We explored changes in multiscale brain signal complexity and power‐law scaling exponents of electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency spectra across several distinct global states of consciousness ...induced in the natural physiological context of the human sleep cycle. We specifically aimed to link EEG complexity to a statistically unified representation of the neural power spectrum. Further, by utilizing surrogate‐based tests of nonlinearity we also examined whether any of the sleep stage‐dependent changes in entropy were separable from the linear stochastic effects contained in the power spectrum. Our results indicate that changes of brain signal entropy throughout the sleep cycle are strongly time‐scale dependent. Slow wave sleep was characterized by reduced entropy at short time scales and increased entropy at long time scales. Temporal signal complexity (at short time scales) and the slope of EEG power spectra appear, to a large extent, to capture a common phenomenon of neuronal noise, putatively reflecting cortical balance between excitation and inhibition. Nonlinear dynamical properties of brain signals accounted for a smaller portion of entropy changes, especially in stage 2 sleep.
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•Neural signatures exhibit non-monotonic patterns in vigilance discrimination tasks.•Beyond the end-spurt, non-monotonic patterns suggest pacing occurs across a vigil.•Pacing effects ...emerged most frequently in anterior ERPs linked to central cognition.•Understanding neural behavior can inform predictive modeling of vigilance performance.
The end-spurt effect, where performance declines with time-on-task and then increases toward the end of a task, has garnered little attention in the vigilance literature. Researchers have suggested the performance enhancement is due to increased motivation or arousal with knowledge of the end of the vigil. However, recent examination of neural signature patterns during a simultaneous discrimination task, where task length was unknown, provided preliminary support that the end-spurt reflects pacing of resources. The current effort expands this previous work to an additional simultaneous task and to a successive discrimination task across two sessions, one where task length was not known and one where task length was known. Twenty-eight (Study 1) and a separate 24 (Study 2) participants completed a Simultaneous Radar task (Study 1) in one session and Simultaneous and Successive Lines tasks (Study 2) across two sessions while neural data was collected. Several event-related potentials exhibited non-monotonic patterns during the vigilance tasks, in some cases reflecting end-spurt patterns, but more commonly reflecting higher-order polynomial patterns. These patterns were more prevalent in anterior regions as opposed to posterior regions. Of note, the N1 anterior exhibited consistent general patterns across all the vigilance tasks and across sessions. Importantly, even when participants had knowledge of session length, some ERPs still exhibited higher-order polynomial trends, suggesting pacing rather than an end-spurt from motivation or arousal as the vigil ends. These insights can help inform predictive modeling of vigilance performance and the implementation of mitigation efforts to allay the vigilance decrement.
Summary
Background
The photodermatoses affect large proportions of the population but their impact on quality of life (QoL) and psychological health has not been reviewed. Several tools are available ...to evaluate QoL and psychological impacts.
Objectives
To systematically review current literature to identify tools used to assess QoL and psychological impacts in patients with photodermatoses, and to summarize the reported findings.
Methods
A systematic search of PubMed, OVID Medline, PsycInfo and CINAHL was performed for articles investigating QoL and/or psychological impact in patients with photodermatoses, published between 1960 and September 2018.
Results
Twenty studies were included: 19 incorporated QoL assessment while three evaluated psychological morbidity. Six QoL tools were found to be used: Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), Children's DLQI, Family DLQI, Skindex (16‐ and 29‐item versions), Erythropoietic Protoporphyria Quality of Life (EPP‐QoL) and EuroQol. Between 31% and 39% of photosensitive patients reported a very large impact on QoL (DLQI > 10). Employment and education, social and leisure activities, and clothing choices were particularly affected. Only one tool was specifically designed for a photodermatosis (EPP‐QoL). Four tools were used to evaluate psychological impact: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Fear of Negative Evaluation, brief COPE and Illness Perception Questionnaire‐Revised. Levels of anxiety and depression were approximately double British population data. Patients with facial involvement, female gender and younger age at onset showed more psychological morbidity.
Conclusions
Several tools have been used to assess QoL in the photodermatoses, and confirm substantial impact on QoL. Development of specific, validated QoL measures would address their unique impacts. Research delineating their psychological comorbidity is sparse and requires further exploration.
What's already known about this topic?
The photodermatoses negatively impact quality of life (QoL) and cause psychological distress, but no reviews of this area appear in the literature.
What does this study add?
Few studies have explored the psychological and social impacts of the photodermatoses.
