Stress at Work: Factors Associated with Cognitive Disorganisation among private sector professionals

This study explores psychological and psychological variables associated with perceived stress at work. A total of 100 international participants consented to donating a hair sample and completing a work-related stress survey. Logistic regression was used to investigate associations with low/high cognitive disorganisation using data collected from hair cortisol analysis and self-report questionnaires. High cognitive disorganisation scores were associated with high cardiopulmonary and anger scores. Low perceived self-efficacy was associated with high cognitive disorganisation. An association was found between low cortisol and low perceived self-efficacy. The relationship between high cognitive disorganisation and low self-efficacy endorses previous claims linking performance to perceived high self-efficacy

Computational study of human head response to primary blast waves of five levels from three directions

Human exposure to blast waves without any fragment impacts can still result in primary blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI). To investigate the mechanical response of human brain to primary blast waves and to identify the injury mechanisms of bTBI, a three-dimensional finite element head model consisting of the scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid, nasal cavity, and brain was developed from the imaging data set of a human female. The finite element head model was partially validated and was subjected to the blast waves of five blast intensities from the anterior, right lateral, and posterior directions at a stand-off distance of one meter from the detonation center. Simulation results show that the blast wave directly transmits into the head and causes a pressure wave propagating through the brain tissue. Intracranial pressure (ICP) is predicted to have the highest magnitude from a posterior blast wave in comparison with a blast wave from any of the other two directions with same blast intensity. The brain model predicts higher positive pressure at the site proximal to blast wave than that at the distal site. The intracranial pressure wave invariably travels into the posterior fossa and vertebral column, causing high pressures in these regions. The severities of cerebral contusions at different cerebral locations are estimated using an ICP based injury criterion. Von Mises stress prevails in the cortex with a much higher magnitude than in the internal parenchyma. According to an axonal injury criterion based on von Mises stress, axonal injury is not predicted to be a cause of primary brain injury from blasts. Copyright

Distribution of the invasive bryozoan Schizoporella japonica in Great Britain and Ireland and a review of its European distribution

The bryozoan Schizoporella japonica Ortmann (1890) was first recorded in European waters in 2010 and has since been reported from further locations in Great Britain (GB) and Norway. This paper provides a new earliest European record for the species from 2009, a first record from Ireland and presence and absence records from a total of 231 marinas and harbours across GB, Ireland, the Isle of Man, France and Portugal. This species is typically associated with human activity, including commercial and recreational vessels, aquaculture equipment, and both wave and tidal energy devices. It has also been observed in the natural environment, fouling rocks and boulders. The species has an extensive but widely discontinuous distribution in GB and Ireland. Although found frequently in marinas and harbours in Scotland, it inhabits only a few sites in England, Wales and Ireland, interspersed with wide gaps that are well documented as genuine absences. This appears to be a rare example of a southward-spreading invasion in GB and Ireland. The species has been reported from the Isle of Man and Norway but has not been found in France or Portugal. In the future we expect S. japonica to spread into suitable sections of the English, Welsh and Irish coasts, and further within Europe. The species’ capability for long-distance saltatory spread and potential for negative impact on native ecosystems and economic activity suggests that S. japonica should now be considered invasive in GB and Ireland. As such, it is recommended that biosecurity procedures alongside effective surveillance and monitoring should be prioritised for regions outside the species’ current distribution

Spatially configuring wrinkle pattern and multiscale surface evolution with structural confinement

© 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. Surface elastic instabilities, such as wrinkling and creasing, can enable a convenient strategy to impart reversible patterned topography to a surface. Here the classic system of a stiff layer on a soft substrate is focused, which famously produces parallel harmonic wrinkles at modest uniaxial compression that period-double repeatedly at higher compressions and ultimately evolve into deep folds and creases. By introducing micrometer-scale planar Bravais lattice holes to spatially pattern the substrate, these instabilities are guided into a wide variety of different patterns, including wrinkling in parallel bands and star shape bands, and radically reduce the threshold compression. The experimental patterns and thresholds are enabled to understand by considering a simple plane-strain model for the patterned substrate-deformation, decorated by wrinkling on the stiff surface layer. The experiments also show localized wrinkle-crease transitions at modest compression, yielding a hierarchical surface with different generations of instability mixed together. By varying the geometrical inputs, control over the stepwise evolution of surface morphologies is demonstrated. These results demonstrate considerable control over both the patterns and threshold of the surface elastic instabilities, and have relevance to many emerging applications of morphing surfaces, including in wearable/flexible electronics, biomedical systems, and optical devices

