The use of oral fluids to monitor key pathogens in porcine respiratory disease complex.

BACKGROUND: The usefulness of oral fluid (OF) sampling for surveillance of infections in pig populations is already accepted but its value as a tool to support investigations of porcine respiratory disease complex (PRDC) has been less well studied. This study set out to describe detection patterns of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2), swine influenza virus type A (SIV) and Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae (M. hyo) among farms showing differing severity of PRDC. The study included six wean-to-finish pig batches from farms with historical occurrence of respiratory disease. OF samples were collected from six pens every two weeks from the 5th to the 21st week of age and tested by real time PCR for presence of PRRSV, SIV and M. hyo and by quantitative real time PCR for PCV2. Data was evaluated alongside clinical and post-mortem observations, mortality rate, slaughter pathology, histopathology, and immunohistochemistry testing data for PCV2 antigen where available. RESULTS: PRRSV and M. hyo were detectable in OF but with inconsistency between pens at the same sampling time and within pens over sequential sampling times. Detection of SIV in clinical and subclinical cases showed good consistency between pens at the same sampling time point with detection possible for periods of 2-4 weeks. Quantitative testing of OF for PCV2 indicated different patterns and levels of detection between farms unaffected or affected by porcine circovirus diseases (PCVD). There was good correlation of PCR results for multiple samples collected from the same pen but no associations were found between prevalence of positive test results and pen location in the building or sex of pigs. CONCLUSIONS: Detection patterns for PRRSV, SIV and M. hyo supported the effectiveness of OF testing as an additional tool for diagnostic investigation of PRDC but emphasised the importance of sampling from multiple pens and on multiple occasions. Preliminary evidence supported the measurement of PCV2 load in pooled OF as a tool for prediction of clinical or subclinical PCVD at farm level.

Social influences on unconscious plagiarism and anti-plagiarism.

People are more likely to unconsciously plagiarise ideas from a same-sex partner than a different-sex partner, and more likely to unconsciously plagiarise if recalling alone rather than in the presence of their partner [Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Calvini, G. (1999). Contexts of cryptomnesia: May the source be with you. Social Cognition, 17, 273-297. doi: 10.1521/soco.1999.17.3.273 ]. Two sets of experiments explore these phenomena, using extensions of the standard unconscious plagiarism paradigm. In Experiment 1A participants worked together in same- or different-sex dyads before trying to recall their own ideas or their partner's ideas. More source errors were evident for same-sex dyads (Experiment 1A), but this effect was absent when participants recalled from both sources simultaneously (Experiment 1B). In Experiment 2A, participants recalled ideas from a single source either alone or in the presence of the partner, using an extended-recall task. Partner presence did not affect the availability of ideas, but did reduce the propensity to report them as task compliant, relative to a partner-present condition. Simultaneous recall from both sources removed this social effect (Experiment 2B). Thus social influences on unconscious plagiarism are apparent, but are influenced by the salience of the alternate source at retrieval.

Professionalism dilemmas, moral distress and the healthcare student: insights from two online UK-wide questionnaire studies.

OBJECTIVE: To understand the prevalence of healthcare students' witnessing or participating in something that they think unethical (professionalism dilemmas) during workplace learning and examine whether differences exist in moral distress intensity resulting from these experiences according to gender and the frequency of occurrence. DESIGN: Two cross-sectional online questionnaires of UK medical (study 1) and nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy and pharmacy students (study 2) concerning professionalism dilemmas and subsequent distress for (1) Patient dignity and safety breaches; (2) Valid consent for students' learning on patients; and (3) Negative workplace behaviours (eg, student abuse). PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: 2397 medical (67.4% female) and 1399 other healthcare students (81.1% female) responded. MAIN RESULTS: The most commonly encountered professionalism dilemmas were: student abuse and patient dignity and safety dilemmas. Multinomial and logistic regression identified significant effects for gender and frequency of occurrence. In both studies, men were more likely to classify themselves as experiencing no distress; women were more likely to classify themselves as distressed. Two distinct patterns concerning frequency were apparent: (1) Habituation (study 1): less distress with increased exposure to dilemmas 'justified' for learning; (2) Disturbance (studies 1 and 2): more distress with increased exposure to dilemmas that could not be justified. CONCLUSIONS: Tomorrow's healthcare practitioners learn within a workplace in which they frequently encounter dilemmas resulting in distress. Gender differences could be respondents acting according to gendered expectations (eg, males downplaying distress because they are expected to appear tough). Habituation to dilemmas suggests students might balance patient autonomy and right to dignity with their own needs to learn for future patient benefit. Disturbance contests the 'accepted' notion that students become less empathic over time. Future research might examine the strategies that students use to manage their distress, to understand how this impacts of issues such as burnout and/or leaving the profession.

