Discovery of the Principal Cystic Fibrosis Mutation (F508del) in Ancient DNA from Iron Age Europeans

The most common, life-threatening autosomal recessive disease of Europeans and Euro-Americans, cystic fibrosis (CF), occurs predominately in patients with the F508del mutation.1 Although F508del is currently detectable as a single allele in 1/30-1/40 Europeans2-4 and Euro-Americans,5 it has not been determined what heterozygote selective advantage(s) might account for its relatively high prevalence. Indirect evidence6 suggests that this mutation was present in Brittany at least 3000 years ago, but no direct analyses of ancient DNA have been reported to identify F508del and clarify its frequency in prehistoric inhabitants of Europe. Here we show that F508del was present in 3 of 32 Iron Age inhabitants of Austria from whom DNA could be recovered from molar teeth using procedures that fulfill authenticity criteria.7 Because these individuals, who were buried in cemeteries along the Danube river, were shown by radiocarbon dating of isolated bone collagen to have lived there during 544-255 BC, this indicates that the F508del mutation is definitely more than 2000 years old and that CF (the disease) was present among them. More generally, the apparent enrichment of this Iron Age population in F508del suggests an evolutionary advantage in their environment that can be investigated by interdisciplinary strategies of paleoepidemiology

Preventing Repeat Victimization: A Systematic Review

This report presents a systematic review, including a statistical meta-analysis, of the effects of initiatives to prevent repeat victimization

Processes and priorities in planning mathematics teaching

Insights into teachers' planning of mathematics reported here were gathered as part of a broader project examining aspects of the implementation of the Australian curriculum in mathematics (and English). In particular, the responses of primary and secondary teachers to a survey of various aspects of decisions that inform their use of curriculum documents and assessment processes to plan their teaching are discussed. Teachers appear to have a clear idea of the overall topic as the focus of their planning, but they are less clear when asked to articulate the important ideas in that topic. While there is considerable diversity in the processes that teachers use for planning and in the ways that assessment information informs that planning, a consistent theme was that teachers make active decisions at all stages in the planning process. Teachers use a variety of assessment data in various ways, but these are not typically data extracted from external assessments. This research has important implications for those responsible for supporting teachers in the transition to the Australian Curriculum: Mathematic

Distributive Justice and the Crime Drop

Data were extracted from a total of almost 600000 respondents from all sweeps of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) 1982-2012 to determine whether victimisation was more or less concentrated across households during the crime drop. The most victimised household decile experienced the greatest absolute decline in victimisation but still accounted for over 70% of all victimisations suffered. Methodological issues underlying the patterns observed are discussed. The characteristics associated with highly victimised household are consistent across survey sweeps. Cross-national and crime type extension of work of the kind undertaken is advocated as both intrinsically important and likely to clarify the dynamics of the crime drop

Cyberbullying among adolescents: Measures in search of a construct

Objective: This review focuses on the literature on cyberbullying among adolescents. Currently, there is no unified theoretical framework to move the field of cyberbullying forward. Due to some unique features of cyberbullying, researchers have generally assumed that it is distinct from aggression perpetrated in person. Many measures of cyberbullying have been developed based on this assumption rather than to test competing models and inform a theoretical framework for cyberbullying. Approach: We review current theory and research on cyberbullying within the context of the broader literature on aggression to explore the usefulness of the assumption that cyberbullying represents a distinct form of aggression. Associations between cyberbullying and general forms of aggression and psychosocial predictors of cyberbullying are discussed. Conclusions: Based on the empirical research, we suggest that the media through which aggression is perpetrated may be best conceptualized as a new dimension on which aggression can be classified, rather than cyberbullying as a distinct counterpart to existing forms of aggression. Research on cyberbullying should be considered within the context of theoretical and empirical knowledge of aggression in adolescence. Using this approach will create a theoretical framework for understanding cyberbullying, focus future research, and guide prevention efforts

An Efficient Precoder Design for Multiuser MIMO Cognitive Radio Networks with Interference Constraints

We consider a linear precoder design for an underlay cognitive radio multiple-input multiple-output broadcast channel, where the secondary system consisting of a secondary base-station (BS) and a group of secondary users (SUs) is allowed to share the same spectrum with the primary system. All the transceivers are equipped with multiple antennas, each of which has its own maximum power constraint. Assuming zero-forcing method to eliminate the multiuser interference, we study the sum rate maximization problem for the secondary system subject to both per-antenna power constraints at the secondary BS and the interference power constraints at the primary users. The problem of interest differs from the ones studied previously that often assumed a sum power constraint and/or single antenna employed at either both the primary and secondary receivers or the primary receivers. To develop an efficient numerical algorithm, we first invoke the rank relaxation method to transform the considered problem into a convex-concave problem based on a downlink-uplink result. We then propose a barrier interior-point method to solve the resulting saddle point problem. In particular, in each iteration of the proposed method we find the Newton step by solving a system of discrete-time Sylvester equations, which help reduce the complexity significantly, compared to the conventional method. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate fast convergence and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Multi-disciplinary perspectives: application of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research to evaluate a health coaching initiative

