333 research outputs found
Probing apathy in children and adolescents with the Apathy Motivation Index–Child version
Apathy is linked to mental health and altered neurocognitive functions such as learning and decision-making in healthy adults. Mental health problems typically begin to emerge during adolescence, yet little is known about how apathy develops due to an absence of quantitative measurements specific to young people. Here, we present and evaluate the Apathy Motivation Index–Child Version (AMI-CV) for children and adolescents. We show across two samples of young people (aged 8 to 17 years, total N = 191) tested in schools in the UK and on a smartphone app, that the AMI-CV is a short, psychometrically sound measure to assess levels of apathy and motivation in young people. Similar to adult versions, the AMI-CV captures three distinct apathy domains: Behavioural Activation, Social Motivation and Emotional Sensitivity. The AMI-CV showed excellent construct validity with an alternative measure of apathy and external validity replicating specific links with related mental health traits shown in adults. Our results provide a short measure of self-reported apathy in young people that enables research into apathy development. The AMI-CV can be used in conjunction with the adult version to investigate the impact of levels of apathy across the lifespan
Probing apathy in children and adolescents with the Apathy Motivation Index–Child version
Apathy is linked to mental health and altered neurocognitive functions such as learning and decision-making in healthy adults. Mental health problems typically begin to emerge during adolescence, yet little is known about how apathy develops due to an absence of quantitative measurements specific to young people. Here, we present and evaluate the Apathy Motivation Index–Child Version (AMI-CV) for children and adolescents. We show across two samples of young people (aged 8 to 17 years, total N = 191) tested in schools in the UK and on a smartphone app, that the AMI-CV is a short, psychometrically sound measure to assess levels of apathy and motivation in young people. Similar to adult versions, the AMI-CV captures three distinct apathy domains: Behavioural Activation, Social Motivation and Emotional Sensitivity. The AMI-CV showed excellent construct validity with an alternative measure of apathy and external validity replicating specific links with related mental health traits shown in adults. Our results provide a short measure of self-reported apathy in young people that enables research into apathy development. The AMI-CV can be used in conjunction with the adult version to investigate the impact of levels of apathy across the lifespan
Local power and land use: spatial implications for local energy development
Background
The decentralised and private nature of small-scale renewable energy development does not fit traditional models of government planning and oversight. The land use impacts related to these developments are not well understood and data is lacking related to the environmental, social and economic impacts that can occur under various scenarios.
Methods
This research note provides a literature review of the scarce information available about the spatial impacts of small-scale renewable energy and outlines the current stream of research being undertaken to address this knowledge gap. The preliminary case studies in Overijssel, the Netherlands and Navarre, Spain provide the background for understanding this complex issue, and a new integrated policy and land use model is introduced in order to combine qualitative and qualitative data that is important for understanding the dynamics of this growing field.
Results
The main difficulties in moving forward in planning for the decentralised renewable energytransition are the variation of perspectives on the attractiveness and appropriateness of urban renewableenergy (RE) development, differences in implementation processes and incentives, the dynamic nature ofthe relevant technologies and the lack of up to date information on land use.
Conclusions
Multi-functional land use is a key strategy for increasing the uptake of small-scale renewable energy but little to no data is available regarding it in European land use literature and policy. This needs to be addressed in order to enable pragmatic policies that will enable effective implementation of renewable energ
Genome-wide association studies for diabetic macular edema and proliferative diabetic retinopathy
Background: Diabetic macular edema (DME) and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) are sight threatening complications of diabetes mellitus and leading causes of adult onset blindness worldwide. Genetic risk factors for diabetic retinopathy (DR) have been described previously, but have been difficult to replicate between studies, which have often used composite phenotypes and been conducted in different populations. This study aims to identify genetic risk factors for DME and PDR as separate complications in Australians of European descent with type 2 diabetes.
Methods: Caucasian Australians with type 2 diabetes were evaluated in a genome wide association study (GWAS) to compare 270 DME cases and 176 PDR cases with 435 non retinopathy controls. All participants were genotyped by SNP array and after data cleaning, cases were compared to controls using logistic regression adjusting for relevant covariates.
Results: The top ranked SNP for DME was rs1990145 (p = 4.10 x 10(-6), OR = 2.02 95%CI [1.50, 2.72]) on chromosome 2. The top-ranked SNP for PDR was rs918519 (p = 3.87 x 10(-6), OR = 0.35 95%CI [0.22, 0.54]) on chromosome 5. A trend towards association was also detected at two SNPs reported in the only other reported GWAS of DR in Caucasians; rs12267418 near MALRD1 (p = 0.008) in the DME cohort and rs16999051 in the diabetes gene PCSK.2 (p = 0.007) in the PDR cohort.
Conclusion: This study has identified loci of interest for DME and PDR, two common ocular complications of diabetes. These findings require replication in other Caucasian cohorts with type 2 diabetes and larger cohorts will be required to identify genetic loci with statistical confidence. There is considerable overlap in the patient cohorts with each retinopathy subtype, complicating the search for genes that contribute to PDR and DME biology
The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish II: Characterization of Spectral Structure with Electromagnetic Simulations and its science Implications
We use time-domain electromagnetic simulations to determine the spectral
characteristics of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Arrays (HERA) antenna.
