Development and validation of the Perceived Life Significance Scale.

A recent literature review of meaning and bereavement suggests a conceptual distinction between sense-making, or the integration of a loss with beliefs and narratives, and life significance, or perception of value associated with an aspect of one's life experience. The present study aims to develop and validate a new measure: the Perceived Life Significance Scale (PLSS). Exploratory (n = 353) and confirmatory (n = 483) factor analyses support three factors: active pursuit of goals and activities; emptiness/insignificance (reverse-scored); and receptivity to beauty in everyday life.

Electrochemical annealing of nanoporous gold by application of cyclic potential sweeps.

An electrochemical method for annealing the pore sizes of nanoporous gold (NPG) is reported. The pore sizes of NPG can be increased by electrochemical cycling with the upper potential limit being just at the onset of gold oxide formation. This study has been performed in electrolyte solutions including potassium chloride, sodium nitrate and sodium perchlorate.

Selective logging: does the imprint remain on tree structure and composition after 45 years?

Selective logging of tropical forests is increasing in extent and intensity. The duration over which impacts of selective logging persist, however, remains an unresolved question, particularly for African forests. Here, we investigate the extent to which a past selective logging event continues to leave its imprint on different components of an East African forest 45 years later.

Posterior brain white matter abnormalities in older adults with probable mild cognitive impairment.

Objective: Much of the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) neuroimaging literature has exclusively focused on regions associated with Alzheimer's disease. Little research has examined white matter abnormalities of other brain regions, including those associated with visual processing, despite evidence that other brain abnormalities appear in these regions in early disease stages.

Method: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was utilized to examine participants (n = 44) that completed baseline imaging as part of a longitudinal healthy aging study.

Protected areas in tropical Africa: assessing threats and conservation activities.

Numerous protected areas (PAs) have been created in Africa to safeguard wildlife and other natural resources. However, significant threats from anthropogenic activities and decline of wildlife populations persist, while conservation efforts in most PAs are still minimal. We assessed the impact level of the most common threats to wildlife within PAs in tropical Africa and the relationship of conservation activities with threat impact level.

Brain structure and cognitive correlates of body mass index in healthy older adults.

Obesity, commonly measured with body mass index (BMI), is associated with numerous deleterious health conditions including alterations in brain integrity related to advanced age. Prior research has suggested that white matter integrity observed using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is altered in relation to high BMI, but the integrity of specific white matter tracts remains poorly understood. Additionally, no studies have examined white matter tract integrity in conjunction with neuropsychological evaluation associated with BMI among older adults.

Fiber bundle length and cognition: a length-based tractography MRI study.

Executive function (EF) and cognitive processing speed (CPS) are two cognitive performance domains that decline with advanced age. Reduced EF and CPS are known to correlate with age-related frontal-lobe volume loss. However, it remains unclear whether white matter microstructure in these regions is associated with age-related decline in EF and/or CPS.

Men's and Women's Interpretation and Endorsement of Items Measuring Self-Reported Heterosexual Aggression.

Early research on sexual aggression (e.g., sexual coercion, sexual assault, and rape) mainly focused on men as perpetrators and women as victims; more recently, researchers have begun to investigate women as perpetrators of sexual aggression as well.

Impact of the AGTR1 A1166C polymorphism on subcortical hyperintensities and cognition in healthy older adults.

Vascular aging consists of complex and multifaceted processes that may be influenced by genetic polymorphisms of the renin-angiotensin system. A polymorphism in the angiotensin II type 1 receptor gene (AGTR1/rs5186) has been associated with an increased risk for arterial stiffness, hypertension, and ischemic stroke. Despite these identified relationships, the impact of AGTR1 A1166C on white matter integrity and cognition is less clear in a healthy aging population.

Impact of human immunodeficiency virus on neurocognition and risky behaviors in young adults.

Previous studies have identified cognitive impairments due to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in adults. However, few studies have examined the impact of HIV on cognition in young adults (18-24 years old). Yet, this group is one of the largest populations of individuals with new HIV infection.

Lectin-carbohydrate interactions on nanoporous gold monoliths.