Estimated Drug Overdose Deaths Averted by North America's First Medically-Supervised Safer Injection Facility

Illicit drug overdose remains a leading cause of premature mortality in urban settings worldwide. We sought to estimate the number of deaths potentially averted by the implementation of a medically supervised safer injection facility (SIF) in Vancouver, Canada.The number of potentially averted deaths was calculated using an estimate of the local ratio of non-fatal to fatal overdoses. Inputs were derived from counts of overdose deaths by the British Columbia Vital Statistics Agency and non-fatal overdose rates from published estimates. Potentially-fatal overdoses were defined as events within the SIF that required the provision of naloxone, a 911 call or an ambulance. Point estimates and 95% Confidence Intervals (95% CI) were calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation. Between March 1, 2004 and July 1, 2008 there were 1004 overdose events in the SIF of which 453 events matched our definition of potentially fatal. In 2004, 2005 and 2006 there were 32, 37 and 38 drug-induced deaths in the SIF's neighbourhood. Owing to the wide range of non-fatal overdose rates reported in the literature (between 5% and 30% per year) we performed sensitivity analyses using non-fatal overdose rates of 50, 200 and 300 per 1,000 person years. Using these model inputs, the number of averted deaths were, respectively: 50.9 (95% CI: 23.6–78.1); 12.6 (95% CI: 9.6–15.7); 8.4 (95% CI: 6.5–10.4) during the study period, equal to 1.9 to 11.7 averted deaths per annum.Based on a conservative estimate of the local ratio of non-fatal to fatal overdoses, the potentially fatal overdoses in the SIF during the study period could have resulted in between 8 and 51 deaths had they occurred outside the facility, or from 6% to 37% of the total overdose mortality burden in the neighborhood during the study period. These data should inform the ongoing debates over the future of the pilot project

Across the great divide: genetic forensics reveals misidentification of endangered cutthroat trout populations

Accurate assessment of species identity is fundamental for conservation biology. Using molecular markers from the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes, we discovered that many putatively native populations of greenback cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii stomias) comprised another subspecies of cutthroat trout, Colorado River cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii pleuriticus). The error can be explained by the introduction of Colorado River cutthroat trout throughout the native range of greenback cutthroat trout in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by fish stocking activities. Our results suggest greenback cutthroat trout within its native range is at a higher risk of extinction than ever before despite conservation activities spanning more than two decades

Upper- and lower-limb amputees show reduced levels of eeriness for images of prosthetic hands

The uncanny phenomenon describes the feeling of unease associated with seeing an image which is close to appearing human. Prosthetic hands in particular are well-known to induce this effect. Little is known, however, about this phenomenon from the viewpoint of prosthesis users. We studied perceptions of eeriness and human-likeness for images of different types of mechanical, cosmetic, and anatomical hands in upper-limb prosthesis users (n=9), lower-limb prosthesis users (n=10), prosthetists (n=16), control participants with no prosthetic training (n=20), and control participants who were trained to use a myoelectric prosthetic hand simulator (n=23). Both the upper- and lowerlimb prosthesis user groups showed a reduced uncanny phenomenon (i.e., significantly lower levels of eeriness) for cosmetic prosthetic hands compared to the other groups, with no concomitant reduction in how these stimuli were rated in terms of human-likeness. However, a similar effect was found neither for prosthetists with prolonged visual experience of prosthetic hands, nor for the group with short-term training with the simulator. These findings in the prosthesis users therefore seem likely to be related to limb absence or prolonged experience with prostheses

Orientation cues for high-flying nocturnal insect migrants: do turbulence-induced temperature and velocity fluctuations indicate the mean wind flow?

