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McDougall posted an update 10 months, 2 weeks ago
Saprochaete clavata is a pathogenic yeast responsible for rare outbreaks involving immunocompromised patients, especially those with hematologic malignancies. During February 2016-December 2017, we diagnosed S. clavata infections in 9 patients (8 with fungemia), including 3 within 1 month, at a cancer center in Marseille, France. The patients (median age 58 years), 4 of 9 of whom had acute myeloid leukemia, were hospitalized in 3 different wards. Ten environmental samples, including from 2 dishwashers and 4 pitchers, grew S. clavata, but no contaminated food was discovered. The outbreak ended after contaminated utensils and appliances were discarded. Whole-genome sequencing analysis demonstrated that all clinical and environmental isolates belonged to the same phylogenetic clade, which was unrelated to clades from previous S. clavata outbreaks in France. We identified a dishwasher with a deficient heating system as the vector of contamination.We tested for enterovirus D68 in fecal samples collected during June-September 2016 from 567 patients with acute flaccid paralysis in 7 West Africa nations. Children less then 5 years old comprised 64.3% of enterovirus D68 positive patients. Our findings emphasize the need for active surveillance for acute flaccid myelitis.We report a fatal case of measles inclusion-body encephalitis occurring in a woman from Romania with AIDS. After an extensive but unsuccessful diagnostic evaluation, a pan-pathogen shotgun metagenomic approach revealed a measles virus infection. We identified no mutations previously associated with neurovirulence.
is a known causative gene of dilated cardiomyopathy and familial conduction disturbance. Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay, normally caused by nonsense mutations, is a safeguard process to protect cells from deleterious effects of inappropriate proteins from mutated genes. Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay induced by nonstop codon mutations is rare. We investigated the effect of an
missense mutation identified in 2 families affected by cardiac laminopathy.
Genomic DNA and total RNA were isolated from patients’ peripheral blood lymphocytes or cardiac tissue.
-coding exons were screened by direct sequencing. Complementary DNAs were generated by a reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction from total RNA. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction was performed to quantify the
complementary DNA amount by using specific primers for lamins A and C. A minigene splicing reporter experiment was performed to assess the effect of detected variants on RNA splicing. The protein expressions of both isoforms were analynd resulted in severe cardiac laminopathy.The notion that reward inhibits pain is a well-supported observation in both humans and animals, allowing suppression of pain reflexes to acquired rewarding stimuli. However, a blanket inhibition of pain by reward would also impair pain discrimination. In contrast, early counterconditioning experiments implied that reward might actually spare pain discrimination. To test this hypothesis, we investigated whether discriminative performance was enhanced or inhibited by reward. We found in adult human volunteers (N = 25) that pain-based discriminative ability is actually enhanced by reward, especially when reward is directly contingent on discriminative performance. Drift-diffusion modeling shows that this relates to an augmentation of the underlying sensory signal strength and is not merely an effect of decision bias. This enhancement of sensory-discriminative pain-information processing suggests that whereas reward can promote reward-acquiring behavior by inhibition of pain in some circumstances, it can also facilitate important discriminative information of the sensory input when necessary.Belief updating is a relatively nascent field of research that examines how people adjust their beliefs in light of new evidence. So far, belief updating has been investigated in partly unrelated lines of research from different psychological disciplines. In this article, we aim to integrate these disparate lines of research. After presenting some prominent theoretical frameworks and experimental designs that have been used for the study of belief updating, we review how healthy people and people with mental disorders update their beliefs after receiving new information that supports or challenges their views. Available evidence suggests that both healthy people and people with particular mental disorders are prone to certain biases when updating their beliefs, although the nature of the respective biases varies considerably and depends on several factors. Anomalies in belief updating are discussed in terms of both new insights into the psychopathology of various mental disorders and societal implications, such as irreconcilable political and societal controversies due to the failure to take information into account that disconfirms one’s own view. We conclude by proposing a novel integrative model of belief updating and derive directions for future research.Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) is an important food, medicinal, and utilitarian crop with a large pan-tropical distribution. Two morphologically different types in the siceraria subspecies are sufficiently different to be considered as varieties, but they are assigned into different taxonomic ranks. Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) of 95 different accessions from the Nangui Abrogoua University collection was used to confirm the varietal status in bottle gourd. This analysis produced 22 575 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Cluster analyses conducted with 2250 (9.96%) SNPs distinctly separated hard-shelled from soft-shelled types. Analysis of 23 SNPs located in 11 genes coding for traits that differentiate the two types of gourds revealed that genes in the soft-shelled types had about 21% fewer SNPs than genes within hard-shelled gourds, but the latter had more non-synonymous SNPs. buy Lixisenatide Cluster analyses conducted with the 23 SNPs fitted well with the structure defined by the 2250 SNPs, suggesting the implication of these SNPs in the varietal differentiation of bottle gourd. These nucleotide changes along with the genetic relationships between the accessions provide molecular proof supporting the status of two varieties. To prevent the confusion inherent in the use of synonyms and homonyms in bottle gourd, we suggest the terms hard-shelled and soft-shelled to designate, respectively, the varieties used as utensils and those grown for their edible seeds.