How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolingual peer in language tests?

BACKGROUND: Bilingual children are under-referred due to an ostensible expectation that they lag behind their monolingual peers in their English acquisition. The recommendations of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) state that bilingual children should be assessed in both the languages known by the children. However, despite these recommendations, a majority of speech and language professionals report that they assess bilingual children only in English as bilingual children come from a wide array of language backgrounds and standardized language measures are not available for the majority of these. Moreover, even when such measures do exist, they are not tailored for bilingual children. AIMS: It was asked whether a cut-off exists in the proportion of exposure to English at which one should expect a bilingual toddler to perform as well as a monolingual on a test standardized for monolingual English-speaking children. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Thirty-five bilingual 2;6-year-olds exposed to British English plus an additional language and 36 British monolingual toddlers were assessed on the auditory component of the Preschool Language Scale, British Picture Vocabulary Scale and an object-naming measure. All parents completed the Oxford Communicative Development Inventory (Oxford CDI) and an exposure questionnaire that assessed the proportion of English in the language input. Where the CDI existed in the bilingual's additional language, these data were also collected. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Hierarchical regression analyses found the proportion of exposure to English to be the main predictor of the performance of bilingual toddlers. Bilingual toddlers who received 60% exposure to English or more performed like their monolingual peers on all measures. K-means cluster analyses and Levene variance tests confirmed the estimated English exposure cut-off at 60% for all language measures. Finally, for one additional language for which we had multiple participants, additional language CDI production scores were significantly inversely related to the amount of exposure to English. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Typically developing 2;6-year-olds who are bilingual in English and an additional language and who hear English 60% of the time or more, perform equivalently to their typically developing monolingual peers.

Donor verification using Short Tandem Repeat (STR) analysis directly from blood collected in PAXgene RNA tubes.

Biorepository processing includes nucleic acid extractions in batch mode from a large number of blood samples from many different donors. Handling such a large number of biospecimens presents the challenge of ensuring that samples are not switched or mislabeled during processing. One approach for confirming donor identity from DNA samples is the use of multiplexed fluorescent PCR for detecting Short Tandem Repeat (STR) allelic-size polymorphisms for a set of common autosomal loci. While donor identity of DNA extracted directly from blood collected in standard tubes containing anticoagulants can be easily verified by generating STR profiles, RNA from blood collected in PAXgene Blood RNA tubes (PAXgene RNA tubes) is depleted of DNA and is not amenable to STR fingerprinting for donor identity verification. We investigated the feasibility of isolating DNA directly from blood collected in PAXgene RNA tubes for use as template for STR DNA fingerprinting for blood donor identity verification. We determined that DNA extraction can be performed manually with the QIAamp DNA Blood Minikit or on the QIAxtractor instrument with minimal pre-processing protocol additions, and that DNA isolated from blood collected in PAXgene RNA tubes is of sufficient quantity and quality for successful STR fingerprint analysis. Adaptation of quality assurance methods such as the PAXgene RNA tube DNA extraction/STR fingerprinting assay described here is a good practice that ensures that biobanking collections provide scientists with high quality, donor-verified biomaterial.

The impact of self-efficacy, alexithymia and multiple traumas on posttraumatic stress disorder and psychiatric co-morbidity following epileptic seizures: a moderated mediation analysis.

This study investigated the incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychiatric co-morbidity following epileptic seizure, whether alexithymia mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and psychiatric outcomes, and whether the mediational effect was moderated by the severity of PTSD from other traumas. Seventy-one (M=31, F=40) people with a diagnosis of epilepsy recruited from support groups in the United Kingdom completed the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 and the Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale. They were compared with 71 people (M=29, F=42) without epilepsy. For people with epilepsy, 51% and 22% met the diagnostic criteria for post-epileptic seizure PTSD and for PTSD following one other traumatic life event respectively. For the control group, 24% met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD following other traumatic life events. The epilepsy group reported significantly more anxiety and depression than the control. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that self-efficacy was significantly correlated with alexithymia, post-epileptic seizure PTSD and psychiatric co-morbidity. Alexithymia was also significantly correlated with post-epileptic seizure PTSD and psychiatric co-morbidity. Mediation analyses confirmed that alexithymia mediated the path between self-efficacy and post-epileptic seizure PTSD and psychiatric co-morbidity. Moderated mediation also confirmed that self-efficacy and PTSD from one other trauma moderated the effect of alexithymia on outcomes. To conclude, people can develop posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and psychiatric co-morbidity following epileptic seizure. These psychiatric outcomes are closely linked with their belief in personal competence to deal with stressful situations and regulate their own functioning, to process rather than defend against distressing emotions, and with the degree of PTSD from other traumas.

