137 research outputs found
High-spin states in the vibrational nucleus Cd-114
No full text2 pages, 2 figures.-- PACS nrs.: 23.20.Lv; 27.60.+j.-- Printed version published Apr 15, 2004.High-spin states of the neutron-rich vibrational nucleus Cd-114 have been studied using the incomplete fusion reaction Pd-110(Li-7, p2n) and the GASP spectrometer in conjunction with the ISIS Si ball. About 50 new states with excitation energies up to 7 MeV and angular momentum I ≤ 18(+) were observed and for many of them, spin and parity could be firmly assigned. The band-like stuctures in Cd-114 are compared to the corresponding ones in the even-even neighbour Cd-112.This work has been supported by the European Commission within the Contract HPRI-1999-CT-00083 and by the DGI, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Spain, under the Project BFM2001-0184. A. J. acknowledges support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the Heisenberg program.Peer reviewe
Critically ill patients with community-onset intraabdominal infections: influence of healthcare exposure on resistance rates and mortality
No full textIntraabdominal infections; Healthcare exposure; Intensive care unitsInfeccions intraabdominals; Exposició per tractaments de salut; Unitats de cures intensivesInfecciones intraabdominales; Exposición por tratamientos de salud; Unidades de cuidados intensivosThe concept of healthcare-associated infections (as opposed to hospital-acquired infections) in intraabdominal infections (IAIs) is scarcely supported by data in the literature. The aim of the present study was to analyse community-onset IAIs (non-postoperative/non-nosocomial) in patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs), to investigate differences in resistance patterns linked to healthcare exposure and mortality-associated factors. A one-year prospective observational study (17 Spanish ICUs) was performed distributing cases as healthcare-associated infections (HCAI), community-acquired infections (CAI) and immunocompromised patients (ICP). Bacteria producing extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBL) and/or carbapenemase (CPE), high-level aminoglycoside- and/or methicillin- and/or vancomycin- resistance were considered antimicrobial resistant (AMR). Mortality-associated factors were identified by regression multivariate analysis. Of 345 patients included (18.8% HCAI, 6.1% ICP, 75.1% CAI), 51.6% presented generalized peritonitis; 32.5% were >75 years (55.4% among HCAI). Overall, 11.0% cases presented AMR (7.0% ESBL- and/or CPE), being significantly higher in HCAI (35.4%) vs. CAI (5.8%) (p75 years (OR = 6.67, 95%CI = 2.56–17.36,p75 years, severity and Candida isolation but not with AMR.This multicentre study was possible due to the generous implication of the personnel in the 17 participating ICUs. The study did not receive external funding. One of the authors [MJG] is employee of a commercial company (PRISM-AG) which was not funder of the present study. This company only provided support in the form of the salary for this author [MJG], but did not have any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific role of this author is articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section
Human activity was a major driver of the mid-Holocene vegetation change in southern Cumbria: Implications for the elm decline in the British Isles
No full textThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.The dramatic decline in elm (Ulmus) across a large swathe of north-west Europe in the mid-Holocene has been ascribed to a number of possible factors, including climate change, human activity and/or pathogens. A major limitation for identifying the underlying cause(s) has been the limited number of high-resolution records with robust geochronological frameworks. Here, we report a multiproxy study of an upland (Blea Tarn) and lowland (Urswick Tarn) landscape in southern Cumbria (British Isles) to reconstruct vegetation change across the elm decline in an area with a rich and well-dated archaeological record to disentangle different possible controls. Here we find a two-stage decline in Ulmus taking place between 6350–6150 and 6050–5850 cal a BP, with the second phase coinciding with an intensification of human activity. The scale of the decline and associated human impact is more abrupt in the upland landscape. We consider it likely that a combination of human impact and disease drove the Ulmus decline within southern Cumbria.This work was funded by a studentship for MJG from the University of Exeter and Sir John Fisher Foundation. Additional funding for 14C dating was from the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society (Clare Fell Bursary to MJG), and the Australian Research Council (FL100100195)
Non-valvular atrial fibrillation and stroke : implications for management
No full textNonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation is more prevalent with increasing age. It is associated with a six-fold excess risk of stroke; and a cumulative lifetime stroke risk of 35%. 15% of ischaemic strokes are directly attributable to it. Five trials have established the safety of warfarin in reducing the risk by 70% in well selected patients, with stringent monitoring. Thromboembolism, cardiac failure, hypertension and echocardiographic abnormalities identify higher risk patients. The management of NVAF is changing from rate control, to cardioversion and anticoagulation (or use of antithrombotics) to reduce the embolic risk.peer-reviewe
Autism spectrum disorder and interoception: Abnormalities in global integration?
