Fighting the resistance: Biodegradable and injectable/moldable hydrogels with hierarchical nanostructures (see picture) were made with broad‐spectrum antimicrobial activities and biofilm‐disruption ...capability. They demonstrate no cytotoxicity in vitro, and show excellent skin biocompatibility in animals. These hydrogels have great potential for clinical use in prevention and treatment of various multidrug‐resistant infections.
Bariatric surgery, used to achieve effective weight loss in individuals with severe obesity, modifies the gut microbiota and systemic metabolism in both humans and animal models. The aim of the ...current study was to understand better the metabolic functions of the altered gut microbiome by conducting deep phenotyping of bariatric surgery patients and bacterial culturing to investigate causality of the metabolic observations.
Three bariatric cohorts (n = 84, n = 14 and n = 9) with patients who had undergone Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), sleeve gastrectomy (SG) or laparoscopic gastric banding (LGB), respectively, were enrolled. Metabolic and 16S rRNA bacterial profiles were compared between pre- and post-surgery. Faeces from RYGB patients and bacterial isolates were cultured to experimentally associate the observed metabolic changes in biofluids with the altered gut microbiome.
Compared to SG and LGB, RYGB induced the greatest weight loss and most profound metabolic and bacterial changes. RYGB patients showed increased aromatic amino acids-based host-bacterial co-metabolism, resulting in increased urinary excretion of 4-hydroxyphenylacetate, phenylacetylglutamine, 4-cresyl sulphate and indoxyl sulphate, and increased faecal excretion of tyramine and phenylacetate. Bacterial degradation of choline was increased as evidenced by altered urinary trimethylamine-N-oxide and dimethylamine excretion and faecal concentrations of dimethylamine. RYGB patients' bacteria had a greater capacity to produce tyramine from tyrosine, phenylalanine to phenylacetate and tryptophan to indole and tryptamine, compared to the microbiota from non-surgery, normal weight individuals. 3-Hydroxydicarboxylic acid metabolism and urinary excretion of primary bile acids, serum BCAAs and dimethyl sulfone were also perturbed following bariatric surgery.
Altered bacterial composition and metabolism contribute to metabolic observations in biofluids of patients following RYGB surgery. The impact of these changes on the functional clinical outcomes requires further investigation. Video abstract.
The
revelation effect
is a robust phenomenon in episodic memory whereby stimuli that immediately follow a simple cognitive task are more likely to garner positive responses on a variety of memory ...tests, including autobiographical memory judgments. Six experiments investigated the revelation effect for judgments of past and future events as well as judgments made from others’ perspectives. The purpose of this work was to determine whether these subjectively distinct judgments are subject to the same decision-making biases, as might be expected if they are governed by similar processes (e.g., Schacter, Addis, & Buckner
2007
). College-aged participants were asked to rate a variety of life events according to whether the events had occurred during their childhoods or would occur during the next 10 years. Events that followed an anagram task were judged as more likely to have happened in the past and more likely to occur in the future. We also showed a revelation effect when participants were asked to adopt the perspective of others when making judgments about past and future events. When the task was reworded to be non-episodic (participants judged how common the events were during childhood and adulthood), no revelation effect was found for either past or future time frames, which suggests common boundary conditions for both types of judgments. The results are consistent with studies showing strong parallels between remembering and other forms of self-projection but not with semantic memory judgments.
The development of processes to tune the properties of materials is essential for the progression of next-generation technologies for catalysis, optoelectronics and sustainability including energy ...harvesting and conversion. Layered carbon nitrides have also been identified as of significant interest within these fields of application. However, most carbon nitride materials studied to date have poor crystallinity and therefore their properties cannot be readily controlled or easily related to their molecular level or nanoscale structures. Here we report a process for forming a range of crystalline layered carbon nitrides with polytriazine imide (PTI) structures that can be interconverted by simple ion exchange processes, permitting the tunability of their optoelectronic and chemical properties. Notable outcomes of our work are (a) the creation of a crystalline, guest-ion-free PTI compound that (b) can be re-intercalated with ions or molecules using "soft chemistry" approaches. This includes the intercalation of HCl, demonstrating a new ambient pressure route to the layered PTI·
x
HCl material that was previously only available by a high-pressure-high-temperature route (c). Our work also shows (d) that the intercalant-free (IF-) PTI material spontaneously absorbs up to 10 weight% H
2
O from the ambient atmosphere and that this process is reversible, leading to potential applications for membranes and water capture in dry environments.
Crystalline layered carbon nitrides can be inter-converted by simple ion exchange process allowing their properties to be tuned.
