The Influence of an Acute Bout of Aerobic Exercise on Vascular Endothelial Function in Moderate Stages of Chronic Kidney Disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is directly influenced by the deleterious effects of systemic inflammation and oxidative stress. The vascular endothelium may transiently respond to aerobic exercise and improve post-exercise vascular renal function in moderate stages of CKD. Brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD) is a nitric-oxide-dependent measure of endothelial function that is transiently potentiated by exercise. The purpose of the study was to determine the acute influence of a single bout of high-intensity interval exercise (HIIE) or steady-state moderate-intensity exercise (SSE) on endothelial dysfunction in moderate stages of CKD. Twenty participants (n = 6 men; n = 14 women) completed 30 min of SSE (65%) and HIIE (90:20%) of VO2reserve in a randomized crossover design. FMD measurements and blood samples were obtained before, 1 h, and 24 h post-exercise. FMD responses were augmented 1 h post-exercise in both conditions (p < 0.005). Relative to pre-exercise measures, total antioxidant capacity increased by 4.3% 24 h post-exercise (p = 0.012), while paraoxonase-1 was maintained 1 h and elevated by 6.1% 24 h after SSE, but not HIIE (p = 0.035). In summary, FMD can be augmented by a single episode of either HIIE or SSE in moderate stages of CKD. Modest improvements were observed in antioxidant analytes, and markers of oxidative stress were blunted in response to either SSE or HIIE.

Focus on One or More? Cultural Similarities and Differences in How Parents Talk About Social Events to Preschool Children

How parents talk about social events shapes their children’s understanding of the social world and themselves. In this study, we show that parents in a society that more strongly values individualism (the United States) and one that more strongly values collectivism (Japan) differ in how they talk about negative social events, but not positive ones. An animal puppet show presented positive social events (e.g., giving a gift) and negative social events (e.g., knocking over another puppet’s block tower). All shows contained two puppets, an actor and a recipient of the event. We asked parents to talk to their 3- and 4-years old children about these events. A total of 26 parent–child dyads from the United States (M = 41.92 months) and Japan (M = 42.77 months) participated. The principal dependent measure was how much parent talk referred to the actor of each type of social event. There were no cultural differences observed in positive events – both the United States and Japanese parents discussed actors more than recipients. However, there were cultural differences observed in negative events – the United States parents talked mostly about the actor but Japanese parents talked equally about the actor and the recipient of the event. The potential influences of these differences on early cognitive and social development are discussed.

EXPRESS: T1 difficulty does not modulate the magnitude of the attentional blink

When the visual system is busy processing one stimulus it has problems processing a subsequent stimulus if it arrives soon after the first. Laboratory studies of this second-stimulus impairment – known as ¬attentional blink (AB) – have employed two targets (T1, T2) presented in rapid sequence, and have found identification accuracy to be nearly perfect for T1 but impaired for T2. It is commonly believed that the magnitude of the AB is related directly to the difficulty of T1: the greater the T1 difficulty, the larger the AB. A survey of the experimental literature disconfirms that belief showing it to have arisen from artificial constraints imposed by the 100% limit of the response scale. Removal of that constraint, either by using reaction time (RT) instead of accuracy as the dependent measure, or in experiments in which the functions of T2 accuracy over lags do not converge to the limit of the response scale, reveals parallel functions for the easy-T1 and the hard-T1 conditions, consistent with the idea that T1 difficulty does not modulate AB magnitude. This finding is problematic for all but the Boost-and-Bounce and the Locus Coeruleus-Norepinephrine theories in which T1 acts merely as a trigger for an eventual refractory period that leads to the failure to process T2, rendering T1 difficulty and its relationship to the AB an irrelevant consideration.

Appraisal of self-reference, delusional ideation and memory in a normal sample

I investigated whether self-referent appraisal bias (SRB) mediates the relation between delusional thinking and self-referent memory (SRM). Forty normal adults participated. Participants rated how much 80 statements were about them on a five-point scale and the ratings were summed to operationalize SRB. Corrected hit rate (Pr) from an incidental recognition memory test for these statements was the dependent measure of SRM. Peters Delusion Inventory (PDI) scores correlated with Pr (r=-.34) and there was a trend toward correlation between SRB and Pr (r=-.25). SRB mediated the relation between PDI score and Pr with age, standardized memory and language achievement scores as covariates (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Bootstrapping analyses confirmed that the change in the model was significant with SRB as a mediator. These findings suggest that individual differences, such as SRB, mediate SRM performance. This suggests that such subtle biases could mediate cognitive impairment in psychosis, which has implications for treatment.

