The psychophysiological mechanisms of alexithymia in autism spectrum disorder

Accumulating evidence indicates that co-occurring alexithymia underlies several facets of the social-emotional difficulties common in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The mechanisms involved, however, remain poorly understood because measuring alexithymia relies heavily on self-report. To address this issue, carefully matched groups of individuals with ASD and comparison participants rated 70 emotion-inducing pictures on subjectively experienced arousal while skin conductance responses were monitored objectively. The results demonstrated reliable correlations between these subjective and objective measures, and in both groups around 25% of individual differences in this correlation (i.e. in emotion-relevant interoception) were accounted for by self-reported alexithymia. In the context of the wider literature, this suggests that alexithymia involves a disruption in how physiological arousal modulates the subjective experience of feelings in those with and without a diagnosis of ASD. Since mindfulness based therapies foster greater awareness of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, the findings also have implications for how the symptoms and consequences of alexithymia (e.g., anxiety) might be ameliorated

Novel scheelite‐type [Ca0.55(Nd1‐xBix)0.3]MoO4 (0.2 ≤ x ≤ 0.95) microwave dielectric ceramics with low sintering temperature

Novel scheelite‐type [Ca0.55(Nd1‐xBix)0.3]MoO4 (0.2 ≤ x ≤ 0.95) ceramics were prepared using the solid‐state reaction method. According to the X‐ray diffraction data, a solid solution was formed in 0.2 ≤ x ≤ 0.95 and all the samples belong to pure scheelite phase with the tetragonal structure. As revealed by Raman spectroscopy, the number of vibrational modes decreased with the increase in x value, which further indicated that Bi3+ ions occupied A‐site of scheelite structure. As the x value increased, the sintering temperature decreased from 740°C to 660°C; the permittivity increased from 12.6 to 20.3; the Qf value first decreased slightly and gradually remained stable. Based on the infrared reflectivity spectrum analysis, the calculated permittivity derived from the fitted data shared the same trend with the measured value. The [Ca0.55(Nd0.05Bi0.95)0.3]MoO4 ceramic sintered at 660 °C attained a near‐zero value temperature coefficient ~τf (−7.1 ppm/°C) and showed excellent microwave dielectric properties with a ɛr ~ 20.3 and a Qf ~ 33 860 GHz, making this system a promising candidate in the ultralow temperature cofired ceramic (ULTCC) technology

Metabolomic and transcriptomic stress response of Escherichia coli

GC-MS-based analysis of the metabolic response of Escherichia coli exposed to four different stress conditions reveals reduction of energy expensive pathways.Time-resolved response of E. coli to changing environmental conditions is more specific on the metabolite as compared with the transcript level.Cease of growth during stress response as compared with stationary phase response invokes similar transcript but dissimilar metabolite responses.Condition-dependent associations between metabolites and transcripts are revealed applying co-clustering and canonical correlation analysis

Free Recall Learning of Hierarchically Organised Lists by Adults with Asperger's Syndrome: Additional Evidence for Diminished Relational Processing

The Task Support Hypothesis (TSH, Bowler et al. Neuropsychologia 35:65–70 1997) states that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show better memory when test procedures provide support for retrieval. The present study aimed to see whether this principle also applied at encoding. Twenty participants with high-functioning ASD and 20 matched comparison participants studied arrays of 112 words over four trials. Words were arranged either under hierarchically embedded category headings (e.g. Instruments—String—Plucked—Violin) or randomly. Both groups showed similar overall recall and better recall for the hierarchically organised words. However, the ASD participants made less use of information about relations between words and more use of item-specific information in their recall, confirming earlier reports of relational difficulties in this population

Assisted evolution enables HIV-1 to overcome a high trim5α-imposed genetic barrier to rhesus macaque tropism

Diversification of antiretroviral factors during host evolution has erected formidable barriers to cross-species retrovirus transmission. This phenomenon likely protects humans from infection by many modern retroviruses, but it has also impaired the development of primate models of HIV-1 infection. Indeed, rhesus macaques are resistant to HIV-1, in part due to restriction imposed by the TRIM5α protein (rhTRIM5α). Initially, we attempted to derive rhTRIM5α-resistant HIV-1 strains using two strategies. First, HIV-1 was passaged in engineered human cells expressing rhTRIM5α. Second, a library of randomly mutagenized capsid protein (CA) sequences was screened for mutations that reduced rhTRIM5α sensitivity. Both approaches identified several individual mutations in CA that reduced rhTRIM5α sensitivity. However, neither approach yielded mutants that were fully resistant, perhaps because the locations of the mutations suggested that TRIM5α recognizes multiple determinants on the capsid surface. Moreover, even though additive effects of various CA mutations on HIV-1 resistance to rhTRIM5α were observed, combinations that gave full resistance were highly detrimental to fitness. Therefore, we employed an 'assisted evolution' approach in which individual CA mutations that reduced rhTRIM5α sensitivity without fitness penalties were randomly assorted in a library of viral clones containing synthetic CA sequences. Subsequent passage of the viral library in rhTRIM5α-expressing cells resulted in the selection of individual viral species that were fully fit and resistant to rhTRIM5α. These viruses encoded combinations of five mutations in CA that conferred complete or near complete resistance to the disruptive effects of rhTRIM5α on incoming viral cores, by abolishing recognition of the viral capsid. Importantly, HIV-1 variants encoding these CA substitutions and SIVmac239 Vif replicated efficiently in primary rhesus macaque lymphocytes. These findings demonstrate that rhTRIM5α is difficult to but not impossible to evade, and doing so should facilitate the development of primate models of HIV-1 infection

