E Pluribus Unum

On Lingering and Being Last: Race and Sovereignty in the New World, by Jonathan Elmer. (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2008. Pp. 256. $75.00 cloth,$25.00 paper.

Relationships between auditory event-related potentials and mood state, medication, and comorbid psychiatric illness in patients with bipolar disorder

BACKGROUND: Patients with bipolar disorder (BD) exhibit aberrations in auditory event-related potentials (ERPs), although the relationships between these measures and mood state at testing, comorbid psychiatric illness, presence of psychotic features, and medication usage are unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between these factors and auditory ERP measures in BD patients. METHODS: An auditory 'oddball' discrimination task was used to elicit ERPs from 69 patients with type I BD and 52 healthy controls. Patients were placed into subgroups based upon their mood state at testing (euthymic or symptomatic), and ANOVA was used to compare amplitude and peak latency measures from the N100, P200, N200, and P300 ERP components across subgroups. Multiple regression was used to investigate relationships between ERP measures and comorbid psychiatric diagnosis, history of psychotic features, and medication status. RESULTS: Relative to healthy control participants, euthymic and symptomatic BD patients exhibited reduced P300 and P200 amplitude, but ERP measures did not differ among BD patients on the basis of mood status. A history of a comorbid anxiety disorder was associated with reduced N200 peak latency, but prolonged P300 peak latency among BD patients. No other relationships between clinical variables and ERP measures were significant. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that disrupted auditory attention may be observed in BD patients regardless of their mood state at testing, medication status, or history of psychosis. These results extend previous findings, and provide further evidence for aberrations in the P300 ERP as an endophenotype for BD

Auditory feature perception and auditory hallucinatory experiences in schizophrenia spectrum disorder

Schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SZ) is associated with deficits in auditory perception as well as auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH). However, the relationship between auditory feature perception and auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), one of the most commonly occurring symptoms in psychosis, has not been well characterized. This study evaluated perception of a broad range of auditory features in SZ and to determine whether current AVHs relate to auditory feature perception. Auditory perception, including frequency, intensity, duration, pulse-train and temporal order discrimination, as well as an embedded tone task, was assessed in both AVH (n = 20) and non-AVH (n = 24) SZ individuals and in healthy controls (n = 29) with the Test of Basic Auditory Capabilities (TBAC). The Hamilton Program for Schizophrenia Voices Questionnaire (HPSVQ) was used to assess the experience of auditory hallucinations in patients with SZ. Findings suggest that compared to controls, the SZ group had greater deficits on an array of auditory features, with non-AVH SZ individuals showing the most severe degree of abnormality. IQ and measures of cognitive processing were positively associated with performance on the TBAC for all SZ individuals, but not with the HPSVQ scores. These findings indicate that persons with SZ demonstrate impaired auditory perception for a broad range of features. It does not appear that impaired auditory perception is associated with recent auditory verbal hallucinations, but instead associated with the degree of intellectual impairment in SZ

