Pathological buying symptoms are associated with distortions in judging elapsed time

Background and aims Pathological buying (PB) is often assumed to be related to deficits in impulse control. Distortions in judging elapsed time are one component of behavioral impulsivity. This study was set out to examine the hypothesis that PB propensity is associated with distorted time perception, such that time is perceived to pass more slowly. Methods The study is based on a convenience sample of 78 adults. Symptom severity of PB and related problems/disorders (substance use, borderline, depression, mania, and obsessive–compulsive disorder) as well as four dimensions of trait impulsivity were assessed. A time-production task was employed that required participants to produce prespecified time intervals ranging from 1 to 60 s. Results PB propensity was associated with the belief that time elapses more slowly, even when controlling for symptoms of related disorders and general trait impulsivity. Neither trait impulsivity nor symptoms of related disorders were predictive of distortions in judging elapsed time. Discussion and conclusion These results suggest that PB propensity is related with non-specific, general deficits in judging elapsed time as a specific component of behavioral impulsivity

Interprofessional education about patient decision support in specialty care

Specialty care involves services provided by health professionals who focus on treating diseases affecting one body system. In contrast to primary care - aimed at providing continuous, comprehensive care - specialty care often involves intermittent episodes of care focused around specific medical conditions. In addition, it typically includes multiple providers who have unique areas of expertise that are important in supporting patients' care. Interprofessional care involves multiple professionals from different disciplines collaborating to provide an integrated approach to patient care. For patients to experience continuity of care across interprofessional providers, providers need to communicate and maintain a shared sense of responsibility to their patients. In this article, we describe challenges inherent in providing interprofessional patient decision support in specialty care. We propose ways for providers to engage in interprofessional decision support and discuss promising approaches to teaching an interprofessional decision support to specialty care providers. Additional evaluation and empirical research are required before further recommendations can be made about education for interprofessional decision support in specialty care.Medical Decision MakingAnalysis and support of clinical decision makin

Dynamic Modulation of Thymic MicroRNAs in Response to Stress

thymocyte subsets. Several of the differentially regulated murine thymic miRs are also stress responsive in the heart, kidney, liver, brain, and/or spleen. The most dramatic thymic microRNA down modulated is miR-181d, exhibiting a 15-fold reduction following stress. This miR has both similar and distinct gene targets as miR-181a, another member of miR-181 family. Many of the differentially regulated microRNAs have known functions in thymopoiesis, indicating that their dysregulation will alter T cell repertoire selection and the formation of naïve T cells. This data has implications for clinical treatments involving anti-inflammatory steroids, ablation therapies, and provides mechanistic insights into the consequences of infections

Data reuse in the social sciences and humanities : project report of the SWITCH Innovation Lab “Repositories & Data Quality”

The underlying data and additional materials in connection with this publication are available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4609834 The code used for data analysis is available at: https://github.com/ZHAW-Services-Research-Data/SWITCH-Innovation-Lab-Repositories-Data-QualityThis report is the result of the SWITCH Innovation Lab “Repositories & Data Quality”, a project that ran from October 2020 until February 2021 as a collaboration between SWITCH and ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Its aim was to complement previous studies on research data management issues (conducted in part as earlier SWITCH Innovation Labs) and to identify relevant data sources for researchers in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in Switzerland. More particularly, the project focused on the reuse of existing data sets by SSH researchers and the criteria they applied when choosing a suitable data source for their work and research. Some of the steps in this task consisted of finding the locations where valuable data is shared, published and accessed as well as conducting a more specific investigation into data availability, modes of accessibility and aspects related to assessing data quality. For this purpose, the project team designed and carried out an online survey targeted specifically at active SSH researchers in Switzerland. To disseminate the survey questionnaire towards this target audience, mailing lists of several research organizations in these fields were utilized. The survey ran for about 8 weeks until early February 2021 and received responses from 260 participants. Some of the main findings include a generally high number of researchers making use of existing data for their own work. Central data providers such as FORSbase, FSO and the GESIS data archive are the most frequently named sources. Trust in these data sources and sufficient additional materials like documentation and methodologies are key criteria for selecting data for reuse. Some data sources could provide desired data sets but are hardly accessible and reusable for researchers (if at all). This mainly includes administrative data and records of (Swiss) public authorities and offices, as well as historic assets from archives, libraries and museums. Furthermore, qualitative research data like interviews, surveys, questionnaires and observations were often highlighted among valuable yet usually inaccessible data sources. At the same time, the case of qualitative data such as interview recordings and ethnographic fieldnotes illustrate well a certain reusability dilemma. To enable “reusability” of such materials from a legal perspective (i.e. to protect personal identities of research participants), much of sensitive context-related details need to be removed. Yet, it is exactly those details that are necessary to contextualize and reuse these data in a proper way from a qualitative researcher’s point of view. Finally, the list of relevant data sources in the SSH contains a large number of individual studies, data sets and resources. This fact supports the idea to connect and link this data, as repeatedly voiced by survey respondents. This demand presents a particular opportunity for future efforts in this area that directly align with the broad objectives at SWITCH. More specifically, the vision of the SWITCH Research Data Connectome is to interconnect research data from different sources, which contributes to the current development of a knowledge graph. Building on this knowledge base that documents and links metadata to enable a more effective search for and reuse of data, new specialized services could be employed in the future. The results of the SWITCH Innovation Lab “Repositories & Data Quality” project shall help lay the groundwork for such future client-oriented services, by providing more detailed information about the handling and reuse of data in Switzerland

