The National Adult Reading Test: restandardisation against the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Fourth edition

Since publication in 1982, the 50-item National Adult Reading Test (NART; Nelson, 1982; NART–R; Nelson & Willison, 1991) has remained a widely adopted method for estimating premorbid intelligence both for clinical and research purposes. However, the NART has not been standardised against the most recent revisions of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III (1997) and WAIS-IV (2008)). Our objective, therefore, was to produce reliable standardised estimates of WAIS-IV IQ from the NART. Ninety-two neurologically healthy British adults were assessed and regression equations calculated to produce population estimates of WAIS-IV full-scale IQ (FSIQ) and constituent index scores. Results showed strong NART/WAIS-IV FSIQ correlations with more moderate correlations observed between NART error and constituent index scores. FSIQ estimates were closely similar to the published WAIS and WAIS-R estimates at the high end of the distribution, but at the lower end were approximately equidistant from the highly discrepant WAIS (low) and WAIS-R (high) values. We conclude that the NART is likely to remain an important tool for estimating the impact of neurological damage on general cognitive ability. We advise caution in the use of older published WAIS and/or WAIS-R estimates for estimating premorbid WAIS-IV FSIQ, particularly for those with low NART scores

TripAdvisor Reviews of London Museums: A New Approach to Understanding Visitors

The digital revolution has affected museums in many ways, both directly and indirectly. A major external change is the rise of user-written reviews; that is, reviews written by museum visitors and posted on the Internet. User-generated reviews pose challenges to museums, as they are publicly available and largely outside the control of museums. This article discusses research on reviews of accredited museums in London. The authors’ data set consists of all reviews written about 88 museums that were posted on TripAdvisor during 2014, a total of 22,940 reviews. Using a technique called topic modelling, they describe 19 themes in reviewers’ stories of their visits. The authors find that museum visitors pay attention to the ancillary aspects of their visit: queues, cost, food service, toilets, and activities for children. They make fewer comments on the cultural side of the museum experience. However, these cultural aspects do matter and are associated with positive reviews. The authors argue that reviewers consider museums as part of a wider leisure sector. They close with a discussion of the implications of their study for museum management and assess the usefulness of user-generated content as a source of data on museum visitors

Live versus Archive: Comparing a Web Archive and to a Population of Webpages

With its seemingly limitless scope, the World Wide Web promises enormous advantages, along with enormous problems, to researchers who seek to use it as a source of data. Websites change continually and a high level of flux makes it challenging to capture a snapshot of the web, or even a cross-section of a small subset of the web. A web archive, such as those at the Internet Archive, promises to store and deliver repeated cross-sections of the entire web, and it also offers the potential for longitudinal analysis. Whether this potential is realized depends on the extent to which the archive has truly captured the web. Therefore, a crucial question for Internet researchers is: ‘How good are the archival data?’ We ask if there are systematic biases in the Internet Archive, using a case study to address this question. Specifically, we are interested in whether biases exist in the British websites stored in the Internet Archive data. We find that the Internet Archive contains a surprisingly small subset, about 24%, of the webpages of the website that we use for our case study (the travel site, TripAdvisor). Furthermore, the subset of data we found in the Internet Archive appears to be biased and is not a random sample of the webpages on the site. The archived data we examine has a bias toward prominent webpages. This bias could create serious problems for research using archived websites

Wind Energy Development: Methods for Assessing Risks to Birds and Bats Pre-Construction

Wind power generation is rapidly expanding. Although wind power is a low-carbon source of energy, it can impact negatively birds and bats, either directly through fatality or indirectly by displacement or habitat loss. Pre-construction risk assessment at wind facilities within the United States is usually required only on public lands. When conducted, it generally involves a 3-tier process, with each step leading to more detailed and rigorous surveys. Preliminary site assessment (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tier 1) is usually conducted remotely and involves evaluation of existing databases and published materials. If potentially at-risk wildlife are present and the developer wishes to continue the development process, then on-site surveys are conducted (Tier 2) to verify the presence of those species and to assess site-specific features (e.g., topography, land cover) that may inÀ uence risk from turbines. The next step in the process (Tier 3) involves quantitative or scienti¿ c studies to assess the potential risk of the proposed project to wildlife. Typical Tier-3 research may involve acoustic, aural, observational, radar, capture, tracking, or modeling studies, all designed to understand details of risk to specifc species or groups of species at the given site. Our review highlights several features lacking from many risk assessments, particularly the paucity of before-and-aftercontrol-impact (BACI) studies involving modeling and a lack of understanding of cumulative effects of wind facilities on wildlife. Both are essential to understand effective designs for pre-construction monitoring and both would help expand risk assessment beyond eagles

Parasitophorous vacuole poration precedes its rupture and rapid host erythrocyte cytoskeleton collapse in Plasmodium falciparum egress.

