bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Efficacy beliefs predict collaborative practice among intensive care unit nurses
Authors: Le Blanc Pascale M. , Schaufeli Wilmar B. , Salanova Marisa , Llorens Susana , Nap Raoul E. 
Published: February 2010

le blanc p.m., schaufeli w.b., salanova m., llorens s. & nap r.e. (2010) Efficacy beliefs predict collaborative practice among intensive care unit nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing66(3), 583–594.AbstractAim.  This paper is a report of an investigation of whether intensive care nurses’ efficacy beliefs predict future collaborative practice, and to test the potential mediating role of team commitment in this relationship.Background.  Recent empirical studies in the field of work and organizational psychology have demonstrated that (professional) efficacy beliefs are reciprocally related to workers’ resources and well‐being over time, resulting in a positive gain spiral. Moreover, there is ample evidence that workers’ affective commitment to their organization or work‐team is related to desirable work behaviours such as citizenship behaviour.Methods.  A longitudinal design was applied to questionnaire data from the EURICUS‐project. Structural Equation Modelling was used to analyse the data. The sample consisted of 372 nurses working in 29 different European intensive care units. Data were collected in 1997 and 1998. However, our research model deals with fundamental psychosocial processes that are not time‐dependent. Moreover, recent empirical literature shows that there is still room for improvement in ICU collaborative practice.Results.  The hypotheses that (i) the relationship between efficacy beliefs and collaborative practice is mediated by team commitment and (ii) efficacy beliefs, team commitment and collaborative practice are reciprocally related were supported, suggesting a potential positive gain spiral of efficacy beliefs.Conclusion.  Healthcare organizations should create working environments that provide intensive care unit nurses with sufficient resources to perform their job well. Further research is needed to design and evaluate interventions for the enhancement of collaborative practice in intensive care units.
Predictors of fear and anxiety nine years after coronary artery bypass grafting
Authors: Koivula Meeri , Hautamäki‐Lamminen Katja , Åstedt‐Kurki Päivi 
Published: February 2010

koivula m., hautamäki‐lamminen k. & åstedt‐kurki p. (2010) Predic‐tors of fear and anxiety nine years after coronary artery bypass grafting. Journal of Advanced Nursing66(3), 595–606.AbstractAim.  This paper is a report of a study to identify (i) associations between fear and anxiety with variables of demography, symptoms, treatment and perceived health, (ii) associations between fear, anxiety, depression and social support and (iii) predictors of fear and anxiety nine years after coronary artery bypass grafting.Background.  Earlier research shows that anxiety and fear are common, but there is a lack of knowledge about the long‐term (>five years) situation of people after coronary artery bypass grafting.Method.  A convenience sample (n = 170) was formed of patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass grafting (n = 723) in one university hospital in 2007, nine years after surgery, by postal questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent to 152 surviving patients, and 114 responded (75%).Results.  Fear had a connection to female sex, age under 65 years, more chest pain, hospitalization and poor perceived health. Anxiety had a connection to age under 65 years, living alone, more chest pain and poor perceived health. Social support had a low negative correlation with anxiety. Age under 65 years and chest pain explained 28% of the variance in fear. Age under 65 years and depressive symptoms explained 51–57% of the variance in anxiety.Conclusion.  Anxiety in people with coronary heart disease can be alleviated by developing social support from peers and professionals. Those aged under 65 years should be recognized as at greater risk of a predictor of long‐term fear and anxiety after coronary artery bypass grafting.
Nurses’ experiences with telephone triage and advice: a meta‐ethnography
Authors: Purc‐Stephenson Rebecca J. , Thrasher Christine 
Published: February 2010

