Effects of different deep freezing and thawing procedures on the developmental capacity of bovine embryos

<p/

Association of postpartum maternal mood with infant speech perception at 2 and 6.5 months of age

Importance: Language development builds on speech perception, with early disruptions increasing the risk for later language difficulties. Although a major postpartum depressive episode is associated with language development, this association has not been investigated among infants of mothers experiencing a depressed mood at subclinical levels after birth, even though such a mood is frequently present in the first weeks after birth. Understanding whether subclinical depressed maternal mood after birth is associated with early language development is important given opportunities of coping strategies for subclinical depressed mood.Objective: To examine whether depressed maternal mood at subclinical levels 2 months after birth is associated with infant speech perception trajectories from ages 2 to 6.5 months.Design, setting, and participants: In this longitudinal cohort study conducted between January 1, 2018, and October 31, 2019, 46 healthy, monolingual German mother-infant dyads were tested. The sample was recruited from the infants database of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Initial statistical analysis was performed between January 1 and March 31, 2021; the moderation analysis (results reported herein) was conducted between July 1 and July 31, 2022.Exposures: Mothers reported postpartum mood via the German version of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (higher scores indicated higher levels of depressed mood, with a cutoff of 13 points indicating a high probability of clinical depression) when their infants were 2 months old.Main outcomes and measures: Electrophysiological correlates of infant speech perception (mismatch response to speech stimuli) were tested when the infants were aged 2 months (initial assessment) and 6.5 months (follow-up).Results: A total of 46 mothers (mean [SD] age, 32.1 [3.8] years) and their 2-month-old children (mean [SD] age, 9.6 [1.2] weeks; 23 girls and 23 boys) participated at the initial assessment, and 36 mothers (mean [SD] age, 32.2 [4.1] years) and their then 6.5-month-old children (mean [SD] age, 28.4 [1.5 weeks; 18 girls and 18 boys) participated at follow-up. Moderation analyses revealed that more depressed maternal subclinical postpartum mood (mean [SD] Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale score, 4.8 [3.6]) was associated with weaker longitudinal changes of infants' electrophysiological brain responses to syllable pitch speech information from ages 2 to 6.5 months (coefficient: 0.68; 95% CI, 0.03-1.33; P = .04).Conclusions and relevance: The results of this cohort study suggest that infant speech perception trajectories are correlated with subclinical depressed mood in postpartum mothers. This finding lays the groundwork for future research on early support for caregivers experiencing depressed mood to have a positive association with children's language development

Associations between anxiety, body mass index, and sex hormones in women

Background: Several studies have shown a positive association between anxiety and obesity, particularly in women. We aimed to study whether sex hormone alterations related to obesity might play a role in this association. Patients and methods: Data for this study were obtained from a population-based cohort study (the LIFE-Adult-Study). A total of 3,124 adult women (970 premenopausal and 2,154 postmenopausal) were included into the analyses. The anxiety symptomatology was assessed using the GAD-7 questionnaire (cut-off ≥ 10 points). Sex hormones were measured from fasting serum samples. Results: We did not find significant differences in anxiety prevalence in premenopausal obese women compared with normal-weight controls (4.8% vs. 5.5%). Both obesity and anxiety symptomatology were separately associated with the same sex hormone alteration in premenopausal women: higher total testosterone level (0.97 ± 0.50 in obese vs. 0.86 ± 0.49 nmol/L in normal-weight women, p = 0.026 and 1.04 ± 0.59 in women with vs. 0.88 ± 0.49 nmol/L in women without anxiety symptomatology, p = 0.023). However, women with anxiety symptomatology had non-significantly higher estradiol levels than women without anxiety symptomatology (548.0 ± 507.6 vs. 426.2 ± 474.0 pmol/L), whereas obesity was associated with lower estradiol levels compared with those in normal-weight group (332.7 ± 386.5 vs. 470.8 ± 616.0 pmol/L). Women with anxiety symptomatology had also significantly higher testosterone and estradiol composition (p = 0.006). No associations of sex hormone levels and BMI with anxiety symptomatology in postmenopausal women were found. Conclusions: Although both obesity and anxiety symptomatology were separately associated with higher testosterone level, there was an opposite impact of anxiety and obesity on estradiol levels in premenopausal women. We did not find an evidence that the sex hormone alterations related to obesity are playing a significant role in anxiety symptomatology in premenopausal women. This could be the explanation why we did not find an association between obesity and anxiety. In postmenopausal women, other mechanisms seem to work than in the premenopausal group

Contact force sensing in ablation of ventricular arrhythmias using a 56-hole open-irrigation catheter: a propensity-matched analysis.

