Phonon Properties of Knbo3 and Ktao3 from First-Principles Calculations

The frequencies of transverse-optical $\Gamma$ phonons in KNbO$_3$ and KTaO$_3$ are calculated in the frozen-phonon scheme making use of the full-potential linearized muffin-tin orbital method. The calculated frequencies in the cubic phase of KNbO$_3$ and in the tetragonal ferroelectric phase are in good agreement with experimental data. For KTaO$_3$, the effect of lattice volume was found to be substantial on the frequency of the soft mode, but rather small on the relative displacement patterns of atoms in all three modes of the $T_{1u}$ symmetry. The TO frequencies in KTaO$_3$ are found to be of the order of, but somehow higher than, the corresponding frequencies in cubic KNbO$_3$.Comment: 8 pages + 1 LaTeX figure, Revtex 3.0, SISSA-CM-94-00

Hot Nuclear Matter in the Quark Meson Coupling Model

We study here hot nuclear matter in the quark meson coupling (QMC) model which incorporates explicitly quark degrees of freedom, with quarks coupled to scalar and vector mesons. The equation of state of nuclear matter including the composite nature of the nucleons is calculated at finite temperatures. The calculations are done taking into account the medium-dependent bag constant. Nucleon properties at finite temperatures as calculated here are found to be appreciably different from the value at $T=0.$Comment: 19 pages including 6 eps files, uses revtex; PACS number: 21.65.+f,24.85.+p,12.39.Ba,12.38.L

Cognitive conflicts in major depression : Between desired change and personal coherence

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposesThe notion of intrapsychic conflict has been present in psychopathology for more than a century within different theoretical orientations. However, internal conflicts have not received enough empirical attention, nor has their importance in depression been fully elaborated. This study is based on the notion of cognitive conflict, understood as implicative dilemma (ID), and on a new way of identifying these conflicts by means of the Repertory Grid Technique. Our aim was to explore the relevance of cognitive conflicts among depressive patientsPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

A Relativistic Thomas-Fermi Description of Collective Modes in Droplets of Nuclear Matter

Isoscalar collective modes in a relativistic meson-nucleon system are investigated in the framework of the time-dependent Thomas-Fermi method. The energies of the collective modes are determined by solving consistently the dispersion relations and the boundary conditions. The energy weighted sum rule satisfied by the model allows the identification of the giant ressonances. The percentage of the energy weighted sum rule exhausted by the collective modes is in agreement with experimental data, but the energies come too high.Comment: 21 pages (RevTex) and 2 postscript figures as a compressed uuencode fil

Accommodating 'others'?: housing dispersed, forced migrants in the UK

Utilising insights from a qualitative study in the city of Leeds (UK), this paper considers issues related to the housing of dispersed forced migrants. The term 'dispersed forced migrants' is used here as a general label to include four groups of international migrants (i.e. refugees, asylum seekers, those with humanitarian protection status and failed asylum seekers) who have previously been dispersed, on a no choice basis, to a variety of locations across the UK under the requirements of the Immigration and Asylum Act (1999). The tiering of housing entitlement that exists within the generic population of dispersed forced migrants (a consequence of the particular socio-legal status assigned to individuals), and its role in rendering migrants susceptible to homelessness is outlined. The adequacy/standard of accommodation made available to forced migrants is also discussed. It is concluded that current arrangements fail to meet the basic housing needs of many forced migrants. Any future improvement in this situation will require a significant shift in government policy

Behavioral and Transcriptome Profiling of Heterozygous Rab10 Knock-Out Mice

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.A central question in the field of aging research is to identify the cellular and molecular basis of neuroresilience. One potential candidate is the small GTPase, Rab10. Here, we used Rab101/ mice to investigate the molecular mecha-nisms underlying Rab10-mediated neuroresilience. Brain expression analysis of 880 genes involved in neurodegener-ation showed that Rab101/ mice have increased activation of pathways associated with neuronal metabolism, structural integrity, neurotransmission, and neuroplasticity compared with their Rab101/1 littermates. Lower activation was observed for pathways involved in neuroinflammation and aging. We identified and validated several differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including Stx2, Stx1b, Vegfa, and Lrrc25 (downregulated) and Prkaa2, Syt4, and Grin2d (upregulated). Behavioral testing showed that Rab101/ mice perform better in a hippocampal-dependent spatial task (object in place test), while their performance in a classical conditioning task (trace eyeblink classical condition-ing, TECC) was significantly impaired. Therefore, our findings indicate that Rab10 differentially controls the brain cir-cuitry of hippocampal-dependent spatial memory and higher-order behavior that requires intact cortex-hippocampal circuitry. Transcriptome and biochemical characterization of these mice suggest that glutamate ionotropic receptor NMDA type subunit 2D (GRIN2D or GluN2D) is affected by Rab10 signaling. Further work is needed to evaluate whether GRIN2D mediates the behavioral phenotypes of the Rab101/ mice. We conclude that Rab101/ mice de-scribed here can be a valuable tool to study the mechanisms of resilience in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) model mice and to identify novel therapeutical targets to prevent cognitive decline associated with normal and pathologic aging.ECU Open Access Publishing Support Fun

Self-consistent solution of the Schwinger-Dyson equations for the nucleon and meson propagators