Brief Report: Attenuated Emotional Suppression of the Attentional Blink in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Another Non-Social Abnormality?

Twenty-five individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and 25 typically developed individuals participated in an Attentional Blink paradigm to determine whether emotional words would capture attention similarly in the two groups. Whilst the emotionality of words facilitated attention in typical comparison participants, this effect was attenuated in the ASD group. The magnitude of the emotional modulation of attention in ASD also correlated significantly with participants’ VIQ, which was not observed for the comparison group. Together these observations replicate and extend the findings of Corden et al. (J Autism Develop Disord 38:1072–1080, 2008) and implicate abnormalities in emotional processes outside the broader context of social cognition in ASD. We discuss our findings in relation to possible abnormalities in amygdala function that may underlie the disorder

Leadership Competencies for Digital Transformation : Evidence from Multiple Cases

Digital transformation (DT) is disrupting industrial organizations, which require significant changes in their properties to remain competitive. This calls for strong leadership to drive this transformation. However, what leadership competencies are required to lead DT impactfully is unclear. Therefore, we seek to identify the key leadership competencies by employing a qualitative, grounded theory approach. By conducting interviews of ten DT experts from two hardcore industrial organizations, we highlight five key leadership competencies that industrial organizations need to develop in their leaders: digital vision, digital knowledge, failing fast, empowerment, and managing diverse teams. The results of this study will help industrial organizations to strategically prepare their leadership for the requirements of DT.©2020 Springer. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Advances in Human Factors, Business Management and Leadership: Proceedings of the AHFE 2020 Virtual Conferences on Human Factors, Business Management and Society, and Human Factors in Management and Leadership, July 16-20, 2020, USA. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/0.1007/978-3-030-50791-6_11.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Guideline adherence and patient satisfaction in the treatment of inflammatory bowel disorders – an evaluation study

Background: Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the most frequent inflammatory bowel disorders (IBD). IBD cause a significant burden to society due to extensive health care utilization from the first clinical symptoms until diagnosis and thereafter due to direct and indirect costs. Besides the socio-economic impact of CD and UC, gastrointestinal and extraintestinal symptoms affect quality of life, but there is remarkably little data about the quality of treatment as assessed by patient satisfaction, quality of life and adherence to guidelines. Thus the aim of this study was to identify variables that influence quality of treatment and quality of life as well as patient satisfaction. Methods: The Essener Zirkel Study was a cross sectional study of 86 IBD-patients with a confirmed diagnosis of CD or UC. They were recruited at primary, secondary and tertiary care settings. Quality of treatment, quality of life and patient satisfaction were evaluated. Consulting behaviour and number of examinations, duration of disease and variables regarding adherence to guidelines were evaluated, too. Results: 59 (69%) patients had CD and 27 had UC (31%). 19% spent more than four years until the suspected diagnosis of IBD was confirmed and visited more than five physicians. All patients showed a significantly reduced quality of life compared to the 1998 German normative population. In spite of being under medical treatment, nearly half of the patients suffered from strong quality of life restricting symptoms. Over all, 35% described their treatment as moderate or bad. Patients who consulted psychotherapists and non-medical practitioners suffered significantly less from depression. Conclusion: Besides structural deficiencies due to the health care policy, we revealed the adherence to guidelines to be a problem area. Our findings support the assumption, that providing better health care and especially maintaining constant patient-physician communication improves patient satisfaction.Claudia Pieper, Sebastian Haag, Stefan Gesenhues, Gerald Holtmann, Guido Gerken and Karl-Heinz Jöcke

Brief Report: The Role of Task Support in the Spatial and Temporal Source Memory of Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show intact recognition (supported procedure) but impaired recall (unsupported procedure) of incidentally-encoded context. Because this has not been demonstrated for temporal source, we compared the temporal and spatial source memory of adults with ASD and verbally matched typical adults. Because of difficulties with temporal processing in ASD, we predicted ASD adults would benefit from test support for location but not temporal occurrence of studied words. We found similar levels of recognition and source memory for both groups but there was a greater effect of support on memory for location source in the ASD group. The lack of an effect of support for temporal source may simply reflect a difficulty in operationalising temporal cues