Aging, Emotion, Attention, and Binding in the Taboo Stroop Task: Data and Theories.

How does aging impact relations between emotion, memory, and attention? To address this question, young and older adults named the font colors of taboo and neutral words, some of which recurred in the same font color or screen location throughout two color-naming experiments. The results indicated longer color-naming response times (RTs) for taboo than neutral base-words (taboo Stroop interference); better incidental recognition of colors and locations consistently associated with taboo versus neutral words (taboo context-memory enhancement); and greater speed-up in color-naming RTs with repetition of color-consistent than color-inconsistent taboo words, but no analogous speed-up with repetition of location-consistent or location-inconsistent taboo words (the consistency type by repetition interaction for taboo words). All three phenomena remained constant with aging, consistent with the transmission deficit hypothesis and binding theory, where familiar emotional words trigger age-invariant reactions for prioritizing the binding of contextual features to the source of emotion. Binding theory also accurately predicted the interaction between consistency type and repetition for taboo words. However, one or more aspects of these phenomena failed to support the inhibition deficit hypothesis, resource capacity theory, or socio-emotional selectivity theory. We conclude that binding theory warrants further test in a range of paradigms, and that relations between aging and emotion, memory, and attention may depend on whether the task and stimuli trigger fast-reaction, involuntary binding processes, as in the taboo Stroop paradigm

Beyond Memory in H.M., The World’s Most Famous “Hippocampal Amnesic”

Patient H.M. (Henry Moliason) suffered a wide range of cognitive deficits attributable to the damage to his hippocampal formation but not to his well-established deficits in the ability to recall newly encountered facts, events, names, and objects, which formed the basis for his early diagnosis as a “hippocampal amnesic.” Among Henry’s “non-memory” or cognitive deficits that this chapter reviews are his impaired ability to create new and grammatical sentence plans, to identify who-did-what-to-whom in novel sentences and to understand and read aloud novel sentences containing familiar words that he understood without difficulty in isolation, but not in novel sentence contexts such as metaphors. Also reviewed are his deficits in detecting novel forms concealed within complex visual arrays, in identifying anomalous objects in novel visual scenes, in detecting and describing what makes captioned cartoons funny, and in combining familiar concepts into new and useful ideas. The chapter concludes by relating Henry’s non-memory deficits to fundamental questions of this book, for example, What is the role of the hippocampal formation in human memory and cognition? And how does the hippocampal formation work

Development and characterisation of a novel three-dimensional inter-kingdom wound biofilm model

Chronic diabetic foot ulcers are frequently colonised and infected by polymicrobial biofilms that ultimately prevent healing. This study aimed to create a novel in vitro inter-kingdom wound biofilm model on complex hydrogel-based cellulose substrata to test commonly used topical wound treatments. Inter-kingdom triadic biofilms composed of Candida albicans, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Staphylococcus aureus were shown to be quantitatively greater in this model compared to a simple substratum when assessed by conventional culture, metabolic dye and live dead qPCR. These biofilms were both structurally complex and compositionally dynamic in response to topical therapy, so when treated with either chlorhexidine or povidone iodine, principal component analysis revealed that the 3-D cellulose model was minimally impacted compared to the simple substratum model. This study highlights the importance of biofilm substratum and inclusion of relevant polymicrobial and inter-kingdom components, as these impact penetration and efficacy of topical antiseptics

Possible dose dependent effect of perioperative dexamethasone and laparoscopic surgery on the postoperative systemic inflammatory response and complications following surgery for colon cancer

Background: Perioperative dexamethasone is associated with attenuation of the postoperative systemic inflammatory response and fewer postoperative complications following elective surgery for colorectal cancer. This study examined the impact of different doses of dexamethasone, given to reduce postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) after elective colonic resection for cancer, on the postoperative Glasgow Prognostic Score (poGPS) and morbidity. Methods: Patients from a single centre were included if they underwent potentially curative resection of colonic cancer from 2008 to 2017 (n = 480). Patients received no dexamethasone (209, 44%), or either 4 mg (166, 35%), or 8 mg (105, 21%), intravenously during anaesthesia, at the discretion of the anaesthetist. The postoperative Glasgow Prognostic Score (poGPS) on day 3 and 4, and complication rate at discharge were recorded. Results: When patients were grouped by surgical approach (open or laparoscopic) and dexamethasone dose (0 mg, 4 mg or 8 mg), there was a statistically significant linear trend toward a lower postoperative systemic inflammatory response (day 3 poGPS) with the use of minimally invasive surgery and higher doses of dexamethasone (p < 0.001). Furthermore, this combination of laparoscopic surgery and higher doses of dexamethasone was significantly associated with a lower proportion of postoperative complications (p < 0.001). At multivariate Cox regression, dexamethasone was not significantly associated with either improved or poorer cancer specific or overall survival. Conclusions: Higher doses of perioperative dexamethasone are associated with greater reduction in postoperative systemic inflammation and complications following surgery for colonic cancer without negative impact on survival

