Human papillomavirus is detected in transitional cell carcinoma arising in renal transplant recipients

"This is a non-final version of an article published in final form in Pathology The Journal of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia 41 (3) pp.245-247"Aims: We investigated the role of human papillomavirus HPV in the development of transitional cell carcinoma TCC arising in renal transplant recipients. Methods: Genomic DNA was extracted from 10 m paraffin embedded sections of five TCCs arising in five renal transplant recipients using the QIAamp DNA mini kit according to the manufacturer's instructions. β-globin PCR was performed to test DNA adequacy. Samples were tested for the presence of HPV DNA by broad spectrum HPV PCR method using non-biotinylated SPF10 primers SPF1A, SPF1B, SPF1C, SPF1D, SPF2B, SPF2D which amplify a short 65 bp fragment. Positive bands were identified on a 3 gel. Positive samples underwent a second HPV PCR and were amplified using biotinylated SPF10 primer set, which amplifies the same 65 bp region of the L1 open reading frame. INNO-LiPA line probe assay was then performed to genotype the samples which uses a reverse hybridisation principle. Results: Four of five TCCs examined were positive for HPV. The high risk HPV16 was detected in three cases whereas in the fourth case an unclassifiable HPV genotype was present. In all DNA samples, β-globin amplification was successful. Conclusions: Our results indicate that HPV and in particular HPV16 may play an aetiological role in the development of TCC in renal transplant patients.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio

Morpheme Position Coding in Reading Development as Explored With a Letter Search Task

Suffixes have been shown to be recognized as units of processing in visual word recognition and their identification has been argued to be position-specific in skilled adult readers: in lexical decision tasks suffixes are automatically identified at word endings, but not at word beginnings. The present study set out to investigate whether position-specific coding can be detected with a letter search task and whether children already code suffixes as position-specific units. A preregistered experiment was conducted in Italian in which 3rd-graders, 5th-graders, and adults had to detect a target letter that was either contained in the suffix of a pseudoword (e.g., S in flagish ) or in a non-suffix control (e.g., S in flagosh ). To investigate sensitivity to position, letters also had to be detected in suffixes and non-suffixes placed in reversed position, that is in the beginning of pseudowords (e.g., S in ishflag vs. oshflag). Results suggested position-specific processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes that develop throughout reading development. However, some effects were weak and only partially compatible with the hypotheses. Therefore, a second experiment was conducted. The effects of position-specific suffix identification could not be replicated. A combined analysis additionally using a Bayesian approach indicated no processing differences between suffixes and non-suffixes in our task. We discuss potential interpretations and the possibility of letter search being unsuited to investigate morpheme processing. We connect our example of failed self-replication to the current discussion about the replication crisis in psychology and the lesson psycholinguistics can learn

Deciphering CAPTCHAs: What a Turing Test Reveals about Human Cognition

Turning Turing's logic on its head, we used widespread letter-based Turing Tests found on the internet (CAPTCHAs) to shed light on human cognition. We examined the basis of the human ability to solve CAPTCHAs, where machines fail. We asked whether this is due to our use of slow-acting inferential processes that would not be available to machines, or whether fast-acting automatic orthographic processing in humans has superior robustness to shape variations. A masked priming lexical decision experiment revealed efficient processing of CAPTCHA words in conditions that rule out the use of slow inferential processing. This shows that the human superiority in solving CAPTCHAs builds on a high degree of invariance to location and continuous transforms, which is achieved during the very early stages of visual word recognition in skilled readers

Στα μονοπάτια της παράδοσης. Καταγραφή και προστασία της ξυλοναυπηγικής στην Κύπρο

Οι παραδοσιακές τέχνες αποτελούν αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι κάθε προβιομηχανικής κοινωνίας, ενώ οι τεχνίτες δείχνουν πώς μεταλαμπαδεύεται η εξειδικευμένη γνώση από γενιά σε γενιά. Η γνώση είναι άρρηκτα δεμένη με την τέχνη: εξελίσσονται μαζί και επηρεάζονται από κοινωνικο-οικονομικούς παράγοντες, όπως η ύφεση ή η ευημερία του τόπου. Αρκετοί ερευνητές μελέτησαν τις παραδοσιακές τέχνες της Κύπρου και τα επαγγέλματα που σχετίζονται με την καθεμιά. Από αυτές, η ξυλοναυπηγική δεν έχει καταγραφεί ως τώρα, ενώ η κοινότητα των ξυλοναυπηγών συρρικνώνεται συνεχώς. Η συγγραφέας πραγματοποίησε επιτόπια καταγραφή της τέχνης, αρχίζοντας με την κοινότητα των ξυλοναυπηγών της Λεμεσού. Το παρόν άρθρο παρουσιάζει τα πρώτα αποτελέσματα, τους προβληματισμούς, και κάποιες προτάσεις για την προστασία μιας παραδοσιακής τέχνης, που εμπίπτει τόσο στην Άυλη όσο και στην Ενάλια Πολιτισμική Κληρονομιά.Οι παραδοσιακές τέχνες αποτελούν αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι κάθε προβιομηχανικής κοινωνίας, ενώ οι τεχνίτες δείχνουν πώς μεταλαμπαδεύεται η εξειδικευμένη γνώση από γενιά σε γενιά. Η γνώση είναι άρρηκτα δεμένη με την τέχνη: εξελίσσονται μαζί και επηρεάζονται από κοινωνικο-οικονομικούς παράγοντες, όπως η ύφεση ή η ευημερία του τόπου. Αρκετοί ερευνητές μελέτησαν τις παραδοσιακές τέχνες της Κύπρου και τα επαγγέλματα που σχετίζονται με την καθεμιά. Από αυτές, η ξυλοναυπηγική δεν έχει καταγραφεί ως τώρα, ενώ η κοινότητα των ξυλοναυπηγών συρρικνώνεται συνεχώς. Η συγγραφέας πραγματοποίησε επιτόπια καταγραφή της τέχνης, αρχίζοντας με την κοινότητα των ξυλοναυπηγών της Λεμεσού. Το παρόν άρθρο παρουσιάζει τα πρώτα αποτελέσματα, τους προβληματισμούς, και κάποιες προτάσεις για την προστασία μιας παραδοσιακής τέχνης, που εμπίπτει τόσο στην Άυλη όσο και στην Ενάλια Πολιτισμική Κληρονομιά

