Effects of Cannabis Use on Human Behavior, Including Cognition, Motivation, and Psychosis: A Review

With a political debate about the potential risks and benefits of cannabis use as a backdrop, the wave of legalization and liberalization initiatives continues to spread. Four states (Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska) and the District of Columbia have passed laws that legalized cannabis for recreational use by adults, and 23 others plus the District of Columbia now regulate cannabis use for medical purposes. These policy changes could trigger a broad range of unintended consequences, with profound and lasting implications for the health and social systems in our country. Cannabis use is emerging as one among many interacting factors that can affect brain development and mental function. To inform the political discourse with scientific evidence, the literature was reviewed to identify what is known and not known about the effects of cannabis use on human behavior, including cognition, motivation, and psychosis

Internet-based medical education: a realist review of what works, for whom and in what circumstances

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Financialisation of News in China in the Age of the Internet: The Case of Xinhuanet

This paper discusses the recent development of Xinhuanet.com, a news website launched by Xinhua News Agency, one of China’s key central state-owned news organisations. Xinhuanet Co. Ltd., the business entity running the website, went public in October 2016 in Shanghai. This has marked the first step in the state news agency’s financialisation. Two main questions are addressed. First, what were the main driving forces behind Xinhuanet’s transformation from a governmental cultural organisation to a publicly traded enterprise, the majority shareholder of which remains Xinhua? Second, how to understand the nature of this transformation in relation to Xinhua’s wider marketisation process and that of the Chinese media sector as a whole? The paper argues that Xinhua’s financialisation via Xinhuanet is best understood as part of a state-administrated initiative in accord with Xinhua’s own business ambitions. The financialisation of news by state players such as Xinhuanet does not alter the underlying ownership structure of Chinese news media, which remain ultimately state-controlled

Binary and Millisecond Pulsars at the New Millennium

We review the properties and applications of binary and millisecond pulsars. Our knowledge of these exciting objects has greatly increased in recent years, mainly due to successful surveys which have brought the known pulsar population to over 1300. There are now 56 binary and millisecond pulsars in the Galactic disk and a further 47 in globular clusters. This review is concerned primarily with the results and spin-offs from these surveys which are of particular interest to the relativity community.Comment: 59 pages, 26 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in Living Reviews in Relativity (http://www.livingreviews.org

Identifying the domains of context important to implementation science: a study protocol

There is growing recognition that "context" can and does modify the effects of implementation interventions aimed at increasing healthcare professionals' use of research evidence in clinical practice. However, conceptual clarity about what exactly comprises "context" is lacking. The purpose of this research program is to develop, refine, and validate a framework that identifies the key domains of context (and their features) that can facilitate or hinder (1) healthcare professionals' use of evidence in clinical practice and (2) the effectiveness of implementation interventions

Intermittent auscultation versus continuous fetal monitoring: Exploring factors that influence birthing unit nurses' fetal surveillance practice using theoretical domains framework

Background: Intermittent Auscultation (IA) is the recommended method of fetal surveillance for healthy women in labour. However, the majority of women receive continuous electronic monitoring. We used the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to explore the views of Birthing Unit nurses about using IA as their primary method of fetal surveillance for healthy women in labour. Methods: Using a semi-structured interview guide, we interviewed a convenience sample of birthing unit nurses throughout Ontario, Canada to elicit their views about fetal surveillance. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were content analysed using the TDF and themes were framed as belief statements. Domains potentially key to changing fetal surveillance behaviour and informing intervention design were identified by noting the frequencies of beliefs, content, and their reported influence on the use of IA Results: We interviewed 12 birthing unit nurses. Seven of the 12 TDF domains were perceived to be key to changing birthing unit nurses' behaviour The nurses reported that competing tasks, time constraints and the necessity to multitask often limit their ability to perform IA (domains Beliefs about capabilities; Environmental context and resources). Some nurses noted the decision to use IA was something that they consciously thought about with every patient while others stated it their default decision as long as there were no risk factors (Memory, attention and decision processes, Nature of behaviour). They identified positive consequences (e.g. avoid unnecessary interventions, mother-centered care) and negative consequences of using IA (e.g. legal concerns) and reported that the negative consequences can often outweigh positive consequences (Beliefs about consequences). Some reported that hospital policies and varying support from care teams inhibited their use of IA (Social influences), and that support from the entire team and hospital management would likely increase their use (Social influences; Behavioural regulation). Conclusion: We identified potential influences on birthing unit nurses' use of IA as their primary method of fetal surveillance. These beliefs suggest potential targets for behaviour change interventions to promote IA use

