Professional Practice Guidelines for Personality Assessment.

The current paper conveys guidelines for personality assessment developed by a work group formed by the Society for Personality Assessment (SPA), which are intended to serve as an aid for best practices specific to personality assessment for professionals, and a source of information for consumers and policy makers. The guidelines were developed after a careful and systematic review of the literature on personality assessment and examination of practice patterns, and were refined through multiple rounds of input from stakeholders including members of SPA and other professionals routinely conducting personality assessment. The guidelines address the scope of personality assessment and current practice trends, minimum education and training qualifications, ethical practices, diversity considerations, assessment procedures, and appropriate applications.

Flower consumption, ambient temperature and rainfall modulate drinking behavior in a folivorous-frugivorous arboreal mammal.

Water is vital for the survival of any species because of its key role in most physiological processes. However, little is known about the non-food-related water sources exploited by arboreal mammals, the seasonality of their drinking behavior and its potential drivers, including diet composition, temperature, and rainfall. We investigated this subject in 14 wild groups of brown howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba clamitans) inhabiting small, medium, and large Atlantic Forest fragments in southern Brazil.

Howler monkey tolerance to habitat shrinking: Lifetime warranty or death sentence?

Habitat loss and fragmentation are major threats to the conservation of nonhuman primates. Given that species differ in their responses to fragmented landscapes, identifying the factors that enable them to cope with altered environments or that cause their extirpation is critical to design conservation management strategies. Howler monkeys (Alouatta spp.

ATLANTIC-PRIMATES: a dataset of communities and occurrences of primates in the Atlantic Forests of South America.

Primates play an important role in ecosystem functioning and offer critical insights into human evolution, biology, behavior, and emerging infectious diseases. There are 26 primate species in the Atlantic Forests of South America, 19 of them endemic. We compiled a dataset of 5,472 georeferenced locations of 26 native and 1 introduced primate species, as hybrids in the genera Callithrix and Alouatta.

Outbreak of neurologic disease caused by equine herpesvirus-1 at a university equestrian center.

Background: Equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) infection causes neurologic disease in horses. However, risk factors for the disease and long-term prognosis are poorly characterized.

Hypothesis: There are identifiable risk factors for equine herpes-1 myeloencephalopathy.

Identification and preliminary clinical evaluation of a 50.8-kDa serum marker for prostate cancer.

Objectives: To identify a 50.8-kDa biomarker to perform a preliminary clinical evaluation of its utility as an aid in the early detection of prostate cancer.

Methods: The 50.

Expression of the human cachexia-associated protein (HCAP) in prostate cancer and in a prostate cancer animal model of cachexia.

Prostate cancer (CaP) patients with disseminated disease often suffer from severe cachexia, which contributes to mortality in advanced cancer. Human cachexia-associated protein (HCAP) was recently identified from a breast cancer library based on the available 20-amino acid sequence of proteolysis-inducing factor (PIF), which is a highly active cachectic factor isolated from mouse colon adenocarcinoma MAC16. Herein, we investigated the expression of HCAP in CaP and its potential involvement in CaP-associated cachexia.

Identification of the target of monoclonal antibody A6H as dipeptidyl peptidase IV/CD26 by LC MS\MS.

The monoclonal antibody (MAb) A6H, originally developed to fetal renal tissues, was found to be highly reactive to renal cell carcinoma and was subsequently demonstrated to co-stimulate a subpopulation of T cells. The A6H antigen had not been identified heretofore. Antigen from detergent extracts of renal cell carcinoma cells (7860) was immunoabsorbed with A6H-agarose, and the resin-bound proteins were separated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE).

Identification of prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) as the target of monoclonal antibody 107-1A4 by proteinchip; array, surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization (SELDI) technology.

Recently we described the generation of the prostate tissue-specific monoclonal antibody (MAb) 107-1A4, its expression pattern and preliminary targeting of human prostate cancer xenografts. In this report we demonstrate that the target antigen for MAb 107-1A4 is prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) using immunoaffinity absorption followed by SDS-PAGE and mass spectrometric analysis of peptides produced by in-gel tryptic digestion. The identity of the antigen has been confirmed by Western blots using MAbs of known specificity.

Pharmacokinetic interaction between single oral doses of diltiazem and sirolimus in healthy volunteers.

Aim And Background: The pharmacokinetic interaction between sirolimus, a macrolide immunosuppressant metabolized by CYP3A4, and the calcium channel blocker diltiazem was studied in 18 healthy subjects. Several clinically important interactions have previously been reported for other immunosuppressive drugs that are metabolized by the same enzyme and for calcium antagonists.

Methods: Healthy subjects who were 20 to 43 years old participated in an open, three-period, randomized, crossover study of the pharmacokinetics of a single 10-mg oral dose of sirolimus, a single oral 120-mg dose of diltiazem, and the two drugs given together.

Mechanistic studies of the effects of anti-factor H antibodies on complement-mediated lysis.

We have recently reported that complement factor H, a negative regulator of complement-mediated cytotoxicity, is produced and secreted by most bladder cancers. This observation was exploited in the development of the BTA stat and BTA TRAK diagnostic assays, both of which make use of two factor H-specific monoclonal antibodies in sandwich format. Here we show that both antibodies exert interesting effects on the biochemistry of complement activation in in vitro systems.

