Associations of cognitive reserve and psychological resilience with cognitive functioning in subjects with cerebral white matter hyperintensities

Background and purpose Cerebral small vessel disease is characterized by progressive white matter hyperintensities (WMH) and cognitive decline. However, variability exists in how individuals maintain cognitive capabilities despite significant neuropathology. The relationships between individual cognitive reserve, psychological resilience and cognitive functioning were examined in subjects with varying degrees of WMH. Methods In the Helsinki Small Vessel Disease Study, 152 subjects (aged 65-75 years) underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, evaluation of subjective cognitive complaints and brain magnetic resonance imaging with volumetric WMH evaluation. Cognitive reserve was determined by education (years) and the modified Cognitive Reserve Scale (mCRS). Psychological resilience was evaluated with the Resilience Scale 14. Results The mCRS total score correlated significantly with years of education (r = 0.23, p < 0.01), but it was not related to age, sex or WMH volume. Together, mCRS score and education were associated with performance in a wide range of cognitive domains including processing speed, executive functions, working memory, verbal memory, visuospatial perception and verbal reasoning. Independently of education, the mCRS score had incremental predictive value on delayed verbal recall and subjective cognitive complaints. Psychological resilience was not significantly related to age, education, sex, WMH severity or cognitive test scores, but it was associated with subjective cognitive complaints. Conclusions Cognitive reserve has strong and consistent associations with cognitive functioning in subjects with WMH. Education is widely associated with objective cognitive functioning, whereas lifetime engagement in cognitively stimulating leisure activities (mCRS) has independent predictive value on memory performance and subjective cognitive complaints. Psychological resilience is strongly associated with subjective, but not objective, cognitive functioning.Peer reviewe

Education for sustainable development: A study in adolescent perception changes towards sustainability following a strategic planning-based intervention-the young persons' plan for the planet program

© 2019 by the authors. In 2016, the United Nations (UN) launched the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework for sustainable development and a sustainable future. However, the global challenge has been to engage, connect, and empower communities, particularly young people, to both understand and deliver the 17 SDGs. In this study, we show the benefit of a strategic planning-based experiential learning tool, the Young Persons' Plan for the Planet (YPPP) Program, to improve the underlying competencies of Australian and Mauritian adolescents in increasing understanding and delivering the SDGs. The study was conducted with 300 middle to senior high school students, in 25 schools throughout Australia and Mauritius, over an 18-month period. The intervention included the development of research, strategic planning, management, STEM (Science Technology, Engineering, Maths) and global competency skills in the students, to enable them to build and deliver regional and national SDG plans. Research methods included pre- and post-intervention testing of the attitudes of these students to sustainable development outcomes and compared these attitudes to subsets of scientists and the Australian national population. Our results, from both qualitative and quantitative evidence, demonstrate significant improvements in these adolescents' appreciation of, and attitudes towards, the SDGs and sustainable outcomes, across a range of key parameters. The results from the 76 students who attended the International Conference in Mauritius in December 2018 demonstrate significant improvements in mean levels of understanding, and attitudes of the students towards the SDGs awareness (+85%), understanding/engagement (+75%), motivation (+57%), and action orientation/empowerment (+66%). These changes were tested across a range of socio-demographic, geographic, and cultural parameters, with consistent results. These findings have significant implications for the challenge of sustainable education and achieving community engagement and action towards the SDGs in Australia and Mauritius, particularly for young people. As the intervention can be replicated and scaled, the findings also highlight the opportunity to extend both the research and this type of experiential learning intervention across both broader geographies and other generation and community segments

The disequilibrium of hope: A grounded theory analysis of parents' experiences of receiving a “no primary finding” result from genome sequencing

