Increased Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score in dementia caregivers relative to non-caregiving controls

BACKGROUND: Elderly individuals who provide care to a spouse suffering from dementia bear an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that the Framingham CHD Risk Score would be higher in dementia caregivers relative to non-caregiving controls. METHODS: We investigated 64 caregivers providing in-home care for their spouse with Alzheimer's disease and 41 gender-matched non-caregiving controls. All subjects (mean age 70 +/- 8 years, 75% women, 93% Caucasian) had a negative history of CHD and cerebrovascular disease. The original Framingham CHD Risk Score was computed adding up categorical scores for age, blood lipids, blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking with adjustment made for sex. RESULTS: The average CHD risk score was higher in caregivers than in controls even when co-varying for socioeconomic status, health habits, medication, and psychological distress (8.0 +/- 2.9 vs. 6.3 +/- 3.0 points, p = 0.013). The difference showed a medium effect size (Cohen's d = 0.57). A relatively higher blood pressure in caregivers than in controls made the greatest contribution to this difference. The probability (area under the receiver operator curve) that a randomly selected caregiver had a greater CHD risk score than a randomly selected non-caregiver was 65.5%. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the Framingham CHD Risk Score, the potential to develop overt CHD in the following 10 years was predicted to be greater in dementia caregivers than in non-caregiving controls. The magnitude of the difference in the CHD risk between caregivers and controls appears to be clinically relevant. Clinicians may want to monitor caregiving status as a routine part of standard evaluation of their elderly patients' cardiovascular risk.

The Acropolitan - v. 8, no. 3

In this issue...Doris Torongo, Montana Fossils, President Hoover, Mine Rescue, First Aid, Radio Debate, Anaconda Smelter, nickel-copper alloy, Ore Diggers basketball

The Amplifier - v. 3, no. 2

In this issue...Boeing Aircraft, Shell Oil Company, Hugo Pulju, mauled grizzly bear, Dean McAuliffe, Geology, Rocky Mountains, Coach Olsen, Petroleum Department

Remembering Lee Metcalf

Abstract Montana's Lee Metcalf was an extraordinary Montana leader with an unbelievable record of accomplishment fighting for the little people against the forces of economic and political power. The public memory is so short that this film will serve to help reacquaint Lee & Donna Metcalf to most of those who were around during their time. But it will also provide an opportunity for new generations to receive a perspective of an important leader from an important time. (Language from YouTube version of the film, written and provided by Executive Producer Evan Barrett) Lee Warren Metcalf (January 28, 1911 – January 12, 1978) was an American lawyer, judge, and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Representative (1953–1961) and a U.S. Senator (1961–1978) from Montana. He was permanent acting President pro tempore of the Senate, the only person to hold that position, from 1963 until his death in 1978. U.S. House of Representatives During his tenure in the House, Metcalf served on the Education and Labor Committee (1953–1959), Interior and Insular Affairs Committee (1955–1959), Select Astronautics and Space Exploration Committee (1958), and Ways and Means Committee (1959–1960). He became known as one of Congress's "Young Turks" who promoted liberal domestic social legislation and reform of congressional procedures. He introduced legislation to provide health care to the elderly ten years before the creation of Medicare. He earned the nickname "Mr. Education" after sponsoring a comprehensive bill providing for federal aid to education. He also voted against legislation that would have raised grazing permits on federal lands, and led the opposition to a bill that would have swapped forested public lands for cutover private lands. He was elected chairman of the Democratic Study Group in 1959. U. S. Senate Regarded as "a pioneer of the conservation movement", Metcalf worked to protect the natural environment and regulate utilities. He helped pass the Wilderness Act of 1964, and supported the creation of the Great Bear Wilderness and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. In 1962, he introduced a "Save Our Streams" bill to preserve natural recreation facilities and protect fish and wildlife from being destroyed by highway construction. He was a longtime member of the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission. He was also active on the issue of education. He was a leading supporter of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the effort to extend the G.I. Bill's educational benefits to a new generation of veterans, and the development of legislation to improve federally-aided vocational education.[1] The Peace Corps was established under leadership of Metcalf and Senator Mansfield. In 1983, by act of Congress, the Lee Metcalf Wilderness area was created in southwestern Montana in honor of the late Congressman. The Great Bear Wilderness and Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness areas were also created as a result of Metcalf's efforts in Congress, in addition to the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge in Montana. Metcalf was ranked number 15 on a list of the 100 Most Influential Montanans of the Century by the Missoulian newspaper. This text is courtesy of Wikipedia®, a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization, and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Intra-abdominal pressure development after different temporary abdominal closure techniques in a porcine model

