The Condominium Crisis: A Problem Unresolved

Many factors have contributed to the movement toward condominium conversion

The Condominium Crisis: A Problem Unresolved

Many factors have contributed to the movement toward condominium conversion

The Experience of Pregnancy for Women with Bipolar Disorder: An Exploratory Study

Background: Bipolar disorder often emerges in an individual’s late teens and early twenties, thus women with bipolar disorder are impacted for the majority of their childbearing years. Pregnancy brings a unique set of challenges to this population, including risk of relapse, teratogenicity of medications, and increased risk of postpartum psychosis, yet no research exists on this population’s experience of pregnancy. Design: This study utilized semi-structured telephone interviews to gather preliminary qualitative data on the experience of pregnancy for women with bipolar disorder with the long-term goal of developing patient education materials and improving nursing-led interventions to help manage illness during pregnancy and postpartum. Method: A purposive sample of four English-speaking women, age 29-39, with a confirmed diagnosis of bipolar disorder I or II and who had given birth within the last eighteen months, was recruited nationally via the electronic and mass media, and postings on bulletin boards in a range of educational and related settings. One open-ended focused telephone interview was held with each client, and conducted by the first author. She was also responsible for doing the audiotaping, transcription, and coding of the data using a descriptive qualitative design.  Results: Women with bipolar disorder described a unique pregnancy experience, influenced by the intersection of mental illness, pregnancy, and pharmacotherapy. Recurrent themes included hopefulness, patient and healthcare provider as advocates, the importance of interdisciplinary care, education, community support and the mixed impact of medication. Discussion & Conclusion: This research contributes to initiatives designed to improve healthcare for pregnant women with bipolar disorder, augment patient education materials, and inform the design of nurse-led interventions. Empirical research findings become even more valuable tools for improving patient care when paired with the voices of patients themselves. As pregnant women are a historically under-studied population, this study also contributes to the larger body of scientific research on this population.&nbsp

Aberrant Splicing of the Senataxin Gene in a Patient with Ataxia with Oculomotor Apraxia Type 2

Ataxia with oculomotor apraxia type 2 (AOA2) is caused by a diversity of mutations within the coding region of the senataxin gene. Recently, rare noncoding senataxin mutations affecting RNA processing have been identified in AOA2. Here, we report the case of an 18-year-old woman, with classic clinical features of AOA2, who was found to harbor a mutation within senataxin intron 16. This mutation disrupts the local 5′ splice site architecture via a novel intronic frameshift mechanism, causing skipping of exon 16 with predicted disruption of the conserved DNA/RNA helicase domain. RNA processing mutations expand the growing complexity of pathogenic senataxin mutations

On the influence of spatial information for hyper-spectral satellite imaging characterization

Land-use classification for hyper-spectral satellite images requires a previous step of pixel characterization. In the easiest case, each pixel is characterized by its spectral curve. The improvementof the spectral and spatial resolution in hyper-spectral sensors has led to very large data sets. Some researches have focused on better classifiers that can handle big amounts of data. Others have faced the problem of band selection to reduce the dimensionality of the feature space. However, thanks to the improvement in the spatial resolution of the sensors, spatial information may also provide new featuresfor hyper-spectral satellite data. Here, an study on the influence of spectral-spatial features combined with an unsupervised band selection method is presented. The results show that it is possible to reduce very significantly the number of spectral bands required while having an adequate description of the spectral-spatial characteristics of the image for pixel classification tasksThis work has been partly supported by grant FPI PREDOC/2007/20 from Fundació Caixa Castelló-Bancaixa and projects CSD2007-00018 (Consolider Ingenio 2010) and AYA2008-05965-C04-04 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovatio

