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PubMed2004

The developmental psychopathology of self-injurious behavior: compensatory regulation in posttraumatic adaptation.

This article utilizes a developmental psychopathology framework to explicate one pathway, originating in childhood traumatic experience, toward the development of self-injurious behavior (SIB). The descriptive psychopathology of SIB is summarized first, followed by an overview of theoretical interpretations of SIB within psychoanalytic, neo-analytic, behavioral, and biological paradigms. Building on these empirical and theoretical foundations, a developmental psychopathology framework is used to model the development of SIB in the aftermath of childhood traumatic experience, particularly maltreatment. In this model, maltreatment undermines positive adaptation at motivational, attitudinal, instrumental, emotional, and/or relational levels of competence. In turn, vulnerabilities in the child's adaptive resources necessitate the application of alternative regulatory and relational strategies, such as self-injury, to the negotiation of contemporaneous and prospective developmental issues. The article concludes with a discussion of the empirical and clinical implications of a developmental understanding of SIB as a compensatory regulatory strategy in posttraumatic adaptation.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2006

Complex functionality of gene groups identified from high-throughput data.

Relating experimental data to biological knowledge is necessary to cope with the avalanches of new data emerging from recent developments in high-throughput technologies. Automatic functional profiling becomes the de facto standard approach for the secondary analysis of high-throughput data. A number of tools employing available gene functional annotations have been developed for this purpose. However, current annotations are derived mostly from traditional analysis of the individual gene function. The complex biological phenomena carried out by the concerted activity of many genes often requires the definition of new complex functionality (related to a group of genes), which is, in many cases, not available in current annotation vocabularies. Functional profiling with annotation terms related to the description of individual biological functions of a gene may fail to provide reasonable interpretation of biological relationships in a set of genes involved in complex biological phenomena. We introduce a novel procedure to profile a complex functionality of a gene set. Complex functionality is constructed as a combination of available annotation terms. By profiling ChIP-chip data from Saccharomyces cerevisiae we demonstrate that this technique produces deeper insights into the results of high-throughput experiments that are beyond the known facts described in the functional classifications.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Ultrastructure of canine meninges after repeated epidural injection of S(+)-ketamine.

BACKGROUND: The safety of ketamine when administered by the spinal route must be confirmed in various animal species before it is approved for use in humans. This study evaluates the ultrastructure of canine meninges after repeated doses of epidural S(+)-ketamine. METHODS: Five dogs received S(+)-ketamine 5%, 1 mg/kg, twice a day for 10 days through an epidural catheter with its tip located at the L5 level. One dog received the same volume of normal saline at the same times. The spinal cord and meninges were processed for histopathological and ultrastructural studies. Clinical effects were assessed after each injection. RESULTS: Motor and sensory block appeared after each injection of S(+)-ketamine, but not in the dog receiving saline. No signs of clinical or neurologic alterations were observed. Using light microscopy, no meningeal layer showed alterations except focal infiltration at the catheter tip level by macrophages, lymphocytes, and a few mast cells. The cells of different layers were studied by electron microscopy and interpreted according to data from human and other animal species because no ultrastructural description of the canine meninges is currently available. There were no cellular signs of inflammation, phagocytosis, or degeneration in meningeal layers and no signs of atrophy, compression, or demyelinization in the areas of dorsal root ganglia and spinal cord around the arachnoid. These findings were common for dogs receiving S(+)-ketamine and the dog receiving saline. CONCLUSION: Repeated doses of epidural S(+)-ketamine 5%, 1 mg/kg, twice a day for 10 days was not associated to cellular alterations in canine meninges.

Animals↗

PubMed1998

Cervical dysplasia and human immunodeficiency virus infection in women: prevalence and associated factors. Groupe d'Epidémiologie Clinique du SIDA en Aquitaine (GESCA).

