The ape lottery : chimpanzees fail to consider spatial information when drawing statistical inferences

Funding: this work was supported by a research grant of the German Science Foundation DFG (grant # RA 2155/3-1) to Hannes Rakoczy and Josep Call. We acknowledge additional support by the Leibniz Association through funding for the Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition.Humans and nonhuman great apes share a sense for intuitive statistics, making intuitive probability judgments based on proportional information. This ability is of tremendous importance, in particular for predicting the outcome of events using prior information and for inferring general regularities from limited numbers of observations. Already in infancy, humans functionally integrate intuitive statistics with other cognitive domains, rendering this type of reasoning a powerful tool to make rational decisions in a variety of contexts. Recent research suggests that chimpanzees are capable of one type of such cross-domain integration: The integration of statistical and social information. Here, we investigated whether apes can also integrate physical information into their statistical inferences. We tested 14 sanctuary-living chimpanzees in a new task setup consisting of two “gumball machine”-apparatuses that were filled with different combinations of preferred and non-preferred food items. In four test conditions, subjects decided which of two apparatuses they wanted to operate to receive a random sample, while we varied both the proportional composition of the food items as well as their spatial configuration above and below a barrier. To receive the more favorable sample, apes needed to integrate proportional and spatial information. Chimpanzees succeeded in conditions in which we provided them either with proportional information or spatial information, but they failed to correctly integrate both types of information when they were in conflict. Whether these limitations in chimpanzees' performance reflect true limits of cognitive competence or merely performance limitations due to accessory task demands is still an open question.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Semi-occlusive dressing therapy versus surgical treatment in fingertip amputation injuries: a clinical study.

OBJECTIVES Treatment of fingertip amputations is subject of controversial debates. Recently, semi-occlusive dressings have increased in popularity in these injuries. AIMS To compare clinical outcomes of conservative semi-occlusive dressing therapy versus surgical treatment of fingertip amputations. METHODS Eighty-four patients with fingertip amputations were re-examined clinically after a mean follow-up of 28.1 months (range 9.6-46.2). Sixty-six patients (79%) were treated with semi-occlusive dressings (group 1) and 18 (21%) underwent surgery (group 2). Range of motion, grip strength, and two-point discrimination were measured at the final follow-up. Furthermore, VAS score, Quick-DASH score, subjective aesthetic outcome and loss of working days were obtained. RESULTS Group 1 demonstrated healing in all 66 patients (100%) while in Group 2 5 out of 18 patients (28%) failed to achieve healing after a mean of 17 days (range 2-38) due to graft necrosis. Group 1 showed significantly lower VAS scores and significantly lower loss of two-point discrimination compared to Group 2. Work absence was significantly shorter in Group 1 versus Group 2. Trophic changes in finger (46%) and nail (30%) were significantly lower in Group 1 compared to Group 2 (44% and 70%, respectively). Disturbance during daily business activities (14%) and cold sensitivity (23%) were significantly lower in Group 1 compared to Group 2 (86% and 77%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Semi-occlusive dressing therapy for fingertip amputations demonstrated excellent healing rates. Compared to surgical treatment, it resulted in significantly better clinical outcomes, lower complication rates and significantly higher reported satisfaction rates. Therefore, semi-occlusive dressing for fingertip injuries is a very successful procedure and shall be preferred over surgical treatment in most cases. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE III therapeutic

Chimpanzees prepare for alternative possible outcomes

When facing uncertainty, humans often build mental models of alternative outcomes. Considering diverging scenarios allows agents to respond adaptively to different actual worlds by developing contingency plans (covering one's bases). In a pre-registered experiment, we tested whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) prepare for two mutually exclusive possibilities. Chimpanzees could access two pieces of food, but only if they successfully protected them from a human competitor. In one condition, chimpanzees could be certain about which piece of food the human experimenter would attempt to steal. In a second condition, either one of the food rewards was a potential target of the competitor. We found that chimpanzees were significantly more likely to protect both pieces of food in the second relative to the first condition, raising the possibility that chimpanzees represent and prepare effectively for different possible worlds.PostprintPeer reviewe

Psychological care in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes in a real‐world setting and associations with metabolic control

