Generative Roles: Assessing Sustained Involvement in Generativity

Abstract Generative roles refer to observable, behavioral community positions that embody aspects of teaching and nurturing that are central to the concept of generativity. Two studies are presented that describe generative roles in a community sample and provide psychometric data for a short index of generative roles. The first study also provides reliability and validity data from a second informant. The second study examines generative roles at different stages of adolescence and adulthood. Participants were asked 8 yes/no questions about a variety of community roles. The validity of the GRI was supported by significant correlations with the Loyola Generativity Scale, a widely used measure of generative concern (r=.33), and measures of related constructs. The correlations were similar across age categories. The Generative Roles Index has good psychometric qualities and complements existing measures of generativity by providing behavioral, observable data on roles

Variations in Environmental Tritium Dose Estimates Due to Meteorological Data Averaging and Uncertainties in Pathway Model Parameters

The large amounts of tritium produced at the Savannah River Site (SRS) coupled with the current dose reconstruction study at the facility emphasize the importance of ensuring accurate and efficient prediction of tritium doses to the public. Presently, dose estimates to the general population in the site vicinity are calculated annually using a five year meteorological database. Determining whether detailed monthly dose estimates are necessary or whether annual averaged data is sufficient offers the potential for more efficient dose prediction. In this study, off site collective committed doses and maximum individual doses due to atmospheric tritium releases were calculated according to the methods outlined in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Regulatory Guide 1.109 and compared using monthly versus five-year meteorological data and source terms. Site-specific variables not currently utilized at SRS for annual dose estimates also have been included. In addition, the range of predicted doses, based on the distribution in model parameters given in the literature, were estimated. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was performed in order to determine the influence of model inputs on dose estimates. Results corroborate previous studies by indicating that the primary contributor to infant tritium dose is the ingestion of milk, while for all other age groups, the most important pathway is the ingestion of vegetation. These relative pathway contributions remain constant throughout the year for infants; for children, teenagers, and adults, however, inhalation and absorption of tritium through the skin increases in relative importance in the months of June to September. It was found that the model utilized was most sensitive to dose factors, the ratio of the specific activity of tritium oxide in vegetation to the specific activity of atmospheric tritium oxide, and breathing rates. Most importantly, it was found that over a five-year period, the use of averaged meteorological data results in total individual doses that are only 2 to 6% higher than doses determined monthly, depending on the pathway of interest.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42693/1/10661_2004_Article_141219.pd

Children\u27s Exposure to Violence and the Intersection Between Delinquency and Victimization.

Presents survey results from the National Survey of Children\u27s Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) regarding the co-occurrence of victimization and delinquency among children who are exposed to violence. The survey confirms findings of earlier studies that identified three groups of youth: delinquent-victims, primarily delinquent youth, and primarily victim youth. The survey found that the youth identified as delinquent-victims had higher levels of both delinquency and victimization than youth who fell into the other two categories. In addition, youth who had higher levels of delinquency and victimization suffered more adversities, including more mental health symptoms, more inconsistent/harsh parenting and less parental supervision, and less social support. The bulletin further categorizes delinquent youth according to whether they engaged in violence or carried weapons; committed property crimes such as arson, burglary or car theft; or committed minor delinquency such as drug use or truancy. This is the fifth in a series of bulletins that present findings from NatSCEV, the most comprehensive nationwide survey to date of the incidence and prevalence of children’s exposure to violence across all ages, settings, and timeframes

The victimization of children and youth: A comprehensive, national survey.