Genome sequencing (GS) has the potential to reduce the “diagnostic odyssey” that many parents of children with rare undiagnosed conditions experience. While much research has considered the impact of receiving a diagnostic result, research has rarely focused solely on the impact of receiving a “no primary finding” (NPF) result. This study aimed to investigate the experience of parents of children with rare and undiagnosed conditions following an NPF result from GS. Nine parents whose child had an NPF result from GS were recruited through the social media platform of the charity SWAN (Syndromes Without A Name) UK. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using grounded theory. Analysis led to the emergence of two main themes. The first theme “Striving to Solve the Unsolved Puzzle” concerned the experience of striving to end the “diagnostic odyssey.” The second theme “Navigating Hope, Lost then Found” plots the trajectory of hope raised by the promise of a new technology, dashed by the NPF, and the eventual return of small and distant hope for the future. Taken together, these themes allowed for a proposed theory: “The Disequilibrium of Hope,” which highlights the dynamic and modifiable experience of hope participants experience in their GS journey. These results suggest GS can be an emotional rollercoaster for parents. While hope plays an important role in coping with the day-to-day life of living with a rare disease, careful management of expectations from GS is important during pre-test counseling, and continued follow-up and support are needed beyond result disclosure. An understanding of the disappointment and distress caused by an NPF result is valuable for healthcare professionals in this field to ensure counseling can be tailored. Further research should consider how to support parents after an NPF result

Energetics, forces, and quantized conductance in jellium modeled metallic nanowires

Energetics and quantized conductance in jellium modeled nanowires are investigated using the local density functional based shell correction method, extending our previous study of uniform in shape wires [C. Yannouleas and U. Landman, J. Phys. Chem. B 101, 5780 (1997)] to wires containing a variable shaped constricted region. The energetics of the wire (sodium) as a function of the length of the volume conserving, adiabatically shaped constriction leads to formation of self selecting magic wire configurations. The variations in the energy result in oscillations in the force required to elongate the wire and are directly correlated with the stepwise variations of the conductance of the nanowire in units of 2e^2/h. The oscillatory patterns in the energetics and forces, and the correlated stepwise variation in the conductance are shown, numerically and through a semiclassical analysis, to be dominated by the quantized spectrum of the transverse states at the narrowmost part of the constriction in the wire.Comment: Latex/Revtex, 11 pages with 5 Postscript figure

Astrocytes mediate synapse elimination through MEGF10 and MERTK pathways

To achieve its precise neural connectivity, the developing mammalian nervous system undergoes extensive activity-dependent synapse remodeling. Recently microglial cells have been shown to be responsible for a portion of synaptic remodeling, but the remaining mechanisms remain mysterious. Here we report a new role for astrocytes in actively engulfing CNS synapses. This process helps to mediate synapse elimination, requires the Megf10 and Mertk phagocytic pathways, and is strongly dependent on neuronal activity. Developing mice deficient in both astrocyte pathways fail to normally refine their retinogeniculate connections and retain excess functional synapses. Lastly, we show that in the adult mouse brain, astrocytes continuously engulf both excitatory and inhibitory synapses. These studies reveal a novel role for astrocytes in mediating synapse elimination in the developing and adult brain, identify Megf10 and Mertk as critical players in the synapse remodeling underlying neural circuit refinement, and have important implications for understanding learning and memory as well as neurological disease processes

Prospective association of social circumstance, socioeconomic, lifestyle and mental health factors with subsequent hospitalisation over 6–7 year follow up in people living with HIV

