Aging is associated with positive responding to neutral information but reduced recovery from negative information

Studies on aging and emotion suggest an increase in reported positive affect, a processing bias of positive over negative information, as well as increasingly adaptive regulation in response to negative events with advancing age. These findings imply that older individuals evaluate information differently, resulting in lowered reactivity to, and/or faster recovery from, negative information, while maintaining more positive responding to positive information. We examined this hypothesis in an ongoing study on Midlife in the US (MIDUS II) where emotional reactivity and recovery were assessed in a large number of respondents (N = 159) from a wide age range (36–84 years). We recorded eye-blink startle magnitudes and corrugator activity during and after the presentation of positive, neutral and negative pictures. The most robust age effect was found in response to neutral stimuli, where increasing age is associated with a decreased corrugator and eyeblink startle response to neutral stimuli. These data suggest that an age-related positivity effect does not essentially alter the response to emotion-laden information, but is reflected in a more positive interpretation of affectively ambiguous information. Furthermore, older women showed reduced corrugator recovery from negative pictures relative to the younger women and men, suggesting that an age-related prioritization of well-being is not necessarily reflected in adaptive regulation of negative affect

THE CHANGING ECONOMIC SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF EUROPE

Many theoretical and practical works aim at describing the spatial structure of Europe, where spatial relations have undergone continuous change. This article gives an overview of models describing the spatial structure of Europe. Their diversity is highlighted by listing of these models, without any claim to completeness. Our study aims at describing the economic spatial structure of Europe with bi-dimensional regression analysis based on the gravitational model. With the help of the gravity model, we get a spatial image of the spatial structure of Europe. With these images, we can justify the appropriateness of the models based on different methodological backgrounds by comparing them with our results. Our goal is not to create and show a new model that overwrites the existing ones, but rather to contribute to understanding the European spatial structure through a new methodological approach

Spontaneous restoration of functional β-cell mass in obese SM/J mice

Maintenance of functional β-cell mass is critical to preventing diabetes, but the physiological mechanisms that cause β-cell populations to thrive or fail in the context of obesity are unknown. High fat-fed SM/J mice spontaneously transition from hyperglycemic-obese to normoglycemic-obese with age, providing a unique opportunity to study β-cell adaptation. Here, we characterize insulin homeostasis, islet morphology, and β-cell function during SM/J\u27s diabetic remission. As they resolve hyperglycemia, obese SM/J mice dramatically increase circulating and pancreatic insulin levels while improving insulin sensitivity. Immunostaining of pancreatic sections reveals that obese SM/J mice selectively increase β-cell mass but not α-cell mass. Obese SM/J mice do not show elevated β-cell mitotic index, but rather elevated α-cell mitotic index. Functional assessment of isolated islets reveals that obese SM/J mice increase glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, decrease basal insulin secretion, and increase islet insulin content. These results establish that β-cell mass expansion and improved β-cell function underlie the resolution of hyperglycemia, indicating that obese SM/J mice are a valuable tool for exploring how functional β-cell mass can be recovered in the context of obesity

Gymnosperms from the Early Cretaceous Crato Formation (Brazil). II. Cheirolepidiaceae

Conifers are common in the Early Cretaceous Crato flora. Sterile foliage shoots of several morphotypes occur. Good preservation of several of these specimens allows detailed morphological and anatomical studies. Based on these characters, two taxa of Cheirolepidiaceae, Tomaxellia biforme and Frenelopsis sp., are identified. The palaeogeographic distribution of the genus Tomaxellia currently extends from southern South America northwards to the palaeoequatorial region. The morphological and anatomical characters of both taxa might be interpreted as adaptations to a warm and temporarily dry palaeoclimate, however their habitat can not be reconstructed yet, due to scarcity of the remains. Koniferen stellen eine wesentliche Komponente der unterkretazischen Crato-Flora dar. Es kommen sterile beblätterte Zweige verschiedener Morphotypen vor. Die gute Erhaltung einiger dieser Fossilreste lässt detaillierte morphologisch-anatomische Untersuchungen zu. Auf der Basis solcher Merkmale wurden zwei Taxa der Cheirolepidiaceae, Tomaxellia biforme und Frenelopsis sp., identifiziert. Das Areal der Gattung Tomaxellia wird damit vom südlichen Südamerika nordwärts, in die paläoäquatoriale Region erweitert. Morphologische und anatomische Merkmale beider Taxa können als Anpassungserscheinungen an ein warmes und periodisch trockenes Paläoklima interpretiert werden. Auf Grund des seltenen Vorkommens solcher Fossilreste können noch keine Angaben zu ihrem ehemaligen Habitat gemacht werden. doi:10.1002/mmng.200600009</a

Imputation of ordinal outcomes: a comparison of approaches in Traumatic Brain Injury

Loss to follow-up and missing outcomes data are important issues for longitudinal observational studies and clinical trials in traumatic brain injury. One popular solution to missing 6-month outcomes has been to use the last observation carried forward (LOCF). The purpose of the current study was to compare the performance of model-based single-imputation methods with that of the LOCF approach. We hypothesized that model-based methods would perform better as they potentially make better use of available outcome data. The Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research in Traumatic Brain Injury (CENTER-TBI) study (n = 4509) included longitudinal outcome collection at 2 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months post-injury; a total of 8185 Glasgow Outcome Scale extended (GOSe) observations were included in the database. We compared single imputation of 6-month outcomes using LOCF, a multiple imputation (MI) panel imputation, a mixed-effect model, a Gaussian process regression, and a multi-state model. Model performance was assessed via cross-validation on the subset of individuals with a valid GOSe value within 180 +/- 14 days post-injury (n = 1083). All models were fit on the entire available data after removing the 180 +/- 14 days post-injury observations from the respective test fold. The LOCF method showed lower accuracy (i.e., poorer agreement between imputed and observed values) than model-based methods of imputation, and showed a strong negative bias (i.e., it imputed lower than observed outcomes). Accuracy and bias for the model-based approaches were similar to one another, with the multi-state model having the best overall performance. All methods of imputation showed variation across different outcome categories, with better performance for more frequent outcomes. We conclude that model-based methods of single imputation have substantial performance advantages over LOCF, in addition to providing more complete outcome data.Development and application of statistical models for medical scientific researc