Implications of antimicrobial combinations in complex wound biofilms containing fungi

Diabetic foot ulcer treatment currently focuses on targeting bacterial biofilms, while dismissing fungi. To investigate this we used an in vitro biofilm model containing bacteria and fungi, reflective of the wound environment, to test the impact of antimicrobials. Here we showed that while mono-treatment approaches influenced biofilm composition it had no discernible effect on overall quantity. Only by combining bacterial and fungal specific antibiotics were we able to decrease the biofilm bioburden, irrespective of composition

Minnesota Hotels and Motels: A Profile of the Industry

This archival publication may no reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations. Current information available from Minnesota Extension Service and University of Minnesota Tourism Center

Glomerular filtration rate by differing measures, albuminuria and prediction of cardiovascular disease, mortality and end-stage kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease is common in the general population and associated with excess cardiovascular disease (CVD), but kidney function does not feature in current CVD risk-prediction models. We tested three formulae for estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) to determine which was the most clinically informative for predicting CVD and mortality. Using data from 440,526 participants from UK Biobank, eGFR was calculated using serum creatinine, cystatin C (eGFRcys) and creatinine-cystatin C. Associations of each eGFR with CVD outcome and mortality were compared using Cox models and adjusting for atherosclerotic risk factors (per relevant risk scores), and the predictive utility was determined by the C-statistic and categorical net reclassification index. We show that eGFRcys is most strongly associated with CVD and mortality, and, along with albuminuria, adds predictive discrimination to current CVD risk scores, whilst traditional creatinine-based measures are weakly associated with risk. Clinicians should consider measuring eGFRcys as part of cardiovascular risk assessment

The relationship between liver volume, clinicopathological characteristics and survival in patients undergoing resection with curative intent for non-metastatic colonic cancer

Introduction: The prognostic value of CT-derived liver volume in terms of cancer outcomes is not clear. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between liver area on a single axial CT-slice and the total liver volume in patients with colonic cancer. Furthermore, we examine the relationship between liver volume, determined using this novel method, clinicopathological variables and survival. Methods: Consecutive patients who underwent potentially curative surgery for colonic cancer were identified from a prospectively maintained database. Maximal liver area on axial CT-slice (cm2) and total volume (cm3), were obtained by the manual segmentation of pre-operative CT-images in a PACS viewer. The maximal liver area was normalized for body height2 to create the liver index (LI) and values, categorized into tertiles. The primary outcome of interest was overall survival (OS). Relationships between LI and clinico-pathological variables were examined using chi-square analysis and binary logistic regression. The relationship between LI and OS was examined using cox proportional hazard regression. Results: A total of 359 patients were included. A total of 51% (n = 182) of patients were male and 73% (n = 261) were aged 65 years or older. 81% (n = 305) of patients were alive 3-years post-operatively. The median maximal liver area on the axial CT slice was 178.7 (163.7–198.4) cm2. The median total liver volume was 1509.13 (857.8–3337.1) cm3. Maximal liver area strongly correlated with total liver volume (R2 = 0.749). The median LI was 66.8 (62.0–71.6) cm2/m2. On multivariate analysis, age (p < 0.001), sex (p < 0.05), BMI (p < 0.001) and T2DM (p < 0.05) remained significantly associated with LI. On univariate analysis, neither LI (continuous) or LI (tertiles) were significantly associated with OS (p = 0.582 and p = 0.290, respectively). Conclusions: The simple, reliable method proposed in this study for quantifying liver volume using CT-imaging was found to have an excellent correlation between observers and provided results consistent with the contemporary literature. This method may facilitate the further examination of liver volume in future cancer studies