Development and diagnostic validation of the Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test

Purpose: To describe the development and determine the diagnostic accuracy of the Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test in detecting aphasia. Methods: Consecutive acute stroke admissions (n = 100; mean = 66.49y) participated in a single (assessor) blinded cross-sectional study. Index assessment was the ∼45 min Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test. The Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test is further divided into four 15–25 min Short Tests: two Foundation Tests (severe impairment), Standard (moderate) and High Level Test (mild). Independent reference standard included the Language Screening Test, Aphasia Screening Test, Comprehensive Aphasia Test and/or Measure for Cognitive-Linguistic Abilities, treating team diagnosis and aphasia referral post-ward discharge. Results: Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test cut-off score of ≤ 157 demonstrated 80.8% (LR+ =10.9) sensitivity and 92.6% (LR− =0.21) specificity. All Short Tests reported specificities of ≥ 92.6%. Foundation Tests I (cut-off ≤ 61) and II (cut-off ≤ 51) reported lower sensitivity (≥ 57.5%) given their focus on severe conditions. The Standard (cut-off ≤ 90) and High Level Test (cut-off ≤ 78) reported sensitivities of ≥ 72.6%. Conclusion: The Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test is a sensitive assessment of aphasia. Diagnostically, the High Level Test recorded the highest psychometric capabilities of the Short Tests, equivalent to the full Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test. The test is available for download from brisbanetest.org. Implications for rehabilitation: Aphasia is a debilitating condition and accurate identification of language disorders is important in healthcare. Language assessment is complex and the accuracy of assessment procedures is dependent upon a variety of factors. The Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test is a new evidence-based language test specifically designed to adapt to varying patient need, clinical contexts and co-occurring conditions. In this cross-sectional validation study, the Brisbane Evidence-Based Language Test was found to be a sensitive measure for identifying aphasia in stroke

Unlocking climate-resilient economic development in drylands : pathways to a resilient world - submission to the Talanoa dialogu

The brief is based on a five-year evidence-based and stakeholder-driven research project carried out under the consortium for Pathways to Resilience in Semi-Arid Economies (PRISE) in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Targeted investment, more robust institutional frameworks, and adaptation actions that proactively support climate-resilient economic development (CRED) can enhance adaptive capacity. A territorial approach to adaptation that transcends national borders and administrative boundaries will open up opportunities for transboundary adaptation and support CRED at both regional and national levels.UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID

Social stratification without genetic differentiation at the site of Kulubnarti in Christian Period Nubia

Relatively little is known about Nubia’s genetic landscape prior to the influence of the Islamic migrations that began in the late 1st millennium CE. Here, we increase the number of ancient individuals with genome-level data from the Nile Valley from three to 69, reporting data for 66 individuals from two cemeteries at the Christian Period (~650–1000 CE) site of Kulubnarti, where multiple lines of evidence suggest social stratification. The Kulubnarti Nubians had ~43% Nilotic-related ancestry (individual variation between ~36–54%) with the remaining ancestry consistent with being introduced through Egypt and ultimately deriving from an ancestry pool like that found in the Bronze and Iron Age Levant. The Kulubnarti gene pool – shaped over a millennium – harbors disproportionately female-associated West Eurasian-related ancestry. Genetic similarity among individuals from the two cemeteries supports a hypothesis of social division without genetic distinction. Seven pairs of inter-cemetery relatives suggest fluidity between cemetery groups. Present-day Nubians are not directly descended from the Kulubnarti Nubians, attesting to additional genetic input since the Christian Period.K.A.S. was supported by a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1613577). D.R. was funded by NSF HOMINID grant BCS-1032255; NIH (NIGMS) grant GM100233; the Allen Discovery Center program, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation; the John Templeton Foundation grant 61220; and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

