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This study focused on adolescents' negative reactions to parental monitoring to determine whether parents should avoid excessive monitoring because adolescents find monitoring behaviors to be over-controlling and privacy invasive. Adolescents (n = 242, M age = 15.4 years; 51% female) reported monitoring, negative reactions, warmth, antisocial behavior, depressive symptoms, and disclosure. Adolescents additionally reported antisocial behavior, depressive symptoms, and disclosure one to two years later. In cross-sectional analyses, less monitoring but more negative reactions were linked with less disclosure, suggesting that negative reactions can undermine parents' ability to obtain information. Although monitoring behaviors were not related to depressive symptoms, more negative reactions were linked with more depressive symptoms, suggesting that negative reactions also may increase depressive symptoms as a side effect of monitoring behavior. Negative reactions were not linked to antisocial behavior. There were no longitudinal links between negative reactions and changes in disclosure, antisocial behavior, or depressive symptoms.

Both reasoned and reactive decision-making processes contribute to risk-taking behavior. This study tested whether elements of the reasoned and reactive processes are completely separate, partially interconnected, or fully interconnected and whether reasoned and reactive processes predict both between-person and within-person differences in risk-taking behavior. Participants were 580 university students (M age = 20.45, range 18–52 years) who completed surveys assessing decision-making processes and risk-taking behavior. The reasoned and reactive decision-making processes appear to overlap and intersect; distal elements from both decision-making processes exhibit indirect effects on risk-taking behavior through elements from their own, as well as the other, process. However, reasoned and reactive processes both helped explain why some individuals engage in more risk-taking behavior than other individuals and why each individual is more likely to engage in some forms of risk-taking more than others.

The bacterial endospore is the most resilient biological structure known. Multiple protective integument layers shield the spore core and promote spore dehydration and dormancy. Dormancy is broken when a spore germinates and becomes a metabolically active vegetative cell. Germination requires the breakdown of a modified layer of peptidoglycan (PG) known as the spore cortex. This study reports in vitro and in vivo analyses of the Bacillus anthracis SleL protein. SleL is a spore cortex lytic enzyme composed of three conserved domains: two N-terminal LysM domains and a C-terminal glycosyl hydrolase family 18 domain. Derivatives of SleL containing both, one or no LysM domains were purified and characterized. SleL is incapable of digesting intact cortical PG of either decoated spores or purified spore sacculi. However, SleL derivatives can hydrolyse fragmented PG substrates containing muramic-δ-lactam recognition determinants. The muropeptides that result from SleL hydrolysis are the products of N-acetylglucosaminidase activity. These muropeptide products are small and readily released from the cortex matrix. Loss of the LysM domain(s) decreases both PG binding and hydrolysis activity but these domains do not appear to determine specificity for muramic-δ-lactam. When the SleL derivatives are expressed in vivo, those proteins lacking one or both LysM domains do not associate with the spore. Instead, these proteins remain in the mother cell and are apparently degraded. SleL with both LysM domains localizes to the coat or cortex of the endospore. The information revealed by elucidating the role of SleL and its domains in B. anthracis sporulation and germination is important in designing new spore decontamination methods. By exploiting germination-specific lytic enzymes, eradication techniques may be greatly simplified.

Bacterial spores remain dormant and highly resistant to environmental stress until they germinate. Completion of germination requires the degradation of spore cortex peptidoglycan by germination-specific lytic enzymes (GSLEs). Bacillus anthracis has four GSLEs: CwlJ1, CwlJ2, SleB, and SleL. In this study, the cooperative action of all four GSLEs in vivo was investigated by combining in-frame deletion mutations to generate all possible double, triple, and quadruple GSLE mutant strains. Analyses of mutant strains during spore germination and outgrowth combined observations of optical density loss, colony-producing ability, and quantitative identification of spore cortex fragments. The lytic transglycosylase SleB alone can facilitate enough digestion to allow full spore viability and generates a variety of small and large cortex fragments. CwlJ1 is also sufficient to allow completion of nutrient-triggered germination independently and is a major factor in Ca 2+ -dipicolinic acid (DPA)-triggered germination, but its enzymatic activity remains unidentified because its products are large and not readily released from the spore's integuments. CwlJ2 contributes the least to overall cortex digestion but plays a subsidiary role in Ca 2+ -DPA-induced germination. SleL is an N -acetylglucosaminidase that plays the major role in hydrolyzing the large products of other GSLEs into small, rapidly released muropeptides. As the roles of these enzymes in cortex degradation become clearer, they will be targets for methods to stimulate premature germination of B. anthracis spores, greatly simplifying decontamination measures.

Bacillus anthracis spores, the infectious agents of anthrax, are notoriously difficult to remove from contaminated areas because they are resistant to many eradication methods. These resistance properties are due to the spore's dehydration and dormancy and to the multiple protective layers surrounding the spore core, one of which is the cortex. In order for B. anthracis spores to germinate and resume growth, the cortex peptidoglycan must be depolymerized. This study reports on analyses of sleL ( yaaH) , which encodes a cortex-lytic enzyme. The inactivation of sleL does not affect vegetative growth, spore viability, or the initial stages of germination, including dipicolinic acid release. However, mutant spores exhibit a slight delay in the loss of optical density compared to that of wild-type spores. Mutants also retain more diaminopimelic acid and N -acetylmuramic acid during germination than wild-type spores, suggesting that the cortex peptidoglycan is not being hydrolyzed as rapidly. This finding is supported by high-pressure liquid chromatography analysis of the peptidoglycan structure used to confirm that SleL acts as an N -acetylglucosaminidase. When sleL is inactivated, the cortex peptidoglycan is not depolymerized into small muropeptides but instead is retained within the spore as large fragments. In the absence of the sleL -encoded N -acetylglucosaminidase, other cortex-lytic enzymes break down the cortex peptidoglycan sufficiently to allow rapid germination and outgrowth.

