A Case Report: Factors Influencing the Care of a Critically Ill Patient in the ICU Following Medical Management of a Benign Parasagittal Meningioma

Background and Purpose. Primary brain tumors will affect 23,890 adults in the US in 2020. Many of these patients will require an intensive care unit (ICU) if resection is the chosen course of treatment. Early mobility has been shown to reduce negative effect of ICU stays in patient ability and long-term outcomes. Case Description. This report describes the 4-week inpatient physical therapy management of a 69-year-old female who is 6 months post left cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and presented to the ICU with shortness of breath, severe continuous frontal headaches, and a reduction of regained strength from her CVA in her right extremities. Upon further investigation, vasogenic edema caused by a benign parasagittal meningioma was found. The purpose of this article is to describe the physical therapy driven interventions, and the outcomes found in the patient. Intervention. Interventions included following a post-craniotomy protocol and an early-mobility protocol which for this patient focused on upright self-supported sitting and gross movement motion. The patient was also educated and trained on bed mobility and posture correction. Outcomes. Following physical therapy intervention, the patient displayed an increase in right extremity strength and range of motion, increase in independence in bed mobility and sitting balance, and decreases in overall symptoms. Discussion. Rationale for treatment pre and post-surgery was based on study findings and clinical reasoning from clinical instructors on reducing ICU acquired weakness and strengthening muscle weakness. Treatments were progressed with patient response and clinical findings. The case was not without limitations, these were reflected upon

Expression of foraging and Gp-9 are associated with social organization in the fire ant Solenopsis invicta.

The aim of this study was to investigate levels of expression of two major genes, the odorant binding protein Gp-9 (general protein-9) and foraging, that have been shown to be associated with behavioural polymorphisms in ants. We analysed workers and young nonreproductive queens collected from nests of the monogyne (single reproductive queen per nest) and polygyne (multiple reproductive queens) social forms of Solenopsis invicta. In workers but not young queens, the level of foraging expression was significantly associated with social form and the task performed (ie localization in the nest or foraging area). The level of expression of Gp-9 was also associated with social form and worker localization. In addition there was a higher level of expression of the Gp-9(b) allele compared with the Gp-9(B) allele in the heterozygote workers and the young nonreproductive queens. Finally, in the polygyne colonies the level of expression of foraging was not significantly associated with the Gp-9 genotype for either workers or young nonreproductive queens, suggesting that both genes have independent non-epistatic effects on behaviour in S. invicta

Higher expression of somatic repair genes in long-lived ant queens than workers.

Understanding why organisms senesce is a fundamental question in biology. One common explanation is that senescence results from an increase in macromolecular damage with age. The tremendous variation in lifespan between genetically identical queen and worker ants, ranging over an order of magnitude, provides a unique system to study how investment into processes of somatic maintenance and macromolecular repair influence lifespan. Here we use RNAseq to compare patterns of expression of genes involved in DNA and protein repair of age-matched queens and workers. There was no difference between queens and workers in 1-day-old individuals, but the level of expression of these genes increased with age and this up-regulation was greater in queens than in workers, resulting in significantly queen-biased expression in 2-month-old individuals in both legs and brains. Overall, these differences are consistent with the hypothesis that higher longevity is associated with increased investment into somatic repair

Bursting balloons - comparison of risk taking between extreme sports, esports, and the general public

Arguably, extreme sports athletes exhibit a more significant risk appetite than the general public. Are standard behavioral risk measures able to capture this? To answer this question, we assessed self-reports of risk taking and measured the risk-taking behavior of samples of snowboarders and climbers. Two groups of non-athletes, university students and crowdworkers, and athletes of a sport that does not include the potential of grave injury or death, esports athletes, serve as control conditions and complement our study. Across these five different groups, 1313 participants performed an online version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and gave self-reports of general willingness to take risks and sports-specific risk taking. Extreme sports athletes exhibited greater risk taking in the BART than non-athletes and esports athletes. Furthermore, BART-performance predicted sports-specific risk taking and its affective consequences. Our results speak to the BART’s ecological validity and the unique role of physical consequences on risk-taking behavior

Getting trapped in a dead end? Trait self-control and boredom are linked to goal adjustment.

Disengaging from unattainable goals and reengaging in alternative goals is essential for effective goal pursuit; yet, surprisingly little is known about associated personality factors. Here, we focused on individual differences in self-control (domain-general self-control, if-then planning) and boredom (boredom proneness, boredom avoidance and escape tendencies). Concerning goal adjustment in everyday life (Study 1; N = 323 crowdworkers), if-then planning was associated with worse disengagement and better reengagement. While boredom proneness was associated with poorer reengagement, boredom avoidance and escape tendencies were associated with better reengagement. When goal striving was thwarted during the COVID-19 pandemic (Study 2; N = 97 students), similar associations emerged along with links to anxiety and depression. However, disengagement was no longer associated with if-then planning but instead with better self-control and higher boredom proneness. These results show differential relationships of goal disengagement and reengagement with self-control and boredom, paving the way to a better understanding of who struggles or shines when effective goal adjustment is required

Boredom Proneness Predicts Self-Assessed Decision Errors in Sports but Is Unrelated to Risk Taking in General.