In the asexual blood stages of malarial infection, merozoites invade erythrocytes and replicate within a parasitophorous vacuole to form daughter cells that eventually exit (egress) by sequential rupture of the vacuole and erythrocyte membranes. The current model is that PKG, a malarial cGMP-dependent protein kinase, triggers egress, activating malarial proteases and other effectors. Using selective inhibitors of either PKG or cysteine proteases to separately inhibit the sequential steps in membrane perforation, combined with video microscopy, electron tomography, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and soft X-ray tomography of mature intracellular Plasmodium falciparum parasites, we resolve intermediate steps in egress. We show that the parasitophorous vacuole membrane (PVM) is permeabilized 10-30 min before its PKG-triggered breakdown into multilayered vesicles. Just before PVM breakdown, the host red cell undergoes an abrupt, dramatic shape change due to the sudden breakdown of the erythrocyte cytoskeleton, before permeabilization and eventual rupture of the erythrocyte membrane to release the parasites. In contrast to the previous view of PKG-triggered initiation of egress and a gradual dismantling of the host erythrocyte cytoskeleton over the course of schizont development, our findings identify an initial step in egress and show that host cell cytoskeleton breakdown is restricted to a narrow time window within the final stages of egress

A rapid in vivo screen for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma therapeutics

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, and is projected to be second by 2025. It has the worst survival rate among all major cancers. Two pressing needs for extending life expectancy of affected individuals are the development of new approaches to identify improved therapeutics, addressed herein, and the identification of early markers. PDA advances through a complex series of intercellular and physiological interactions that drive cancer progression in response to organ stress, organ failure, malnutrition, and infiltrating immune and stromal cells. Candidate drugs identified in organ culture or cell-based screens must be validated in preclinical models such as KIC (p48Cre;LSL-KrasG12D;Cdkn2af/f) mice, a genetically engineered model of PDA in which large aggressive tumors develop by 4 weeks of age. We report a rapid, systematic and robust in vivo screen for effective drug combinations to treat Kras-dependent PDA. Kras mutations occur early in tumor progression in over 90% of human PDA cases. Protein kinase and G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling activates Kras. Regulators of G-protein signaling (RGS) proteins are coincidence detectors that can be induced by multiple inputs to feedback-regulate GPCR signaling. We crossed Rgs16::GFP bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) transgenic mice withKIC mice and show that the Rgs16::GFP transgene is a KrasG12D-dependent marker of all stages of PDA, and increases proportionally to tumor burden in KIC mice. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis of cultured primary PDA cells reveals characteristics of embryonic progenitors of pancreatic ducts and endocrine cells, and extraordinarily high expression of the receptor tyrosine kinase Axl, an emerging cancer drug target. In proof-of-principle drug screens, we find that weanling KIC mice with PDA treated for 2 weeks with gemcitabine (with or without Abraxane) plus inhibitors of Axl signaling (warfarin and BGB324) have fewer tumor initiation sites and reduced tumor size compared with the standard-of-care treatment. Rgs16::GFP is therefore an in vivo reporter of PDA progression and sensitivity to new chemotherapeutic drug regimens such as Axl-targeted agents. This screening strategy can potentially be applied to identify improved therapeutics for other cancers

Control of Rayleigh-Taylor instability by vertical vibration in large aspect ratio containers

We consider a horizontal heavy fluid layer supported by a light, immiscible one in a wide (as compared to depth) container, which is vertically vibrated intending to counterbalance the Rayleigh-Taylor instability of the flat, rigid-body vibrating state. In the simplest case when the density and viscosity of the lighter fluid are small compared to their counterparts in the heavier fluid, we apply a long wave, weakly nonlinear analysis that yields a generalized Cahn-Hilliard equation for the evolution of the fluid interface. This equation shows that the stabilizing effect of vibration is like that of surface tension, and is used to analyze the linear stability of the flat state, the local bifurcation at the instability threshold and some global existence and stability properties concerning the steady states without dry spots. The analysis is extended to two cases of practical interest. Namely, (a) the viscosity of one of the fluids is much smaller than that of the other one, and (b) the densities and viscosities of both fluids are quite close to each other

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project

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