A genetic history of the pre-contact Caribbean

Humans settled the Caribbean about 6,000 years ago, and ceramic use and intensified agriculture mark a shift from the Archaic to the Ceramic Age at around 2,500 years ago1,2,3. Here we report genome-wide data from 174 ancient individuals from The Bahamas, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (collectively, Hispaniola), Puerto Rico, Curaçao and Venezuela, which we co-analysed with 89 previously published ancient individuals. Stone-tool-using Caribbean people, who first entered the Caribbean during the Archaic Age, derive from a deeply divergent population that is closest to Central and northern South American individuals; contrary to previous work4, we find no support for ancestry contributed by a population related to North American individuals. Archaic-related lineages were >98% replaced by a genetically homogeneous ceramic-using population related to speakers of languages in the Arawak family from northeast South America; these people moved through the Lesser Antilles and into the Greater Antilles at least 1,700 years ago, introducing ancestry that is still present. Ancient Caribbean people avoided close kin unions despite limited mate pools that reflect small effective population sizes, which we estimate to be a minimum of 500–1,500 and a maximum of 1,530–8,150 individuals on the combined islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola in the dozens of generations before the individuals who we analysed lived. Census sizes are unlikely to be more than tenfold larger than effective population sizes, so previous pan-Caribbean estimates of hundreds of thousands of people are too large5,6. Confirming a small and interconnected Ceramic Age population7, we detect 19 pairs of cross-island cousins, close relatives buried around 75 km apart in Hispaniola and low genetic differentiation across islands. Genetic continuity across transitions in pottery styles reveals that cultural changes during the Ceramic Age were not driven by migration of genetically differentiated groups from the mainland, but instead reflected interactions within an interconnected Caribbean world1,8.This work was supported by a grant from the National Geographic Society to M. Pateman to facilitate analysis of skeletal material from The Bahamas and by a grant from the Italian ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation’ (Italian archaeological, anthropological and ethnological missions abroad, DGPSP Ufficio VI). D.R. was funded by NSF HOMINID grant BCS-1032255, NIH (NIGMS) grant GM100233, the Paul Allen Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation grant 61220 and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.Peer reviewe

