Promoting Values Development Through Community Service: A Design

Human society has become technologically complex, resulting in heightened global interdependency. However, rather than observing an era of collaboration and cooperation, we have witnessed a rise in individual and societal egocentrism (Newman, 1985 )

Emergency Portasystemic Shunting in Cirrhotics With Bleeding Varices — A Comparison of Portacaval and Mesocaval Shunts

Despite the best conservative measures available for the control of major variceal hemorrhage, some patients either continue to bleed, or rebleed early, and require emergency surgery. One hundred patients with cirrhosis and uncontrolled bleeding were treated with emergency portasystemic shunts between 1968 and 1983. Fifty eight patients had end-to-side portacaval shunts and 42 had Dacron interposition mesocaval shunts. Both groups were comparable with respect to age, sex and prevalence of alcoholism. There was an increased severity of liver disease as assessed by Child's class in the mesocaval group of patients

Semantic context and visual feature effects in object naming: an fMRI study using arterial spin labeling

Previous behavioral studies reported a robust effect of increased naming latencies when objects to be named were blocked within semantic category, compared to items blocked between category. This semantic context effect has been attributed to various mechanisms including inhibition or excitation of lexico-semantic representations and incremental learning of associations between semantic features and names, and is hypothesized to increase demands on verbal self-monitoring during speech production. Objects within categories also share many visual structural features, introducing a potential confound when interpreting the level at which the context effect might occur. Consistent with previous findings, we report a significant increase in response latencies when naming categorically related objects within blocks, an effect associated with increased perfusion fMRI signal bilaterally in the hippocampus and in the left middle to posterior superior temporal cortex. No perfusion changes were observed in the middle section of the left middle temporal cortex, a region associated with retrieval of lexical–semantic information in previous object naming studies. Although a manipulation of visual feature similarity did not influence naming latencies, we observed perfusion increases in the perirhinal cortex for naming objects with similar visual features that interacted with the semantic context in which objects were named. These results provide support for the view that the semantic context effect in object naming occurs due to an incremental learning mechanism, and involves increased demands on verbal self-monitoring

Independent distractor frequency and age-of-acquisition effects in picture-word interference: fMRI evidence for post-lexical and lexical accounts according to distractor type

In two fMRI experiments, participants named pictures with superimposed distractors that were high or low in frequency or varied in terms of age of acquisition. Pictures superimposed with low-frequency words were named more slowly than those superimposed with high-frequency words, and late-acquired words interfered with picture naming to a greater extent than early-acquired words. The distractor frequency effect (Experiment 1) was associated with increased activity in left premotor and posterior superior temporal cortices, consistent with the operation of an articulatory response buffer and verbal self-monitoring system. Conversely, the distractor age-of-acquisition effect (Experiment 2) was associated with increased activity in the left middle and posterior middle temporal cortex, consistent with the operation of lexical level processes such as lemma and phonological word form retrieval. The spatially dissociated patterns of activity across the two experiments indicate that distractor effects in picture–word interference may occur at lexical or postlexical levels of processing in speech production

Exercise therapy for the treatment of tendinopathies: a scoping review.

Purpose: Tendinopathy is a common condition leading to pain, disability and reduced quality of life/participation. Due to many tendinopathies having a chronic or recurrent course, there is a need to identify effective, evidence based practice for this condition. Exercise is the mainstay of conservative management for tendinopathy however, due to the heterogeneity of tendinopathy, populations affected and variation in exercise approaches a mapping of this area is required to inform future research, both primary and secondary and ultimately practice. The aim of this scoping review was therefore to map the existing evidence on exercise interventions and outcomes for the treatment of any tendinopathy. Methods: JBI Scoping Review methodology and an apriori protocol guided this review. Inclusion criteria included i). Participants - studies including any age or gender with any tendinopathy, ii). Concept – Exercise therapy (any type or format) intervention, delivered in any setting by any professional with any outcomes related to evaluating exercise interventions for tendinopathy, iii). Context – any setting in any developed nation listed as having very high human development. Nine databases, five clinical trial registries and six grey literature sources were searched. Results were uploaded to Covidence for screening. All screening (title/abstract and full text) were conducted by two reviewers independently with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. A data extraction tool was iteratively developed and piloted by the review team prior to data extraction. As per scoping review methodology, no critical appraisal was conducted. Data was synthesised to present a map of tendinopathy exercise interventions and outcomes (related to ICON health related domains) alongside an accompanying narrative. Results: 22,547 studies were identified and after de-duplication and screening 554 studies were included in the review representing 25,687 participants. Studies were predominantly randomised controlled trials or systematic reviews conducted in the UK, Turkey, USA & Australia. The main tendinopathies reported were rotator cuff, achilles, lateral elbow and patellar. The majority of studies included a range of strength training approaches followed by flexibility and motor re-training /proprioception exercise. There was a range in quality of reporting of exercise across tendinopathies, assessed using the TIDieR checklist with 65.8% partially reproducible and 28% not reproducible. There was variation across tendinopathies in domains (disability, pain and physical function capacity) reported with corresponding variation in primary outcome measures related to these. Conclusion(s): This scoping review has mapped the evidence on exercise for tendinopathies. There is a range of exercise approaches across different tendinopathies and a need for future research to strictly adhere to reporting guidelines. There are a range of outcomes and domains reported across tendinopathies and future research would benefit from the development of core outcome sets for each tendinopathy. Impact: This scoping review adds to the body of evidence on tendinopathy rehabilitation. The results have informed systematic reviews currently being conducted on effectiveness of exercise for tendinopathies and the acceptability and feasibility of exercise interventions for tendinopathies. These reviews will provide guidance on exercise for tendinopathy rehabilitation, which can be adopted internationally. Funding acknowledgements: This project is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) [Health Technology Assessment (HTA) 129388 Exercise therapy for the treatment of tendinopathies]. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care

