The energetics of lactation in cooperatively breeding meerkats Suricata suricatta

Species may become obligate cooperative breeders when parents are unable to raise their offspring unassisted. We measured the daily energy expenditure of mothers, helpers and offspring during peak lactation in cooperatively breeding meerkats Suricata suricatta using the doubly labelled water technique. Lactating mothers expended more energy per day than allo-lactating subordinate females, non-lactating females or suckling offspring. Metabolizable energy intakes of lactating mothers were calculated from isotope-based estimates of offspring milk energy intake, and were not significantly different from the previously suggested maximal limit for mammals. Allo-lactating females were the only category of animals that lost weight during the period of study, probably because they spent more time babysitting than non-lactating females. Daily energy expenditure (DEE) of lactating mothers increased with litter size but decreased with the number of helpers. Calculations show that for every 10 helpers, even in the absence of allo-lactators, mothers are able to reduce their DEE during peak lactation by an amount equivalent to the energy cost of one pup. These results indicate that helpers have beneficial energetic consequences for lactating mothers in an obligate cooperatively breeding mammal.

Analysis of malts by capillary electrophoresis

A range of malts, as well as their high- and low-molecular-mass fractions, has been examined by capillary electrophoresis in phosphate buffer, pH 2.5, and in carbonate buffer, pH 9.5, and the results have been compared with those for roasted barley and for caramels. The malts fall into two categories: (i) the lightly roasted malts, where the high-molecular-mass coloured fraction is negatively charged at pH 9.5 and positively charged at pH 2.5; and (ii) the highly roasted malts (and the roasted barley), where the high-molecular-mass fraction migrates close to the electro-osmotic flow at both pH 9.5 and 2.5, implying that it carries little or no charge. The former category shows migration patterns similar to Class III caramels, whereas the latter migrates differently from Class I, III and IV caramels as well as from the former. Capillary electrophoresis therefore has considerable potential for differentiating between malts and between malts and caramels and roasted barley. (C) 2002 Society of Chemical Industry.

Seasonal variation in dawn song characteristics in the common nightingale

Many male temperate zone passerines show a marked peak of singing activity before sunrise. The two main functions of this so-called dawn chorus are mate attraction and territory defence. We examined how seasonal patterns of different dawn song characteristics were related to mating status and to the breeding cycle of females in the common nightingale, Luscinia megarhynchos. We investigated two measures of song output: song rate and percentage performance time. We also calculated the proportion of 'whistle songs', a song category that is thought to be important in female choice. We predicted that if the main function of dawn singing in nightingales is to attract a social mate, then mated males should change their dawn singing behaviour after pair formation. In contrast, if dawn singing is mainly used in territory defence, we expected no difference in song traits between mated and unmated males throughout the season. We found that song rate and the proportion of whistle songs were low at the beginning of the season and did not predict future mating status. After arrival of females, all measures of dawn song performance remained largely constant throughout the breeding season, and we did not find significant differences in the seasonal variation between mated and unmated males. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that song at dawn is important to defend a territory throughout the breeding season. (c) 2005 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dietary glycaemic index, glycaemic load and breast cancer risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis

This systematic review aimed to examine if an association exists between dietary glycaemic index (GI) and glycaemic load (GL) intake and breast cancer risk. A systematic search was conducted in Medline and Embase and identified 14 relevant studies up to May 2008. Adjusted relative risk estimates comparing breast cancer risk for the highest versus the lowest category of GI/GL intake were extracted from relevant studies and combined in meta-analyses using a random-effects model. Combined estimates from six cohort studies show non-significant increased breast cancer risks for premenopausal women (relative risk (RR) 1.14, 95% CI 0.95-1.38) and postmenopausal women (RR 1.11, 95% CI 0.99-1.25) consuming the highest versus the lowest category of GI intake. Evidence of heterogeneity hindered analyses of GL and premenopausal risk, although most studies did not observe any significant association. Pooled cohort study results indicated no association between postmenopausal risk and GL intake (RR 1.03, 95% CI 0.94-1.12). Our findings do not provide strong support of an association between dietary GI and GL and breast cancer risk. © 2008 Cancer Research UK.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reaxys Database Information|

