Priorities for Standards and Measurements to Accelerate Innovations in Nano-Electrotechnologies: Analysis of the NIST-Energetics-IEC TC 113 Survey.

In 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Energetics Incorporated collaborated with the International Electrotechnical Commission Technical Committee 113 (IEC TC 113) on nano-electrotechnologies to survey members of the international nanotechnologies community about priorities for standards and measurements to accelerate innovations in nano-electrotechnologies. In this paper, we analyze the 459 survey responses from 45 countries as one means to begin building a consensus on a framework leading to nano-electrotechnologies standards development by standards organizations and national measurement institutes. The distributions of priority rankings from all 459 respondents are such that there are perceived distinctions with statistical confidence between the relative international priorities for the several items ranked in each of the following five Survey category types: 1) Nano-electrotechnology Properties, 2) Nano-electrotechnology Taxonomy: Products, 3) Nano-electrotechnology Taxonomy: Cross-Cutting Technologies, 4) IEC General Discipline Areas, and 5) Stages of the Linear Economic Model. The global consensus prioritizations for ranked items in the above five category types suggest that the IEC TC 113 should focus initially on standards and measurements for electronic and electrical properties of sensors and fabrication tools that support performance assessments of nano-technology enabled sub-assemblies used in energy, medical, and computer products.

Impaired hemispheric communication in schizophrenia: a study using the consonant-vowel-consonant task.

The ability of the left and right hemispheres to interact and cooperate in the processing of information is important for normal brain functioning. Some investigators have suggested that this cooperation in functioning occurs through a process called "metacontrol." Because studies have suggested that patients with schizophrenia may have problems with interhemispheric interaction, we considered that it could be informative to study such patients from the viewpoint of interhemispheric cooperation, and more specifically that of metacontrol. To do this we utilized an assessment procedure called the consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) task, in which nonsense three-letter combinations (trigrams) are presented vertically to the left, right and both visual fields. The pattern of errors can be used to determine the type of processing the hemispheres use under the different conditions of presentation. Previous studies have shown that when trigram information is presented to both hemispheres, the left hemisphere appears to switch into a mode that more resembles right hemisphere processing, and we wished to determine if evidence for this switch in the mode of processing also occurred in a sample of patients with schizophrenia. To determine the specificity of any findings to schizophrenia, we also studied a group of patients with bipolar disorder. For the control and bipolar groups, our results showed the typical finding of superior processing in the right visual field (left hemisphere) over the left visual field, with presentation to both visual fields demonstrating a qualitative error pattern resembling that of the left visual field (right hemisphere). Patients with schizophrenia, however, did not demonstrate this switching into a right hemisphere mode upon bilateral presentation of the trigrams and instead seemed to show no switching, or actually switching into more of a left hemisphere mode. Our results suggest that patients with schizophrenia (but not bipolar disorder) may have abnormalities in the cooperative processing of information when it is presented to both hemispheres, and that this disturbance may reflect problems with metacontrol of hemispheric processing.

Genomic instability of human mammary epithelial cells overexpressing a truncated form of EMSY.

The EMSY gene encodes a protein that interacts with Brca2 and is amplified in some sporadic cases of human breast cancer. To examine whether overexpression of EMSY would mimic the chromosome instability phenotype that is associated with the loss of Brca2 function, we constructed a lentiviral vector (Lenti-EMSY/GFP) that encodes a truncated form of the Emsy protein, including its Brca2-interacting domain, and green fluorescent protein (GFP) and used it to transduce human telomerase-immortalized human breast epithelial (184-hTert) cells, which have a nearly normal karyotype. At passage 5 after transduction, 39 (26%) of 150 EMSY/GFP-transduced metaphase cells contained at least one structural chromosomal abnormality compared with 19 (13%) of 150 GFP-transduced metaphase cells (P = .003, chi-square test); at passage 10, the corresponding frequencies were 42% and 15%, respectively (P < .001). Mitomycin C also produced a severalfold higher frequency of chromosome breaks in the EMSY/GFP-transduced cells than in the control cells. These results support the hypothesis that EMSY overexpression can play a role in the genesis of human breast cancer.

Lateralized cognitive dysfunction and psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia.

Our understanding of hemispheric asymmetries in schizophrenia can be attributed to extensive neuropsychological and neuroimaging research on this topic; however, it has yet to be determined whether lateralized cognitive dysfunction represents a single core trait in schizophrenia or whether the lateralized impairments are domain specific. To test whether lateralized deficits are core features in schizophrenia we examined performance across a wide range of lateralized cognitive domains including attention, fluency, recognition memory, perception, and arousal. We also examined the relationship between lateralized impairments and psychotic and affective symptoms to determine whether abnormal hemispheric asymmetries were possibly state-related. The sample consisted of 43 subjects with schizophrenia and 66 normal healthy comparison subjects without psychiatric illness. Schizophrenia subjects exhibited abnormal right hemisphere performance on a test of recognition memory and abnormal left hemisphere performance on a measure of arousal. These findings suggest that lateralized cognitive disturbances in schizophrenia do not represent a single core lateralized deficit. Regarding the symptom analyses, severity of positive symptoms was related to right hemisphere cognitive impairment (including fluency and recognition memory), whereas severity of negative symptoms was related to left hemisphere cognitive impairment (including fluency). Overall, our findings suggest that lateralized dysfunction can occur in both hemispheres in schizophrenia, and that the positive psychotic symptoms may relate more to right hemisphere impairment, whereas negative psychotic symptoms may related more to left hemisphere impairment.