Evidence for niche adaptation in the genome of the bovine pathogen Streptococcus uberis.

Background: Streptococcus uberis, a Gram positive bacterial pathogen responsible for a significant proportion of bovine mastitis in commercial dairy herds, colonises multiple body sites of the cow including the gut, genital tract and mammary gland. Comparative analysis of the complete genome sequence of S. uberis strain 0140J was undertaken to help elucidate the biology of this effective bovine pathogen.

Measuring observed mental state in acute psychiatric inpatients.

Background: Relationships within acute psychiatric units between patient-level experiences and events and fluctuations in mental state have rarely been examined.

Aim: Data from a multi-centre service evaluation (11 units, 5,546 admissions) were used to examine mental state patterns and associations with clinical characteristics, events and adverse incidents.

Method: During the 12-month evaluation period, nursing staff completed shift-level ratings using a new rating scale, the observed mental state (OMS) scale, which assessed active psychopathology (emotional distress, disinhibition, psychosis, cognitive impairment) and withdrawal (45,885 sets of day/afternoon shift ratings).

Reasoning anomalies associated with delusions in schizophrenia.

Deluded people differ from nondeluded controls on attributional style questionnaires and probabilistic-reasoning and theory-of-mind (ToM) tasks. No study to date has examined the relations between these 3 reasoning anomalies in the same individuals so as to evaluate their functional independence and potentially inform theories of delusion formation. We did so in 35 schizophrenic patients with a history of delusions, 30 of whom were currently deluded, and 34 healthy controls.

Structural consideration of the formation of the activation complex between the staphylokinase-like streptococcal plasminogen activator PadA and bovine plasminogen.

The characteristics of a streptococcal plasminogen activator (PA) displaying specificity for ruminant plasminogen (Plg) were defined using molecular approaches. The 16-kDa secreted protein PadA was found to be prevalent in Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies dysgalactiae isolated from cases of bovine mastitis and septic arthritis in lambs. PadA was able to activate bovine, ovine and caprine Plg, but not human Plg.

Taking the perspective of the other contributes to awareness of illness in schizophrenia.

Two approaches dominate research on the lack of awareness of illness that characterizes schizophrenia. The "deficit" approach uses standardized neuropsychological batteries to identify the neural underpinnings of intact insight; the "nondeficit" approach investigates the psychological defense mechanisms that motivate denial of illness. We adopt, instead, a cognitive neuropsychological approach to model the cognitive processes which underpin insight and which might be either damaged (because of neuropathology) or not used (because of motivational forces).

Adverse incidents in acute psychiatric inpatient units: rates, correlates and pressures.

Objective: This paper reports findings from a multicentre service evaluation project conducted in acute psychiatric inpatient units in NSW, Australia. Overall rates of aggression, absconding and early readmission are reported, as well as length-of-stay profiles and associations between these outcomes and selected sociodemographic and clinical characteristics routinely collected by health services.

Method: Data from the 11 participating units were collected for a 12month period from multiple sources, including electronic medical records, routine clinical modules, incident forms, and shift based project-specific logs.

Interpretation of standard leaching test BS EN 12457-2: is your sample hazardous or inert?

A slag sample from a lead refiner has been obtained and given to two analytical laboratories to determine the release of trace elements from the sample according to BS EN 12457-2. Samples analysed by one laboratory passed waste acceptance criteria, leading it to be classified as an inert material; samples of the same material analysed by the other laboratory failed waste acceptance criteria and were classified as hazardous. It was found that the sample preparation procedure is the critical step in the leaching analysis and that the effects of particle size on leachability should be taken into account when using this standard.

Psychomotor slowing in older patients with major depression: Relationships with blood flow in the caudate nucleus and white matter lesions.

[corrected] Selected structural and functional neuroimaging correlates of psychomotor slowing were examined [corrected] in older persons with depression. Clinical, neuropsychological, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) data were obtained for 32 persons with depression (mean age=55.5) and 17 controls (mean age = 55.

Willed action in schizophrenia.

This study examined stimulus-driven and willed action in schizophrenic patients and healthy controls using an easy finger-tap task and a more demanding peg-placement task under unimanual, bimanual and dual-task conditions. Peg-placement externally cued by a metronome was also examined, as were practice effects. Patients with marked negative symptoms placed fewer pegs unimanually with and without practice and benefited most from metronome-cueing.

Evaluating alternative hypotheses for the early evolution and diversification of ants.

Ants are the world's most diverse and ecologically dominant eusocial organisms. Resolving the phylogeny and timescale for major ant lineages is vital to understanding how they achieved this success. Morphological, molecular, and paleontological studies, however, have presented conflicting views on early ant evolution.

Serotonin transporter gene status predicts caudate nucleus but not amygdala or hippocampal volumes in older persons with major depression.

Background: Although the short allele of the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism (5-HTT) has been linked to increased risk of major depression in early adult life, its relationships with late-life depression and to changes in subcortical nuclei remain unclear.

Methods: 5-HTT genotypes (SS, SL, LL) were determined for 45 older persons with major depression (mean age=52.0, sd=12.

Differential BOLD responses to auditory target stimuli associated with a skin conductance response.

Background: The orienting reflex (OR) is a fundamental biological mechanism thought to reflect automatic adaptive processing of environmental stimuli necessary for successful interaction with the environment. It has been hypothesized that the OR is generated in response to novelty such as in the case where a mismatch results between an internal neuronal template stored in working memory and incoming stimuli. Recent blood oxygenated level dependant (BOLD) activation studies that have investigated networks involved in the processing of novelty have suggested the recruitment of a distributed limbic-neocortical network.

