First Principles for an Effective Rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996

The increasing centrality of the Internet in modern communications, together with massive changes in the landscape of the telecommunications market, have intensified the calls for Congress to overhaul the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In this paper, we analyze this looming legislative challenge by dividing it into two sets of issues: first, issues concerning the proper substance of telecommunications policy reform; and, second, issues concerning the appropriate institutions for carrying out that reform. In Part I, we argue that Congress should require regulators to adhere more closely to (and justify departures from) basic antitrust principles in developing the substance of competition policy. In particular, we explore how those principles would have brought greater predictability and analytical rigor to the FCC's implementation of statutory provisions requiring incumbent telephone providers to lease parts of their networks to competitors. Moreover, we explain how antitrust principles can now inform the current debate over whether to regulate broadband platforms to prevent discrimination against independent providers of applications like voice over Internet protocol. In Part II, we turn to Congress's institutional choices in reforming telecommunications regulation.Despite our advocacy for antitrust-oriented rules of decision, we argue for a continued reliance on the FCC, rather than antitrust courts, as the appropriate institution for superintending the efficient development of competition throughout the industry.Not only does the FCC enjoy specialized expertise in the economics and technology of the telecommunications industry, it also enjoys a distinct advantage over courts in developing and enforcing complicated ,and necessary,prescriptive rules, such as those governing interconnection and its associated intercarrier fees. At the same time, the FCC will increasingly need to refocus its energies from prescriptive regulation to a new emphasis on after-the-fact enforcement and market-monitoring, much like the role played today by the Federal Trade Commission.

Attentional Processing in C57BL/6J Mice Exposed to Developmental Vitamin D Deficiency

Epidemiological evidence suggests that Developmental Vitamin D (DVD) deficiency is associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia. DVD deficiency in mice is associated with altered behaviour, however there has been no detailed investigation of cognitive behaviours in DVD-deficient mice. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of DVD deficiency on a range of cognitive tasks assessing attentional processing in C57BL/6J mice. DVD deficiency was established by feeding female C57BL/6J mice a vitamin D-deficient diet from four weeks of age. After six weeks on the diet, vitamin D-deficient and control females were mated with vitamin D-normal males and upon birth of the pups, all dams were returned to a diet containing vitamin D. The adult offspring were tested on a range of cognitive behavioural tests, including the five-choice serial reaction task (5C-SRT) and five-choice continuous performance test (5C-CPT), as well as latent inhibition using a fear conditioning paradigm. DVD deficiency was not associated with altered attentional performance on the 5C-SRT. In the 5C-CPT DVD-deficient male mice exhibited an impairment in inhibiting repetitive responses by making more perseverative responses, with no changes in premature or false alarm responding. DVD deficiency did not affect the acquisition or retention of cued fear conditioning, nor did it affect the expression of latent inhibition using a fear conditioning paradigm. DVD-deficient mice exhibited no major impairments in any of the cognitive domains tested. However, impairments in perseverative responding in DVD-deficient mice may indicate that these animals have specific alterations in systems governing compulsive or reward-seeking behaviour

Junior staffing changes and the temporal ecology of adverse incidents in acute psychiatric wards

Aim.  This paper reports an examination of the relationship between adverse incident rates, the arrival of new junior staff on wards, and days of the week on acute psychiatric wards. Background.  Incidents of violence, absconding and self-harm in acute inpatient services pose risks to patients and staff. Previous research suggests that the arrival of inexperienced new staff may trigger more adverse incidents. Findings on the relationship between incidents and the weekly routine are inconsistent. Method.  A retrospective analysis was conducted of formally reported incident rates, records of nursing student allocations and junior doctor rotation patterns, using Poisson Regression. Variance between days of the week was explored using contingency table analysis. The data covered 30 months on 17 psychiatric wards, and were collected in 2002–2004. Findings.  The arrival of new and inexperienced staff on the wards was not associated with increases in adverse incident rates. Most types of incidents were less frequent at weekends and midweek. Incident rates were unchanged on ward-round days, but increased rates were found on the days before and after ward rounds. Conclusion.  Increased patient tension is associated with raised incident rates. It may be possible to reduce incident rates by moderating stimulation in the environment and by mobilizing support for patients during critical periods

The Cognitive Impact of the ANK3 Risk Variant for Bipolar Disorder: Initial Evidence of Selectivity to Signal Detection during Sustained Attention

