Nse2, a component of the Smc5-6 complex, is a SUMO ligase required for the response to DNA damage

The Schizosaccharomyces pombe SMC proteins Rad18 (Smc6) and Spr18 (Smc5) exist in a high-M(r) complex which also contains the non-SMC proteins Nse1, Nse2, Nse3, and Rad62. The Smc5-6 complex, which is essential for viability, is required for several aspects of DNA metabolism, including recombinational repair and maintenance of the DNA damage checkpoint. We have characterized Nse2 and show here that it is a SUMO ligase. Smc6 (Rad18) and Nse3, but not Smc5 (Spr18) or Nse1, are sumoylated in vitro in an Nse2-dependent manner, and Nse2 is itself autosumoylated, predominantly on the C-terminal part of the protein. Mutations of C195 and H197 in the Nse2 RING-finger-like motif abolish Nse2-dependent sumoylation. nse2.SA mutant cells, in which nse2.C195S-H197A is integrated as the sole copy of nse2, are viable, whereas the deletion of nse2 is lethal. Smc6 (Rad18) is sumoylated in vivo: the sumoylation level is increased upon exposure to DNA damage and is drastically reduced in the nse2.SA strain. Since nse2.SA cells are sensitive to DNA-damaging agents and to exposure to hydroxyurea, this implicates the Nse2-dependent sumoylation activity in DNA damage responses but not in the essential function of the Smc5-6 complex

Inhibitory Deficits in reading disability depend on subtype: guessers but not spellers

In this study, children with the guessing subtype of dyslexia (who read fast and inaccurately) were compared with children with the spelling subtype (who read slowly and accurately) on three aspects of executive functioning (EF): response inhibition, susceptibility to interference from irrelevant information, and planning. It was found that guessers were impaired in their ability to inhibit inappropriate responding on all tasks used to assess EF (the stop signal task, the Stroop task, and the Tower of London task). This raises the question of whether the specific reading disorder of guessers may be linked to the same executive deficits which underlie ADHD. In order to unite a fast/inaccurate reading style with executive deficiencies, an attempt is made to incorporate the concept of executive control into models of lexical activation

The Acute versus Chronic Pain Questionnaire (ACPQ) and actual pain experience in older people

The Acute versus Chronic Pain Questionnaire (ACPQ) was applied to older people. Two groups emerged from an analysis of which an item of each pair (an acute and a chronic affective item) was considered to cause the most suffering. One group of subjects comprised those who expected to suffer more from one or more acute pain items (high-ACPQ group, n = 35). A second group emerged for whom none of the acute items was considered to be a burden (low-ACPQ group, n = 33). It was hypothesized that, compared to the low-ACPQ group, the subjects with high-ACPQ scores selected acute ACPQ-items due to a decline in the experience of chronic affective pain. This hypothesis predicted lower scores on the chronic ACPQ-items and lower scores on scales evaluating the subjects' own chronic affective pain. The results showed that, irrespective of the group, the chronic ACPQ-items were considered to produce the most burdens. However, compared with the low-ACPQ group, the high-ACPQ group reported experiencing significantly more pain from the acute ACPQ-items. Moreover, the latter group indicated suffering less pain from their own chronic pain conditions. The present findings suggest that the selection of one or more acute items of the ACPQ (high-ACPQ group) may point to an alteration in subjects' actual pain experience

Scale formation and adhesion to mild steels during reheating for hot working.

