia grafisch ontwerp: een hybride beeldtaal

In dit onderzoek staat de vraag centraal op welke wijze de hybride beeldtaal in grafisch ontwerp is veroorzaakt door de ontwikkeling van technologische mogelijkheden en in welke mate die geaccepteerd is in onze visuele cultuur. Voor de beantwoording van deze vraag is gebruik gemaakt van een literatuur- en een statistisch onderzoek. Er wordt in het literatuuronderzoek geconstateerd dat het ontstaan van de hybride beeldtaal in grafisch ontwerp in grote mate is veroorzaakt door de ontwikkeling van technologische mogelijkheden. Zo is de hybride beeldtaal voortgekomen uit principes die de essentie vormen van de computer. Immers, net zoals de computer zich de eigenschappen van oude media toe-eigent, eigenen ook beelden gemaakt op de computer zich beeldeigenschappen van andere media, technieken en culturen toe. De hybride beeldtaal die hierdoor ontstaat wordt gedefinieerd als de meervoudige combinatie van media-elementen die zijn gestapeld, vervlochten of vervormd en wanneer gebruik wordt gemaakt van artistieke en/of technologische vormgevingskenmerken die historisch en/of cultureel bepaald zijn of wanneer daarnaar wordt verwezen. Om te beoordelen in hoeverre de hybride beeldtaal in onze visuele cultuur is geaccepteerd en de bevindingen uit de literatuurstudie te toetsen is een statistisch onderzoek uitgevoerd. Hierin is het kijkgedrag van en de voorkeur voor hybride en niet-hybride beelden vastgelegd. Vervolgens is gekeken naar verschillende factoren die de waarneming en waardering kunnen beïnvloeden: leeftijd, kunstonderwijs, de ervaring met digitale apparaten, en de ervaring met opmaaksoftware.