Empathetic perspective-taking is impaired in schizophrenia: evidence from a study of emotion attribution and theory of mind.

Introduction: Schizophrenia and autism are clinically distinct yet both disorders are characterised by theory of mind (ToM) deficits. Autistic individuals fail to appreciate false beliefs, yet understand the causal connections between behavioural events and simple emotions. Findings of this type have promoted the view that ToM deficits in autism reflect a domain-specific difficulty with appreciating the representational nature of epistemic mental states (i.

Axial and radial diffusivity in preterm infants who have diffuse white matter changes on magnetic resonance imaging at term-equivalent age.

Objective: Diffuse excessive high signal intensity (DEHSI) is observed in the majority of preterm infants at term-equivalent age on conventional MRI, and diffusion-weighted imaging has shown that apparent diffusion coefficient values are elevated in the white matter (WM) in DEHSI. Our aim was to obtain diffusion tensor imaging on preterm infants at term-equivalent age and term control infants to test the hypothesis that radial diffusivity was significantly different in the WM in preterm infants with DEHSI compared with both preterm infants with normal-appearing WM on conventional MRI and term control infants.

Methods: Diffusion tensor imaging was obtained on 38 preterm infants at term-equivalent age and 8 term control infants.

Impaired implicit sequence learning in depression: a probe for frontostriatal dysfunction?

Background: Implicit learning through motor sequencing tasks is sensitive to basal ganglia dysfunction. Consequently, it is ideally suited for testing elements of the frontostriatal model of major depression and performance can be related to key clinical, neuropsychological, vascular and biochemical data.

Method: Twenty-one subjects with moderate to severe unipolar depression and 21 age-, sex- and education-matched controls were recruited.

The role of opportunity in the unintentional introduction of nonnative ants.

A longstanding goal in the study of biological invasions is to predict why some species are successful invaders, whereas others are not. To understand this process, detailed information is required concerning the pool of species that have the opportunity to become established. Here we develop an extensive database of ant species unintentionally transported to the continental United States and use these data to test how opportunity and species-level ecological attributes affect the probability of establishment.

Attentional orienting triggered by gaze in schizophrenia.

The ability to detect the direction of another person's gaze and to shift our own attention reflexively in the same direction facilitates the sharing of attention with other people. Such sharing of attention would seem critical for the maintenance of normal social cognition. Social cognition is severely impaired in people with schizophrenia.

Externalizing and personalizing biases in persecutory delusions: the relationship with poor insight and theory-of-mind.

The presence of externalizing bias (EB) for negative events together with personalizing bias (PB) (a bias to blame others rather than circumstances) may jointly constitute a vulnerability to develop persecutory delusions (PDs). Whereas EB purportedly serves to defend a vulnerable self-concept by avoiding negative self-attributions and might therefore exacerbate poor insight, PB may reflect cognitive deficits, including theory-of-mind impairment. We investigated these proposals in 34 schizophrenic patients with a history of PDs and 21 healthy controls.

Auditory recovery cycle dysfunction in schizophrenia: a study using event-related potentials.

Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies reported evidence of impaired auditory information processing in patients with schizophrenia. The recovery cycle of the auditory N1 ERP component was measured in 17 patients with schizophrenia and 17 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers. Subjects performed a visual distraction task while listening to 80-dB SPL, 1000-Hz tone pairs, presented with intra-pair intervals of 1, 3, 5 or 7 s, with inter-pair intervals of 9-13 s.

Functional MRI BOLD response to Tower of London performance of first-episode schizophrenia patients using cortical pattern matching.

Due to its three-dimensional folding pattern, the human neocortex poses a challenge for accurate co-registration of grouped functional brain imaging data. The present study addressed this problem by employing three-dimensional continuum-mechanical image-warping techniques to derive average anatomical representations for co-registration of functional magnetic resonance brain imaging data obtained from 10 male first-episode schizophrenia patients and 10 age-matched male healthy volunteers while they performed a version of the Tower of London task. This novel technique produced an equivalent representation of blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response across hemispheres, cortical regions, and groups, respectively, when compared to intensity average co-registration, using a deformable Brodmann area atlas as anatomical reference.

Vascular risk and low serum B12 predict white matter lesions in patients with major depression.

Background: While patients with depression have been shown to have a greater incidence of vascular risk factors and structural brain changes, any association with dietary co-factors is unclear.

Methods: Forty-seven patients with major depression (mean age = 52.8 years, SD = 12.

Reduced hippocampal volumes and memory loss in patients with early- and late-onset depression.

Background: Hippocampal volume reduction has been reported inconsistently in people with major depression.

Aims: To evaluate the interrelationships between hippocampal volumes, memory and key clinical, vascular and genetic risk factors.

Method: Totals of 66 people with depression and 20 control participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging and clinical assessment.

Identification of multiple linear epitopes of the plasminogen activator A (PauA) of Streptococcus uberis with murine monoclonal antibodies.

Streptococcus (S.) uberis is a common cause of mastitis in cattle. A protein (PauA) secreted by this bacterium is capable of activating plasminogen from sheep and cattle.

Complex interactions between bovine plasminogen and streptococcal plasminogen activator PauA.

The interactions between bovine plasminogen and the streptococcal plasminogen activator PauA that culminate in the generation of plasmin are not fully understood. Formation of an equimolar activation complex comprising PauA and plasminogen by non-proteolytic means is a prerequisite to the recruitment of substrate plasminogen; however the determinants that facilitate these interactions have yet to be defined. A mutagenesis strategy comprising nested deletions and random point substitutions indicated roles for both amino and carboxyl-terminal regions of PauA and identified further essential residues within the alpha domain of the plasminogen activator.