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Recent Submissions
Informant- and Self-Appraisals on the Psychosis and Hallucinations Questionnaire (PsycH-Q) Enhances Detection of Visual Hallucinations in Parkinson's Disease
(2018-11-01) Muller, Alana J.; Mills, Joanna M.Z.; O'Callaghan, Claire; Naismith, Sharon L.; Clouston, Paul D.; Lewis, Simon J.G.; Shine, James M.
Background: Clinicians vary in their ability to elicit and interpret hallucinatory symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). There is limited evidence for informant-report measures of PD hallucinations as adjuncts to clinician-rated scales. Objectives: To determine the utility of an informant version of the validated Psychosis and Hallucinations Questionnaire (PsycH-Q) for assessing the presence and severity of hallucinations in PD; and, to evaluate accuracy of clinician judgements by comparison with informant report and self-report. Methods: One hundred sixty-three PD patient-informant dyads completed self- and informant-report versions of PsycH-Q and three common questionnaire measures: Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire; Parkinson's Psychosis Questionnaire; and Scales for Outcomes in Parkinson's disease–Psychiatric Complications. We compared self-ratings and informant ratings across analogous subscales for the presence of hallucinations with clinician interview ratings on MDS-UPDRS as a diagnostic standard. Results: There was a low level of agreement between dyads (average κ = 0.39; κ range = 0.32–0.47; P < 0.001), and patients indicated the highest prevalence of hallucinations compared to informant or clinician estimates. Clinician interview missed 32% of PsycH-Q hallucinators identified by dyads. Relative to the sample, 22 patients with exclusively clinician-appraised hallucinations had poorer overall quality of life measured by the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire. Conclusions: The sole use of clinician-rated scales may underestimate prevalence of PD hallucinations, and there is room for introducing self- and informant-report tools. Nonetheless, clinician appraisals are critical in cases when informant and patient insight might be affected by the impact of illness on quality of life.
Relatedness among people diagnosed with dementia
(2012) Sabat, Steven R.; Lee, Joanna M.
In this study, we examined the social relatedness of people in the moderate stage of dementia as defined by their performance on standard tests and clinical examination. The individuals herein were observed in the natural social environment of an adult day center that they attended on weekdays. A number of important aspects of mutually desired, independently initiated, supportive social relationships were observed to exist, through which the principals revealed semiotic, or meaning-driven, behavior that would not be predicted by their meeting the criteria that contributed to their diagnosis. Losses in social functioning described in the DSM and associated with the clinical diagnosis of dementia appear to be caused more by social dynamics involving healthy others than by brain injury alone. Implications for the non-pharmacological treatment of people with dementia are explored and discussed within the context of Kitwood's idea of positive person work.
Palynostratigraphy of the Murray basin
(1999) Macphail, Mike
To date, the only published comprehensive zonation for datingand correlating late Tertiary non-marine sequences in Australiais that developed in the 1970s for the offshore Gippsland Basinon the extreme southeastern margin of the continent. In thispaper an analogous zonation scheme is presented for the MurrayBasin, a large intracratonic basin that covers some 300 000 km2of inland New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Majorspore and pollen sequences identified within this basin corre-spond with major periods of marine transgression-regression, inthe middle Eocene to early Oligocene, early Oligocene to middleMiocene and late Miocene to Pliocene. Presence/absence dataallow the first two sequences to be subdivided into palynologicalzones that can be confidently correlated with zones establishedfor the Gippsland Basin, viz., equivalents of the middle to lateEocene lower, middle and upper Nothofagidites asperus zones,and the Oligocene to middle Miocene Proteacidites tuberculatusand Canthiumidites bellus zones, respectively. Late Miocene-early Pliocene and late Pliocene-Pleistocene intervals are as-signed to the Monotocidites galeatus Zone and Tubulifloriditespleistocenicus Zone, respectively. Changes in the relative abun-dance of commonly occurring species support the above subdi-visions in a general way only and are not reliable as a basis forbasin-wide correlations. Until some independent geological orgeophysical datum is found to allow a direct comparison ofspecies time distributions across the basin, further formal subdi-vision of the zones is not recommended.
Control of alternative splicing through siRNA-mediated transcriptional gene silencing
(2009) Allo, Mariano; Buggiano, Valeria; Fededa, Juan P.; Petrillo, Ezequiel; Schor, Ignacio; de la Mata, Manuel; Agirre, Eneritz; Plass, Mireya; Eyras, Eduardo; Abou Elela, Sherif; Klinck, Roscoe; Chabot, Benoit; Kornblihtt, Alberto R.
When targeting promoter regions, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) trigger a previously proposed pathway known as transcriptional gene silencing by promoting heterochromatin formation. Here we show that siRNAs targeting intronic or exonic sequences close to an alternative exon regulate the splicing of that exon. The effect occurred in hepatoma and HeLa cells with siRNA antisense strands designed to enter the silencing pathway, suggesting hybridization with nascent pre-mRNA. Unexpectedly, in HeLa cells the sense strands were also effective, suggesting that an endogenous antisense transcript, detectable in HeLa but not in hepatoma cells, acts as a target. The effect depends on Argonaute-1 and is counterbalanced by factors favoring chromatin opening or transcriptional elongation. The increase in heterochromatin marks (dimethylation at Lys9 and trimethylation at Lys27 of histone H3) at the target site, the need for the heterochromatin-associated protein HP1 alpha and the reduction in RNA polymerase II processivity suggest a mechanism involving the kinetic coupling of transcription and alternative splicing.
Policy Forum Pod
(Policy Forum - Crawford School of Public Policy, 2023-12-08) Bessell, Sharon; Hunter, Arnagretta; Hendriks, Carolyn M.
In this episode, we speak to Professor Carolyn Hendriks about democracy, representation, political trust and decision making and what's happening in local communities.
Democracy is under strain as the legitimacy of representatives is questioned and public trust declines. The rise of populism is changing the way many think about democracy and democratic representation, while new forms of leadership emerge.