Monoliths of nanoporous gold (np-Au) were modified with self-assembled monolayers of octadecanethiol (C-SH), 8-mercaptooctyl α-D-mannopyranoside (αMan-C-SH), and 8-mercapto-3,6-dioxaoctanol (HO-PEG-SH), and the loading was assessed using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Modification with mixed SAMs containing αMan-C-SH (at a 0.20 mole fraction in the SAM forming solution) with either octanethiol or HO-PEG-SH was also investigated.

Radial variation in wood specific gravity of tropical tree species differing in growth-mortality strategies.

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Premise Of The Study: Wood specific gravity (WSG) mediates an interspecific trade-off between growth and mortality and is a key measure for estimating carbon stocks. Most studies use species mean values to represent WSG, despite variation at different levels of biological organization. We examined sources of variation in WSG across four nested scales (segments within cores, cores within trees, trees within species, and species), compared the pattern of radial variation in WSG among species differing in growth strategies, and investigated the effect of WSG radial variation on aboveground biomass estimates.

Meaning reconstruction in bereavement: sense and significance.

Recently there has been growing empirical and theoretical attention to the role of meaning in grief along with increased recognition of the need for more sophisticated definitions of meaning. The present article highlights philosophical issues inherent in the study of meaning and grief reviews the place of meaning in current theories of grief and provides a brief overview of the ways that meaning has been operationalized by grief researchers, including sense-making, benefit finding, identity change, and purpose in life. It is argued that, in our focus on the ways mourners make sense of loss, we have neglected an important aspect of meaning: life significance.

Social Competence in Infants and Toddlers with Special Health Care Needs: The Roles of Parental Knowledge, Expectations, Attunement, and Attitudes toward Child Independence.

Little research has empirically addressed the relationships among parental knowledge of child development, parental attunement, parental expectations, and child independence in predicting the social competence of infants and toddlers with special health care needs. We used baseline data from the Strengthening Families Project, a prevention intervention study that tested Bavolek's Nurturing Program for Parents and Their Children with Health Challenges to explore the roles of these variables in predicting social competence in infants and toddlers with special health care needs. Bivariate relationships among the study variables were explored and used to develop and test a model for predicting social competence among these children.

Social environment influences performance in a cognitive task in natural variants of the foraging gene.

In Drosophila melanogaster, natural genetic variation in the foraging gene affects the foraging behaviour of larval and adult flies, larval reward learning, adult visual learning, and adult aversive training tasks. Sitters (for(s)) are more sedentary and aggregate within food patches whereas rovers (for(R)) have greater movement within and between food patches, suggesting that these natural variants are likely to experience different social environments. We hypothesized that social context would differentially influence rover and sitter behaviour in a cognitive task.

Triallelic relationships between the serotonin transporter polymorphism and cognition among healthy older adults.

The biallelic serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-hydroxytryptamine transporter linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR)) is a common genetic sequence associated with serotonin transporter (5-hydroxytryptamine transporter (5-HTT)) expression, which is further modulated by a triallelic single-nucleotide polymorphism (rs25531). Recent studies using the biallelic 5-HTTLPR have identified a beneficial role of low 5-HTT expression on cognitive performance, although no studies have examined the impact of the triallelic 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 marker on cognitive performance among healthy older adults. In the present study, we addressed this issue in 84 healthy older adults genotyped for biallelic and triallelic variants of 5-HTT.

Nanoporous gold as a solid support for protein immobilization and development of an electrochemical immunoassay for prostate specific antigen and carcinoembryonic antigen.

Nanoporous gold (NPG) was utilized as a support for immobilizing alkaline phosphatase (ALP) conjugated to monoclonal antibodies against either prostate specific antigen (PSA) or carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The antibody-ALP conjugates were coupled to self-assembled monolayers of lipoic acid and used in direct kinetic assays. Using the enzyme substrate p-aminophenylphosphate, the product p-aminophenol was detected by its oxidation near 0.

The Role of Anxiety in Binge Eating Behavior: A Critical Examination of Theory and Empirical Literature.