Genomic Insights into the Formation of Human Populations in East Asia

厦门大学人类学研究所、厦门大学生命科学学院细胞应激生物学国家重点实验室王传超教授课题组与哈佛医学院David Reich教授团队合作，联合全球43个单位的85位共同作者组成的国际合作团队通过古DNA精细解析东亚人群形成历史。研究人员利用古DNA数据检验了东亚地区农业和语言共扩散理论，综合考古学、语言学等证据，该研究系统性地重构了东亚人群的形成、迁徙和混合历史。这是目前国内开展的东亚地区最大规模的考古基因组学研究，此次所报道的东亚地区古人基因组样本量是以往国内研究机构所发表的样本量总和的两倍，改变了东亚地区尤其是中国境内考古基因组学研究长期滞后的局面。 该研究是由王传超教授团队与哈佛医学院（David Reich教授）、德国马普人类历史科学研究所（Johannes Krause教授）、复旦大学现代人类学教育部重点实验室（李辉教授和金力院士）、维也纳大学进化人类学系（Ron Pinhasi副教授）、南洋理工大学人文学院（Hui-Yuan Yeh助理教授）、俄罗斯远东联邦大学科学博物馆（Alexander N Popov研究员）、西安交通大学（张虎勤教授）、蒙古国国家博物馆研究中心、乌兰巴托国立大学考古系、华盛顿大学人类学系、台湾成功大学考古所、加州大学人类学系等全球43个单位的85位共同作者组成的国际合作团队联合完成的。厦门大学人类学研究所、厦门大学生命科学学院细胞应激生物学国家重点实验室为论文第一完成单位。厦门大学人类学研究所韦兰海副教授、胡荣助理教授、郭健新博士后、何光林博士后和杨晓敏硕士参与了研究工作。The deep population history of East Asia remains poorly understood due to a lack of ancient DNA data and sparse sampling of present-day people1,2. We report genome-wide data from 166 East Asians dating to 6000 BCE-1000 CE and 46 present-day groups. Hunter-gatherers from Japan, the Amur River Basin, and people of Neolithic and Iron Age Taiwan and the Tibetan plateau are linked by a deeply-splitting lineage likely reflecting a Late Pleistocene coastal migration. We follow Holocene expansions from four regions. First, hunter-gatherers of Mongolia and the Amur River Basin have ancestry shared by Mongolic and Tungusic language speakers but do not carry West Liao River farmer ancestry contradicting theories that their expansion spread these proto-languages. Second, Yellow River Basin farmers at ～3000 BCE likely spread Sino-Tibetan languages as their ancestry dispersed both to Tibet where it forms up ～84% to some groups and to the Central Plain where it contributed ～59-84% to Han Chinese. Third, people from Taiwan ～1300 BCE to 800 CE derived ～75% ancestry from a lineage also common in modern Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic speakers likely deriving from Yangtze River Valley farmers; ancient Taiwan people also derived ～25% ancestry from a northern lineage related to but different from Yellow River farmers implying an additional north-to-south expansion. Fourth, Yamnaya Steppe pastoralist ancestry arrived in western Mongolia after ～3000 BCE but was displaced by previously established lineages even while it persisted in western China as expected if it spread the ancestor of Tocharian Indo-European languages. Two later gene flows affected western Mongolia: after ～2000 BCE migrants with Yamnaya and European farmer ancestry, and episodic impacts of later groups with ancestry from Turan.We thank David Anthony, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Katherine Brunson, Rowan Flad, Pavel Flegontov,Qiaomei Fu, Wolfgang Haak, Iosif Lazaridis, Mark Lipson, Iain Mathieson, Richard Meadow,Inigo Olalde, Nick Patterson, Pontus Skoglund, Dan Xu, and the four reviewers for valuable comments. We thank Naruya Saitou and the Asian DNA Repository Consortium for sharing genotype data from present-day Japanese groups. We thank Toyohiro Nishimoto and Takashi Fujisawa from the Rebun Town Board of Education for sharing the Funadomari Jomon samples, and Hideyo Tanaka and Watru Nagahara from the Archeological Center of Chiba City who are excavators of the Rokutsu Jomon site. The excavations at Boisman-2 site (Boisman culture), the Pospelovo-1 site (Yankovsky culture), and the Roshino-4 site (Heishui Mohe culture) were funded by the Far Eastern Federal University and the Institute of History,Archaeology and Ethnology Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; research on Pospelovo-1 is funded by RFBR project number 18-09-40101. C.C.W was funded by the Max Planck Society, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 31801040), the Nanqiang Outstanding Young Talents Program of Xiamen University (X2123302), the Major project of National Social Science Foundation of China (20&ZD248), a European Research Council (ERC) grant to Dan Xu (ERC-2019-ADG-883700-TRAM) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (ZK1144). O.B. and Y.B. were funded by Russian Scientific Foundation grant 17-14-01345. H.M. was supported by the grant JSPS 16H02527. M.R. and C.C.W received funding from the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant No 646612) to M.R. The research of C.S. is supported 30 by the Calleva Foundation and the Human Origins Research Fund. H.L was funded NSFC (91731303, 31671297), B&R International Joint Laboratory of Eurasian Anthropology (18490750300). J.K. was funded by DFG grant KR 4015/1-1, the Baden Württemberg Foundation, and the Max Planck Institute. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry radiocarbon dating work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (BCS-1460369) to D.J.K. and B.J.C. D.R. was funded by NSF grant BCS-1032255, NIH (NIGMS) grant GM100233, the Paul M. Allen Frontiers Group, John Templeton Foundation grant 61220, a gift from Jean-Francois Clin, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 该研究得到了国家自然科学基金“中国东南各族群的遗传混合”、国家社科基金重大项目“多学科视角下的南岛语族的起源和形成研究”、厦门大学南强青年拔尖人才支持计划A类、中央高校基本科研业务费等资助

The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra–West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe

Dual Antiplatelet Therapy Is Associated with Increased Risk of Bleeding and Decreased Risk of Stroke Following Carotid Endarterectomy.

