Investigating The Life Cycle Of Haplosporidium nelsoni (MSX)

Attempts to decipher the life cycle of Haplosporidium nelsoni began almost immediately after it was identified as the pathogen causing MSX disease in eastern oysters, Crassostrea virginica. But transmission experiments failed and the spore stage, characteristic of haplosporidans, was extremely rare. Researchers concluded that another host was involved: an intermediate host in which part of the life cycle was produced, or-if the oyster was an accidental host-an alternate host that produces infective elements. A later finding that spores were found more often in spat (\u3c 1 y old) than in adults revived the idea of direct transmission between oysters. The new findings and the availability of molecular diagnostics led us to revive life cycle investigations. Over several years, oyster spat were examined for spores and searched for H. nelsoni in potential non-oyster hosts using both histological and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methodologies. Although spores occurred in a high proportion of spat with advanced infections, it was concluded that they were unlikely to be a principal source of infective elements because naive oysters used as sentinels to assess infection pressure became highly infected even after native oysters developed resistance, and infected spat could no longer be found. A histological survey of zooplankton and small bivalves in Delaware Bay found few recognizable parasites and nothing resembling a haplosporidan. A subsequent PCR study of water, sediment, and macro-invertebrates from Chesapeake, Delaware, and Oyster bays resulted in many positive samples, but in situ hybridization failed to identify any recognizable structures. PCR analysis of potential intermediate hosts for other molluscan pathogens has also resulted in many species yielding positive results but required in situ hybridization to verify infections. It is suggested that any future search for a nonoyster host of H. nelsoni be conducted in a relatively confined system and/or target specific phyla, strategies that have been successful in other life cycle studies. It is noted that candidate phyla could include those known to host haplosporidans and species whose abundance or distribution may have changed in concert with outbreaks of MSX disease in the northeastern United States in recent years

Evidence That Qpx (Quahog Parasite Unknown) Is Not Present In Hatchery-Produced Hard Clam Seed

A protistan parasite known as QPX (Quahog Parasite Unknown) has been recently associated with disease and mortality of adult hard clams, Mercenaria mercenaria, from Canada to Virginia. There is concern that the organism may be transported in hatchery-reared seed. Tissue sections of 2,203 seed clams (\u3c1-20 mm) from 13 different hatcheries in six states, collected from 1995 to 1997 and examined by pathologists in three laboratories, failed to show QPX or QPX-like organisms. Further, QPX was not detected in a total of 756 hatchery-produced clams examined during their first year of field growout. From this, we conclude that hatchery-produced seed clams are an unlikely source of QPX organisms

Clinical predictors of antipsychotic use in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders: a historical open cohort study using electronic health records.

JOURNAL ARTICLEThe final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s00787-015-0780-7Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are more likely to receive antipsychotics than any other psychopharmacological medication, yet the psychiatric disorders and symptoms associated with treatment are unclear. We aimed to determine the predictors of antipsychotic use in children with ASD receiving psychiatric care. The sample consisted of 3482 children aged 3-17 with an ICD-10 diagnosis of ASD referred to mental health services between 2008 and 2013. Antipsychotic use outcome, comorbid diagnoses, and other clinical covariates, including challenging behaviours were extracted from anonymised patient records. Of the 3482 children (79 % male) with ASD, 348 (10 %) received antipsychotic medication. The fully adjusted model indicated that comorbid diagnoses including hyperkinetic (OR 1.44, 95 %CI 1.01-2.06), psychotic (5.71, 3.3-10.6), depressive (2.36, 1.37-4.09), obsessive-compulsive (2.31, 1.16-4.61) and tic disorders (2.76, 1.09-6.95) were associated with antipsychotic use. In addition, clinician-rated levels of aggression, self-injurious behaviours, reduced adaptive function, and overall parental concern for their child's presenting symptoms were significant risk factors for later antipsychotic use. In ASD, a number of comorbid psychiatric disorders are independent predictors for antipsychotic treatment, even after adjustment for familial, socio-demographic and individual factors. As current trial evidence excludes children with comorbidity, more pragmatic randomised controlled trials with long-term drug monitoring are needed.NIHRBiomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College LondonGuy’s and St. Thomas’ CharityMaudsley CharityMR

Strong but opposing effects of associational resistance and susceptibility on defense phenotype in an African savanna plant