purc‐stephenson r.j. & thrasher c. (2010) Nurses’ experiences with telephone triage and advice: a meta‐ethnography. Journal of Advanced Nursing66(3), 482–494.AbstractAims.  This study is a meta‐ethnography of nurses’ experiences with telephone triage and advice and factors that facilitate or impede their decision‐making process.Background.  Telephone triage and advice services are a rapidly expanding development in health care. Unlike traditional forms of nursing practice, telenurses offer triage recommendations and advice to the general public without visual cues.Data sources.  Published qualitative research on telephone triage and advice were sought from interdisciplinary research databases (1980–2008) and bibliographical reviews of retrieved studies.Review methods.  Our systematic search identified 16 relevant studies. Two researchers independently reviewed, critically appraised, and extracted key themes and concepts from each study. We followed techniques of meta‐ethnography to synthesize the findings, using both reciprocal and refutational translation to compare similar or contradictory findings, and a line‐of‐arguments synthesis.Results.  We identified five major themes that highlight common issues and concerns experienced by telenurses: gaining and maintaining skills, autonomy, new work environment, holistic assessment, and stress and pressure. A line‐of‐arguments synthesis produced a three‐stage model that describes the decision‐making process used by telenurses and highlights how assessments largely depend on the ability to ‘build a picture’ of the patient and the presenting health issue.Conclusion.  Telenurses experience a range of common concerns and issues which either impede or facilitate the decision‐making process. Although ‘building a picture’ of the patient is key to making assessments over the telephone, final triage decisions are influenced by balancing the conflicting demands of being both carer and gatekeeper to limited healthcare services.
The conserved and divergent roles of carbonic anhydrases in the filamentous fungi Aspergillus fumigatus and Aspergillus nidulans
Authors: Han Kap‐Hoon , Chun Yoon‐Hee , De Castro Pimentel Figueiredo Bárbara , Soriani Frederico Marianetti , Savoldi Marcela , Almeida Agostinho , Rodrigues Fernando , Cairns Charlie Timothy , Bignell Elaine , Tobal Jaqueline Moisés , Goldman Maria Helena S. , Kim Jong‐Hwan , Bahn Yong‐Sun , Goldman Gustavo Henrique , Da Silva Ferreira Márcia Eliana 
Published: February 2010

SummaryCarbon dioxide (CO2) and its hydration product bicarbonate (HCO3‐) are essential molecules in various physiological processes of all living organisms. The reversible interconversion between CO2 and HCO3‐ is in equilibrium. This reaction is slow without catalyst, but can be rapidly facilitated by Zn2+‐metalloenzymes named carbonic anhydrases (CAs). To gain an insight into the function of multiple clades of fungal CA, we chose to investigate the filamentous fungi Aspergillus fumigatus and A. nidulans. We identified four and two CAs in A. fumigatus and A. nidulans, respectively, named cafA‐D and canA‐B. The cafA and cafB genes are constitutively, strongly expressed whereas cafC and cafD genes are weakly expressed but CO2‐inducible. Heterologous expression of the A. fumigatus cafB, and A. nidulans canA and canB genes completely rescued the high CO2‐requiring phenotype of a Saccharomyces cerevisiaeΔnce103 mutant. Only the ΔcafAΔcafB and ΔcanB deletion mutants were unable to grow at 0.033% CO2, of which growth defects can be restored by high CO2. Defects in the CAs can affect Aspergilli conidiation. Furthermore, A. fumigatusΔcafA, ΔcafB, ΔcafC, ΔcafD and ΔcafAΔcafB mutant strains are fully virulent in a low‐dose murine infection.
Adjusting to alien genes
Authors: Johnsen Pål J. , Levin Bruce R. 
Published: February 2010

