On the Way to Assess Emotions in Animals: Do Lambs (Ovis aries) Evaluate an Event Through Its Suddenness, Novelty, or Unpredictability?

Appraisal theories provide a framework that gives insight into emotions and could allow comparisons across species. According to these theories, events are first evaluated on their suddenness, novelty, and unpredictability. The authors examined the ability of lambs (Ovis aries) to evaluate an event according to these 3 criteria through 3 tests. The lambs responded to suddenness with a startle response coupled with an increase in heart rate and to novelty with an orientation response coupled with an increase of vagal activity. There was no clear evidence that lambs can detect the predictability of an event. Those results support the usefulness of appraisal theories to assess emotion in animals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Health status of the over 60 years of age population and its relationship with sociodemographic factors (ANCO Project)

OBJECTIVE: To describe the health status of a population over 60 years and to study their relationship with several socio-demographic variables. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study, population based. SETTINGS: A community. PARTICIPANTS: A randomized sample of 1,103 non institutionalized people over 60 years living in the city of Cordoba (Spain). MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: By mean of a personal interview at home we used the OARS-MFAQ-VE questionnaire. Low self-rated health was associated with the age, to be female sex, a low cultural background, and a low income. Only 5.2% of the study people do not suffered any illness and 56% state that their health problems are major problems for doing their current activities. 4.9% declared to have some degree of physical incapacity. 3.7% of elderly population has an important cognitive deficit. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of elderly people has good health. Age is related with a poor health. Women have more health problems than men.     

Transmission Fiber Chromatic Dispersion Dependence on Temperature: Implications on 40 Gb/s Performance

In this letter, we will evaluate the performance degradation of a 40 km high‐speed (40 Gb/s) optical system, induced by optical fiber variations of the chromatic dispersion induced by temperature changes. The chromatic dispersion temperature sensitivity will be estimated based on the signal quality parameters.     

The role of squamous cell carcinoma antigen in the management of laryngeal and hypopharyngeal cancer

BACKGROUND: The efficacy of squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCC-Ag) in laryngeal cancer to predict those patients who will relapse after primary treatment (surgery or radiotherapy) and its utility to detect relapses early and thereby increase salvage rates and cure were assessed. METHODS: Sixty healthy donors and 168 patients with laryngeal cancer were included in this prospective trial. Squamous cell carcinoma antigen was measured at diagnosis in all patients, 24 hours and 1 week after surgery in 113 patients and every 10 Gy of administered dose and 2 weeks after treatment in 49 patients primarily referred to radiotherapy. The marker was determined every 3-6 months during follow-up. All patients who relapsed had SCC-Ag studies before and after salvage treatment. RESULTS: The selected cut-off value was 1.5 ngr/ml (mean value in control group, 0.65 + 2 standard deviation [0.38]). Seventy-eight percent of patients with cancer had elevated SCC-Ag values at diagnosis. Squamous cell carcinoma antigen was statistically related to TNM categories (T, P < 0.04; N, P < 0.05; Stage, P < 0.01). Seventy-five percent of those patients with previously elevated pretreatment values normalized after treatment. Incomplete surgical resection (P < 0.0001) or persistence of the disease after radiotherapy (P < 0.01) were related to high posttreatment values. Squamous cell carcinoma antigen was elevated in 88% of the patients who relapsed. In 55% of the recurrences, SCC-Ag was elevated 3 months before pathologic confirmation of relapse. Salvage by surgery or radiotherapy was effective in 70% of the patients. Squamous cell carcinoma antigen posttreatment values were the most important factor in predicting disease free survival (DFS) (P < 0.0001) and overall survival (P < 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: Squamous cell carcinoma antigen is an excellent marker of residual disease after primary treatment that can lead to the addition of other therapeutic procedures (surgery and postoperative radiotherapy). The absence of posttreatment SCC-Ag is the best predictor of DFS, its presence detects recurrence in early stages, permitting salvage of an increased proportion of patients primarily referred for palliative treatment.     