Yellow nail syndrome is an uncommon disorder characterized by dystrophic nails, lymphedema, and respiratory disease. It has rarely been reported in children and this is the first report of congenital yellow nails in siblings. The purpose of this study was to determine whether topical vitamin E applied to the nail plates and periungual skin would affect the growth rate or appearance of the fingernails in patients with congenital yellow nail syndrome. This study was the first trial of a treatment for this entity in children and the largest randomized double blind trial to date. We found that vitamin E solution had no significant effect (p = 0.84) on fingernail growth or the global appearance score (p = 1.0) when compared with placebo. The average growth rates and global assessment scores improved and onycholysis and onychomadesis decreased from baseline with both vitamin E and placebo treatment, although these were not primary end points of the study. Topical vitamin E did not result in a statistically significant improvement when compared with oil alone for the treatment of the nails in our three patients with yellow nail syndrome. However, it is interesting and perhaps clinically useful that both vitamin E and placebo oil improved the condition of the nails.

We report a 17-year-old girl who developed Henoch-Schonlein purpura 10 days after receiving a meningococcal vaccine (Menomune). To our knowledge, this is the first case report of Henoch-Schonlein purpura temporally associated with the tetravalent serogroups A, C, W-135, and Y meningococcal vaccine administered in the United States.

Following the Israeli military Operation Protective Edge in summer 2014 this reports presents the findings of a study initiated by ActionAid and Alianza por la Solidaridad (Alianza) on violence against women (VAW) in the Gaza Strip defined as ‘any act of gender-based violence that results in or is likely to result in physical sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women including threats of such acts coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty whether occurring in public or in private life’. This study had two aims: First to paint a wider picture of violence against women across Gaza after the last Israeli military operation complementing existing qualitative work on subsets of the population. Second to draw conclusions about what services could be offered to better protect and support survivors of VAW in Gaza and what interventions can be planned that tackle attitudes and trigger behavioural changes in order to decrease its incidence and prevalence. A survey with a representative sample of women in the Gaza Strip and qualitative interviews focus groups and roundtable discussions were carried out to learn more about the types of VAW in public and private spaces in Gaza; incidence and prevalence of VAW in public and private spheres; perception of the nature causes and consequences of VAW; existing avenues of support to survivors of VAW; and to understand its link to military violence in Gaza. The fieldwork for this study took place between April and July 2015; 37 social workers spoke to 440 women who responded to a quantitative questionnaire and 332 women 130 men 7 key community informants and 28 members of civil society organizations in focus group discussions roundtables and individual interviews to help us gain a wider picture about the types prevalence and frequency of violence that women aged 17 and above experience across the Gaza Strip. (excerpt)

A 47-year-old man with multiple-drug–resistant AIDS was admitted to Yale–New Haven Hospital for evaluation of mental status and neuromotor changes and a 6-week history of a painful, nonhealing, enlarging ulcer on the lower extremity that the patient attributed to minor trauma. The patient had received outpatient wound care and several courses of oral antibiotics, but he was taking neither antiretroviral medications nor prophylaxis for opportunistic infections. The patient’s most recent CD4 cell count was less than 20/μL with a viral load of 715000 copies/mL. He had a history of successfully treated cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. On admission, he displayed clinical and radiologic features consistent with cerebral toxoplasmosis. He had no history of diabetes mellitus, peripheral vascular disease, or neuropathic disease. During his hospital stay, the patient received intravenous and oral antibiotics (ampicillin sodium– sulbactam sodium, aztreonam, and clindamycin) for presumed bacterial infection of the ulcer, and a skin care nurse treated the wound daily with bacitracin zinc and dry dressings. After 4 days in the hospital with no improvement, dermatology consultation was requested. On physical examination, there was a tender 3.0 2.0-cm ulcer on the right lateral part of the heel with surrounding erythema and induration (Figure 1). The border was well demarcated and not elevated, undermined, or scalloped. The base contained granulation tissue and necrotic debris. The patient had no oral, ocular, or anogenital ulcers. The remainder of the lower extremity examination was significant for 1+ pitting ankle edema, adequate capillary refill time, palpable dorsalis pedis pulses, and no evidence of compromised circulation or peripheral neuropathy. The patient also had molluscum contagiosum on his chest. A punch biopsy specimen from the edge of the ulcer showed hyperplastic epidermis and numerous thickwalled blood vessels in the dermis, as well as a perivascular lymphocytic infiltrate. Among normal endothelial cells were many large, irregularly shaped endothelial cells with large basophilic intranuclear inclusions, in some cells surrounded by clear halos. Intracytoplasmic basophilic inclusions were also present (Figure 2). Immunohistochemical studies showed CMV antigen reactivity within the endothelial cells. Direct immu