The control of attentional target selection in a colour/colour conjunction task

To investigate the time course of attentional object selection processes in visual search tasks where targets are defined by a combination of features from the same dimension, we measured the N2pc component as an electrophysiological marker of attentional object selection during colour/colour conjunction search. In Experiment 1, participants searched for targets defined by a combination of two colours, while ignoring distractor objects that matched only one of these colours. Reliable N2pc components were triggered by targets and also by partially matching distractors, even when these distractors were accompanied by a target in the same display. The target N2pc was initially equal in size to the sum of the two N2pc components to the two different types of partially matching distractors, and became superadditive from about 250 ms after search display onset. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the superadditivity of the target N2pc was not due to a selective disengagement of attention from task-irrelevant partially matching distractors. These results indicate that attention was initially deployed separately and in parallel to all target-matching colours, before attentional allocation processes became sensitive to the presence of both matching colours within the same object. They suggest that attention can be controlled simultaneously and independently by multiple features from the same dimension, and that feature-guided attentional selection processes operate in parallel for different target-matching objects in the visual field

Healthcare staff's experience in providing end-of-life care to children: A mixed-method review.

BACKGROUND: Staff who provide end-of-life care to children not only have to deal with their own sense of loss but also that of bereaved families. There is a dearth of knowledge on how they cope with these challenges. AIM: The aim of this review is to explore the experiences of healthcare professionals who provide end-of-life care to children in order to inform the development of interventions to support them, thereby improving the quality of paediatric care for both children and their families. DATA SOURCES: Searches included CINAHL, MEDLINE, Web of Science, EMBASE, PsychINFO and The Cochrane Library in June 2015, with no date restrictions. Additional literature was uncovered from searching reference lists of relevant studies, along with contacting experts in the field of paediatric palliative care. DESIGN: This was a systematic mixed studies review. Study selection, appraisal and data extraction were conducted by two independent researchers. Integrative thematic analysis was used to synthesise the data. RESULTS: The 16 qualitative, 6 quantitative and 8 mixed-method studies identified included healthcare professionals in a range of settings. Key themes identified rewards and challenges of providing end-of-life care to children, the impact on staff's personal and professional lives, coping strategies and key approaches to help support staff in their role. CONCLUSION: Education focusing on the unique challenges of providing end-of-life care to children and the importance of self-care, along with timely multidisciplinary debriefing, are key strategies for improving healthcare staff's experiences, and as such the quality of care they provide

The effect of feature saliency on haptic subitizing

‘Subitizing’ refers to fast and error-free numerosity judgment for small (<4) sets of items. For larger sets, the slower process of ‘counting’ is used. Counting has a serial character, whereas subitizing is believed to have a parallel character. While subitizing was initially found in vision, it has been shown to exist in touch as well. In vision, it has been demonstrated that adding distractor items to a set of target items influences numerosity judgment of the target items. Subitizing was in this case only possible if the distractor item is highly salient among the targets. In the present study, we investigated the effect of adding a distractor item on haptic judgement of a set of target items. To this end, we asked subjects to judge the number of spheres grasped in their hand. Either a cube or an ellipsoid could be added to the set. A cube among spheres has been shown to be highly salient, while an ellipsoid among spheres is not. Our results show that adding a distractor item led to an increase in the response time slopes regardless of the distractor shape. Subitizing was, however, only possible in the case of a salient distractor. This is in agreement with results from vision

Risk of upper gastrointestinal bleeding and perforation associated with low-dose aspirin as plain and enteric-coated formulations

BACKGROUND: The use of low-dose aspirin has been reported to be associated with an increased risk of upper gastrointestinal complications (UGIC). The coating of aspirin has been proposed as an approach to reduce such a risk. To test this hypothesis, we carried out a population based case-control study. METHODS: We identified incident cases of UGIC (bleeding or perforation) aged 40 to 79 years between April 1993 to October 1998 registered in the General Practice Research Database. Controls were selected randomly from the source population. Adjusted estimates of relative risk (RR) associated with current use of aspirin as compared to non use were computed using unconditional logistic regression. RESULTS: We identified 2,105 cases of UGIC and selected 11,500 controls. Among them, 287 (13.6%) cases and 837 (7.3%) controls were exposed to aspirin, resulting in an adjusted RR of 2.0 (1.7-2.3). No clear dose-effect was found within the range of 75-300 mg. The RR associated with enteric-coated formulations (2.3, 1.6-3.2) was similar to the one of plain aspirin (1.9, 1.6-2.3), and no difference was observed depending on the site. The first two months of treatment was the period of greater risk (RR= 4.5, 2.9-7.1). The concomitant use of aspirin with high-dose NSAIDs greatly increased the risk of UGIC (13.3, 8.5-20.9) while no interaction was apparent with low-medium doses (2.2, 1.0-4.6). CONCLUSIONS: Low-dose aspirin increases by twofold the risk of UGIC in the general population and its coating does not modify the effect. Concomitant use of low-dose aspirin and NSAIDs at high doses put patients at a specially high risk of UGIC

Consistent phenological shifts in the making of a biodiversity hotspot: the Cape flora

