Your Scent is as Their Scent. The Invisible Presence in New Kingdom Egyptian Art

Ancient Egyptian art often includes depictions of the act of smelling and of smell-carrying objects. Though the act of smelling and the objects themselves are visibly recognizable, both underline the presence of an invisible force, that of smell. In this analysis, Iargue that the visible presentation of scent-rich environments in Theban tomb wall paintings from the Eighteenth Dynasty was meant to mark divine presence, another invisible force. Textual evidence from mortuary literature reveals that the Egyptian gods could be identified by their smell. Thus, if the deceased were to take on this smell (i.e. identity) of the gods, the resultant change in identity would facilitate a successful transition into the afterlife. In addition, smell may also be linked with the breath of life, which could be invoked to call the deceased back to the living world to receive offerings

Inappropriate sexual behaviour in secure psychiatric services: an evaluation of St Andrew’s Sexualised Behaviour Assessment (SASBA)

Incidents of unwanted sexual behaviour are common on mental health wards in England and Wales (Care Commission, 2018). This thesis aims to evaluate the utility of using St Andrew’s Sexualised Behaviour Assessment Scale (SASBA; Knight et al., 2008) for detecting sexual inappropriateness with mental health patients in forensic psychiatric settings. SASBA encourages continuous observation and recording of incidents of Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour (ISB), although it was initially designed for patients in neurorehabilitation settings. Chapter I introduces the challenges associated with measuring and defining sexual incidents. Chapter II provides a systematic review comparing SASBA and the few alternative behavioural tools. Chapters III and IV contain retrospective cohort studies that examine SASBA data in a mixed diagnosis mental health sample (n=137) and a psychosis subsample (n=72). Both samples included patients with and without sexual offence histories, providing the added opportunity to test for differences between sub-groups. The prevalence of ISB within groups was investigated and determined how monitoring should be targeted. Predictive factors for ISB behaviours in both studies were identified, and regression models were produced. The results suggested that SASBA is useful at detecting ISB in mental health samples, but is more relevant to sexually disinhibited psychotic patients than predatory sexual offenders. Chapter VI provides a summary of each section and a synthesis of the overall findings. Recommendations for future use and the limitations of retrospective data are also discussed

Research on Elementary, Middle, and Secondary Earth and Space Sciences Teacher Education

In order to fully engage with the vision of the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS, our nation needs a diverse and well prepared K-12 science teacher workforce. And in order for ESS to gain equal status with other sciences, the geoscience community must ensure that the K-12 science teacher workforce is adequately prepared to teach ESS core knowledge and practices. This is a challenging endeavor and complicated by the fact that the K-12 teacher education landscape is highly variable across institutions in terms of how much ESS content is included, how programs are structured, and how ESS fits into the larger institutional context. Teacher education exists in a complex landscape that involve many domains of research. This theme chapter focuses on teacher education research that most directly aligns to the undergraduate teaching and learning experience. Three grand challenges emerged from discussion and reflections on the existing literature and are poised to guide future research on undergraduate K-12 teacher education

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Persistent Nociceptor Hyperactivity as a Painful Evolutionary Adaptation

Chronic pain caused by injury or disease of the nervous system (neuropathic pain) has been linked to persistent electrical hyperactivity of the sensory neurons (nociceptors) specialized to detect damaging stimuli and/or inflammation. This pain and hyperactivity are considered maladaptive because both can persist long after injured tissues have healed and inflammation has resolved. While the assumption of maladaptiveness is appropriate in many diseases, accumulating evidence from diverse species, including humans, challenges the assumption that neuropathic pain and persistent nociceptor hyperactivity are always maladaptive. We review studies indicating that persistent nociceptor hyperactivity has undergone evolutionary selection in widespread, albeit selected, animal groups as a physiological response that can increase survival long after bodily injury, using both highly conserved and divergent underlying mechanisms

Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids favourably modulate cardiometabolic biomarkers in type 2 diabetes: a meta-analysis and meta-regression of randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) suggest that supplementation with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3PUFAs) may favourably modify cardiometabolic biomarkers in type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Previous meta-analyses are limited by insufficient sample sizes and omission of meta-regression techniques, and a large number of RCTs have subsequently been published since the last comprehensive meta-analysis. Updated information regarding the impact of dosage, duration or an interaction between these two factors is therefore warranted. The objective was to comprehensively assess the effect of n-3PUFAs supplementation on cardiometabolic biomarkers including lipid profiles, inflammatory parameters, blood pressure, and indices of glycaemic control, in people with T2DM, and identify whether treatment dosage, duration or an interaction thereof modify these effects. METHODS: Databases including PubMed and MEDLINE were searched until 13th July 2017 for RCTs investigating the effect of n-3PUFAs supplementation on lipid profiles, inflammatory parameters, blood pressure, and indices of glycaemic control. Data were pooled using random-effects meta-analysis and presented as standardised mean difference (Hedges g) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Meta-regression analysis was performed to investigate the effects of duration of supplementation and total dosage of n-3PUFAs as moderator variables where appropriate. RESULTS: A total of 45 RCTs were identified, involving 2674 people with T2DM. n-3PUFAs supplementation was associated with significant reductions in LDL [ES: - 0.10, (95% CI - 0.17, - 0.03); p = 0.007], VLDL (ES: - 0.26 (- 0.51, - 0.01); p = 0.044], triglycerides (ES: - 0.39 (- 0.55, - 0.24; p ≤ 0.001] and HbA1c (ES: - 0.27 (- 0.48, - 0.06); p = 0.010]. Moreover, n-3PUFAs supplementation was associated with reduction in plasma levels of TNF-α [ES: - 0.59 (- 1.17, - 0.01); p = 0.045] and IL-6 (ES: - 1.67 (- 3.14, - 0.20); p = 0.026]. All other lipid markers, indices of glycaemic control, inflammatory parameters, and blood pressure remained unchanged (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: n-3PUFAs supplementation produces favourable hypolipidemic effects, a reduction in pro-inflammatory cytokine levels and improvement in glycaemia. Neither duration nor dosage appear to explain the observed heterogeneity in response to n-3PUFAs. Trial registration This trial was registered at http://www.crd.york.ac.uk as CRD42016050802

A large genome-wide association study of age-related macular degeneration highlights contributions of rare and common variants.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.3448Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with limited therapeutic options. Here we report on a study of >12 million variants, including 163,714 directly genotyped, mostly rare, protein-altering variants. Analyzing 16,144 patients and 17,832 controls, we identify 52 independently associated common and rare variants (P < 5 × 10(-8)) distributed across 34 loci. Although wet and dry AMD subtypes exhibit predominantly shared genetics, we identify the first genetic association signal specific to wet AMD, near MMP9 (difference P value = 4.1 × 10(-10)). Very rare coding variants (frequency <0.1%) in CFH, CFI and TIMP3 suggest causal roles for these genes, as does a splice variant in SLC16A8. Our results support the hypothesis that rare coding variants can pinpoint causal genes within known genetic loci and illustrate that applying the approach systematically to detect new loci requires extremely large sample sizes.We thank all participants of all the studies included for enabling this research by their participation in these studies. Computer resources for this project have been provided by the high-performance computing centers of the University of Michigan and the University of Regensburg. Group-specific acknowledgments can be found in the Supplementary Note. The Center for Inherited Diseases Research (CIDR) Program contract number is HHSN268201200008I. This and the main consortium work were predominantly funded by 1X01HG006934-01 to G.R.A. and R01 EY022310 to J.L.H

On the co-rotation of Milky Way satellites: LMC-mass satellites induce apparent motions in outer halo tracers

Understanding the physical mechanism behind the formation of a co-rotating thin plane of satellite galaxies, like the one observed around the Milky Way (MW), has been challenging. The perturbations induced by a massive satellite galaxy, like the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) provide valuable insight into this problem. The LMC induces an apparent co-rotating motion in the outer halo by displacing the inner regions of the halo with respect to the outer halo. Using the Latte suite of FIRE-2 cosmological simulations of MW-mass galaxies, we confirm that the apparent motion of the outer halo induced by the infall of a massive satellite changes the observed distribution of orbital poles of outer-halo tracers, including satellites. We quantify the changes in the distribution of orbital poles using the two-point angular correlation function and find that all satellites induce changes. However, the most massive satellites with pericentric passages between 30-100kpc induce the largest changes. The best LMC-like satellite analog shows the largest change in orbital pole distribution. The dispersion of orbital poles decreases by 20{\deg} during the first two pericentric passages. Even when excluding the satellites brought in with the LMC-like satellite, there is clustering of orbital poles. These results suggest that in the MW, the recent pericentric passage of the LMC should have changed the observed distribution of orbital poles of all other satellites. Therefore, studies of kinematically-coherent planes of satellites that seek to place the MW in a cosmological context should account for the existence of a massive satellite like the LMC.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures. ApJ submitted, Comments are welcom

Serotonin depletion amplifies distinct human social emotions as a function of individual differences in personality

Funder: Gates Cambridge Trust; doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100005370Abstract: Serotonin is involved in a wide range of mental capacities essential for navigating the social world, including emotion and impulse control. Much recent work on serotonin and social functioning has focused on decision-making. Here we investigated the influence of serotonin on human emotional reactions to social conflict. We used a novel computerised task that required mentally simulating social situations involving unjust harm and found that depleting the serotonin precursor tryptophan—in a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled design—enhanced emotional responses to the scenarios in a large sample of healthy volunteers (n = 73), and interacted with individual differences in trait personality to produce distinctive human emotions. Whereas guilt was preferentially elevated in highly empathic participants, annoyance was potentiated in those high in trait psychopathy, with medium to large effect sizes. Our findings show how individual differences in personality, when combined with fluctuations of serotonin, may produce diverse emotional phenotypes. This has implications for understanding vulnerability to psychopathology, determining who may be more sensitive to serotonin-modulating treatments, and casts new light on the functions of serotonin in emotional processing