Further investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men's health research funding is urgently required

Kootsy Canuto, Jacob Prehn, Karla Canuto, Rosie Neate, Graham Gee, Corey Kennedy, Celina Gaweda, Oliver Black, James Smith, Alex Brow

Belief Revision and Delusions: How Do Patients with Schizophrenia Take Advice?

The dominant cognitive model that accounts for the persistence of delusional beliefs in schizophrenia postulates that patients suffer from a general deficit in belief revision. It is generally assumed that this deficit is a consequence of impaired reasoning skills. However, the possibility that such inflexibility affects the entire system of a patient's beliefs has rarely been empirically tested. Using delusion-neutral material in a well-documented advice-taking task, the present study reports that patients with schizophrenia: 1) revise their beliefs, 2) take into account socially provided information to do so, 3) are not overconfident about their judgments, and 4) show less egocentric advice-discounting than controls. This study thus shows that delusional patients' difficulty in revising beliefs is more selective than had been previously assumed. The specificities of the task and the implications for a theory of delusion formation are discussed

Evidence for Sub-Haplogroup H5 of Mitochondrial DNA as a Risk Factor for Late Onset Alzheimer's Disease

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease and the leading cause of dementia among senile subjects. It has been proposed that AD can be caused by defects in mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. Given the fundamental contribution of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) for the respiratory chain, there have been a number of studies investigating the association between mtDNA inherited variants and multifactorial diseases, however no general consensus has been reached yet on the correlation between mtDNA haplogroups and AD. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We applied for the first time a high resolution analysis (sequencing of displacement loop and restriction analysis of specific markers in the coding region of mtDNA) to investigate the possible association between mtDNA-inherited sequence variation and AD in 936 AD patients and 776 cognitively assessed normal controls from central and northern Italy. Among over 40 mtDNA sub-haplogroups analysed, we found that sub-haplogroup H5 is a risk factor for AD (OR=1.85, 95% CI:1.04-3.23) in particular for females (OR=2.19, 95% CI:1.06-4.51) and independently from the APOE genotype. Multivariate logistic regression revealed an interaction between H5 and age. When the whole sample is considered, the H5a subgroup of molecules, harboring the 4336 transition in the tRNAGln gene, already associated to AD in early studies, was about threefold more represented in AD patients than in controls (2.0% vs 0.8%; p=0.031), and it might account for the increased frequency of H5 in AD patients (4.2% vs 2.3%). The complete re-sequencing of the 56 mtDNAs belonging to H5 revealed that AD patients showed a trend towards a higher number (p=0.052) of sporadic mutations in tRNA and rRNA genes when compared with controls. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that high resolution analysis of inherited mtDNA sequence variation can help in identifying both ancient polymorphisms defining sub-haplogroups and the accumulation of sporadic mutations associated with complex traits such as AD

Design concepts for the Cherenkov Telescope Array CTA: an advanced facility for ground-based high-energy gamma-ray astronomy

Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has had a major breakthrough with the impressive results obtained using systems of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has a huge potential in astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology. CTA is an international initiative to build the next generation instrument, with a factor of 5-10 improvement in sensitivity in the 100 GeV-10 TeV range and the extension to energies well below 100 GeV and above 100 TeV. CTA will consist of two arrays (one in the north, one in the south) for full sky coverage and will be operated as open observatory. The design of CTA is based on currently available technology. This document reports on the status and presents the major design concepts of CTA

Iron, Inflammation, Dialysis Adequacy, Nutritional Status, and Hyperparathyroidism Modify Erythropoietic Response

Background and objectives: The erythropoietic response in hemodialysis patients depends on several physiologic factors. Most epidemiologic studies include the effect of these factors by representing them as confounders. This study tested the hypothesis that iron stores, inflammation, dialysis adequacy, nutritional status, and hyperparathyroidism act as nonlinear effect modifiers of the erythropoietic response and quantified the magnitude of those effects over clinically relevant ranges

