Heterias petrensis, a new species of freshwater isopod from Tasmania (Family Janiridae, Tribe Asellota)

A new species of freshwater isopod, Heterias petrensis (Family Janiridae, tribe Asellota) is described. The species is found in Lake Crescent, Tasmania. A revised description is given of the genus Heterias

Searching for a talking face: the effect of degrading the auditory signal

Previous research (e.g. McGurk and MacDonald, 1976) suggests that faces and voices are bound automatically, but recent evidence suggests that attention is involved in a task of searching for a talking face (Alsius and Soto-Faraco, 2011). We hypothesised that the processing demands of the stimuli may affect the amount of attentional resources required, and investigated what effect degrading the auditory stimulus had on the time taken to locate a talking face. Twenty participants were presented with between 2 and 4 faces articulating different sentences, and had to decide which of these faces matched the sentence that they heard. The results showed that in the least demanding auditory condition (clear speech in quiet), search times did not significantly increase when the number of faces increased. However, when speech was presented in background noise or was processed to simulate the information provided by a cochlear implant, search times increased as the number of faces increased. Thus, it seems that the amount of attentional resources required vary according to the processing demands of the auditory stimuli, and when processing load is increased then faces need to be individually attended to in order to complete the task. Based on these results we would expect cochlear-implant users to find the task of locating a talking face more attentionally demanding than normal hearing listeners

A Characterization of Mixed Unit Interval Graphs

We give a complete characterization of mixed unit interval graphs, the intersection graphs of closed, open, and half-open unit intervals of the real line. This is a proper superclass of the well known unit interval graphs. Our result solves a problem posed by Dourado, Le, Protti, Rautenbach and Szwarcfiter (Mixed unit interval graphs, Discrete Math. 312, 3357-3363 (2012)).Comment: 17 pages, referees' comments adde

Development of Prognosis in Palliative care Study (PiPS) predictor models to improve prognostication in advanced cancer: prospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: To develop a novel prognostic indicator for use in patients with advanced cancer that is significantly better than clinicians' estimates of survival. DESIGN: Prospective multicentre observational cohort study. SETTING: 18 palliative care services in the UK (including hospices, hospital support teams, and community teams). PARTICIPANTS: 1018 patients with locally advanced or metastatic cancer, no longer being treated for cancer, and recently referred to palliative care services. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Performance of a composite model to predict whether patients were likely to survive for "days" (0-13 days), "weeks" (14-55 days), or "months+" (>55 days), compared with actual survival and clinicians' predictions. RESULTS: On multivariate analysis, 11 core variables (pulse rate, general health status, mental test score, performance status, presence of anorexia, presence of any site of metastatic disease, presence of liver metastases, C reactive protein, white blood count, platelet count, and urea) independently predicted both two week and two month survival. Four variables had prognostic significance only for two week survival (dyspnoea, dysphagia, bone metastases, and alanine transaminase), and eight variables had prognostic significance only for two month survival (primary breast cancer, male genital cancer, tiredness, loss of weight, lymphocyte count, neutrophil count, alkaline phosphatase, and albumin). Separate prognostic models were created for patients without (PiPS-A) or with (PiPS-B) blood results. The area under the curve for all models varied between 0.79 and 0.86. Absolute agreement between actual survival and PiPS predictions was 57.3% (after correction for over-optimism). The median survival across the PiPS-A categories was 5, 33, and 92 days and survival across PiPS-B categories was 7, 32, and 100.5 days. All models performed as well as, or better than, clinicians' estimates of survival. CONCLUSIONS: In patients with advanced cancer no longer being treated, a combination of clinical and laboratory variables can reliably predict two week and two month survival

Cryotomography of budding influenza a virus reveals filaments with diverse morphologies that mostly do not bear a genome at their distal end

