Environmentally Smart Design: Designing for Social Wellbeing Across the City and in the Workplace

Sustainable need not mean more expensive. Health problems caused by sedentary lifestyles, pollution and injuries from road accidents come at great financial cost — not just for individuals, but also for employers and indeed national governments. Built environments designed to keep people active and away from harm are thus economically beneficial, too. Alisdair McGregor, Ann Marie Aguilar and Victoria Lockhart of Arup cite some of the company's recent schemes in New York and London that have successfully encouraged cycling, strolling and other healthy behaviours, while also avoiding contributing to climate change.     

Steerable Microinvasive Probes for Localized Drug Delivery to Deep Tissue

Enhanced understanding of neuropathologies has created a need for more advanced tools. Current neural implants result in extensive glial scarring and are not able to highly localize drug delivery due to their size. Smaller implants reduce surgical trauma and improve spatial resolution, but such a reduction requires improvements in device design to enable accurate and chronic implantation in subcortical structures. Flexible needle steering techniques offer improved control over implant placement, but often require complex closed‐loop control for accurate implantation. This study reports the development of steerable microinvasive neural implants (S‐MINIs) constructed from borosilicate capillaries (OD = 60 µm, ID = 20 µm) that do not require closed‐loop guidance or guide tubes. S‐MINIs reduce glial scarring 3.5‐fold compared to prior implants. Bevel steered needles are utilized for open‐loop targeting of deep‐brain structures. This study demonstrates a sinusoidal relationship between implant bevel angle and the trajectory radius of curvature both in vitro and ex vivo. This relationship allows for bevel‐tipped capillaries to be steered to a target with an average error of 0.23 mm ± 0.19 without closed‐loop control. Polished microcapillaries present a new microinvasive tool for chronic, predictable targeting of pathophysiological structures without the need for closed‐loop feedback and complex imaging.     

Narrating emotional events in schizophrenia.

Research has indicated that schizophrenia patients report similar amounts of experienced emotion in response to emotional material compared with nonpatients. However, less is known about how schizophrenia patients describe and make sense of their emotional life events. We adopted a narrative approach to investigate schizophrenia patients' renderings of their emotional life experiences. In Study 1, patients' (n = 42) positive and negative narratives were similarly personal, tellable, engaged, and appropriate. However, negative narratives were less grammatically clear than positive narratives, and positive narratives were more likely to involve other people than negative narratives. In Study 2, emotional (positive and negative) narratives were less tellable and detached, yet more linear and social compared with neutral narratives for both schizophrenia patients (n = 24) and healthy controls (n = 19). However, patients' narratives about emotional life events were less appropriate to context and less linear, and patients' narratives, whether emotional or not, were less tellable and more detached compared with controls' narratives. Although schizophrenia patients are capable of recounting life events that trigger different emotions, the telling of these life events is fraught with difficulty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Severity of delayed (“secondary”) cerebral energy failure after acute hypoxia-ischemia is related to the time integral of acute ATP depletion

The aim of this study was to reproduce the delayed (secondary) cerebral energy failure previously described in birth-asphyxiated newborn infants and to investigate relationships between primary insult severity and the extent of the delayed energy failure. Phosphorus (³¹P) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) at 7 T was used to study the brains of 12 newborn piglets during an acute, reversible, cerebral hypoxic-ischemic episode which continued until nucleotide triphosphates (NTP) were depleted. After reperfusion and reoxygenation, spectroscopy was continued for 48 h. High-energy metabolite concentrations returned to near normal levels after the insult, but later they fell as delayed energy failure developed. The time integral of NTP depletion in the primary insult correlated strongly with the minimum [phosphocreatine (PCr)]/[inorganic orthophosphate (P_i)] observed 24–48 h after the insult. (Linear regression analysis gave slope –8.04 h^–1; ordinate intercept=1.23;r=0.92;P<0.0001.) This model is currently being used to investigate the therapeutic potential of various cerebroprotective strategies including hypothermia.     