BACKGROUND: Despite many patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy (CEA) being on dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) for cardiac or neurologic indications, the impact of such therapy on perioperative outcomes remains unclear. We aim to compare rates of postoperative bleeding, stroke and major adverse events (stroke, death or MI) among patients on Aspirin alone (ASAA) versus DAPT (Clopidogrel and Aspirin). METHODS: Patients undergoing CEA for carotid artery stenosis between 2010 and 2021 in the Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) were included. We excluded patients undergoing concomitant or re-do operations or patients with missing antiplatelet information. Propensity score matching was performed between the 2 groups ASAA and DAPT based on age, sex, race, presenting symptoms, major comorbidities [hypertension, diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD)], degree of ipsilateral stenosis, presence of contralateral occlusion, as well as preoperative medications. Intergroup differences between the treatment groups and differences in perioperative outcomes were tested with the McNemars test for categorical variables and paired t-test or Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test for continuous variables where appropriate. Relative risks with 95% confidence intervals were estimated as the ratio of the probability of the outcome event in the patients treated within each treatment group. RESULTS: A total of 125,469 patients were included [ASAA n = 82,920 (66%) and DAPT n = 42,549 (34%)]. Patients on DAPT were more likely to be symptomatic, had higher rates of CAD, prior percutaneous coronary intervention or coronary artery bypass grafting, and higher rates of diabetes. After propensity score matching, the DAPT group had an increased rate of bleeding complications (RR: 1.6: 1.4-1.8, P < 0.001) as compared with those on ASAA despite being more likely to receive both drains and protamine. In addition, patients on DAPT had a slight decrease in the risk of in-hospital stroke as compared with patients on ASAA (RR: 0.80: 0.7-0.9, P = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This large multi-institutional study demonstrates a modest decrease in the risk of in-hospital stroke for patients on DAPT undergoing CEA as compared with those on ASAA. This small benefit is at the expense of a significant increase in the risk of perioperative bleeding events incurred by those on DAPT at the time of CEA. This analysis suggests avoiding DAPT when possible, during CEA

Tryptophan-rich antimicrobial peptides: properties and applications

There is a world-wide quest for development of new-generation antibiotics, due to the emergence of microbial pathogens that have developed resistance to the currently available antibiotics. The antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a strong candidate in this regard, due to minimal possibilities of emergence of resistance against these. The tryptophan (Trp)-rich peptides comprise an important class of AMPs. The amino acid Trp has unique biochemical properties that allow it to interact with and insert into biological membranes. This feature, together with the presence of basic residues in many AMPs that enable selective binding to microbial membranes, imparts strong antimicrobial properties on Trp-rich peptides. Such peptides thus display activity against a range of bacteria, fungi and viruses, and some are also active against protozoan pathogens and/or cancer cells. The mechanisms of action of the peptides may involve cell lysis or intracellular effects. The applications of such AMPs range from human health and hygiene to plant pathogen control

Thromboembolism risk of COVID-19 is high and associated with a higher risk of mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BackgroundStudies have suggested that there is increased risk of thromboembolism (TE) associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, overall arterial and venous TE rates of COVID-19 and effect of TE on COVID-19 mortality is unknown.MethodsWe did a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies evaluating TE in COVID-19. We searched PubMed, Cochrane, and Embase for studies published up to June 12, 2020. Random effects models were used to produce summary TE rates and odds ratios (OR) of mortality in COVID-19 patients with TE compared to those without TE. Heterogeneity was quantified with I 2 .FindingsOf 425 studies identified, 42 studies enrolling 8271 patients were included in the meta-analysis. Overall venous TE rate was 21% (95% CI:17-26%): ICU, 31% (95% CI: 23-39%). Overall deep vein thrombosis rate was 20% (95% CI: 13-28%): ICU, 28% (95% CI: 16-41%); postmortem, 35% (95% CI:15-57%). Overall pulmonary embolism rate was 13% (95% CI: 11-16%): ICU, 19% (95% CI:14-25%); postmortem, 22% (95% CI:16-28%). Overall arterial TE rate was 2% (95% CI: 1-4%): ICU, 5% (95%CI: 3-7%). Pooled mortality rate among patients with TE was 23% (95%CI:14-32%) and 13% (95% CI:6-22%) among patients without TE. The pooled odds of mortality were 74% higher among patients who developed TE compared to those who did not (OR, 1.74; 95%CI, 1.01-2.98; P = 0.04).InterpretationTE rates of COVID-19 are high and associated with higher risk of death. Robust evidence from ongoing clinical trials is needed to determine the impact of thromboprophylaxis on TE and mortality risk of COVID-19.FundingNone