Improving elderly recall with bimodal presentation: a natural experiment of discharge planning.

This study's goal was to better explain memory and its decline in a natural setting to improve social work practice among the elderly. The effect that bimodal (verbal and visual) presentation of information has on delayed incidental recall was compared with unimodal (verbal only) presentation. A significant increase occurred in overall recall and verbatim recall. Gist recall improved, but not significantly.     

Pharmacological treatments that facilitate extinction of fear: Relevance to psychotherapy

A great deal is now known about the mechanisms of conditioned fear acquisition and expression. More recently, the mechanisms of inhibition of conditioned fear have become the subject of intensive study. The major model system for the study of fear inhibition in the laboratory is extinction, in which a previously fear conditioned organism is exposed repeatedly to the fear-eliciting cue in the absence of any aversive event and the fear conditioned response declines. It is well established that extinction is a form of new learning as opposed to forgetting or “unlearning” of conditioned fear, and it is hypothesized that extinction develops when sensory pathways conveying sensory information to the amygdala come to engage GABAergic interneurons through forms of experience-dependent plasticity such as long-term potentiation. Several laboratories currently are investigating methods of facilitating fear extinction in animals with the hope that such treatments might ultimately prove to be useful in facilitating exposure-based therapy for anxiety disorders in clinical populations. This review discusses the advances that have been made in this field and presents the findings of the first major clinical study to examine the therapeutic utility of a drug that facilitates extinction in animals. It is concluded that extinction is an excellent model system for the study of fear inhibition and an indispensable tool for the screening of putative pharmacotherapies for clinical use.     

X-chromosomal gebundener Hydrozephalus (HSAS) Eine Erkrankung aus der Gruppe der CRASH-Syndrome

Hintergrund.  

Unter CRASH-Syndrom wird eine Gruppe von X-chromosomal vererbten Erkrankungen zusammengefasst, die eine Mutation im L1CAM-Gen vorweisen und nach dem Akronym CRASH folgende Symptome vorweisen k?nnen: Corpus-callosum-Hypoplasie, Retardierung, adduzierte Daumen, spastische Paraplegie und Hydrozephalus. Eine Erkrankung aus dieser Reihe ist der X-chromosomal gebundene Hydrozephalus, erstmals beschrieben von Bickers und Adams 1949 als Hydrozephalus mit ?quaduktstenose (HSAS).     

Tumor vascular signals in renal masses: detection with Doppler US

The vascularity of 49 renal masses (26 malignant and 23 benign lesions) was investigated with duplex Doppler ultrasound. Doppler signals obtained at the margins of renal masses were defined as "tumor signals" when the Doppler-shifted frequency of the lesion exceeded the frequency shift in the ipsilateral main renal artery. These exceeded 2.5 kHz with a 3-MHz insonating frequency. Among the 26 renal masses that subsequently proved to be malignant, tumor signals were obtained in 15 of 18 (83%) untreated renal cell carcinomas, in three of four Wilms tumors, and in two patients with metastases to the kidney, but not in the one patient with lymphoma. None of the 23 benign renal masses demonstrated tumor signals. Tumor vascularity in malignant lesions gives rise to abnormal, high-velocity, Doppler-shifted signals that can help in the differential diagnosis of renal masses.     

Detection of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and apoptosis in human fragmented embryos

In human in-vitro fertilization (IVF)-embryo transfer, the in-vitro culture environment differs from in-vivo conditions in that the oxygen concentration is higher, and in such conditions the mouse embryos show a higher concentration of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in simple culture media. ROS are believed to cause damage to cell membranes and DNA fragmentation in somatic cells. This study was conducted to ascertain the level of H2O2 concentration within embryos and the morphological features of cell damage induced by H2O2. A total of 62 human oocytes and embryos (31 fragmented, 15 non-fragmented embryos, 16 unfertilized oocytes) was obtained from the IVF-embryo transfer programme. The relative intensity of H2O2 concentrations within embryos was measured using 2',7'-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate by Quanti cell 500 fluorescence imaging and DNA fragmentation was observed with transmission electron microscopy and an in-situ apoptosis detection kit. The H2O2 concentrations were significantly higher in fragmented embryos (72.21 +/- 9.62, mean +/- SEM) compared to non-fragmented embryos (31.30 +/- 3.50, P < 0.05) and unfertilized oocytes (30.75 +/- 2.67, P < 0.05). Apoptosis was observed only in fragmented embryos, and was absent in non-fragmented embryos. Electron microscopic findings confirmed apoptotic bodies and cytoplasmic condensation in the fragmented blastomeres. We conclude that there is a direct relationship between increased H2O2 concentration and apoptosis, and that further studies should be undertaken to confirm these findings.      

A functional perspective on social marketing: insights from Israel's bicycle helmet campaign

This article examines the functional approach to attitudes for its potential contribution to improving models of attitude-behavior consistency and to demonstrate its potential application to social marketing. To this end, a study of children's attitudes toward bicycle helmets is reported on and its results examined. The study was undertaken to plan Israel's first-ever media campaign to encourage the use of helmets by children. Responses of the 783 Israeli children (ages 7 to 14 years) who participated in the study are analyzed to test the hypothesis generated by this application of functional theory--that children's attitudes toward wearing bicycle helmets serve primarily an expressive function. The results suggest cautious support for the functional hypothesis. In conclusion, possible extensions of this approach to other areas of social marketing are discussed.