Psychopathy and the DSM-IV criteria for antisocial personality disorder.

The Axis II Work Group of the Task Force on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) has expressed concern that antisocial personality disorder (APD) criteria are too long and cumbersome and that they focus on antisocial behaviors rather than personality traits central to traditional conceptions of psychopathy and to international criteria. R. D. Hare et al describe an alternative to the approach taken in the DSM-III—Revised (DSM-III—R; American Psychiatric Association, 1987), namely, the revised Psychopathy Checklist. The authors also discuss the multisite APD field trials designed to evaluate and compare 4 criteria sets: the DSM-III—R criteria, a shortened list of these criteria, the criteria for dyssocial personality disorder from the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (World Health Organization, 1990), and a 10-item criteria set for psychopathic personality disorder derived from the revised Psychopathy Checklist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved

Differences in potassium forms between cutans and adjacent soil matrix in a Grey Clay Soil

International audienceCutans are common fabric features in soil and represent foci of chemical and biological reactions. The influence of cutans on potassium forms and their transformations were investigated for a Western Australian grey clay soil. Cutans and matrix soil had similar clay mineral associations with kaolinite, smectite and illite being present, but had different chemical properties. The organic carbon content of cutans was higher than for matrix soil, while pH values and oxalate extractable/dithionate extractable iron (Feo/Fed) ratios were lower. Numerous SEM-EDS single point analyses of cutans and the plasma phase of the matrix soil indicated that the mean value of K concentration in cutans is greater than in matrix soil, and that the K concentration decreased with distance from cutan to matrix. Chemical extractions showed mean values of total K and latent exchangeable K were higher for cutans than for matrix soil, but both fixed K and exchangeable K values were the same for cutans and matrix soil. In a K adsorption/desorption experiment, 35% of K adsorbed by matrix soil could not be desorbed by 1 M NH4Ac. These results indicate that cutans are relatively enriched in K and may play an important role in determining available K and latent exchangeable K due to the special physical and chemical environments they provide in the soil

Weakness in the ICU: a call to action

Muscle weakness is prevalent in critically ill patients and can have a dramatic effect on short- and long-term outcomes, yet there are currently no interventions with proven efficacy in preventing or treating this complication. In a new randomized trial, researchers found that serial electrical muscle stimulation significantly mitigated ultrasound-defined muscle atrophy, and the treatment was not linked to adverse effects. Although preliminary, these results, together with other recent studies, indicate a paradigm shift to a proactive approach in managing neuromuscular complications in the ICU

Industrial precipitation of zirconyl chloride: the effect of pH and solution concentration on calcination of zirconia

In situ and ex situ X-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy were used to investigate thecalcination of four samples of zirconia manufactured using two different zirconia reactant solution concentrations (0.81M and 1.62M) with precipitation carried out at pH 3 and 12. The calcinations wereinvestigated over the temperature range from room temperature to 1000"C. It was found that varyingthe precipitation conditions resulted in differing calcination routes; it is believed that variations in particlesize and initial degree of hydration are responsible for these differences. It was also found that theinitial phase produced after calcination was tetragonal zirconia, which underwent a process of crystallitegrowth to a size of # 30nm before transformation from tetragonal to monoclinic

Integrated crop pollination to buffer spatial and temporal variability in pollinator activity

Insect pollination improves the yield and quality of many crops, yet there is increasing evidence of insufficient insect pollinators limiting crop production. Effective Integrated Crop Pollination (ICP) involves adaptable, targeted and cost effective management of crop pollination and encourages the use of both wild and managed pollinators where appropriate. In this study we investigate how the addition of honeybee hives affects the community of insects visiting oilseed rape, and if hive number and location affect pollinator foraging and oilseed rape pollination in order to provide evidence for effective ICP. We found that introducing hives increased overall flower visitor numbers and altered the pollinator community, which became dominated by honeybees. Furthermore a greater number of hives did not increase bee numbers significantly but did result in honeybees foraging further into fields. The timing of surveys and proximity to the field edge influenced different pollinators in different ways and represents an example of spatial and temporal complementarity. For example dipteran flower visitor numbers declined away from the field edge whereas honeybees peaked at intermediate distances into the field. Furthermore, no significant effects of survey round on wild bees overall was observed but honeybee numbers were relatively lower during peak flowering and dipteran abundance was greater in later survey rounds. Thus combining diverse wild pollinators and managed species for crop pollination buffers spatial and temporal variation in flower visitation. However we found no effect of insect pollination on seed set or yield of oilseed rape in our trial, highlighting the critical need to understand crop demand for insect pollination before investments are made in managing pollination services

