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E Fox

Publications and source records attributed to E Fox.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1995

Characterization, expression and envelope association of a Chlamydia trachomatis 28 kDa protein.

Genital serovariants of Chlamydia trachomatis establish infection by attachment, entry and multiplication within human endometrial epithelial cells. In previous studies, a chlamydial recombinant Escherichia coli was identified which exhibited a specific adherent phenotype to endometrial epithelial cells closely resembling that observed for a genital strain of C. trachomatis. One of the plasmid-encoded products expressed by the recombinant is a 28 kDa protein. In this study, localization of the 28 kDa protein in isolated outer membranes of recombinant E. coli and in chlamydial outer membrane complexes lends support for a potential role for this protein in the attachment process. Surprisingly, nucleic acid sequence analysis reveals that the 28 kDa protein shares a modest degree of homology with a member of the E. coli heat shock protein family.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed1995

Pre-cuing target location reduces interference but not negative priming from visual distractors.

Research on visual selective attention has shown that processing of distractors can produce (1) interference with response to a concurrent target, and (2) negative priming of response to a subsequent target. These results support late-selection accounts of attention. However, recent findings demonstrate that when conditions are optimal for attentional focusing, the interference effects are almost entirely eliminated. This result has been interpreted as supporting early-selection accounts. The present study investigates the impact of focusing attention on negative priming in addition to interference effects. In a letter-identification task, reliable interference and negative priming effects were observed from distractors. However, when the location of the target in the prime display was pre-cued, interference effects were significantly reduced, but negative priming effects did not decrease. This pattern of results provides further evidence that the absence of interference is insufficient to determine whether distractors have been semantically processed (Driver & Tipper, 1989).

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Medical ethics education: past, present, and future.

This paper examines undergraduate medical ethics education in the United States during its 25-year history. Included is a brief description of early efforts in medical ethics education and a discussion of the traditional model of ethics teaching, which emphasizes the knowledge and cognitive skills necessary for ethical decision making. The authors also discuss alternatives to the traditional model that focus more directly on students' personal values, attitudes, and behavior. Current areas of consensus in the field are then explored. Finally, the authors identify three incipient trends in medical ethics education--toward increased emphasis on everyday ethics, student ethics, and macroethics. Throughout the paper, examples of specific courses and curricula are used to illustrate the modes and trends described.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1994

Grapheme-phoneme correspondence in dyslexic and matched control readers.

Snowling (1980) reported that dyslexic children appear to have specific deficits in grapheme-phoneme conversion skills. Using a similar methodology, the present study compared the ability of dyslexic and control readers to make phoneme discriminations between the beginnings and ends of words. Recognition of word pairs as same or different were presented in four conditions: visual presentation-visual recognition (V-V), auditory-auditory (A-A), visual-auditory (V-A) and auditory-visual (A-V). It was found that dyslexic readers had particular difficulty with the mixed-mode conditions (V-A, A-V) which required grapheme-phoneme conversion. Furthermore, dyslexic readers were particularly error-prone in these conditions if words differed on their end-sound rather than their beginning sound.

Child↗
PubMed1994

Interference and negative priming from ignored distractors: the role of selection difficulty.

The relation between distractor interference and negative priming from identical distractors was examined in two experiments. Subjects responded to a target letter, which was indicated by an adjacent bar marker, and attempted to ignore a distracting letter. On prime trials, distracting letters were either compatible or incompatible with the target, allowing for a measure of interference. On subsequent probe trials, previously ignored distractors were sometimes presented as targets, allowing for a measure of negative priming. Reducing the spatial separation between targets and distractors on the prime trial increased the magnitude of interference and negative priming, but these effects appeared to be independent of each other (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, the prime target location was precued on some trials, but not on others. Precuing attenuated the magnitude of interference, but not that of negative priming effects. This pattern indicates that measures of negative priming and measures of distractor interference on the immediately preceding trial are independent. The results are discussed in terms of a selective inhibition model of selective attention.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Ethics consultants' recommendations for life-prolonging treatment of patients in a persistent vegetative state.