Do stimulus--action associations contribute to repetition priming?

Despite evidence that response learning makes a major contribution to repetition priming, the involvement of response representations at the level of motor actions remains uncertain. Levels of response representation were investigated in 4 experiments that used different tasks at priming and test. Priming for stimuli that required congruent responses across 2 tasks was compared with that for stimuli requiring incongruent responses. Congruent responses showed more priming than incongruent responses did when congruence involved both decisions and actions (Experiment 1), decisions only (Experiment 2), and actions only (Experiment 4) but not when decision and action congruence were set in opposition (Experiment 3). These results demonstrate response learning with response representations at the level of both decisions and actions.

The role of working memory capacity in multiple-cue probability learning.

Multiple-cue probability learning (MCPL) involves learning to predict a criterion when outcome feedback is provided for multiple cues. A great deal of research suggests that working memory capacity (WMC) is involved in a wide range of tasks that draw on higher level cognitive processes. In three experiments, we examined the role of WMC in MCPL by introducing measures of working memory capacity, as well as other task manipulations. While individual differences in WMC positively predicted performance in some kinds of multiple-cue tasks, performance on other tasks was entirely unrelated to these differences. Performance on tasks that contained negative cues was correlated with working memory capacity, as well as measures of explicit knowledge obtained in the learning process. When the relevant cues predicted positively, however, WMC became irrelevant. The results are discussed in terms of controlled and automatic processes in learning and judgement.

Posttraumatic stress disorder following myocardial infarction: personality, coping, and trauma exposure characteristics.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the interrelationship between trauma exposure characteristics of myocardial infarction (MI), MI patients' personality traits, coping strategies, post-MI PTSD, and general psychological distress. METHOD: One hundred and twenty MI patients were recruited from two general practices. The MI patients were interviewed using a MI experience questionnaire and completed the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS), the General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28), the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), and the COPE Scale. RESULTS: Neuroticism was directly associated with post-MI PTSD and general psychological distress, while agreeableness did not link to the outcomes directly. Neuroticism influenced MI exposure characteristics which in turn influenced PTSD. Agreeableness affected PTSD and general psychological distress through MI exposure characteristics. Neuroticism influenced problem-focused coping which in turn affected general psychological distress. Agreeableness influenced problem-focused coping which in turn affected PTSD and general psychological distress. CONCLUSIONS: Patients developed PTSD and general psychological distress following MI. Neurotic and antagonistic personality traits combined with patients' subjective experiences of MI and usage of problem-focused coping influenced the severity of outcomes.

Trauma exposure characteristics, past traumatic life events, coping strategies, posttraumatic stress disorder, and psychiatric comorbidity among people with anaphylactic shock experience.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the interrelationship between trauma exposure characteristics, past traumatic life events, coping strategies, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and psychiatric comorbidity among people after anaphylactic shock experience. METHOD: The design was cross-sectional in that 94 people with anaphylactic shock experience responded to a postal survey. They completed the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist, the General Health Questionnaire 28, and the COPE Scale. They also answered questions on trauma exposure characteristics. The control group comprised 83 people without anaphylaxis. RESULTS: Twelve percent of people with anaphylactic shock experience fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for full PTSD. As a group, people with anaphylaxis reported significantly more past traumatic life events and psychiatric comorbidity than did the control. Partial least squares analysis showed that trauma exposure characteristics influenced postanaphylactic shock PTSD symptoms and psychiatric comorbidity, which, in turn, influenced coping strategies. CONCLUSIONS: People could develop PTSD and psychiatric comorbidity symptoms after their experience of anaphylactic shock. The way they coped with anaphylactic shock was affected by the severity of these symptoms. Past traumatic life events had a limited role to play in influencing outcomes.

Sizing up the associative account of repetition priming.

Three studies which test an associative account of repetition priming in a size comparison task are reported. Congruence of decision between priming and test affected performance when the priming task and test tasks were the same but not when they differed. This congruence effect was unaffected by the proportion of trials with congruent responses. Same-task priming exceeded cross-task priming even when both tasks required the same aspect of semantic knowledge. The results indicate that a component of priming is due to associations which are formed during priming and automatically activated when stimuli are repeated at test. Stimuli do not become associated with motor responses but are associated with the results of processing at a number of other levels.

