Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Students Coming Out at the Intersection of Spirituality and Sexual Identity

In this study, the researchers examined how lesbian, gay, and bisexual undergraduate students negotiated and defined their spiritual identities during the coming-out process. Although there were varied responses, the findings suggest that students describe spirituality as acceptance, personal relationships with a powerful essence, and connections to nature. When navigating multiple identities, students experienced various levels of intersectionality including irreconciliation, progressive development, arrested development, completed development, and reconciliation

Estimating the mass of the debris disc in HD 69830

We present a method to estimate the mass of the debris disc in the HD 69830 system, which also hosts three exoplanets with Neptune-like minimum masses. By considering the range of published stellar ages, we interpret the infrared emission from the debris disc as originating from a steady state, collisional cascade of dust grains. Using dynamical survival models subjected to observational constraints, we estimate the allowed range of disc masses. If the disc has an age of about 1 Gyr, then its mass is several times that of our asteroid belt. The maximum allowed age for the disc and the number of planetesimals it contains are determined by the assumed value for the binding energy of the planetesimals. If one insists on interpreting the disc as being transient, then this mass estimate becomes an upper limit.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS. 4 pages, 2 figures. No changes from previous version, except for corrections of typographical errors and to British English (e.g., "disc"

Tuberculosis interferon-gamma responses in the breast milk of human immunodeficiency virus infected mothers

Tuberculosis (TB) cellular immune responses were examined in breastmilk of HIV-infected mothers using the T-SPOT.TB interferon gamma release assay (IGRA). Positive TB IFN-γ responses were detected in 6 of 8 (75%) valid breast milk assays. Among 7 mothers with paired breastmilk and blood assays, TB IFN- γ responses were higher in breastmilk compared to blood (p=.02). The magnitude of TB IFN-γ responses in maternal breastmilk and blood were correlated. Elucidating the influence of breastmilk TB immune responses on infant TB susceptibility and immunity may inform future maternal TB vaccine strategies

Use of Coniothyrium minitans transformed with the hygromycin B resistance gene to study survival and infection of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum sclerotia in soil

A Coniothyrium minitans strain (T3) co-transformed with the genes for β-glucuronidase (uidA) and hygromycin phosphotransferase (hph), the latter providing resistance to the antibiotic hygromycin B, was used to investigate the survival and infection of sclerotia of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum by C. minitans over time in four different soils. Infection of sclerotia was rapid in all cases, with the behaviour of transformant T3 and wild type parent A69 being similar. Differences were seen between the soils in the rate of infection of sclerotia by C. minitans and in their indigenous fungal populations. Amendment of agar with hygromycin B enabled the quantification of C. minitans in soil by dilution plating where there was a high background of other microorganisms. In Lincoln soil from New Zealand, which had a natural but low population of C. minitans the hygromycin B resistance marker allowed the umambiguous discrimination of the applied transformed isolate from the indigenous hygromycin B sensitive one. In this soil, although the indigenous C. minitans population was detected from sclerotia, none were recovered on the dilution plates, indicating the increased sensitivity of C. minitans detection from soil using sclerotial baiting. C. minitans was a very efficient parasite, being able to infect a large proportion of sclerotia within a relatively short time from an initially low soil population. The addition of hygromycin B to agar also allowed the detection of C. minitans from decaying sclerotia by inhibiting secondary fungal colonisers. This is the first report to show that fungi colonising sclerotia already infected by C. minitans mask the detection of C. minitans from sclerotia rather than displacing the original parasite

Lysine mediation of neuroendocrine food regulation in guinea fowl

In poultry, obesity is partly influenced by food intake, and is increasingly becoming a nationwide problem. Hypothalamic food intake mechanisms are involved metabolically and neurologically via two peptide hormones, leptin and ghrelin, and the amino acid glutamate, which is enzymatically derived from lysine metabolism. We hypothesize that lysine homeostasis mediates regulation of feed intake and performance characteristics via the brain–liver axis through glutamate sensing. The objective was to examine the effects of lysine homeostasis in avian food regulation and performance through neuroendocrine signaling. One-day-old male French Guinea fowl (GF) keets (n = 270) were weighed and randomly assigned to 5 dietary treatments (0.80%, 0.86%, 0.92%, 1.10% control, and 1.22% lysine) in 3 replicates. At 4 and 8 wk of age 20% of experimental birds were randomly selected, weighed and euthanatized. The liver, pancreas, and hypothalamus were excised, snap frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at –80°C until use. Tissue mRNA was extracted and cDNA synthesized for qPCR assays. Lysine at 0.80 and 0.86% hindered growth, development of digestive organs, expression of brain and liver glutamate and leptin receptors, and caused high mortality in GF. The fold change for metabotropic glutamate receptor I was lower (P \u3c 0.05) in liver and higher in brain at 0.86 and 0.92% than the control (1.10%) and 1.22% lysine. The 1.22% lysine exhibited highest expression of ionotropic glutamate receptor, while brain ghrelin receptor expression was highest at 0.86 and 0.92% lysine. Therefore, dietary lysine concentration may influence signaling pathways regulating food intake in brain-liver axis via glutamate synthesis

Theoretical and computational study of high pressure structures in barium

Recent high pressure work has suggested that elemental barium forms a high pressure self-hosting structure (Ba IV) involving two `types' of barium atom. Uniquely among reported elemental structures it cannot be described by a single crystalline lattice, instead involving two interpenetrating incommensurate lattices. In this letter we report pseudopotential calculations demonstrating the stability and the potentially disordered nature of the `guest' structure. Using band structures and nearly-free electron theory we relate the appearance of Ba IV to an instability in the close-packed structure, demonstrate that it has a zero energy vibrational mode, and speculate about the structure's stability in other divalent elements.Comment: 4 pages and 5 figures. To appear in PR

Concert recording 2013-11-16b

[Track 01]. Brushstrokes on a simple field / Jeff Payne ; edited by Jacob Lee -- [Track 02]. Song among hills ; [Track 03]. Mythos unbound ; [Track 04]. Sketches on an autumn day / Jeff Payne

Eye Movements in Risky Choice.

We asked participants to make simple risky choices while we recorded their eye movements. We built a complete statistical model of the eye movements and found very little systematic variation in eye movements over the time course of a choice or across the different choices. The only exceptions were finding more (of the same) eye movements when choice options were similar, and an emerging gaze bias in which people looked more at the gamble they ultimately chose. These findings are inconsistent with prospect theory, the priority heuristic, or decision field theory. However, the eye movements made during a choice have a large relationship with the final choice, and this is mostly independent from the contribution of the actual attribute values in the choice options. That is, eye movements tell us not just about the processing of attribute values but also are independently associated with choice. The pattern is simple-people choose the gamble they look at more often, independently of the actual numbers they see-and this pattern is simpler than predicted by decision field theory, decision by sampling, and the parallel constraint satisfaction model. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.This work was supported by funding from the University of Essex Research Promotion Fund, Economic and Social Research Council grants ES/K002201/1 and ES/K004948/1, and Leverhulme grant RP2012-V-022. Raw data and R code are available from the authors and will be posted on publication.This is the final version. It was first published by Wiley at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bdm.1854/pd

Open urethroplasty versus endoscopic urethrotomy - clarifying the management of men with recurrent urethral stricture (the OPEN trial) : study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Peer reviewedPublisher PD