The susceptibility of plants to herbivores can be strongly influenced by the identity, morphology and palatability of neighboring plants. While the defensive traits of neighbors often determine the mechanism and strength of associational resistance and susceptibility, the effect of neighbors on plant defense phenotype remains poorly understood. We used field surveys and a prickle-removal experiment in a semi-arid Kenyan savanna to evaluate the efficacy of physical defenses against large mammalian herbivores in a common understory plant, Solanum campylacanthum. We then quantified the respective effects of spinescent Acacia trees and short-statured grasses on browsing damage and prickle density in S. campylacanthum. We paired measurements of prickle density beneath and outside tree canopies with long-term herbivore-exclusion experiments to evaluate whether associational resistance reduced defense investment by decreasing browsing damage. Likewise, we compared defense phenotype within and outside pre-existing and experimentally created clearings to determine whether grass neighbors increased defense investment via associational susceptibility. Removing prickles increased the frequency of browsing by ~25%, and surveys of herbivory damage on defended leaves suggested that herbivores tended to avoid prickles. As predicted, associational resistance and susceptibility had opposing effects on plant phenotype: individuals growing beneath Acacia canopies (or, analogously, within large-herbivore exclosures) had a significantly lower proportion of their leaves browsed and produced ~ 70–80% fewer prickles than those outside refuges, whereas plants in grass-dominated clearings were more heavily browsed and produced nearly twice as many prickles as plants outside clearings. Our results demonstrate that associational resistance and susceptibility have strong, but opposing, effects on plant defense phenotype, and that variable herbivore damage is a major source of intraspecific variation in defense phenotype in this system

Ontology of core data mining entities

In this article, we present OntoDM-core, an ontology of core data mining entities. OntoDM-core defines themost essential datamining entities in a three-layered ontological structure comprising of a specification, an implementation and an application layer. It provides a representational framework for the description of mining structured data, and in addition provides taxonomies of datasets, data mining tasks, generalizations, data mining algorithms and constraints, based on the type of data. OntoDM-core is designed to support a wide range of applications/use cases, such as semantic annotation of data mining algorithms, datasets and results; annotation of QSAR studies in the context of drug discovery investigations; and disambiguation of terms in text mining. The ontology has been thoroughly assessed following the practices in ontology engineering, is fully interoperable with many domain resources and is easy to extend

Negative Symptoms in Early-Onset Psychosis and Their Association With Antipsychotic Treatment Failure.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from OUP via the DOI in this recordThe prevalence of negative symptoms (NS) at first episode of early-onset psychosis (EOP), and their effect on psychosis prognosis is unclear. In a sample of 638 children with EOP (aged 10-17 y, 51% male), we assessed (1) the prevalence of NS at first presentation to mental health services and (2) whether NS predicted eventual development of multiple treatment failure (MTF) prior to the age of 18 (defined by initiation of a third trial of novel antipsychotic due to prior insufficient response, intolerable adverse-effects or non-adherence). Data were extracted from the electronic health records held by child inpatient and community-based services in South London, United Kingdom. Natural Language Processing tools were used to measure the presence of Marder Factor NS and antipsychotic use. The association between presenting with ≥2 NS and the development of MTF over a 5-year period was modeled using Cox regression. Out of the 638 children, 37.5% showed ≥2 NS at first presentation, and 124 (19.3%) developed MTF prior to the age of 18. The presence of NS at first episode was significantly associated with MTF (adjusted hazard ratio 1.62, 95% CI 1.07-2.46; P = .02) after controlling for a number of potential confounders including psychosis diagnostic classification, positive symptoms, comorbid depression, and family history of psychosis. Other factors associated with MTF included comorbid autism spectrum disorder, older age at first presentation, Black ethnicity, and family history of psychosis. In EOP, NS at first episode are prevalent and may help identify a subset of children at higher risk of responding poorly to antipsychotics.J.D. received supported by a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Research Training Fellowship (MR/L017105/1) and Psychiatry Research Trust Peggy Pollak Research Fellowship in Developmental Psychiatry. H.D. and S.L. have received salary support from the Foundation of Professional Services to Adolescents, UK. R.D.H. was funded by an MRC Fellowship (MR/J01219X/1). R.P. was funded by an MRC CRTF (MR/K002813/1). C.A., L.P-C., and C.M.D-C. have held grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. Instituto de Salud Carlos III, co-financed by ERDF Funds from the European Commission, “A way of making Europe,” CIBERSAM, Madrid Regional Government (S2010/BMD-2422 AGES), European Union Structural Funds and European Union Seventh Framework Program under grant agreements FP7-HEALTH-2009-2.2.1-2-241909 (EU-GEI), FP7-HEALTH-2009-2.2.1-3-242114 (OPTiMISE), FP7-HEALTH-2013-2.2.1-2-603196 (PSYSCAN)and FP7- HEALTH-2013-2.2.1-2-602478 (METSY); European Union H2020 Program under the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (grant agreement No-115916; PRISM); Fundación Alicia Koplowitz and Fundación Mutua Madrileña. M.H., J.H.M. and H.S. receive salary support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health

