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Preclinical and clinical studies suggest that males and females may be differentially affected by cannabis use. This study evaluated the interaction of cannabis use and biological sex on cognition, and the association between observed cognitive deficits and features of cannabis use.
Methods:
Cognitive measures were assessed in those with regular, ongoing, cannabis use (N = 40; 22 female) and non-using peers (N = 40; 23 female). Intelligence, psychomotor speed, and verbal working memory were measured with the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence, Digit Symbol Test, and Digit Span and Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, respectively. Associations between cognitive measures and cannabis use features (e.g., lifetime cannabis use, age of initiation, time since last use of cannabis, recent high-concentration tetrahydrocannabinoid exposure) were also evaluated.
Results:
No main effects of group were observed across measures. Significant interactions between group and biological sex were observed on measures of intelligence, psychomotor speed, and verbal learning, with greatest group differences observed between males with and without regular cannabis use. Psychomotor performance was negatively correlated with lifetime cannabis exposure. Female and male cannabis use groups did not differ in features of cannabis use.
Conclusions:
Findings suggest that biological sex influences the relationship between cannabis and cognition, with males potentially being more vulnerable to the neurocognitive deficits related to cannabis use.
Antineuronal antibodies are associated with psychosis, although their clinical significance in first episode of psychosis (FEP) is undetermined.
Aims
To examine all patients admitted for treatment of FEP for antineuronal antibodies and describe clinical presentations and treatment outcomes in those who were antibody positive.
Method
Individuals admitted for FEP to six mental health units in Queensland, Australia, were prospectively tested for serum antineuronal antibodies. Antibody-positive patients were referred for neurological and immunological assessment and therapy.
Results
Of 113 consenting participants, six had antineuronal antibodies (anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antibodies [n = 4], voltage-gated potassium channel antibodies [n = 1] and antibodies against uncharacterised antigen [n = 1]). Five received immunotherapy, which prompted resolution of psychosis in four.
Conclusions
A small subgroup of patients admitted to hospital with FEP have antineuronal antibodies detectable in serum and are responsive to immunotherapy. Early diagnosis and treatment is critical to optimise recovery.
Reconnection outflows have been under intense recent scrutiny, from in situ observations and from simulations. These regions are host to a variety of instabilities and intense energy exchanges, often even superior to the main reconnection site. We report here a number of results drawn from an investigation of simulations. First, the outflows are observed to become unstable to drift instabilities. Second, these instabilities lead to the formation of secondary reconnection sites. Third, the secondary processes are responsible for large energy exchanges and particle energization. Finally, the particle distribution function are modified to become non-Maxwellian and include multiple interpenetrating populations.
Magnetic reconnection is one of the key processes in astrophysical and laboratory plasmas: it is the opposite of a dynamo. Looking at energy, a dynamo transforms kinetic energy in magnetic energy while reconnection takes magnetic energy and returns it to its kinetic form. Most plasma processes at their core involve first storing magnetic energy accumulated over time and then releasing it suddenly. We focus here on this release. A key concept in analysing reconnection is that of the separatrix, a surface (line in 2D) that separates the fresh unperturbed plasma embedded in magnetic field lines not yet reconnected with the hotter exhaust embedded in reconnected field lines. In kinetic physics, the separatrices become a layer where many key processes develop. We present here new results relative to the processes at the separatrices that regulate the plasma flow, the energization of the species, the electromagnetic fields and the instabilities developing at the separatrices.
Osteocalcin (OC) is a vitamin K-dependent protein found in bone and in circulation. High serum γ-carboxylated OC reflects a high, and high uncarboxylated OC (ucOC) reflects a low vitamin K status. A revolutionary hypothesis is that ucOC acts as a hormone improving glucose handling and reducing fat mass. The objective was to test the logical extrapolation of the ucOC hormone hypothesis to humans that elevated ucOC is associated with higher body weight, BMI and fat mass. In a cross-sectional analysis, the associations of vitamin K status with circulating adiponectin and body composition were investigated in 244 postmenopausal women (study I). The effects of vitamin K treatment on adiponectin, body weight and BMI were investigated in archived samples from forty-two young men and women who received varying doses of menaquinone-7 during 12 weeks (study II) and from a cohort of 164 postmenopausal women who participated in a 3-year placebo-controlled trial on 45 mg menaquinone-4 (MK-4) (study III). No association was found between vitamin K status and circulating adiponectin before or after vitamin K supplementation. A higher carboxylation of OC was significantly correlated with lower body weight, BMI and fat mass of the trunk. Women taking MK-4 maintained their baseline body weight and BMI, whereas women taking placebo showed significant increases in both indices. These findings demonstrate that a high vitamin K status of bone has no effect on circulating adiponectin in healthy people and long-term vitamin K supplementation does not increase weight in healthy postmenopausal women.
The increasingly large sample size requirements of modern adult mental health research suggests the need for a data collection and diagnostic application that can be used across a broad range of clinical and research populations.
Aims
To develop a data collection and diagnostic application that can be used across a broad range of clinical and research settings.
Method
We expanded and redeveloped the OPCRIT system into a broadly applicable diagnostic and data-collection package and carried out an interrater reliability study of this new tool.
