The longitudinal negative impact of early stressful events on emotional and physical well-being: The buffering role of cardiac vagal development

Early stressful events negatively affect emotional and physical well-being. Cardiac vagal tone (CVT), which is associated with better emotional and physical well-being, usually gradually increase in early childhood. Nonetheless, children's CVT developmental trajectories are greatly variable, such that CVT can increase or decrease across the years. The present study examines the longitudinal effects of early stressful events and the role of 4 years CVT developmental trajectory on children's emotional and physical well-being. Forty-two 4-year-old children were enrolled. Number of stressful events and resting electrocardiogram (ECG) were collected at T1. ECG was registered again after one (T2), two (T3) and three (T4) years. Children's emotional and physical well-being were assessed at T4 through the Child Health and Illness Profile – Child Edition (CHIP–CE). CVT development was calculated as the angular coefficient, reflecting the developmental trajectory of CVT across the four timepoints. Results yielded that higher experienced stressful events predicted poorer emotional and physical well-being after 4 years. The interaction between the number of stressful events and CVT development emerged on physical well-being. Early stressful events negatively affect long-term children's emotional and physical well-being while a positive CVT development seems to mitigate the negative effects of early stressful events on physical well-being

The Sub-Surface Structure of a Large Sample of Active Regions

We employ ring-diagram analysis to study the sub-surface thermal structure of active regions. We present results using a large number of active regions over the course of Solar Cycle 23. We present both traditional inversions of ring-diagram frequency differences, with a total sample size of 264, and a statistical study using Principal Component Analysis. We confirm earlier results on smaller samples that sound speed and adiabatic index are changed below regions of strong magnetic field. We find that sound speed is decreased in the region between approximately r=0.99R_sun and r=0.995R_sun (depths of 3Mm to 7Mm), and increased in the region between r=0.97R_sun and r=0.985R_sun (depths of 11Mm to 21Mm). The adiabatic index is enhanced in the same deeper layers that sound-speed enhancement is seen. A weak decrease in adiabatic index is seen in the shallower layers in many active regions. We find that the magnitudes of these perturbations depend on the strength of the surface magnetic field, but we find a great deal of scatter in this relation, implying other factors may be relevant.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Solar Physic

Early postpartum administration of equine chorionic gonadotropin to dairy cows calved during the hot season: Effects on fertility after first artificial insemination

Heat stress reduces fertility of high-producing dairy cows, and early administration of equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG) may improve it. Here, 401 heat-stressed, high-producing dairy cows on a single commercial farm were given eCG (500 UI, n = 214) or saline (n = 187) on days 11–17 after calving, and the effects on fertility after the first artificial insemination (AI) were assessed. On post-partum day 96.34 ± 9.88, all cows were inseminated after a “double short Cosynch” synchronization protocol. Ovarian activity and uterine status were checked by ultrasound on the day of eCG administration and every 7 days thereafter for a total of 3 weeks; checks were also performed during synchronization, and 7 days after AI. On post-partum day 30, cytobrush uterine cytology was performed to check for subclinical endometritis. Pregnancy status was checked on days 30 and 60 after AI. The eCG and control groups did not differ significantly in terms of average lactations per cow (2.33 ± 1.34), days in milk at first AI (96.33 ± 9.88), average milk yield at AI (41.38 ± 7.74 L), or the particular inseminator or bull used for AI. The eCG and control groups showed increasing ovarian activity with time, with approximately 75% of cows in both groups showing a corpus luteum at the beginning of the synchronization protocol. On post-partum day 30, 17.4% of eCG cows and 22.9% of control cows showed subclinical endometritis. Cows treated with eCG showed a tendency toward lower hyperecogenic intraluminal content (16.8 vs. 21.4%, P = 0.15), but ovarian activity during the synchronization protocol was similar between eCG and control groups, with 91% of animals in both groups showing luteolysis after prostaglandin application and 88% showing ovulation after the last administration of gonadotropin-releasing hormone. Fertility was similar between the two groups at both time points after AI (30 days, 34.9 vs. 31.8%; 60 days, 30.6 vs. 28.5%; P > 0.2). These results suggest that early postpartum eCG administration does not improve fertility of heat-stressed dairy cows as long as 60 days after AI. Other strategies may be more effective at mitigating the ability of post-partum heat stress to reduce fertility of high-producing dairy cows