Complement factor H or a related protein is a marker for transitional cell cancer of the bladder.

The BTAstat and BTA TRAK tests are new immunoassays that detect and measure an antigen in the urine of individuals diagnosed with bladder cancer. As described in this report, the monoclonal antibodies used in these kits were developed by immunizing mice with partially purified protein preparations derived from the urine of patients with bladder cancer. The antigen that is recognized by the monoclonal antibodies was purified from the urine of bladder cancer patients by immunoaffinity chromatography and identified as being either complement factor H (FH) or a closely related protein (CFHrp) by partial amino acid sequence analysis.

Antigenic cross-reactivity of human tracheal mucin with human sperm and trophoblasts correlates with the expression of mucin 8 gene messenger ribonucleic acid in reproductive tract tissues.

Objective: To test whether autoimmunity to sperm in men with cystic fibrosis (CF) is a result of cross-reactivity between sperm and carbohydrate sequences of the abnormal CF mucins, we investigated the possible epitope sharing between sperm surface antigens and CF mucin antigens using specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) directed to purified CF tracheobronchial mucin-1 (HTM-1) and the expression of tracheal mucin 8 gene (MUC8) mRNA in normal male and female reproductive tract tissues by Northern blot analysis.

Design: A panel of mAbs directed to HTM-1 subspecies (types I to V) and polyclonal antibodies (pAb) to native and deglycosylated HTM-1 were tested for their ability to agglutinate motile sperm. An indirect immunofluorescence assay was used to detect expression of cross-reactive HTM-1 epitopes on sperm, term placenta (n = 3), and purified trophoblasts (n = 9).

PR92 antigen in human prostate fluid: elevated levels in prostate cancer.

In this preliminary study, we report that an enzyme-linked immunofluorescence assay (EFLA) was developed for the determination of PR92 antigen in prostatic fluid, utilizing anti-PR92 monoclonal antibody. Fluid samples from 64 patients were assayed. PR92 antigen was expressed as unit per microgram (U/microgram) of prostatic fluid proteins.

OVX1 as a marker for early stage endometrial carcinoma.

Background: Endometrial carcinoma is generally diagnosed only after the onset of postmenopausal bleeding. Although most patients with Stage I disease can be cured, the prognosis worsens significantly when the tumor is no longer confined to the uterine corpus. Serum CA 125 is elevated in only 10-20% cases of Stage I and II endometrial carcinoma.

OVX1 radioimmunoassay complements CA-125 for predicting the presence of residual ovarian carcinoma at second-look surgical surveillance procedures.

Purpose: At second-look surgical surveillance procedures, normal CA-125 levels can be associated with persistent disease in 50% to 60% of patients. A novel radioimmunoassay (RIA) has been evaluated for the ability to identify patients with persistent disease who have normal levels of CA-125.

Materials And Methods: The OVX1 double-determinant assay used a murine monoclonal antibody to detect an epitope on a high-molecular weight mucin-like glycoprotein.

Flow cytometric quantitation of the expression of membrane cofactor protein as a marker for the human sperm acrosome reaction.

A mAb (TRA-2-10, IgG1) to an embryonal carcinoma cell line (2102ep) that recognizes an antigen termed membrane cofactor protein (CD 46, TLX antigen) binds to human sperm after chemical induction of acrosomal loss by Ca2+ ionophore. An indirect immunofluorescence assay was developed in which sperm membrane cofactor protein was detected by flow cytometry on acrosome-reacted living human sperm. The expression of the membrane cofactor protein antigen on acrosome-reacted sperm may represent a marker that can be used in a rapid, quantitative, and reproducible flow cytometric assay for the evaluation of human sperm acrosomal loss.

Preparation of synthetic polypeptide domains of carcinoembryonic antigen and their use in epitope mapping.

Genes encoding the four principal polypeptide domains (N, A1-B1, A2-B2, and A3-B3) of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) were synthesized and expressed in Escherichia coli as fusion products with bacterial CMP-KDO synthetase (CKS). The four synthetic fusion proteins were purified in high yield and used as targets in Western blots for 11 anti-CEA MAbs and to compete with immobilized CEA for binding to four of these MAbs. Each of the MAbs showed strong binding to one or more of the fusion proteins.

A randomized study of SMS 201-995 versus bromocriptine treatment in acromegaly: clinical and biochemical effects.

Twenty-six acromegalic patients were randomized to treatment with either SMS 201-995 or bromocriptine in increasing doses and were investigated before treatment, after 2, 4, and 8 weeks of treatment, and 2 weeks after discontinuation of treatment. There were two dropouts from the bromocriptine group and one from the SMS 201-995 group. Amelioration of clinical signs and symptoms was seen in both groups during treatment.

Induction of a rat T cell lymphoma-leukemia by magnesium deficiency--a study of fetal defense against maternal neoplasia.

If Sprague-Dawley rats, 25-30 days old, are fed a diet containing 4-5 mg% of Mg, about 25% of survivors develop a large tumor of the thymus within 6-12 weeks. The tumor is composed of lymphoblasts, which seem to arise from the thymic reticuloendothelial system and, at times, disseminate as an acute T cell lymphoma-leukemia of unknown etiology. If the tumor cells are transmitted intraperitoneally to rats, 14-16 days pregnant, a local invasive and generalized disease is established in the mother but not in the fetuses or their domain.