Does early drug use-related police contact predict premature mortality and morbidity : A population register-based study

Introduction The aim was to analyse whether age at first drug offense predicts premature mortality and morbidity due to substance use and violence among adolescents and young adults. Methods A prospective longitudinal register-linkage study based on a total population sample from Finland including individuals born between 1987 and 1992 and aged 15-25 years during follow-up in 2002-2017 (n = 386 435). Age-specific rates of deaths and health-care admissions (morbidity) during a 5-year follow-up were calculated from the first drug offense. Cox regression models were used to estimate differences in mortality and morbidity at ages 21-25. Results Of all 15- to 20-year-olds, 1.4% (n = 5540) have had a police contact. The 5-year mortality rates (per 1000 person-years) among those with first drug offense at ages 15-16 was 2.92 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.56-6.18], and 5.26 (CI 4.00-7.07) and 5.05 (CI 4.06-6.38) at ages 17-18, and 19-20, respectively. The rates of morbidity varied between 61.20 (CI 52.43-71.76) and 87.51 (CI 82.11-93.33). Both mortality and morbidity rates were over 10 times higher than among the general population. In models adjusted for family background, first police contact at an early age (15-16) did not increase the risk of mortality at ages 21-25 compared with first police contact at ages 17-18 (hazard ratio 1.55, CI 0.77-3.09) or 19-20 (hazard ratio 1.52, CI 0.78-2.98). The results were similar for morbidity. Discussion and Conclusions Adolescents with drug-related police contacts have high risk of mortality and morbidity due to substance use and violence regardless of age of first contact.Peer reviewe

Quantum Mirrors and Crossing Symmetry as Heart of Ghost Imaging

In this paper it is proved that the key to understanding the ghost imaging mystery are the crossing symmetric photon reactions in the nonlinear media. Hence, the laws of the plane quantum mirror (QM) and that of spherical quantum mirror, observed in the ghost imaging experiments, are obtained as natural consequences of the energy-momentum conservation laws. So, it is shown that the ghost imaging laws depend only on the energy-momentum conservation and not on the photons entanglement. The extension of these results to the ghost imaging with other kind of light is discussed. Some fundamental experiments for a decisive tests of the [SPDC-DFG]-quantum mirror are suggested.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Ab initio study of the surface properties of austenitic stainless steel alloys

Using ab initio calculations we investigated the surface energies of paramagnetic Fe1-c-nCrcNin random alloys within the concentration range of 0.12 <= c <= 032 and 0.04 <= n <= 0.32. These alloys crystallize mainly in the face centred cubic (fcc) structure and constitute the main building blocks of austenitic stainless steels. It is shown that all alloys have the lowest surface energies along the most close packed crystal orientation, namely the fcc (111) surfaces. The amount of Ni seems to have little effect on the surface energy, while almost all composition-driven change may be attributed to the changes in the Cr content. Within the studied compositional range, the change of the surface energy with the composition is of the order of 10%. Trends of the surface energy can be related to the magnetic structure of surfaces. Using the total energy as a function of the concentration, we determine the effective chemical potentials in bulk and at the surface, which can be used to estimate the surface segregation energies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Bioavailability of riverine dissolved organic matter in three Baltic Sea estuaries and the effect of catchment land use

Peer reviewe

3 '-UTR poly(T/U) repeat of EWSR1 is altered in microsatellite unstable colorectal cancer with nearly perfect sensitivity

Approximately 15 % of colorectal cancers exhibit instability of short nucleotide repeat regions, microsatellites. These tumors display a unique clinicopathologic profile and the microsatellite instability status is increasingly used to guide clinical management as it is known to predict better prognosis as well as resistance to certain chemotherapeutics. A panel of five repeats determined by the National Cancer Institute, the Bethesda panel, is currently the standard for determining the microsatellite instability status in colorectal cancer. Recently, a quasimonomorphic mononucleotide repeat 16T/U at the 3' untranslated region of the Ewing sarcoma breakpoint region 1 gene was reported to show perfect sensitivity and specificity in detecting mismatch repair deficient colorectal, endometrial, and gastric cancers in two independent populations. To confirm this finding, we replicated the analysis in 213 microsatellite unstable colorectal cancers from two independent populations, 148 microsatellite stable colorectal cancers, and the respective normal samples by PCR and fragment analysis. The repeat showed nearly perfect sensitivity for microsatellite unstable colorectal cancer as it was altered in 212 of the 213 microsatellite unstable (99.5 %) and none of the microsatellite stable colorectal tumors. This repeat thus represents the first potential single marker for detecting microsatellite instability.Peer reviewe