Continuous variable quantum key distribution with two-mode squeezed states

Quantum key distribution (QKD) enables two remote parties to grow a shared key which they can use for unconditionally secure communication [1]. The applicable distance of a QKD protocol depends on the loss and the excess noise of the connecting quantum channel [2-10]. Several QKD schemes based on coherent states and continuous variable (CV) measurements are resilient to high loss in the channel, but strongly affected by small amounts of channel excess noise [2-6]. Here we propose and experimentally address a CV QKD protocol which uses fragile squeezed states combined with a large coherent modulation to greatly enhance the robustness to channel noise. As a proof of principle we experimentally demonstrate that the resulting QKD protocol can tolerate more noise than the benchmark set by the ideal CV coherent state protocol. Our scheme represents a very promising avenue for extending the distance for which secure communication is possible.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Origin and distribution of epipolythiodioxopiperazine (ETP) gene clusters in filamentous ascomycetes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genes responsible for biosynthesis of fungal secondary metabolites are usually tightly clustered in the genome and co-regulated with metabolite production. Epipolythiodioxopiperazines (ETPs) are a class of secondary metabolite toxins produced by disparate ascomycete fungi and implicated in several animal and plant diseases. Gene clusters responsible for their production have previously been defined in only two fungi. Fungal genome sequence data have been surveyed for the presence of putative ETP clusters and cluster data have been generated from several fungal taxa where genome sequences are not available. Phylogenetic analysis of cluster genes has been used to investigate the assembly and heredity of these gene clusters.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Putative ETP gene clusters are present in 14 ascomycete taxa, but absent in numerous other ascomycetes examined. These clusters are discontinuously distributed in ascomycete lineages. Gene content is not absolutely fixed, however, common genes are identified and phylogenies of six of these are separately inferred. In each phylogeny almost all cluster genes form monophyletic clades with non-cluster fungal paralogues being the nearest outgroups. This relatedness of cluster genes suggests that a progenitor ETP gene cluster assembled within an ancestral taxon. Within each of the cluster clades, the cluster genes group together in consistent subclades, however, these relationships do not always reflect the phylogeny of ascomycetes. Micro-synteny of several of the genes within the clusters provides further support for these subclades.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>ETP gene clusters appear to have a single origin and have been inherited relatively intact rather than assembling independently in the different ascomycete lineages. This progenitor cluster has given rise to a small number of distinct phylogenetic classes of clusters that are represented in a discontinuous pattern throughout ascomycetes. The disjunct heredity of these clusters is discussed with consideration to multiple instances of independent cluster loss and lateral transfer of gene clusters between lineages.</p

Case Study of Resilient Baton Rouge: Applying Depression Collaborative Care and Community Planning to Disaster Recovery.

BackgroundAddressing behavioral health impacts of major disasters is a priority of increasing national attention, but there are limited examples of implementation strategies to guide new disaster responses. We provide a case study of an effort being applied in response to the 2016 Great Flood in Baton Rouge.MethodsResilient Baton Rouge was designed to support recovery after major flooding by building local capacity to implement an expanded model of depression collaborative care for adults, coupled with identifying and responding to local priorities and assets for recovery. For a descriptive, initial evaluation, we coupled analysis of documents and process notes with descriptive surveys of participants in initial training and orientation, including preliminary comparisons among licensed and non-licensed participants to identify training priorities.ResultsWe expanded local behavioral health service delivery capacity through subgrants to four agencies, provision of training tailored to licensed and non-licensed providers and development of advisory councils and partnerships with grassroots and government agencies. We also undertook initial efforts to enhance national collaboration around post-disaster resilience.ConclusionOur partnered processes and lessons learned may be applicable to other communities that aim to promote resilience, as well as planning for and responding to post-disaster behavioral health needs

Interpreting Helioseismic Structure Inversion Results of Solar Active Regions

Helioseismic techniques such as ring-diagram analysis have often been used to determine the subsurface structural differences between solar active and quiet regions. Results obtained by inverting the frequency differences between the regions are usually interpreted as the sound-speed differences between them. These in turn are used as a measure of temperature and magnetic-field strength differences between the two regions. In this paper we first show that the "sound-speed" difference obtained from inversions is actually a combination of sound-speed difference and a magnetic component. Hence, the inversion result is not directly related to the thermal structure. Next, using solar models that include magnetic fields, we develop a formulation to use the inversion results to infer the differences in the magnetic and thermal structures between active and quiet regions. We then apply our technique to existing structure inversion results for different pairs of active and quiet regions. We find that the effect of magnetic fields is strongest in a shallow region above 0.985R_sun and that the strengths of magnetic-field effects at the surface and in the deeper (r < 0.98R_sun) layers are inversely related, i.e., the stronger the surface magnetic field the smaller the magnetic effects in the deeper layers, and vice versa. We also find that the magnetic effects in the deeper layers are the strongest in the quiet regions, consistent with the fact that these are basically regions with weakest magnetic fields at the surface. Because the quiet regions were selected to precede or follow their companion active regions, the results could have implications about the evolution of magnetic fields under active regions.Comment: Accepted for publication in Solar Physic

Sympathy for the Details: Dense Trajectories and Hybrid Classification Architectures for Action Recognition

