Oxytocin versus carbetocin at elective Cesarean delivery in parturients with class III obesity: a double-blind randomized controlled noninferiority trial.

Purpose: Class III obesity (body mass index [BMI] ≥ 40 kg·m) is associated with high rates of Cesarean deliveries and postpartum hemorrhage, with increased maternal and fetal morbidity. The doses of oxytocin and carbetocin are two to four times higher at Cesarean delivery in patients with class III obesity. We sought to investigate the efficacy of carbetocin 80 µg iv compared with oxytocin 1 IU iv (plus infusion) at elective Cesarean delivery in parturients with class III obesity.

Maintenance infusion rate of oxytocin after initial 1-IU bolus for elective Cesarean delivery: a dose-finding study.

Purpose: The purpose of our study was to determine the minimum effective dose of oxytocin maintenance infusion required to maintain adequate uterine tone in 90% of patients (ED) after administration of the initial bolus at elective Cesarean delivery (CD) under spinal anesthesia.

Methods: We conducted a prospective, double-blind dose-finding study with biased coin up-down design. Immediately after delivery, a 1-IU oxytocin bolus was administered, followed by a maintenance infusion.

The Impact of Estrogen-Suppressing Contraceptives on Behavioral and Functional Difficulties in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by rapidly shifting emotional, interpersonal, and behavioral symptoms, and is often co-morbid with mood and anxiety disorders. Females are more likely to be diagnosed with BPD than males and exhibit greater functional impairment. Hormonal fluctuations, particularly in estrogen levels, may influence the manifestation of BPD symptoms.

Evaluation of magnetic resonance imaging for bladder cancer detection following transurethral resection of bladder tumour (TURBT).

Purpose: To evaluate the performance of MRI for detection of bladder cancer following transurethral resection of bladder tumour (TURBT).

Methods: This single-centre retrospective study included forty-one consecutive patients with bladder cancer who underwent bladder MRI after TURBT. Two uroradiologists retrospectively assessed the presence of tumour using bladder MRI with and without DWI (diffusion weighted imaging) using a five-point Likert scale.

Neural mechanisms of visual motion extrapolation.

Because neural processing takes time, the brain only has delayed access to sensory information. When localising moving objects this is problematic, as an object will have moved on by the time its position has been determined. Here, we consider predictive motion extrapolation as a fundamental delay-compensation strategy.

Exploring the extent to which shared mechanisms contribute to motion-position illusions.

Motion-position illusions (MPIs) are visual motion illusions in which motion signals bias the perceived position of an object. Due to phenomenological similarities between these illusions, previous research has assumed that some are caused by common mechanisms. However, this assumption has yet to be directly tested.

Methodological Challenges in Group-based Randomised Controlled Trials for Intimate Partner Violence Perpetrators: A Meta-summary.

Evidence for treatment effects of group-based Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) perpetrators programmes remains, at best, inconclusive. In the present review, systematic/meta-analytic reviews were used to identify randomised controlled trials and a meta-summary approach was employed to identify methodological challenges in the design and conduct of these trials. Of the fifteen studies identified, seven were comparative effectiveness trials.

Visual Information Is Predictively Encoded in Occipital Alpha/Low-Beta Oscillations.

Hierarchical predictive coding networks are a general model of sensory processing in the brain. Under neural delays, these networks have been suggested to naturally generate oscillatory activity in approximately the α frequency range (∼8-12 Hz). This suggests that α oscillations, a prominent feature of EEG recordings, may be a spectral "fingerprint" of predictive sensory processing.

Comparative effectiveness of psychological interventions for treating the psychological consequences of sexual abuse in children and adolescents: a network meta-analysis.

Background: Following sexual abuse, children and young people may develop a range of psychological problems, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and a range of behaviour problems. Those working with children and young people experiencing these problems may use one or more of a range of psychological approaches.

Objectives: To assess the relative effectiveness of psychological interventions compared to other treatments or no treatment controls, to overcome psychological consequences of sexual abuse in children and young people up to 18 years of age.

Advancing early warning capabilities with CHIRPS-compatible NCEP GEFS precipitation forecasts.