Migratory insects flying at high altitude at night often show a degree of common alignment, sometimes with quite small angular dispersions around the mean. The observed orientation directions are often close to the downwind direction and this would seemingly be adaptive in that large insects could add their self-propelled speed to the wind speed, thus maximising their displacement in a given time. There are increasing indications that high-altitude orientation may be maintained by some intrinsic property of the wind rather than by visual perception of relative ground movement. Therefore, we first examined whether migrating insects could deduce the mean wind direction from the turbulent fluctuations in temperature. Within the atmospheric boundary-layer, temperature records show characteristic ramp-cliff structures, and insects flying downwind would move through these ramps whilst those flying crosswind would not. However, analysis of vertical-looking radar data on the common orientations of nocturnally migrating insects in the UK produced no evidence that the migrants actually use temperature ramps as orientation cues. This suggests that insects rely on turbulent velocity and acceleration cues, and refocuses attention on how these can be detected, especially as small-scale turbulence is usually held to be directionally invariant (isotropic). In the second part of the paper we present a theoretical analysis and simulations showing that velocity fluctuations and accelerations felt by an insect are predicted to be anisotropic even when the small-scale turbulence (measured at a fixed point or along the trajectory of a fluid-particle) is isotropic. Our results thus provide further evidence that insects do indeed use turbulent velocity and acceleration cues as indicators of the mean wind direction

Detection of covert lesions in focal epilepsy using computational analysis of multimodal magnetic resonance imaging data

Objective: To compare the location of suspect lesions detected by computational analysis of multimodal magnetic resonance imaging data with areas of seizure onset, early propagation, and interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) identified with stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG) in a cohort of patients with medically refractory focal epilepsy and radiologically normal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Methods: We developed a method of lesion detection using computational analysis of multimodal MRI data in a cohort of 62 control subjects, and 42 patients with focal epilepsy and MRI-visible lesions. We then applied it to detect covert lesions in 27 focal epilepsy patients with radiologically normal MRI scans, comparing our findings with the areas of seizure onset, early propagation, and IEDs identified at SEEG. Results: Seizure-onset zones (SoZs) were identified at SEEG in 18 of the 27 patients (67%) with radiologically normal MRI scans. In 11 of these 18 cases (61%), concordant abnormalities were detected by our method. In the remaining seven cases, either early seizure propagation or IEDs were observed within the abnormalities detected, or there were additional areas of imaging abnormalities found by our method that were not sampled at SEEG. In one of the nine patients (11%) in whom SEEG was inconclusive, an abnormality, which may have been involved in seizures, was identified by our method and was not sampled at SEEG. Significance: Computational analysis of multimodal MRI data revealed covert abnormalities in the majority of patients with refractory focal epilepsy and radiologically normal MRI that co-located with SEEG defined zones of seizure onset. The method could help identify areas that should be targeted with SEEG when considering epilepsy surgery

Increased risk of A(H1N1)pdm09 influenza infection in UK pig industry workers compared to a general population cohort.

BACKGROUND: Pigs are mixing vessels for influenza viral reassortment but the extent of influenza transmission between swine and humans is not well understood. OBJECTIVES: To assess whether occupational exposure to pigs is a risk factor for human infection with human and swine-adapted influenza viruses. METHODS: UK pig industry workers were frequency-matched on age, region, sampling month, and gender with a community-based comparison group from the Flu Watch study. HI assays quantified antibodies for swine and human A(H1) and A(H3) influenza viruses (titres≥40 considered seropositive and indicative of infection). Virus-specific associations between seropositivity and occupational pig exposure were examined using multivariable regression models adjusted for vaccination. Pigs on the same farms were also tested for seropositivity. RESULTS: 42% of pigs were seropositive to A(H1N1)pdm09. Pig industry workers showed evidence of increased odds of A(H1N1)pdm09 seropositivity compared to the comparison group, albeit with wide confidence intervals (CI), Adjusted Odds Ratio after accounting for possible cross reactivity with other swine A(H1) viruses (aOR) 25.3, 95% CI [1.4-536.3], p=0.028. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that A(H1N1)pdm09 virus was common in UK pigs during the pandemic and subsequent period of human A(H1N1)pdm09 circulation, and occupational exposure to pigs was a risk factor for human infection. Influenza immunization of pig industry workers may reduce transmission and the potential for virus reassortment. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved