Amyloid-PET imaging predicts functional decline in clinically normal individuals.

Background: There is good evidence that elevated amyloid-β (Aβ) positron emission tomography (PET) signal is associated with cognitive decline in clinically normal (CN) individuals. However, it is less well established whether there is an association between the Aβ burden and decline in daily living activities in this population. Moreover, Aβ-PET Centiloids (CL) thresholds that can optimally predict functional decline have not yet been established.

Investigating reliable amyloid accumulation in Centiloids: Results from the AMYPAD Prognostic and Natural History Study.

Introduction: To support clinical trial designs focused on early interventions, our study determined reliable early amyloid-β (Aβ) accumulation based on Centiloids (CL) in pre-dementia populations.

Methods: A total of 1032 participants from the Amyloid Imaging to Prevent Alzheimer's Disease-Prognostic and Natural History Study (AMYPAD-PNHS) and Insight46 who underwent [F]flutemetamol, [F]florbetaben or [F]florbetapir amyloid-PET were included. A normative strategy was used to define reliable accumulation by estimating the 95 percentile of longitudinal measurements in sub-populations (N = 101/750, N = 35/382) expected to remain stable over time.

Recruitment of pre-dementia participants: main enrollment barriers in a longitudinal amyloid-PET study.

Background: The mismatch between the limited availability versus the high demand of participants who are in the pre-dementia phase of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a bottleneck for clinical studies in AD. Nevertheless, potential enrollment barriers in the pre-dementia population are relatively under-reported. In a large European longitudinal biomarker study (the AMYPAD-PNHS), we investigated main enrollment barriers in individuals with no or mild symptoms recruited from research and clinical parent cohorts (PCs) of ongoing observational studies.

The amyloid imaging for the prevention of Alzheimer's disease consortium: A European collaboration with global impact.

Background: Amyloid-β (Aβ) accumulation is considered the earliest pathological change in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Amyloid Imaging to Prevent Alzheimer's Disease (AMYPAD) consortium is a collaborative European framework across European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Associations (EFPIA), academic, and 'Small and Medium-sized enterprises' (SME) partners aiming to provide evidence on the clinical utility and cost-effectiveness of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging in diagnostic work-up of AD and to support clinical trial design by developing optimal quantitative methodology in an early AD population.

The Amypad Studies: In the Diagnostic and Patient Management Study (DPMS), 844 participants from eight centres across three clinical subgroups (245 subjective cognitive decline, 342 mild cognitive impairment, and 258 dementia) were included.

Protein Kinase C Epsilon Is a Key Regulator of Mitochondrial Redox Homeostasis in Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

The intracellular redox environment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells is often highly oxidized compared to healthy hematopoietic progenitors and this is purported to contribute to disease pathogenesis. However, the redox regulators that allow AML cell survival in this oxidized environment remain largely unknown. Utilizing several chemical and genetically-encoded redox sensing probes across multiple human and mouse models of AML, we evaluated the role of the serine/threonine kinase PKC-epsilon (PKCε) in intracellular redox biology, cell survival and disease progression.

In vitro efficacy of dicationic compounds and mefloquine enantiomers against Echinococcus multilocularis metacestodes.

The current chemotherapy of alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is based on benzimidazoles such as albendazole and has been shown to be parasitostatic rather than parasiticidal, requiring lifelong duration. Thus, new and more efficient treatment options are urgently needed. By employing a recently validated assay based on the release of functional phosphoglucose isomerase (PGI) from dying parasites, the activities of 26 dicationic compounds and of the (+)- and (-)-erythro-enantiomers of mefloquine were investigated.

Testing the effects of a decision aid for prostate cancer screening.

There is an ever-growing trend toward more patient involvement in making health care decisions. This trend has been accompanied by the development of "informed decision-making" interventions to help patients become more engaged and comfortable with making these decisions. We describe the effects of a prostate cancer screening decision aid on knowledge, beliefs about screening, risk perception, control preferences, decisional conflict, and decisional anxiety.

Influence of a patient decision aid on decisional conflict related to PSA testing: a structural equation model.

Objective: To examine the impact of a decision aid (DA) designed to promote informed decision making for screening with the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test and to test a theoretical model of factors influencing decisional conflict.

Design: Structural equation modeling examined pathways between DA exposure, knowledge, schema, prostate cancer risk perceptions, decisional anxiety, and decisional conflict. Sample participants included 200 men from the general population (exclusive of African Americans) and 200 African American men.

The relationship between object files and conscious perception.

Object files (OFs) are hypothesized mid-level representations which mediate our conscious perception of persisting objects-e.g. telling us 'which went where'.

Forming and updating object representations without awareness: evidence from motion-induced blindness.

The input to visual processing consists of an undifferentiated array of features which must be parsed into discrete units. Here we explore the degree to which conscious awareness is important for forming such object representations, and for updating them in the face of changing visual scenes. We do so by exploiting the phenomenon of motion-induced blindness (MIB), wherein salient (and even attended) objects fluctuate into and out of conscious awareness when superimposed onto certain global motion patterns.

Seeing the disappearance of unseen objects.

Because of the massive amount of incoming visual information, perception is fundamentally selective. We are aware of only a small subset of our visual input at any given moment, and a great deal of activity can occur right in front of our eyes without reaching awareness. While previous work has shown that even salient visual objects can go unseen, here we demonstrate the opposite pattern, wherein observers perceive stimuli which are not physically present.

Divide and conquer: how object files adapt when a persisting object splits into two.

Coherent visual experience requires not only segmenting incoming visual input into a structured scene of objects, but also binding discrete views of objects into dynamic representations that persist across time and motion. However, surprisingly little work has explored the principles that guide the construction and maintenance of such persisting object representations. What causes a part of the visual field to be treated as the same object over time? In the cognitive development literature, a key principle of object persistence is cohesion: An object must always maintain a single bounded contour.

A draft sequence of the rice genome (Oryza sativa L. ssp. japonica).

The genome of the japonica subspecies of rice, an important cereal and model monocot, was sequenced and assembled by whole-genome shotgun sequencing. The assembled sequence covers 93% of the 420-megabase genome. Gene predictions on the assembled sequence suggest that the genome contains 32,000 to 50,000 genes.