Action recognition in videos is a challenging task due to the complexity of the spatio-temporal patterns to model and the difficulty to acquire and learn on large quantities of video data. Deep learning, although a breakthrough for Image classification and showing promise for videos, has still not clearly superseded action recognition methods using hand-crafted features, even when training on massive datasets. In this paper, we introduce hybrid video classification architectures based on carefully designed unsupervised representations of hand-crafted spatio-temporal features classified by supervised deep networks. As we show in our experiments on five popular benchmarks for action recognition, our hybrid model combines the best of both worlds: it is data efficient (trained on 150 to 10000 short clips) and yet improves significantly on the state of the art, including recent deep models trained on millions of manually labelled images and videos

Phylogenomics Reshuffles the Eukaryotic Supergroups

Background. Resolving the phylogenetic relationships between eukaryotes is an ongoing challenge of evolutionary biology. In recent years, the accumulation of molecular data led to a new evolutionary understanding, in which all eukaryotic diversity has been classified into five or six supergroups. Yet, the composition of these large assemblages and their relationships remain controversial. Methodology/Principle Findings. Here, we report the sequencing of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for two species belonging to the supergroup Rhizaria and present the analysis of a unique dataset combining 29908 amino acid positions and an extensive taxa sampling made of 49 mainly unicellular species representative of all supergroups. Our results show a very robust relationship between Rhizaria and two main clades of the supergroup chromalveolates: stramenopiles and alveolates. We confirm the existence of consistent affinities between assemblages that were thought to belong to different supergroups of eukaryotes, thus not sharing a close evolutionary history. Conclusions. This well supported phylogeny has important consequences for our understanding of the evolutionary history of eukaryotes. In particular, it questions a single red algal origin of the chlorophyll-c containing plastids among the chromalveolates. We propose the abbreviated name ‘SAR’ (Stramenopiles+Alveolates+Rhizaria) to accommodate this new super assemblage of eukaryotes, which comprises the largest diversity of unicellular eukaryotes

Elevated Peripheral Neutrophils and Matrix Metalloproteinase 9 as Biomarkers of Functional Outcome Following Subarachnoid Hemorrhage

There is growing evidence supporting the role of inflammation in early brain injury and cerebral vasospasm following subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are released by inflammatory cells and can mediate early brain injury via disruption of the extracellular matrix and mediate vasospasm by cleaving endothelin-1 into vasoactive fragments. We hypothesize that inflammation marked by neutrophil elevation and MMP-9 release in human SAH is associated with vasospasm and with poor clinical outcome. We enrolled consecutive SAH subjects (N = 55), banked serial blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples, and evaluated their 3-month modified Rankin scores (mRS). Vasospasm was defined as >50% vessel caliber reduction on angiography 6–8 days post-SAH. A poor outcome was defined as mRS > 2. We compared blood leukocyte and neutrophil counts during post-SAH days 0–14 with respect to vasospasm and 3-month outcome. In a subset of SAH subjects (N = 35), we compared blood and CSF MMP-9 by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) on post-SAH days 0–1, 2–3, 4–5, 6–8, and 10–14 with respect to vasospasm and to 3-month outcome. Persistent elevation of blood leukocyte (p = 0.0003) and neutrophil (p = 0.0002) counts during post-SAH days 0–14 are independently associated with vasospasm after adjustment for major confounders. In the same time period, blood neutrophil count (post-SAH days 2–3, p = 0.018), blood MMP-9 (post-SAH days 4–5, p = 0.045), and CSF MMP-9 (post-SAH days 2–3, p = 0.05) are associated with poor 3-month SAH clinical outcome. Neutrophil count correlates with blood MMP-9 (post-SAH days 6–8, R = 0.39; p = 0.055; post-SAH days 10–14, R = 0.79; p < 0.0001), and blood MMP-9 correlates with CSF MMP-9 (post-SAH days 4–5, R = 0.72; p = 0.0002). Elevation of CSF MMP-9 during post-SAH days 0–14 is associated with poor 3-month outcome (p = 0.0078). Neither CSF nor blood MMP-9 correlates with vasospasm. Early rise in blood neutrophil count and blood and CSF MMP-9 are associated with poor 3-month SAH clinical outcome. In blood, neutrophil count correlates with MMP-9 levels, suggesting that neutrophils may be an important source of blood MMP-9 early in SAH. Similarly, CSF and blood MMP-9 correlate positively early in the course of SAH, suggesting that blood may be an important source of CSF MMP-9. Blood and CSF MMP-9 are associated with clinical outcome but not with vasospasm, suggesting that MMP-9 may mediate brain injury independent of vasospasm in SAH. Future in vitro studies are needed to investigate the role of MMP-9 in SAH-related brain injury. Larger clinical studies are needed to validate blood and CSF MMP-9 as potential biomarkers for SAH outcome