Minimal risk in research involving pregnant women and fetuses.

The concept of minimal risk plays a key role in federal regulations on the protection of human research subjects. Although there has been considerable discussion of the meaning of minimal risk, the question of how this concept should be interpreted in research involving pregnant women and fetuses has not been addressed. This essay reviews the literature on minimal risk and argues for an interpretation of that concept in the context of research involving pregnant women and fetuses.

Regulatory and ethical issues for phase I in utero gene transfer studies.

Clinical gene transfer research has involved adult and child subjects, and it is expected that gene transfer in fetal subjects will occur in the future. Some genetic diseases have serious adverse effects on the fetus before birth, and there is hope that prenatal gene therapy could prevent such disease progression. Research in animal models of prenatal gene transfer is actively being pursued.

Abortion decisions as inclusion and exclusion criteria in research involving pregnant women and fetuses.

From the perspective of investigators conducting research involving pregnant women and fetuses, a woman's decision about whether to have an abortion can sometimes be relevant to the suitability of the woman and fetus as research subjects. However, prominent ethicists disagree over whether it is permissible for a woman's decision about abortion to be an inclusion or exclusion criterion for participation in research. A widely held view is that fetuses to be aborted and fetuses to be carried to term should be treated equally as research subjects.

Viral SELEX reveals individual and cooperative roles of the C-box and G-box in HIV-2 replication.

The 5' UTR of HIV-2 genomic RNA contains signaling motifs that regulate specific steps of the replication cycle. Two motifs of interest are the C-box and the G-box. The C-box is found in the 5' untranslated region upstream of the primer binding site, while the G-box is found downstream from the major splice donor site, encompassing the gag start codon and flanking nucleotides.

Mild traumatic brain injury: a Midwest survey of discharge teaching practices of emergency department nurses.

Research indicates that the assessment and discharge teaching practices for persons with traumatic brain injury are more focused on ruling out severe brain injury and informing the person about "red flags" warranting a return visit to the medical provider. Our primary purpose was to determine the extent to which discharge practices were aligned with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines contained within the Acute Concussion Evaluation care plan. Responses from 87 nurses (25.

Multiple virus infections occur in individual polygyne and monogyne Solenopsis invicta ants.

Concurrent infections of Solenopsis invicta colonies with S. invicta virus 1 (SINV-1), SINV-2, and SINV-3 has been reported. However, whether individual ants were capable of supporting multiple virus infections simultaneously was not known, nor whether the social form of the colony (polygyne or monogyne) had an influence on the occurrence of multiple infection rates in individual ants.

Embedded effort indicators on the California Verbal Learning Test - Second Edition (CVLT-II): an attempted cross-validation.

This study determined whether the logistic regression method that was recently developed by Wolfe and colleagues (2010) for the detection of invalid effort on the California Verbal Learning Test - Second Edition (CVLT-II) could be cross-validated in an independent sample of 100 consecutively referred patients with traumatic brain injury. Although the CVLT-II logistic regression formula demonstrated a statistically significant level of agreement with results from the Word Memory Test, it was associated with an unacceptably high proportion of false positives. The component variables of the logistic regression were sensitive to length of coma but did not covary with psychosocial complicating factors (e.

Criterion validity of the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) fluency subtests after traumatic brain injury.

The performance of 65 patients with complicated mild-severe traumatic brain injury was evaluated on the Verbal and Design Fluency subtests of the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), and compared with that of 65 demographically matched healthy controls. There were statistically significant group differences on Letter Fluency and Category Switching but not on any of the Design Fluency tasks. Combined, these two Verbal Fluency subtests had a classification accuracy of 65.

Conformational dynamics data bank: a database for conformational dynamics of proteins and supramolecular protein assemblies.

The conformational dynamics data bank (CDDB, http://www.cdyn.org) is a database that aims to provide comprehensive results on the conformational dynamics of high molecular weight proteins and protein assemblies.

Theoretical and practical problems with wide reflective equilibrium in bioethics.

Various theories have been put forward in an attempt to explain what makes moral judgments justifiable. One of the main theories currently advocated in bioethics is a form of coherentism known as wide reflective equilibrium. In this paper, I argue that wide reflective equilibrium is not a satisfactory approach for justifying moral beliefs and propositions.

Toward interaction of affective and cognitive contributors to creativity in bipolar disorders: a controlled study.

Background: Enhanced creativity in bipolar disorder patients may be related to affective and cognitive phenomena.

Methods: 32 bipolar disorder patients (BP), 21 unipolar major depressive disorder patients (MDD), 22 creative controls (CC), and 42 healthy controls (HC) (all euthymic) completed the Revised Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory (NEO), the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego Autoquestionnaire (TEMPS-A), the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI); the Barron-Welsh Art Scale (BWAS), the Adjective Check List Creative Personality Scale, and the Figural and Verbal Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Mean scores were compared across groups, and relationships between temperament/personality and creativity were assessed with bivariate correlation and hierarchical multiple linear regression.

Relationships between decisional balance and stage of adopting mammography and Pap testing among Chinese American women.

Background: The Transtheoretical Model has not been applied to explain cancer screening behavior among a large sample of Chinese Americans. This study examines the stage of adopting mammography and Pap testing in relation to women's decisional balance of cancer screening.

Methods: We surveyed a sample of 507 Chinese American women aged 50 and older in the DC area in 2003 and 2004.

A 5'UTR-spliced mRNA isoform is specialized for enhanced HIV-2 gag translation.

Full-length unspliced genomic RNA plays critical roles in HIV replication, serving both as mRNA for the synthesis of the key viral polyproteins Gag and Gag-Pol and as genomic RNA for encapsidation into assembling viral particles. We show that a second gag mRNA species that differs from the genomic RNA molecule by the absence of an intron in the 5' untranslated region (5'UTR) is produced during HIV-2 replication in cell culture and in infected patients. We developed a cotransfection system in which epitopically tagged Gag proteins can be traced back to their mRNA origins in the translation pool.

Initiation and elongation in fibrillation of ALS-linked superoxide dismutase.

Familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (fALS) caused by mutations in copper-zinc superoxide dismutase (SOD1) is characterized by the presence of SOD1-rich inclusions in spinal cords. Similar inclusions observed in fALS transgenic mice have a fibrillar appearance suggestive of amyloid structure. Metal-free apo-SOD1 is a relatively stable protein and has been shown to form amyloid fibers in vitro only when it has been subjected to severely destabilizing conditions, such as low pH or reduction of its disulfide bonds.

A critique of "the best secular argument against abortion".

Don Marquis has put forward a non-religious argument against abortion based on what he claims is a morally relevant similarity between killing adult human beings and killing fetuses. He asserts that killing adults is wrong because it deprives them of their valuable futures. He points out that a fetus's future includes everything that is in an adult's future, given that fetuses naturally develop into adults.

Regulation of primate lentiviral RNA dimerization by structural entrapment.

Background: Genomic RNA dimerization is an important process in the formation of an infectious lentiviral particle. One of the signals involved is the stem-loop 1 (SL1) element located in the leader region of lentiviral genomic RNAs which also plays a role in encapsidation and reverse transcription. Recent studies revealed that HIV types 1 and 2 leader RNAs adopt different conformations that influence the presentation of RNA signals such as SL1.