NGC 5548 in a Low-Luminosity State: Implications for the Broad-Line Region

We describe results from a new ground-based monitoring campaign on NGC 5548, the best studied reverberation-mapped AGN. We find that it was in the lowest luminosity state yet recorded during a monitoring program, namely L(5100) = 4.7 x 10^42 ergs s^-1. We determine a rest-frame time lag between flux variations in the continuum and the Hbeta line of 6.3 (+2.6/-2.3) days. Combining our measurements with those of previous campaigns, we determine a weighted black hole mass of M_BH = 6.54 (+0.26/-0.25) x 10^7 M_sun based on all broad emission lines with suitable variability data. We confirm the previously-discovered virial relationship between the time lag of emission lines relative to the continuum and the width of the emission lines in NGC 5548, which is the expected signature of a gravity-dominated broad-line region. Using this lowest luminosity state, we extend the range of the relationship between the luminosity and the time lag in NGC 5548 and measure a slope that is consistent with alpha = 0.5, the naive expectation for the broad line region for an assumed form of r ~ L^alpha. This value is also consistent with the slope recently determined by Bentz et al. for the population of reverberation-mapped AGNs as a whole.Comment: 24 pages, 3 tables, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The Mass of the Black Hole in the Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4593 from Reverberation Mapping

We present new observations leading to an improved black hole mass estimate for the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4593 as part of a reverberation-mapping campaign conducted at the MDM Observatory. Cross-correlation analysis of the H_beta emission-line light curve with the optical continuum light curve reveals an emission-line time delay of 3.73 (+-0.75) days. By combining this time delay with the H_beta line width, we derive a central black hole mass of M_BH = 9.8(+-2.1)x10^6 M_sun, an improvement in precision of a factor of several over past results.Comment: 22 pages, 3 tables, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Modeling mycorrhizal fungi dispersal by the mycophagous swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor)

Despite the importance of mammal-fungal interactions, tools to estimate the mammal-assisted dispersal distances of fungi are lacking. Many mammals actively consume fungal fruiting bodies, the spores of which remain viable after passage through their digestive tract. Many of these fungi form symbiotic relationships with trees and provide an array of other key ecosystem functions. We present a flexible, general model to predict the distance a mycophagous mammal would disperse fungal spores. We modelled the probability of spore dispersal by combining animal movement data from GPS-telemetry with data on spore gut-retention time. We test this model using an exemplar generalist mycophagist, the swamp wallaby (Wallabia bicolor). We show that swamp wallabies disperse fungal spores hundreds of metres—and occasionally up to 1265 m—from the point of consumption, distances that are ecologically significant for many mycorrhizal fungi. In addition to highlighting the ecological importance of swamp wallabies as dispersers of mycorrhizal fungi in eastern Australia, our simple modelling approach provides a novel and effective way of empirically describing spore dispersal by a mycophagous animal. This approach is applicable to the study of other animal-fungi interactions in other ecosystems.Funding provided by: Hermon Slade FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001109Award Number: HSF08-6Funding provided by: Australian Research CouncilCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000923Award Number: DP0557022Methods are described in the published article

Dynamics of Flux Creep in Underdoped Single Crystals of Y_1-xPr_xBa_2Cu_3O_7-d

Transport as well as magnetic relaxation properties of the mixed state were studied on strongly underdoped Y_1-xPr_xBa_2Cu_3O_7-d crystals. We observed two correlated phenomena - a coupling transition and a transition to quantum creep. The distribution of transport current below the coupling transition is highly nonuniform, which facilitates quantum creep. We speculate that in the mixed state below the coupling transition, where dissipation is nonohmic, the current distribution may be unstable with respect to self-channeling resulting in the formation of very thin current-carrying layers.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Detection of the Water Reservoir in a Forming Planetary System

Icy bodies may have delivered the oceans to the early Earth, yet little is known about water in the ice-dominated regions of extra-solar planet-forming disks. The Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared on-board the Herschel Space Observatory has detected emission from both spin isomers of cold water vapor from the disk around the young star TW Hydrae. This water vapor likely originates from ice-coated solids near the disk surface hinting at a water ice reservoir equivalent to several thousand Earth Oceans in mass. The water's ortho-to-para ratio falls well below that of Solar System comets, suggesting that comets contain heterogeneous ice mixtures collected across the entire solar nebula during the early stages of planetary birth.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. Corrected typo in reported mass (in g) of detected water vapor reservoir. All conclusions are unchange