OBJECTIVE: To study the prevalence of Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (CIN) and its association with HIV-I infection, controlling for other risk factors of CIN. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: HIV-1 seropositive (HIV+) and seronegative (HIV-) women were enrolled at the Obstetrics-Gynecologic Departments of the Bordeaux University Hospital from April 1993 to June 1995. A gynecologic check-up was performed with a clinical examination, a colposcopy and a Papanicolaou smear. Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) were screened. Colposcopy was interpreted as: normal, low-grade or high-grade lesions. Interpretation of Papanicolaou smears was based on the 1988 Bethesda system using three descriptive diagnoses: normal, low-grade and high-grade Squamous Intraepithelial lesions (SILs). If colposcopy showed a high grade lesion or Papanicolaou smear a high-grade SIL, a cervical biopsy was performed. Absence of CIN was defined by normal Papanicolaou smear and colposcopy. High grade CIN was defined by either identification of high grade SIL on Papanicolaou smear or high grade lesion on colposcopy confirmed by CIN2-3 lesion on biopsy. Other cases were classified as low-grade CIN. HPV infection was diagnosed on presence of koilocytosis on cytological or histological specimens. RESULTS: Prevalence of CIN was significantly higher in the 128 HIV+ women than in the 102 HIV- women: 34.4% vs. 13.7% (O.R.=3.30). Among HIV+ women, 25.8% had low-grade CIN and 8.6% high-grade CIN versus 10.8% and 2.9%, respectively among the HIV- women. Prevalence of HPV infection was 50.0% among women with CIN vs. 5.8% in women without CIN (P= 10(-6)). In the multivariate analysis of the determinants of CIN, smoking more than ten pack-years and HPV infection were the only two variables associated with CIN while association with HIV infection disappeared. Among HIV+ women, the variables associated with CIN were clinical AIDS and HPV infection.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗

PubMed2002

Modeling of single-step and multistep adsorption isotherms of organic pesticides on soil.

The aim of this study was to investigate the sorption behavior and mechanisms of the organic pesticides on soil. To establish the sorption isotherms of six commonly used pesticides (acetochlor, atrazine, diazinon, carbendazim, imidacloprid, and isoproturon), laboratory equilibrium studies were performed at extended concentration ranges on brown forest soil using the batch equilibrium technique. The pesticide concentrations in the equilibrated liquid phase were quantified with high-performance liquid chromatograph by ultraviolet detection. The adsorption processes could be described by a single-step (Langmuir) isotherm for acetochlor and carbendazim, by a two-step curve for diazinon, isoproturon, and atrazine, and by a three-step curve for imidacloprid. A nonlinear mathematical model-derived from the Langmuir equation-has been developed that represents well the detected single-step and multistep shaped adsorption isotherms. The interpreted model was found to fit the experimental data well and allows the description of the adsorption profile with great precision. The altered adsorption activity, which was indicated by the step arising on the plot, may represent the existence/occurrence of a different specific type of adsorption mechanism. This binding force starts to operate simultaneously at a critical concentration of solute in the studied soil-pesticide system. The parameters calculated from the equation provide an opportunity to estimate the extent of absorption constant, adsorption capacity, and concentration limit characteristic to the measured stepwise isotherms.

Adsorption↗

PubMed2002

Factors determining the reliable description of global tumbling parameters in solution NMR.

An accurate description of global tumbling of a protein is essential for correct analysis and interpretation of internal dynamics and thermodynamics. The accurate fitting of global tumbling parameters is affected by the number of experimental relaxation data points available for analysis, the distribution of data points over the domain of the function describing the tumbling, the measurement error associated with the data, the error associated with use of an approximate functional form, and errors in the protein structure. We present an analysis of the influence of these factors on the error in global tumbling parameters and the corresponding error in the calculated T(1)/T(2) values. We find that reduction of experimental and approximation error can compensate for a less-than-ideal quantity or distribution of data points, and that accurate parameters can be obtained for proteins with highly anisotropic distributions of bond vectors, as illustrated using the helical bundle protein G-CSF. This indicates that proteins with anisotropic distributions, such as the helical bundle class of proteins, should not summarily be excluded when selecting proteins for dynamic and thermodynamic analyses of (15)N backbone relaxation measurements.

Anisotropy↗

PubMed1992

Metric invariance in object recognition: a review and further evidence.

Phenomenologically, human shape recognition appears to be invariant with changes of orientation in depth (up to parts occlusion), position in the visual field, and size. Recent versions of template theories (e.g., Ullman, 1989; Lowe, 1987) assume that these invariances are achieved through the application of transformations such as rotation, translation, and scaling of the image so that it can be matched metrically to a stored template. Presumably, such transformations would require time for their execution. We describe recent priming experiments in which the effects of a prior brief presentation of an image on its subsequent recognition are assessed. The results of these experiments indicate that the invariance is complete: The magnitude of visual priming (as distinct from name or basic level concept priming) is not affected by a change in position, size, orientation in depth, or the particular lines and vertices present in the image, as long as representations of the same components can be activated. An implemented seven layer neural network model (Hummel & Biederman, 1992) that captures these fundamental properties of human object recognition is described. Given a line drawing of an object, the model activates a viewpoint-invariant structural description of the object, specifying its parts and their interrelations. Visual priming is interpreted as a change in the connection weights for the activation of: a) cells, termed geon feature assemblies (GFAs), that conjoin the output of units that represent invariant, independent properties of a single geon and its relations (such as its type, aspect ratio, relations to other geons), or b) a change in the connection weights by which several GFAs activate a cell representing an object.