Glycemic index, glycemic load, and risk of digestive tract neoplasms: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Habitual consumption of diets with a high glycemic index (GI) and a high glycemic load (GL) may influence cancer risk via hyperinsulinemia and the insulin-like growth factor axis.
Objective: The objective was to conduct a systematic review to assess the association between GI, GL, and risk of digestive tract cancers.
Design: Medline and Embase were searched for relevant publications from inception to July 2008. When possible, adjusted results from a comparison of cancer risk of the highest compared with the lowest category of GI and GL intake were combined by using random-effects meta-analyses.
Results: Cohort and case-control studies that examined the risk between GI or GL intake and colorectal cancer (n = 12) and adenomas (n = 2), pancreatic cancer (n = 6), gastric cancer (n = 2), and squamous-cell esophageal carcinoma (n = 1) were retrieved. Most case-control studies observed positive associations between GI and GL intake and these cancers. However, pooled cohort study results showed no associations between colorectal cancer risk and GI intake [relative risk (RR): 1.04; 95% CI: 0.92, 1.12; n = 7 studies] or GL intake (RR: 1.06; 95% CI: 0.95, 1.17; n = 8 studies). Furthermore, no significant associations were observed in meta-analyses of cohort study results of colorectal cancer subsites and GI and GL intake. Similarly, no significant associations emerged between pancreatic cancer risk and GI intake (RR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.83, 1.19; n = 5 studies) or GL intake (RR: 1.01; 95% CI: 0.86, 1.19; n = 6 studies) in combined cohort studies.
Conclusions: The findings from our meta-analyses indicate that GI and GL intakes are not associated with risk of colorectal or pancreatic cancers. There were insufficient data available regarding other digestive tract cancers to make any conclusions about GI or GL intake and risk.

K-Theory of non-linear projective toric varieties

We define a category of quasi-coherent sheaves of topological spaces on projective toric varieties and prove a splitting result for its algebraic K-theory, generalising earlier results for projective spaces. The splitting is expressed in terms of the number of interior lattice points of dilations of a polytope associated to the variety. The proof uses combinatorial and geometrical results on polytopal complexes. The same methods also give an elementary explicit calculation of the cohomology groups of a projective toric variety over any commutative ring.

High bax expression is a good prognostic indicator in acute myeloid leukaemia

Most cytotoxic drugs kill cells by instigating the process of apoptosis and it has been suggested that apoptotic markers may provide an indication of tumour chemosensitivity. The aim of this study was to determine if such a relationship exists in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). The levels of spontaneous apoptosis, bcl-2 and bax were evaluated in 56 newly diagnosed AML patients to determine if they correlated with a response to cytotoxic therapy. Spontaneous apoptosis was lower, but bcl-2, bax and the bcl-2/bax ratio were higher in AML compared with normal individuals. AML patients with high bax expression at diagnosis had significantly better prognosis for disease-free survival, event-free survival and overall survival (P = 0.016). In the standard risk group, high bax expression was in keeping with significantly improved survival. Multivariate analysis revealed bax to be an independent predictor of survival. There was a significant reduction in bcl-2 and bax expression when AML patients entered complete remission and also in relapsed AML patients who entered a second remission. This study suggests that bax is a useful prognostic indicator in AML and may assist with therapeutic decision-making for patients in the standard risk category.

High-dose adenosine overcomes the attenuation of myocardial perfusion reserve caused by caffeine.

Objectives:
We studied whether an increase in adenosine dose overcomes caffeine antagonism on adenosine-mediated coronary vasodilation.

Background:
Caffeine is a competitive antagonist at the adenosine receptors, but it is unclear whether caffeine in coffee alters the actions of exogenous adenosine, and whether the antagonism can be surmounted by increasing the adenosine dose.

Methods:
Myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) was used to assess adenosine-induced hyperemia in 30 patients before (baseline) and after coffee ingestion (caffeine). At baseline, patients received 140 µg/kg/min of adenosine combined with low-level exercise. For the caffeine study, 12 patients received 140 µg/kg/min of adenosine (standard) and 18 patients received 210 µg/kg/min (high dose) after caffeine intake (200 mg). Myocardial perfusion was assessed semiquantitatively and quantitatively, and perfusion defect was characterized according to the presence of reversibility.

Results:
Caffeine reduced the magnitude of perfusion abnormality induced by standard adenosine as measured by the summed difference score (SDS) (12.0 ± 4.4 at baseline vs. 4.1 ± 2.1 after caffeine, p < 0.001) as well as defect size (18% [3% to 38%] vs. 8% [0% to 22%], p < 0.01), whereas it had no effect on the abnormalities caused by high-dose adenosine (SDS, 7.7 ± 4.0 at baseline vs. 7.8 ± 4.2 after caffeine, p = 0.7). There was good agreement between baseline and caffeine studies for segmental defect category (kappa = 0.72, 95% confidence interval: 0.65 to 0.79) in the high-dose group. An increase in adenosine after caffeine intake was well tolerated.

Conclusions:
Caffeine in coffee attenuates adenosine-induced coronary hyperemia and, consequently, the detection of perfusion abnormality by adenosine MPS. This can be overcome by increasing the adenosine dose without compromising test tolerability.

tts: A SAT-Solver for Small, Difficult Instances

The Ternary Tree Solver (tts) is a complete solver for propositional satisfiability which was designed to have good performance on the most difficult small instances. It uses a static ternary tree data structure to represent the simplified proposition under all permissible partial assignments and maintains a database of derived propositions known to be unsatisfiable. In the SAT2007 competition version 4.0 won the silver medal for the category handmade, speciality UNSAT solvers and was the top qualifier for the second stage for handmade benchmarks, solving 11 benchmarks which were not solved by any other entrant. We describe the methods used by the solver and analyse the competition Phase 1 results on small benchmarks. We propose a first version of a comprehensive suite of small difficult satisfiability benchmarks (sdsb) and compare the worst-case performance of the competition medallists on these benchmarks.