University of Illinois Year of Cyberinfrastructure Final Report

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a leader in computing and information technology (IT). Our leadership role has both produced and been produced by a culture of innovation. Many efforts have arisen over the years that have been the product of this culture. While the university’s commitment to developing digital infrastructure, resources, and support services has served campus researchers well, it has become clear that a more coherent and unified approach to assessing and addressing the IT services and support needs of campus researchers is imperative. With the support of the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Chief Information Officer, we embarked on the Year of Cyberinfrastructure (Year of CI). Through this effort, we engaged researchers across disciplines to gain an understanding of the challenges they face in order to inform how we, as a campus, should move together to address these needs. We confirmed that researchers tend to assemble needed resources and services on their own, often out of necessity. While this practice has allowed those with the ambition or, more frequently, the absolute need, to advance their fields, it has primarily benefitted only those researchers and their collaborators. Providers of resources and services have brought value to the research process, but this value has been accrued in a largely disjointed manner that has tended to favor the power users of technology. The Year of CI effort has made clear that our research support landscape is not only lacking coherence but is also very uneven across academic and research units. To support modern research practices and to be competitive and preeminent in the academic community and the world, the 21st century research university must provide a foundation of research IT infrastructure and services that are accessible by all disciplines. Our campus needs a strong vision for how IT supports research, along with the ability to realize and evolve that vision in lockstep with the changing needs of the research community and the technologies available to meet those needs. Though Illinois faces significant financial challenges, it is time to be bold and make an investment to allow the university to emerge from these challenges as the premier destination for faculty, postdocs, graduate students, undergraduate students, and research staff who seek to work in a world-class modern research environment. It is time to provide the infrastructure that will grow the campus research portfolio to new heights. The Year of CI has provided the initial assessment of the campus and indicates the steps we must take to develop the digital support ecosystem that will allow the campus to realize its vision of preeminence in research.Ope

Disturbances of postural sway components in cannabis users

Introduction A prominent effect of acute cannabis use is impaired motor coordination and driving performance. However, few studies have evaluated balance in chronic cannabis users, even though density of the CB1 receptor, which mediates the psychoactive effects of cannabis, is extremely high in brain regions critically involved in this fundamental behavior. The present study measured postural sway in regular cannabis users and used rambling and trembling analysis to quantify the integrity of central and peripheral nervous system contributions to the sway signal. Methods Postural sway was measured in 42 regular cannabis users (CB group) and 36 non-cannabis users (N-CB group) by asking participants to stand as still as possible on a force platform in the presence and absence of motor and sensory challenges. Center of pressure (COP) path length was measured, and the COP signal was decomposed into rambling and trembling components. Exploratory correlational analyses were conducted between sway variables, cannabis use history, and neurocognitive function. Results The CB group had significantly increased path length and increased trembling in the anterior-posterior (AP) direction. Exploratory correlational analyses suggested that AP rambling was significantly inversely associated with visuo-motor processing speed. Discussion Regular cannabis use is associated with increased postural sway, and this appears to be predominantly due to the trembling component, which is believed to reflect the peripheral nervous system’s contribution to the sway signal

Should we keep everything forever (reprised)? Preservation review of research data in a repository as an art and a science

--This poster was accepted for iPres2018, Boston, USA-- The Illinois Data Bank was established in 2016 as an institutional file-based repository for research data (Hetrick et al. 2018). The service commits to a minimum retention period of five years, after which deposits are to be appraised and potentially reformatted, enhanced, or withdrawn. Preservation review guidelines were established and a “review indicator” was proposed (Anderson et al., 2016) to help curators identify datasets for which an in-depth, human-mediated review may be warranted. Our poster will characterize the datasets deposited during Illinois Data Bank’s first two years in order to evaluate the following: the feasibility and utility of our proposed Review Indicator as currently formulated, and possible actions during initial curation that would minimize or eliminate the need for a five-year review of some datasets. As we continue to explore strategies to assist with the on-going stewardship of complex data collections, we hope that our efforts will spark conversations with, and insights from, others who are responsible for preserving similarly challenging collectionsOpe

Enlarging conference learning : at the crossroads of fat studies and conference pedagogies

This article stages an encounter between the field of fat studies and conference pedagogy scholarship. After laying the foundations for a reading of academic conferences as learning spaces, the authors present two examples—International Fat Studies Conferences held in Aotearoa, New Zealand, in 2012 and 2016—to unpack these ideas. The framing of fat studies conferences as pedagogical spaces sparks questions that travel in multiple directions. It calls us to consider possible modifications to the design of fat studies conferences, as well as how discussions about fat pedagogy may have a wider application to academic gatherings

RDS Campus Annual Report 2019

This annual report covers the Research Data Service (RDS) from July 1 2018-June 30 2019.Ope

Illinois Data Bank First Year in Review

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Illinois Data Bank First Year in Review

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