Keeping Emotions in Mind: The Influence of Working Memory Capacity on Parent-Reported Symptoms of Emotional Lability in a Sample of Children With and Without ADHD.

Emotional lability (EL) often co-occurs with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. However, difficulties of regulating intense emotions in ADHD are still poorly understood. We investigated the potential role of working memory (WM) as a protective factor against EL in children with ADHD by building on models describing the close relationship between WM and regulation of emotions. The parents of 41 children with ADHD and 34 typically developing children (TDC) filled out the emotional control scale (ECS) from the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning and the child behavior checklist (CBCL). The children themselves completed the backward conditions of the digit span (DS) and spatial span (SS) tasks as well as the letter-umber sequencing (LNS) task. The results of a stepwise regression analysis confirmed the negative relationship between parent reported EL measured using the ECS and scores on the LNS, when controlling for symptoms of ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). WM thus seems to be important for the ability of the children to express emotions in an adaptive and flexible way. We therefore suggest that a poorer WM capacity, which is often found in children with ADHD, may be a predictor of high levels of EL

The Milky Way Bulge: Observed properties and a comparison to external galaxies

The Milky Way bulge offers a unique opportunity to investigate in detail the role that different processes such as dynamical instabilities, hierarchical merging, and dissipational collapse may have played in the history of the Galaxy formation and evolution based on its resolved stellar population properties. Large observation programmes and surveys of the bulge are providing for the first time a look into the global view of the Milky Way bulge that can be compared with the bulges of other galaxies, and be used as a template for detailed comparison with models. The Milky Way has been shown to have a box/peanut (B/P) bulge and recent evidence seems to suggest the presence of an additional spheroidal component. In this review we summarise the global chemical abundances, kinematics and structural properties that allow us to disentangle these multiple components and provide constraints to understand their origin. The investigation of both detailed and global properties of the bulge now provide us with the opportunity to characterise the bulge as observed in models, and to place the mixed component bulge scenario in the general context of external galaxies. When writing this review, we considered the perspectives of researchers working with the Milky Way and researchers working with external galaxies. It is an attempt to approach both communities for a fruitful exchange of ideas.Comment: Review article to appear in "Galactic Bulges", Editors: Laurikainen E., Peletier R., Gadotti D., Springer Publishing. 36 pages, 10 figure

Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality and life expectancy, 1950–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

BACKGROUND: Assessments of age-specific mortality and life expectancy have been done by the UN Population Division, Department of Economics and Social Affairs (UNPOP), the United States Census Bureau, WHO, and as part of previous iterations of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD). Previous iterations of the GBD used population estimates from UNPOP, which were not derived in a way that was internally consistent with the estimates of the numbers of deaths in the GBD. The present iteration of the GBD, GBD 2017, improves on previous assessments and provides timely estimates of the mortality experience of populations globally. METHODS: The GBD uses all available data to produce estimates of mortality rates between 1950 and 2017 for 23 age groups, both sexes, and 918 locations, including 195 countries and territories and subnational locations for 16 countries. Data used include vital registration systems, sample registration systems, household surveys (complete birth histories, summary birth histories, sibling histories), censuses (summary birth histories, household deaths), and Demographic Surveillance Sites. In total, this analysis used 8259 data sources. Estimates of the probability of death between birth and the age of 5 years and between ages 15 and 60 years are generated and then input into a model life table system to produce complete life tables for all locations and years. Fatal discontinuities and mortality due to HIV/AIDS are analysed separately and then incorporated into the estimation. We analyse the relationship between age-specific mortality and development status using the Socio-demographic Index, a composite measure based on fertility under the age of 25 years, education, and income. There are four main methodological improvements in GBD 2017 compared with GBD 2016: 622 additional data sources have been incorporated; new estimates of population, generated by the GBD study, are used; statistical methods used in different components of the analysis have been further standardised and improved; and the analysis has been extended backwards in time by two decades to start in 1950. FINDINGS: Globally, 18·7% (95% uncertainty interval 18·4–19·0) of deaths were registered in 1950 and that proportion has been steadily increasing since, with 58·8% (58·2–59·3) of all deaths being registered in 2015. At the global level, between 1950 and 2017, life expectancy increased from 48·1 years (46·5–49·6) to 70·5 years (70·1–70·8) for men and from 52·9 years (51·7–54·0) to 75·6 years (75·3–75·9) for women. Despite this overall progress, there remains substantial variation in life expectancy at birth in 2017, which ranges from 49·1 years (46·5–51·7) for men in the Central African Republic to 87·6 years (86·9–88·1) among women in Singapore. The greatest progress across age groups was for children younger than 5 years; under-5 mortality dropped from 216·0 deaths (196·3–238·1) per 1000 livebirths in 1950 to 38·9 deaths (35·6–42·83) per 1000 livebirths in 2017, with huge reductions across countries. Nevertheless, there were still 5·4 million (5·2–5·6) deaths among children younger than 5 years in the world in 2017. Progress has been less pronounced and more variable for adults, especially for adult males, who had stagnant or increasing mortality rates in several countries. The gap between male and female life expectancy between 1950 and 2017, while relatively stable at the global level, shows distinctive patterns across super-regions and has consistently been the largest in central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia, and smallest in south Asia. Performance was also variable across countries and time in observed mortality rates compared with those expected on the basis of development. INTERPRETATION: This analysis of age-sex-specific mortality shows that there are remarkably complex patterns in population mortality across countries. The findings of this study highlight global successes, such as the large decline in under-5 mortality, which reflects significant local, national, and global commitment and investment over several decades. However, they also bring attention to mortality patterns that are a cause for concern, particularly among adult men and, to a lesser extent, women, whose mortality rates have stagnated in many countries over the time period of this study, and in some cases are increasing

Ageing and the Immune Response in the CNS

The ageing brain serves as the background for most neurodegenerative diseases. Brain ageing itself is generally accompanied by cognitive decline. However, several questions on the biology of brain ageing remain to be answered. Interestingly, no species besides humans show progressively drastic neuronal loss and cognitive decline as observed in clinical-grade Alzheimer's disease (AD). The parameters that cause the shift in balance on the delicate nexus between normal and pathological ageing are unknown. Are these changes that occur during ageing merely sporadic or are they programmed by mechanisms of ageing? What causes the specific regionality of neurodegenerative diseases in the brain? To understand these details about ageing-related neurodegenerative conditions, a careful approach to understanding brain ageing and cellular responses to brain ageing is crucial and might render important insights. In this regard, it is important to highlight that brain ageing is still predominantly seen as an outcome of dysfunction of neurons, with studies on glial cells being very limited. As neuro-supportive cells, glial cells might respond to ageing-related changes in neurons as well. The alterations that glial components suffer in the ageing brain, mechanisms that affect glial ageing and how this in turn affects the progression of neuronal ageing, are thus interesting avenues to address. In this chapter, we will address the current theories on brain ageing in view of the age-related changes in the neuroimmune system. This edition first published 201

Designing for everyday sounds at home with people with dementia and their partners

People with dementia and their caregivers aging in place have expressed the need for social, emotional, and recreational interventions at home. Listening to everyday sounds evokes memories and provides conversational cues to support social relations and elicit emotional responses for people with dementia. However, research has yet to explore how these meaningful experiences can be transferred into home settings. This paper presents the insights from our co-design study that involved three people with dementia and their partners in developing an interactive sound player for listening to everyday sounds at home. We report on the motivations of people with dementia and their caregivers to engage in meaningful sound-based activities at home and present the Tumbler as a prototype to foster initiative and agency in exploring familiar everyday sounds. We present design implications of how sound can enrich the everyday experiences of dementia by facilitating social and pleasurable moments at home

Quantifying calcification in the lumbar aorta on X-ray images

In this paper we propose to use inpainting to estimate the severity of atherosclerotic plaques from X-ray projections. Inpainting allows to "remove" the plaque and estimate what the background image for an uncalcified aorta would have looked like. A measure of plaque severity can then be derived by subtracting the inpainting from the original image. In contrast to the current standard of categorical calcification scoring from X-rays, our method estimates both the size and the density of calcified areas and provides a continuous severity score, thus allowing for measurement of more subtle differences. We discuss a class of smooth inpainting methods, compare their ability to reconstruct the original images, and compare the inpainting based calcification score to the conventional categorical score in a longitudinal study on 49 patients addressing correlations of the calcification scores with hypertension, a known cardiovascular risk factor.</p

Enhanced microglial pro-inflammatory response to lipopolysaccharide correlates with brain infiltration and blood-brain barrier dysregulation in a mouse model of telomere shortening

Microglia are a proliferative population of resident brain macrophages that under physiological conditions self-renew independent of hematopoiesis. Microglia are innate immune cells actively surveying the brain and are the earliest responders to injury. During aging, microglia elicit an enhanced innate immune response also referred to as 'priming'. To date, it remains unknown whether telomere shortening affects the proliferative capacity and induces priming of microglia. We addressed this issue using early (first-generation G1 mTerc(-/-))- and late-generation (third-generation G3 and G4 mTerc(-/-)) telomerase-deficient mice, which carry a homozygous deletion for the telomerase RNA component gene (mTerc). Late-generation mTerc(-/-) microglia show telomere shortening and decreased proliferation efficiency. Under physiological conditions, gene expression and functionality of G3 mTerc(-/-) microglia are comparable with microglia derived from G1 mTerc(-/-) mice despite changes in morphology. However, after intraperitoneal injection of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), G3 mTerc(-/-) microglia mice show an enhanced proinflammatory response. Nevertheless, this enhanced inflammatory response was not accompanied by an increased expression of genes known to be associated with age-associated microglia priming. The increased inflammatory response in microglia correlates closely with increased peripheral inflammation, a loss of blood-brain barrier integrity, and infiltration of immune cells in the brain parenchyma in this mouse model of telomere shortening