Historical (1750 - 2014) anthropogenic emissions of reactive gases and aerosols from the Community Emission Data System (CEDS)

We present a new data set of annual historical (1750–2014) anthropogenic chemically reactive gases (CO, CH4, NH3, NOX, SO2, NMVOC), carbonaceous aerosols (BC and OC), and CO2 developed with the Community Emissions Database System (CEDS). We improve upon existing inventories with a more consistent and reproducible methodology applied to all emissions species, updated emission factors, and recent estimates through 2014. The data system relies on existing energy consumption data sets and regional and country-specific inventories to produce trends over recent decades. All emissions species are consistently estimated using the same activity data over all time periods. Emissions are provided on an annual basis at the level of country and sector and gridded with monthly seasonality. These estimates are comparable to, but generally slightly higher than, existing global inventories. Emissions over the most recent years are more uncertain, particularly in low- and middle-income regions where country-specific emission inventories are less available. Future work will involve refining and updating these emission estimates, estimating emissions uncertainty, and publication of the system as open source software

The influence of semantic and phonological factors on syntactic decisions: An event-related brain potential study

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influence this decision. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while native speakers of German processed written words that were or were not semantically and/or phonologically marked for gender. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants were faster in making a gender decision when words were semantically and/or phonologically gender marked than when this was not the case, although the phonological effects were less clear. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that even though participants performed a grammatical gender decision, this task can be influenced by semantic and phonological factors

International Veterinary Epilepsy Task Force recommendations for systematic sampling and processing of brains from epileptic dogs and cats

Traditionally, histological investigations of the epileptic brain are required to identify epileptogenic brain lesions, to evaluate the impact of seizure activity, to search for mechanisms of drug-resistance and to look for comorbidities. For many instances, however, neuropathological studies fail to add substantial data on patients with complete clinical work-up. This may be due to sparse training in epilepsy pathology and or due to lack of neuropathological guidelines for companion animals. The protocols introduced herein shall facilitate systematic sampling and processing of epileptic brains and therefore increase the efficacy, reliability and reproducibility of morphological studies in animals suffering from seizures. Brain dissection protocols of two neuropathological centres with research focus in epilepsy have been optimised with regards to their diagnostic yield and accuracy, their practicability and their feasibility concerning clinical research requirements. The recommended guidelines allow for easy, standardised and ubiquitous collection of brain regions, relevant for seizure generation. Tissues harvested the prescribed way will increase the diagnostic efficacy and provide reliable material for scientific investigations

Amygdala circuitry mediating reversible and bidirectional control of anxiety

Anxiety—a sustained state of heightened apprehension in the absence of immediate threat—becomes severely debilitating in disease states. Anxiety disorders represent the most common of psychiatric diseases (28% lifetime prevalence) and contribute to the aetiology of major depression and substance abuse. Although it has been proposed that the amygdala, a brain region important for emotional processing, has a role in anxiety, the neural mechanisms that control anxiety remain unclear. Here we explore the neural circuits underlying anxiety-related behaviours by using optogenetics with two-photon microscopy, anxiety assays in freely moving mice, and electrophysiology. With the capability of optogenetics to control not only cell types but also specific connections between cells, we observed that temporally precise optogenetic stimulation of basolateral amygdala (BLA) terminals in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA)—achieved by viral transduction of the BLA with a codon-optimized channelrhodopsin followed by restricted illumination in the downstream CeA—exerted an acute, reversible anxiolytic effect. Conversely, selective optogenetic inhibition of the same projection with a third-generation halorhodopsin (eNpHR3.0) increased anxiety-related behaviours. Importantly, these effects were not observed with direct optogenetic control of BLA somata, possibly owing to recruitment of antagonistic downstream structures. Together, these results implicate specific BLA–CeA projections as critical circuit elements for acute anxiety control in the mammalian brain, and demonstrate the importance of optogenetically targeting defined projections, beyond simply targeting cell types, in the study of circuit function relevant to neuropsychiatric disease