Background: International guidelines recommend psychosocial care for children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Objective: To assess psychological care in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes in a real-world setting and to evaluate associations with metabolic outcome. Methods: Delivery of psychological care, HbA1c, and rates of severe hypoglycemia and diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes from 199 diabetes care centers participating in the German diabetes survey (DPV) were analyzed. Results: Overall, 12 326 out of 31 861 children with type 1 diabetes were supported by short-term or continued psychological care (CPC). Children with psychological care had higher HbA1c (8.0% vs 7.7%, P<.001) and higher rates of DKA (0.032 vs 0.021 per patient-year, P<.001) compared with children without psychological care. In age-, sex-, diabetes duration-, and migratory background-matched children, HbA1c stayed stable in children supported by CPC during follow-up (HbA1c 8.5% one year before psychological care started vs 8.4% after two years, P = 1.0), whereas HbA1c was lower but increased significantly by 0.3% in children without psychological care (HbA1c 7.5% vs 7.8% after two years, P <.001). Additional HbA1c-matching showed that the change in HbA1c during follow-up was not different between the groups, but the percentage of children with severe hypoglycemia decreased from 16.3% to 10.7% in children receiving CPC compared with children without psychological care (5.5% to 5.8%, P =.009). Conclusions: In this real-world setting, psychological care was provided to children with higher HbA1c levels. CPC was associated with stable glycemic control and less frequent severe hypoglycemia during follow-up

Novel artificial situational awareness system is comparable with human situational awareness in the en-route air traffic control domain

This paper is part of the AISA project, which has received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 892618 under European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Further information: - https://aisa-project.eu/dissemination.php - https://aisa-project.eu/downloads/AISA_D5.2.pdfAISA project introduces human-machine distributed situational awareness (SA) in en-route air traffic control. This paper is a result of the project's preliminary study. As a part of the project, a comparison between artificial and human situational awareness is performed. To investigate if the artificial SA could undistractedly monitor traffic, air traffic controller (ATCO) tasks are defined within Knowledge Graph (KG) system. KG system serves as a database with the ability to define relationships between data points. Human-in-the-loop simulations were performed to acquire needed data. ATCOs conducted different traffic scenarios which were later analysed and assessed regarding SA indicators defined in the paper. Tasks defined within the KG-based system can produce artificial SA that can successfully identify and complement all human SA degradation occurrences, contributing to Team SA. Therefore, defined tasks are sufficient to apply to the traffic data and to produce adequate machine SA

Mutations in POLE and survival of colorectal cancer patients – link to disease stage and treatment

Recent molecular profiling studies reported a new class of ultramutated colorectal cancers (CRCs), which are caused by exonuclease domain mutations (EDMs) in DNA polymerase ϵ (POLE). Data on the clinical implications of these findings as to whether these mutations define a unique CRC entity with distinct clinical outcome are lacking. We performed Sanger sequencing of the POLE exonuclease domain in 431 well-characterized patients with microsatellite stable (MSS) CRCs of a population-based patient cohort. Mutation data were analyzed for associations with major epidemiological, clinical, genetic, and pathological parameters including overall survival (OS) and disease-specific survival (DSS). In 373 of 431 MSS CRC, all exons of the exonuclease domain were analyzable. Fifty-four mutations were identified in 46 of these samples (12.3%). Besides already reported EDMs, we detected many new mutations in exons 13 and 14 (corresponding to amino acids 410–491) as well as in exon 9 and exon 11 (corresponding to aa 268–303 and aa 341–369). However, we did not see any significant associations of EDMs with clinicopathological parameters, including sex, age, tumor location and tumor stage, CIMP, KRAS, and BRAF mutations. While with a median follow-up time of 5.0 years, survival analysis of the whole cohort revealed nonsignificantly different adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of 1.35 (95% CI: 0.82–2.25) and 1.44 (0.81–2.58) for OS and DSS indicating slightly impaired survival of patients with EDMs, subgroup analysis for patients with stage III/IV disease receiving chemotherapy revealed a statistically significantly increased adjusted HR (1.87; 95%CI: 1.02–3.44). In conclusion, POLE EDMs do not appear to define an entirely new clinically distinct disease entity in CRC but may have prognostic or predictive implications in CRC subgroups, whose significance remains to be investigated in future studies