OBJECTIVE--Surprisingly little is known about the content of ethics consultants' recommendations. We chose to study this issue using hypothetical persistent vegetative state (PVS) cases. We addressed four questions: What recommendations do ethics consultants give regarding life-prolonging treatment (LPT) in PVS cases? To what degree is there consensus? What factors influence recommendations? Do recommendations conform to established guidelines? DESIGN--Questionnaire survey. Our questionnaire asked subjects what they would recommend for seven hypothetical vignettes involving a PVS patient that varied with respect to advance directives and family wishes. We also questioned subjects about demographic characteristics, ethics consultation experience, and personal preference for LPT in PVS. SUBJECTS--Attendees at an annual meeting of the Society for Bioethics Consultation (n = 154). RESULTS--The response rate was 77%. Eighty-one percent of respondents were ethics committee members and 62% were ethics consultants. There was general agreement among respondents for only one of seven vignettes: in the case of a PVS patient whose advance directive and family agree that LPT be stopped, 93% recommended stopping all LPT. Responses to other vignettes varied considerably. Although patient wishes were an important factor influencing recommendations, none of the respondents adhered invariably to the patient's advance directive. Recommendations were also influenced by family wishes, resource allocation considerations, legal constraints, and personal preference for LPT in PVS. Guidelines we examined were generally too equivocal to be useful for evaluating ethics consultants' recommendations. CONCLUSIONS--The finding of wide variability in ethics consultants' recommendations suggests a need to clarify standards for ethics consultation.

Coma↗
PubMed1993

Attentional bias in anxiety: selective or not?

Under certain circumstances, anxiety has been shown to be associated with a processing bias favouring threatening information. Much of the evidence has come from experiments utilising the modified Stroop colour-naming paradigm. However, the traditional Stroop stimuli does not allow for a good test of selective attention. The present study presented colour, neutral and threatening words in conditions where the distracting (word) and target (colour) information were presented: (i) together; or (ii) separately. High trait-anxious Ss took longer to colour-name threatening words than neutral words, even when the threatening material was presented outside the focus of attention. There were no differential responses to threat and neutral words for low trait-anxious Ss. High trait-anxious Ss were also distracted by separate colour words, which produced no interference for the low-anxious Ss. These results suggest that high-trait anxiety may be associated with a general inability to maintain attentional focus, rather than by an automatic attentional bias towards threatening information.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Estimating the seroincidence of HIV-1 in the general adult population in Kigali, Rwanda.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the seroincidence of HIV-1 infection in the general adult population of Kigali, Rwanda. DESIGN: Repeated standardized cross-sectional studies. SETTING: Two urban prenatal clinics. PATIENTS: A total of 4486 consecutive pregnant women consulting in 1989 and 1990. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence of HIV-1 antibodies. RESULTS: HIV seropositivity increased by 3-5% annually over this period, indicating that it has not reached a plateau in this sentinel population. The percentage infection rates, calculated using two complementary methods, were 26.2-30.7% in 1990. Extrapolating these results to the general population of Kigali, we estimate that 2300-3800 new infections in young women and 3600-6100 new infections in young men occur annually among the total population of 350,000 in Kigali. CONCLUSIONS: A new HIV infection occurred in an adult every 50-90 min, on average, in Kigali during 1989-1990, while every 6-7 h a baby with maternally acquired HIV infection was born. Our HIV surveillance system, which is based on prenatal sentinel posts, is a useful tool for monitoring the progression of the HIV epidemic in Kigali.

Cross-Sectional Studies↗
PubMed1993

Cognitive function and quality of life in end-stage renal failure.

The Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) and the Wechsler Memory Scale--Revised (WMS-R) were administered to a small sample of end-stage renal failure patients. The memory test successfully discriminated between patients who were rated by their nurses to be well adjusted or poorly adjusted to dialysis treatment. It is concluded that this instrument may be useful in investigating cognitive function in this patient population.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1993

Trends of human immunodeficiency virus type-1 infection in female prostitutes and males diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease in Djibouti, east Africa.