There are no fully validated QoL tools specific to the photodermatoses.
Around one‐third of adult and child patients with photosensitivity experience very or extremely large impact on QoL, with particular effect on clothing choices, employment and social and leisure activities.
Studies suggest anxiety and depression levels in these patients are around double those in the U.K. general population.
More attention is required on these ‘hidden’ conditions.
Linked Comment: Walburn and Sarkany. Br J Dermatol 2020; 182:1077.
Plain language summary available online
Plasma discharges with a negative triangularity (δ=-0.4) shape have been created in the DIII-D tokamak with a significant normalized beta (β_{N}=2.7) and confinement characteristic of the high ...confinement mode (H_{98y2}=1.2) despite the absence of an edge pressure pedestal and no edge localized modes (ELMs). These inner-wall-limited plasmas have a similar global performance as a positive triangularity (δ=+0.4) ELMing H-mode discharge with the same plasma current, elongation and cross sectional area. For cases both of dominant electron cyclotron heating with T_{e}/T_{i}>1 and dominant neutral beam injection heating with T_{e}/T_{i}=1, turbulent fluctuations over radii 0.5<ρ<0.9 were reduced by 10-50% in the negative triangularity shape compared to the matching positive triangularity shape, depending on the radius and conditions.
At a moment when the ePortfolio has been recognized as a high impact practice - as a unique site for hosting student integrative learning and as a powerful genre for assessment - this book provides ...faculty, staff, and administrators with a set of frameworks and models useful for guiding students in designing and creating ePortfolios that clearly communicate their purpose and effectively use the affordances of the medium.In short, this book both illustrates and provides guidance on how to support the development of students' ePortfolio literacy. The ePortfolio curricular models provided in ePortfolio as Curriculum include both those integrated within existing disciplinary courses and those offered through credit-bearing stand-alone courses.In taking up questions focused on what students need to know and do in becoming informed, effective ePortfolio makers, the contributors to this volume - from the standpoint of their course outcomes and institutional contexts - present various approaches to developing an ePortfolio curriculum. Individually and collectively, the chapters explain ways to engage students in understanding the potential purposes, structures, audiences, and designs of ePortfolios; in developing the reflective practices for contextualizing and informing the selection and curation of artifacts; and in creating appropriate focus and coherence.Synthesizing insights from the previous chapters, the concluding chapter identifies six consistent features of an ePortfolio curriculum that support the development of students' ePortfolio literacy. In addition, Kathleen Blake Yancey identifies and defines seven common ePortfolio curricular dimensions that contribute to students' ePortfolio literacy, among them student agency, digital identity, and campus and global citizenship. Not least, she describes new practices emerging from ePortfolio curricula, including new ePortfolio-specific genres; new metaphors used to characterize ePortfolios and their practices; and new issues that the ePortfolio curriculum raises.
•Interest in intraindividual brain signal variability is growing in basic and clinical studies.•We examined the reproducibility and efficiency of multiscale entropy algorithms.•Most measures ...exhibited acceptable psychometric properties with wide differences in computational efficiency.
There is a broad family of statistical methods for capturing time series regularity, with increasingly widespread adoption by the neuroscientific community. A common feature of these methods is that they permit investigators to quantify the entropy of brain signals – an index of unpredictability/complexity. Despite the proliferation of algorithms for computing entropy from neural time series data there is scant evidence concerning their relative stability and efficiency. Here we evaluated several different algorithmic implementations (sample, fuzzy, dispersion and permutation) of multiscale entropy in terms of their stability across sessions, internal consistency and computational speed, accuracy and precision using a combination of electroencephalogram (EEG) and synthetic 1/ƒ noise signals. Overall, we report fair to excellent internal consistency and longitudinal stability over a one-week period for the majority of entropy estimates, with several caveats. Computational timing estimates suggest distinct advantages for dispersion and permutation entropy over other entropy estimates. Considered alongside the psychometric evidence, we suggest several ways in which researchers can maximize computational resources (without sacrificing reliability), especially when working with high-density M/EEG data or multivoxel BOLD time series signals.
