Multiplication of microbes below 0.690 water activity: implications for terrestrial and extraterrestrial life

Since a key requirement of known life forms is available water (water activity; aw), recent searches for signatures of past life in terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments have targeted places known to have contained significant quantities of biologically available water. However, early life on Earth inhabited high-salt environments, suggesting an ability to withstand low water-activity. The lower limit of water activity that enables cell division appears to be ∼ 0.605 which, until now, was only known to be exhibited by a single eukaryote, the sugar-tolerant, fungal xerophile Xeromyces bisporus. The first forms of life on Earth were, though, prokaryotic. Recent evidence now indicates that some halophilic Archaea and Bacteria have water-activity limits more or less equal to those of X. bisporus. We discuss water activity in relation to the limits of Earth's present-day biosphere; the possibility of microbial multiplication by utilizing water from thin, aqueous films or non-liquid sources; whether prokaryotes were the first organisms able to multiply close to the 0.605-aw limit; and whether extraterrestrial aqueous milieux of ≥ 0.605 aw can resemble fertile microbial habitats found on Earth.

How should teaching on whole person medicine, including spiritual issues, be delivered in the undergraduate medical curriculum in the United Kingdom?

Background

Although the General Medical Council recommends that United Kingdom medical students are taught ‘whole person medicine’, spiritual care is variably recognised within the curriculum. Data on teaching delivery and attainment of learning outcomes is lacking. This study ascertained views of Faculty and students about spiritual care and how to teach and assess competence in delivering such care.

A questionnaire comprising 28 questions exploring attitudes to whole person medicine, spirituality and illness, and training of healthcare staff in providing spiritual care was designed using a five-point Likert scale. Free text comments were studied by thematic analysis. The questionnaire was distributed to 1300 students and 106 Faculty at Queen’s University Belfast Medical School.

351 responses (54 staff, 287 students; 25 %) were obtained. >90 % agreed that whole person medicine included physical, psychological and social components; 60 % supported inclusion of a spiritual component within the definition. Most supported availability of spiritual interventions for patients, including access to chaplains (71 %), counsellors (62 %), or members of the patient’s faith community (59 %). 90 % felt that personal faith/spirituality was important to some patients and 60 % agreed that this influenced health. However 80 % felt that doctors should never/rarely share their own spiritual beliefs with patients and 67 % felt they should only do so when specifically invited. Most supported including training on provision of spiritual care within the curriculum; 40-50 % felt this should be optional and 40 % mandatory. Small group teaching was the favoured delivery method. 64 % felt that teaching should not be assessed, but among assessment methods, reflective portfolios were most favoured (30 %). Students tended to hold more polarised viewpoints but generally were more favourably disposed towards spiritual care than Faculty. Respecting patients’ values and beliefs and the need for guidance in provision of spiritual care were identified in the free-text comments.

Students and Faculty generally recognise a spiritual dimension to health and support provision of spiritual care to appropriate patients. There is lack of consensus whether this should be delivered by doctors or left to others. Spiritual issues impacting patient management should be included in the curriculum; agreement is lacking about how to deliver and assess.

Measuring conflict and agreement between two prioritized knowledge bases in possibilistic logic.

In this paper we investigate the relationship between two prioritized knowledge bases by measuring both the conflict and the agreement between them.First of all, a quantity of conflict and two quantities of agreement are defined. The former is shown to be a generalization of the well-known Dalal distance which is the hamming distance between two interpretations. The latter are, respectively, a quantity of strong agreement which measures the amount ofinformation on which two belief bases “totally” agree, and a quantity of weak agreement which measures the amount of information that is believed by onesource but is unknown to the other. All three quantity measures are based on the weighted prime implicant, which represents beliefs in a prioritized belief base. We then define a degree of conflict and two degrees of agreement based on our quantity of conflict and quantities of agreement. We also consider the impact of these measures on belief merging and information source ordering.

Supervised walking in comparison with fitness training for chronic back pain in physiotherapy: results of the SWIFT single-blinded randomized controlled trial (ISRCTN17592092)

Effectiveness of brief/minimal contact self-activation interventions that encourage participation in physical activity (PA) for chronic low back pain (CLBP >12 weeks) is unproven. The primary objective of this assessor-blinded randomized controlled trial was to investigate the difference between an individualized walking programme (WP), group exercise class (EC), and usual physiotherapy (UP, control) in mean change in functional disability at 6 months. A sample of 246 participants with CLBP aged 18 to 65 years (79 men and 167 women; mean age ± SD: 45.4 ± 11.4 years) were recruited from 5 outpatient physiotherapy departments in Dublin, Ireland. Consenting participants completed self-report measures of functional disability, pain, quality of life, psychosocial beliefs, and PA were randomly allocated to the WP (n = 82), EC (n = 83), or UP (n = 81) and followed up at 3 (81%; n = 200), 6 (80.1%; n = 197), and 12 months (76.4%; n = 188). Cost diaries were completed at all follow-ups. An intention-to-treat analysis using a mixed between-within repeated-measures analysis of covariance found significant improvements over time on the Oswestry Disability Index (Primary Outcome), the Numerical Rating Scale, Fear Avoidance-PA scale, and the EuroQol EQ-5D-3L Weighted Health Index (P < 0.05), but no significant between-group differences and small between-group effect sizes (WP: mean difference at 6 months, 6.89 Oswestry Disability Index points, 95% confidence interval [CI] -3.64 to -10.15; EC: -5.91, CI: -2.68 to -9.15; UP: -5.09, CI: -1.93 to -8.24). The WP had the lowest mean costs and the highest level of adherence. Supervised walking provides an effective alternative to current forms of CLBP management.

Ethnicity and the prostate cancer experience: a qualitative metasynthesis

Objectives: To summarise black and minority ethnic (BME) patients' and partners
experiences of prostate cancer (PCa) by examining the findings of existing qualitative studies
Methods:
We undertook a systematic metasynthesis of qualitative studies using a modified version of
Noblit and Hare's 'meta-ethnography' approach, with a 2000-2015 search of seven databases.
Results: Thirteen studies of men from US and UK BME groups were included. We explored
constructs with BME-specific features. Healthcare provider relationships, formation of a
spiritual alliance with God (which enhanced the participants’ feeling of empowerment and
ability to cope with the cancer) and living on for others (generally to increase cancer
awareness), often connected to spiritual regrowth, were the three constructs most commonly
reported. A magnified effect from erectile dysfunction was also common. Initially this
affected men’s disclosure to others about their cancer and their sexual problems, but
eventually men responded by shifting their conceptualisations of masculinity to sustain self
and social identities. There was also evidence of inequality resulting from financial
constraints and adversity that necessitated resilience in coping.
Conclusions: The prostate cancer experience of BME men and their partners is affected by a
complex intersection of ethnicity with other factors. Healthcare services should acknowledge
this. If providers recognise the men’s felt masculinities, social identities and spiritual beliefs
and their shifting nature, services could be improved, with community as well as individual
benefits. More studies are needed in diverse ethnic groups

The link between logic, mathematics and imagination: evidence from children with developmental dyscalculia and mathematically gifted children

This study examined performance on transitive inference problems in children with developmental dyscalculia (DD), typically developing controls matched on IQ, working memory and reading skills, and in children with outstanding mathematical abilities. Whereas mainstream approaches currently consider DD as a domain-specific deficit, we hypothesized that the development of mathematical skills is closely related to the development of logical abilities, a domain-general skill. In particular, we expected a close link between mathematical skills and the ability to reason independently of one's beliefs. Our results showed that this was indeed the case, with children with DD performing more poorly than controls, and high maths ability children showing outstanding skills in logical reasoning about belief-laden problems. Nevertheless, all groups performed poorly on structurally equivalent problems with belief-neutral content. This is in line with suggestions that abstract reasoning skills (i.e. the ability to reason about content without real-life referents) develops later than the ability to reason about belief-inconsistent fantasy content.A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90DWY3O4xx8.