Appraisal of self-reference, delusional ideation and memory in a normal sample

I investigated whether self-referent appraisal bias (SRB) mediates the relation between delusional thinking and self-referent memory (SRM). Forty normal adults participated. Participants rated how much 80 statements were about them on a five-point scale and the ratings were summed to operationalize SRB. Corrected hit rate (Pr) from an incidental recognition memory test for these statements was the dependent measure of SRM. Peters Delusion Inventory (PDI) scores correlated with Pr (r=-.34) and there was a trend toward correlation between SRB and Pr (r=-.25). SRB mediated the relation between PDI score and Pr with age, standardized memory and language achievement scores as covariates (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Bootstrapping analyses confirmed that the change in the model was significant with SRB as a mediator. These findings suggest that individual differences, such as SRB, mediate SRM performance. This suggests that such subtle biases could mediate cognitive impairment in psychosis, which has implications for treatment.

Quantum Biophysics of the Atmosphere:Factor Analysis of the Annual Dynamics of Maximum, Mininum and Average Temperatures from 1879 to 2017 to Hadley English Temperature Center (Hadcet)

Factor analysis of annual dynamics from 1879 to 2017 was carried out by the method of identification of stable regularities: maximum, minimum and average air temperature of Central England according to HadCET. The sample capacity was 139 rows. In factor analysis, time is excluded, and it acts only as a system-forming factor that ensures the relationship between the three parameters of climate and weather. Therefore, the adequacy of the dynamics models is taken into account in the diagonal cells of the correlation matrix. In addition to time, different lists of objects are possible in factor analysis. The coefficient of correlation variation, that is, a measure of the functional relationship between the parameters of the system (annual weather at the weather station in Central England) is 0.8230 for trends, 0.8603 taking into account the annual dynamics of the four-membered model obtained from the computational capabilities of the software environment CurveExpert-1.40, and 0.9578 for the full up to the error of measurement wavelet analysis of the dynamics of the values of three factors. In all three methods of factor analysis, the meteorological parameter «average Annual temperature» was in the first place as the influencing variable, the «Maximum temperature» was in the second place, and the «Minimum temperature» was in the third place. As the dependent measure in these areas there are three kind of temperature. The comparison shows that among the binary relations between the three temperatures, the average temperature on the maximum air temperature in the surface layer of the atmosphere has the greatest influence on the correlation coefficient 0.9765. At the same time, all six equations refer to strong connections, so there is a high quantum certainty between the three types of temperature. But when predicting the most meaningful essence showed the maximum temperature.

Comparing Phonetic Convergence in Children and Adults

Observations by sociolinguists suggest that when children relocate to a new community, they rapidly learn to imitate their peers, adopting the new local accent faster and more effectively than adults. However, few well-controlled laboratory experiments have been conducted comparing speech or accent imitation across ages. Here, we investigated Canadian English-speaking children’s and adults’ imitation of three model speakers: a Canadian English talker, an Australian English talker, and a non-native Mandarin English talker who learned English later in life. The speech of all three talkers was manipulated to have elongated voice onset time (VOT) on word initial stop consonants. The dependent measure was how much participants would lengthen their VOTs after exposure to one of the talkers in two paradigms: delayed shadowing (Experiment 1) and immediate shadowing (Experiment 2). We predicted that overall children would show more imitation than adults, particularly when imitating the Canadian English talker, given previous work on children’s social preferences. Although we did not observe age differences in either study, when shadowing was immediate, we found that imitation was influenced by the accent of the speaker, but not in the manner we predicted: both age groups imitated the Mandarin-accented model more strongly than the Canadian model. When shadowing was delayed, we observed no evidence of imitation. We discuss our findings in light of other recent work, and conclude that the development of speech imitation is an area ripe for further investigation.