Adult↗

PubMed1981

Antigenic structure of influenza virus haemagglutinin defined by hybridoma antibodies.

The recurrence of influenza virus infection in man is attributed primarily to changes occurring in the antigenic structure of the viral surface glycoproteins, especially of the haemagglutinin (HA) molecule. Comparative antigenic analysis of epidemic influenza virus strains has allowed the description of 'strain-specific' and 'cross-reactive' antigenic determinants. However, the interpretation of these findings remained ambiguous, because the specificity of the applied antisera was insufficiently defined and because the antigenic differences among the HA molecules of various epidemic virus strains resulted presumably from a large number of amino acid substitutions. Thus, in characterizing the antigenic structure of the HA molecule, our approach has been (1) to generate a panel of monoclonal anti-HA hybridoma antibodies, (2) to use some of these antibodies to select mutants of the influenza A/PR/8/34 (PR8) virus expressing antigenically altered HA molecules, and (3) to construct an operational antigenic map of the HA molecule by comparative antigenic analysis of the mutant viruses with the monoclonal antibodies. As we report here, analysis of the 34 mutant viruses selected has enabled us to define four antigenic sites on the HA molecule. Our observation that these sites have undergone antigenic drift to a different extent in nature implies that the mechanisms responsible for antigenic drift act selectively on distinct structures of the HA molecule.

Animals↗

PubMed1981

The vascular and microvascular anatomy of the rat uterus during the oestrous cycle.

The vascular and microvascular anatomy of the rat uterus during the oestrous cycle was studied using the corrosion vascular casting/scanning electron microscopy method. Particular attention was paid to identifying each stage of the oestrous cycle prior to casting. The optimum viscosity range for the methyl methacrylate-based casting medium was between 2.3 and 4.0 centistokes; the perfusion pressure was adjusted to give an abdominal aortic pressure of 90 mm Hg. Casts show a complete replication of all uterine vessels. The longitudinal muscle capillaries of the myometrium appear thicker and more closely spaced than those of the circular muscle. Capillary networks surrounding the endometrial glands are continuous with the complex subepithelial capillary plexus. The uterus undergoes large variations in diameter during the oestrous cycle, and the corresponding changes in the spatial arrangement of its vasculature are demonstrated. No new vessel growth was detected during the cycle. The vaso-activity of methyl methacrylate makes vessel diameter measurements from the casts unreliable. This and other problems relating to the physiological interpretation of corrosion casts are discussed in detail. This work provides a thorough description of the morphology and unique structural variability of the rat uterine vasculature during the oestrous cycle.

Animals↗

PubMed1990

Perceptual characteristics of consonant production by apraxic speakers.

Single-word repetitions by 4 brain-damaged adults with apraxia of speech (AOS) but without concomitant aphasia were transcribed using a standard narrow phonetic transcription system. Analysis of consonant productions yielded a profile of AOS slightly different from the traditionally accepted one. Among the results was the atypical finding that consonant distortions exceeded all other error types including sound substitutions. In addition, errors predominated in the medial position of words, and monosyllabic words had approximately the same error rate per number of consonants as did multisyllabic words. Results are discussed with reference to previous perceptual descriptions of AOS and in relationship to Broca's aphasia. Results are also interpreted relative to linguistic and motoric components of speech production models.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Parent participation in the care of hospitalized child in Thai and Western cultures.

This integrated literature review provides state-of-the-science information regarding parent participation in the care of hospitalized child. The database search revealed only 12 articles on this subject published between 1996-2002. Ganong's (1987) integrative research review process guided this study, and the matrix method of Garrard (1999) was modified to develop the data collection tool. The rules of inference for data analysis and interpretation were identified. Research outcomes were systematically analyzed and reported using a qualitative descriptive approach. Three major themes emerged from the investigation: parents, nurses, and child care interactions. As there were both similar and different findings between Thai and Western cultures, cultural differences regarding parent participation in the care of hospitalized child must be considered in future investigations. Because cultural competence in parent participation has not been well addressed in the literature, further research is needed to delineate the cultural underpinnings of parent participation in the care of hospitalized child.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2026

Public opinion survey on heritable human genome editing in South Africa: a study protocol.