BACKGROUND: Abnormalities in cognition have been reported in patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) and their first degree relatives, suggesting that susceptibility genes for BD may impact on cognitive processes. Recent genome-wide genetic studies have reported a strong association with BD in a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) (rs10994336) within ANK3, which codes for Ankyrin 3. This protein is involved in facilitating the propagation of action potentials by regulating the assembly of sodium gated ion channels. Since ANK3 influences the efficiency of transmission of neuronal impulses, allelic variation in this gene may have widespread cognitive effects. Preclinical data suggest that this may principally apply to sequential signal detection, a core process of sustained attention. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: One hundred and eighty-nine individuals of white British descent were genotyped for the ANK3 rs10994336 polymorphism and received diagnostic interviews and comprehensive neurocognitive assessment of their general intellectual ability, memory, decision making, response inhibition and sustained attention. Participants comprised euthymic BD patients (n = 47), their unaffected first-degree relatives (n = 75) and healthy controls (n = 67). The risk allele T was associated with reduced sensitivity in target detection (p = 0.0004) and increased errors of commission (p = 0.0018) during sustained attention regardless of diagnosis. We found no effect of the ANK3 genotype on general intellectual ability, memory, decision making and response inhibition. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest that allelic variation in ANK3 impacts cognitive processes associated with signal detection and this mechanism may relate to risk for BD. However, our results require independent replication and confirmation that ANK3 (rs10994336) is a direct functional variant

Career Development in Schizophrenia: A Heuristic Framework

Adults with schizophrenia continue to have poor rates of competitive employment. We have learned how to support individuals in the workplace with supported employment (SE); but have paid limited attention to early vocational identity development, work antecedents, illness characteristics, and career preferences. Vocational identity development is an important and natural condition of human growth for all persons and is well-researched in career counseling. For young adults with schizophrenia, the predictor of positive work outcome with the most evidence has been that working competitively prior to illness leads to better chances for work post-diagnosis. A heuristic framework is proposed to conceptualize how pre-illness vocational development (paid and unpaid) plus life cycle supports can provide direction to the individual in their work recovery.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44318/1/10597_2005_Article_5004.pd

The NEWMEDS rodent touchscreen test battery for cognition relevant to schizophrenia.

RATIONALE: The NEWMEDS initiative (Novel Methods leading to New Medications in Depression and Schizophrenia, http://www.newmeds-europe.com ) is a large industrial-academic collaborative project aimed at developing new methods for drug discovery for schizophrenia. As part of this project, Work package 2 (WP02) has developed and validated a comprehensive battery of novel touchscreen tasks for rats and mice for assessing cognitive domains relevant to schizophrenia. OBJECTIVES: This article provides a review of the touchscreen battery of tasks for rats and mice for assessing cognitive domains relevant to schizophrenia and highlights validation data presented in several primary articles in this issue and elsewhere. METHODS: The battery consists of the five-choice serial reaction time task and a novel rodent continuous performance task for measuring attention, a three-stimulus visual reversal and the serial visual reversal task for measuring cognitive flexibility, novel non-matching to sample-based tasks for measuring spatial working memory and paired-associates learning for measuring long-term memory. RESULTS: The rodent (i.e. both rats and mice) touchscreen operant chamber and battery has high translational value across species due to its emphasis on construct as well as face validity. In addition, it offers cognitive profiling of models of diseases with cognitive symptoms (not limited to schizophrenia) through a battery approach, whereby multiple cognitive constructs can be measured using the same apparatus, enabling comparisons of performance across tasks. CONCLUSION: This battery of tests constitutes an extensive tool package for both model characterisation and pre-clinical drug discovery.This work was supported by the Innovative Medicine Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement no. 115008 of which resources are composed of EFPIA in-kind contribution and financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013). The authors thank Charlotte Oomen for valuable comments on the manuscript.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-015-4007-

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of attention processes in presumed obligate carriers of schizophrenia: preliminary findings

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Presumed obligate carriers (POCs) are the first-degree relatives of people with schizophrenia who, although do not exhibit the disorder, are in direct lineage of it. Thus, this subpopulation of first-degree relatives could provide very important information with regard to the investigation of endophenotypes for schizophrenia that could clarify the often contradictory findings in schizophrenia high-risk populations. To date, despite the extant literature on schizophrenia endophenotypes, we are only aware of one other study that examined the neural mechanisms that underlie cognitive abnormalities in this group. The aim of this study was to investigate whether a more homogeneous group of relatives, such as POCs, have neural abnormalities that may be related to schizophrenia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to collect blood oxygenated level dependent (BOLD) response data in six POCs and eight unrelated healthy controls while performing under conditions of sustained, selective and divided attention.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The POCs indicated alterations in a widely distributed network of regions involved in attention processes, such as the prefrontal and temporal (including the parahippocampal gyrus) cortices, in addition to the anterior cingulate gyrus. More specifically, a general reduction in BOLD response was found in these areas compared to the healthy participants during attention processes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These preliminary findings of decreased activity in POCs indicate that this more homogeneous population of unaffected relatives share similar neural abnormalities with people with schizophrenia, suggesting that reduced BOLD activity in the attention network may be an intermediate marker for schizophrenia.</p