"Angels and Demons in Cromwellian and Restoration Ireland: Heresy and the Supernatural"

This essay explores accounts of supernatural activity in Cromwellian and Restoration Ireland. Religious life in Cromwellian Ireland was driven by expectations of the unusual—including audible voices from heaven, material encounters with angels, and spiritual encounters with demons. Some conservative Protestants linked this activity to the development and dissemination of heretical belief, while some who had such encounters were confident that it was compatible with the Cromwellian religious mainstream. Crawford Gribben explores the flexibility in the discourse of the marvelous in Ireland and the ways in which the administration contributed to it, and the alignment of the supernatural with various confessional convictions and postures, as well as theological radicalism. After the Restoration, accounts of supernatural encounters were remembered as ghost stories, not as matters for theological debate, a cultural transition linked to the development of a historiography that has continued to invest the Irish Cromwellian past with Gothic tropes.

Belief, Knowledge and Expertise. The emergence of the lay expert in medical sociology

The paper has three main aims. First, to trace – through the pages of the Journal – the changing ways in which lay understandings of health and illness have been represented during the 1979-2002 period. Second, to say something about the limits of lay knowledge (and particularly lay expertise) in matters of health and medicine. Third, to call for a re-assessment of what lay people can offer to a democratised and customer sensitive system of health care and to attempt to draw a boundary around the domain of expertise. In following through on those aims, the author calls upon data derived from three current projects. These latter concern the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down’s syndrome; the development of an outcome measure for people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury; and a study of why older people might reject annual influenza vaccinations. Key words: Lay health beliefs, lay expertise, Alzheimer’s, Traumatic Brain Injury, Vaccinations

Analyzing the degree of conflict among belief functions.

The study of alternative combination rules in DS theory when evidence is in conflict has emerged again recently as an interesting topic, especially in data/information fusion applications. These studies have mainly focused on investigating which alternative would be appropriate for which conflicting situation, under the assumption that a conflict is identified. The issue of detection (or identification) of conflict among evidence has been ignored. In this paper, we formally define when two basic belief assignments are in conflict. This definition deploys quantitative measures of both the mass of the combined belief assigned to the emptyset before normalization and the distance between betting commitments of beliefs.We argue that only when both measures are high, it is safe to say the evidence is in conflict. This definition can be served as a prerequisite for selecting appropriate combination rules.

Disaggregating conservative Protestant groups in Northern Ireland: Overlapping categories and the importance of a born-again self-identification

Rather than treating conservative Protestantism as a homogenous phenomenon, recent literature has underlined the importance of disaggregating this group to illuminate important attitudinal and behavioral differences between conservative Protestants. However, the methods used to empirically operationalize conservative Protestantism have not always been able to capture variations within the groupings. Based on analysis of the 2004 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, we argue that religious self-identification is a more useful way of analyzing conservative Protestant subgroups than denomination or religious belief. We show that many of these identifications are overlapping, rather than stand-alone, religious group identifications. Moreover, the identification category of born-again has seldom been included in surveys. We find having a born-again identification to be a better predictor than the more frequently asked fundamentalist and evangelical categories of the religious and social beliefs that are seen as indicative of conservative Protestantism.

Anti-Semitism in France: Past and present

This article discusses the so-called newness of today's antisemitism through the historical and social specificities of antisemitism in French society. It casts light on the continuities of antisemitic discourse in France, but also its transformation in relation to the French colonial heritage and the recent ‘communitarianisation’ of France's social life. This analysis of antisemitism is furthered by the presentation of two case-studies: the controversial discourses of comedian Dieudonné and Kémi Séba, leader of a black supremacist movement called Tribu KA which stirred controversies in the 2000s. These two examples emphasise the fact that antisemitic discourse is better understood as a narrative about downward social mobility and status, which hardly makes antisemitism new.

Background beliefs and evidence interpretation

In this paper we argue that it is often adaptive to use one’s background beliefs when interpreting information that, from a normative point of view, is incomplete. In both of the experiments reported here participants were presented with an item possessing two features and were asked to judge, in the light of some evidence concerning the features, to which of two categories it was more likely that the item belonged. It was found that when participants received evidence relevant to just one of these hypothesised categories (i.e. evidence that did not form a Bayesian likelihood ratio) they used their background beliefs to interpret this information. In Experiment 2, on the other hand, participants behaved in a broadly Bayesian manner when the evidence they received constituted a completed likelihood ratio. We discuss the circumstances under which participants, when making their judgements, consider the alternative hypothesis. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for an understanding of hypothesis testing, belief revision, and categorisation.