Predictors of nursing home admission of individuals without a dementia diagnosis before admission - results from the Leipzig Longitudinal Study of the Aged (LEILA 75+)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In previous decades a substantial number of community-based studies mostly including dementia cases examined predictors of nursing home admission (NHA) among elderly people. However, no one study has analysed predictors of NHA for individuals without developing dementia before NHA.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data were derived from the Leipzig Longitudinal Study of the Aged, a population-based study of individuals aged 75 years and older. 1,024 dementia-free older adults were interviewed six times on average every 1.4 years. Socio-demographic, clinical, and psychometric variables were obtained. Kaplan-Meier estimates were used to determine mean time to NHA. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine predictors of long-term NHA.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the overall sample, 7.8 percent of the non-demented elderly (n = 59) were admitted to nursing home (NH) during the study period. The mean time to NHA in the dementia-free sample was 7.6 years. Characteristics associated with a shorter time to NHA were increased age, living alone, functional and cognitive impairment, major depression, stroke, myocardial infarction, a low number of specialist visits and paid home helper use.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Severe physical or psychiatric diseases and living alone have a significant effect on NHA for dementia-free individuals. The findings offer potentialities of secondary prevention to avoid or delay NHA for these elderly individuals. Further investigation of predictors of institutionalization is warranted to advance understanding of the process leading to NHA for this important group.</p

ERP evidence suggests executive dysfunction in ecstasy polydrug users

Background: Deficits in executive functions such as access to semantic/long-term memory have been shown in ecstasy users in previous research. Equally, there have been many reports of equivocal findings in this area. The current study sought to further investigate behavioural and electro-physiological measures of this executive function in ecstasy users. Method: Twenty ecstasy–polydrug users, 20 non-ecstasy–polydrug users and 20 drug-naïve controls were recruited. Participants completed background questionnaires about their drug use, sleep quality, fluid intelligence and mood state. Each individual also completed a semantic retrieval task whilst 64 channel Electroencephalography (EEG) measures were recorded. Results: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed no between-group differences in behavioural performance on the task. Mixed ANOVA on event-related potential (ERP) components P2, N2 and P3 revealed significant between-group differences in the N2 component. Subsequent exploratory univariate ANOVAs on the N2 component revealed marginally significant between-group differences, generally showing greater negativity at occipito-parietal electrodes in ecstasy users compared to drug-naïve controls. Despite absence of behavioural differences, differences in N2 magnitude are evidence of abnormal executive functioning in ecstasy–polydrug users

Molecular diagnosis of bird-mediated pest consumption in tropical farmland

Biodiversity loss will likely have surprising and dramatic consequences for human wellbeing. Identifying species that benefit society represents a critical first step towards predicting the consequences of biodiversity loss. Though natural predators prevent billions of dollars in agricultural pest damage annually, characterizing which predators consume pests has proven challenging. Emerging molecular techniques may illuminate these interactions. In the countryside of Costa Rica, we identified avian predators of coffee’s most damaging insect pest, the coffee berry borer beetle (Coleoptera:Scolytidae Hypothenemus hampeii), by assaying 1430 fecal samples of 108 bird species for borer DNA. While feeding trials confirmed the efficacy of our approach, detection rates were low. Nevertheless, we identified six species that consume the borer. These species had narrow diet breadths, thin bills, and short wings; traits shared with borer predators in other systems. Borer predators were not threatened; therefore, safeguarding pest control necessitates managing species beyond those at risk of regional extinction by maintaining populations in farmland habitats. Generally, our results demonstrate potential for pairing molecular methods with ecological analyses to yield novel insights into species interactions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/2193-1801-3-630) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Group B streptococcal carriage, serotype distribution and antibiotic susceptibilities in pregnant women at the time of delivery in a refugee population on the Thai-Myanmar border

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is the leading cause of neonatal sepsis in the developed world. Little is known about its epidemiology in the developing world, where the majority of deaths from neonatal infections occur. Maternal carriage of GBS is a prerequisite for the development of early onset GBS neonatal sepsis but there is a paucity of carriage data published from the developing world, in particular South East Asia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We undertook a cross sectional study over a 13 month period in a remote South East Asian setting on the Thai-Myanmar border. During labour, 549 mothers had a combined vaginal rectal swab taken for GBS culture. All swabs underwent both conventional culture as well as PCR for GBS detection. Cultured GBS isolates were serotyped by latex agglutination, those that were negative or had a weak positive reaction and those that were PCR positive but culture negative were additionally tested using multiplex PCR based on the detection of GBS capsular polysaccharide genes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The GBS carriage rate was 12.0% (95% CI: 9.4-15.0), with 8.6% positive by both culture and PCR and an additional 3.5% positive by PCR alone. Serotypes, Ia, Ib, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII were identified, with II the predominant serotype. All GBS isolates were susceptible to penicillin, ceftriaxone and vancomycin and 43/47 (91.5%) were susceptible to erythromycin and clindamycin.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>GBS carriage is not uncommon in pregnant women living on the Thai-Myanmar border with a large range of serotypes represented.</p

