Infant Emotional Mimicry of Strangers: Associations with Parent Emotional Mimicry, Parent-Infant Mutual Attention, and Parent Dispositional Affective Empathy

Emotional mimicry, the tendency to automatically and spontaneously reproduce others’ facial expressions, characterizes human social interactions from infancy onwards. Yet, little is known about the factors modulating its development in the first year of life. This study investigated infant emotional mimicry and its association with parent emotional mimicry, parent-infant mutual attention, and parent dispositional affective empathy. One hundred and seventeen parent-infant dyads (51 six-month-olds, 66 twelve-month-olds) were observed during video presentation of strangers’ happy, sad, angry, and fearful faces. Infant and parent emotional mimicry (i.e., facial expressions valence-congruent to the video) and their mutual attention (i.e., simultaneous gaze at one another) were systematically coded second-by-second. Parent empathy was assessed via self-report. Path models indicated that infant mimicry of happy stimuli was positively and independently associated with parent mimicry and affective empathy, while infant mimicry of sad stimuli was related to longer parent-infant mutual attention. Findings provide new insights into infants’ and parents’ coordination of mimicry and attention during triadic contexts of interactions, endorsing the social-affiliative function of mimicry already present in infancy: emotional mimicry occurs as an automatic parent-infant shared behavior and early manifestation of empathy only when strangers’ emotional displays are positive, and thus perceived as affiliative.NWODevelopmental pathways of social-emotional and cognitive functioning - ou

How do parents' depression and anxiety, and infants' negative temperament relate to parent–infant face-to-face interactions?

The present study investigated the associations of mothers' and fathers' lifetime depression and anxiety symptoms, and of infants' negative temperament with parents' and infants' gaze, facial expressions of emotion, and synchrony. We observed infants' (age between 3.5 and 5.5 months, N = 101) and parents' gaze and facial expressions during 4-min naturalistic face-to-face interactions. Parents' lifetime symptoms of depression and anxiety were assessed with clinical interviews, and infants' negative temperament was measured with standardized observations. Parents with more depressive symptoms and their infants expressed less positive and more neutral affect. Parents' lifetime anxiety symptoms were not significantly related to parents' expressions of affect, while they were linked to longer durations of gaze to parent, and to more positive and negative affect in infants. Parents' lifetime depression or anxiety was not related to synchrony. Infants' temperament did not predict infants' or parents' interactive behavior. The study reveals that more depression symptoms in parents are linked to more neutral affect from parents and from infants during face-to-face interactions, while parents' anxiety symptoms are related to more attention to parent and less neutral affect from infants (but not from parents)

Experimental Study on the Explosive Spalling in High-Performance Concrete: Role of Aggregate and Fiber Types

A complete description of the mechanical behavior of High-Performance Concrete in fire still requires further efforts to fully understand the tricky phenomenon of spalling, whose complexity comes from the interaction among different phenomena, namely: the microstructural changes occurring in concrete at high temperature, the pressure rising in the pores, and the stress induced by both thermal gradients and external loads. To what extent these different aspects influence each other is still not completely clear, and within this context a comprehensive experimental campaign has been launched at the Politecnico di Milano, focusing on the role played by concrete grade, aggregate type, and fiber type and content. Eleven concrete mixes are investigated considering three grades (fc ≥ 40, 60 and 90 MPa), three aggregate types (silico-calcareous, basalt and calcareous aggregates) and different fiber types and contents (steel and monofilament or fibrillated polypropylene fibers)

A Validated RP-HPLC Method Development for Amoxicillin in Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms

A rapid and simple Reverse Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (RP-HPLC) method has been developed for the quantification of Amoxicillin in tablet dosage form. Separation was achieved on Chromatopak-C18 (250mm×4.6×5micron) column in isocratic mode with mobile phase consisting of Acetonitrile: 0.2M Potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer (pH 3) (22:78v/v) and conditions optimized with flow rate of 1 ml/minute and wavelength of detection at 283 nm. The retention time of Amoxicillin was found to be 6.4 min. Linearity was established for Amoxicillin in the range 10 100 μ g / ml with R2 value 0.999. This method was validated in accordance with ICH guidelines, the linearity, accuracy, precision, specificity, robustness, ruggedness, and system suitability results were within the acceptance criteria. Validation studies demonstrated that the proposed RP-HPLC method is simple, specific, rapid, reliable and reproducible for the determination of Amoxicillin for Quality Control level