The Schwinger-Dyson equations for the nucleon and meson propagators are solved self-consistently in an approximation that goes beyond the Hartree-Fock approximation. The traditional approach consists in solving the nucleon Schwinger-Dyson equation with bare meson propagators and bare meson-nucleon vertices; the corrections to the meson propagators are calculated using the bare nucleon propagator and bare nucleon-meson vertices. It is known that such an approximation scheme produces the appearance of ghost poles in the propagators. In this paper the coupled system of Schwinger-Dyson equations for the nucleon and the meson propagators are solved self-consistently including vertex corrections. The interplay of self-consistency and vertex corrections on the ghosts problem is investigated. It is found that the self-consistency does not affect significantly the spectral properties of the propagators. In particular, it does not affect the appearance of the ghost poles in the propagators.Comment: REVTEX, 7 figures (available upon request), IFT-P.037/93, DOE/ER/40427-12-N9

Characteristics of ischaemic stroke associated with COVID-19

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, is associated with coagulopathy causing venous and arterial thrombosis.1 2 Recent data from the pandemic epicentre in Wuhan, China, reported neurological complications in 36% of 214 patients with COVID-19; acute cerebrovascular disease (mainly ischaemic stroke) was more common among 88 patients with severe COVID-19 than those with non-severe disease (5.7% vs 0.8%).3 However, the mechanisms, phenotype and optimal management of ischaemic stroke associated with COVID-19 remain uncertain. We describe the demographic, clinical, radiological and laboratory characteristics of six consecutive patients assessed between 1st and 16th April 2020 at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, UK, with acute ischaemic stroke and COVID-19 (confirmed by reverse-transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR)) (table 1). All six patients had large vessel occlusion with markedly elevated D-dimer levels (≥1000μg/L). Three patients had multiterritory infarcts, two had concurrent venous thrombosis, and, in two, ischaemic strokes occurred despite therapeutic anticoagulation

Randomized, double-blind comparison of once-weekly dalbavancin versus twice-daily linezolid therapy for the treatment of complicated skin and skin structure infections

Background. Dalbavancin, a novel lipoglycopeptide with a pharmacokinetic profile that allows weekly dosing, is active against gram-positive bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The efficacy of dalbavancin for treatment of skin and skin structure infections (SSSIs) was demonstrated in a phase 2 study. Methods. In a phase 3 noninferiority study, patients with complicated SSSIs, including infections known or suspected to involve MRSA, were randomized (ratio, 2:1) in a double-blind manner to receive dalbavancin (1000 mg given intravenously on day 1 and 500 mg given intravenously on day 8) or linezolid (600 mg given intravenously or intravenously/orally every 12 h for 14 days). Efficacy was assessed by determining clinical and microbiological responses at the end of therapy and at the test-of-cure visit. Relapses were identified by additional follow-up ~1 month later. Results. MRSA was identified in 51% of patients from whom a pathogen was isolated at baseline. Dalbavancin and linezolid demonstrated comparable clinical efficacy in the clinically evaluable population at the test-of-cure visit (88.9% and 91.2% success, respectively). The rate of clinical success at the end of therapy was >90% in both arms. Less than 1.0% of patients in either treatment arm experienced relapse after the test-of-cure visit. Both treatments yielded successful microbiological response in excess of 85% among microbiologically evaluable patients at end of therapy and at the test-of-cure visit for all pathogens combined, for all S. aureus strains, and for MRSA. Gastrointestinal symptoms were among the most common adverse events in both arms. A higher proportion of patients in the linezolid arm reported adverse events that were judged by the investigator to be probably/possibly related to treatment (dalbavancin arm, 25.4% of subjects; linezolid arm, 32.2% of subjects). Conclusions. Two doses of dalbavancin (1000 mg given on day 1 followed by 500 mg given on day 8) were as well tolerated and as effective as linezolid given twice daily for 14 days for the treatment of patients with complicated SSSI, including those infected with MRSA.Peer reviewe

Repeated Assessment of Exploration and Novelty Seeking in the Human Behavioral Pattern Monitor in Bipolar Disorder Patients and Healthy Individuals

Exploration and novelty seeking are cross-species adaptive behaviors that are dysregulated in bipolar disorder (BD) and are critical features of the illness. While these behaviors have been extensively quantified in animals, multivariate human paradigms of exploration are lacking. The human Behavioral Pattern Monitor (hBPM), a human version of the animal open field, identified a signature pattern of hyper-exploration in manic BD patients, but whether exploratory behavior changes with treatment is unknown. The objective of this study was to assess the sensitivity of the hBPM to changes in manic symptoms, a necessary step towards elucidating the neurobiology underlying BD.Twelve acutely hospitalized manic BD subjects and 21 healthy volunteers were tested in the hBPM over three sessions; all subjects were retested one week after their first session and two weeks after their second session. Motor activity, spatial and entropic (degree of unpredictability) patterns of exploration, and interactions with novel objects were quantified. Manic BD patients demonstrated greater motor activity, extensive and more unpredictable patterns of exploration, and more object interactions than healthy volunteers during all three sessions. Exploration and novelty-seeking slightly decreased in manic BD subjects over the three sessions as their symptoms responded to treatment, but never to the level of healthy volunteers. Among healthy volunteers, exploration did not significantly decrease over time, and hBPM measures were highly correlated between sessions.Manic BD patients showed a modest reduction in symptoms yet still demonstrated hyper-exploration and novelty seeking in the hBPM, suggesting that these illness features may be enduring characteristics of BD. Furthermore, behavior in the hBPM is not subject to marked habituation effects. The hBPM can be reliably used in a repeated-measures design to characterize exploration and novelty seeking and, in parallel with animal studies, can contribute to developing treatments that target neuropsychiatric disease