STAT3 Induction of miR-146b Forms a Feedback Loop to Inhibit the NF-kB to IL-6 Signaling Axis and STAT3-Driven Cancer Phenotypes

Interleukin-6 (IL-6)–mediated activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) is a mechanism by which chronic inflammation can contribute to cancer and is a common oncogenic event. We discovered a pathway, the loss of which is associated with persistent STAT3 activation in human cancer. We found that the gene encoding the tumor suppressor microRNA miR-146b is a direct STAT3 target gene, and its expression was increased in normal breast epithelial cells but decreased in tumor cells. Methylation of the miR-146b promoter, which inhibited STAT3-mediated induction of expression, was increased in primary breast cancers. Moreover, we found that miR-146b inhibited nuclear factor kB (NF-kB)–dependent production of IL-6, subsequent STAT3 activation, and IL-6/STAT3–driven migration and invasion in breast cancer cells, thereby establishing a negative feedback loop. In addition, higher expression of miR-146b was positively correlated with patient survival in breast cancer subtypes with increased IL6 expression and STAT3 phosphorylation. Our results identify an epigenetic mechanism of crosstalk between STAT3 and NF-kB relevant to constitutive STAT3 activation in malignancy and the role of inflammation in oncogenesis

Clinical presentation and proteomic signature of patients with TANGO2 mutations

Transport And Golgi Organization protein 2 (TANGO2) deficiency has recently been identified as a rare metabolic disorder with a distinct clinical and biochemical phenotype of recurrent metabolic crises, hypoglycemia, lactic acidosis, rhabdomyolysis, arrhythmias, and encephalopathy with cognitive decline. We report nine subjects from seven independent families, and we studied muscle histology, respiratory chain enzyme activities in skeletal muscle and proteomic signature of fibroblasts. All nine subjects carried autosomal recessive TANGO2 mutations. Two carried the reported deletion of exons 3 to 9, one homozygous, one heterozygous with a 22q11.21 microdeletion inherited in trans. The other subjects carried three novel homozygous (c.262C&gt;T/p.Arg88*; c.220A&gt;C/p.Thr74Pro; c.380+1G&gt;A), and two further novel heterozygous (c.6_9del/p.Phe6del); c.11-13delTCT/p.Phe5del mutations. Immunoblot analysis detected a significant decrease of TANGO2 protein. Muscle histology showed mild variation of fiber diameter, no ragged-red/cytochrome c oxidase-negative fibers and a defect of multiple respiratory chain enzymes and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10 ) in two cases, suggesting a possible secondary defect of oxidative phosphorylation. Proteomic analysis in fibroblasts revealed significant changes in components of the mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation, plasma membrane, endoplasmic reticulum-Golgi network and secretory pathways. Clinical presentation of TANGO2 mutations is homogeneous and clinically recognizable. The hemizygous mutations in two patients suggest that some mutations leading to allele loss are difficult to detect. A combined defect of the respiratory chain enzymes and CoQ10 with altered levels of several membrane proteins provides molecular insights into the underlying pathophysiology and may guide rational new therapeutic interventions.</p

Competition and habitat quality influence age and sex distribution in wintering rusty blackbirds.

Bird habitat quality is often inferred from species abundance measures during the breeding and non-breeding season and used for conservation management decisions. However, during the non-breeding season age and sex classes often occupy different habitats which suggest a need for more habitat-specific data. Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) is a forested wetland specialist wintering in bottomland hardwood forests in the south-eastern U. S. and belongs to the most steeply declining songbirds in the U.S. Little information is available to support priority birds such as the Rusty Blackbird wintering in this threatened habitat. We assessed age and sex distribution and body condition of Rusty Blackbirds among the three major habitats used by this species in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley and also measured food availability. Overall, pecan groves had the highest biomass mainly driven by the amount of nuts. Invertebrate biomass was highest in forests but contributed only a small percentage to overall biomass. Age and sex classes were unevenly distributed among habitats with adult males primarily occupying pecan groves containing the highest nut biomass, females being found in forests which had the lowest nut biomass and young males primarily staying in forest fragments along creeks which had intermediate nut biomass. Males were in better body condition than females and were in slightly better condition in pecan groves. The results suggest that adult males occupy the highest quality habitat and may competitively exclude the other age and sex classes

Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance?

This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how ‘adaptation success’ is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of ‘local’ vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with ‘vulnerable’ populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation