Sources and transport pathways of common heavy metals to urban road surfaces

Heavy metals that are built-up on urban impervious surfaces such as roads are transported to urban water resources through stormwater runoff. Therefore, it is essential to understand the predominant pathways of heavy metals to the build-up on roads in order to develop suitable pollution mitigation strategies to protect the receiving water environment. The study presented in this paper investigated the sources and transport pathways of manganese, lead, copper, zinc and chromium, which are heavy metals commonly present in urban road build-up. It was found that manganese and lead are contributed to road build-up primarily by direct deposition due to the re-suspension of roadside soil by wind turbulence, while traffic is the predominant source of copper, zinc and chromium to the atmosphere and road build-up. Atmospheric deposition is also the major transport pathway for copper and zinc, and for chromium, direct deposition by traffic sources is the predominant pathway.

Staged homicides: An examination of common features of faked burglaries, suicides, accidents and car accidents

A staged crime scene involves deliberate alteration of evidence by the offender to simulate events that did not occur for the purpose of misleading authorities (Geberth, 2006; Turvey, 2000). This study examined 115 staged homicides from the USA to determine common elements; victim and perpetrator characteristics; and specific features of different types of staged scenes. General characteristics include: multiple victims and offenders; a previous relationship be- tween parties involved; and victims discovered in their own home, often by the offender. Staged scenes were separated by type with staged burglaries, suicides, accidents, and car accidents examined in more detail. Each type of scene displays differently with separate indicators and common features. Features of staged burglaries were: no points of entry/exit staged; non-valuables taken; scene ransacking; offender self- injury; and offenders bringing weapons to the scene. Features of staged suicides included: weapon arrangement and simulating self-injury to the victim; rearranging the body; and removing valuables. Examples of elements of staged accidents were arranging the implement/weapon and re- positioning the deceased; while staged car accidents involved: transporting the body to the vehicle and arranging both; mutilation after death; attempts to secure an alibi; and clean up at the primary crime scene. The results suggest few staging behaviors are used, despite the credibility they may have offered the façade. This is the first peer-reviewed, published study to examine the specific features of these scenes, and is the largest sample studied to date.

Inter-cycle variability of ignition delay in an ethanol fumigated common rail diesel engine

An experimental study has been performed to investigate the ignition delay of a modern heavy-duty common-rail diesel engine run with fumigated ethanol substitutions up to 40% on an energy basis. The ignition delay was determined through the use of statistical modelling in a Bayesian framework this framework allows for the accurate determination of the start of combustion from single consecutive cycles and does not require any differentiation of the in-cylinder pressure signal. At full load the ignition delay has been shown to decrease with increasing ethanol substitutions and evidence of combustion with high ethanol substitutions prior to diesel injection have also been shown experimentally and by modelling. Whereas, at half load increasing ethanol substitutions have increased the ignition delay. A threshold absolute air to fuel ratio (mole basis) of above ~110 for consistent operation has been determined from the inter-cycle variability of the ignition delay, a result that agrees well with previous research of other in-cylinder parameters and further highlights the correlation between the air to fuel ratio and inter-cycle variability. Numerical modelling to investigate the sensitivity of ethanol combustion has also been performed. It has been shown that ethanol combustion is sensitive to the initial air temperature around the feasible operating conditions of the engine. Moreover, a negative temperature coefficient region of approximately 900{1050 K (the approximate temperature at fuel injection) has been shown with for n-heptane and n-heptane/ethanol blends in the numerical modelling. A consequence of this is that the dominate effect influencing the ignition delay under increasing ethanol substitutions may rather be from an increase in chemical reactions and not from in-cylinder temperature. Further investigation revealed that the chemical reactions at low ethanol substitutions are different compared to the high (> 20%) ethanol substitutions.

