Attachment priming and avoidant personality features as predictors of social-evaluation biases

Personality research has shown that negativity in social situations (e.g., negative evaluations of others) can be reduced by the activation of participants' sense of attachment security. Individuals with avoidant personality disorder (APD), however, are theoretically less responsive to context or situational cues because of the inflexible nature of their personality disposition. This idea of individual differences in context-responsiveness was tested in a sample of 169 undergraduates who were assessed for APD features and assigned to positive, negative, or neutral attachment priming conditions. More pronounced APD features were associated with more negative responses to vignettes describing potentially distressing social situations. A significant interaction showed that participants with more avoidant features consistently appraised the vignettes relatively more negatively, regardless of priming condition. Those without APD features, by contrast, did not exhibit negative appraisals/evaluations unless negatively primed (curvilinear effect). This effect could not be explained by depression, current mood, or attachment insecurity, all of which related to negative evaluative biases, but none of which related to situation inflexibility. These findings provide empirical support for the notion that negative information-processing is unusually inflexible and context-unresponsive among individuals with more pronounced features of APD

Attachment working models as unconscious structures: An experimental test

Internal working models of attachment (IWMs) are presumed to be largely unconscious representations of childhood attachment experiences. Several instruments have been developed to assess IWMs; some of them are based on self-report and others on narrative interview techniques. This study investigated the capacity of a self-report measure, the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA; Armsden & Greenberg, 1987), and of a narrative interview method, the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985), to measure unconscious attachment models. We compared scores on the two attachment instruments to response latencies in an attachment priming task. It was shown that attachment organisation assessed by the AAI correlates with priming effects, whereas the IPPA scales were inversely or not related to priming. The results are interpreted as support for the assumption that the AAI assesses, to a certain degree, unconscious working models of attachment

Real-time kinetics and high-resolution melt curves in single-molecule digital LAMP to differentiate and study specific and non-specific amplification

Isothermal amplification assays, such as loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), show great utility for the development of rapid diagnostics for infectious diseases because they have high sensitivity, pathogen-specificity and potential for implementation at the point of care. However, elimination of non-specific amplification remains a key challenge for the optimization of LAMP assays. Here, using chlamydia DNA as a clinically relevant target and high-throughput sequencing as an analytical tool, we investigate a potential mechanism of non-specific amplification. We then develop a real-time digital LAMP (dLAMP) with high-resolution melting temperature (HRM) analysis and use this single-molecule approach to analyze approximately 1.2 million amplification events. We show that single-molecule HRM provides insight into specific and non-specific amplification in LAMP that are difficult to deduce from bulk measurements. We use real-time dLAMP with HRM to evaluate differences between polymerase enzymes, the impact of assay parameters (e.g. time, rate or florescence intensity), and the effect background human DNA. By differentiating true and false positives, HRM enables determination of the optimal assay and analysis parameters that leads to the lowest limit of detection (LOD) in a digital isothermal amplification assay

Capturing the ‘ome’ : the expanding molecular toolbox for RNA and DNA library construction

All sequencing experiments and most functional genomics screens rely on the generation of libraries to comprehensively capture pools of targeted sequences. In the past decade especially, driven by the progress in the field of massively parallel sequencing, numerous studies have comprehensively assessed the impact of particular manipulations on library complexity and quality, and characterized the activities and specificities of several key enzymes used in library construction. Fortunately, careful protocol design and reagent choice can substantially mitigate many of these biases, and enable reliable representation of sequences in libraries. This review aims to guide the reader through the vast expanse of literature on the subject to promote informed library generation, independent of the application

A Tissue Engineering product development pathway

Tissue engineering is a field of inquiry and research that uses engineering techniques and principles of biological sciences to develop functional substitutes for reconstruction of damaged organs. Commercial translation of tissue engineering products is currently in progress all over the world. Many companies are moving their interest towards this market segment that grows by 6% per year. Aim of this thesis is to probe the possibility of developing tissue engineering products in the most cost-effective way, minimizing the industrial risk and developing a specific fund raising model. Tissue engineering is based on three main features: cells, scaffolds and bioreactors. Cells are seeded on a scaffold and cultured in a bioreactor in order to obtain a tissue engineering product. Nevertheless, developing cell carrying products is hampered by certification claims ("advanced therapies" certification rules) that unbearably increase R&D and certification costs and can be faced by either big companies or start-ups of big companies and spin-offs of complex aggregates of research centers involved in advanced cell research. On the other hand, scaffolds (certification class IIb) and bioreactors for tissue engineering (certification class I) can be developed with a lower economic effort, being the competition based on innovation, since their market is in the "growth phase" for scaffolds and in the "introduction phase" for bioreactors in the Levitt's product life cycle theory. Purpose of this thesis is to basically study scaffold and bioreactor features, then to preliminarily design some models of bioreactors and, eventually, to set a business model, based on private and public fund raising, aimed to the development of scaffolds for dental implantology and of bioreactors for cardiovascular and bone tissue engineering. Finally, a business plan of a company being spin-off of Politecnico di Torino and industrial start-up has been elaborate