CHIRPS-GEFS is an operational data set that provides daily bias-corrected forecasts for next 1-day to ~15-day precipitation totals and anomalies at a quasi-global 50-deg N to 50-deg S extent and 0.05-degree resolution. These are based on National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Ensemble Forecast System version 12 (GEFS v12) precipitation forecasts.

Cell-Free Total Biosynthesis of Plant Terpene Natural Products using an Orthogonal Cofactor Regeneration System.

Here we report the one-pot, cell-free enzymatic synthesis of the plant monoterpene nepetalactol starting from the readily available geraniol. A pair of orthogonal cofactor regeneration systems permitted NAD-dependent geraniol oxidation followed by NADPH-dependent reductive cyclization without isolation of intermediates. The orthogonal cofactor regeneration system maintained a high ratio of NAD to NADH and a low ratio of NADP to NADPH.

An initial 'snapshot' of sensory information biases the likelihood and speed of subsequent changes of mind.

We often need to rapidly change our mind about perceptual decisions in order to account for new information and correct mistakes. One fundamental, unresolved question is whether information processed prior to a decision being made ('pre-decisional information') has any influence on the likelihood and speed with which that decision is reversed. We investigated this using a luminance discrimination task in which participants indicated which of two flickering greyscale squares was brightest.

Tracking dynamic adjustments to decision making and performance monitoring processes in conflict tasks.

How we exert control over our decision-making has been investigated using conflict tasks, which involve stimuli containing elements that are either congruent or incongruent. In these tasks, participants adapt their decision-making strategies following exposure to incongruent stimuli. According to conflict monitoring accounts, conflicting stimulus features are detected in medial frontal cortex, and the extent of experienced conflict scales with response time (RT) and frontal theta-band activity in the Electroencephalogram (EEG).

A slow rainy season onset is a reliable harbinger of drought in most food insecure regions in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Since 2015, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has experienced an unprecedented rise in acute food insecurity (AFI), and current projections for the year 2020 indicate that more than 100 million Africans are estimated to receive emergency food assistance. Climate-driven drought is one of the main contributing factors to AFI, and timely and appropriate actions can be taken to mitigate impacts of AFI on lives and livelihoods through early warning systems. To support this goal, we use observations of peak Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as an indicator of seasonal drought conditions following a rainy season to show that delays in the onset of the rainy season (onset date) can be an effective early indicator of seasonal drought conditions.

Perceptual change-of-mind decisions are sensitive to absolute evidence magnitude.

To navigate the world safely, we often need to rapidly 'change our mind' about decisions. Current models assume that initial decisions and change-of-mind decisions draw upon common sources of sensory evidence. In two-choice scenarios, this evidence may be 'relative' or 'absolute'.

Perceptual decision confidence is sensitive to forgone physical effort expenditure.

Contemporary theoretical accounts of metacognition propose that action-related information is used in the computation of perceptual decision confidence. We investigated whether the amount of expended physical effort, or the 'motoric sunk cost' of a decision, influences perceptual decision confidence judgements in humans. In particular, we examined whether people feel more confident in decisions which required more effort to report.

Black Lives Matter: We are in the Same Storm but we are not in the Same Boat.

Black Lives Matter is a clarion call for racial equality and racial justice. With the arrival of Africans as slaves in 1619, a racial hierarchy was formed in the United States. However, slavery is commonly dismissed as that less than noble aspect of the United States' history without really confronting the legacies of racial inequality and racial injustice left in its wake.

Moral judgements of fairness-related actions are flexibly updated to account for contextual information.

In everyday life we are constantly updating our moral judgements as we learn new information. However, this judgement updating process has not been systematically studied. We investigated how people update their moral judgements of fairness-related actions of others after receiving contextual information regarding the deservingness of the action recipient.

Extensive heterogeneity in somatic mutation and selection in the human bladder.

The extent of somatic mutation and clonal selection in the human bladder remains unknown. We sequenced 2097 bladder microbiopsies from 20 individuals using targeted ( = 1914 microbiopsies), whole-exome ( = 655), and whole-genome ( = 88) sequencing. We found widespread positive selection in 17 genes.