The impact of participating in suicide research online.

The impact of participation in online mixed-methods suicide research was investigated. Participants, who described feeling suicidal, completed an 18-item questionnaire before and after taking part (n = 103), and answered open-ended questions about participation (n = 97). Overall, participation reduced negative experiences and had no effect on positive experiences. Feelings of calm increased, but participants felt less supported. Some participants did experience distress, but some also reported this distress to be manageable. Anonymously sharing experiences of suicidality was viewed as important, had therapeutic benefits, and engendered hopes for recovery. The findings suggest a need to ensure vulnerable participants in online studies are well supported while protecting their anonymity

Understanding treatment non-adherence in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: a survey of what service users do and why.

BACKGROUND: Approximately half of service users with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder do not fully follow treatment recommendations. Studies of adherence have not adequately explored the frequency, consequences and meanings of non-adherence behaviours from service users' perspectives. This study contributes to a more fine-grained understanding of treatment choices and the support service users require in order to maximise benefit from their medications. METHODS: This was a mixed-methods questionnaire study, employing quantitative and thematic qualitative analyses. Thirty-five individuals with a diagnosis of, and receiving psycho-pharmaceutical treatment for, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder answered online or telephone questions about whether, how, and why they deviated from their treatment recommendations, and what support they currently and would like to receive. RESULTS: Over half of participants identified themselves as being non-adherent, however when asked in detail about intentional and unintentional adherence, 77% reported deviating from treatment recommendations. Critically, 29% were non-adherent and satisfied with being so. Service users' satisfaction with their support was positively correlated with satisfaction with their medication. Participants' made treatment choices in order to live well. Both side-effects and symptoms could be obstacles to adherence, but feeling well also impacted on participants' treatment choices. Treatment choices were often made in the context of living well day-to-day, and did not necessarily take into account longer-term effects of non-adherence. Participants wanted more information about their medications, better emotional support (including better access to psychological therapies) and stability in their relationships with health professionals. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that non-adherence, both intentional and unintentional, is common amongst individuals with diagnoses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and that this often occurs without health professionals' knowledge or support. Treatment choices reflect a desire to live well, but are often driven by short-term needs. Given access to more information, and importantly to emotional support, service users could be helped to make treatment choices that adequately reflect the long-term risks of non-adherence, as well as allowing them to live well day-to-day. More research is required better to understand the meanings and complexities of service users' treatment choices

Cigarette smoking and risk of acoustic neuromas and pituitary tumours in the Million Women Study

BACKGROUND: The relationship between cigarette smoking and incidence of acoustic neuromas and pituitary tumours is uncertain. METHODS: We examined the relation between smoking and risk of acoustic neuromas and pituitary tumours in a prospective study of 1.2 million middle-aged women in the United Kingdom. RESULTS: Over 10.2 million person years of follow-up, 177 women were diagnosed with acoustic neuromas and 174 with pituitary tumours. Current smokers at recruitment were at significantly reduced risk of incident acoustic neuroma compared with never smokers (adjusted relative risk (RR)=0.41, 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.24-0.70, P=0.001). Past smokers did not have significantly different risk of acoustic neuroma than never smokers (RR=0.87, 95% CI=0.62-1.22, P=0.4). Smoking was not associated with incidence of pituitary tumours (RR in current vs never smokers=0.91, 95% CI=0.60-1.40, P=0.7). CONCLUSION: Women who smoke are at a significantly reduced risk of acoustic neuromas, but not of pituitary tumours, compared with never smokers. Acoustic neuromas are much rarer than the cancers that are increased among smokers

Overview of Aerosolized Florida Red Tide Toxins: Exposures and Effects

Florida red tide is caused by Karenia brevis, a dinoflagellate that periodically blooms, releasing its potent neurotoxin, brevetoxin, into the surrounding waters and air along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Exposure to Florida red tide toxins has been associated with adverse human health effects and massive fish and marine mammal deaths. The articles in this mini-monograph describe the ongoing interdisciplinary and interagency research program that characterizes the exposures and health effects of aerosolized Florida red tide toxins (brevetoxins). The interdisciplinary research program uses animal models and laboratory studies to develop hypotheses and apply these findings to in situ human exposures. Our ultimate goal is to develop appropriate prevention measures and medical interventions to mitigate or prevent adverse health effects from exposure to complex mixtures of aerosolized red tide toxins

Microneedle Enhanced Delivery of Cosmeceutically Relevant Peptides in Human Skin

Peptides and proteins play an important role in skin health and well-being. They are also found to contribute to skin aging and melanogenesis. Microneedles have been shown to substantially enhance skin penetration and may offer an effective means of peptide delivery enhancement. The aim of this investigation was to assess the influence of microneedles on the skin penetration of peptides using fluorescence imaging to determine skin distribution. In particular the effect of peptide chain length (3, 4, 5 amino acid chain length) on passive and MN facilitated skin penetration was investigated. Confocal laser scanning microscopy was used to image fluorescence intensity and the area of penetration of fluorescently tagged peptides. Penetration studies were conducted on excised full thickness human skin in Franz type diffusion cells for 1 and 24 hours. A 2 to 22 fold signal improvement in microneedle enhanced delivery of melanostatin, rigin and pal-KTTKS was observed. To our knowledge this is the first description of microneedle enhanced skin permeation studies on these peptides