Results
OPCRIT+ performed well in an interrater reliability study with relatively inexperienced clinicians, giving a combined, weighted kappa of 0.70 for diagnostic reliability.
Conclusions
OPCRIT+ showed good overall interrater reliability scores for diagnoses. It is now incorporated in the electronic patient record of the Maudsley and associated hospitals. OPCRIT+ can be downloaded free of charge athttp://sgdp.iop.kcl.ac.uk/opcritplus.
Whether it is news that ships have been pirated off Somali and Sweden, or word that Scottish authorities have released a notorious prisoner on grounds of compassion, those interested in the practice of comparative criminology can find significant fodder for their investigations in various news sources. For example, The New York Times reported on a brazen bank robbery in Baghdad in which nine culprits made off with $4.3 million in two get away cars after executing eight bank guards (Nordland & Mohammed, 2009). The robbers neglected the presence of security cameras and the time of the rising sun, so they were caught on videotape and observed by witnesses as they fled the scene of the crime. After a brief trial, four of the defendants were convicted and sentenced to death while one defendant was acquitted. Four other defendants, the suspected ring leaders with ties to the Shiite political elite, are still on the run. Intrigue is added to the case since many of the robbers were also bodyguards to Iraq’s Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. News reporters Nordland and Mohammed (2009: A1) observed that the case “resonat[es] loudly for what it says about high-level corruption and the uneven application of law in Iraq.” For a comparative criminologist, other questions might also be raised by this story: How does the legitimacy of the judicial process affect the standing of the government in the eyes of the public? How are CCTV and other surveillance practices integrated into the ordinary police practices of various nations? How does social reaction to robbery vary between societies? Whatever questions they might ask, our primary contention in this chapter is that criminologists engaged in comparative inquiry employ particular methods in order to produce more defensible understandings of crime and justice.
Nearly one-third of the world's energy consumption and 36% of its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are attributable to manufacturing industries. However, the adoption of advanced technologies already in commercial use could provide technical energy savings in industry of 27–41 exajoules (EJ), along with a reduction in CO2 emissions of 2.2–3.2 gigatonnes (Gt) per year, about 7–12% of today's global CO2 emissions. Even more significant savings can be attained on the supply side if fuel switching and CO2 capture and storage are considered. However, such changes must start in the coming decade to have a substantial impact by 2050.
The modern story of attachment began soon after World War II, when John Bowlby (1907–1990) and Rene Spitz (1887–1974) independently began to document the fate of children separated from their parents, reared from infancy in orphanages, or placed in traumatic circumstances in institutions where care might be efficient but impersonal. What they found is familiar to us now: listless, apathetic children who had not had personal attention from an interested adult, and disinhibited, over-friendly children who made shallow relationships with any adult who passed through their world. John Bowlby's contribution to our understanding of child development was his perception that ‘mother love’ had evolutionary value, and that some behaviours that young children show with their parents might be biologically determined to support survival. Bowlby was no biological determinist, however, and fully recognized the importance of the quality of parental care and the potentially harmful effects of its loss early in life. His theory of attachment proposed that the need for safety is an organizing system in the psychosocial development of children, and that this is different and separate from the need for food or sex. The theory posits both innate characteristics, determined by evolution, and a continuing effect of the experienced environment on the developing child.
Two strands have run through the work that has followed Bowlby's original ideas, developmental and clinical.
During the last decade, direct work with children who have experienced public disaster or private catastrophe, such as abuse, neglect and other intrafamilial crime, has led to the recognition that classifications of post-traumatic stress disorder are relevant to childhood psychopathology. Comorbidity is common. Traumatised children who also are bereaved or dislocated are hindered in mourning and in the capacity to sustain or form attachments. Adult psychopathology often may be linked with unrecognised or underestimated effects of psychological trauma during childhood and adolescence. This paper discusses therapeutic interventions, outlines research hypotheses and provides an introductory bibliography.
The local environments of CAs acceptors in InxGa1−xAs and AlxGa1−xAs have been determined from the localized vibrational modes (LVMs) of both isolated CAs impurities and H-CAs pairs using infrared (IR) absorption and Raman scattering techniques. In as-grown layers of InxGa1−xAs (x<0.1), a single LVM due to isolated CAs acceptors was observed. The introduction of hydrogen led to the formation of H-CAs pairs and a single A1−-mode (stretch) and a single A1+-mode (XH) were observed for the InxGa1−xAs layers. All the LVMs were identified with carbon in CAsGa4 cluster configurations implying that less than 5 % of the detectable carbon atoms were present in clusters incorporating one or more CAs-In bonds. For AlxGa1−xAs, five stretch modes and five X-modes of the H-CAs pairs were observed for 0<x<1 and each mode was assigned to configurations for which the originally unpaired CAs had 0,1,2,3 or 4 Al nearest neighbors. These results show that carbon does not appear to form bonds with In atoms for the InxGa1−xAs samples investigated and this can explain the difficulty found in incorporating CAs acceptors in InxGa1−xAs with x>0.1 for some growth techniques. CAs acceptors can form strong bonds with both Al and Ga atoms, however, leading to a high solubility of carbon in AlxGa1-xAs over the full compositional range.