Heritable human genome editing (HHGE) presents new possibilities for the prevention of genetic diseases but also raises ethical and societal questions. While international surveys have explored public attitudes, particularly in high-income countries, there is a lack of large-scale empirical data from the Global South. In South Africa, previous work used deliberative public engagement to examine public perspectives. The present study aims to complement this by capturing public opinion through a cross-sectional survey, enabling direct comparison with deliberative findings. This study will recruit 400 adult participants residing in South Africa using targeted Facebook advertisements. A two-phase sampling process will be employed: initial screening for demographic information, followed by stratified sampling to ensure a representative South African population. The opinion survey consists of 19 HHGE scenarios, each explored through private and public moral lenses. Additionally, participants will indicate their interpretation of 'safe and effective' genome editing. Quantitative data will be analysed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and logistic regression. Qualitative responses will undergo thematic analysis using both manual coding and generative AI tools under human oversight. The study includes two stages of informed consent and ensures data confidentiality through strict data handling protocols. Results will be disseminated in peer-reviewed journals and policy forums. The study will also generate a secondary dataset for evaluating AI-assisted qualitative analysis, to be conducted under separate ethical clearance.

Humans↗

PubMed1989

Incidence of childhood cancer in Denmark 1943-1984.

A population-based study was carried out on 5790 tumours in children (aged 0-14 years) diagnosed in the period 1943-1984 in Denmark. Cases were identified from the files of the high-quality National Cancer Registry in which codes for tumours were based solely on topography until the end of 1977. To achieve a uniform data set following the outlines of the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology (ICD-O) coding system used by the Cancer Registry today, all cases of childhood cancer diagnosed prior to 1978 were re-evaluated, and an ICD-O code was applied. Tumours were aggregated into diagnostic groups suitable for analysis and presentation using an internationally agreed scheme, which was designed by the Manchester Children's Tumour Registry and modified recently by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The average incidence rates for all histological types of childhood cancer combined were 137 per million boys and 111 per million girls, which are close to those reported from the USA but higher than most of the overall figures reported from Europe. The proportions of specific tumours were similar to those observed in other industrialized countries. The well known excess of cancer cases among boys compared to girls was due mainly to the occurrence of 90% more lymphomas, 30% more leukaemias and 15% more tumours of the central nervous system (CNS) among boys. Although significant increases were seen in the subgroups of CNS neoplasms and neuroblastomas (both sexes) and of lymphomas (boys only), no overall increase in childhood cancer was observed during the 42-year period of registration. While the increase in the incidence of CNS tumours was explained at least partly by better cancer surveillance, no interpretation can be offered for the increases seen for neuroblastomas and lymphomas. Our descriptive data suggest that environmental exposures do not play any significant role in the aetiology of the majority of childhood cancers.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Coarse-graining of cellular automata, emergence, and the predictability of complex systems.

We study the predictability of emergent phenomena in complex systems. Using nearest-neighbor, one-dimensional cellular automata (CA) as an example, we show how to construct local coarse-grained descriptions of CA in all classes of Wolfram's classification. The resulting coarse-grained CA that we construct are capable of emulating the large-scale behavior of the original systems without accounting for small-scale details. Several CA that can be coarse-grained by this construction are known to be universal Turing machines; they can emulate any CA or other computing devices and are therefore undecidable. We thus show that because in practice one only seeks coarse-grained information, complex physical systems can be predictable and even decidable at some level of description. The renormalization group flows that we construct induce a hierarchy of CA rules. This hierarchy agrees well with apparent rule complexity and is therefore a good candidate for a complexity measure and a classification method. Finally we argue that the large-scale dynamics of CA can be very simple, at least when measured by the Kolmogorov complexity of the large-scale update rule, and moreover exhibits a novel scaling law. We show that because of this large-scale simplicity, the probability of finding a coarse-grained description of CA approaches unity as one goes to increasingly coarser scales. We interpret this large-scale simplicity as a pattern formation mechanism in which large-scale patterns are forced upon the system by the simplicity of the rules that govern the large-scale dynamics.

Journal Article↗

PubMedDate not supplied

An international registry to compare quotidian dialysis regimens with conventional thrice-weekly hemodialysis: why, how, and potential pitfalls.

