Psychological functioning in adolescents referred to specialist gender identity clinics across Europe : a clinical comparison study between four clinics

Adolescents seeking professional help with their gender identity development often present with psychological difficulties. Existing literature on psychological functioning of gender diverse young people is limited and mostly bound to national chart reviews. This study examined the prevalence of psychological functioning and peer relationship problems in adolescents across four European specialist gender services (The Netherlands, Belgium, the UK, and Switzerland), using the Child Behavioural Checklist (CBCL) and the Youth Self-Report (YSR). Differences in psychological functioning and peer relationships were found in gender diverse adolescents across Europe. Overall, emotional and behavioural problems and peer relationship problems were most prevalent in adolescents from the UK, followed by Switzerland and Belgium. The least behavioural and emotional problems and peer relationship problems were reported by adolescents from The Netherlands. Across the four clinics, a similar pattern of gender differences was found. Birth-assigned girls showed more behavioural problems and externalising problems in the clinical range, as reported by their parents. According to self-report, internalising problems in the clinical range were more prevalent in adolescent birth-assigned boys. More research is needed to gain a better understanding of the difference in clinical presentations in gender diverse adolescents and to investigate what contextual factors that may contribute to this

Identification of plastic constitutive parameters at large deformations from three dimensional displacement fields

The aim of this paper is to provide a general procedure to extract the constitutive parameters of a plasticity model starting from displacement measurements and using the Virtual Fields Method. This is a classical inverse problem which has been already investigated in the literature, however several new features are developed here. First of all the procedure applies to a general three-dimensional displacement field which leads to large plastic deformations, no assumptions are made such as plane stress or plane strain although only pressure-independent plasticity is considered. Moreover the equilibrium equation is written in terms of the deviatoric stress tensor that can be directly computed from the strain field without iterations. Thanks to this, the identification routine is much faster compared to other inverse methods such as finite element updating. The proposed method can be a valid tool to study complex phenomena which involve severe plastic deformation and where the state of stress is completely triaxial, e.g. strain localization or necking occurrence. The procedure has been validated using a three dimensional displacement field obtained from a simulated experiment. The main potentialities as well as a first sensitivity study on the influence of measurement errors are illustrated

Performance of photon reconstruction and identification with the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

A description is provided of the performance of the CMS detector for photon reconstruction and identification in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV at the CERN LHC. Details are given on the reconstruction of photons from energy deposits in the electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL) and the extraction of photon energy estimates. The reconstruction of electron tracks from photons that convert to electrons in the CMS tracker is also described, as is the optimization of the photon energy reconstruction and its accurate modelling in simulation, in the analysis of the Higgs boson decay into two photons. In the barrel section of the ECAL, an energy resolution of about 1% is achieved for unconverted or late-converting photons from Hγγ decays. Different photon identification methods are discussed and their corresponding selection efficiencies in data are compared with those found in simulated events

Emerging Infectious Disease leads to Rapid Population Decline of Common British Birds

Emerging infectious diseases are increasingly cited as threats to wildlife, livestock and humans alike. They can threaten geographically isolated or critically endangered wildlife populations; however, relatively few studies have clearly demonstrated the extent to which emerging diseases can impact populations of common wildlife species. Here, we report the impact of an emerging protozoal disease on British populations of greenfinch Carduelis chloris and chaffinch Fringilla coelebs, two of the most common birds in Britain. Morphological and molecular analyses showed this to be due to Trichomonas gallinae. Trichomonosis emerged as a novel fatal disease of finches in Britain in 2005 and rapidly became epidemic within greenfinch, and to a lesser extent chaffinch, populations in 2006. By 2007, breeding populations of greenfinches and chaffinches in the geographic region of highest disease incidence had decreased by 35% and 21% respectively, representing mortality in excess of half a million birds. In contrast, declines were less pronounced or absent in these species in regions where the disease was found in intermediate or low incidence. Also, populations of dunnock Prunella modularis, which similarly feeds in gardens, but in which T. gallinae was rarely recorded, did not decline. This is the first trichomonosis epidemic reported in the scientific literature to negatively impact populations of free-ranging non-columbiform species, and such levels of mortality and decline due to an emerging infectious disease are unprecedented in British wild bird populations. This disease emergence event demonstrates the potential for a protozoan parasite to jump avian host taxonomic groups with dramatic effect over a short time period

Measurement and Interpretation of Fermion-Pair Production at LEP energies above the Z Resonance

This paper presents DELPHI measurements and interpretations of cross-sections, forward-backward asymmetries, and angular distributions, for the e+e- -> ffbar process for centre-of-mass energies above the Z resonance, from sqrt(s) ~ 130 - 207 GeV at the LEP collider. The measurements are consistent with the predictions of the Standard Model and are used to study a variety of models including the S-Matrix ansatz for e+e- -> ffbar scattering and several models which include physics beyond the Standard Model: the exchange of Z' bosons, contact interactions between fermions, the exchange of gravitons in large extra dimensions and the exchange of sneutrino in R-parity violating supersymmetry.Comment: 79 pages, 16 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

A Determination of the Centre-of-Mass Energy at LEP2 using Radiative 2-fermion Events

Using e+e- -> mu+mu-(gamma) and e+e- -> qqbar(gamma) events radiative to the Z pole, DELPHI has determined the centre-of-mass energy, sqrt{s}, using energy and momentum constraint methods. The results are expressed as deviations from the nominal LEP centre-of-mass energy, measured using other techniques. The results are found to be compatible with the LEP Energy Working Group estimates for a combination of the 1997 to 2000 data sets.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

A Measurement of the Tau Hadronic Branching Ratios

The exclusive and semi-exclusive branching ratios of the tau lepton hadronic decay modes (h- v_t, h- pi0 v_t, h- pi0 pi0 v_t, h- \geq 2pi0 v_t, h- \geq 3pi0 v_t, 2h- h+ v_t, 2h- h+ pi0 v_t, 2h- h+ \geq 2pi0 v_t, 3h- 2h+ v_t and 3h- 2h+ \geq 1pi0 v_t) were measured with data from the DELPHI detector at LEP.Comment: 53 pages, 18 figures, Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.