BACKGROUND: Decompressive laparotomy followed by temporary abdominal closure (TAC) is an established prophylaxis and treatment for abdominal compartment syndrome. The herein presented study aimed at the comparison of volume reserve capacity and development of intra-abdominal hypertension after forced primary abdominal closure and different TAC techniques in a porcine model. METHODS: Eight anesthesized and mechanically ventilated domestic pigs underwent a standardized midline laparotomy. A bag was placed into the abdominal cavity. Before abdominal closure, the bag was prefilled with 3,000 mL water to simulate increased intra-abdominal volume. The intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) was then increased in 2 mm Hg steps up to 30 mm Hg by adding volume (volume reserve capacity) to the intra-abdominal bag. Volume reserve capacity with the corresponding IAP were analyzed and compared for primary abdominal closure, bag silo closure, a zipper system, and vacuum-assisted closure (VAC) with different negative pressures (-50, -100, and -150 mm Hg). Hemodynamic and pulmonary parameters were monitored throughout the experiment. RESULTS: Volume reserve capacity was the highest for bag silo closure followed by the zipper system and VAC with primary abdominal closure providing the least volume reserve capacity in the whole IAP range. Of interest, VAC -50 mm Hg resulted in a lower volume reserve capacity when compared with VAC -100 and -150 mm Hg. Pulmonary and hemodynamic parameters demonstrated no significant differences between primary abdominal closure and the evaluated TAC techniques at all IAP levels. CONCLUSIONS: The present experimental in vivo study indicates that bag silo closure and zipper systems may be favorable TAC techniques after decompressive laparotomy. In contrast, the VAC techniques resulted in lower volume reserve capacity and therefore may bear an increased risk for recurrent intra-abdominal hypertension in the initial phase after decompressive laparotomy.

News of the European Resource Centre for Social Work Research Data base

The CERTS database is now online! Our efforts bear finally fruit! It is possible to visit our database on the web now in French, in English and in about ten European languages in the forthcoming months. Your turn! Connect you to the following address: www.certs-europe.com/database

Curricular Integration of Simulations in Neuroscience - Instructional and Technical Perspectives

In recent years interactive media and tools, like scientific simulations and simulation environments or dynamic data visualizations, became established methods in the neural and cognitive sciences. Hence, university teachers of neural and cognitive sciences are faced with the challenge to integrate these media into the neuroscientific curriculum. Especially simulations and dynamic visualizations offer great opportunities for teachers and learners, since they are both illustrative and explorable. However, simulations bear instructional problems: they are abstract, demand some computer skills and conceptual knowledge about what simulations intend to explain. By following two central questions this article provides an overview on possible approaches to be applied in neuroscience education and opens perspectives for their curricular integration: (i) How can complex scientific media be transformed for educational use in an efficient and (for students on all levels) comprehensible manner and (ii) by what technical infrastructure can this transformation be supported? Exemplified by educational simulations for the neurosciences and their application in courses, answers to these questions are proposed a) by introducing a specific educational simulation approach for the neurosciences b) by introducing an e-learning environment for simulations, and c) by providing examples of curricular integration on different levels which might help academic teachers to integrate newly created or existing interactive educational resources in their courses.

Iowa State Daily (April 25, 2012)

ContentsFarm welcomes foalsVisit offers industry experienceFinalist sees 'opportunity for growth'Runners beat heat in BostonSupport the right to bear arms Freeze your own popsicles

