Effect on haematological and anthropometric parameters of iron supplementation in the first 2 years of life. Risks and benefits

Effects of iron supplementation (IS) on haematological and anthropometric parameters in a cohort of 121 healthy children, followed from 6 to 24 months of life, in the Paediatric Department, Second University of Naples, were evaluated. Children were randomly segregated in four groups: (1) exclusively breast feeding (BF) weaned with non-iron fortified (NIF) foods, (2) BF and iron fortified formulas (IFF) and foods, (3) exclusively IFF and foods, (4) BF and oral iron supplementation (OIS). Haematological parameters (Hb, MCV, Serum ferritin and transferrin saturation) in addition to anthropometric measurements (length and weight) were obtained. Results from the study at 6, 12, 18 and 24 months showed significantly lower values of haematological parameters in BF infants than other groups and in IFF infants than in those with OIS. In contrast children with OIS showed significant lower length. It appears that IS may be of limited or no benefit for growth in non-iron deficient children

Image Forgery Localization via Fine-Grained Analysis of CFA Artifacts

In this paper, a forensic tool able to discriminate between original and forged regions in an image captured by a digital camera is presented. We make the assumption that the image is acquired using a Color Filter Array, and that tampering removes the artifacts due to the demosaicking algorithm. The proposed method is based on a new feature measuring the presence of demosaicking artifacts at a local level, and on a new statistical model allowing to derive the tampering probability of each 2 × 2 image block without requiring to know a priori the position of the forged region. Experimental results on different cameras equipped with different demosaicking algorithms demonstrate both the validity of the theoretical model and the effectiveness of our schem

Reverse engineering of double compressed images in the presence of contrast enhancement

Abstract-A comparison between two forensic techniques for the reverse engineering of a chain composed by a double JPEG compression interleaved by a linear contrast enhancement is presented here. The first approach is based on the well known peak-to-valley behavior of the histogram of double-quantized DCT coefficients, while the second approach is based on the distribution of the first digit of DCT coefficients. These methods have been extended to the study of the considered processing chain, for both the chain detection and the estimation of its parameters. More specifically, the proposed approaches provide an estimation of the quality factor of the previous JPEG compression and the amount of linear contrast enhancement

Therapeutic opportunities to modulate immune tolerance through the metabolism-chromatin axis

: The ability of the immune system to discriminate external stimuli from self-components - namely immune tolerance - occurs through a coordinated cascade of events involving a dense network of immune cells. Among them, CD4+CD25+ T regulatory cells are crucial to balance immune homeostasis and function. Growing evidence supports the notion that energy metabolites can dictate T cell fate and function via epigenetic modifications, which affect gene expression without altering the DNA sequence. Moreover, changes in cellular metabolism couple with activation of immune pathways and epigenetic remodeling to finely tune the balance between T cell activation and tolerance. This Review summarizes these aspects and critically evaluates novel possibilities for developing therapeutic strategies to modulate immune tolerance through metabolism via epigenetic drugs

Mudança tecnológica ou inércia: uma análise comparativa internacional com vistas ao caso brasileiro

Tomando como ponto de partida a perspectiva neoinstitucionalista de que a dependência da trajetória afeta o curso de difusão de inovações tecnológicas, nós investigamos que fatores levam à mudança ou à inércia tecnológica. Perseguindo este objetivo, apresentamos um quadro geral capaz de identificar o papel dos policy-makers de afetar processos de difusão de inovações tecnológicas

Impact of ER gene polymorphisms on overweight and obesity in Down Syndrome

AbstractThe impact of ER XbaI and PvuII α gene polymorphisms on overweight and obesity were studied in 77 subjects with Down Syndrome (DS), of which 32 were children (18 boys, 14 girls), mean age 8.7 ± 2.3 years, and 45 adolescents (28 boys, 17 girls) mean age 14 ± 2.5 years. Their lifestyle was compared to 40 healthy age-matched controls. DS subjects had significant lesser physical activity than controls (p0.05). The frequency of ER genotypes in DS subjects was compared with the healthy controls, finding that there was a high prevalence of XXER genotype in DS subjects. Children and adolescents with DS, lacking ER XbaI site, showed significantly higher BMI and body fat distribution than other XbaI genotypes. The lack of ER XbaI site can indicate added risk of obesity in DS. No differences in metabolic and cardiovascular parameters were observed among ER genotypes. However, childhood obesity is associated with increased cardiovascular risk

Tackling the Gender Gap in Mathematics with Active Learning Methodologies

We implement a teaching methodology aimed at improving primary school children's mathematical skills. The methodology, grounded in active and cooperative learning, focuses on peer interaction, sharing of ideas, learning from mistakes, and problem solving. We evaluate the causal effect of the intervention on the gender gap in mathematics in Italy with a randomized controlled trial. The treatment significantly improves girls' math performance (0.14 s.d.), with no impact on boys, and reduces the math gender gap by more than 40%. The effect is stronger for girls with high pre-test scores