AutoRoot: open-source software employing a novel image analysis approach to support fully-automated plant phenotyping

Background: Computer-based phenotyping of plants has risen in importance in recent years. Whilst much software has been written to aid phenotyping using image analysis, to date the vast majority has been only semi-automatic. However, such interaction is not desirable in high throughput approaches. Here, we present a system designed to analyse plant images in a completely automated manner, allowing genuine high throughput measurement of root traits. To do this we introduce a new set of proxy traits. Results: We test the system on a new, automated image capture system, the Microphenotron, which is able to image many 1000s of roots/h. A simple experiment is presented, treating the plants with differing chemical conditions to produce different phenotypes. The automated imaging setup and the new software tool was used to measure proxy traits in each well. A correlation matrix was calculated across automated and manual measures, as a validation. Some particular proxy measures are very highly correlated with the manual measures (e.g. proxy length to manual length, r2 > 0.9). This suggests that while the automated measures are not directly equivalent to classic manual measures, they can be used to indicate phenotypic differences (hence the term, proxy). In addition, the raw discriminative power of the new proxy traits was examined. Principal component analysis was calculated across all proxy measures over two phenotypically-different groups of plants. Many of the proxy traits can be used to separate the data in the two conditions. Conclusion: The new proxy traits proposed tend to correlate well with equivalent manual measures, where these exist. Additionally, the new measures display strong discriminative power. It is suggested that for particular phenotypic differences, different traits will be relevant, and not all will have meaningful manual equivalent measures. However, approaches such as PCA can be used to interrogate the resulting data to identify differences between datasets. Select images can then be carefully manually inspected if the nature of the precise differences is required. We suggest such flexible measurement approaches are necessary for fully automated, high throughput systems such as the Microphenotron

Plant growth environments with programmable relative humidity and homogeneous nutrient availability

We describe the design, characterization, and use of “programmable”, sterile growth environments for individual (or small sets of) plants. The specific relative humidities and nutrient availability experienced by the plant is established (RH between 15% and 95%; nutrient concentration as desired) during the setup of the growth environment, which takes about 5 minutes and <1$ in disposable cost. These systems maintain these environmental parameters constant for at least 14 days with minimal intervention (one minute every two days). The design is composed entirely of off-the-shelf components (e.g., LEGO® bricks) and is characterized by (i) a separation of root and shoot environment (which is physiologically relevant and facilitates imposing specific conditions on the root system, e.g., darkness), (ii) the development of the root system on a flat surface, where the root enjoys constant contact with nutrient solution and air, (iii) a compatibility with root phenotyping. We demonstrate phenotyping by characterizing root systems of Brassica rapa plants growing in different relative humidities (55%, 75%, and 95%). While most phenotypes were found to be sensitive to these environmental changes, a phenotype tightly associated with root system topology – the size distribution of the areas encircled by roots – appeared to be remarkably and counterintuitively insensitive to humidity changes. These setups combine many of the advantages of hydroponics conditions (e.g., root phenotyping, complete control over nutrient composition, scalability) and soil conditions (e.g., aeration of roots, shading of roots), while being comparable in cost and setup time to Magenta® boxes

Non-destructive determination of floral staging in cereals using X-ray micro computed tomography (µCT)

Background Accurate floral staging is required to aid research into pollen and flower development, in particular male development. Pollen development is highly sensitive to stress and is critical for crop yields. Research into male development under environmental change is important to help target increased yields. This is hindered in monocots as the flower develops internally in the pseudostem. Floral staging studies therefore typically rely on destructive analysis, such as removal from the plant, fixation, staining and sectioning. This time-consuming analysis therefore prevents follow up studies and analysis past the point of the floral staging. Results This study focuses on using X-ray µCT scanning to allow quick and detailed non-destructive internal 3D phenotypic information to allow accurate staging of Arabidopsis thaliana L. and Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) flowers. X-ray µCT has previously relied on fixation methods for above ground tissue, therefore two contrast agents (Lugol’s iodine and Bismuth) were observed in Arabidopsis and Barley in planta to circumvent this step. 3D models and 2D slices were generated from the X-ray µCT images providing insightful information normally only available through destructive time-consuming processes such as sectioning and microscopy. Barley growth and development was also monitored over three weeks by X-ray µCT to observe flower development in situ. By measuring spike size in the developing tillers accurate non-destructive staging at the flower and anther stages could be performed; this staging was confirmed using traditional destructive microscopic analysis. Conclusion The use of X-ray micro computed tomography (µCT) scanning of living plant tissue offers immense benefits for plant phenotyping, for successive developmental measurements and for accurate developmental timing for scientific measurements. Nevertheless, X-ray µCT remains underused in plant sciences, especially in above-ground organs, despite its unique potential in delivering detailed non-destructive internal 3D phenotypic information. This work represents a novel application of X-ray µCT that could enhance research undertaken in monocot species to enable effective non-destructive staging and developmental analysis for molecular genetic studies and to determine effects of stresses at particular growth stages