Influenza viruses exhibit striking variations in particle morphology between strains. Clinical isolates of influenza A virus have been shown to produce long filamentous particles while laboratory-adapted strains are predominantly spherical. However, the role of the filamentous phenotype in the influenza virus infectious cycle remains undetermined. We used cryo-electron tomography to conduct the first three-dimensional study of filamentous virus ultrastructure in particles budding from infected cells. Filaments were often longer than 10 microns and sometimes had bulbous heads at their leading ends, some of which contained tubules we attribute to M1 while none had recognisable ribonucleoprotein (RNP) and hence genome segments. Long filaments that did not have bulbs were infrequently seen to bear an ordered complement of RNPs at their distal ends. Imaging of purified virus also revealed diverse filament morphologies; short rods (bacilliform virions) and longer filaments. Bacilliform virions contained an ordered complement of RNPs while longer filamentous particles were narrower and mostly appeared to lack this feature, but often contained fibrillar material along their entire length. The important ultrastructural differences between these diverse classes of particles raise the possibility of distinct morphogenetic pathways and functions during the infectious process

Multiple markers of cortical morphology reveal evidence of supragranular thinning in schizophrenia.

In vivo structural neuroimaging can reliably identify changes to cortical morphology and its regional variation but cannot yet relate these changes to specific cortical layers. We propose, however, that by synthesizing principles of cortical organization, including relative contributions of different layers to sulcal and gyral thickness, regional patterns of variation in thickness of different layers across the cortical sheet and profiles of layer variation across functional hierarchies, it is possible to develop indirect morphological measures as markers of more specific cytoarchitectural changes. We developed four indirect measures sensitive to changes specifically occurring in supragranular cortical layers, and applied these to test the hypothesis that supragranular layers are disproportionately affected in schizophrenia. Our findings from the four different measures converge to indicate a predominance of supragranular thinning in schizophrenia, independent of medication and illness duration. We propose that these indirect measures offer novel ways of identifying layer-specific cortical changes, offering complementary in vivo observations to existing post-mortem studies.KW is supported by the University of Cambridge MB/PhD Programme and, together with KJW, by the Wellcome Trust. IMG by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award (RNAG/260), and LR and PCF by the Bernard Wolfe Health Neuroscience Fund and Wellcome Trust

A Plasmid-Transposon Hybrid Mutagenesis System Effective in a Broad Range of Enterobacteria.

Random transposon mutagenesis is a powerful technique used to generate libraries of genetic insertions in many different bacterial strains. Here we develop a system facilitating random transposon mutagenesis in a range of different Gram-negative bacterial strains, including Pectobacterium atrosepticum, Citrobacter rodentium, Serratia sp. ATCC39006, Serratia plymuthica, Dickeya dadantii, and many more. Transposon mutagenesis was optimized in each of these strains and three studies are presented to show the efficacy of this system. Firstly, the important agricultural pathogen D. dadantii was mutagenized. Two mutants that showed reduced protease production and one mutant producing the previously cryptic pigment, indigoidine, were identified and characterized. Secondly, the enterobacterium, Serratia sp. ATCC39006 was mutagenized and mutants incapable of producing gas vesicles, proteinaceous intracellular organelles, were identified. One of these contained a β-galactosidase transcriptional fusion within the gene gvpA1, essential for gas vesicle production. Finally, the system was used to mutate the biosynthetic gene clusters of the antifungal, anti-oomycete and anticancer polyketide, oocydin A, in the plant-associated enterobacterium, Dickeya solani MK10. The mutagenesis system was developed to allow easy identification of transposon insertion sites by sequencing, after facile generation of a replicon encompassing the transposon and adjacent DNA, post-excision. Furthermore, the system can also create transcriptional fusions with either β-galactosidase or β-glucuronidase as reporters, and exploits a variety of drug resistance markers so that multiple selectable fusions can be generated in a single strain. This system of various transposons has wide utility and can be combined in many different ways.The authors would like to acknowledge several funding sources. D. Smith was supported by a PhD studentship from the BBSRC. Work in the MW lab is supported by the BBSRC (grants BB/G015171/1 and BB/M019411/1). K. Roberts was funded by an MRC studentship. R. Monson and the Salmond lab were supported by grants from the BBSRC (Grant No Provisional BB/K001833/1). M.A. Matilla was supported by the EU Marie-Curie Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF), grant number 298003. B. Richardson was supported by a Harry Smith vacation studentship from the SGM, UK. The authors would also like to thank Ray Chai for careful reading and comments on this manuscript. Alison Drew provided technical support. Work with plant pathogens was carried out under DEFRA licence No. 50864/197900/1.This is the final version of the article. It was first available from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2015.0144