No full textResearch over the past three decades has seen a revived interest in the way the human body—and the way in which it is perceived—interacts with aspects of our experience. Consequently, interoception (i.e. the perception of physiological feedback from the body) has recently been shown to be associated with a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and affective functions, making it broadly relevant to the study of autism spectrum disorder. Although limited qualitative accounts and empirical studies suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorder encounter abnormalities when perceiving and integrating physiological feedback from their bodies, other studies have suggested that people with/without autism spectrum disorder do not differ in interoceptive ability after accounting for alexithymia. In this article, we discuss the newly recognized importance of interoception in autism spectrum disorder with a focus on how deficits in the perception of bodily feedback might relate to the core features and co-occuring psychopathology of autism spectrum disorder. Finally, a new integrated theory is advanced which posits that people with autism spectrum disorder may experience a reduced capacity to integrate interoceptive information that may result in a narrow attentional bodily focus and reduced motivational and behavioral drives.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:
MJG was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery
Early Career Research Award (DE170100726). BL was funded
by the Swiss National Science Foundation
An inclusive Research and Education Community (iREC) model to facilitate undergraduate science education reform
No full textOver the last two decades, there have been numerous initiatives to improve undergraduate student outcomes in STEM. One model for scalable reform is the inclusive Research Education Community (iREC). In an iREC, STEM faculty from colleges and universities across the nation are supported to adopt and sustainably implement course-based research – a form of science pedagogy that enhances student learning and persistence in science. In this study, we used pathway modeling to develop a qualitative description that explicates the HHMI Science Education Alliance (SEA) iREC as a model for facilitating the successful adoption and continued advancement of new curricular content and pedagogy. In particular, outcomes that faculty realize through their participation in the SEA iREC were identified, organized by time, and functionally linked. The resulting pathway model was then revised and refined based on several rounds of feedback from over 100 faculty members in the SEA iREC who participated in the study. Our results show that in an iREC, STEM faculty organized as a long-standing community of practice leverage one another, outside expertise, and data to adopt, implement, and iteratively advance their pedagogy. The opportunity to collaborate in this manner and, additionally, to be recognized for pedagogical contributions sustainably engages STEM faculty in the advancement of their pedagogy. Here, we present a detailed pathway model of SEA that, together with underpinning features of an iREC identified in this study, offers a framework to facilitate transformations in undergraduate science education.The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Howard Hughes Medical Institute grants to DIH is GT12052 and MJG is GT15338https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2024.1442318/ful
A green solvent processable, self-doped N-annulated perylene butyl tetraester applied as a solar cell cathode interlayer
No full textWe report a new amino-bay-substituted, N-annulated perylene butyl tetraester (NH2-PTEN-H) with application as a cathode interlayer in organic photovoltaic devices. Synthesis from the parent N-annulated perylene butyl tetraester is presented alongside comprehensive structural characterization. Density functional theory calculations on NH2-PTEN-H and related analogues, both with and without N-annulation and amino-bay substitution, show that N-annulation locks the perylene core into a planar conformation even in the presence of a sterically demanding amino group. Steady-state optical spectra reveal intramolecular charge transfer characteristics and a large excited-state dipole moment. Solubility profiling establishes perylene butyl tetraesters as a highly soluble subclass of perylene dyes; NH2-PTEN-H, in particular, dissolves readily in the green solvent ethyl acetate up to 168 mg mL−1, enabling environmentally benign ink formulations. These inks were spin-coated into uniform thin films on quartz and studied, and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy confirmed NH2-PTEN-H as a paramagnetic species in the solid state. Utilized as a cathode interlayer in conventional organic photovoltaic devices, architectures containing NH2-PTEN-H deliver power conversion efficiencies comparable to those using the benchmark cathode interlayer material PFN-Br. © 2025 The Author(s). Polymer International published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.GCW acknowledges funding from the NSERC DG program (2019-04392 and 2025-04443), the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the University of Calgary. MJG thanks Alberta Student Aid for Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarships. This work at the University of Kentucky was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) through award number N00014-22-1-2179. Supercomputing resources were provided by the University of Kentucky Information Technology Department and Center for Computational Sciences (CCS). This work was also supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) under Award Nos. OSR-CARF/CCF-3079, OSR-CRG2018-3746, ORA-CRG10-2021-4681, OSR-CRG10-2021-4701 and ORFS-CRG11-2022-5045