Long term conditions are a leading cause of mortality and morbidity. Their management is founded on a combination of approaches involving government policy, better integration between health and care systems, and individual responsibility for self-care. Health coaching has emerged as an approach to encouraging individual responsibility and enhancing the self-management of long term conditions. This paper focuses on the evaluation of a workforce initiative in a diverse and socially deprived community. The initiative sought both to improve integration between health and care services for people with long term conditions, and equip practitioners with health coaching skills. The aim of the study was to contribute an empirical understanding of what practitioners perceive to be the contextual factors that impact on the adoption of health coaching in community settings. These factors were conceptualised using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). A stratified purposive sample of 22 health and care practitioners took part in semi-structured telephone interviews. Data were analysed using the CFIR as an analytical framework. The perceptions of trainees mapped onto the major domains of the CFIR: characteristics of the intervention, outer setting, inner setting, characteristics of individuals involved, and process of implementation. Individual patient expectations, co-morbidities and social context were central to the extent to which practitioners and patients engaged with health coaching. Structural constraints within provider services and the wider NHS were also reported as discouraging initiatives that focused on long term rewards rather than short term wins. The authors recommend further research is undertaken both to understand the role of health coaching in disadvantaged communities and ensure the service user voice is heard

Large time behavior and asymptotic stability of the two-dimensional Euler and linearized Euler equations

We study the asymptotic behavior and the asymptotic stability of the two-dimensional Euler equations and of the two-dimensional linearized Euler equations close to parallel flows. We focus on spectrally stable jet profiles $U(y)$ with stationary streamlines $y_{0}$ such that $U'(y_{0})=0$, a case that has not been studied previously. We describe a new dynamical phenomenon: the depletion of the vorticity at the stationary streamlines. An unexpected consequence, is that the velocity decays for large times with power laws, similarly to what happens in the case of the Orr mechanism for base flows without stationary streamlines. The asymptotic behaviors of velocity and the asymptotic profiles of vorticity are theoretically predicted and compared with direct numerical simulations. We argue on the asymptotic stability of these flow velocities even in the absence of any dissipative mechanisms.Comment: To be published in Physica D, nonlinear phenomena (accepted January 2010

Activating KIR2DS4 Is Expressed by Uterine NK Cells and Contributes to Successful Pregnancy

Tissue-specific NK cells are abundant in the pregnant uterus and interact with invading placental trophoblast cells that transform the maternal arteries to increase the fetoplacental blood supply. Genetic case-control studies have implicated killer cell Ig-like receptor (KIR) genes and their $\textit{HLA}$ ligands in pregnancy disorders characterized by failure of trophoblast arterial transformation. Activating $\textit{KIR2DS1}$ or $\textit{KIR2DS5}$ (when located in the centromeric region as in Africans) lower the risk of disorders when there is a fetal $\textit{HLA-C}$ allele carrying a C2 epitope. In this study, we investigated another activating $\textit{KIR, KIR2DS4}$, and provide genetic evidence for a similar effect when carried with $\textit{KIR2DS1. KIR2DS4}$ is expressed by ∼45% of uterine NK (uNK) cells. Similarly to KIR2DS1, triggering of KIR2DS4 on uNK cells led to secretion of GM-CSF and other chemokines, known to promote placental trophoblast invasion. Additionally, XCL1 and CCL1, identified in a screen of 120 different cytokines, were consistently secreted upon activation of KIR2DS4 on uNK cells. Inhibitory $\textit{KIR2DL5A}$, carried in linkage disequilibrium with $\textit{KIR2DS1}$, is expressed by peripheral blood NK cells but not by uNK cells, highlighting the unique phenotype of uNK cells compared with peripheral blood NK cells. That KIR2DS4, KIR2DS1, and some alleles of KIR2DS5 contribute to successful pregnancy suggests that activation of uNK cells by KIR binding to HLA-C is a generic mechanism promoting trophoblast invasion into the decidua.This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Centre for Trophoblast Research, the British Heart Foundation, and the Cambridge Philosophical Society

Eliciting Information from a Large Population

This paper studies information transmission in social surveys where a welfare max-imizing decision maker communicates with a random sample of individuals from a large population who have heterogeneous preferences. The population distribution of preferences is unknown and has to be estimated, based on answers from the respondents. The decision maker cannot identify the true distribution of preferences even if the sample size becomes arbitrarily large, since the respondents have incentive to "exaggerate" their preferences especially as the sample size becomes larger and each respondent has weaker inuence on the decision. The quality of communication with each respondent may improve as the sample size becomes smaller, and thus we identify the trade-off between the quality and quantity of communication. We show that the decision maker may prefer to sample a smaller number of individuals when the prior is weaker