Eye Closure Interacts with Music to Influence Vividness and Content of Directed Imagery

Goal-directed, intentional mental imagery generation supports a range of daily self-regulatory activities, such as planning, decision-making, and recreational escapism. Many clinical interventions for mood and anxiety disorders also use imagery and their effectiveness can be affected by an individual's ability to manipulate vividness and content of mental imagery. Prior literature points towards music as a promising candidate to influence imagination in such settings, but basic questions remain regarding how music affects mental imagery and how it interacts with basic, well-established parameters, such as facilitatory effects of eye closure. One hundred participants listened to music and a silent control whilst performing a guided mental imagery task. Specifically, participants saw a short video of a figure journeying towards a landmark and imagined a continuation of the journey with either closed or open eyes. After each trial, participants reported vividness and content of their imagined journeys. Bayesian Mixed Effects Models obtained strong evidence of greater vividness, duration, as well as distance travelled in music conditions compared to silent conditions. Additionally, interactive effects of music and eye closure were found for both vividness and the emotional valence of imagined content, where music effects were disproportionately amplified by eye closure. Findings further support music's potential to manipulate the perceptual, spatial-temporal, as well as emotional sentiment of deliberately generated mental imagery

Ocean Surface Winds Drive Dynamics of Transoceanic Aerial Movements

Global wind patterns influence dispersal and migration processes of aerial organisms, propagules and particles, which ultimately could determine the dynamics of colonizations, invasions or spread of pathogens. However, studying how wind-mediated movements actually happen has been hampered so far by the lack of high resolution global wind data as well as the impossibility to track aerial movements. Using concurrent data on winds and actual pathways of a tracked seabird, here we show that oceanic winds define spatiotemporal pathways and barriers for large-scale aerial movements. We obtained wind data from NASA SeaWinds scatterometer to calculate wind cost (impedance) models reflecting the resistance to the aerial movement near the ocean surface. We also tracked the movements of a model organism, the Cory's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea), a pelagic bird known to perform long distance migrations. Cost models revealed that distant areas can be connected through “wind highways” that do not match the shortest great circle routes. Bird routes closely followed the low-cost “wind-highways” linking breeding and wintering areas. In addition, we found that a potential barrier, the near surface westerlies in the Atlantic sector of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), temporally hindered meridional trans-equatorial movements. Once the westerlies vanished, birds crossed the ITCZ to their winter quarters. This study provides a novel approach to investigate wind-mediated movements in oceanic environments and shows that large-scale migration and dispersal processes over the oceans can be largely driven by spatiotemporal wind patterns

Ocean Surface Winds Drive Dynamics of Transoceanic Aerial Movements

Global wind patterns influence dispersal and migration processes of aerial organisms, propagules and particles, which ultimately could determine the dynamics of colonizations, invasions or spread of pathogens. However, studying how wind-mediated movements actually happen has been hampered so far by the lack of high resolution global wind data as well as the impossibility to track aerial movements. Using concurrent data on winds and actual pathways of a tracked seabird, here we show that oceanic winds define spatiotemporal pathways and barriers for large-scale aerial movements. We obtained wind data from NASA SeaWinds scatterometer to calculate wind cost (impedance) models reflecting the resistance to the aerial movement near the ocean surface. We also tracked the movements of a model organism, the Cory's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea), a pelagic bird known to perform long distance migrations. Cost models revealed that distant areas can be connected through “wind highways” that do not match the shortest great circle routes. Bird routes closely followed the low-cost “wind-highways” linking breeding and wintering areas. In addition, we found that a potential barrier, the near surface westerlies in the Atlantic sector of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), temporally hindered meridional trans-equatorial movements. Once the westerlies vanished, birds crossed the ITCZ to their winter quarters. This study provides a novel approach to investigate wind-mediated movements in oceanic environments and shows that large-scale migration and dispersal processes over the oceans can be largely driven by spatiotemporal wind patterns