Background: Predictors of hospitalisation in people with HIV (PLHIV) in the contemporary treatment era are not well understood. / Methods: This ASTRA sub-study used clinic data linkage and record review to determine occurrence of hospitalisations among 798 PLHIV from baseline questionnaire (February to December 2011) until 1 June 2018. Associations of baseline social circumstance, socioeconomic, lifestyle, mental health, demographic and clinical factors with repeated all-cause hospitalisation from longitudinal data were investigated using Prentice-Williams-Peterson models. Associations were also assessed in 461 individuals on antiretroviral therapy (ART) with viral load ≤50 copies/ml and CD4 count ≥500 cells/ µl. / Findings: Rate of hospitalisation was 5.8/100 person-years (95% CI: 5.1–6.5). Adjusted for age, demographic group and time with diagnosed HIV, the following social circumstance, socioeconomic, lifestyle and mental health factors predicted hospitalisation: no stable partner (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR)=1.59; 95% CI=1.16–2.20 vs living with partner); having children (aHR=1.50; 1.08–2.10); non-employment (aHR=1.56; 1.07–2.27 for unemployment; aHR=2.39; 1.70–3.37 for sick/disabled vs employed); rented housing (aHR=1.72; 1.26–2.37 vs homeowner); not enough money for basic needs (aHR=1.82; 1.19–2.78 vs enough); current smoking (aHR=1.39; 1.02–1.91 vs never); recent injection-drug use (aHR=2.11; 1.30–3.43); anxiety symptoms (aHRs=1.39; 1.01–1.91, 2.06; 1.43–2.95 for mild and moderate vs none/minimal); depressive symptoms (aHRs=1.67; 1.17–2.38, 1.91; 1.30–2.78 for moderate and severe vs none/minimal); treated/untreated depression (aHRs=1.65; 1.03–2.64 for treated depression only, 1.87; 1.39–2.52 for depressive symptoms only; 1.53; 1.05–2.24; for treated depression and depressive symptoms, versus neither). Associations were broadly similar in those with controlled HIV and high CD4. / Interpretation: Social circumstance, socioeconomic disadvantage, adverse lifestyle factors and poorer mental health are strong predictors of hospitalisation in PLHIV, highlighting the need for targeted interventions and care. / Funding: British HIV Association (BHIVA) Research Award (2017); SMR funded by a PhD fellowship from the Royal Free Charity

Postdigital Dialogue

This article is a multi-authored experimental postdigital dialogue about postdigital dialogue. Fourteen authors were invited to produce their sections, followed by two author-reviewers who examined the article as a whole. Authors were invited to reflect on Petar Jandric’s book Learning in the age of digital reason (2017) or to produce completely new insights. The article also contains a summary of book symposium on Learning in the age of digital reason held at the 2017 American Educational Research Conference (AERA). The authors are tentatively confident that this article produces more knowledge than the arithmetic sum of its constituent parts. However, they are also very aware of its limits and insist that their conclusions are not consensual or homogenous. As traditional forms of research increasingly fail to describe our current reality, they present this article as an experiment and a possible starting point for developing new dialogical research approaches fit for our postdigital reality

Cosmological Constraints from Measurements of Type Ia Supernovae discovered during the first 1.5 years of the Pan-STARRS1 Survey

We present griz light curves of 146 spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia Supernovae ($0.03 < z <0.65$) discovered during the first 1.5 years of the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey. The Pan-STARRS1 natural photometric system is determined by a combination of on-site measurements of the instrument response function and observations of spectrophotometric standard stars. We find that the systematic uncertainties in the photometric system are currently 1.2\% without accounting for the uncertainty in the HST Calspec definition of the AB system. A Hubble diagram is constructed with a subset of 113 out of 146 SNe Ia that pass our light curve quality cuts. The cosmological fit to 310 SNe Ia (113 PS1 SNe Ia + 222 light curves from 197 low-z SNe Ia), using only SNe and assuming a constant dark energy equation of state and flatness, yields $w=-1.120^{+0.360}_{-0.206}\textrm{(Stat)} ^{+0.269}_{-0.291}\textrm{(Sys)}$. When combined with BAO+CMB(Planck)+$H_0$, the analysis yields $\Omega_{\rm M}=0.280^{+0.013}_{-0.012}$ and $w=-1.166^{+0.072}_{-0.069}$ including all identified systematics (see also Scolnic et al. 2014). The value of $w$ is inconsistent with the cosmological constant value of $-1$ at the 2.3$\sigma$ level. Tension endures after removing either the BAO or the $H_0$ constraint, though it is strongest when including the $H_0$ constraint. If we include WMAP9 CMB constraints instead of those from Planck, we find $w=-1.124^{+0.083}_{-0.065}$, which diminishes the discord to $<2\sigma$. We cannot conclude whether the tension with flat $\Lambda$CDM is a feature of dark energy, new physics, or a combination of chance and systematic errors. The full Pan-STARRS1 supernova sample with $\sim\!\!$3 times as many SNe should provide more conclusive results.Comment: 38 pages, 16 figures, 14 tables, ApJ in pres