Preliminary Evidence Supporting the Ability of Hermatypic Corals to Affect Adversely Larvae and Early Settlement Stages of Hard Coral Competitors

Crude, aqueous extracts of five species of hermatypic coral from three scleractinian families were assayed for bioactivity against the early life stages of scleractinian corals. At concentrations between 62.5 and 250 μg/ml, extracts of all species were lethal to at least three of the five species of coral planulae larvae tested. To test for behavioral changes, extracts from four species were tested on planulae of the scleractinian Pocillopora damicornis. All four caused immediate but reversible behavioral aberrations in the larvae at concentrations as low as 7.8 μg/ml. To determine the effects on newly settled corals, postmetamorphosis juveniles (spat) of P. damicornis were exposed to extracts from four hermatypic species. They were either killed or suffered a reduction in growth rates. If released under natural conditions, substances with lethal or sublethal activities against the early life stages of other scleractinians could allow hermatypic corals to influence patterns of scleractinian recruitment, thus playing a role in ordering coral communities.     

Pharmacogenetics Informed Decision Making in Adolescent Psychiatric Treatment: A Clinical Case Report

Advances made in genetic testing and tools applied to pharmacogenetics are increasingly being used to inform clinicians in fields such as oncology, hematology, diabetes (endocrinology), cardiology and expanding into psychiatry by examining the influences of genetics on drug efficacy and metabolism. We present a clinical case example of an adolescent male with anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder who did not tolerate numerous medications and dosages over several years in attempts to manage his symptoms. Pharmacogenetics testing was performed and DNA results on this individual elucidated the potential pitfalls in medication use because of specific pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic differences specifically involving polymorphisms of genes in the cytochrome p450 enzyme system. Future studies and reports are needed to further illustrate and determine the type of individualized medicine approach required to treat individuals based on their specific gene patterns. Growing evidence supports this biological approach for standard of care in psychiatry.     

High-Resolution Chromosome Ideogram Representation of Currently Recognized Genes for Autism Spectrum Disorders

Recently, autism-related research has focused on the identification of various genes and disturbed pathways causing the genetically heterogeneous group of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The list of autism-related genes has significantly increased due to better awareness with advances in genetic technology and expanding searchable genomic databases. We compiled a master list of known and clinically relevant autism spectrum disorder genes identified with supporting evidence from peer-reviewed medical literature sources by searching key words related to autism and genetics and from authoritative autism-related public access websites, such as the Simons Foundation Autism Research Institute autism genomic database dedicated to gene discovery and characterization. Our list consists of 792 genes arranged in alphabetical order in tabular form with gene symbols placed on high-resolution human chromosome ideograms, thereby enabling clinical and laboratory geneticists and genetic counsellors to access convenient visual images of the location and distribution of ASD genes. Meaningful correlations of the observed phenotype in patients with suspected/confirmed ASD gene(s) at the chromosome region or breakpoint band site can be made to inform diagnosis and gene-based personalized care and provide genetic counselling for families.     

Nitrogen fixation by pea and lentil green manures in a semi-arid agroecoregion: effect of planting and termination timing

Crop-fallow systems dominate many semi-arid agricultural regions despite fallow’s negative effects on soil and water quality. Annual legumes grown as a fallow-replacement crop, and terminated prior to maturity, can reduce these negative effects without substantially decreasing plant available water for the subsequent crop. Interest in growing legume green manures (LGMs) in synthetically-fertilized systems is increasing in the northern Great Plains of North America, partly due to the N-fixing capabilities of legumes; however, little is known about the effects of planting and termination time on N fixation amounts in the region. A 2-year field study was initiated in southwest Montana to determine the effects of planting time (spring or summer) and termination time (e.g. flower or pod) on the amount of N fixed by field pea (Pisum sativum cv. Arvika) and lentil (Lens culinaris cv. Richlea). Two methods, ¹⁵N natural abundance and N difference, were used to quantify N fixation, with wheat or in-crop weeds as reference plants. In 2009, N fixed by spring-planted lentil was higher by pod than flower (P = 0.03). Termination time did not affect the amount of N fixed by spring-planted pea, despite more biomass by pod than flower. In 2010, both spring-planted crops fixed more N by pod than flower (P < 0.01) and more N was fixed by spring-planted than summer-planted crops (P < 0.01). These results should prove useful to growers interested in selecting management practices that optimize N fixation of LGMs.