A sustainable route for antibacterial nanofinishing of textiles

In this paper, an aerosol-based process is shown for imparting antibacterial property to textiles. Metal nanoparticles (copper and silver) are produced by means of DC electrical discharges (glow and arc) between two electrodes in nitrogen at ambient pressure and passed through textile fabrics (cotton, polyester and lyocell) which act as filter media. The particle retention efficiency of the fabrics is measured in dependence of particle size and face velocity. The antibacterial performance of the fabrics treated with metal nanoparticles and its durability to wash is assessed according to industry standards. Loads of about 200 ppm (2x10-2 %wt.) of nanoparticles of copper or silver give strong antibacterial property but the colour and hand feeling of the fabrics are significantly affected. Nanosilver loads in the order of 50 ppm (5x10-3 %wt.) impart comparably high antibacterial property to the fabrics with no visible impact on colour and hand touching, and wash fastness is proven for 10 washes. Small silver nanoparticles (20 nm)

Birth weight, cardiometabolic risk factors and effect modification of physical activity in children and adolescents : pooled data from 12 international studies

Objectives: Low and high birth weight is associated with higher levels of cardiometabolic risk factors and adiposity in children and adolescents, and increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and early mortality later in life. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) is associated with lower cardiometabolic risk factors and may mitigate the detrimental consequences of high or low birth weight. Thus, we examined whether MVPA modified the associations between birth weight and cardiometabolic risk factors in children and adolescents. Methods: We used pooled individual data from 12 cohort- or cross-sectional studies including 9,100 children and adolescents. Birth weight was measured at birth or maternally reported retrospectively. Device-measured physical activity (PA) and cardiometabolic risk factors were measured in childhood or adolescence. We tested for associations between birth weight, MVPA, and cardiometabolic risk factors using multilevel linear regression, including study as a random factor. We tested for interaction between birth weight and MVPA by introducing the interaction term in the models (birth weight x MVPA). Results: Most of the associations between birth weight (kg) and cardiometabolic risk factors were not modified by MVPA (min/day), except between birth weight and waist circumference (cm) in children (p = 0.005) and HDL-cholesterol (mmol/l) in adolescents (p = 0.040). Sensitivity analyses suggested that some of the associations were modified by VPA, i.e., the associations between birth weight and diastolic blood pressure (mmHg) in children (p = 0.009) and LDL- cholesterol (mmol/l) (p = 0.009) and triglycerides (mmol/l) in adolescents (p = 0.028). Conclusion: MVPA appears not to consistently modify the associations between low birth weight and cardiometabolic risk. In contrast, MVPA may mitigate the association between higher birth weight and higher waist circumference in children. MVPA is consistently associated with a lower cardiometabolic risk across the birth weight spectrum. Optimal prenatal growth and subsequent PA are both important in relation to cardiometabolic health in children and adolescents.publishedVersio

Factors and Situations Affecting the Value of Patient Preference Studies: Semi-Structured Interviews in Europe and the US

Objectives: Patient preference information (PPI) is gaining recognition among the pharmaceutical industry, regulatory authorities, and health technology assessment (HTA) bodies/payers for use in assessments and decision-making along the medical product lifecycle (MPLC). This study aimed to identify factors and situations that influence the value of patient preference studies (PPS) in decision-making along the MPLC according to different stakeholders. Methods: Semi-structured interviews (n = 143) were conducted with six different stakeholder groups (physicians, academics, industry representa

Fine-mapping identifies multiple prostate cancer risk loci at 5p15, one of which associates with TERT expression

Associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at 5p15 and multiple cancer types have been reported. We have previously shown evidence for a strong association between prostate cancer (PrCa) risk and rs2242652 at 5p15, intronic in the telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) gene that encodes TERT. To comprehensively evaluate the association between genetic variation across this region and PrCa, we performed a fine-mapping analysis by genotyping 134 SNPs using a custom Illumina iSelect array or Sequenom MassArray iPlex, followed by imputation of 1094 SNPs in 22 301 PrCa cases and 22 320 controls in The PRACTICAL consortium. Multiple stepwise logistic regression analysis identified four signals in the promoter or intronic regions of TERT that independently associated with PrCa risk. Gene expression analysis of normal prostate tissue showed evidence that SNPs within one of these regions also associated with TERT expression, providing a potential mechanism for predisposition to disease