SummaryFrom the perspective of a bacterium, higher eukaryotes are oversexed, unadventurous and reproduce in an inconvenient way. Sex, or recombination following horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events, to be less provocative, is a rare event for a bacterium, but a potentially profound one. Through HGT a bacterium can acquire DNA from distant as well as closely related species and, thereby, instantly obtain genes that encode novel functions or replace its existing genes with better ones. While there is an abundance of retrospective evidence for HGT in bacteria, there has been little consideration of the dynamics of the process. In this issue of Molecular Microbiology Lind et al. explore these dynamics theoretically, and then experimentally by substituting Salmonella Typhimurium ribosomal genes with orthologues from various microbial origins. The authors show that the majority of these newly acquired ribosomal proteins reduce fitness in S. Typhimurium, but within short order (40–250 generations) subsequent evolution will mitigate the fitness costs of the alien alleles. The presented results suggest that that at least the initial phase of adapting to alien genes of this informational core ilk is not by changing them but rather by increasing their level of expression by gene amplification. Lind et al. argue that their results provide an explanation as to why duplicated genes are overrepresented among horizontally transferred genes.
REVIEW: Acute withdrawal, protracted abstinence and negative affect in alcoholism: are they linked?
Authors: Heilig Markus , Egli Mark , Crabbe John C. , Becker Howard C. 
Published: February 2010

ABSTRACTThe role of withdrawal‐related phenomena in the development and maintenance of alcohol addiction remains under debate. A ‘self‐medication’ framework postulates that emotional changes are induced by a history of alcohol use, persist into abstinence, and are a major factor in maintaining alcoholism. This view initially focused on negative emotional states during early withdrawal: these are pronounced, occur in the vast majority of alcohol‐dependent patients, and are characterized by depressed mood and elevated anxiety. This concept lost popularity with the realization that in most patients, these symptoms abate over 3–6 weeks of abstinence, while relapse risk persists long beyond this period. More recently, animal data have established that a prolonged history of alcohol dependence induces more subtle neuroadaptations. These confer altered emotional processing that persists long into protracted abstinence. The resulting behavioral phenotype is characterized by excessive voluntary alcohol intake and increased behavioral sensitivity to stress. Emerging human data support the clinical relevance of negative emotionality for protracted abstinence and relapse. These developments prompt a series of research questions: (1) are processes observed during acute withdrawal, while transient in nature, mechanistically related to those that remain during protracted abstinence?; (2) is susceptibility to negative emotionality in acute withdrawal in part due to heritable factors, similar to what animal models have indicated for susceptibility to physical aspects of withdrawal?; and (3) to what extent is susceptibility to negative affect that persists into protracted abstinence heritable?
REVIEW: A comparison of selected quantitative trait loci associated with alcohol use phenotypes in humans and mouse models
Authors: Ehlers Cindy L. , Walter Nicole A. R. , Dick Danielle M. , Buck Kari J. , Crabbe John C. 
Published: February 2010

ABSTRACTEvidence for genetic linkage to alcohol and other substance dependence phenotypes in areas of the human and mouse genome have now been reported with some consistency across studies. However, the question remains as to whether the genes that underlie the alcohol‐related behaviors seen in mice are the same as those that underlie the behaviors observed in human alcoholics. The aims of the current set of analyses were to identify a small set of alcohol‐related phenotypes in human and in mouse by which to compare quantitative trait locus (QTL) data between the species using syntenic mapping. These analyses identified that QTLs for alcohol consumption and acute and chronic alcohol withdrawal on distal mouse chromosome 1 are syntenic to a region on human chromosome 1q where a number of studies have identified QTLs for alcohol‐related phenotypes. Additionally, a QTL on human chromosome 15 for alcohol dependence severity/withdrawal identified in two human studies was found to be largely syntenic with a region on mouse chromosome 9, where two groups have found QTLs for alcohol preference. In both of these cases, while the QTLs were found to be syntenic, the exact phenotypes between humans and mice did not necessarily overlap. These studies demonstrate how this technique might be useful in the search for genes underlying alcohol‐related phenotypes in multiple species. However, these findings also suggest that trying to match exact phenotypes in humans and mice may not be necessary or even optimal for determining whether similar genes influence a range of alcohol‐related behaviors between the two species.
Transgenerational memory effect of ageing in Drosophila
Authors: BURNS JAMES G. , MERY FREDERIC 
Published: February 2010