Thrice-weekly hemodialysis is the most commonly used form of renal replacement therapy, yet it is associated with unacceptably high morbidity and mortality. Attempts to improve outcomes for hemodialysis patients by increasing their per-session dose of dialysis have recently proven unsatisfactory in the multicentered Hemodialysis (HEMO) study. Interest has thus turned to increasing dialysis frequency. Short daily and long nocturnal dialysis, which are typically performed 6 days per week, are gaining acceptance and are associated with significant improvements in secondary outcomes, including nutrition, left ventricular hypertrophy, hypertension, anemia, and calcium-phosphorus balance. Studies to date have not been adequately powered to detect the survival benefits that these changes may confer. Large-scale randomized studies are planned, but will likely not answer the survival question for several years. Until this issue is resolved, funding policies are unlikely to change, confining current dialysis patients to potentially suboptimal therapy. By capturing data from current and future daily dialysis patients using an international registry, a survival benefit might be demonstrated more quickly. Such a project will soon be undertaken by the London Daily/Nocturnal Study Group with endorsement from the International Society for Hemodialysis and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. This database will also provide useful descriptive data that will help develop methodologies in this growing field. Historically the interpretation of dialysis registry data has been plagued with various methodological problems. These are briefly reviewed, and some potential solutions and necessary precautions are discussed.

Appointments and Schedules↗

PubMed1990

Attachment behavior at home and in the laboratory: Q-sort observations and strange situation classifications of one-year-olds.

This article reports Attachment Q-set data and Strange Situation classifications of 58 1-year-old middle-class infants. Security, dependency, and sociability were scored from Q-sort reports of home observations. The primary analyses involve comparisons between securely attached infants (Group B) and anxiously attached infants (Groups A and C combined). Additional analyses compare anxious-resistant with anxious-avoidant infants. Secure classification in the Strange Situation was associated with quality of secure-base behavior at home (i.e., higher Q-sort security scores) and with sociability, but not with dependency scores. Descriptive analyses of individual Q-set items support the secure-base interpretation of Strange Situation security classifications. Relations between home security scores and interactive behavior scores from the Strange Situation were also examined by multiple regression analysis.

Arousal↗

PubMed1996

Evaluation of various sets of acoustic cues for the perception of prevocalic stop consonants. II. Modeling and evaluation.

The purpose of the study presented in this paper and the accompanying paper [Smits et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 100, 3852-3864 (1996)] is to evaluate whether detailed or gross time-frequency structures are more relevant for the perception of prevocalic stop consonants. To this end, first a perception experiment was carried out with "burst-spliced" stop-vowel utterances. This experiment is described in the accompanying paper. The present paper describes the second part of the investigation, i.e., the simulation of the behavior of the listeners in the perception experiment. First, a number of detailed and gross cues are measured on the stimuli. Next, these cues are mapped onto the observed perceptual data using a formal model of human classification behavior. The results show that in all cases the detailed cues, such as formant transitions, give a better account of the perceptual data than the gross cues, such as the global spectral tilt and its initial change. The best-performing models are interpreted in terms of the acoustic boundaries which are associated with the perceived linguistic contrast. These boundaries are highly interpretable linear functions of five or six acoustic cues, which give a quantitative description of the often-discussed "trade-off" relation between the various cues for perception of place of articulation in stop consonants.

Humans↗

PubMed2004

Kinetic characterization of P-glycoprotein-mediated efflux of rhodamine 6G in the intact rabbit lung.

P-Glycoprotein (P-gp) is an ATP-dependent drug efflux transporter involved in multidrug resistance and drug disposition in many organ systems. A majority of P-gp substrates are lipophilic amine drugs which also exhibit rapid extensive accumulation in lung tissue. P-gp is expressed in lung tissue, and the very nature of this drug efflux mechanism suggests a moderating role in pulmonary drug disposition. Little is known about P-gp-mediated efflux out of lung tissue or its kinetic characteristics as they may relate to the impact of P-gp on pulmonary drug accumulation. The present study develops an experimental and kinetic model to characterize the kinetics of P-gp-mediated efflux of rhodamine 6G dye (R6G) out of the intact rabbit lung. The perfusate concentration of R6G with time during recirculation through an isolated perfused rabbit lung was measured, and 66.6 +/- 2.6% (S.E.) of the perfusate R6G was taken up by the lung. In the presence of P-gp inhibitors, R6G uptake increased significantly to 87.5 +/- 1.1% (P < 0.002), indicating a functional pulmonary P-gp efflux transporter. Fractional lung accumulation of R6G increased with increasing R6G perfusate concentration, a result consistent with saturation of an efflux transporter. A parsimonious three-compartment kinetic model of R6G pulmonary disposition was used to interpret data sets from experiments with different perfusion variables and to estimate parameters descriptive of the dominant kinetic processes involved in R6G pulmonary accumulation. The estimated value of the kinetic parameter, k(pgp), rate constant for P-gp-mediated R6G efflux, indicates that this transporter plays a significant role in moderating R6G pulmonary disposition.

ATP Binding Cassette Transporter, Subfamily B, Mem↗