Noncommutative generalizations of theorems of Cohen and Kaplansky

This paper investigates situations where a property of a ring can be tested on a set of "prime right ideals." Generalizing theorems of Cohen and Kaplansky, we show that every right ideal of a ring is finitely generated (resp. principal) iff every "prime right ideal" is finitely generated (resp. principal), where the phrase "prime right ideal" can be interpreted in one of many different ways. We also use our methods to show that other properties can be tested on special sets of right ideals, such as the right artinian property and various homological properties. Applying these methods, we prove the following noncommutative generalization of a result of Kaplansky: a (left and right) noetherian ring is a principal right ideal ring iff all of its maximal right ideals are principal. A counterexample shows that the left noetherian hypothesis cannot be dropped. Finally, we compare our results to earlier generalizations of Cohen's and Kaplansky's theorems in the literature.Comment: 41 pages. To appear in Algebras and Representation Theory. Minor changes were made to the numbering system, in order to remain consistent with the published versio

Inspiratory muscle warm-up does not improve cycling time-trial performance

Purpose: This study examined the effects of an active cycling warm-up, with and without the addition of an inspiratory muscle warm-up (IMW), on 10-km cycling time-trial performance

Transurethral resection of the prostate in Northern Nigeria, problems and prospects

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is the commonest disease of the urinary tract afflicting the ageing male and is the commonest neoplastic disease in men aged 50 years and above.</p> <p>Transurethral prostatectomy (TURP) is the ultimate treatment of choice for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) due mainly to the preference of minimally invasive surgery, long term relief of symptoms and cost effectiveness. It is however not available to the majority of Nigerians in need of prostatic surgery in Public Health Institutions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The records of patients who underwent prostatectomy in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, over the period June 2001 to July 2007 were examined. The bio data of patients and laboratory investigations performed were retrieved.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Five Hundred and forty two patients were operated upon, out of which 40 were excluded due to open prostatectomy (22 patients), bladder neck stenosis (16 patients) or bladder tumour around the trigon (2 patients). The age range of the patients was 47–110 years with a mean of 67.2 years. 289 patients (80.1%) had urethral catheter in situ at presentation and 11 (3%) patients had suprapubic cystostomy of which only 3 (0.85%) had combined urethral stricture and BPH.</p> <p>Only 131 (26%) had their PSA measured which ranged from 2–100 ng/ml out of which 39(29.8% n = 131) patients had more than 4 ng/ml and cancer of the prostate and 1(0.8%, n = 131) patient had a PSA level of 4 ng/ml and malignant prostate.</p> <p>Hospital stay was 1–32 days (mean 7.9) and the mean follow up period was 5.6 months (range 0–60) and there were 17.5% complications comprising of urinary tract infection (UTI) 7.2%, Orchitis 2.2%, urinary incontinence 0.6%, atonic bladder 1%, erectile dysfunction 0.6%, cerebrovascular accident 0.4%, myocardial infarction 0.4%, deep vein thrombosis 0.4% and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC) 0.6% and 1.2% mortality. The cost of treatment inclusive of pre-admission investigations was US$615.00 (range US$ 300–1,300)</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Despite advances in minimally invasive therapy for LUTH/BPH, TURP is the optimum treatment of choice for the ageing male of sub-Saharan Africa. It is however not available to the majority of patients in this region due to poor health allocation and inadequate facilities and training.</p

Isoforms of U1-70k control subunit dynamics in the human spliceosomal U1 snRNP

Most human protein-encoding genes contain multiple exons that are spliced together, frequently in alternative arrangements, by the spliceosome. It is established that U1 snRNP is an essential component of the spliceosome, in human consisting of RNA and ten proteins, several of which are post- translationally modified and exist as multiple isoforms. Unresolved and challenging to investigate are the effects of these post translational modifications on the dynamics, interactions and stability of the particle. Using mass spectrometry we investigate the composition and dynamics of the native human U1 snRNP and compare native and recombinant complexes to isolate the effects of various subunits and isoforms on the overall stability. Our data reveal differential incorporation of four protein isoforms and dynamic interactions of subunits U1-A, U1-C and Sm-B/B’. Results also show that unstructured post- ranslationally modified C-terminal tails are responsible for the dynamics of Sm-B/B’ and U1-C and that their interactions with the Sm core are controlled by binding to different U1-70k isoforms and their phosphorylation status in vivo. These results therefore provide the important functional link between proteomics and structure as well as insight into the dynamic quaternary structure of the native U1 snRNP important for its function.This work was funded by: BBSRC (OVM), BBSRC and EPSRC (HH and NM), EU Prospects (HH), European Science Foundation (NM), the Royal Society (CVR), and fellowship from JSPS and HFSP (YM and DAPK respectively)