Casanovas are liars : behavioral syndromes, sperm competition risk, and the evolution of deceptive male mating behavior in live-bearing fishes [version 2; referees: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]
No full textMale reproductive biology can by characterized through competition over mates as well as mate choice. Multiple mating and male mate choice copying, especially in internally fertilizing species, set the stage for increased sperm competition, i.e., sperm of two or more males can compete for fertilization of the female’s ova. In the internally fertilizing fish Poecilia mexicana, males respond to the presence of rivals with reduced expression of mating preferences (audience effect), thereby lowering the risk of by-standing rivals copying their mate choice. Also, males interact initially more with a non-preferred female when observed by a rival, which has been interpreted in previous studies as a strategy to mislead rivals, again reducing sperm competition risk (SCR). Nevertheless, species might differ consistently in their expression of aggressive and reproductive behaviors, possibly due to varying levels of SCR. In the current study, we present a unique data set comprising ten poeciliid species (in two cases including multiple populations) and ask whether species can be characterized through consistent differences in the expression of aggression, sexual activity and changes in mate choice under increased SCR. We found consistent species-specific differences in aggressive behavior, sexual activity as well as in the level of misleading behavior, while decreased preference expression under increased SCR was a general feature of all but one species examined. Furthermore, mean sexual activity correlated positively with the occurrence of potentially misleading behavior. An alternative explanation for audience effects would be that males attempt to avoid aggressive encounters, which would predict stronger audience effects in more aggressive species. We demonstrate a positive correlation between mean aggressiveness and sexual activity (suggesting a hormonal link as a mechanistic explanation), but did not detect a correlation between aggressiveness and audience effects. Suites of correlated behavioral tendencies are termed behavioral syndromes, and our present study provides correlational evidence for the evolutionary significance of SCR in shaping a behavioral syndrome at the species level across poeciliid taxa
External validation of four dementia prediction models for use in the general community-dwelling population: a comparative analysis from the Rotterdam Study
No full text\ua9 2018 The Author(s) To systematically review the literature for dementia prediction models for use in the general population and externally validate their performance in a head-to-head comparison. We selected four prediction models for validation: CAIDE, BDSI, ANU-ADRI and DRS. From the Rotterdam Study, 6667 non-demented individuals aged 55 years and older were assessed between 1997 and 2001. Subsequently, participants were followed for dementia until 1 January, 2015. For each individual, we computed the risk of dementia using the reported scores from each prediction model. We used the C-statistic and calibration plots to assess the performance of each model to predict 10-year risk of all-cause dementia. For comparisons, we also evaluated discriminative accuracy using only the age component of these risk scores for each model separately. During 75,581 person-years of follow-up, 867 participants developed dementia. C-statistics for 10-year dementia risk prediction were 0.55 (95% CI 0.53–0.58) for CAIDE, 0.78 (0.76–0.81) for BDSI, 0.75 (0.74–0.77) for ANU-ADRI, and 0.81 (0.78–0.83) for DRS. Calibration plots showed that predicted risks were too extreme with underestimation at low risk and overestimation at high risk. Importantly, in all models age alone already showed nearly identical discriminative accuracy as the full model (C-statistics: 0.55 (0.53–0.58) for CAIDE, 0.81 (0.78–0.83) for BDSI, 0.77 (0.75–0.79) for ANU-ADRI, and 0.81 (0.78–0.83) for DRS). In this study, we found high variability in discriminative ability for predicting dementia in an elderly, community-dwelling population. All models showed similar discriminative ability when compared to prediction based on age alone. These findings highlight the urgent need for updated or new models to predict dementia risk in the general population
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