Bayesian Methods for Exoplanet Science

Exoplanet research is carried out at the limits of the capabilities of current telescopes and instruments. The studied signals are weak, and often embedded in complex systematics from instrumental, telluric, and astrophysical sources. Combining repeated observations of periodic events, simultaneous observations with multiple telescopes, different observation techniques, and existing information from theory and prior research can help to disentangle the systematics from the planetary signals, and offers synergistic advantages over analysing observations separately. Bayesian inference provides a self-consistent statistical framework that addresses both the necessity for complex systematics models, and the need to combine prior information and heterogeneous observations. This chapter offers a brief introduction to Bayesian inference in the context of exoplanet research, with focus on time series analysis, and finishes with an overview of a set of freely available programming libraries.Comment: Invited revie

Which older people decline participation in a primary care trial of physical activity and why: insights from a mixed methods approach

This article is available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. Copyright 2014 Rogers et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Physical activity is of vital importance to older peoples’ health. Physical activity intervention studies with older people often have low recruitment, yet little is known about non-participants. Methods: Patients aged 60–74 years from three UK general practices were invited to participate in a nurse-supported pedometer-based walking intervention. Demographic characteristics of 298 participants and 690 non-participants were compared. Health status and physical activity of 298 participants and 183 non-participants who completed a survey were compared using age, sex adjusted odds ratios (OR) (95% confidence intervals). 15 non-participants were interviewed to explore perceived barriers to participation. Results: Recruitment was 30% (298/988). Participants were more likely than non-participants to be female (54% v 47%; p = 0.04) and to live in affluent postcodes (73% v 62% in top quintile; p < 0.001). Participants were more likely than non-participants who completed the survey to have an occupational pension OR 2.06 (1.35-3.13), a limiting longstanding illness OR 1.72 (1.05-2.79) and less likely to report being active OR 0.55 (0.33-0.93) or walking fast OR 0.56 (0.37-0.84). Interviewees supported general practice-based physical activity studies, particularly walking, but barriers to participation included: already sufficiently active, reluctance to walk alone or at night, physical symptoms, depression, time constraints, trial equipment and duration. Conclusion: Gender and deprivation differences suggest some selection bias. However, trial participants reported more health problems and lower activity than non-participants who completed the survey, suggesting appropriate trial selection in a general practice population. Non-participant interviewees indicated that shorter interventions, addressing physical symptoms and promoting confidence in pursuing physical activity, might increase trial recruitment and uptake of practice-based physical activity endeavours.The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit Programme (Grant Reference Number PB-PG-0909-20055)

Reflective Journaling: A Theoretical Model and Digital Prototype for Developing Resilience and Creativity

Reflection is commonly discussed as a tool for personal and professional development that is becoming increasingly important in today’s global and digital world. In this paper, we propose a model that suggests ways in which reflection, in the form of Reflective Journaling, can support the development of creativity and resilience, which are needed to enable individuals to function effectively in a fast-changing environment. In addition, the model proposes ways in which external support and progress monitoring can be used in conjunction with skills in adaptive resilience and structured creativity, to support the maintenance of reflective journaling as a habit, in the longer term, thus creating virtuous cycles of skills and behaviours that can reinforce each other. Based on our model, and additional user research, we describe the design of a first digital prototype that aims to support the use of Reflective Journaling and to develop creativity and resilience through suggested mechanisms. Initial evaluations of our prototype are positive. It has been well-received by early test users, and has the potential to address all the connections defined. We therefore suggest that the theoretical model can be used to develop digital tools, such as the one included, to help those who wish to develop the habit of reflective journaling, and through that a range of other skills associated with resilience and creative thinking. We see this as a starting point for investigating this potential in more depth