ABSTRACT
Well‐designed and effectively managed networks of marine reserves can be effective tools for both fisheries management and biodiversity conservation. Connectivity, the demographic linking of ...local populations through the dispersal of individuals as larvae, juveniles or adults, is a key ecological factor to consider in marine reserve design, since it has important implications for the persistence of metapopulations and their recovery from disturbance. For marine reserves to protect biodiversity and enhance populations of species in fished areas, they must be able to sustain focal species (particularly fishery species) within their boundaries, and be spaced such that they can function as mutually replenishing networks whilst providing recruitment subsidies to fished areas. Thus the configuration (size, spacing and location) of individual reserves within a network should be informed by larval dispersal and movement patterns of the species for which protection is required. In the past, empirical data regarding larval dispersal and movement patterns of adults and juveniles of many tropical marine species have been unavailable or inaccessible to practitioners responsible for marine reserve design. Recent empirical studies using new technologies have also provided fresh insights into movement patterns of many species and redefined our understanding of connectivity among populations through larval dispersal. Our review of movement patterns of 34 families (210 species) of coral reef fishes demonstrates that movement patterns (home ranges, ontogenetic shifts and spawning migrations) vary among and within species, and are influenced by a range of factors (e.g. size, sex, behaviour, density, habitat characteristics, season, tide and time of day). Some species move <0.1–0.5 km (e.g. damselfishes, butterflyfishes and angelfishes), <0.5–3 km (e.g. most parrotfishes, goatfishes and surgeonfishes) or 3–10 km (e.g. large parrotfishes and wrasses), while others move tens to hundreds (e.g. some groupers, emperors, snappers and jacks) or thousands of kilometres (e.g. some sharks and tuna). Larval dispersal distances tend to be <5–15 km, and self‐recruitment is common. Synthesising this information allows us, for the first time, to provide species, specific advice on the size, spacing and location of marine reserves in tropical marine ecosystems to maximise benefits for conservation and fisheries management for a range of taxa. We recommend that: (i) marine reserves should be more than twice the size of the home range of focal species (in all directions), thus marine reserves of various sizes will be required depending on which species require protection, how far they move, and if other effective protection is in place outside reserves; (ii) reserve spacing should be <15 km, with smaller reserves spaced more closely; and (iii) marine reserves should include habitats that are critical to the life history of focal species (e.g. home ranges, nursery grounds, migration corridors and spawning aggregations), and be located to accommodate movement patterns among these. We also provide practical advice for practitioners on how to use this information to design, evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of marine reserve networks within broader ecological, socioeconomic and management contexts.
Globally, groupers (Epinephelidae) that form fish spawning aggregations (FSAs) are highly vulnerable to overfishing and often require site-specific approaches to management. Over 5-years (2009-2013), ...we conducted underwater visual censuses (UVC) at a well-known spawning site at Njari Island, Gizo, Western Province, Solomon Islands, that supports aggregations of squaretail coralgrouper (Plectropomus areolatus), camouflage grouper (Epinephelus polyphekadion) and brown-marbled grouper (E. fuscoguttatus). Findings show that while there were species-specific variations in the duration and timing of the spawning season, aggregation densities peaked from March to June, representing the main spawning season for all three species. For P. areolatus, gonad analysis from samples taken from 2008 to 2011 confirmed reproductive activity in support of density trends observed through UVC. Over the 5-year UVC monitoring period, FSA densities declined for P. areolatus and E. polyphekadion. Conversely, following the first year of monitoring, E. fuscoguttatus densities increased. These inter-specific differences may reflect variable responses to fishing as shown elsewhere, or for example, differences in recruitment success. In response to known declines in FSAs of these species, in 2018 the Solomon Islands government placed a nationwide ban on these species' harvest and sale between October and January. As this study shows, this ban does not encompass the peak aggregation period at Njari and will offer limited protection to other FSAs of these species that are known to vary in reproductive seasonality across the Solomon Islands. A more biologically meaningful and practical management strategy would be to implement a nationwide ban on the harvest and sale of these groupers each month between full and new moons when these FSAs form consistently throughout the country. Since effective management of FSAs typically requires a combined approach, spatial management that protects both spawning sites and reproductive migratory corridors is warranted.
Tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) are ectopic lymphoid formations that form within nonlymphoid tissue. They share structural and functional characteristics with secondary lymphoid structures such as ...lymph nodes and can contain B-cell follicles and germinal centers surrounded by a T-cell region. TLS have been described in several types of cancers and are usually associated with positive patient outcomes. However, TLS differ vastly in cellular composition and location within tissue types. In this review, we discuss factors confounding the interpretation of the evidence for a prognostic role for TLS in cancer and frame these factors in the context of translation to regular clinical use.
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