Background The best documented survival responses of organisms to past climate change on short (glacial-interglacial) timescales are distributional shifts. Despite ample evidence on such timescales for local adaptations of populations at specific sites, the long-term impacts of such changes on evolutionary significant units in response to past climatic change have been little documented. Here we use phylogenies to reconstruct changes in distribution and flowering ecology of the Cape flora - South Africa's biodiversity hotspot - through a period of past (Neogene and Quaternary) changes in the seasonality of rainfall over a timescale of several million years. Results Forty-three distributional and phenological shifts consistent with past climatic change occur across the flora, and a comparable number of clades underwent adaptive changes in their flowering phenology (9 clades; half of the clades investigated) as underwent distributional shifts (12 clades; two thirds of the clades investigated). Of extant Cape angiosperm species, 14-41% have been contributed by lineages that show distributional shifts consistent with past climate change, yet a similar proportion (14-55%) arose from lineages that shifted flowering phenology. Conclusions Adaptive changes in ecology at the scale we uncover in the Cape and consistent with past climatic change have not been documented for other floras. Shifts in climate tolerance appear to have been more important in this flora than is currently appreciated, and lineages that underwent such shifts went on to contribute a high proportion of the flora's extant species diversity. That shifts in phenology, on an evolutionary timescale and on such a scale, have not yet been detected for other floras is likely a result of the method used; shifts in flowering phenology cannot be detected in the fossil record

Toward characterization and definition of fibromyalgia severity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There are no standard criteria for defining or assessing severity of fibromyalgia (FM) as a condition as fibromyalgia is associated with multiple symptom domains. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether patient self-reported severity of FM is associated with severity of pain and sleep interference and the presence of core co-morbidities.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We recruited individuals ≥ 18 years of age with a clinician-confirmed diagnosis of FM ≥ 3 months and a current pain rating >2 on a 0-10 numeric rating scale (NRS). Patients completed a questionnaire by mail in which they self-rated their FM severity (very mild, mild, moderate, and severe), their current pain severity and extent of sleep interference (NRS; mild, 0-3; moderate, 4-6, severe, 7-10), and provided information (yes/no) on the presence of core comorbidities (symptoms of depression, anxiety, sleep problems, back pain, neck pain) and medication use for FM. The core symptoms of FM were stratified to assist with patient characterization. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to explore the relationship between self-reported FM severity and continuous variables (pain severity and sleep interference), and Mantel-Haenszel chi-square analysis was used to evaluate the trend in the proportions of patients reporting use of medications and core symptoms of FM by severity of FM. To complement patient-reported FM severity and to understand physicians' perspectives, a survey was performed among 28 physician specialists (rheumatology, neurology, anesthesiology/pain management, family practice, internal medicine, and psychiatry) to determine what they assessed when evaluating FM severity in clinical practice.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The population (N = 129) of FM patients was predominantly female (89.1%), with a mean age of 49.4 ± 11.0 years, and 81.4% reported duration ≥ 2 years. Self-reported FM severity was moderate/severe in 86.0% of patients; mean current pain score was 6.40 ± 2.19 (moderate), and mean sleep interference score was 7.28 ± 2.23 (severe). Greater FM severity was significantly associated with higher levels of current pain and sleep interference (p < 0.0001), the proportion of patients reporting FM medication use (p = 0.0001), and the presence of core comorbidities (p < 0.05). Pain, functional disability, and fatigue severity were ranked as the top three criteria by the highest proportion of physicians when evaluating FM severity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>With higher self-reported FM severity, patients have greater pain and sleep interference as well as increased frequency of core comorbidities. Further investigation into understanding FM severity is warranted.</p

Social sciences research in neglected tropical diseases 2: A bibliographic analysis

The official published version of the article can be found at the link below.Background There are strong arguments for social science and interdisciplinary research in the neglected tropical diseases. These diseases represent a rich and dynamic interplay between vector, host, and pathogen which occurs within social, physical and biological contexts. The overwhelming sense, however, is that neglected tropical diseases research is a biomedical endeavour largely excluding the social sciences. The purpose of this review is to provide a baseline for discussing the quantum and nature of the science that is being conducted, and the extent to which the social sciences are a part of that. Methods A bibliographic analysis was conducted of neglected tropical diseases related research papers published over the past 10 years in biomedical and social sciences. The analysis had textual and bibliometric facets, and focussed on chikungunya, dengue, visceral leishmaniasis, and onchocerciasis. Results There is substantial variation in the number of publications associated with each disease. The proportion of the research that is social science based appears remarkably consistent (<4%). A textual analysis, however, reveals a degree of misclassification by the abstracting service where a surprising proportion of the "social sciences" research was pure clinical research. Much of the social sciences research also tends to be "hand maiden" research focused on the implementation of biomedical solutions. Conclusion There is little evidence that scientists pay any attention to the complex social, cultural, biological, and environmental dynamic involved in human pathogenesis. There is little investigator driven social science and a poor presence of interdisciplinary science. The research needs more sophisticated funders and priority setters who are not beguiled by uncritical biomedical promises

Low diversity Cryptococcus neoformans variety grubii multilocus sequence types from Thailand are consistent with an ancestral African origin.

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Mutations of Different Molecular Origins Exhibit Contrasting Patterns of Regional Substitution Rate Variation

Transitions at CpG dinucleotides, referred to as “CpG substitutions”, are a major mutational input into vertebrate genomes and a leading cause of human genetic disease. The prevalence of CpG substitutions is due to their mutational origin, which is dependent on DNA methylation. In comparison, other single nucleotide substitutions (for example those occurring at GpC dinucleotides) mainly arise from errors during DNA replication. Here we analyzed high quality BAC-based data from human, chimpanzee, and baboon to investigate regional variation of CpG substitution rates