A cross-sectional serosurvey for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) was conducted during the first quarter of 1991 among high risk groups in Djibouti, East Africa, and compared with previous surveys in 1987, 1988, and 1990. The survey demonstrated evidence of HIV-1 infection in 36.0% (n = 292) of street prostitutes, 15.3% (n = 360) of prostitutes working as bar hostesses, and 10.4% (n = 193) of males diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. By multivariate modeling, HIV-1 seropositivity in prostitutes was associated with Ethiopian nationality, working as a street prostitute, and residing in Djibouti for two years or less. We suggest that prostitution, particularly street prostitution, is a major route of HIV-1 transmission in Djibouti.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Redefining the emergency physician's role in do-not-resuscitate decision-making.

In summary, Wrenn and Brody's [14] study raises important questions about the appropriate role of emergency physicians in discussing DNR decisions in the emergency setting. Their approach to DNR orders expands, appropriately we believe, the traditional role of emergency physicians. We suggest that it is desirable for emergency physicians to give patients and family members the option of DNR status when there is a significant likelihood that the patient will experience cardiopulmonary arrest before the admitting physician can address the DNR issue and the patient is profoundly debilitated or terminally ill. In addition, emergency physicians have a heightened obligation to promptly address DNR status when appropriate decisions about resuscitation have been reached previously, as in the following cases: (1) when a clearly valid portable prehospital DNR order is in effect; (2) when the patient's primary physician clearly indicates to the emergency physician that the patient is DNR; (3) when an incompetent patient has an advance directive that explicitly precludes CPR and unquestionably applies to the current situation; (4) when a clearly competent, informed patient requests that a DNR order be entered. Finally, we advise emergency physicians against using the principle of futility as sole justification for DNR orders except in situations in which cardiopulmonary arrest is expected, and outcome data suggest that survival is virtually unprecedented.

Decision Making↗
PubMed1992

Monitoring for HIV-1, HIV-2, HTLV-I sero-progression and sero-conversion in a population at risk in east Africa.

Thirty-three individuals from East Africa, at risk for acquiring sexually transmitted infections, were selected to be monitored over a five month period for evidence of sero-progression and/or sero-conversion for human immunodeficiency virus type-1 and type-2 (HIV-1, HIV-2), and human T cell leukemia virus type-1 (HTLV-I). Initially, all sera were reactive by at least one retroviral screening assay, but most produced negative or indeterminate results by western blot assays. Five months after the initial screening, western blot assays indicated that one individual exhibited full sero-conversion for HIV-1; one HIV-1 positive individual also became positive for HIV-2; and two subjects showed sero-progression to become HTLV-I confirmed positive. Sera from fourteen individuals produced indeterminate results by western blot for HIV-1, ten of which were previously negative; the remaining four sera exhibited reactivity to at least one additional viral specific antigen after the five months. Circulating HIV-1 antigen was not demonstrated in any of the sera but DNA isolated from one of the individuals with indeterminate results produced a positive reaction for HIV-1 by the polymerase chain reaction.

Blotting, Western↗
PubMed1992

Diagnostic challenges: lymphotropic sero-"questionables".

During a sero-survey for lymphotropic retroviruses, seven screening tests were performed for the three lymphotropic retroviruses of relevance in Djibouti, East Africa (HIV-1, HIV-2 and HTLV-1). Of the 82 subjects whose sera reacted in at least one retroviral screening assay, about one third could be followed, and their sera were re-examined after a 5-month interval, and then after an additional 3-month interval. Six selected individuals are reported here, whose retroviral serologies presented important and often unexplained changes over an eight-month period. The six cases summarize prototypic situations and present serological results in a style appropriate to stimulate thought on the significance and interpretation of lymphotropic viral serologies. Each case study is followed by a set of questions that formulate pertinent serological concepts.

Adult↗