Age-related cognitive changes may contribute to impairments in making complex social decisions. Interpersonal conflict is a key factor behind suicidal behavior in old age, with suicidal motivations ranging from escape to revenge. Such conflicts may prove catastrophic for people prone to suicide, in part because of their tendency to make disadvantageous decisions. Yet, little is known about soci...

Acute poisoning is a sudden and potentially life threatening damage of human health, characterised by quick dynamics and high lethality. The death rate and the lethality from acute poisonings vary between countries and depend on the complex action of various medico-social factors. We have studied the hospital lethality from acute exogenous intoxications in the Toxicology Clinic of Emergency Med...

BACKGROUND People who attempt suicide often display cognitive impairments, particularly poor cognitive control. Could poor cognitive control contribute to high suicide rates in old age? A component of cognitive control, cognitive inhibition-active suppression of task-irrelevant processing-is very sensitive to aging and has been linked to attempted suicide. We investigated cognitive inhibition i...

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of temperature on lethality of venom from Chironex fleckeri (the potentially fatal box jellyfish). DESIGN Venom extracted from nematocysts of mature Chironex fleckeri specimens was exposed to temperatures between 4 degrees C and 58 degrees C for periods of two, five or 20 minutes, and then injected into freshwater crayfish (Cherax quadricarinatus) to assess l...

We have devised a genetic screen, termed synthetic dosage lethality, in which a cloned "reference" gene is inducibly overexpressed in a set of mutant strains carrying potential "target" mutations. To test the specificity of the method, two reference genes, CTF13, encoding a centromere binding protein, and ORC6, encoding a subunit of the origin of replication binding complex, were overexpressed ...

Mice were administered anticholinesterase pesticides dichlorvos (DDVP) or methomyl (MET). Both DDVP and MET induced dose-dependent seizures and lethality in mice. The muscarinic antagonist atropine (ATR, 1.8 mg/kg) did not prevent seizures but diminished the lethality induced by DDVP or MET. The nicotinic antagonist mecamylamine (MEC, 1 mg/kg) affected neither DDVP-induced seizures nor DDVP- an...

Suicide represents a major health problem world-wide. Nevertheless, the understanding of the neurobiological underpinnings of suicidal behavior remains far from complete. We compared suicide attempters to non-attempters, and high vs. low lethality attempters, to identify brain regions associated with suicidal behavior in patients with psychotic disorders. 489 individuals with schizophrenia, sch...

The concept of synthetic lethality (the creation of a lethal phenotype from the combined effects of mutations in two or more genes) has recently been exploited in various efforts to develop new genotype-selective anticancer therapeutics. These efforts include screening for novel anticancer agents, identifying novel therapeutic targets, characterizing mechanisms of resistance to targeted therapy...

Synthetic lethality is based on the incompatibility of cell survival with the loss of function of two or more genes, not with loss of function of a single gene. If targets of synthetic lethality are deregulated or mutated in cancer cells, the strategy of synthetic lethality can result in significant increase of therapeutic efficacy and a favourable therapeutic window. In this review, we discuss...

An organic acid solution of 2% acetic, 1% lactic, 0.1% propionic, and 0.1% benzoic acids was combined with steam surface pasteurization to treat frankfurters during vacuum packaging to eliminate potential postcook contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. The thermal lethality of L. monocytogenes from steam was evaluated at an inoculation concentration of 1 to 6 log CFU/cm2. About 3-log reduct...