Impacts of climate change on plant diseases – opinions and trends

There has been a remarkable scientific output on the topic of how climate change is likely to affect plant diseases in the coming decades. This review addresses the need for review of this burgeoning literature by summarizing opinions of previous reviews and trends in recent studies on the impacts of climate change on plant health. Sudden Oak Death is used as an introductory case study: Californian forests could become even more susceptible to this emerging plant disease, if spring precipitations will be accompanied by warmer temperatures, although climate shifts may also affect the current synchronicity between host cambium activity and pathogen colonization rate. A summary of observed and predicted climate changes, as well as of direct effects of climate change on pathosystems, is provided. Prediction and management of climate change effects on plant health are complicated by indirect effects and the interactions with global change drivers. Uncertainty in models of plant disease development under climate change calls for a diversity of management strategies, from more participatory approaches to interdisciplinary science. Involvement of stakeholders and scientists from outside plant pathology shows the importance of trade-offs, for example in the land-sharing vs. sparing debate. Further research is needed on climate change and plant health in mountain, boreal, Mediterranean and tropical regions, with multiple climate change factors and scenarios (including our responses to it, e.g. the assisted migration of plants), in relation to endophytes, viruses and mycorrhiza, using long-term and large-scale datasets and considering various plant disease control methods

Priming the Semantic Neighbourhood during the Attentional Blink

Background: When two targets are presented in close temporal proximity amongst a rapid serial visual stream of distractors, a period of disrupted attention and attenuated awareness lasting 200–500 ms follows identification of the first target (T1). This phenomenon is known as the ‘‘attentional blink’ ’ (AB) and is generally attributed to a failure to consolidate information in visual short-term memory due to depleted or disrupted attentional resources. Previous research has shown that items presented during the AB that fail to reach conscious awareness are still processed to relatively high levels, including the level of meaning. For example, missed word stimuli have been shown to prime later targets that are closely associated words. Although these findings have been interpreted as evidence for semantic processing during the AB, closely associated words (e.g., day-night) may also rely on specific, well-worn, lexical associative links which enhance attention to the relevant target. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used a measure of semantic distance to create prime-target pairs that are conceptually close, but have low word associations (e.g., wagon and van) and investigated priming from a distractor stimulus presented during the AB to a subsequent target (T2). The stimuli were words (concrete nouns) in Experiment 1 and the corresponding pictures of objects in Experiment 2. In both experiments, report of T2 was facilitated when this item was preceded by a semantically-related distractor

Pleosporales

One hundred and five generic types of Pleosporales are described and illustrated. A brief introduction and detailed history with short notes on morphology, molecular phylogeny as well as a general conclusion of each genus are provided. For those genera where the type or a representative specimen is unavailable, a brief note is given. Altogether 174 genera of Pleosporales are treated. Phaeotrichaceae as well as Kriegeriella, Zeuctomorpha and Muroia are excluded from Pleosporales. Based on the multigene phylogenetic analysis, the suborder Massarineae is emended to accommodate five families, viz. Lentitheciaceae, Massarinaceae, Montagnulaceae, Morosphaeriaceae and Trematosphaeriaceae

Flexible attention allocation to visual and auditory working memory tasks: manipulating reward induces a trade-off

Prominent roles for general attention resources are posited in many models of working memory, but the manner in which these can be allocated differs between models or is not sufficiently specified. We varied the payoffs for correct responses in two temporally-overlapping recognition tasks, a visual array comparison task and a tone sequence comparison task. In the critical conditions, an increase in reward for one task corresponded to a decrease in reward for the concurrent task, but memory load remained constant. Our results show patterns of interference consistent with a trade-off between the tasks, suggesting that a shared resource can be flexibly divided, rather than only fully allotted to either of the tasks. Our findings support a role for a domain-general resource in models of working memory, and furthermore suggest that this resource is flexibly divisible

Search for Gravitational Waves from Primordial Black Hole Binary Coalescences in the Galactic Halo

We use data from the second science run of the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors to search for the gravitational waves from primordial black hole (PBH) binary coalescence with component masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$. The analysis requires a signal to be found in the data from both LIGO observatories, according to a set of coincidence criteria. No inspiral signals were found. Assuming a spherical halo with core radius 5 kpc extending to 50 kpc containing non-spinning black holes with masses in the range 0.2--$1.0 M_\odot$, we place an observational upper limit on the rate of PBH coalescence of 63 per year per Milky Way halo (MWH) with 90% confidence.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted to Phys. Rev.

Restricted Attentional Capacity within but Not between Sensory Modalities: An Individual Differences Approach

Background Most people show a remarkable deficit to report the second of two targets when presented in close temporal succession, reflecting an attentional blink (AB). An aspect of the AB that is often ignored is that there are large individual differences in the magnitude of the effect. Here we exploit these individual differences to address a long-standing question: does attention to a visual target come at a cost for attention to an auditory target (and vice versa)? More specifically, the goal of the current study was to investigate a) whether individuals with a large within-modality AB also show a large cross-modal AB, and b) whether individual differences in AB magnitude within different modalities correlate or are completely separate. Methodology/Principal Findings While minimizing differential task difficulty and chances for a task-switch to occur, a significant AB was observed when targets were both presented within the auditory or visual modality, and a positive correlation was found between individual within-modality AB magnitudes. However, neither a cross-modal AB nor a correlation between cross-modal and within-modality AB magnitudes was found. Conclusion/Significance The results provide strong evidence that a major source of attentional restriction must lie in modality-specific sensory systems rather than a central amodal system, effectively settling a long-standing debate. Individuals with a large within-modality AB may be especially committed or focused in their processing of the first target, and to some extent that tendency to focus could cross modalities, reflected in the within-modality correlation. However, what they are focusing (resource allocation, blocking of processing) is strictly within-modality as it only affects the second target on within-modality trials. The findings show that individual differences in AB magnitude can provide important information about the modular structure of human cognition