PURPOSE: The effect of adding contact force (CF) sensing to 56-hole tip irrigation in ventricular arrhythmia (VA) ablation has not been previously studied. We aimed to compare outcomes with and without CF sensing in VA ablation using a 56-hole radiofrequency (RF) catheter. METHODS: A total of 164 patients who underwent first-time VA ablation using Thermocool SmartTouch Surround Flow (TC-STSF) catheter (Biosense-Webster, Diamond Bar, CA, USA) were propensity-matched in a 1:1 fashion to 164 patients who had first-time ablation using Thermocool Surround Flow (TC-SF) catheter. Patients were matched for age, gender, cardiac aetiology, ejection fraction and approach. Acute success, complications and long-term follow-up were compared. RESULTS: There was no difference between procedures utilising either TC-SF or TC-STSF in acute success (TC-SF: 134/164 (82%), TC-STSF: 141/164 (86%), p = 0.3), complications (TC-SF: 11/164 (6.7%), TC-STSF: 11/164 (6.7%), p = 1.0) or VA-free survival (TC-SF: mean arrhythmia-free survival time = 5.9 years, 95% CI = 5.4-6.4, TC-STSF: mean = 3.2 years, 95% CI = 3-3.5, log-rank p = 0.74). Fluoroscopy time was longer in normal hearts with TC-SF (19 min, IQR: 14-30) than TC-STSF (14 min, IQR: 8-25; p = 0.04). CONCLUSION: Both TC-SF and TC-STSF catheters are safe and effective in treating VAs. The use of CF sensing catheters did not improve safety or acute and long-term outcomes, but reduced fluoroscopy time in normal heart VA

Power-efficient silicon nitride thermo-optic phase shifters for visible light

We demonstrate power-efficient, thermo-optic, silicon nitride waveguide phase shifters for blue, green, and yellow wavelengths. The phase shifters operated with low power consumption due to a suspended structure and multi-pass waveguide design. The devices were fabricated on 200-mm silicon wafers using deep ultraviolet lithography as part of an active visible-light integrated photonics platform. The measured power consumption to achieve a π phase shift (averaged over multiple devices) was 0.78, 0.93, 1.09, and 1.20 mW at wavelengths of 445, 488, 532, and 561 nm, respectively. The phase shifters were integrated into Mach-Zehnder interferometer switches, and 10 − 90% rise(fall) times of about 570(590) μs were measured

Shedding light on the elusive role of endothelial cells in cytomegalovirus dissemination.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is frequently transmitted by solid organ transplantation and is associated with graft failure. By forming the boundary between circulation and organ parenchyma, endothelial cells (EC) are suited for bidirectional virus spread from and to the transplant. We applied Cre/loxP-mediated green-fluorescence-tagging of EC-derived murine CMV (MCMV) to quantify the role of infected EC in transplantation-associated CMV dissemination in the mouse model. Both EC- and non-EC-derived virus originating from infected Tie2-cre(+) heart and kidney transplants were readily transmitted to MCMV-naïve recipients by primary viremia. In contrast, when a Tie2-cre(+) transplant was infected by primary viremia in an infected recipient, the recombined EC-derived virus poorly spread to recipient tissues. Similarly, in reverse direction, EC-derived virus from infected Tie2-cre(+) recipient tissues poorly spread to the transplant. These data contradict any privileged role of EC in CMV dissemination and challenge an indiscriminate applicability of the primary and secondary viremia concept of virus dissemination

A single dose of escitalopram blunts the neural response in the thalamus and caudate during monetary loss