The huntingtin inclusion is a dynamic phase-separated compartment

Inclusions of disordered protein are a characteristic feature of most neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington’s disease. Huntington’s disease is caused by expansion of a polyglutamine tract in the huntingtin protein; mutant huntingtin protein (mHtt) is unstable and accumulates in large intracellular inclusions both in affected individuals and when expressed in eukaryotic cells. Using mHtt-GFP expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we find that mHtt-GFP inclusions are dynamic, mobile, gel-like structures that concentrate mHtt together with the disaggregase Hsp104. Although inclusions may associate with the vacuolar membrane, the association is reversible and we find that inclusions of mHtt in S. cerevisiae are not taken up by the vacuole or other organelles. Instead, a pulse-chase study using photoconverted mHtt-mEos2 revealed that mHtt is directly and continuously removed from the inclusion body. In addition to mobile inclusions, we also imaged and tracked the movements of small particles of mHtt-GFP and determine that they move randomly. These observations suggest that inclusions may grow through the collision and coalescence of small aggregative particles

Vertical migration of some herbicides through undisturbed and homogenized soil columns

A laboratory experiment was conducted by using three herbicides, two from dinitroaniline group and one from thiocarbamate group to know their degree of downward movement (leachability) through soil columns and their contribution in ground water contamination. Soil columns were loaded with Pendimethalin, Benthiocarb and Oryzalin at doses of 10.0, 10.0 and 7.7 kg/ha, respectively. After 30 days soil samples were analyzed from each segments (i.e. 0–6, 6–12, 12–18, 18–24 and 24–30 cm) for Benthiocarb and Pendimethalin by GLC equipped with Ni63 electron capture detector (ECD) and for Oryzalin by HPLC coupled with UV-VIS detector. The results obtained in the present study reveal that the residues of the three herbicides under investigation were predominantly confined to the upper soil layer (0–6 cm). Comparatively, low mobility of these herbicides in soils could be due to strong adsorption of these chemical to soil colloids

Socio-economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic on dairy farm households in West Bengal state

India is one of the leading economies that have been stuck hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and the stringent measures were put in place to combat it. Among several sectors, dairy sector is the most affected as dairy products are highly perishable and rely on time-sensitive supply chains. Though studies are available on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on dairy sector, there are no studies on COVID-infected dairy farm households. The present study was an attempt to assess the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic on infected and uninfected dairy farm households in West Bengal. The study covered pre-lockdown, lockdown (both 1st and 2nd wave) and post-lockdown phases of COVID-19 pandemic. The primary data was collected from 150 dairy farm households (COVID-19 infected-75 and uninfected-75) in Murshidabad and Nadia districts of West Bengal. Dairy Economic Performance Index consisting of number of milch animals, milk yield, marketed milk, milk procurement price, concentrate price and veterinary cost was developed using principal component analysis. In order to make infected and uninfected groups statistically comparable, propensity score matching technique was employed. The index values were compared between matched infected and uninfected groups over different phases of COVID-19 pandemic. Dairy households incurred significant economic losses during the lockdown and post-lockdown periods due to increase in cost of concentrates, decline in the number of milch animals and drop in milk procurement prices. Dairy households faced constraints in procuring dry fodder, concentrate feed and in accessing veterinary care. COVID-19 infected dairy farm households had a greater socio-economic hurdle than that of uninfected households

Circulating Mucosal Associated Invariant T Cells Are Activated in Vibrio cholerae O1 Infection and Associated with Lipopolysaccharide Antibody Responses

Background: Mucosal Associated Invariant T (MAIT) cells are innate-like T cells found in abundance in the intestinal mucosa, and are thought to play a role in bridging the innate-adaptive interface. Methods: We measured MAIT cell frequencies and antibody responses in blood from patients presenting with culture-confirmed severe cholera to a hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh at days 2, 7, 30, and 90 of illness. Results: We found that MAIT (CD3+CD4−CD161hiVα7.2+) cells were maximally activated at day 7 after onset of cholera. In adult patients, MAIT frequencies did not change over time, whereas in child patients, MAITs were significantly decreased at day 7, and this decrease persisted to day 90. Fold changes in MAIT frequency correlated with increases in LPS IgA and IgG, but not LPS IgM nor antibody responses to cholera toxin B subunit. Conclusions: In the acute phase of cholera, MAIT cells are activated, depleted from the periphery, and as part of the innate response against V. cholerae infection, are possibly involved in mechanisms underlying class switching of antibody responses to T cell-independent antigens