The literature relating to scale formation and adhesion has been reviewed, with particular reference to the factors which have been found to influence the adherence of scales formed on mild steels during reheating. The methods used to assess scale adhesion and the current thoughts on the mechanism of adherence are also outlined. In addition the practical importance of scale pitting problems and current methods of' scale removal are considered.Laboratory oxidation and scale adhesion tests have been carried out on silicon killed, rimming, semi-killed and a silicon-killed aluminium treated steel under simulated reheating conditions. Temperatures in the range 950°C-1350°C were studied for times of up to three hours in atmospheres simulating the products of combustion of uncleaned coke-oven gas burnt to give 6% free oxygen in the furnace atmosphere.The oxidation behaviour was studied by metallographic examination of the scale and scale/metal interface and by thermo-gravimetric techniques.The amount of oxidation was found to increase rapidly with temperature and only approximately parabolically with time. Deviations' from classic oxidation theory are discussed with reference to the structure and composition of the scale and metal/scale interface. Although the amount of oxidation was similar for each steel studied, marked differences were found

Dissociative style and directed forgetting.

Dissociative style may correspond to an enhanced ability to avoid conscious recollection of traumatic experiences, which may, however, remain dormant in nonconscious memory. This hypothesis was tested in two "directed-forgetting" experiments with affectively neutral words (experiment 1) and sex and threat words (experiment 2) employing a total of 83 first-year psychology students high and low in dissociative style, and 14 dissociative patients. Conscious and nonconscious memory were separated with the process dissociation procedure (L. L. Jacoby, 1991). Instruction to forget was expected to reduce conscious but to enhance nonconscious memory performance in Ss with a high dissociative ability. Results were opposite to predictions. Particularly for sex words, the instruction to forget raised the overall (conscious and nonconscious) memory performance of the patients. An alternative construction hypothesis is proposed that identifies dissociative style with enhanced skills of constructing conscious experiences

Are tibial angles measured with inertial sensors useful surrogates for frontal plane projection angles using 2-dimensional video analysis during single leg squat tasks? A reliability and agreement analysis in elite football (soccer) players

During single leg squats (SLS), tibial angle (TA) quantification using inertial measurement units (IMU) may offer a practical alternative to frontal plane projection angle (FPPA) measurement using 2-dimensional (2D) video analysis. This study determined: (i) the reliability of IMUs and 2D video analysis for TA measurement, and 2D video analysis for FPPA measurement; (ii) the agreement between IMU TA and both 2D video TA and FPPA measurements during single leg squats in elite footballers. 18 players were tested on consecutive days. Absolute TA (ATA) and relative TA (RTA) were measured with IMUs. ATA and FPPA were measured concurrently using 2D video analysis. Within-session reliability for all measurements varied across days (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) range=0.27–0.83, standard error of measurement (SEM) range=2.12–6.23°, minimal detectable change (MDC) range=5.87–17.26°). Between-sessions, ATA reliability was good for both systems (ICCs=0.70–0.74, SEMs=1.64–7.53°, MDCs=4.55–7.01°), while IMU RTA and 2D FPPA reliability ranged from poor to good (ICCs=0.39–0.72, SEMs=2.60–5.99°, MDCs=7.20–16.61°). All limits of agreement exceeded a 5° acceptability threshold. Both systems were reliable for between-session ATA, although agreement was poor. IMU RTA and 2D video FPPA reliability was variable. For SLS assessment, IMU derived TAs are not useful surrogates for 2D video FPPA measures in this population

The value of tibial mounted inertial measurement units to quantify running kinetics in elite football (soccer) players. A reliability and agreement study using a research orientated and a clinically orientated system

In elite football, measurement of running kinetics with inertial measurement units (IMUs) may be useful as a component of periodic health examination (PHE). This study determined the reliability of, and agreement between a research orientated IMU and clinically orientated IMU system for initial peak acceleration (IPA) and IPA symmetry index (SI) measurement during running in elite footballers. On consecutive days, 16 participants performed treadmill running at 14kmph and 18kmph. Both IMUs measured IPA and IPA SI concurrently. All measurements had good or excellent within-session reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC2,1) range = 0.79-0.96, IPA standard error of measurement (SEM) range = 0.19-0.62 g, IPA SI SEM range = 2.50-8.05%). Only the research orientated IMU demonstrated acceptable minimal detectable changes (MDCs) for IPA at 14kmph (range = 7.46-9.80%) and IPA SI at both speeds (range = 6.92-9.21%). Considering both systems, between-session IPA reliability ranged from fair to good (ICC2,1 range = 0.63-0.87, SEM range = 0.51-1.10 g) and poor to fair for IPA SI (ICC2,1 range = 0.32-0.65, SEM range = 8.07-11.18%). All MDCs were >10%. For IPA and SI, the 95% levels of agreement indicated poor between system agreement. Therefore, the use of IMUs to evaluate treadmill running kinetics cannot be recommended in this population as a PHE test to identify prognostic factors for injuries or for rehabilitation purposes