Medical students' attitudes to complementary and alternative medicine: further validation of the IMAQ and findings from an international longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Current research mainly employs cross-sectional designs to examine changes in medical students' attitudes towards complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). AIMS: This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal study to further validate the Integrative Medicine Attitude Questionnaire (IMAQ) and examine changes in medical students' attitudes over 3 years. METHODS: A total of 154 medical students from four schools in three countries completed a modified version of the IMAQ during their first (T1) and fourth year (T2). RESULTS: We established the validity of a three-factor model for the IMAQ: (1) attitudes towards holism; (2) attitudes towards the effectiveness of CAM therapies, and (3) attitudes towards introspection and the doctor-patient relationship. We found that IMAQ factor scores did not differ significantly from T1 to T2, emphasizing the relative stability in attitudes across time. Various student characteristics were significantly associated with IMAQ factor scores at T2: age, gender, CAM use, CAM education and school; and two variables (gender and CAM use) predicted changes in medical students' attitudes between T1 and T2. CONCLUSIONS: We urge medical educators to continue exploring medical students' attitude changes towards CAM and we provide examples of what further research is needed.

The effects of precedence on Navon-induced processing bias in face recognition.

Macrae and Lewis (2002) showed that repeated reporting of the global dimension of Navon stimuli improved performance in a subsequent face identification task, whilst reporting the features of the Navon stimuli impaired performance. Using a face composite task, which is assumed to require featural processing, Weston and Perfect (2005) showed the complementary pattern: Featural responding to Navon letters speeded performance. However, both studies used Navon stimuli with global precedence, in which the overall configuration is easier to report than the features. Here we replicate the two studies above, whilst manipulating the precedence (global or featural) of the letter stimuli in the orientation task. Both studies replicated the previously reported findings with global precedence stimuli, but showed the reverse pattern with local precedence stimuli. These data raise important questions as to what is transferred between the Navon orientation task and the face-processing tasks that follow.

Content specificity: is it the full story? Statistical modelling of a clinical skills examination.

OBJECTIVE: This study sought to determine the relative contributions made by transferable skills and content-specific skills to Year 2 medical student performance in a clinical skills examination. METHODS: Correlated trait-correlated method models were constructed to describe the performance of 2 year groups of students in examinations held in the summers of 2004 and 2005 at Peninsula Medical School in the UK. The transferable skills components of the models were then removed to indicate the contribution made to the fit of the models to the data. RESULTS: Although content-specific skills made the greater contribution to the 2 models of student performance (accounting for averages of 54% and 43% of the variance, respectively), transferable skills did make an important but smaller contribution (averages of 13% and 16%, respectively). When the transferable skills components of the models were removed, the fit was not as good. CONCLUSIONS: Both content-specific skills and transferable skills contributed to performance in the clinical skills examination. This challenges current thinking and has important implications, not just for those involved in clinical skills examinations, but for all medical educators.

The effects of local and global processing orientation on eyewitness identification performance.

Recent work has demonstrated that performance on a simultaneous target-present photographic line-up can be enhanced by prior global processing orientation, and hindered by prior local processing orientation induced by processing Navon letter stimuli. A series of studies explore the generality of this processing bias effect using either videotaped scenarios or live interactions. Five experiments demonstrate that these effects are seen across a range of test stimuli, test formats, and test instructions. These data inform the processes engaged in by witnesses when making line-up identifications and indicate that it may be possible to improve the accuracy of witnesses making such judgements.

Halo effects in grading student projects.

Halo effects in rating specific pieces of work, as in educational grading, have received little attention. Grades awarded by 2 independent graders to undergraduate projects were analyzed with a correlated uniqueness model. Grades showed substantial halo despite being awarded by expert assessors at the time of reading the work. There was greater halo between different grades applying to the same section of the project than between grades applying to different sections. Supervisors who had regular contact with the student whose work they were grading showed no more halo than other graders. More reliable graders showed less within-section halo than graders of lower reliability but equal between-sections halo. The halo effects observed cannot be entirely attributable to a unitary general impression.

Local temporal distinctiveness does not benefit auditory verbal and spatial serial recall.

