Genetic and biogeochemical investigation of sedimentary nitrogen cycling communities responding to tidal and seasonal dynamics in Cape Fear River Estuary

Tidal and seasonal fluctuations in the oligohaline reaches of estuaries may alter geochemical features that influence structure and function of microbial communities involved in sedimentary nitrogen (N) cycling. In order to evaluate sediment community responses to short-term (tidal) and long-term (seasonal) changes in different tidal regimes, nitrogen cycling rates and genes were quantified in three sites that span a range of tidal influence in the upper portion of the Cape Fear River Estuary. Environmental parameters were monitored during low and high tides in winter and spring. N-15 tracer incubation experiments were conducted to measure nitrification, denitrification, anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox), and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonia (DNRA). Abundances of functional genes including bacterial and archaeal ammonia monooxygenase (amoA), nitrite reductases (nirS and nrfA), nitrous oxide reductase (nosZ), and hydrazine oxidoreductase (hzo) were measured using quantitative PCR assays. Denitrification rates were highest among the measured N cycling processes while bacteria carrying nrfA genes were most abundant. A discernable pattern in the short-term variation of N cycling rates and gene abundance was not apparent under the different tidal regimes. Significant seasonal variation in nitrification, denitrification, and anammox rates as well as bacterial amoA, nirS and nosZ gene abundance was observed, largely explained by increases in substrate availability during winter, with sediment ammonium playing a central role. These results suggest that the coupling of nitrification to N removal pathways is primarily driven by organic carbon mineralization and independent of tidal or salinity changes. Finally, changes in denitrification and nitrification activities were strongly reflected by the abundance of the respective functional genes, supporting a linkage between the structure and function of microbial communities. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Managing bone mineral density with oral bisphosphonate therapy in women with breast cancer receiving adjuvant aromatase inhibition

The use of adjuvant aromatase inhibitors is associated with an increased risk of osteoporosis and fractures. The oral bisphosphonate, risedronate - dosed as the US Food and Drug Administration approved for the treatment or prevention of postmenopausal osteoporosis - appears to mitigate bone loss associated with 2 years of adjuvant anastrozole in women with early-stage breast cancer

Effect of four-week cannabidiol treatment on cognitive function: secondary outcomes from a randomised clinical trial for the treatment of cannabis use disorder

RATIONALE: Chronic cannabis use is associated with impaired cognitive function. Evidence indicates cannabidiol (CBD) might be beneficial for treating cannabis use disorder. CBD may also have pro-cognitive effects; however, its effect on cognition in people with cannabis use disorder is currently unclear. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to assess whether a 4-week CBD treatment impacted cognitive function. We hypothesised that CBD treatment would improve cognition from baseline to week 4, compared to placebo. METHODS: Cognition was assessed as a secondary outcome in a phase 2a randomised, double-blind, parallel-group and placebo-controlled clinical trial of 4-week daily 200 mg, 400 mg and 800 mg CBD for the treatment of cannabis use disorder. Participants had moderate or severe DSM-5 cannabis use disorder and intended to quit cannabis use. Our pre-registered primary cognitive outcome was delayed prose recall. Secondary cognitive outcomes were immediate prose recall, stop signal reaction time, trail-making task performance, verbal fluency and digit span. RESULTS: Seventy participants were randomly assigned to placebo (n = 23), 400 mg CBD (n = 24) and 800 mg CBD (n = 23). A 200 mg group was eliminated from the trial because it was an inefficacious dose at interim analysis (n = 12) and was not analysed here. For the primary cognitive outcome, there was no effect of CBD compared to placebo, evidenced by a lack of dose-by-time interaction at 400 mg (0.46, 95%CIs: - 1.41, 2.54) and 800 mg (0.89, 95%CIs: - 0.99, 2.81). There was no effect of CBD compared to placebo on secondary cognitive outcomes, except backwards digit span which increased following 800 mg CBD (0.30, 95%CIs: 0.02, 0.58). CONCLUSIONS: In this clinical trial for cannabis use disorder, CBD did not influence delayed verbal memory. CBD did not have broad cognitive effects but 800 mg daily treatment may improve working memory manipulation. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: The trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02044809) and the EU Clinical Trials Register (2013-000,361-36)

Extreme Food-Plant Specialisation in Megabombus Bumblebees as a Product of Long Tongues Combined with Short Nesting Seasons

© 2015 Huang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The attached file is the published version of the article

