Goal-directed and habitual control in the basal ganglia: implications for Parkinson's disease

Progressive loss of the ascending dopaminergic projection in the basal ganglia is a fundamental pathological feature of Parkinson's disease. Studies in animals and humans have identified spatially segregated functional territories in the basal ganglia for the control of goal-directed and habitual actions. In patients with Parkinson's disease the loss of dopamine is predominantly in the posterior putamen, a region of the basal ganglia associated with the control of habitual behaviour. These patients may therefore be forced into a progressive reliance on the goal-directed mode of action control that is mediated by comparatively preserved processing in the rostromedial striatum. Thus, many of their behavioural difficulties may reflect a loss of normal automatic control owing to distorting output signals from habitual control circuits, which impede the expression of goal-directed action. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

Search for new physics in the multijet and missing transverse momentum final state in proton-proton collisions at √s=8 Tev

Peer reviewe

Measurement of Higgs boson production and properties in the WW decay channel with leptonic final states

Peer reviewe

Study of hadronic event-shape variables in multijet final states in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Worldwide comparison of survival from childhood leukaemia for 1995–2009, by subtype, age, and sex (CONCORD-2): a population-based study of individual data for 89 828 children from 198 registries in 53 countries

Background Global inequalities in access to health care are reflected in differences in cancer survival. The CONCORD programme was designed to assess worldwide differences and trends in population-based cancer survival. In this population-based study, we aimed to estimate survival inequalities globally for several subtypes of childhood leukaemia. Methods Cancer registries participating in CONCORD were asked to submit tumour registrations for all children aged 0-14 years who were diagnosed with leukaemia between Jan 1, 1995, and Dec 31, 2009, and followed up until Dec 31, 2009. Haematological malignancies were defined by morphology codes in the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, third revision. We excluded data from registries from which the data were judged to be less reliable, or included only lymphomas, and data from countries in which data for fewer than ten children were available for analysis. We also excluded records because of a missing date of birth, diagnosis, or last known vital status. We estimated 5-year net survival (ie, the probability of surviving at least 5 years after diagnosis, after controlling for deaths from other causes [background mortality]) for children by calendar period of diagnosis (1995-99, 2000-04, and 2005-09), sex, and age at diagnosis (< 1, 1-4, 5-9, and 10-14 years, inclusive) using appropriate life tables. We estimated age-standardised net survival for international comparison of survival trends for precursor-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Findings We analysed data from 89 828 children from 198 registries in 53 countries. During 1995-99, 5-year agestandardised net survival for all lymphoid leukaemias combined ranged from 10.6% (95% CI 3.1-18.2) in the Chinese registries to 86.8% (81.6-92.0) in Austria. International differences in 5-year survival for childhood leukaemia were still large as recently as 2005-09, when age-standardised survival for lymphoid leukaemias ranged from 52.4% (95% CI 42.8-61.9) in Cali, Colombia, to 91.6% (89.5-93.6) in the German registries, and for AML ranged from 33.3% (18.9-47.7) in Bulgaria to 78.2% (72.0-84.3) in German registries. Survival from precursor-cell ALL was very close to that of all lymphoid leukaemias combined, with similar variation. In most countries, survival from AML improved more than survival from ALL between 2000-04 and 2005-09. Survival for each type of leukaemia varied markedly with age: survival was highest for children aged 1-4 and 5-9 years, and lowest for infants (younger than 1 year). There was no systematic difference in survival between boys and girls. Interpretation Global inequalities in survival from childhood leukaemia have narrowed with time but remain very wide for both ALL and AML. These results provide useful information for health policy makers on the effectiveness of health-care systems and for cancer policy makers to reduce inequalities in childhood survival

Constraints on parton distribution functions and extraction of the strong coupling constant from the inclusive jet cross section in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

BLISS: an artificial language for learnability studies

To explore neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the human language faculty, cognitive scientists use artificial languages to control more precisely the language learning environment and to study selected aspects of natural languages. Artificial languages applied in cognitive studies are usually designed ad hoc, to only probe a specific hypothesis, and they include a miniature grammar and a very small vocabulary. The aim of the present study is the construction of an artificial language incorporating both syntax and semantics, BLISS. Of intermediate complexity, BLISS mimics natural languages by having a vocabulary, syntax, and some semantics, as defined by a degree of non-syntactic statistical dependence between words. We quantify, using information theoretical measures, dependencies between words in BLISS sentences as well as differences between the distinct models we introduce for semantics. While modeling English syntax in its basic version, BLISS can be easily varied in its internal parametric structure, thus allowing studies of the relative learnability of different parameter sets

Study of double parton scattering using W+2-jet events in proton-proton collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Measurements of the tt¯ charge asymmetry using the dilepton decay channel in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Peer reviewe

Histopathology of Growth Anomaly Affecting the Coral, Montipora capitata: Implications on Biological Functions and Population Viability

Growth anomalies (GAs) affect the coral, Montipora capitata, at Wai'ōpae, southeast Hawai'i Island. Our histopathological analysis of this disease revealed that the GA tissue undergoes changes which compromise anatomical machinery for biological functions such as defense, feeding, digestion, and reproduction. GA tissue exhibited significant reductions in density of ova (66.1–93.7%), symbiotic dinoflagellates (38.8–67.5%), mesenterial filaments (11.2–29.0%), and nematocytes (28.8–46.0%). Hyperplasia of the basal body wall but no abnormal levels of necrosis and algal or fungal invasion was found in GA tissue. Skeletal density along the basal body wall was significantly reduced in GAs compared to healthy or unaffected sections. The reductions in density of the above histological features in GA tissue were collated with disease severity data to quantify the impact of this disease at the colony and population level. Resulting calculations showed this disease reduces the fecundity of M. capitata colonies at Wai'ōpae by 0.7–49.6%, depending on GA severity, and the overall population fecundity by 2.41±0.29%. In sum, GA in this M. capitata population reduces the coral's critical biological functions and increases susceptibility to erosion, clearly defining itself as a disease and an ecological threat