The purpose of this manuscript is to expand the understanding of binge eating by reviewing the role of aspects of negative affect. Specifically, this paper will present evidence for further investigation of the bearing that anxiety may have in binge eating development and maintenance. A comprehensive review of the literature regarding the relation of binge eating and anxiety was performed.

Impact of body mass index on neuronal fiber bundle lengths among healthy older adults.

Increased body mass index (BMI) has been linked to various detrimental health outcomes, including cognitive dysfunction. Recent work investigating associations between obesity and the brain has revealed decreased white matter microstructural integrity in individuals with elevated BMI, independent of age or comorbid health conditions. However, the relationship between high BMI and white matter fiber bundle length (FBL), which represents a novel metric of microstructural brain integrity, remains unknown.

Electrochemical characterization of globotriose-containing self-assembled monolayers on nanoporous gold and their binding of soybean agglutinin.

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of α-D-Gal-(1→4)-β-D-Gal-(1→4)-β-D-Glc-mercaptooctane (globotriose, Gb3-C8-SH) were prepared both as single-component SAMs and as mixed SAMs with either octanethiol (OCT) or 8-mercapto-3,6-dioxaoctanol (HO-PEG2-SH), on flat gold and on nanoporous gold (NPG) electrodes. The binding of soybean agglutinin (SBA) to the globotriose (Gb3) unit in the SAMs was then studied using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), which is a label free method found to be quite sensitive to SAM composition and to the differences in SAM structure on NPG versus on flat Au. The affinity of SBA to the mixed SAM of HO-PEG2-SH and Gb3-C8-SH on NPG is found to be greater on NPG than on flat gold, and indicates a potential advantage for NPG as a substrate.

Neuronal fiber bundle lengths in healthy adult carriers of the ApoE4 allele: a quantitative tractography DTI study.

The epsilon 4 (e4) isoform of apolipoprotein E (ApoE) is a known genetic risk factor for suboptimal brain health. Morphometry studies of brains with Alzheimer's disease have reported significant alterations in temporal lobe brain structure of e4 carriers, yet it remains unclear if the presence of an e4 allele is associated with alterations in the microstructure of white matter fiber bundles in healthy populations. The present study used quantitative tractography based on diffusion tensor imaging (qtDTI) to examine the influence of the e4 allele on temporal lobe fiber bundle lengths (FBLs) in 64 healthy older adults with at least one e4 allele (carriers, N = 23) versus no e4 allele (non-carriers, N = 41).

Health care utilisation in patients with non-cardiac chest pain: a longitudinal analysis of chest pain, anxiety and interoceptive fear.

Chest pain can be a frightening experience that leads many to seek medical evaluation. The symptom results in costly health care utilisation. Over half of patients referred for cardiac evaluations of chest pain do not obtain definitive medical explanations for their symptoms; these cases are described as non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP).

Quality of life in patients with non-CAD chest pain: associations to fear of pain and psychiatric disorder severity.

Chest pain in the absence of identified cardiac cause, or non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP), is a common condition that may result in impaired quality of life. Theories of NCCP put forward that patients who react to cardiopulmonary sensations with fear may avoid activities that elicit cardiac sensations. Co-morbid psychiatric disorders, which are prevalent in this population, may predispose individuals to be more vigilant to physiological sensations, including cardiac-related symptoms.

SRmapper: a fast and sensitive genome-hashing alignment tool.

Unlabelled: Modern sequencing instruments have the capability to produce millions of short reads every day. The large number of reads produced in conjunction with variations between reads and reference genomic sequences caused both by legitimate differences, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms and insertions/deletions (indels), and by sequencer errors make alignment a difficult and computationally expensive task, and many reads cannot be aligned. Here, we introduce a new alignment tool, SRmapper, which in tests using real data can align 10s of billions of base pairs from short reads to the human genome per computer processor day.

Drug design for protein kinases and phosphatases: flexible-receptor docking, binding affinity and specificity, and drug-binding kinetics.

This article reviews some of our experiences on applying computational techniques to aid the design of drugs targeting protein kinases and phosphatases. It is not a comprehensive review. Rather, it focuses on several less explored approaches or ideas that we have experiences on.