Efficient team actions: Outline of a theory of teams in sport

So far, social psychology in sport has preliminary focused on team cohesion, and many studies and meta analyses tried to demonstrate a relation between cohesiveness of a team and it's performance. How a team really co-operates and how the individual actions are integrated towards a team action is a question that has received relatively little attention in research. This may, at least in part, be due to a lack of a theoretical framework for collective actions, a dearth that has only recently begun to challenge sport psychologists. In this presentation a framework for a comprehensive theory of teams in sport is outlined and its potential to integrate the following presentations is put up for discussion. Based on a model developed by von Cranach, Ochsenbein and Valach (1986), teams are information processing organisms, and team actions need to be investigated on two levels: the individual team member and the group as an entity. Elements to be considered are the task, the social structure, the information processing structure and the execution structure. Obviously, different task require different social structures, communication and co-ordination. From a cognitivist point of view, internal representations (or mental models) guide the behaviour mainly in situations requiring quick reactions and adaptations, were deliberate or contingency planning are difficult. In sport teams, the collective representation contains the elements of the team situation, that is team task and team members, and of the team processes, that is communication and co-operation. Different meta-perspectives may be distinguished and bear a potential to explain the actions of efficient teams. Cranach, M. von, Ochsenbein, G., & Valach, L. (1986).The group as a self-active system: Outline of a theory of group action. European Journal of Social Psychology, 16, 193-229.

Reconstructive Dreams: A Pragmatic Fantastic After Postmodernism

This dissertation focuses on the use of fantastic elements in the work of a young generation of writers which explore the possibilities of literary development after and beyond postmodernism. By overtly declaring the fictionality of their fantastic stories by means of frame narratives, texts like Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (2002), Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000), Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), David Mitchell’s number9dream (2001) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001) reassess the communicative value of genre boundaries in an attempt to move beyond postmodern relativity and breakdown of communicability. This clear focus on pragmatic concerns marks a shift in the use of the fantastic which calls for a reconsideration of some of the general critical assumptions about the workings of the mode. Though the relation between reality and fiction remains a central issue, the main concern shifts away from such epistemological and ontological considerations, towards questions concerning the pragmatic function of literary fiction in general and different genres in particular. Instead of dwelling on the typically postmodern concerns about the fictionality of reality and the instability of meaning, the works under discussion emphasise the constructive role fiction plays in dealing with reality, the uses to which it can be put and the functions it fulfils in fashioning our being in the world. Drawing on Iser’s theory of the fictive, Irmtraud Huber therefore suggests a reconceptualisation of the fantastic mode, which newly foregrounds its underlying pragmatic structure. She bring this adapted understanding to bear in a close textual analysis of the above mentioned literary texts, with the aim to account for their use of the mode in their commitment to a larger literary endeavour of a new generation that engages with the inheritance of postmodernism and struggles to come into its own.

The Interplay of Power and Trust in Platform Ecosystems of the Enterprise Application Software Industry

In recent years, the formerly oligopolistic Enterprise Application Software (EAS) industry began to disintegrate into focal inter-firm networks with one huge, powerful, and multi-national plat-form vendor as the center, surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of small, niche players that act as complementors. From a theoretical point of view, these platform ecosystems may be governed by two organizing principles - trust and power. However, it is neither from a practical nor from a theoretical perspective clear, how trust and power relate to each other, i.e. whether they act as complements or substitutes. This study tries to elaborate our understanding of the relationship of trust and power by exploring their interplay using multi-dimensional conceptual-izations of trust and power, and by investigating potential dynamics in this interplay over the course of a partnership. Based on an exploratory multiple-case study of seven dyadic partner-ships between four platform vendors, and seven complementors, we find six different patterns of how trust and power interact over time. These patterns bear important implications for the suc-cessful management of partnerships between platform vendors and complementors, and clarify the theoretical debate surrounding the relationship of trust and power.

A key role for lipoic acid synthesis during Plasmodium liver stage development.

The successful navigation of malaria parasites through their life cycle, which alternates between vertebrate hosts and mosquito vectors, requires a complex interplay of metabolite synthesis and salvage pathways. Using the rodent parasite Plasmodium berghei, we have explored the synthesis and scavenging pathways for lipoic acid, a short-chain fatty acid derivative that regulates the activity of α-ketoacid dehydrogenases including pyruvate dehydrogenase. In Plasmodium, lipoic acid is either synthesized de novo in the apicoplast or is scavenged from the host into the mitochondrion. Our data show that sporozoites lacking the apicoplast lipoic acid protein ligase LipB are markedly attenuated in their infectivity for mice, and in vitro studies document a very late liver stage arrest shortly before the final phase of intra-hepaticparasite maturation. LipB-deficient asexual blood stage parasites show unimpaired rates of growth in normal in vitro or in vivo conditions. However, these parasites showed reduced growth in lipid-restricted conditions induced by treatment with the lipoic acid analogue 8-bromo-octanoate or with the lipid-reducing agent clofibrate. This finding has implications for understanding Plasmodium pathogenesis in malnourished children that bear the brunt of malarial disease. This study also highlights the potential of exploiting lipid metabolism pathways for the design of genetically attenuated sporozoite vaccines.