Hedgehog Signalling in Androgen Independent Prostate Cancer

Objectives: Androgen-deprivation therapy effectively shrinks hormone-naïve prostate cancer, both in the prostate and at sites of distant metastasis. However prolonged androgen deprivation generally results in relapse and androgen-independent tumour growth, which is inevitably fatal. The molecular events that enable prostate cancer cells to proliferate in reduced androgen conditions are poorly understood. Here we investigate the role of Hedgehog signalling in androgen-independent prostate cancer (AIPC). Methods: Activity of the Hedgehog signalling pathway was analysed in cultured prostate cancer cells, and circulating prostate tumour cells were isolated from blood samples of patients with AIPC. Results: AIPC cells were derived through prolonged culture in reduced androgen conditions, modelling hormone therapy in patients, and expressed increased levels of Hedgehog signalling proteins. Exposure of cultured AIPC cells to cyclopamine, which inhibits Hedgehog signalling, resulted in inhibition of cancer cell growth. The expression of the Hedgehog receptor PTCH and the highly prostate cancer-specific gene DD3PCA3 was significantly higher in circulating prostate cancer cells isolated from patients with AIPC compared with samples prepared from normal individuals. There was an association between PTCH and DD3PCA3 expression and the length of androgen-ablation therapy. Conclusions: Our data are consistent with reports implicating overactivity of Hedgehog signalling in prostate cancer and suggest that Hedgehog signalling contributes to the androgen-independent growth of prostate cancer cells. As systemic anti-Hedgehog medicines are developed, the Hedgehog pathway will become a potential new therapeutic target in advanced prostate cancer.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Frequency-based neural discrimination in fast periodic visual stimulation

Humans capitalize on statistical cues to discriminate fundamental units of information within complex streams of sensory input. We sought neural evidence for this phenomenon by combining fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) and EEG recordings. Skilled readers were exposed to sequences of linguistic items with decreasing familiarity, presented at a fast rate and periodically interleaved with oddballs. Crucially, each sequence comprised stimuli of the same category, and the only distinction between base and oddball items was the frequency of occurrence of individual tokens within a stream. Frequency-domain analyses revealed robust neural responses at the oddball presentation rate in all conditions, reflecting the discrimination between two locally-emerged groups of items purely informed by token frequency. Results provide evidence for a fundamental frequency-tuned mechanism that operates under high temporal constraints and could underpin category bootstrapping. Concurrently, they showcase the potential of FPVS for providing a direct neural measure of implicit statistical learning

Algorithms for the automated correction of vertical drift in eye-tracking data

A common problem in eye tracking research is vertical drift\u2014the progressive displacement of fixation registrations on the vertical axis that results from a gradual loss of eye tracker calibration over time. This is particularly problematic in experiments that involve the reading of multiline passages, where it is critical that fixations on one line are not erroneously recorded on an adjacent line. Correction is often performed manually by the researcher, but this process is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to error and inconsistency. Various methods have previously been proposed for the automated, post-hoc correction of vertical drift in reading data, but these methods vary greatly, not just in terms of the algorithmic principles on which they are based, but also in terms of their availability, documentation, implementation languages, and so forth. Furthermore, these methods have largely been developed in isolation with little attempt to systematically evaluate them, meaning that drift correction techniques are moving forward blindly. We document ten major algorithms, including two that are novel to this paper, and evaluate them using both simulated and natural eye tracking data. Our results suggest that a method based on dynamic time warping offers great promise, but we also find that some algorithms are better suited than others to particular types of drift phenomena and reading behavior, allowing us to offer evidence-based advice on algorithm selection

Resource recovery from desalination, the case of small islands

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MThis work explores resource recovery coupled to seawater desalination in small islands. As small islands depend on seawater desalination for water access, they make an excellent ground for exploring the trade-offs associated to resource recovery, like potential economic gains, energy use, and environmental impacts. Here, we investigated these tensions in the context of Lampedusa, in Italy. We then developed and evaluated scenarios for the recovery of additional water, Mg, and other resources from brines, to identify if and how resource recovery is an interesting approach for the island vis-à-vis these tensions. We have found that the potential to increase water production with water recovery from brine is an interesting alternative for small islands, especially when harnessing waste heat. However, while some technologies offer possibilities for recovering additional resources, in places like small islands the potential benefits from additional recovery do not seem to justify the costs to the local system

Resource recovery from desalination, the case of small islands

This work explores resource recovery coupled to seawater desalination in small islands. As small islands depend on seawater desalination for water access, they make an excellent ground for exploring the trade-offs associated to resource recovery, like potential economic gains, energy use, and environmental impacts. Here, we investigated these tensions in the context of Lampedusa, in Italy. We then developed and evaluated scenarios for the recovery of additional water, Mg, and other resources from brines, to identify if and how resource recovery is an interesting approach for the island vis-`a-vis these tensions. We have found that the potential to increase water production with water recovery from brine is an interesting alternative for small islands, especially when harnessing waste heat. However, while some technologies offer possibilities for recovering additional resources, in places like small islands the potential benefits from additional recovery do not seem to justify the costs to the local system