These simulations are part of a multi-faceted campaign to determine the
effectiveness of the dish's design for obtaining a detection of redshifted 21
cm emission from the epoch of reionization. Our simulations show the existence
of reflections between HERA's suspended feed and its parabolic dish reflector
that fall below -40 dB at 150 ns and, for reasonable impedance matches, have a
negligible impact on HERA's ability to constrain EoR parameters. It follows
that despite the reflections they introduce, dishes are effective for
increasing the sensitivity of EoR experiments at relatively low cost. We find
that electromagnetic resonances in the HERA feed's cylindrical skirt, which is
intended to reduce cross coupling and beam ellipticity, introduces significant
power at large delays ( dB at 200 ns) which can lead to some loss of
measurable Fourier modes and a modest reduction in sensitivity. Even in the
presence of this structure, we find that the spectral response of the antenna
is sufficiently smooth for delay filtering to contain foreground emission at
line-of-sight wave numbers below Mpc, in
the region where the current PAPER experiment operates. Incorporating these
results into a Fisher Matrix analysis, we find that the spectral structure
observed in our simulations has only a small effect on the tight constraints
HERA can achieve on parameters associated with the astrophysics of
reionization.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 18 pages, 17 Figures. Replacement matches accepted
manuscrip
Genome editing in fruit, ornamental, and industrial crops
The advent of genome editing has opened
new avenues for targeted trait enhancement in fruit,
ornamental, industrial, and all specialty crops. In
particular, CRISPR-based editing systems, derived
from bacterial immune systems, have quickly become
routinely used tools for research groups across the
world seeking to edit plant genomes with a greater
level of precision, higher efficiency, reduced off-target
effects, and overall ease-of-use compared to ZFNs and
TALENs. CRISPR systems have been applied successfully
to a number of horticultural and industrial
crops to enhance fruit ripening, increase stress tolerance,
modify plant architecture, control the timing of
flower development, and enhance the accumulation of
desired metabolites, among other commercially-important
traits. As editing technologies continue to
advance, so too does the ability to generate improved
crop varieties with non-transgenic modifications; in
some crops, direct transgene-free edits have already
been achieved, while in others, T-DNAs have successfully
been segregated out through crossing. In
addition to the potential to produce non-transgenic
edited crops, and thereby circumvent regulatory
impediments to the release of new, improved crop
varieties, targeted gene editing can speed up trait
improvement in crops with long juvenile phases,
reducing inputs resulting in faster market introduction
to the market. While many challenges remain regarding
optimization of genome editing in ornamental,
fruit, and industrial crops, the ongoing discovery of
novel nucleases with niche specialties for engineering
applications may form the basis for additional and
potentially crop-specific editing strategies.The authors would like to acknowledge funding from MINECO, Spain (PGC2018-097655-B-I00 to P Christou), Generalitat de Catalunya Grant 2017 SGR 828 to the Agricultural Biotechnology and Bioeconomy Unit (ABBU). Work in the Dhingra lab in crop improvement is supported in part by Washington State University Agriculture Research Center Hatch grant WNP00011. ES and FR acknowledge the support received from the Department of Horticulture, BW was supported in part by a Research Assistantship from the Washington State University Graduate School. The authors would also like to thank Drs A. McHughen and H. Quemada for input and clarifications on US genome editing regulations. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments
The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish I: Beam Pattern Measurements and Science Implications
The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) is a radio interferometer
aiming to detect the power spectrum of 21 cm fluctuations from neutral hydrogen
from the Epoch of Reionization (EOR). Drawing on lessons from the Murchison
Widefield Array (MWA) and the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of
Reionization (PAPER), HERA is a hexagonal array of large (14 m diameter) dishes
with suspended dipole feeds. Not only does the dish determine overall
sensitivity, it affects the observed frequency structure of foregrounds in the
interferometer. This is the first of a series of four papers characterizing the
frequency and angular response of the dish with simulations and measurements.
We focus in this paper on the angular response (i.e., power pattern), which
sets the relative weighting between sky regions of high and low delay, and
thus, apparent source frequency structure. We measure the angular response at
137 MHz using the ORBCOMM beam mapping system of Neben et al. We measure a
collecting area of 93 m^2 in the optimal dish/feed configuration, implying
HERA-320 should detect the EOR power spectrum at z~9 with a signal-to-noise
ratio of 12.7 using a foreground avoidance approach with a single season of
observations, and 74.3 using a foreground subtraction approach. Lastly we study
the impact of these beam measurements on the distribution of foregrounds in
Fourier space.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Replaced to match accepted ApJ versio
Phenotypic and functional analyses show stem cell-derived hepatocyte-like cells better mimic fetal rather than adult hepatocytes
Background & Aims: Hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs), differentiated from pluripotent stem cells by the use of soluble factors, can model human liver function and toxicity. However, at present HLC maturity and whether any deficit represents a true fetal state or aberrant differentiation is unclear and compounded by comparison to potentially deteriorated adult hepatocytes. Therefore, we generated HLCs from multiple lineages, using two different protocols,
for direct comparison with fresh fetal and adult hepatocytes.
Methods: Protocols were developed for robust differentiation. Multiple transcript, protein and functional analyses compared HLCs to fresh human fetal and adult hepatocytes.
Results: HLCs were comparable to those of other laboratories by multiple parameters. Transcriptional changes during differentiation mimicked human embryogenesis and showed more similarity to pericentral than periportal hepatocytes. Unbiased proteomics demonstrated greater proximity to liver than 30 other human organs or tissues. However, by comparison to fresh material,
HLC maturity was proven by transcript, protein and function to be fetal-like and short of the adult phenotype. The expression of 81% phase 1 enzymes in HLCs was significantly upregulated and half were statistically not different from fetal hepatocytes. HLCs secreted albumin and metabolized testosterone (CYP3A) and dextrorphan (CYP2D6) like fetal hepatocytes. In seven bespoke tests,
devised by principal components analysis to distinguish fetal from adult hepatocytes, HLCs from two different source laboratories consistently demonstrated fetal characteristics.
Conclusions: HLCs from different sources are broadly comparable with unbiased proteomic evidence for faithful differentiation down the liver lineage. This current phenotype mimics human fetal rather than adult hepatocytes
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