Common variants in the CYP2C19 gene are associated with susceptibility to endometriosis

Objective: To follow-up previous studies highlighting a possible role for cytochrome P450, family 2, subfamily C, 19 (CYP2C19) in susceptibility to endometriosis by searching for additional variants in the CYP2C19 gene that may be associated with the disease. Design Case-control study. Setting Academic research. Subject(s) The cases comprised 2,271 women with surgically confirmed endometriosis; the controls comprised 939 women with self-report of no endometriosis and 1,770 unscreened population samples. Intervention(s) Sequencing of the CYP2C19 region and follow-up of 80 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two case-control samples. Main Outcome Measure(s) Allele frequency differences between cases and controls. Result(s) Sequencing of the CYP2C19 gene region resulted in the detection of a large number of known and novel SNPs. Genotyping of 80 polymorphic SNPs in 901 endometriosis cases and 939 controls resulted in study-wide significant association signals for SNPs in moderate or complete linkage disequilibrium with rs4244285, a functional SNP in exon 5 that abrogates CYP2C19 function through the creation of an alternative splice site. Evidence of association was also detected for another functional SNP in the CYP2C19 promoter, rs12248560, which was highlighted in our previous study. Conclusion(s) Functional variants in CYP2C19 may contribute to endometriosis susceptibility in both familial and sporadic cases. © 2014 by American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Inability to swallow tablets is common and cause for concern

We naturally chew food before swallowing, but tablets and capsules require a complicated, conscious mechanism to over-ride the need to chew and the gag reflex, designed to eject foodstuffs that are not adequately chewed...

Gamifying collective intelligence for the common good

The rise of the mobile internet enables the creation of applications that provide new and easier ways for people to organise themselves, raise issues, take action and interact with their city. At the same time, society faces new problems that can only be solved when citizens work together. Nevertheless, a lack of motivation or knowledge often prevents many citizens from regularly contributing to the common good. In this position paper, we present DoGood – a mobile app – as a socio-technological system that aims at supporting the collective intelligence of citizens in their pursuit of civic engagement and civic collaboratories. Our study asks to what extent gamification can motivate users to “do good” deeds. The DoGood app uses gamified elements to encourage citizens to submit and promote their civic activities as well as to join the activities of others. Gamification is sometimes criticised for simply adding a limited number of game elements, such as leaderboards, on top of an existing experience with the hope of increasing motivation. However, in the case of the DoGood app, the process of game design was an integral part of the development, and the gamified elements target the user’s intrinsic motivations instead of providing them with an external reward. In this paper, we present design elements of the app and discuss their potential to support collective intelligence for the common good.

Common psychotic symptoms can be explained by the theory of ecological perception

The symptoms of psychiatric illness are diverse, as are the causes of the illnesses that cause them. Yet, regardless of the heterogeneity of cause and presentation, a great deal of symptoms can be explained by the failure of a single perceptual function – the reprocessing of ecological perception. It is a central tenet of the ecological theory of perception that we perceive opportunities to act. It has also been found that perception automatically causes actions and thoughts to occur unless this primary action pathway is inhibited. Inhibition allows perceptions to be reprocessed into more appropriate alternative actions and thoughts. Reprocessing of this kind takes place over the entire frontal lobe and it renders action optional. Choice about what action to take (if any) is the basis for the feeling of autonomy and ultimately for the sense-of-self. When thoughts and actions occur automatically (without choice) they appear to originate outside of the self, thereby providing prima facie evidence for some of the bizarre delusions that define schizophrenia such as delusional misidentification, delusions of control and Cotard’s delusion. Automatic actions and thoughts are triggered by residual stimulation whenever reprocessing is insufficient to balance automatic excitatory cues (for whatever reason). These may not be noticed if they are neutral and therefore unimportant whereas actions and thoughts with a positive bias are desirable. Responses to negative stimulus, on the other hand, are always unwelcome, because the actions that are triggered will carry the negative bias. Automatic thoughts may include spontaneous positive feelings of love and joy, but automatic negative thoughts and visualisations are experienced as hallucinations. Not only do these feel like they emerge from elsewhere but they carry a negative bias (they are most commonly critical, rude and are irrationally paranoid). Automatic positive actions may include laughter and smiling and these are welcome. Automatic behaviours that carry a negative bias, however, are unwelcome and like hallucinations, occur without a sense of choice. These include crying, stereotypies, perseveration, ataxia, utilization and imitation behaviours and catatonia.

