A Hemimysis-driven novel ecosystem at a modified rubble-mound breakwater: An Engineering With Nature® Demonstration Project.

The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) repairs aging breakwater structures as part of routine maintenance to maintain safe navigation in Great Lakes commercial ports. A USACE repair to an existing breakwater structure in Milwaukee Harbor (WI) implementing Engineering With Nature (EWN) principles created complex rocky habitat by strategically placing cobble-sized stone over conventional 5.4 to 9.

Decreasing referrals to transient ischaemic attack clinics during the COVID-19 outbreak: results from a multicentre cross-sectional survey.

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic is having major implications for stroke care with a documented significant fall in hospital acute stroke admissions. We investigated whether COVID-19 has resulted in a decreased number of referrals to the transient ischaemic attack (TIA) clinics across the North West London region.

Setting And Design: All the TIA clinical leads of the North West London region received an invitation by email to participate in an online survey in May 2020.

Species identity matters when interpreting trophic markers in aquatic food webs.

In aquatic systems, food web linkages are often assessed using diet contents, stable isotope ratios, and, increasingly, fatty acid composition of organisms. Some correlations between different trophic metrics are assumed to be well-supported; for example, particular stable isotope ratios and fatty acids seem to reflect reliance on benthic or pelagic energy pathways. However, understanding whether the assumed correlations between different trophic metrics are coherent and consistent across species represents a key step toward their effective use in food web studies.

Device closure for patent foramen ovale following cryptogenic stroke: a survey of current practice in the UK.

Patent foramen ovale (PFO) closure for cryptogenic stroke remains controversial due to a lack of conclusive randomised controlled data. Many experts feel PFO closure is indicated in selected cases; however, national and international guideline recommendations differ. We surveyed the UK cardiologists, stroke physicians and neurologists, seeking to determine specialist interpretation of the evidence base, and to gain an insight into the current UK practice.

Regularity underlies erratic population abundances in marine ecosystems.

The abundance of a species' population in an ecosystem is rarely stationary, often exhibiting large fluctuations over time. Using historical data on marine species, we show that the year-to-year fluctuations of population growth rate obey a well-defined double-exponential (Laplace) distribution. This striking regularity allows us to devise a stochastic model despite seemingly irregular variations in population abundances.

Extended phenotypic spectrum of KIF5A mutations: From spastic paraplegia to axonal neuropathy.

Objective: To establish the phenotypic spectrum of KIF5A mutations and to investigate whether KIF5A mutations cause axonal neuropathy associated with hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) or typical Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 2 (CMT2).

Methods: KIF5A sequencing of the motor-domain coding exons was performed in 186 patients with the clinical diagnosis of HSP and in 215 patients with typical CMT2. Another 66 patients with HSP or CMT2 with pyramidal signs were sequenced for all exons of KIF5A by targeted resequencing.

Nearshore energy subsidies support Lake Michigan fishes and invertebrates following major changes in food web structure.

Aquatic food webs that incorporate multiple energy channels (e.g., nearshore benthic and pelagic) with varying productivity and turnover rates convey stability to biological communities by providing independent energy sources.

Sniffing out a hidden cause of breathlessness.

A 78-year-old man presented with severe exertional dyspnoea. He suffered from mild chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive cardiac failure and seropositive myasthaenia gravis. Clinical examination of his chest and heart were unremarkable but he had speech dyspnoea and was unable to count to 20 in a single breath.

Multi-criteria decision analysis of test endpoints for detecting the effects of endocrine active substances in fish full life cycle tests.

Fish full life cycle (FFLC) tests are increasingly required in the ecotoxicological assessment of endocrine active substances. However, FFLC tests have not been internationally standardized or validated, and it is currently unclear how such tests should best be designed to provide statistically sound and ecologically relevant results. This study describes how the technique of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was used to elicit the views of fish ecologists, aquatic ecotoxicologists and statisticians on optimal experimental designs for assessing the effects of endocrine active chemicals on fish.

Chemical amplification in an invaded food web: seasonality and ontogeny in a high-biomass, low-diversity ecosystem.

The global spread of invasive species is changing the structure of aquatic food webs worldwide. The North American Great Lakes have proved particularly vulnerable to this threat. In nearshore areas, invasive benthic species such as dreissenid mussels and round gobies (Neogobius melanostomus) have gained dominance in recent years.

CSF neurofilaments in frontotemporal dementia compared with early onset Alzheimer's disease and controls.

Background: Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is pathologically heterogeneous, sometimes revealing intraneuronal inclusions of neurofilaments. We therefore measured CSF neurofilament profiles in patients with FTD, patients with early onset Alzheimer's disease (EAD) and healthy control subjects to explore the discriminative potential of CSF neurofilaments compared with the existing CSF biomarkers amyloid-beta(1-42), tau and tau phosphorylated at threonine-181.

Methods: CSF levels of light chain, heavy chain and hyperphosphorylated heavy chain neurofilaments (NfL, t-NfH and P-NfH) were compared between 17 subjects with FTD, 20 with EAD and 25 cognitively healthy controls.

The natural history of Alzheimer disease: a longitudinal presymptomatic and symptomatic study of a familial cohort.

Background: Knowledge of the evolution of cognitive deficits in Alzheimer disease is important for our understanding of disease progression. Previous reports, however, have either lacked detail or have not covered the presymptomatic stages.

Objective: To delineate the onset and progression of clinical and neuropsychological abnormalities in familial Alzheimer disease.

Evidence of a founder effect in families with frontotemporal dementia that harbor the tau +16 splice mutation.

The +16 exon 10 splice mutation of the tau gene (microtubule-associated protein tau, MAPT) has been reported in numerous families with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). To date, the majority of these families are from England and Wales in the UK, although families with this mutation have been reported from Australia and the USA. Our own analysis has identified eight families with the +16 MAPT splice mutation from around the Manchester and North Wales areas of the UK.

Change in rates of cerebral atrophy over time in early-onset Alzheimer's disease: longitudinal MRI study.

The extent to which cerebral atrophy in Alzheimer's disease changes with time is unknown. We used multiple MRI scans to measure progression of cerebral atrophy in 12 patients with Alzheimer's disease who were followed up from a presymptomatic stage through to moderately severe dementia. Analysis with hierarchical regression models with quadratic terms in time provided evidence of increasing yearly percentage losses in brain volume.

Assessing the onset of structural change in familial Alzheimer's disease.

Regional and global cerebral atrophy are inevitable features of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We assessed volumes and atrophy rates of brain structures in patients with familial AD during the period that they developed symptoms. Five patients with presymptomatic AD and 20 controls had two or more annual volumetric MRI brain scans.