Memory Change and Cognitive Function among the Elderly

The Problem: The deleterious effects of aging on various cognitive abilities are widely recognized, yet little is known regarding what constitutes normal memory test performance in individuals over the age of 74. In this study, forgetting rates for verbal and nonverbal material from the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) were examined in groups of older healthy individuals aged 50-74 and 75-95. Despite equivalent scores on measures of global cognitive status and attention/concentration, the older group demonstrated significantly poorer performance on the Delayed Memory Index. Preliminary normative data for normal elderly subjects on the WMS-R are presented, and the need for appropriate norms for elderly individuals is discussed. The Research: As part of an ongoing neuropsychological investigation of normal and abnormal aging, subjects over the age of 49 were recruited via local flyers and newspaper advertisements. For this study, subjects between the ages of 75 and 95 were included, along with a younger comparison group of individuals aged 50-74. All subjects were carefully screened via telephone interviews for neuropsychological risk factors, and those with a history of neurological disorder (e.g. stroke, head injury), learning disability, major psychiatric disorder, major medical illness or substance abuse, were excluded. The resultant sample was comprised of 30 subjects between the ages of 75 and 95, and 35 between the ages of 50 and 74. All subjects were administered the WMS-R according to standard procedure (Wechlser, 1987). For the purpose of this study, the general composite Index scores of the WMS-R were calculated for comparison of the two age groups. These general Index scores include five parameters of memory: Attention/Concentration, Verbal Memory, Visual Memory, Delayed Memory and General Memory. The Results: The older and younger groups were significantly different in terms of age, but not in educational level or the raw Attention/Concentration score. In terms of test scores, both groups obtained highly similar scores on General Memory, Visual Memory and Verbal Memory. The older group achieved a significantly lower score on Delayed Memory. These results represent some of the earliest data regarding WMS-R performance in healthy older individuals. Because of the above average level of education and excellent health status of these samples, however, the generalizability to other elderly groups (i.e. those with less education and various health risk factors) may be limited. Nevertheless, until more large scale age and education-adjusted norms are available, data such as these may serve as general preliminary guidelines for the interpretation of older subjects\u27 performance on the WMS-R

Psychological Variables Associated with Pain Perceptions Among Individuals with Chronic Spinal Cord Injury Pain

Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships between selected psychological variables and pain perceptions in 103 individuals experiencing chronic pain following traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Previous studies have suggested strong relationships between psychological variables and chronic SCI pain, but further delineation of such relationships is needed in order ultimately to develop more effective pain management strategies for individuals afflicted with such pain. Anger was found to be significantly related to perceptions of pain ( p < .05), but neither guilt nor anger suppression was significantly associated with perceived pain. Internal health locus of control was associated with decreased pain perceptions ( p < .05), but there was no significant relationship between internal health locus of control and anger. Punishing responses from significant others to pain complaints were related to feelings of guilt ( p < .05) and perceived pain ( p < .05), but this relationship was not mediated by guilt.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44861/1/10880_2004_Article_425308.pd

Rebuilding community connections through experiential professional development

The authors argue that the narrowing of the K-12 curriculum in the past twenty years has changed the relationship between K-12 schoolteachers and the community. Using an ecological perspective as the theoretical lens, the article describes these changes as well as an effort by an economic development organization in Indiana to help rebuild those relationships through an experiential learning professional development activity. The article also includes sample teacher developed work plans for teaching economic concepts and skills through community based experiences

Familiarity Differentially Affects Right Hemisphere Contributions to Processing Metaphors and Literals

The role of the two hemispheres in processing metaphoric language is controversial. While some studies have reported a special role of the right hemisphere (RH) in processing metaphors, others indicate no difference in laterality relative to literal language. Some studies have found a role of the RH for novel/unfamiliar metaphors, but not conventional/familiar metaphors. It is not clear, however, whether the role of the RH is specific to metaphor novelty, or whether it reflects processing, reinterpretation or reanalysis of novel/unfamiliar language in general. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effects of familiarity in both metaphoric and non-metaphoric sentences. A left lateralized network containing the middle and inferior frontal gyri, posterior temporal regions in the left hemisphere (LH), and inferior frontal regions in the RH, was engaged across both metaphoric and non-metaphoric sentences; engagement of this network decreased as familiarity decreased. No region was engaged selectively for greater metaphoric unfamiliarity. An analysis of laterality, however, showed that the contribution of the RH relative to that of LH does increase in a metaphor-specific manner as familiarity decreases. These results show that RH regions, taken by themselves, including commonly reported regions such as the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), are responsive to increased cognitive demands of processing unfamiliar stimuli, rather than being metaphor-selective. The division of labor between the two hemispheres, however, does shift towards the right for metaphoric processing. The shift results not because the RH contributes more to metaphoric processing. Rather, relative to its contribution for processing literals, the LH contributes less