Men's Experiences of the UK Criminal Justice System Following Female-Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence

© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York The current study aimed to explore men’s experience of the UK Criminal Justice System (CJS) following female-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV). Unstructured face-to-face and Skype interviews were conducted with six men aged between 40–65 years. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Due to the method of analysis and the sensitive nature of the research, the researcher engaged in a process of reflexivity. Four main themes were identified, including ‘Guilty until Proven Innocent: Victim Cast as Perpetrator;’ ‘Masculine Identity;’ ‘Psychological Impact’ and ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel.’ Themes were discussed and illustrated with direct quotes drawn from the transcripts. Directions for future research, criminal justice interventions, and therapeutic interventions were discussed

The Eyes Have It: Sex and Sexual Orientation Differences in Pupil Dilation Patterns

Recent research suggests profound sex and sexual orientation differences in sexual response. These results, however, are based on measures of genital arousal, which have potential limitations such as volunteer bias and differential measures for the sexes. The present study introduces a measure less affected by these limitations. We assessed the pupil dilation of 325 men and women of various sexual orientations to male and female erotic stimuli. Results supported hypotheses. In general, self-reported sexual orientation corresponded with pupil dilation to men and women. Among men, substantial dilation to both sexes was most common in bisexual-identified men. In contrast, among women, substantial dilation to both sexes was most common in heterosexual-identified women. Possible reasons for these differences are discussed. Because the measure of pupil dilation is less invasive than previous measures of sexual response, it allows for studying diverse age and cultural populations, usually not included in sexuality research

The what and where of adding channel noise to the Hodgkin-Huxley equations

One of the most celebrated successes in computational biology is the Hodgkin-Huxley framework for modeling electrically active cells. This framework, expressed through a set of differential equations, synthesizes the impact of ionic currents on a cell's voltage -- and the highly nonlinear impact of that voltage back on the currents themselves -- into the rapid push and pull of the action potential. Latter studies confirmed that these cellular dynamics are orchestrated by individual ion channels, whose conformational changes regulate the conductance of each ionic current. Thus, kinetic equations familiar from physical chemistry are the natural setting for describing conductances; for small-to-moderate numbers of channels, these will predict fluctuations in conductances and stochasticity in the resulting action potentials. At first glance, the kinetic equations provide a far more complex (and higher-dimensional) description than the original Hodgkin-Huxley equations. This has prompted more than a decade of efforts to capture channel fluctuations with noise terms added to the Hodgkin-Huxley equations. Many of these approaches, while intuitively appealing, produce quantitative errors when compared to kinetic equations; others, as only very recently demonstrated, are both accurate and relatively simple. We review what works, what doesn't, and why, seeking to build a bridge to well-established results for the deterministic Hodgkin-Huxley equations. As such, we hope that this review will speed emerging studies of how channel noise modulates electrophysiological dynamics and function. We supply user-friendly Matlab simulation code of these stochastic versions of the Hodgkin-Huxley equations on the ModelDB website (accession number 138950) and http://www.amath.washington.edu/~etsb/tutorials.html.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, review articl

Isolated congenital tracheal stenosis in a preterm newborn

Severe tracheal stenosis, resulting in functional atresia of the trachea is a rare congenital malformation with an estimated occurrence of two in 100,000 newborns. If no esophagotracheal fistula is present to allow for spontaneous breathing, this condition is usually fatal. We report on a male infant born at 32 weeks of gestation. The patient presented with respiratory distress immediately after delivery due to severe congenital tracheal stenosis resulting in functional atresia of the trachea. Endotracheal intubation failed and even emergency tracheotomy did not allow ventilation of the patient lungs. The patient finally succumbed to prolonged hypoxia due to functional tracheal atresia. The etiology of tracheal atresia and tracheal stenosis is still unclear, but both conditions are frequently combined with other anomalies of the VACTERL (vertebral anomalies, anal atresia, cardiovascular anomalies, tracheoesophageal fistula, esophageal atresia, renal/radial anomalies and limb defects) and TACRD (tracheal agenesis, cardiac, renal and duodenal malformations) association. Conclusion Successful treatment of severe congenital tracheal stenosis and tracheal atresia depends on either prenatal diagnosis or recognition of this condition immediately after birth to perform tracheotomy without delay. Nevertheless, despite any efforts, the therapeutical results of severe tracheal stenosis and tracheal atresia are still unsatisfactory