How do parents use mental state language during narration to their 2- and 4-year-old children?

Parents influence the development of children’s social understanding by using mental state terms that denote concepts which children are about to develop (Taumoepeau & Ruffman, 2006, 2008) or via the usage of contrastive and/or causal mental state talk (Peterson & Slaughter, 2003). The present longitudinal study examined parent-child dyads and assessed parental mental state talk (MST) during picture-book narration. Seventy-four parents told their children a story twice, when the children were 2 and 4 years old. The same wordless picture book was used to elicit the narration at each time point. Two criteria were used to classify MST: type of utterance (affective, perceptual, or cognitive) and complexity of utterance (simple or clarifying). Parental MST was more frequent in narrations to 4-yearolds than to 2-year-olds. Parents directed more complex MST to 4-year-old children than to 2-year-olds. Affective references were most common at both time points, while cognitive utterances hardly occurred. Nevertheless, growing trends were observed in all types of MST. The results suggest that parents match their MST to the children’s level of social understanding development

Comparative "in vitro" studies of furazidin and nitrofurantoin activities against common uropathogens including multidrug-resistant strains of "E. coli" and "S. aureus"

Urinary tract infections caused by wide range of pathogens including gram-negative andgram-positive bacteria as well as fungi are a severe public health problem. The predominant causative agent of both uncomplicated and complicated urinary tract infections is Escherichia coli. In an era of increasing bacterial resistance to antimicrobial agents and a high prevalence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains in communityandhospital-acquired infections, the re-evaluation of older generations of antimicrobial agents, such as nitrofuran derivatives, seems to be a reasonable approach. The aim of the study was to evaluate furazidin activity against common uropathogens in comparison to nitrofurantoin and other selected antimicrobial agents, routinely used in the treatment of urinary tract infections. Furazidin exhibited lower MICs than nitrofurantoin when tested against gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria including clinical MDR E. coli and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The MICs for furazidin ranged from 4 to 64 mg/L forEnterobacteriaceae strains, from 2 to 4 mg/L for gram-positive cocci, and 0.5 mg/L for anaerobic bacteria. The MICs for nitrofurantoin ranged from 16 to 64 mg/L for Enterobacteriaceae strains, from 8 to 64 mg/L for gram positive cocci, and 4 mg/L for anaerobic bacteria. In addition, both nitrofurans displayed better activity against the tested bacterial strains than ciprofloxacin, fosfomycin, trimethoprim and co-trimoxazole. Nitrofuran derivatives displayed higher antimicrobial activity than other antimicrobial agents regardless of bacteria species or resistance mechanism

How does L1 and L2 exposure impact L1 performance in bilingual children? : evidence from Polish-English migrants to the United Kingdom

Most studies on bilingual language development focus on children’s second language (L2). Here, we investigated first language (L1) development of Polish-English early migrant bilinguals in four domains: vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing and discourse. We first compared Polish language skills between bilinguals and their Polish non-migrant monolingual peers, and then investigated the influence of the cumulative exposure to L1 and L2 on bilinguals’ performance. We then examined whether high exposure to L1 could possibly minimize the gap between monolinguals and bilinguals. We analyzed data from 233 typically developing children (88 bilingual, 145 monolingual) aged 4;0 to 7;5 (years; months) on six language measures in Polish: receptive vocabulary, productive vocabulary, receptive grammar, productive grammar (sentence repetition), phonological processing (non-word repetition) and discourse abilities (narration). Information about language exposure was obtained via parental questionnaires. For each language task, we analyzed the data from the subsample of bilinguals who had completed all the tasks in question and from monolinguals matched one-on-one to the bilingual group on age, SES (measured by years of mother’s education), gender, non-verbal IQ and short term memory. The bilingual children scored lower than monolinguals in all language domains, except discourse. The group differences were more pronounced on the productive tasks (vocabulary, grammar, phonological processing) and moderate on the receptive tasks (vocabulary and grammar). L1 exposure correlated positively with the vocabulary size and phonological processing. Grammar scores were not related to the levels of L1 exposure, but were predicted by general cognitive abilities. L2 exposure negatively influenced productive grammar in L1, suggesting possible L2 transfer effects on L1 grammatical performance. Children’s narrative skills benefitted from exposure to two languages: both L1 and L2 exposure influenced story structure scores in L1. Importantly, we did not find any evidence (in any of the tasks in which the gap was present) that the performance gap between monolinguals and bilinguals could be fully closed with high amounts of L1 input

New Insight into Genotypic and Phenotypic Relatedness of Staphylococcus aureus Strains from Human Infections or Animal Reservoirs

Cilj ovog rada bio je ispitati učinkovitost ekstrakcije bioaktivnih spojeva iz listova koprive (Urtica dioica L.) primjenom ubrzane ekstrakcije otapalima pri povišenom tlaku (ASE). Uz etanol kao ekstrakcijsko otapalo, ispitivani su sljedeći parametri ekstrakcije: (i) statičko vrijeme ekstrakcije (5 i 10 min); (ii) broj ciklusa ekstrakcije (1, 2, 3 i 4 ciklusa); te (iii) temperatura (20 i 50 °C). U dobivenim ekstraktima provedeno je spektrofotometrijsko određivanje ukupnih fenola, karotenoida te klorofila a i b. Rezultati istraživanja su pokazali kako sva tri varirana parametra značano utječu na masene udjele ispitivanih spojeva (p ≤ 0,01). Maseni udjeli ukupnih fenola određeni su u rasponu 106,44 do 739,72 mg 100 g-1, klorofila a od 116,44 do 490,42 mg 100 g-1, klorofila b od 44,88 do 166,85 mg g-1 te karotenoida od 36,62 do 133,99 mg 100 g-1. Najveći prinosi dobiveni su pri sljedećim uvjetima ekstrakcije: ukupni fenoli, karotenoidi i klorofil a pri temperaturi 50 °C i 4 ekstrakcijska ciklusa od 10 min; klorofil b pri temperaturi ekstrakcije od 50 °C, 3 ekstrakcijska ciklusa od 10 min.The aim of this study was to investigate the extraction efficiency of the bioactive compounds from stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.) leaves by using Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE). Ethanol was used as the extraction solvent and the following extraction parameters were investigated: (i) static extraction time (5 and 10 min); (ii) number of extraction cycles (1, 2, 3 and 4 cycles); and (iii) temperature (20 and 50 °C). All extracts were spectrophotometrically evaluated in terms of total phenols, carotenoids and chlorophylls a and b. The results of the research have shown that all extraction parameters significantly affected the concetrations of the investigated compounds (p≤0,01). Mass fractions of total phenols ranged from 106,44 to 739,72 mg GAE 100 g-1, chlorophyll a from 116,44 to 490,42 mg 100 g-1, chlorophyll b from 44,88 to 166,85 mg 100 g-1 and carotenoids from 36,62 to 133,99 mg 100 g-1. The highest yields were obtained under the following extraction conditions: extraction temperature of 50 °C and four 10 minute cycles for total phenols, carotenoids and chlorophyll a and extraction temperature of 50 °C and three 10 minutes cycles for chlorophyll b