Robots that can adapt like animals

As robots leave the controlled environments of factories to autonomously function in more complex, natural environments, they will have to respond to the inevitable fact that they will become damaged. However, while animals can quickly adapt to a wide variety of injuries, current robots cannot "think outside the box" to find a compensatory behavior when damaged: they are limited to their pre-specified self-sensing abilities, can diagnose only anticipated failure modes, and require a pre-programmed contingency plan for every type of potential damage, an impracticality for complex robots. Here we introduce an intelligent trial and error algorithm that allows robots to adapt to damage in less than two minutes, without requiring self-diagnosis or pre-specified contingency plans. Before deployment, a robot exploits a novel algorithm to create a detailed map of the space of high-performing behaviors: This map represents the robot's intuitions about what behaviors it can perform and their value. If the robot is damaged, it uses these intuitions to guide a trial-and-error learning algorithm that conducts intelligent experiments to rapidly discover a compensatory behavior that works in spite of the damage. Experiments reveal successful adaptations for a legged robot injured in five different ways, including damaged, broken, and missing legs, and for a robotic arm with joints broken in 14 different ways. This new technique will enable more robust, effective, autonomous robots, and suggests principles that animals may use to adapt to injury

Geographic range did not confer resilience to extinction in terrestrial vertebrates at the end-Triassic crisis

Rates of extinction vary greatly through geological time, with losses particularly concentrated in mass extinctions. Species duration at other times varies greatly, but the reasons for this are unclear. Geographical range correlates with lineage duration amongst marine invertebrates, but it is less clear how far this generality extends to other groups in other habitats. It is also unclear whether a wide geographical distribution makes groups more likely to survive mass extinctions. Here we test for extinction selectivity amongst terrestrial vertebrates across the end-Triassic event. We demonstrate that terrestrial vertebrate clades with larger geographical ranges were more resilient to extinction than those with smaller ranges throughout the Triassic and Jurassic. However, this relationship weakened with increasing proximity to the end-Triassic mass extinction, breaking down altogether across the event itself. We demonstrate that these findings are not a function of sampling biases; a perennial issue in studies of this kind

The first definitive carcharodontosaurid (Dinosauria:Theropoda) from Asia and the delayed ascent of tyrannosaurids

Little is known about the evolution of large-bodied theropod dinosaurs during the Early to mid Cretaceous in Asia. Prior to this time, Asia was home to an endemic fauna of basal tetanurans, whereas terminal Cretaceous ecosystems were dominated by tyrannosaurids, but the intervening 60 million years left a sparse fossil record. Here, we redescribe the enigmatic large-bodied Chilantaisaurus maortuensis from the Turonian of Inner Mongolia, China. We refer this species to a new genus, Shaochilong, and analyze its systematic affinities. Although Shaochilong has previously been allied with several disparate theropod groups (Megalosauridae, Allosauridae, Tyrannosauroidea, Maniraptora), we find strong support for a derived carcharodontosaurid placement. As such, Shaochilong is the first unequivocal Asian member of Carcharodontosauridae, which was once thought to be restricted to Gondwana. The discovery of an Asian carcharodontosaurid indicates that this clade was cosmopolitan in the Early to mid Cretaceous and that Asian large-bodied theropod faunas were no longer endemic at this time. It may also suggest that the ascent of tyrannosaurids into the large-bodied dinosaurian predator niche was a late event that occurred towards the end of the Cretaceous,between the Turonian and the Campanian

Tearing Out the Income Tax by the (Grass)Roots

Landscapes are increasingly fragmented, and conservation programs have started to look at network approaches for maintaining populations at a larger scale. We present an agent-based model of predator–prey dynamics where the agents (i.e. the individuals of either the predator or prey population) are able to move between different patches in a landscaped network. We then analyze population level and coexistence probability given node-centrality measures that characterize specific patches. We show that both predator and prey species benefit from living in globally well-connected patches (i.e. with high closeness centrality). However, the maximum number of prey species is reached, on average, at lower closeness centrality levels than for predator species. Hence, prey species benefit from constraints imposed on species movement in fragmented landscapes since they can reproduce with a lesser risk of predation, and their need for using anti-predatory strategies decreases.authorCount :

Structure of the hDmc1-ssDNA filament reveals the principles of its architecture

In eukaryotes, meiotic recombination is a major source of genetic diversity, but its defects in humans lead to abnormalities such as Down's, Klinefelter's and other syndromes. Human Dmc1 (hDmc1), a RecA/Rad51 homologue, is a recombinase that plays a crucial role in faithful chromosome segregation during meiosis. The initial step of homologous recombination occurs when hDmc1 forms a filament on single-stranded (ss) DNA. However the structure of this presynaptic complex filament for hDmc1 remains unknown. To compare hDmc1-ssDNA complexes to those known for the RecA/Rad51 family we have obtained electron microscopy (EM) structures of hDmc1-ssDNA nucleoprotein filaments using single particle approach. The EM maps were analysed by docking crystal structures of Dmc1, Rad51, RadA, RecA and DNA. To fully characterise hDmc1-DNA complexes we have analysed their organisation in the presence of Ca2+, Mg2+, ATP, AMP-PNP, ssDNA and dsDNA. The 3D EM structures of the hDmc1-ssDNA filaments allowed us to elucidate the principles of their internal architecture. Similar to the RecA/Rad51 family, hDmc1 forms helical filaments on ssDNA in two states: extended (active) and compressed (inactive). However, in contrast to the RecA/Rad51 family, and the recently reported structure of hDmc1-double stranded (ds) DNA nucleoprotein filaments, the extended (active) state of the hDmc1 filament formed on ssDNA has nine protomers per helical turn, instead of the conventional six, resulting in one protomer covering two nucleotides instead of three. The control reconstruction of the hDmc1-dsDNA filament revealed 6.4 protein subunits per helical turn indicating that the filament organisation varies depending on the DNA templates. Our structural analysis has also revealed that the N-terminal domain of hDmc1 accomplishes its important role in complex formation through domain swapping between adjacent protomers, thus providing a mechanistic basis for coordinated action of hDmc1 protomers during meiotic recombination