Emotional and behavioral regulation has been linked to coping and enhancement motives and associated with different patterns of alcohol use and problems. The current studies examined emotional instability, urgency, and internal drinking motives as predictors of alcohol dependence symptoms as well as the likelihood and severity of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5th editionAlcohol Use Disorder (AUD). In Study 1, college drinkers (n = 621) completed alcohol involvement and behavioral/emotional functioning assessments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: National differences in cognitive health of older adults provide an opportunity to shed light on etiological factors. We compared the cognitive health of older adults in New Zealand and the USA, and examined differences in known risk factors.
Methods: Two nationally representative samples were derived from the 2010 waves of the New Zealand Longitudinal Study of Ageing (n = 953) and the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) (n = 3,746).
Br J Community Nurs
November 2014
Common symptoms at the end of life include pain, breathlessness, anxiety, respiratory secretions and nausea. National end-of-life care strategies advocate anticipatory prescribing for timely management of these symptoms to enhance patient care by preventing unnecessary distress. This study investigated the extent to which residents in eight Lothian care homes had anticipatory medications prescribed prior to death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA linear array of 16 Hall effect sensors has been developed to directly measure the poloidal magnetic field inside the boundary of a non-axisymmetric hybrid torsatron/tokamak plasma. The array consists of miniature gallium arsenide Hall sensor elements mounted 8 mm apart on a narrow, rotatable printed circuit board inserted into a re-entrant stainless steel tube sheathed in boron nitride. The sensors are calibrated on the bench and in situ to provide accurate local measurements of the magnetic field to aid in reconstructing the equilibrium plasma current density profiles in fully three-dimensional plasmas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe genome of a member of the phylum Chlorobi was assembled from a shotgun metagenomic sequence of a hot spring in Mammoth Lakes, CA. This organism appears to be a novel, aerobic, photosynthetic Chlorobi member, expanding the knowledge of this underrepresented phylum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: We assessed whether the original three-factor structure of the older adult CASP-12 Quality of Life (QOL) scale was stable for both indigenous and non-indigenous older adult populations in the same non-European country (i.e. New Zealand).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThermoanaerobaculum aquaticum MP-01(T) is currently the only cultivated and described member of Acidobacteria subdivision 23. Here, we report the genome sequence for this novel microorganism that was isolated from a hot spring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the present study, we searched for genes highly expressed in placenta and that could contribute to the establishment and maintenance of a malignant phenotype in different types of tumours, and in astrocytomas in particular. We employed a strategy based on the integration of in silico data from previously generated massively parallel signature sequencing and public serial analysis of gene expression databases. Among 12 selected genes, CD99 exhibited the highest relative mRNA expression in GBM compared to non-neoplastic brain tissues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTicks transmit various human and animal microbial pathogens and may harbour more than one pathogen simultaneously. Both viruses and bacteria can trigger, and may subsequently suppress, vertebrate host and arthropod vector anti-microbial responses. Microbial coinfection of ticks could lead to an advantage or disadvantage for one or more of the microorganisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMetaphyseal dysplasia, Spahr type (MDST; OMIM 250400) was described in 1961 based on the observation of four children in one family who had rickets-like metaphyseal changes but normal blood chemistry and moderate short stature. Its molecular basis and nosologic status remained unknown. We followed up on those individuals and diagnosed the disorder in an additional member of the family.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacteria associated with mammals are a rich source of microbial biodiversity; however, little is known concerning the abilities of these microbes to generate secondary metabolites. This report focuses on a bacterium isolated from the ear of a feral hog from southwestern Oklahoma, USA. The bacterium was identified as a new strain (PE36) of Brevibacillus latersporus, which was shown via genomic analysis to contain a large number of gene clusters presumably involved in secondary metabolite biosynthesis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCD8αβ plays crucial roles in the thymic selection, differentiation, and activation of some, but not all, CD8(+) T cells, whereas CD8αα does not. To investigate these roles, we produced mice that expressed transgene P14 T-cell receptor β (TCRβ) chain and CD8β or did not (WT and KO mice, respectively). The primary CD8(+) T-cell response to acute lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) infection was predominantly D(b)/GP33 specific and CD8 independent in KO mice and was mostly CD8 dependent in WT mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Understanding factors associated with alcohol-related consequences is an important area of research. Emotional functioning has been associated with alcohol-related consequences but there is less research examining a comprehensive underlying model of emotional regulation. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is a recent measure developed to assess six facets of emotion regulation difficulties that contribute to overall emotional functioning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLiterature suggests formative research is vital for those using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to study hidden populations of interest. However, few authors have described in detail how different qualitative methodologies can address the objectives of formative research for understanding the social network properties of the study population, selecting seeds and adapting survey logistics to best fit the population. In this paper we describe the use of community mapping exercises as a tool within focus groups to collect data on social and sexual network characteristics of gay and bisexual men in the metropolitan area of Vancouver, Canada.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigher alcohols such as n-butanol and n-hexanol have higher energy density than ethanol, are more compatible with current fuel infrastructure, and can be upgraded to jet and diesel fuels. Several organisms are known to convert syngas to ethanol, but very few can produce higher alcohols alone. As a potential solution, mixed culture fermentation between the syngas fermenting Alkalibaculum bacchi strain CP15 and propionic acid producer Clostridium propionicum was studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn emerging body of evidence suggests that intergenerational sexual partnerships may increase risk of HIV acquisition among young men who have sex with men (YMSM). However, no studies have comprehensively evaluated literature in this area. We applied a scoping review methodology to explore the relationships between age mixing, HIV risk behavior, and HIV seroconversion among YMSM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe hypothesis that evolvability - the capacity to evolve by natural selection - is itself the object of natural selection is highly intriguing but remains controversial due in large part to a paucity of direct experimental evidence. The antigenic variation mechanisms of microbial pathogens provide an experimentally tractable system to test whether natural selection has favored mechanisms that increase evolvability. Many antigenic variation systems consist of paralogous unexpressed 'cassettes' that recombine into an expression site to rapidly alter the expressed protein.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSyngas fermentation to fuels is a technology on the verge of commercialization. Low cost of fermentation medium is important for process feasibility. The use of corn steep liquor (CSL) instead of yeast extract (YE) in Alkalibaculum bacchi strain CP15 bottle fermentations reduced the medium cost by 27% and produced 78% more ethanol.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacteria require explicit control over their proteomes in order to compete and survive in dynamic environments. The Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi undergoes substantial protein profile changes during its cycling between vector ticks and vertebrate hosts. In an effort to understand regulation of these transitions, we recently isolated and functionally characterized the borrelial nucleic acid-binding protein BpuR, a PUR domain-containing protein.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Congenitally absent teeth may pose aesthetic and functional problems for patients. Treatment is often complex and involves a multidisciplinary team. Using retrospective data, the patient's pathway, when a combined orthodontic-restorative dentistry approach was used, will be summarized.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
September 2013
Objectives: We examined the interrelationships between ethnicity, gender, and caregiving on the health of older New Zealanders. We hypothesized that those providing higher levels of care and more care across time would have poorer health outcomes and that these relationships would be moderated by ethnicity and gender.
Method: A representative sample of participants (N = 2,155) aged 54-70 years from the first 2 waves of the New Zealand Health, Work and Retirement study completed postal surveys in 2006 and 2008.
The Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi lacks endogenous, surface-exposed proteases. In order to efficiently disseminate throughout the host and penetrate tissue barriers, borreliae rely on recruitment of host proteases, such as plasmin(ogen). Here we report the identification of a novel plasminogen-binding protein, BBA70.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe PUR domain is a nucleic acid-binding motif found in critical regulatory proteins of higher eukaryotes and in certain species of bacteria. During investigations into mechanisms by which the Lyme disease spirochete controls synthesis of its Erp surface proteins, it was discovered that the borrelial PUR domain protein, Bpur, binds with high affinity to double-stranded DNA adjacent to the erp transcriptional promoter. Bpur was found to enhance the effects of the erp repressor protein, BpaB.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA site-specific DNA-binding protein was purified from Borrelia burgdorferi cytoplasmic extracts, and determined to be a member of the highly conserved SpoVG family. This is the first time a function has been attributed to any of these ubiquitous bacterial proteins. Further investigations into SpoVG orthologues indicated that the Staphylococcus aureus protein also binds DNA, but interacts preferentially with a distinct nucleic acid sequence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn 'anomalous' negative flux, in which carbon dioxide (CO2) enters rather than is released from the ground, was studied in a saline/alkaline soil. Soil sterilization disclosed an inorganic process of CO2 dissolution into (during the night) and out of (during the day) the soil solution, driven by variation in soil temperature. Experimental and modeling analysis revealed that pH and soil moisture were the most important determinants of the magnitude of this inorganic CO2 flux.
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