The spread of invasive species often follows a jump-dispersal pattern. While jumps are typically fostered by humans, local dispersal can occur due to the specific traits of a species, which are often poorly understood. This holds true for small hive beetles (Aethina tumida), which are parasites of social bee colonies native to sub-Saharan Africa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(1) Background: The Wechsler intelligence scales are very popular in clinical practice and for research purposes. However, they are time consuming to administer. Therefore, researchers and psychologists have explored the possibility of shorter test battery compositions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is commonly used as a biological control agent (BCA) to control insect pests in edible plant production and can as such be introduced into the food chain of fresh produce. Using standard food diagnostics Bt will be detected and reported as presumptive B. cereus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(Bt), used as a biological control agent (BCA), can persist on plants, and from there can be introduced into the final food product. In routine food safety diagnostics, these Bt residues cannot be distinguished from natural populations of present in plants and all are enumerated as "presumptive ." In this study, information on eventual use of Bt biopesticides, brand, application times and intervals provided by three food processing companies in Belgium, were integrated with quantitative data on presumptive measured from fresh to frozen food products.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComplaints pertaining to memory functioning are among the most often reported cognitive symptoms in patients with epilepsy. However, research suggests a considerable mismatch between patients' perception of memory functioning and the objective performance as measured with standardized neuropsychological tests. Depressive mood might be an important factor in explaining this discrepancy, though other variables have also occasionally been reported as relevant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: People with gliomas need specialized neurosurgical, neuro-oncological, psycho-oncological, and neuropsychological care. The role of language and cognitive recovery and rehabilitation in patients' well-being and resumption of work is crucial, but there are no clear guidelines for the ideal timing and character of assessments and interventions. The goal of the present work was to describe representative (neuro)psychological practices implemented after brain surgery in Europe.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacteria are part of the insect gut system and influence many physiological traits of their host. Gut bacteria may even reduce or block the transmission of arboviruses in several species of arthropod vectors. Culicoides biting midges are important arboviral vectors of several livestock and wildlife diseases, yet limited information is available on their gut bacterial communities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAbout one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) is the gold standard for the identification of "eloquent" areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe phylogeny, identification, and characterization of 33 isolates originating from 17 agricultural soils from 11 countries were analyzed on the basis of whole genome sequencing. Phylogenetic analyses revealed all isolates are divided into six groups, which follows the generally accepted phylogenetic division of isolates. Four different identification methods resulted in a variation in the identity of the isolates, as none of the isolates were identified as the same species by all four methods-only the recent identification method proposed directly reflected the phylogeny of the isolates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacterial blotch is one of the most economically important diseases of button 'mushroom. Knowledge of mechanisms of disease expression, inoculum thresholds, and disease management is limited to the most well-known pathogen, . Recent outbreaks in Europe have been attributed to '' and for ginger and brown blotch, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacterial blotch is a group of economically important diseases of the common button mushroom (). Once the pathogens are introduced to a farm, mesophilic growing conditions (that are optimum for mushroom production) result in severe and widespread secondary infections. Efficient, timely and quantitative detection of the pathogens is hence critical for the design of localized control strategies and prediction of disease risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is accumulating evidence for considerable overlap in preoperatively affected cognitive functions in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE). The current study investigated whether it is possible to differentiate between patients with FLE and TLE prior to surgery, based on measures of verbal memory and executive functioning. Furthermore, the postoperative cognitive development was compared.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study explored the impact of motivation on the memory for delayed intentions (so-called, prospective memory, PM) in autistic individuals. Specifically, we were interested in the effects of personal (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDystrophin is an important protein within the central nervous system. The absence of dystrophin, characterizing Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), is associated with brain related comorbidities such as neurodevelopmental (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFunctional neuroimaging studies suggest a role for the left angular gyrus (AG) in processes related to memory recognition. However, results of neuropsychological and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have been inconclusive regarding the specific contribution of the AG in recollection, familiarity, and the subjective experience of memory. To obtain further insight into this issue, 20 healthy right-handed volunteers performed a memory task in a single-blind within-subject controlled TMS study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOf the triad of symptoms found in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), that is, social impairments, communication difficulties and repetitive interests and behaviour, the social impairments are the most stable and common throughout the lifespan. They typically manifest themselves in abnormalities as reciprocal interactions and difficulties in the expression and recognition of emotions. Although peer interactions become especially important during adolescence, little is known about the mentalizing abilities of high-functioning adolescents with ASD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is mainly characterized by functional and communication impairments as well as restrictive and repetitive behavior. The leading hypothesis for the neural basis of autism postulates globally abnormal brain connectivity, which can be assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Even in the absence of a task, the brain exhibits a high degree of functional connectivity, known as intrinsic, or resting-state, connectivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: This longitudinal study examined differences in the development of working memory (WM) between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. Further, it explored to what extent language at ages 7-8 years could be predicted by measures of language and/or WM at ages 4-5 years.
Method: Thirty children with SLI and 33 TD children who were previously examined on measures of WM and language at ages 4-5 years (T1) were reexamined at ages 7-8 years (T2).
Aim: People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) typically have deficits in the working memory (WM) system. WM is found to be an essential chain in successfully navigating in the social world. We hypothesize that brain networks for WM have an altered network integrity in ASD compared to controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Neuropsychol
February 2018
Objective: Since the publication of the WAIS-IV in the U.S. in 2008, efforts have been made to explore the structural validity by applying factor analysis to various samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe glutaraldehyde fixation technique for bioprosthetic tissue valves has been used for about 30 years. It is more or less generally recognized, however, that a solution to the ongoing problems of calcification and immunomodulated inflammation can only be achieved with the development of alternative fixation techniques that differ from fixation with glutaraldehyde. This review reports on the chemistry behind newly developed tissue-fixation processes and the preliminary results achieved with these.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious studies have suggested that alterations in excitatory/inhibitory neurotransmitters might play a crucial role in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-MRS) can provide valuable information about abnormal brain metabolism and neurotransmitter concentrations. However, few H-MRS studies have been published on the imbalance of the two most abundant neurotransmitters in ASD: glutamate (Glu) and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Poor performance on confrontation naming tasks by children and adolescents with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy has been interpreted as indicating impairments of lexicon, that is, the store of words in long-term memory. However, confrontation naming performance crucially depends not only on word knowledge but also on other functions such as fluency. We applied an alternative method to assess lexicon with the aim of tracing deficits in lexicon before and after surgery in adolescents with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy.
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