Family history and antisocial traits moderate naltrexone's effects on heavy drinking in alcoholics.

Naltrexone's (NAL) effects on alcohol consumption are generally modest, so identifying patients likely to benefit would improve treatment utility. Several studies indicate that potentially significant moderators of NAL's effects might include family history of alcohol problems (FH), age of onset of alcohol problems, degree of antisocial traits, and comorbid drug use. Data from 128 alcoholic patients enrolled in a 12-week NAL treatment study (50 mg/day) were reanalyzed to determine the role of FH, age of onset, antisocial traits, and comorbid drug use in NAL's treatment effects on heavy drinking days. Dichotomized FH, age of onset of alcohol problems, and comorbid cocaine or marijuana use had no interaction effect with medication. Percentage of relatives with problem drinking (family history percentage [FHP]) moderated the effects of NAL on drinking such that NAL resulted in lower drinking rates only for patients with higher FHP. Antisocial traits also moderated the effects of medication on drinking for patients compliant with =70% of medication. Patients with more antisocial traits had less heavy drinking on NAL than on placebo, whereas patients low on antisocial traits had no benefit from NAL. Covarying antisociality in regressions of drinking outcome on FHP showed that the effects of FHP were not attributable to antisociality. Thus, NAL may selectively benefit alcoholics with antisocial traits or 20% or more relatives with problem drinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of suppressing the urge to drink on smoking topography: A preliminary study.

Recent studies on the co-occurrent use of alcohol and tobacco have suggested that efforts to control the use of one substance may influence the use of the other. However, little is known about how cognitive strategies used to regulate the use of one substance may affect cross-substance use. In this study, 50 social drinkers who were daily smokers were exposed to the sight and smell of their favorite alcoholic beverage under instructions to either monitor or suppress their urge for alcohol. During a subsequent trial, participants were permitted to smoke while smoking topography was assessed. Although urge ratings were not influenced by instructional set, participants who had previously suppressed their urge to drink alcohol showed more intense smoking behavior than those who had monitored. Results are discussed in terms of the cross-substance effects of urge suppression and their implications for polysubstance treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A RESTful and semantic framework for data integration

Companies have to deal with huge amounts of heterogeneous information, usually stored in distributed datasets that make use of different data schemas. This topic is especially crucial for enterprises that deal with new and different kinds of business data as new services are provided; they need to be able to dynamically add new datasets with new schemas to their information systems. However, even though research efforts have been applied to deal with this integration problem, there is still a lack of practical approaches ready to be implemented for industrial cases. We present a web‐based architecture and system built upon ontologies and other semantic web techniques to cope with federation of business data in real time. The scenario used to demonstrate the utility of the architecture is composed of actual data of a telecom company. Results show that our solution is more suitable, efficient and practical than other works. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regional-scale seagrass habitat mapping in the Wider Caribbean region using Landsat sensors: Applications to conservation and ecology

Seagrass meadows occupy a large proportion of the world's coastal oceans and are some of the most productive systems on Earth. Direct and indirect human-derived impacts have led to significant seagrass declines worldwide and the alteration of services linked to their biodiversity. Effective conservation and the provision of sustainable recovery goals for ecologically significant species are limited by the absence of reliable information on seagrass extent. This is especially true for the Wider Caribbean region (WCR) where many conservation initiatives are under way, but are impaired by the lack of accurate baseline habitat maps.To assist with such a fundamental conservation need using high-resolution remote sensing data, both environmental and methodological challenges need to be tackled. First, the diversity of environments, the heterogeneity of habitats, and the vast extent of the targeted region mean that local expertise and field data of adequate quality and resolution are seldom available. Second, large-scale high-resolution mapping requires several hundred Landsat 5 and 7 images, which poses substantial processing problems.The main goal of this study was to test the feasibility of achieving Landsat-based large-scale seagrass mapping with limited ground-truth data and acceptable accuracies. We used the following combination of methods to map seagrass throughout the WCR: geomorphological segmentation, contextual editing, and supervised classifications. A total of 40 Landsat scenes (path-row) were processed. Three major classes were derived ('dense seagrass', 'medium-sparse seagrass', and a generic 'other' class). Products' accuracies were assessed against (i) selected in situ data; (ii) patterns detectable with very high-resolution IKONOS images; and (iii) published habitat maps with documented accuracies. Despite variable overall classification accuracies (46–88%), following their critical evaluation, the resulting thematic maps were deemed acceptable to (i) regionally provide an adequate baseline for further large-scale conservation programs and research actions; and (ii) regionally re-assess carrying capacity estimates for green turtles. They certainly represent a drastic improvement relative to current regional databases.     

Locus of control and patient attrition from an alcoholism treatment program.

Investigated the relationship of male alcoholics' locus of control scores to dropping out of treatment at various stages. No differences were found among Ss who left at 2 wks, dropped out between 2 wks and 60 days, or completed the 60 dys, or among patients who completed or left the 1-yr aftercare program in total, personal, sociopolitical control scores. Ss who dropped out of aftercare had significantly lower total and personal control scores, and a significantly greater change in personal control in the internal direction, at the end of the intensive treatment than those who completed the aftercare, contrary to prediction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antarctic Rahnella inusitata: A Producer of Cold-Stable β-Galactosidase Enzymes

There has been a recent increase in the exploration of cold-active β-galactosidases, as it offers new alternatives for the dairy industry, mainly in response to the current needs of lactose-intolerant consumers. Since extremophilic microbial compounds might have unique physical and chemical properties, this research aimed to study the capacity of Antarctic bacterial strains to produce cold-active β-galactosidases. A screening revealed 81 out of 304 strains with β-galactosidase activity. The strain Se8.10.12 showed the highest enzymatic activity. Morphological, biochemical, and molecular characterization based on whole-genome sequencing confirmed it as the first Rahnella inusitata isolate from the Antarctic, which retained 41–62% of its β-galactosidase activity in the cold (4 °C–15 °C). Three β-galactosidases genes were found in the R. inusitata genome, which belong to the glycoside hydrolase families GH2 (LacZ and EbgA) and GH42 (BglY). Based on molecular docking, some of these enzymes exhibited higher lactose predicted affinity than the commercial control enzyme from Aspergillus oryzae. Hence, this work reports a new Rahnella inusitata strain from the Antarctic continent as a prominent cold-active β-galactosidase producer.