Equine cytochrome P450 2B6--genomic identification, expression and functional characterization with ketamine

Ketamine is an anesthetic and analgesic regularly used in veterinary patients. As ketamine is almost always administered in combination with other drugs, interactions between ketamine and other drugs bear the risk of either adverse effects or diminished efficacy. Since cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYPs) play a pivotal role in the phase I metabolism of the majority of all marketed drugs, drug-drug interactions often occur at the active site of these enzymes. CYPs have been thoroughly examined in humans and laboratory animals, but little is known about equine CYPs. The characterization of equine CYPs is essential for a better understanding of drug metabolism in horses. We report annotation, cloning and heterologous expression of the equine CYP2B6 in V79 Chinese hamster fibroblasts. After computational annotation of all CYP2B genes, the coding sequence (CDS) of equine CYP2B6 was amplified by RT-PCR from horse liver total RNA and revealed an amino acid sequence identity of 77% and a similarity of 93.7% to its human ortholog. A non-synonymous variant c.226G>A in exon 2 of the equine CYP2B6 was detected in 97 horses. The mutant A-allele showed an allele frequency of 82%. Two further variants in exon 3 were detected in one and two horses of this group, respectively. Transfected V79 cells were incubated with racemic ketamine and norketamine as probe substrates to determine metabolic activity. The recombinant equine CYP2B6 N-demethylated ketamine to norketamine and produced metabolites of norketamine, such as hydroxylated norketamines and 5,6-dehydronorketamine. V(max) for S-/and R-norketamine formation was 0.49 and 0.45nmol/h/mg cellular protein and K(m) was 3.41 and 2.66μM, respectively. The N-demethylation of S-/R-ketamine was inhibited concentration-dependently with clopidogrel showing an IC(50) of 5.63 and 6.26μM, respectively. The functional importance of the recorded genetic variants remains to be explored. Equine CYP2B6 was determined to be a CYP enzyme involved in ketamine and norketamine metabolism, thus confirming results from inhibition studies with horse liver microsomes. Clopidogrel seems to be a feasible inhibitor for equine CYP2B6. The specificity still needs to be established with other single equine CYPs. Heterologous expression of single equine CYP enzymes opens new possibilities to substantially improve the understanding of drug metabolism and drug interactions in horses.

Mineralization of calcium phosphate crystals in starch template inducing a brushite kidney stone biomimetic composite

Dicalcium phosphate dihydrate (brushite) and octacalcium phosphate (OCP) crystals are precursors of hydroxyapatite (HAp) for tooth enamel, dentine, and bones formation in living organisms. Here, we introduce a new method for biomimicking brushite and OCP in starch using single and double diffusion techniques. Brushite and OCP crystals were grown by precipitation in starch after gelation. The obtained materials were analyzed by infrared spectroscopy (IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). IR spectra demonstrate starch inclusion by peak shifts in the 2900–3500 cm–1 region. SEM showed two different morphologies: plate-shaped and needle-like crystals. Calcium phosphate/starch aggregates bear strong resemblance to prismatic brushite kidney stones. This may open up a clue to understand the mechanism of kidney stone formation.

Atypical Mo isotope signatures in eastern Mediterranean sediments

Suboxic sapropel S1 sediments of the eastern Mediterranean carry an untypically light δ98/95Mo signal, being even lighter than oxic Mn-enriched sediments and Mn-crusts/nodules, which were previously thought to carry the lightest Mo isotope values. The evaluation and comparison of oxic S1, diagenetically overprinted oxic S1, and suboxic S1 sediments indicates that this light isotope signal is primarily an oxic signal that has been overprinted by secondary diagenetic processes occurring after sediment burial. Such secondary processes bear the potential of additional Mo isotope fractionation in particular in non-steady state diagenetic environments that involve the discontinuous re-location of the redox boundary.