Prevalence, dimensionality and clinical relevance of self-disturbances and psychotic-like experiences in Polish young adults: a latent class analysis approach.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to investigate latent classes of psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) and self-disturbances (SD) and to explore mutual overlapping between derived subgroups. Further, our goal was to investigate class membership relationship with an exposure to childhood trauma and different psychopathological factors such as cognitive biases, depression, insomnia, psychiatric diagnosis and lifetime suicidality. METHODS: Participants consist of 3167 non-clinical adults. We performed two latent class analyses (LCA), for PLEs and SD separately, to identify subgroups of individuals with different profiles on PLEs and SD. Associations between psychopathological factors and latent class membership were examined using multinomial logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: LCA produced 5 classes within SD and 3 classes within PLEs. Class of the highest endorsement of SD showed 53% overlap with class of the highest endorsement of PLEs. The highest risk of belonging to High Class for both SD and PLEs was associated in particular with depression, cognitive biases and insomnia. Trauma emerged as a significant predictor only for PLEs classes. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings confirm that high PLEs and SD co-occur and are concentrated in a relatively small number of individuals, at least in the general population. Their combination may capture the highest risk of psychosis in the general population

Wpływ systemów uprawy roli na plonowanie, zachwaszczenie i elementy jakościowe nasion soi

Soybean cultivation is becoming more and more popular in many countries, including Poland, due to the high nutritional value of its seeds, its resistance to diseases and pests, as well as lower propensity to lodging compared to other legumes. Under the climatic conditions of Poland, soybean yield is largely dependent on weather conditions in a particular growing season, primarily temperature and rainfall. Studies on the effect of tillage systems used for soybean cropping under the climatic conditions of Poland are scarce. This proves the need to continue such research. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of conventional tillage (CT) and no-tillage (NT) on yield, weed infestation and seed qualitative composition of the ‘Mazowia’ soybean cultivar grown under the conditions of the Lublin Upland. A field experiment was carried out in the period of 2009-2012 at the Czesławice Experimental Farm (51°18′23″N 22°16′2″E). In 2010 the soybean plantation was terminated due to adverse weather conditions and related inhibited plant emergence. The experiment was set up on loess-derived grey-brown podzolic soil as a split-block design in four replicates. The present study showed that the soybean seed yield obtained under conventional tillage conditions was higher by 14.6% compared to that obtained under no-tillage. A higher plant density after emergence and before harvest as well as a higher plant height were found in the conventional tillage treatment. The protein, oil and fibre content in soybean seed was significantly affected only by weather conditions in particular growing seasons. A higher weed weight and richer floristic composition of weeds were found under no-tillage conditions in relation to conventional tillage.Uprawa soi w wielu krajach, jak i w Polsce staje się coraz bardziej popularna ze względu na dużą wartość odżywczą nasion, odporność na choroby i szkodniki oraz mniejszą skłonność do wylegania w porównaniu z innymi roślinami strączkowymi. Plonowanie soi w warunkach klimatycznych Polski jest w dużym stopniu uzależnione od przebiegu warunków pogodowych w danym sezonie wegetacyjnym, głównie temperatury i opadów. Badania dotyczące wpływu sposobu uprawy roli pod soję prowadzone w warunkach klimatycznych Polski są nieliczne. Świadczy to o potrzebie dalszej ich kontynuacji. Celem niniejszej pracy było porównanie wpływu konwencjonalnej uprawy roli (CT) oraz siewu bezpośredniego (NT) na plonowanie, zachwaszczenie i skład jakościowy nasion soi odmiana Mazowia, uprawianej w warunkach Wyżyny Lubelskiej. Badania polowe przeprowadzono w latach 2009-2012 w Gospodarstwie Doświadczalnym Czesławice (51°18′23″N 22°16′2″E). W 2010 roku ze względu na niesprzyjające warunki atmosferyczne i wynikające z nich utrudnione wschody plantację soi zlikwidowano. Eksperyment założono na glebie płowej wytworzonej z lessu, metodą split-block w czterech powtórzeniach. Przeprowadzone badania wykazały, że w warunkach uprawy płużnej (CT) plon nasion soi był wyższy o 14.6% w porównaniu do uzyskanego w siewie bezpośrednim (NT). Na obiekcie z uprawą płużną (CT) stwierdzono również większą obsadę roślin po wschodach i przed zbiorem oraz wysokość roślin. Na zawartości białka, tłuszczu i włókna w nasionach soi wpływał istotnie jedynie przebieg warunków pogodowych w poszczególnych sezonach wegetacyjnych. W warunkach siewu bezpośredniego soi (NT) stwierdzono znacznie większą masę chwastów oraz bogatszy skład florystyczny chwastów w porównaniu do uprawy tradycyjnej (CT)