Introduction: Boredom proneness is linked to poor self-regulation, leading to poor decision making and/or increased risk taking. These links have not yet been investigated in the domain of sports and exercise. However, poor decisions or excessive risk behavior would be highly detrimental to sporting performance and, in some cases, even cause physical harm. Here, we address this gap by assessing if boredom proneness is linked to general risk taking, sport-specific risk taking, and to regrets about sports-specific decision errors with respect to acting too risky or too passively. Methods: N = 936 athletes (27.6 ± 9.0 years, 89.6% men): n = 330 Climbers (31.8 ± 10.7 years, 82.4% men), n = 83 Snowboarders (29.9 ± 8.3 years, 79.5% men), and n = 523 Esports athletes (24.6 ± 6.3 years, 95.8% men) completed the Short Boredom Proneness Scale (SBPS), along with measures for objective risk taking (Balloon Analogue Risk Task; BART), subjective risk taking (general willingness to take risks), as well as assessments for sport-specific risk taking and regrets for sports-specific decision errors (taking too many risks, failing to act at all). In the two extreme sports samples (i.e., climbers and snowboarders), we additionally assessed self-selected outcome certainty in a hypothetical sports-specific scenario where an error would result in physical harm. Results: A series of multiple regression analyses revealed that boredom proneness was unrelated to objective and subjective general risk taking, but a significant predictor of sport-specific risk taking and higher risk taking in the sports scenario (climbers and snowboarders only). Most importantly, boredom proneness predicted regrets for taking too many risks and being too passive. Exploratory post-hoc analyses further indicated that boredom proneness in extreme sports athletes was lower than in esports athletes. Higher boredom proneness was significantly related to lower skill levels across all kinds of sport. Discussion: Across three athlete samples, boredom proneness was unrelated to general risk taking but significantly related to poorer decision making, as indicated by regrets about acting too risky and too passively, as well as demanding a significantly lower safety threshold to make a risky sports-specific choice. While at odds with the often-reported link between boredom proneness and risk taking, these results are consistent with the conceptualization of boredom proneness as a maladaptive self-regulatory disposition that leads to noisy decision making in sports. In addition, we provide preliminary evidence that boredom proneness covaries with self-selection into specific types of sports and might also stand in the way of skill acquisition in sports

Lifespan differences between queens and workers are not explained by rates of molecular damage.

The biological processes that underlie senescence are of universal biological importance, yet they remain poorly understood. A popular theory proposes that senescence is the result of limited investment into mechanisms involved in the prevention and repair of molecular damage, leading to an accumulation of molecular damage with age. In ants, queen and worker lifespans differ by an order of magnitude, and this remarkable difference in lifespan has been shown to be associated with differences in the expression of genes involved in DNA and protein repair. Here we use the comet assay and Western Blotting for poly-ubiquitinated proteins to explore whether these differences in expression lead to differences in the accumulation of DNA damage (comet assay) or protein damage (protein ubiquitination) with age. Surprisingly, there was no difference between queens and workers in the rate of accumulation of DNA damage. We also found that levels of ubiquitinated proteins decreased with age, as previously reported in honeybees. This is in contrast to what has been found in model organisms such as worms and flies. Overall, these results reveal that the link between investment into macromolecular repair, age-related damage accumulation and lifespan is more complex than usually recognised

The effect of non-uniform microscale distribution of sorption sites on solute diffusion in soil

Conventional models of solute transport in soil consider only soil volumes large enough to average over microscale heterogeneities, and it is assumed that microscale variations are unimportant at the macroscale. In this research we test this assumption for cases in which the microscale distribution of solute-sorbing sites is patchy. We obtain a set of equations at the macroscale that allow for the effect of the microscale distribution with the mathematical technique of homogenization. We combine these equations with an image-based model that describes the true microscale pore geometry in a real, structured soil measured with X-ray computed tomography. The resulting models are used to test the microscale averaging assumptions inherent in conventional models. We show that, in general, macroscale diffusion is little affected by microscale variation in the distribution of sorption sites. Therefore, for most purposes the assumption of microscale averaging used in conventional models is justified. The effects of microscale heterogeneity are noticeable only when (i) the rate of sorption is slow compared with diffusion, but still fast enough to affect macroscale transport and (ii) the defined macroscale volume approaches the microscale. We discuss the effects when these conditions are me

Higher expression of somatic repair genes in long-lived ant queens than workers

ABSTRACT Understanding why organisms senesce is a fundamental question in biology. One common explanation is that senescence results from an increase in macromolecular damage with age. The tremendous variation in lifespan between genetically identical queen and worker ants, ranging over an order of magnitude, provides a unique system to study how investment into processes of somatic maintenance and macromolecular repair influence lifespan. Here we use RNAseq to compare patterns of expression of genes involved in DNA and protein repair of age-matched queens and workers. There was no difference between queens and workers in 1-day-old individuals, but the level of expression of these genes increased with age and this upregulation was greater in queens than in workers, resulting in significantly queen-biased expression in 2-month-old individuals in both legs and brains. Overall, these differences are consistent with the hypothesis that higher longevity is associated with increased investment into somatic repair