Objective
The aim of this study was to assess associations between momentary stress and both affective and psychotic symptoms in everyday life of individuals at clinical high risk (CHR), compared to ...chronic psychotic patients and healthy controls, in search for evidence of early stress sensitization. It also assessed whether psychotic experiences were experienced as stressful.
Method
The experience sampling method was used to measure affective and psychotic reactivity to everyday stressful activities, events and social situations in 22 CHR patients, 24 patients with a psychotic disorder and 26 healthy controls.
Results
Multilevel models showed significantly larger associations between negative affect (NA) and activity‐related stress for CHR patients than for psychotic patients (P = 0.008) and for CHR compared to controls (P < 0.001). Similarly, the association between activity‐related stress and psychotic symptoms was larger in CHR than in patients (P = 0.02). Finally, the association between NA and symptoms (P < 0.001) was larger in CHR than in patients.
Conclusion
Stress sensitization seems to play a role particularly in the early phase of psychosis development as results suggest that CHR patients are more sensitive to daily life stressors than psychotic patients. In this early phase, psychotic experiences also contributed to the experience of stress.
The RecX protein is a potent inhibitor of RecA protein activities. RecX functions by specifically blocking the extension of RecA filaments. In vitro, this leads to a net disassembly of RecA protein ...from circular single-stranded DNA. Based on multiple observations, we propose that RecX has a RecA filament capping activity. This activity has predictable effects on the formation and disassembly of RecA filaments. In vivo, the RecX protein may limit the length of RecA filaments formed during recombinational DNA repair and other activities. RecX protein interacts directly with RecA protein, but appears to interact in a functionally significant manner only with RecA filaments bound to DNA.
The Radio Ice Cherenkov Experiment at the South Pole, co-deployed with the AMANDA experiment, seeks to detect ultra-high energy electron neutrinos interacting in cold polar ice. Such interactions ...produce electromagnetic showers, which emit radio-frequency Cherenkov radiation. We describe the experimental apparatus and the procedures used to measure the neutrino flux.
As part of a unique series covering the grand sweep of Western civilization from ancient to present times, this biographical dictionary provides introductory information on 315 leading cultural ...figures of late medieval and early modern Europe. Taking a cultural approach not typically found in general biographical dictionaries, the work includes literary, philosophical, artistic, military, religious, humanistic, musical, economic, and exploratory figures. Political figures are included only if they patronized the arts, and coverage focuses on their cultural impact. Figures from western European countries, such as Italy, France, England, Iberia, the Low Countries, and the Holy Roman Empire predominate, but outlying areas such as Scotland, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe are also represented. Late medieval Europe was an age of crisis. With the Papacy removed to Avignon, the schism in the Catholic Church shook the very core of medieval belief. The Hundred Years' War devastated France. The Black Death decimated the population. Yet out of this crisis grew an age of renewal, leading to the Renaissance. The great Italian city-states developed. Humanism reawakened interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. Dante and Boccaccio began writing in their Tuscan vernacular. Italian artists became humanists and flourished. As the genius of Italy began spreading to northern and western Europe at the end of the 15th century, the age of renewal was completed. This book provides thorough basic information on the major cultural figures of this tumultuous era of crisis and renewal.
Hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins (HRGPs) are the major proteinaceous components of higher plant walls and the predominant components of the cell wall of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The ...GP1 protein, an HRGP of the C. reinhardtii wall, is shown to adopt a polyproline II helical configuration and to carry a complex array of arabinogalactoside residues, many branched, which are necessary to stabilize the helical conformation. The deduced GP1 amino acid sequence displays two Ser-Pro-rich domains, one with a repeating (SP) x motif and the other with a repeating (PPSPX) x motif. A second cloned gene a2 also carries the PPSPX repeat, defining a novel gene family in this lineage. The SP-repeat domains of GP1 form a 100-nm shaft with a flexible kink 28 nm from the head. The gp1 gene encodes a PPPPPRPPFPANTPM sequence at the calculated kink position, generating the proposal that this insert interrupts the PPII helix, with the resultant kink exposing amino acids necessary for GP1 to bind to partner molecules. It is proposed that similar kinks in the higher plant HRGPs called extensins may play a comparable role in wall assembly.
Upper limits are presented on the diffuse flux of ultra-high energy
ν
e, based on analysis of data taken by the RICE experiment during August, 2000. The RICE receiver array at South Pole monitors ...cold ice for radio-wavelength Cherenkov radiation resulting from neutrino induced in-ice showers. For energies above 1 EeV, RICE is an effective detector of over 15 km
3 sr. Potential signal events are separated from backgrounds using vertex location, event reconstruction, and signal shape. These are the first terrestrial limits exploiting the physics of radio-Cherenkov emissions from charged current
ν
e+
N→e+
N
′ interactions.
The number of free-living European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in the Netherlands has declined dramatically in recent years. Although rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) infection has been ...implicated as a possible cause of this decline, the definitive diagnosis has not been reported. We examined three free-living rabbits found dead in the Netherlands in 2004 by use of gross pathology, histopathology, immunohistochemistry, and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. We subsequently compared the identified virus with RHDV from elsewhere in the world by phylogenetic analysis. There was widespread necrosis, hemorrhage, or both in liver, kidney, spleen, and lungs of all three rabbits, consistent with RHDV infection. The presence of RHDV in affected tissues was demonstrated by immunohistochemistry and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. The RHDV from the Netherlands showed the highest identity, 99%, with a strain from France in 2000, and fitted in genogroup G5. These results prove that RHDV infection causes mortality of free-living rabbits in the Netherlands and suggest that RHDV strains circulating in free-living rabbits in the Netherlands and France have a common source or that one has originated from the other.
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