Incorporating If...Then...Personality Signatures in Person Perception: Beyond the Person-Situation Dichotomy.

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nitrogen cycling in tropical grass-legume pastures managed under canopy light interception

Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems - In grass-legume pastures, grazing management strategies are an essential factor affecting nitrogen (N) cycling. This study assessed the impact of grazing...     

Target Score—A Proteomics Data Selection Tool Applied to Esophageal Cancer Identifies GLUT1-Sialyl Tn Glycoforms as Biomarkers of Cancer Aggressiveness

Esophageal cancer (EC) is a life-threatening disease, demanding the discovery of new biomarkers and molecular targets for precision oncology. Aberrantly glycosylated proteins hold tremendous potential towards this objective. In the current study, a series of esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCC) and EC-derived circulating tumor cells (CTCs) were screened by immunoassays for the sialyl-Tn (STn) antigen, a glycan rarely expressed in healthy tissues and widely observed in aggressive gastrointestinal cancers. An ESCC cell model was glycoengineered to express STn and characterized in relation to cell proliferation and invasion in vitro. STn was found to be widely present in ESCC (70% of tumors) and in CTCs in 20% of patients, being associated with general recurrence and reduced survival. Furthermore, STn expression in ESCC cells increased invasion in vitro, while reducing cancer cells proliferation. In parallel, an ESCC mass spectrometry-based proteomics dataset, obtained from the PRIDE database, was comprehensively interrogated for abnormally glycosylated proteins. Data integration with the Target Score, an algorithm developed in-house, pinpointed the glucose transporter type 1 (GLUT1) as a biomarker of poor prognosis. GLUT1-STn glycoproteoforms were latter identified in tumor tissues in patients facing worst prognosis. Furthermore, healthy human tissues analysis suggested that STn glycosylation provided cancer specificity to GLUT1. In conclusion, STn is a biomarker of worst prognosis in EC and GLUT1-STn glycoforms may be used to increase its specificity on the stratification and targeting of aggressive ESCC forms.     

Composition and seasonal variation of fatty acids of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Diplodus vulgaris</Emphasis> L. from the Adriatic Sea

Muscle tissue from the common two-banded sea bream Diplodus vulgaris L. originating from the Adriatic Sea, Croatia, was analyzed. The FA composition of neutral (TAG) and polar (PE, PC, PI/PS) lipid classes was determined, as well as the lipid and water contents during winter and summer periods. Both the total lipid and water contents were higher in the winter period. We identified 16 different FA. The major constituents of the total FA in both seasons were saturates: palmitic (16∶0) and stearic acids (18∶0); monoenes: oleic (18∶1n−9) and palmitoleic acids (16∶1n−7); and polyunsaturates: arachidonic acid (20∶4n−6), EPA (20∶5n−3), and DHA (22∶6n−3), but their amounts and ratios differed significantly between the two seasons and between lipid fractions. The FA composition showed a noticeable pattern of seasonality that reflected fluctuations mainly in TAG. The diminution of the monounsaturated FA content in the summer was clearly followed by an increase in PUFA content. Diplodus vulgaris is a good source of natural n−3 PUFA and would therefore be suitable for inclusion in highly unsaturated low-fat diets.     

Domain-specific discrete event modelling and simulation using graph transformation

Graph transformation is being increasingly used to express the semantics of domain-specific visual languages since its graphical nature makes rules intuitive. However, many application domains require an explicit handling of time to accurately represent the behaviour of a real system and to obtain useful simulation metrics to measure throughputs, utilization times and average delays. Inspired by the vast knowledge and experience accumulated by the discrete event simulation community, we propose a novel way of adding explicit time to graph transformation rules. In particular, we take the event scheduling discrete simulation world view and provide rules with the ability to schedule the occurrence of other rules in the future. Hence, our work combines standard, efficient techniques for discrete event simulation (based on the handling of a future event set) and the intuitive, visual nature of graph transformation. Moreover, we show how our formalism can be used to give semantics to other timed approaches and provide an implementation on top of the rewriting logic system Maude.