Localization and chiral symmetry in 2+1 flavor domain wall QCD

We present results for the dependence of the residual mass of domain wall fermions (DWF) on the size of the fifth dimension and its relation to the density and localization properties of low-lying eigenvectors of the corresponding hermitian Wilson Dirac operator relevant to simulations of 2+1 flavor domain wall QCD. Using the DBW2 and Iwasaki gauge actions, we generate ensembles of configurations with a $16^3\times 32$ space-time volume and an extent of 8 in the fifth dimension for the sea quarks. We demonstrate the existence of a regime where the degree of locality, the size of chiral symmetry breaking and the rate of topology change can be acceptable for inverse lattice spacings $a^{-1} \ge 1.6$ GeV.Comment: 59 Pages, 23 figures, 1 MPG linke

Mechanical suppression of osteolytic bone metastases in advanced breast cancer patients: A randomised controlled study protocol evaluating safety, feasibility and preliminary efficacy of exercise as a targeted medicine

Background: Skeletal metastases present a major challenge for clinicians, representing an advanced and typically incurable stage of cancer. Bone is also the most common location for metastatic breast carcinoma, with skeletal lesions identified in over 80% of patients with advanced breast cancer. Preclinical models have demonstrated the ability of mechanical stimulation to suppress tumour formation and promote skeletal preservation at bone sites with osteolytic lesions, generating modulatory interference of tumour-driven bone remodelling. Preclinical studies have also demonstrated anti-cancer effects through exercise by minimising tumour hypoxia, normalising tumour vasculature and increasing tumoural blood perfusion. This study proposes to explore the promising role of targeted exercise to suppress tumour growth while concomitantly delivering broader health benefits in patients with advanced breast cancer with osteolytic bone metastases. Methods: This single-blinded, two-armed, randomised and controlled pilot study aims to establish the safety, feasibility and efficacy of an individually tailored, modular multi-modal exercise programme incorporating spinal isometric training (targeted muscle contraction) in 40 women with advanced breast cancer and stable osteolytic spinal metastases. Participants will be randomly assigned to exercise or usual medical care. The intervention arm will receive a 3-month clinically supervised exercise programme, which if proven to be safe and efficacious will be offered to the control-arm patients following study completion. Primary endpoints (programme feasibility, safety, tolerance and adherence) and secondary endpoints (tumour morphology, serum tumour biomarkers, bone metabolism, inflammation, anthropometry, body composition, bone pain, physical function and patient-reported outcomes) will be measured at baseline and following the intervention. Discussion: Exercise medicine may positively alter tumour biology through numerous mechanical and nonmechanical mechanisms. This randomised controlled pilot trial will explore the preliminary effects of targeted exercise on tumour morphology and circulating metastatic tumour biomarkers using an osteolytic skeletal metastases model in patients with breast cancer. The study is principally aimed at establishing feasibility and safety. If proven to be safe and feasible, results from this study could have important implications for the delivery of this exercise programme to patients with advanced cancer and sclerotic skeletal metastases or with skeletal lesions present in haematological cancers (such as osteolytic lesions in multiple myeloma), for which future research is recommended. Trial registration: anzctr.org.au, ACTRN-12616001368426. Registered on 4 October 2016

The Relationship between Marital Status and Psychological Resilience in Chronic Pain

We examined the relationship between marital status and a 2-stage model of pain-related effect, consisting of pain unpleasantness and suffering. We studied 1914 chronic pain patients using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) to clarify whether marital status was a determinant factor in the emotional or ideational suffering associated with chronic pain after controlling for pain sensation intensity, age, and ethnicity. Marital status was unrelated to immediate unpleasantness (). We found a strong association with emotional suffering () but not with negative illness beliefs (). Interestingly, widowed subjects experienced significantly less frustration, fear, and anger than all other groups (married, divorced, separated, or single). A final MANCOVA including sex as a covariate revealed that the emotional response to pain was the same for both widow and widower. Only those individuals whose spouse died experienced less emotional turmoil in the face of a condition threatening their lifestyle. These data suggest that after experiencing the death of a spouse, an individual may derive some “emotional inoculation” against future lifestyle threat