Common Alzheimer's disease risk variant within the CLU gene affects white matter microstructure in young adults

There is a strong genetic risk for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD), but so far few gene variants have been identified that reliably contribute to that risk. A newly confirmed genetic risk allele C of the clusterin (CLU) gene variant rs11136000 is carried by ~88% of Caucasians. The C allele confers a 1.16 greater odds of developing late-onset AD than the T allele. AD patients have reductions in regional white matter integrity. We evaluated whether the CLU risk variant was similarly associated with lower white matter integrity in healthy young humans. Evidence of early brain differences would offer a target for intervention decades before symptom onset. We scanned 398 healthy young adults (mean age, 23.6 ± 2.2 years) with diffusion tensor imaging, a variation of magnetic resonance imaging sensitive to white matter integrity in the living brain. We assessed genetic associations using mixed-model regression at each point in the brain to map the profile of these associations with white matter integrity. Each C allele copy of the CLUvariant was associated with lower fractional anisotropy-a widely accepted measure of white matter integrity-in multiple brain regions, including several known to degenerate in AD. These regions included the splenium of the corpus callosum, the fornix, cingulum, and superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculi in both brain hemispheres. Young healthy carriers of the CLU gene risk variant showed a distinct profile of lower white matter integrity that may increase vulnerability to developing AD later in life.

Common genetic variants influence human subcortical brain structures

The highly complex structure of the human brain is strongly shaped by genetic influences. Subcortical brain regions form circuits with cortical areas to coordinate movement, learning, memory and motivation, and altered circuits can lead to abnormal behaviour and disease. To investigate how common genetic variants affect the structure of these brain regions, here we conduct genome-wide association studies of the volumes of seven subcortical regions and the intracranial volume derived from magnetic resonance images of 30,717 individuals from 50 cohorts. We identify five novel genetic variants influencing the volumes of the putamen and caudate nucleus. We also find stronger evidence for three loci with previously established influences on hippocampal volume and intracranial volume. These variants show specific volumetric effects on brain structures rather than global effects across structures. The strongest effects were found for the putamen, where a novel intergenic locus with replicable influence on volume (rs945270; P = 1.08×10 -33; 0.52% variance explained) showed evidence of altering the expression of the KTN1 gene in both brain and blood tissue. Variants influencing putamen volume clustered near developmental genes that regulate apoptosis, axon guidance and vesicle transport. Identification of these genetic variants provides insight into the causes of variability in human brain development, and may help to determine mechanisms of neuropsychiatric dysfunction.

Predicting white matter integrity from multiple common genetic variants

Several common genetic variants have recently been discovered that appear to influence white matter microstructure, as measured by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Each genetic variant explains only a small proportion of the variance in brain microstructure, so we set out to explore their combined effect on the white matter integrity of the corpus callosum. We measured six common candidate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the COMT, NTRK1, BDNF, ErbB4, CLU, and HFE genes, and investigated their individual and aggregate effects on white matter structure in 395 healthy adult twins and siblings (age: 20-30 years). All subjects were scanned with 4-tesla 94-direction high angular resolution diffusion imaging. When combined using mixed-effects linear regression, a joint model based on five of the candidate SNPs (COMT, NTRK1, ErbB4, CLU, and HFE) explained ∼ 6% of the variance in the average fractional anisotropy (FA) of the corpus callosum. This predictive model had detectable effects on FA at 82% of the corpus callosum voxels, including the genu, body, and splenium. Predicting the brain's fiber microstructure from genotypes may ultimately help in early risk assessment, and eventually, in personalized treatment for neuropsychiatric disorders in which brain integrity and connectivity are affected.

Genetic architecture of subcortical brain regions: Common and region-specific genetic contributions