The Impact of Disrespect on Prisoners’ Aggression: Outcomes of Experimentally Inducing Violence Supportive Cognitions

Self-report research suggests that much violence is triggered by perceived insults and disrespect. This may be particularly true in the context of a prison or another environment of acute deprivation, whereby individuals have little other recourse to means of reputation enhancement. This paper presents the findings of two studies conducted with prisoner volunteers inside a Category C (minimum security) prison in England. In the first study, the authors randomly assigned a sample of 89 prisoners to one of two conditions: the experimental group were asked to discuss times they have been disrespected by authority figures inside and outside the prison; the control group were asked more neutral questions. Both groups then completed several measures of cognitive beliefs, distortions, and hostile attribution biases. None of the measures differed across the two groups except the measure of excuse and justification acceptance. Controlling for other factors, the experimental group endorsed these rationalisations at a significantly higher rate than the control group. This finding suggests that raising the salience of disrespect - reminding prisoners of times they have been made to feel unworthy of consideration - may raise the risk that prisoners will engage in violence by providing prisoners with justifications or excuses for actions they might not otherwise endorse. These findings received some additional validation in the second study, a qualitative analysis of offender accounts of violence and aggression within the prison. Implications for reducing violence within prisons are discussed.

Assisted Diagnosis of Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (CIN)

This paper introduces an automated computer- assisted system for the diagnosis of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) using ultra-large cervical histological digital slides. The system contains two parts: the segmentation of squamous epithelium and the diagnosis of CIN. For the segmentation, to reduce processing time, a multiresolution method is developed. The squamous epithelium layer is first segmented at a low (2X) resolution. The boundaries are further fine tuned at a higher (20X) resolution. The block-based segmentation method uses robust texture feature vectors in combination with support vector machines (SVMs) to perform classification. Medical rules are finally applied. In testing, segmentation using 31 digital slides achieves 94.25% accuracy. For the diagnosis of CIN, changes in nuclei structure and morphology along lines perpendicular to the main axis of the squamous epithelium are quantified and classified. Using multi-category SVM, perpendicular lines are classified into Normal, CIN I, CIN II, and CIN III. The robustness of the system in term of regional diagnosis is measured against pathologists' diagnoses and inter-observer variability between two pathologists is considered. Initial results suggest that the system has potential as a tool both to assist in pathologists' diagnoses, and in training.

Sufrimiento y pesimismo en Schopenhauer

El presente artículo investiga de qué forma la centralidad del sufrimiento en la filosofía de Schopenhauer sirve para fundamentar su pesimismo. Tres son los argumentos analizados: el lugar del sufrimiento en el mundo, su lugar en la conciencia humana y su lugar frente a la felicidad. A la luz de estos tres argumentos, se destaca que el vínculo indisoluble entre el sufrimiento y la esencia del mundo, la determinación del sufrimiento en la conciencia, tanto en su génesis como en su intensidad, y su anterioridad ontológica frente a la felicidad hacen del pesimismo una categoría necesaria. Finalmente, se señala una posible contribución del pesimismo schopenhaueriano a la crítica social contemporánea, considerando la idea de mundo que el capitalismo tardío promueve.

Probabilistic classification of acute myocardial infarction from multiple cardiac markers

Logistic regression and Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifiers have been trained to estimate the probability of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in patients based upon the concentrations of a panel of cardiac markers. The panel consists of two new markers, fatty acid binding protein (FABP) and glycogen phosphorylase BB (GPBB), in addition to the traditional cardiac troponin I (cTnI), creatine kinase MB (CKMB) and myoglobin. The effect of using principal component analysis (PCA) and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) to preprocess the marker concentrations was also investigated. The need for classifiers to give an accurate estimate of the probability of AMI is argued and three categories of performance measure are described, namely discriminatory ability, sharpness, and reliability. Numerical performance measures for each category are given and applied. The optimum classifier, based solely upon the samples take on admission, was the logistic regression classifier using FDA preprocessing. This gave an accuracy of 0.85 (95% confidence interval: 0.78-0.91) and a normalised Brier score of 0.89. When samples at both admission and a further time, 1-6 h later, were included, the performance increased significantly, showing that logistic regression classifiers can indeed use the information from the five cardiac markers to accurately and reliably estimate the probability AMI. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2008.

What are you looking at?: Prisoner Confrontations and the Search for Respect

This article examines the occurrence of fights, assaults, arguments and threats of violence between adult male prisoners in an English category C prison. The self-narratives of 40 men are analysed to investigate whether some prisoners engage in more confrontations than others due to a psychological need to protect their identity. The findings indicate that how an individual understands and constructs their self-narrative can influence their involvement in aggressive behaviour. Implications for interventions attempting to reduce aggression are explored.

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.