Velocity dependent measure of spasticity: Reliability in children and juveniles with neuromotor disorders

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to create a clear, standardized test description to rate spasticity severity into four categories according to the definition given by Lance [1], referred to as the Velocity Dependent Measure of Spasticity (VDMS). METHOD: Muscle groups of the upper and lower limbs of children with neuromotor disorders were evaluated on their response to passive movement in a fast-versus slow-velocity test condition. The interrater and test-retest reliability were assessed using Gwet’s alpha one (95%-CI) and the percentage agreement. RESULTS: Two physiotherapists independently assessed 45 children and youths (age 4–19 years). The interrater reliability of the VDMS was substantial to almost perfect (Gwet’s alpha one: 0.66–0.99, n= 45) while the test-retest reliability was almost perfect as well (Gwet’s alpha one: 0.83–1.00, n= 42). CONCLUSION: The VDMS can be recommended as a reliable assessment with a standardized procedure to assess spasticity of the extremities in children with neuromotor disorders.

Two Replication Studies of a Time-Reversed (Psi) Priming Task and the Role of Expectancy in Reaction Times

Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause–effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that response times to incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruent stimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participant records their judgments. The confirmatory hypothesis for Experiment 1 was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participants who completed the English-language version rather than a translation showed a significant effect, as was the case in the original study; no significant departure from chance was found in data involving non-English translations. Experiment 2 sought to enhance the predicted effect by having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statement at the beginning of the experiment to test the pre-recorded hypothesis that a pro-psi statement would produce a larger effect than an anti-psi statement. The results did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no effect in the English-language sample. However, there was mixed support for the effect of the psi statement on performance; those participants who received the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those who received the anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neither the experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs were significantly associated with the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personality variable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlate of psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implications for international collaborations and replication in controversial science. Keywords: priming; expectancy effect; retrocausation; consciousness; sociology; precognition; psi; replication Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause-effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that response times to incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruent stimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participant records his or her judgments. The confirmatory hypothesis for Study 1 was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participants who completed the English-language version rather than a translation showed a significant effect, as was the case in the original study; no significant departure from chance was found in data involving non-English translations. Study 2 sought to enhance the predicted effect by having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statement at the beginning of the experiment to test the pre-recorded hypothesis that a pro-psi statement would produce a larger effect than an anti-psi statement. The results did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no observed association between belief and experience of ESP and psi outcome. However, there was mixed support for the effect of the psi statement on performance; those participants who received the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those who received anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neither the experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs or expectations were significantly correlated with the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personality variable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlate of psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implications for international collaborations and replication in controversial science.

First-phase ejection fraction: association with remodelling and outcome in aortic valve stenosis

BackgroundFirst-phase ejection fraction (EF1), the left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (EF) until the time of peak transaortic velocity, is a novel marker of subclinical LV dysfunction able to predict adverse events in aortic stenosis (AS). This study investigated the association between end-systolic wall stress (ESWS) and EF1 in severe AS, as well as the prognostic value of EF1 in severe asymptomatic AS.MethodsTwo prospectively gathered cohorts of 94 asymptomatic patients and 108 symptomatic patients scheduled for aortic valve replacement (AVR), all with severe AS (aortic valve area <1 cm2) were stratified according to the median value of EF1 (33%). EF1 was defined as the EF at peak transaortic velocity. Asymptomatic patients were followed up for 3 years for the combined end-point of death, AVR or admission with heart failure.ResultsEF1 correlated with EF and was inversely associated with ESWS. In multivariate regression analysis, ESWS (p<0.001) and replacement fibrosis measured by MRI (p=0.02) were associated with EF1. Among asymptomatic patients, EF1 above the median was associated with the combined primary endpoint (HR=0.53 (95% CI 0.33 to 0.87)), while global longitudinal strain and EF were not. Among 42 patients with discordant AS (mean gradient <40 mm Hg), EF1 above median was associated with the primary endpoint (HR 0.28 (95% CI 0.12 to 0.61)).ConclusionEF1 is an afterload-dependent measure that is associated with events in patients with asymptomatic severe AS. The afterload dependency of EF1 may be useful in timing of risk stratification in patients with discordant AS.Trial registration numbersNCT02395107 and NCT02316587.