Ageing and entrepreneurial preferences

Previous research on age and entrepreneurship assumed homogeneity and downplayed age-related differences in the motives and aims underlying enterprising behaviour. We argue that the heterogeneity of entrepreneurship influences how the level of entrepreneurial activity varies with age. Using a sample of 2566 respondents from 27 European countries we show that entrepreneurial activity increases almost linearly with age for individuals who prefer to only employ themselves (self-employers), whereas it increases up to a critical threshold age (late 40s) and decreases thereafter for those who aspire to hire workers (owner-managers). Age has a considerably smaller effect on entrepreneurial behaviour for those who do not prefer self-employment but are pushed into it by lack of alternative employment opportunities (reluctant entrepreneurs). Our results question the conventional wisdom that entrepreneurial activity declines with age and suggest that effective responses to demographic changes require policy makers to pay close attention to the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial preferences

Efficiency of primary saliva secretion: an analysis of parameter dependence in dynamic single-cell and acinus models, with application to aquaporin knockout studies

Secretion from the salivary glands is driven by osmosis following the establishment of osmotic gradients between the lumen, the cell and the interstitium by active ion transport. We consider a dynamic model of osmotically driven primary saliva secretion and use singular perturbation approaches and scaling assumptions to reduce the model. Our analysis shows that isosmotic secretion is the most efficient secretion regime and that this holds for single isolated cells and for multiple cells assembled into an acinus. For typical parameter variations, we rule out any significant synergistic effect on total water secretion of an acinar arrangement of cells about a single shared lumen. Conditions for the attainment of isosmotic secretion are considered, and we derive an expression for how the concentration gradient between the interstitium and the lumen scales with water- and chloride-transport parameters. Aquaporin knockout studies are interpreted in the context of our analysis and further investigated using simulations of transport efficiency with different membrane water permeabilities. We conclude that recent claims that aquaporin knockout studies can be interpreted as evidence against a simple osmotic mechanism are not supported by our work. Many of the results that we obtain are independent of specific transporter details, and our analysis can be easily extended to apply to models that use other proposed ionic mechanisms of saliva secretion

Eye Movements Predict Recollective Experience

Previously encountered stimuli can bring to mind a vivid memory of the episodic context in which the stimulus was first experienced ("remembered'' stimuli), or can simply seem familiar ("known'' stimuli). Past studies suggest that more attentional resources are required to encode stimuli that are subsequently remembered than known. However, it is unclear if the attentional resources are distributed differently during encoding and recognition of remembered and known stimuli. Here, we record eye movements while participants encode photos, and later while indicating whether the photos are remembered, known or new. Eye fixations were more clustered during both encoding and recognition of remembered photos relative to known photos. Thus, recognition of photos that bring to mind a vivid memory for the episodic context in which they were experienced is associated with less distributed overt attention during encoding and recognition. The results suggest that remembering is related to encoding of a few distinct details of a photo rather than the photo as a whole. In turn, during recognition remembering may be trigged by enhanced memory for the salient details of the photos

Genetic variability of hepatitis C virus before and after combined therapy of interferon plus ribavirin

We present an analysis of the selective forces acting on two hepatitis C virus genome regions previously postulated to be involved in the viral response to combined antiviral therapy. One includes the three hypervariable regions in the envelope E2 glycoprotein, and the other encompasses the PKR binding domain and the V3 domain in the NS5A region. We used a cohort of 22 non-responder patients to combined therapy (interferon alpha-2a plus ribavirin) for which samples were obtained before initiation of therapy and after 6 or/and 12 months of treatment. A range of 25-100 clones per patient, genome region and time sample were sequenced. These were used to detect general patterns of adaptation, to identify particular adaptation mechanisms and to analyze the patterns of evolutionary change in both genome regions. These analyses failed to detect a common adaptive mechanism for the lack of response to antiviral treatment in these patients. On the contrary, a wide range of situations were observed, from patients showing no positively selected sites to others with many, and with completely different topologies in the reconstructed phylogenetic trees. Altogether, these results suggest that viral strategies to evade selection pressure from the immune system and antiviral therapies do not result from a single mechanism and they are likely based on a range of different alternatives, in which several different changes, or their combination, along the HCV genome confer viruses the ability to overcome strong selective [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]