Para-infectious brain injury in COVID-19 persists at follow-up despite attenuated cytokine and autoantibody responses

To understand neurological complications of COVID-19 better both acutely and for recovery, we measured markers of brain injury, inflammatory mediators, and autoantibodies in 203 hospitalised participants; 111 with acute sera (1–11 days post-admission) and 92 convalescent sera (56 with COVID-19-associated neurological diagnoses). Here we show that compared to 60 uninfected controls, tTau, GFAP, NfL, and UCH-L1 are increased with COVID-19 infection at acute timepoints and NfL and GFAP are significantly higher in participants with neurological complications. Inflammatory mediators (IL-6, IL-12p40, HGF, M-CSF, CCL2, and IL-1RA) are associated with both altered consciousness and markers of brain injury. Autoantibodies are more common in COVID-19 than controls and some (including against MYL7, UCH-L1, and GRIN3B) are more frequent with altered consciousness. Additionally, convalescent participants with neurological complications show elevated GFAP and NfL, unrelated to attenuated systemic inflammatory mediators and to autoantibody responses. Overall, neurological complications of COVID-19 are associated with evidence of neuroglial injury in both acute and late disease and these correlate with dysregulated innate and adaptive immune responses acutely

An assessment of the relationship between Global Competitiveness Index scores and national GDP per capita growth rates

An increasing amount of attention is paid by the media, and political and business leaders to national competitiveness indices. As globalisation increases and the difficulties of the financial crisis linger on, leaders look towards global benchmarks such as the World Economic Forum‟s Global Competitiveness Index to make policy and resource allocation decisions. Despite this emphasis on national competitiveness, how this translates to economic growth prospects is not well understood, and a universally accepted economic growth model continues to elude macroeconomists. The research seeks to understand whether a more detailed assessment of the Global Competitiveness Index‟s twelve competitiveness pillars can improve its explanatory power for economic growth, by investigating patterns of competitiveness performance from both static and dynamic perspectives. Data was collated over the period 2007-2013 for 118 countries. A hierarchical cluster analysis was performed to segment countries according to homogeneous competitiveness patterns, followed by stepwise multiple regression modelling on the total sample and the resulting clusters in order to assess impacts on adjusted R-squared values. Regressions were performed on stock and flow values for twelve country competitiveness variables. The results show that the cluster analysis coupled with the specified multiple regression models significantly improved the explanatory power of the selected competitiveness variables on economic growth, except for the least competitive countries, where further research is needed to uncover their true drivers of competitiveness.Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013.lmgibs2014Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)MBAUnrestricte

The Categorization Effect in Hedonic Contrast: Experts Differ from Novices

Test stimuli are rated as less good when they follow very good context stimuli than when they are presented alone. This diminution in rating is called hedonic contrast. Contrast is attenuated if the context and the test stimuli are perceived as being in different categories. Because experts use as their basic-level categories what are the subordinate levels for novices, they will categorize when novices do not. Therefore, in the following studies, both experts and novices showed hedonic contrast when attractive context orchids preceded more neutral test orchids. However, only the novices showed hedonic contrast when attractive context irises preceded the test orchids. Novices viewed the irises and the orchids as flowers and therefore members of the same category, resulting in contrast. Experts.\u27however, viewed the irises and the orchids as being in different categories; therefore, hedonic contrast did not occur