Understanding the aetiology of patterns of variation within and covariation across brain regions is key to advancing our understanding of the functional, anatomical and developmental networks of the brain. Here we applied multivariate twin modelling and principal component analysis (PCA) to investigate the genetic architecture of the size of seven subcortical regions (caudate nucleus, thalamus, putamen, pallidum, hippocampus, amygdala and nucleus accumbens) in a genetically informative sample of adolescents and young adults (N=1038; mean age=21.6±3.2years; including 148 monozygotic and 202 dizygotic twin pairs) from the Queensland Twin IMaging (QTIM) study. Our multivariate twin modelling identified a common genetic factor that accounts for all the heritability of intracranial volume (0.88) and a substantial proportion of the heritability of all subcortical structures, particularly those of the thalamus (0.71 out of 0.88), pallidum (0.52 out of 0.75) and putamen (0.43 out of 0.89). In addition, we also found substantial region-specific genetic contributions to the heritability of the hippocampus (0.39 out of 0.79), caudate nucleus (0.46 out of 0.78), amygdala (0.25 out of 0.45) and nucleus accumbens (0.28 out of 0.52). This provides further insight into the extent and organization of subcortical genetic architecture, which includes developmental and general growth pathways, as well as the functional specialization and maturation trajectories that influence each subcortical region. This multivariate twin study identifies a common genetic factor that accounts for all the heritability of intracranial volume (0.88) and a substantial proportion of the heritability of all subcortical structures, particularly those of the thalamus (0.71 out of 0.88), pallidum (0.52 out of 0.75) and putamen (0.43 out of 0.89). In parallel, it also describes substantial region-specific genetic contributions to the heritability of the hippocampus (0.39 out of 0.79), caudate nucleus (0.46 out of 0.78), amygdala (0.25 out of 0.45) and nucleus accumbens (0.28 out of 0.52).

Identification of common variants associated with human hippocampal and intracranial volumes

Identifying genetic variants influencing human brain structures may reveal new biological mechanisms underlying cognition and neuropsychiatric illness. The volume of the hippocampus is a biomarker of incipient Alzheimer's disease and is reduced in schizophrenia, major depression and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. Whereas many brain imaging phenotypes are highly heritable, identifying and replicating genetic influences has been difficult, as small effects and the high costs of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have led to underpowered studies. Here we report genome-wide association meta-analyses and replication for mean bilateral hippocampal, total brain and intracranial volumes from a large multinational consortium. The intergenic variant rs7294919 was associated with hippocampal volume (12q24.22; N = 21,151; P = 6.70 × 10 -16) and the expression levels of the positional candidate gene TESC in brain tissue. Additionally, rs10784502, located within HMGA2, was associated with intracranial volume (12q14.3; N = 15,782; P = 1.12 × 10 -12). We also identified a suggestive association with total brain volume at rs10494373 within DDR2 (1q23.3; N = 6,500; P = 5.81 × 10 -7).

An Uber for apartments could solve some common housing problems

Speculative property developers, criticised for building dog boxes and the slums of tomorrow, are generally hated by urban planners and the public alike. But the doors of state governments are seemingly always open to developers and their lobbyists. Politicians find it hard to say no to the demands of the development industry for concessions because of the contribution housing construction makes to the economic bottom line and because there is a need for well located housing. New supply is also seen as a solution to declining housing affordability. Classical economic theory however is too simplistic for housing supply. Instead, an offshoot of Game Theory - Market Design – not only offers greater insight into apartment supply but also can simultaneously address price, design and quality issues. New research reveals the most significant risk in residential development is settlement risk – when buyers fail to proceed with their purchase despite there being a pre-sale contract. At the point of settlement, the developer has expended all the project funds only to see forecast revenue evaporate. While new buyers may be found, this process is likely to strip the profitability out of the project. As the global financial crisis exposed, buyers are inclined to walk if property values slide. This settlement problem reflects a poor legal mechanism (the pre-sale contract), and a lack of incentive for truthfulness. A second problem is the search costs of finding buyers. At around 10% of project costs, pre-sales are more expensive to developers than finance. This is where Market Design comes in.

Bayesian refinement of association signals for 14 loci in 3 common diseases

To further investigate susceptibility loci identified by genome-wide association studies, we genotyped 5,500 SNPs across 14 associated regions in 8,000 samples from a control group and 3 diseases: type 2 diabetes (T2D), coronary artery disease (CAD) and Graves' disease. We defined, using Bayes theorem, credible sets of SNPs that were 95% likely, based on posterior probability, to contain the causal disease-associated SNPs. In 3 of the 14 regions, TCF7L2 (T2D), CTLA4 (Graves' disease) and CDKN2A-CDKN2B (T2D), much of the posterior probability rested on a single SNP, and, in 4 other regions (CDKN2A-CDKN2B (CAD) and CDKAL1, FTO and HHEX (T2D)), the 95% sets were small, thereby excluding most SNPs as potentially causal. Very few SNPs in our credible sets had annotated functions, illustrating the limitations in understanding the mechanisms underlying susceptibility to common diseases. Our results also show the value of more detailed mapping to target sequences for functional studies. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.