Flushing ballast tanks

The International Maritime Organization requires ballast water tanks to be flushed through with three tank volumes to remove aquatic species. We apply a network model for multiply connected compartments to analyse the influence of internal geometry and inlet-outlet positions on how much of the initial water of each compartment is flushed in time. A complementary experimental study was undertaken to quantify the flushing from 2×2, 3×3 and 5×4 tank configurations by an optical method. The agreement between the predictions and measurements is good. The results show that the flushing in a multi-compartment tank is generally more efficient than perfect mixing. The 95% reduction is met after three exchange volumes in all cases. The outlet needs to be positioned far from the inlet to reduce bypassing through the tank. These results are finally discussed in the context of international regulations for flushing ballast tanks. © 2014 The Authors

Global culture: A noise induced transition in finite systems

We analyze the effect of cultural drift, modeled as noise, in Axelrod's model for the dissemination of culture. The disordered multicultural configurations are found to be metastable. This general result is proven rigorously in d=1, where the dynamics is described in terms of a Lyapunov potential. In d=2, the dynamics is governed by the average relaxation time T of perturbations. Noise at a rate r 1/T sustains disorder. In the thermodynamic limit, the relaxation time diverges and global polarization persists in spite of a dynamics of local convergence.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. For related material visit http://www.imedea.uib.es/physdept

Congeneric predators fill discrete niches created by the relative abundances of their prey species

To what degree is niche partitioning driven by underlying patterns in resources such as food, rather than by competition itself? Do discrete niches exist? We address these questions in the context of Cooper's and Sharp-shinned Hawks, two broadly sympatric, North American, bird-eating raptors in the genus Accipiter. We find that the resource base, as quantified by body masses of birds at bird feeders, is approximately lognormal (smallest birds are most abundant), with lesser modes (peaks) in abundance at larger body mass. The predators appear to exploit peaks in the resource base, with Sharp-shinned Hawks focusing on small prey items (median of 26.5 g), and Cooper's Hawks taking prey from the two most abundant peaks (both the small body mass peak and a lesser peak at medium body mass ~90g). We tested the ability of citizen scientists to distinguish these notoriously similar species, and we determined the influence of potential false positive detections on our conclusions. We find that citizen scientists struggle to distinguish these predators from one another, and 18% of Cooper's Hawks were identified as Sharp-shinned Hawks, while 27% of Sharp-shinned Hawks were identified as Cooper's Hawks. Yet, simulations show that this uncertainty did not jeopardize our qualitative conclusions.Funding provided by: National Science FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Award Number: 1402506Data collected through the interactions add-on to Project FeederWatch. Eliot Miller tracks incoming observations, highlights unusual observations, and contacts contributors to confirm/refute such observations. This then is a cleaner and vetted version of the original FeederWatch interactions observations. User names, IDs, and email addresses are all stripped from the data

Serum Concentrations of Myostatin and Myostatin-Interacting Proteins do not differ between young and Scarcopenic elderly men

Peer reviewedPostprin

Transgenerational latent early-life associated regulation unites environment and genetics across generations

The origin of idiopathic diseases is still poorly understood. The latent early-life associated regulation (LEARn) model unites environmental exposures and gene expression while providing a mechanistic underpinning for later-occurring disorders. We propose that this process can occur across generations via transgenerational LEARn (tLEARn). In tLEARn, each person is a 'unit' accumulating preclinical or subclinical 'hits' as in the original LEARn model. These changes can then be epigenomically passed along to offspring. Transgenerational accumulation of 'hits' determines a sporadic disease state. Few significant transgenerational hits would accompany conception or gestation of most people, but these may suffice to 'prime' someone to respond to later-life hits. Hits need not produce symptoms or microphenotypes to have a transgenerational effect. Testing tLEARn requires longitudinal approaches. A recently proposed longitudinal epigenome/envirome-wide association study would unite genetic sequence, epigenomic markers, environmental exposures, patient personal history taken at multiple time points and family history