Modeling variability for biologics strategic planning

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and, (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 46).Making strategic decisions about resource capabilities in the uncertain business of drug development is a challenging task. Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, is expanding from its success in small molecule therapeutics into the attractive area of biologic therapeutics, both monoclonal antibody and microbial forms. While Novartis has experience developing these types of therapeutics, they have not fully-developed the quantity that the Research group expects to source the pipeline with in the next few years. Therefore the Development group needs to grow. Determining the right number and type of scientists and technicians to hire is difficult due to the variability in the portfolio. The long development timelines, low and variable success rates impact how projects progress through the pipeline. A Monte Carlo simulation model forecasts variability and displays a numerical range of projects and headcount requirements expected for several years. This data is essential for project managers, function heads, and operations leaders to develop the five-year strategic plan for biologic development. This model quantifies the uncertainty of input variables to deliver a calculated risk of output variables, which provides useful and important information for making strategic business decisions.by Tamara L. Conant.M.B.A.S.M

Homology and Derived Series of Groups II: Dwyer's Theorem

We give new information about the relationship between the low-dimensional homology of a group and its derived series. This yields information about how the low-dimensional homology of a topological space constrains its fundamental group. Applications are given to detecting when a set of elements of a group generates a subgroup ``large enough'' to map onto a non-abelian free solvable group, and to concordance and grope cobordism of links. We also greatly generalize several key homological results employed in recent work of Cochran-Orr-Teichner, in the context of classical knot concordance. In 1963 J. Stallings established a strong relationship between the low-dimensional homology of a group and its lower central series quotients. In 1975 W. Dwyer extended Stallings' theorem by weakening the hypothesis on the second homology groups. The naive analogues of these theorems for the derived series are false. In 2003 the second author introduced a new characteristic series, associated to the derived series, called the torsion-free derived series. The authors previously established a precise analogue, for the torsion-free derived series, of Stallings' theorem. Here our main result is the analogue of Dwyer's theorem for the torsion-free derived series. We also prove a version of Dwyer's theorem for the rational lower central series. We apply these to give new results on the Cochran-Orr-Teichner filtration of the classical link concordance group.Comment: 26 pages. In this version, we have included a new proof of part of the main theorem. The new proof is somewhat simpler and stays entirely in the world of group homology and homological algebra rather than using Eilenberg-Mac Lane spaces. Other minor corrections. This is the final version to appear in Geometry & Topolog

A super-analogue of Kontsevich's theorem on graph homology

In this paper we will prove a super-analogue of a well-known result by Kontsevich which states that the homology of a certain complex which is generated by isomorphism classes of oriented graphs can be calculated as the Lie algebra homology of an infinite-dimensional Lie algebra of symplectic vector fields.Comment: 15 page

Law, Market Building and Public Health in the European Union

European Union (EU) law is based upon a liberalising imperative, the goal of which is to construct a single market between member states. Yet the EU is no ordinary trade pact, incorporating as it does a range of supranational political institutions and common policies in a range of areas beyond simple market building. Scholars have nevertheless noted a distinction between ‘positive’ integration (the formulation of common policies applying to all member states) and ‘negative’ integration (the removal of national-level regulations acting as barriers to market integration). In the context of debates about the implications of trade law and corporate activity for health, this article poses three related questions. First, to what extent does EU law afford corporations opportunities to challenge national-level health regulations? Second, to what extent do EU legal and political processes provide opportunities for positive pro-health supranational regulation, including that which might offset the effects of negative liberalising integration? Third, how do EU market-building processes differ from those of more narrowly-drawn trade agreements and organisations in their implications for health? We analyse and compare two recent sets of health-related legal proceedings under EU law, the first of which challenges legislation passed by the Scottish Government to introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol, and the second of which addresses the legality of specific aspects of the EU’s 2014 Tobacco Products Directive. We find, first, that EU law offers ample opportunities for corporations to challenge national health regulations; second, that there is significant scope for pro-health supranational regulations, but that these must be couched in the language of facilitating the single market, and are dependent on the political commitment of key policy actors; and, third, that this (limited) scope for pro-health supranational regulation distinguishes EU legal and political processes from those of other trade agreements and organisations

Hierarchy and Feedback in the Evolution of the E. coli Transcription Network

The E.coli transcription network has an essentially feedforward structure, with, however, abundant feedback at the level of self-regulations. Here, we investigate how these properties emerged during evolution. An assessment of the role of gene duplication based on protein domain architecture shows that (i) transcriptional autoregulators have mostly arisen through duplication, while (ii) the expected feedback loops stemming from their initial cross-regulation are strongly selected against. This requires a divergent coevolution of the transcription factor DNA-binding sites and their respective DNA cis-regulatory regions. Moreover, we find that the network tends to grow by expansion of the existing hierarchical layers of computation, rather than by addition of new layers. We also argue that rewiring of regulatory links due to mutation/selection of novel transcription factor/DNA binding interactions appears not to significantly affect the network global hierarchy, and that horizontally transferred genes are mainly added at the bottom, as new target nodes. These findings highlight the important evolutionary roles of both duplication and selective deletion of crosstalks between autoregulators in the emergence of the hierarchical transcription network of E.coli.Comment: to appear in PNA