Estimation of sensitivity and flock-sensitivity of pooled faecal culture for Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis in sheep

Pooled faecal culture (PFC) is a widely used test in ovine Johne’s disease (OJD) control programmes in Australia but information about its characteristics is limited. We conducted this study to estimate sensitivity and flock-sensitivity of PFC in sheep with different OJD histopathological lesions in simulated flocks with a range of infection prevalence levels. Initially, a known quantity of faeces from sheep with pauci- or multi-bacillary lesions was pooled with uncontaminated faeces from confirmed non-infected sheep and cultured using PFC technique. PFC sensitivity, calculated as a proportion of the pools of a particular size that tested positive, was determined to be 90% in sheep with the multibacillary form of the disease but varied with pool size in sheep with the paucibacillary form of OJD. Subsequently, probabilistic models were developed to estimate overall pool-sensitivity achieved in a flock (Sek) and flock-sensitivity of PFC (FSe) in various simulated scenarios. In flocks with a given ratio of multi- to pauci-bacillary sheep and with low to moderate infection prevalence level, Sek decreased with increase in pool size, but increased with pool size in flocks with ≥ 10 % prevalence. FSe, in contrast, increased with pool size in all the tested scenarios. Both Sek and FSe increased with infection prevalence, ratio of multi- to pauci-bacillary sheep and the number of pools sourced from flocks. Sensitivity analyses indicated that the estimates and trends were robust to moderate changes in input parameters. The results suggest that the current testing of seven pools of size 50 is adequate for most scenarios, however, for very low prevalence flocks, a gain in FSe can be made by increasing the number of pools tested and a higher Sek can be achieved by reducing pool sizes. Keywords: pooling, paratuberculosis, ovine Johne’s disease, Australia, Mycobacterium, epidemiology.Meat and livestock australi

Inhibitory control during sentence reading in dyslexic children

The present study focused on the nature of the reading disability of children with the guessing subtype of dyslexia (who read fast and inaccurately). The objective was to separate the excitatory account of their reading disturbance (i.e., in guessers the words' resting levels of activation are oversensitive to semantic context) from the inhibitory account (i.e., guessers tend to react prematurely to (false) candidate words that are activated in the lexicon). To disentangle the above accounts, guessers and normal readers were presented with a sentential priming task (SPT). In the SPT, subjects had to determine whether the final word of a sentence was semantically congruent or incongruent with the sentence, but had to inhibit their 'congruent' or 'incongruent' response in case of an occasionally presented pseudoword. To evoke guessing, each pseudoword closely resembled either a valid congruent or incongruent word. Guessing referred to prematurely accepting a pseudoword as a word that either appropriately or inappropriately completed the sentence. The extent to which subjects guessed at word meaning was evidenced by the false recognition rates (FRR) of the misspelled terminal words. Analyses on the FRRs of the pseudowords showed that guessers had significantly more difficulty in suppressing the 'go tendency' triggered by the pseudowords. It was concluded that the impulsive reading style of guessers should be ascribed to a less efficient suppression mechanism rather than to excessive reliance on contextual information. Specifically, the data were explained by assuming that the availability of the pseudoword's candidate meaning activated the hand to respond with, and that guessers found difficulty in suspending this response until they analyzed all letters in the stimulus and they could be sure of its spelling