In the present study, we examined the role of randomly arranged temporal intervals preceding and following items (pre- and postitem intervals, respectively) in auditory verbal and spatial recall tasks. The duration of the pre- and postitem intervals did not affect serial recall performance. This finding calls into question (1) the suggestion that the interval following an item permits the consolidation of information in memory, even in a relatively demanding spatial task, and (2) the prediction that temporal distinctiveness should improve performance. The latter was explored further by showing that in contrast to our empirical data, a relative temporal distinctiveness model produced significant increases in recall performance when pre- and postitem intervals increased. The results are discussed with regard to recent studies revisiting the role of temporal isolation in short-term serial memory.

Differentiating posttraumatic stress between elderly and younger residents.

This study aimed to differentiate between the posttraumatic stress responses of elderly and younger community residents who had been exposed to two technological disasters (a train collision and an aircraft crash). One hundred and forty-eight community residents were assessed using the Impact of Event Scale (IES) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). The results showed that age differences were not affected by impact of disaster (IES), suggesting that elderly and younger community residents responded to the disasters similarly. Instead, the community residents exposed to the aircraft crash experienced significantly more intrusion and avoidance than those exposed to the train collision. Also, the community residents who had experienced high exposure to the disasters had significantly more intrusive thoughts and exhibited significantly more avoidance behavior than the low/medium exposure group. The results also showed no main effects in general health between the elderly and younger community residents, suggesting that their health status was similar. Instead, the community residents exposed to the aircraft crash had significantly more general health problems than the train disaster residents and the control group. Also, the community residents in either the low/medium or the high exposure group experienced more general health problems than the control group. Correlation coefficients showed that intrusion, avoidance, and the total impact of the disasters were significantly correlated with all general health subscales for both elderly and younger groups.

Multischool, international survey of medical students' attitudes toward "holism".

PURPOSE: Core and optional courses of study in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are being incorporated into medical curricula. The authors carried out this study to validate a tool to examine students' attitudes toward holism and CAM and explore the relationships between their attitudes and other demographic and education-related characteristics in a large, multischool, international sample of medical students. METHOD: In 2003 the authors used a modified version of the Integrated Medicine Attitude Questionnaire (IMAQ) to survey students at a total of six medical schools in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Hong Kong, China. A three-factor model was tested using confirmatory factor analysis, and the internal consistency of the factors were identified using Cronbach's alpha coefficients. A multiple-indicator multiple-cause (MIMIC) analysis was carried out to determine the relationship between IMAQ factors and student characteristics. RESULTS: The authors validated a three-factor model for the IMAQ: (1) attitudes toward holism, (2) attitudes toward the effectiveness of CAM, and (3) attitudes toward introspection and the doctor-patient relationship. Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranged from .41 to .71. The MIMIC model indicated that various background variables were associated with IMAQ factors (gender, race/ethnicity, and school), depending on whether students had previously visited a CAM practitioner and whether students were willing to undertake a special study module in CAM. CONCLUSIONS: Further development work on the IMAQ is required and qualitative research to verify and examine the reasons behind the relationships found in this study between students' attitudes to holism and their demographic and education-related characteristics.

Distribution patterns of mercury in lakes and rivers of northeastern North America.

We assembled 831 data points for total mercury (Hg(t)) and 277 overlapping points for methyl mercury (CH3Hg+) in surface waters from Massachussetts, USA to the Island of Newfoundland, Canada from State, Provincial, and Federal government databases. These geographically indexed values were used to determine: (a) if large-scale spatial distribution patterns existed and (b) whether there were significant relationships between the two main forms of aquatic Hg as well as with total organic carbon (TOC), a well know complexer of metals. We analyzed the catchments where samples were collected using a Geographical Information System (GIS) approach, calculating catchment sizes, mean slope, and mean wetness index. Our results show two main spatial distribution patterns. We detected loci of high Hg(t) values near urbanized regions of Boston MA and Portland ME. However, except for one unexplained exception, the highest Hg(t) and CH3Hg+ concentrations were located in regions far from obvious point sources. These correlated to topographically flat (and thus wet) areas that we relate to wetland abundances. We show that aquatic Hg(t) and CH3Hg+ concentrations are generally well correlated with TOC and with each other. Over the region, CH3Hg+ concentrations are typically approximately 15% of Hg(t). There is an exception in the Boston region where CH3Hg+ is low compared to the high Hg(t) values. This is probably due to the proximity of point sources of inorganic Hg and a lack of wetlands. We also attempted to predict Hg concentrations in water with statistical models using catchment features as variables. We were only able to produce statistically significant predictive models in some parts of regions due to the lack of suitable digital information, and because data ranges in some regions were too narrow for meaningful regression analyses.