Background. The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) software consists of over one-hundred computerized tests based on classic and novel cognitive neuropsychology and behavioral neurology ...measures. Although the PEBL tests are becoming more widely utilized, there is currently very limited information about the psychometric properties of these measures. Methods. Study I examined inter-relationships among nine PEBL tests including indices of motor-function (Pursuit Rotor and Dexterity), attention (Test of Attentional Vigilance and Time-Wall), working memory (Digit Span Forward), and executive-function (PEBL Trail Making Test, Berg/Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Iowa Gambling Test, and Mental Rotation) in a normative sample (N = 189, ages 18-22). Study II evaluated test-retest reliability with a two-week interest interval between administrations in a separate sample (N = 79, ages 18-22). Results. Moderate intra-test, but low inter-test, correlations were observed and ceiling/floor effects were uncommon. Sex differences were identified on the Pursuit Rotor (Cohen's d = 0.89) and Mental Rotation (d = 0.31) tests. The correlation between the test and retest was high for tests of motor learning (Pursuit Rotor time on target r = .86) and attention (Test of Attentional Vigilance response time r = .79), intermediate for memory (digit span r = .63) but lower for the executive function indices (Wisconsin/Berg Card Sorting Test perseverative errors = .45, Tower of London moves = .15). Significant practice effects were identified on several indices of executive function. Conclusions. These results are broadly supportive of the reliability and validity of individual PEBL tests in this sample. These findings indicate that the freely downloadable, open-source PEBL battery (http://pebl.sourceforge.net) is a versatile research tool to study individual differences in neurocognitive performance.
The purpose of this study was to examine how sex and apolipoprotein E (
APOE
) genotype contribute to individual differences in spatial learning and memory. The associations of
APOE
genotype with ...neurocognitive function have been well studied among the elderly but less is known at earlier ages. Young adults (
n
= 169, 88 females) completed three neurocognitive tasks: mental rotation, spatial span, and Memory Island, a spatial navigation test. Males outperformed females on all three tasks: finding the hidden targets more quickly on Memory Island (Cohen’s
d
= 0.62) and obtaining higher scores on mental rotation (
d
= 0.54) and spatial span (
d
= 0.37). In contrast, no significant effects of
APOE
were observed. The identified sex differences elaborate upon past literature documenting sexually dimorphic performance on specific neurobehavioral tasks.
Self-projection is the ability to orient the self in different places in time and space. Episodic memory, prospection, and theory of mind (ToM) are all cognitive abilities that share an element of ...self-projection. Previous research has posited that each of these abilities stems from the same neural network. The current study compared performance of cognitively healthy older adults and younger adults on several self-projection tasks to examine the relatedness of these constructs behaviorally. Episodic memory and prospection were measured using an episodic interview task where the participants were asked to remember or imagine events that either had happened in the past or could happen in the future and then gave ratings describing the extent to which they were mentally experiencing the event and from what perspective they viewed it. ToM was measured by asking participants to make judgments regarding the intentions of characters described in stories that involved cognitive, affective, or ironic components. Our results demonstrate that aging influences episodic memory, prospection, and ToM similarly: older adult participants showed declines on each of these measures compared to younger adults. Further, we observed correlations between performance on the measures of episodic memory and prospection as well as between episodic memory and ToM, although no correlation between prospection and ToM was observed after controlling for chronological age. We discuss these results in the light of theories suggesting that each of these abilities is governed by a common brain system.
The low reproducibility rate in social sciences has produced hesitation among researchers in accepting published findings at their face value. Despite the advent of initiatives to increase ...transparency in research reporting, the field is still lacking tools to verify the credibility of research reports. In the present paper, we describe methodologies that let researchers craft highly credible research and allow their peers to verify this credibility. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a multi-laboratory replication of Bem's Experiment 1 (Bem 2011
, 407-425. (doi:10.1037/a0021524)) on extrasensory perception (ESP), which was co-designed by a consensus panel including both proponents and opponents of Bem's original hypothesis. In the study we applied direct data deposition in combination with born-open data and real-time research reports to extend transparency to protocol delivery and data collection. We also used piloting, checklists, laboratory logs and video-documented trial sessions to ascertain as-intended protocol delivery, and external research auditors to monitor research integrity. We found 49.89% successful guesses, while Bem reported 53.07% success rate, with the chance level being 50%. Thus, Bem's findings were not replicated in our study. In the paper, we discuss the implementation, feasibility and perceived usefulness of the credibility-enhancing methodologies used throughout the project.
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