Vitamin D and subsequent all-age and premature mortality: a systematic review

<br>Background: All-cause mortality in the population < 65 years is 30% higher in Glasgow than in equally deprived Liverpool and Manchester. We investigated a hypothesis that low vitamin D in this population may be associated with premature mortality via a systematic review and meta-analysis.</br> <br>Methods: Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library and grey literature sources were searched until February 2012 for relevant studies. Summary statistics were combined in an age-stratified meta-analysis.</br> <br>Results: Nine studies were included in the meta-analysis, representing 24,297 participants, 5,324 of whom died during follow-up. The pooled hazard ratio for low compared to high vitamin D demonstrated a significant inverse association (HR 1.19, 95% CI 1.12-1.27) between vitamin D levels and all-cause mortality after adjustment for available confounders. In an age-stratified meta-analysis, the hazard ratio for older participants was 1.25 (95% CI 1.14-1.36) and for younger participants 1.12 (95% CI 1.01-1.24).</br> <br>Conclusions: Low vitamin D status is inversely associated with all-cause mortality but the risk is higher amongst older individuals and the relationship is prone to residual confounding. Further studies investigating the association between vitamin D deficiency and all-cause mortality in younger adults with adjustment for all important confounders (or using randomised trials of supplementation) are required to clarify this relationship.</br&gt

Analysis of five-year trends in self-reported language preference and issues of item non-response among Hispanic persons in a large cross-sectional health survey: implications for the measurement of an ethnic minority population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Significant differences in health outcomes have been documented among Hispanic persons, the fastest-growing demographic segment of the United States. The objective of this study was to examine trends in population growth and the collection of health data among Hispanic persons, including issues of language preference and survey completion using a national health survey to highlight issues of measurement of an increasingly important demographic segment of the United States.</p> <p>Design</p> <p>Data from the 2003-2007 United States Census and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System were used to compare trends in population growth and survey sample size as well as differences in survey response based on language preference among a Hispanic population. Percentages of item non-response on selected survey questions were compared for Hispanic respondents choosing to complete the survey in Spanish and those choosing to complete the survey in English. The mean number of attempts to complete the survey was also compared based on language preference among Hispanic respondents.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The sample size of Hispanic persons in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System saw little growth compared to the actual growth of the Hispanic population in the United States. Significant differences in survey item non-response for nine of 15 survey questions were seen based on language preference. Hispanic respondents choosing to complete the survey in Spanish had a significantly fewer number of call attempts for survey completion compared to their Hispanic counterparts choosing to communicate in English.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Including additional measures of acculturation and increasing the sample size of Hispanic persons in a national health survey such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System may result in more precise findings that could be used to better target prevention and health care needs for an ethnic minority population.</p

Stochastic Gravity: Theory and Applications

Whereas semiclassical gravity is based on the semiclassical Einstein equation with sources given by the expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of quantum fields, stochastic semiclassical gravity is based on the Einstein-Langevin equation, which has in addition sources due to the noise kernel. In the first part, we describe the fundamentals of this new theory via two approaches: the axiomatic and the functional. In the second part, we describe three applications of stochastic gravity theory. First, we consider metric perturbations in a Minkowski spacetime, compute the two-point correlation functions of these perturbations and prove that Minkowski spacetime is a stable solution of semiclassical gravity. Second, we discuss structure formation from the stochastic gravity viewpoint. Third, we discuss the backreaction of Hawking radiation in the gravitational background of a black hole and describe the metric fluctuations near the event horizon of an evaporating black holeComment: 100 pages, no figures; an update of the 2003 review in Living Reviews in Relativity gr-qc/0307032 ; it includes new sections on the Validity of Semiclassical Gravity, the Stability of Minkowski Spacetime, and the Metric Fluctuations of an Evaporating Black Hol

The holographic principle

There is strong evidence that the area of any surface limits the information content of adjacent spacetime regions, at 10^(69) bits per square meter. We review the developments that have led to the recognition of this entropy bound, placing special emphasis on the quantum properties of black holes. The construction of light-sheets, which associate relevant spacetime regions to any given surface, is discussed in detail. We explain how the bound is tested and demonstrate its validity in a wide range of examples. A universal relation between geometry and information is thus uncovered. It has yet to be explained. The holographic principle asserts that its origin must lie in the number of fundamental degrees of freedom involved in a unified description of spacetime and matter. It must be manifest in an underlying quantum theory of gravity. We survey some successes and challenges in implementing the holographic principle.Comment: 52 pages, 10 figures, invited review for Rev. Mod. Phys; v2: reference adde