AbstractChildren born to older parents tend to have lower intelligence and are at higher risk for disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Such observations of ageing damage being passed on from parents to offspring are not often considered within the evolutionary theory of ageing. Here, we show the 25% memory impairment in Drosophila melanogaster offspring solely dependent on the age of the parents and also passed on to the F2 generation. Furthermore, this parental age effect was not attributed to a generalized reduction in condition of the offspring but was specific to short‐term memory. We also provide evidence implicating oxidative stress as a causal factor by showing that lines selected for resistance to oxidative stress did not display a memory impairment in offspring of old parents. The identification of the parental age‐related memory impairment in a model system should stimulate integration between mechanistic studies of age‐related mortality risk and functional studies of parental age effects on the fitness of future generations.
Ontogenetic and spatial variation in size‐selective mortality of a marine fish
Authors: JOHNSON D. W. , HIXON M. A. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractAlthough body size can affect individual fitness, ontogenetic and spatial variation in the ecology of an organism may determine the relative advantages of size and growth. During an 8‐year field study in the Bahamas, we examined selective mortality on size and growth throughout the entire reef‐associated life phase of a common coral‐reef fish, Stegastes partitus (the bicolour damselfish). On average, faster‐growing juveniles experienced greater mortality, though as adults, larger individuals had higher survival. Comparing patterns of selection observed at four separate populations revealed that greater population density was associated with stronger selection for larger adult size. Large adults may be favoured because they are superior competitors and less susceptible to gape‐limited predators. Laboratory experiments suggested that selective mortality of fast‐growing juveniles was likely because of risk‐prone foraging behaviour. These patterns suggest that variation in ecological interactions may lead to complex patterns of lifetime selection on body size.
The genetic basis of early‐life morphological traits and their relation to alternative male reproductive tactics in Atlantic salmon
Authors: PáEZ D. J. , MORRISSEY M. , BERNATCHEZ L. , DODSON J. J. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractAlthough heritability estimates for traits potentially under natural selection are increasingly being reported, their estimation remains a challenge if we are to understand the patterns of adaptive phenotypic change in nature. Given the potentially important role of selection on the early life phenotype, and thereby on future life history events in many fish species, we conducted a common garden experiment, using the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.), with two major aims. The first objective is to determine how the site of origin, the paternal sexual tactic and additive genetic effects influence phenotypic variation of several morphological traits at hatching and emergence. The second aim is to test whether a link exists between phenotypic characteristics early in life and the incidence of male alternative tactics later in life. We found no evidence of a site or paternal effect on any morphological trait at hatching or emergence, suggesting that the spatial phenotypic differences observed in the natural river system from which these fish originated are mainly environmentally driven. However, we do find significant heritabilities and maternal effects for several traits, including body size. No direct evidence was found correlating the incidence of precocious maturation with early life characteristics. We suggest that under good growing conditions, body size and other traits at early developmental stages are not reliable cues for the surpassing of the threshold values associated with male sexual development.
Putting information back into biological communication
Authors: CARAZO P. , FONT E. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractAt the heart of many debates on communication is the concept of information. There is an intuitive sense in which communication implies the transfer of some kind of information, probably the reason why information is an essential ingredient in most definitions of communication. However, information has also been an endless source of misunderstandings, and recent accounts have proposed that information should be dropped from a formal definition of communication. In this article, we re‐evaluate the merits and the internal logic of information‐based vs. information‐free approaches and conclude that information‐free approaches are conceptually incomplete and operationally hindered. Instead, we propose a functional notion of information that follows logically from previous adaptationist accounts. The ensuing definition of communication provides a wider, more inclusive theoretical scope that reflects more accurately the evolutionary scenario shaping animal signals. Additionally, it is a definition better equipped to deal with the extraordinary diversity of animal signals, facilitates the distinction of honest and deceptive signals at a proximate level and accommodates a number of conceptual and practical issues (e.g. redundancy, alerting components) that are lost when we fail to acknowledge the informative content of animal signals.