Background: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) show acute effects on the neural processes associated with negative affective bias in healthy people and people with depression. However, whether and how SSRIs also affect reward and punishment processing on a similarly rapid time scale remains unclear. Methods: We investigated the effects of an acute and clinically relevant dose (20 mg) of the SSRI escitalopram on brain response during reward and punishment processing in 19 healthy participants. In a doubleblind, placebo-controlled study using functional MRI, participants performed a well-established monetary reward task at 3 time points: at baseline; after receiving placebo or escitalopram; and after receiving placebo or escitalopram following an 8-week washout period. Results: Acute escitalopram administration reduced blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response during punishment feedback in the right thalamus (family-wise error corrected [FWE] p = 0.013 at peak level) and the right caudate head (pFWE = 0.011 at peak level) compared to placebo. We did not detect any significant BOLD changes during reward feedback. Limitations: We included only healthy participants, so interpretation of findings are limited to the healthy human brain and require future testing in patient populations. The paradigm we used was based on monetary stimuli, and results may not be generalizable to other forms of reward. Conclusion: Our findings extend theories of rapid SSRI action on the neural processing of rewarding and aversive stimuli and suggest a specific and acute effect of escitalopram in the punishment neurocircuitry

Low-loss broadband bi-layer edge couplers for visible light

Low-loss broadband fiber-to-chip coupling is currently challenging for visible-light photonic-integrated circuits (PICs) that need both high confinement waveguides for high-density integration and a minimum feature size above foundry lithographical limit. Here, we demonstrate bi-layer silicon nitride (SiN) edge couplers that have ≤ 4 dB/facet coupling loss with the Nufern S405-XP fiber over a broad optical wavelength range from 445 to 640 nm. The design uses a thin layer of SiN to expand the mode at the facet and adiabatically transfers the input light into a high-confinement single-mode waveguide (150-nm thick) for routing, while keeping the minimum nominal lithographic feature size at 150 nm. The achieved fiber-to-chip coupling loss is about 3 to 5 dB lower than that of single-layer designs with the same waveguide confinement and minimum feature size limitation

Natural Killer Cells Promote Early CD8 T Cell Responses against Cytomegalovirus

Understanding the mechanisms that help promote protective immune responses to pathogens is a major challenge in biomedical research and an important goal for the design of innovative therapeutic or vaccination strategies. While natural killer (NK) cells can directly contribute to the control of viral replication, whether, and how, they may help orchestrate global antiviral defense is largely unknown. To address this question, we took advantage of the well-defined molecular interactions involved in the recognition of mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV) by NK cells. By using congenic or mutant mice and wild-type versus genetically engineered viruses, we examined the consequences on antiviral CD8 T cell responses of specific defects in the ability of the NK cells to control MCMV. This system allowed us to demonstrate, to our knowledge for the first time, that NK cells accelerate CD8 T cell responses against a viral infection in vivo. Moreover, we identify the underlying mechanism as the ability of NK cells to limit IFN-α/β production to levels not immunosuppressive to the host. This is achieved through the early control of cytomegalovirus, which dramatically reduces the activation of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) for cytokine production, preserves the conventional dendritic cell (cDC) compartment, and accelerates antiviral CD8 T cell responses. Conversely, exogenous IFN-α administration in resistant animals ablates cDCs and delays CD8 T cell activation in the face of NK cell control of viral replication. Collectively, our data demonstrate that the ability of NK cells to respond very early to cytomegalovirus infection critically contributes to balance the intensity of other innate immune responses, which dampens early immunopathology and promotes optimal initiation of antiviral CD8 T cell responses. Thus, the extent to which NK cell responses benefit the host goes beyond their direct antiviral effects and extends to the prevention of innate cytokine shock and to the promotion of adaptive immunity

How children eat may contribute to rising levels of obesity children's eating behaviours: An intergenerational study of family influences

The term ‘obesogenic environment’ is rapidly becoming part of common phraseology. However, the influence of the family and the home environment on children's eating behaviours is little understood. Research that explores the impact of this micro environment and intergenerational influences affecting children's eating behaviours is long overdue. A qualitative, grounded theory approach, incorporating focus groups and semi-structured interviews, was used to investigate the family environment and specifically, the food culture of different generations within families. What emerged was a substantive theory based on ‘ordering of eating’ that explains differences in eating behaviours within and between families. Whereas at one time family eating was highly ordered and structured, typified by the grandparent generation, nowadays family eating behaviours are more haphazard and less ordered, evidenced by the way the current generation of children eat. Most importantly, in families with an obese child eating is less ordered compared with those families with a normal weight child. Ordering of eating' is a unique concept to emerge. It shows that an understanding of the eating process is crucial to the development and improvement of interventions targeted at addressing childhood obesity within the family context