Adaptation of experimental yeast populations to stressful conditions in relation to population size
Authors: SAMANI P. , BELL G. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe purpose of this experiment was to find out how a population becomes adapted to extremely stressful conditions as its environment deteriorates. We created a deteriorating environment for experimental selection lines of yeast by a stepwise increase in the concentration of salt in the growth medium. After each step, we tested the ability of the lines to grow at a high concentration of salt near the lethal limit for the ancestral strain. We found that mutations enhancing growth in this highly stressful environment began to spread at intermediate salt concentrations. The degree of enhancement was related to effective population size by a power law with a small exponent. The effect size of these mutations also increased with the population size in a similar fashion. From these results, we interpret adaptation to lethal stress as an indirect response to selection for resistance to previous lower levels of stress in a deteriorating environment. This suggests that the pattern of genetic correlation between successively higher levels of stress is an important factor in facilitating evolutionary rescue.
The role of abscisic acid and auxin in the response of poplar to abiotic stress
Authors: Popko J. , Hänsch R. , Mendel R.‐R. , Polle A. , Teichmann T. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractThe plant hormones auxin and abscisic acid may at first sight appear to be a conflicting pair of plant regulators. Abscisic acid content increases during stress and protects plant water status. The content of free auxin in the developing xylem of poplar declines during stress, while auxin conjugates increase. This indicates that specific down‐regulation of a signal transduction chain is important in plant adaptation to stress. Diminished auxin content may be a factor that adapts growth and wood development of poplar during adverse environmental conditions. To allow integration of environmental signals, abscisic acid and auxin must interact. Data are accumulating that abscisic acid–auxin cross‐talk exists in plants. However, knowledge of the role of plant hormones in the response of trees to stress is scarce. Our data show that differences in the localisation of ABA synthesis exist between the annual, herbaceous plant Arabidopsis and the perennial woody species, poplar.
Nitrogen nutrition of poplar trees
Authors: Rennenberg H. , Wildhagen H. , Ehlting B. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractMany forest ecosystems have evolved at sites with growth‐limiting nitrogen (N) availability, low N input from external sources and high ecosystem internal cycling of N. By contrast, many poplar species are frequent constituents of floodplain forests where they are exposed to a significant ecosystem external supply of N, mainly nitrate, in the moving water table. Therefore, nitrate is much more important for N nutrition of these poplar species than for many other tree species. We summarise current knowledge of nitrate uptake and its regulation by tree internal signals, as well as acquisition of ammonium and organic N from the soil. Unlike herbaceous plants, N nutrition of trees is sustained by seasonal, tree internal cycling. Recent advances in the understanding of seasonal storage and mobilisation in poplar bark and regulation of these processes by temperature and daylength are addressed. To explore consequences of global climate change on N nutrition of poplar trees, responses of N uptake and metabolism to increased atmospheric CO2 and O3 concentrations, increased air and soil temperatures, drought and salt stress are highlighted.
Molecular and histochemical characterisation of two distinct poplar Melampsora leaf rust pathosystems
Authors: Boyle B. , Levée V. , Hamel L.‐P. , Nicole M.‐C. , Séguin A. 
Published: February 2010

AbstractIn this study, we compared interactions of two Melampsora foliar rust species with poplar, which resulted in either limited or abundant pathogen proliferation. In the pathosystem exhibiting limited pathogen growth, a defence response was observed after invasion of poplar leaf tissues by the biotroph, with late and clear production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and other products. Characterisation of the histological, biochemical and transcriptional events occurring in both pathosystems showed striking similarity with components of plant defence reactions observed during qualitative resistance. Key components associated with development of an active defence response, such as up‐regulation of pathogenesis‐related (PR) genes, were observed during infection. Moreover, the time course and strength of gene induction appear to be critical determinants for the outcome of the tree–pathogen interaction. This work provides basic biochemical characterisation and expression data for the study of so‐called partial resistance in the poplar–rust pathosystem, which is also applicable to other plant–pathogen interactions resulting in quantitative disease resistance.