Abstract This study examined a large spectrum of violence, crime, and victimization experiences in a nationally representative sample of children and youth ages 2 to 17 years. More than one half (530 per 1,000) of the children and youth had experienced a physical assault in the study year, more than 1 in 4 (273 per 1,000) a property offense, more than 1 in 8 (136 per 1,000) a form of child maltreatment, 1 in 12 (82 per 1,000) a sexual victimization, and more than 1 in 3 (357 per 1,000) had been a witness to violence or experienced another form of indirect victimization. Only a minority (29%) had no direct or indirect victimization. The mean number of victimizations for a child or youth with any victimization was 3.0, and a child or youth with one victimization had a 69% chance of experiencing another during a single year

Serum amyloid A primes microglia for ATP-dependent interleukin-1\u3b2 release

Acute-phase response is a systemic reaction to environmental/inflammatory insults and involves production of acute-phase proteins, including serum amyloid A (SAA). Interleukin-1\u3b2 (IL-1\u3b2), a master regulator of neuroinflammation produced by activated inflammatory cells of the myeloid lineage, in particular microglia, plays a key role in the pathogenesis of acute and chronic diseases of the peripheral nervous system and CNS. IL-1\u3b2 release is promoted by ATP acting at the purinergic P2X7 receptor (P2X7R) in cells primed with toll-like receptor (TLR) ligands

Expression and Differential Responsiveness of Central Nervous System Glial Cell Populations to the Acute Phase Protein Serum Amyloid A

Acute-phase response is a systemic reaction to environmental/inflammatory insults and involves hepatic production of acute-phase proteins, including serum amyloid A (SAA). Extrahepatically, SAA immunoreactivity is found in axonal myelin sheaths of cortex in Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS), although its cellular origin is unclear. We examined the responses of cultured rat cortical astrocytes, microglia and oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) to master pro-inflammatory cytokine tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-\u3b1 and lipopolysaccaride (LPS). TNF-\u3b1 time-dependently increased Saa1 (but not Saa3) mRNA expression in purified microglia, enriched astrocytes, and OPCs (as did LPS for microglia and astrocytes). Astrocytes depleted of microglia were markedly less responsive to TNF-\u3b1 and LPS, even after re-addition of microglia. Microglia and enriched astrocytes showed complementary Saa1 expression profiles following TNF-\u3b1 or LPS challenge, being higher in microglia with TNF-\u3b1 and higher in astrocytes with LPS. Recombinant human apo-SAA stimulated production of both inflammatory mediators and its own mRNA in microglia and enriched, but not microglia-depleted astrocytes. Co-ultramicronized palmitoylethanolamide/luteolin, an established anti-inflammatory/neuroprotective agent, reduced Saa1 expression in OPCs subjected to TNF-\u3b1 treatment. These last data, together with past findings suggest that co-ultramicronized palmitoylethanolamide/luteolin may be a novel approach in the treatment of inflammatory demyelinating disorders like MS

Variational methods

International audienceThis contribution presents derivative-based methods for local sensitivity analysis, called Variational Sensitivity Analysis (VSA). If one defines an output called the response function, its sensitivity to inputs variations around a nominal value can be studied using derivative (gradient) information. The main issue of VSA is then to provide an efficient way of computing gradients. This contribution first presents the theoretical grounds of VSA: framework and problem statement, tangent and adjoint methods. Then it covers pratical means to compute derivatives, from naive to more sophisticated approaches, discussing their various 2 merits. Finally, applications of VSA are reviewed and some examples are presented, covering various applications fields: oceanography, glaciology, meteorology

An Amish founder variant consolidates disruption of CEP55 as a cause of hydranencephaly and renal dysplasia

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this record.The centrosomal protein 55 kDa (CEP55 (OMIM 610000)) plays a fundamental role in cell cycle regulation and cytokinesis. However, the precise role of CEP55 in human embryonic growth and development is yet to be fully defined. Here we identified a novel homozygous founder frameshift variant in CEP55, present at low frequency in the Amish community, in two siblings presenting with a lethal foetal disorder. The features of the condition are reminiscent of a Meckel-like syndrome comprising of Potter sequence, hydranencephaly, and cystic dysplastic kidneys. These findings, considered alongside two recent studies of single families reporting loss of function candidate variants in CEP55, confirm disruption of CEP55 function as a cause of this clinical spectrum and enable us to delineate the cardinal clinical features of this disorder, providing important new insights into early human development.Medical Research CouncilNewlife Foundation for disabled childre

AMS 3.0: prediction of post-translational modifications

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We present here the recent update of AMS algorithm for identification of post-translational modification (PTM) sites in proteins based only on sequence information, using artificial neural network (ANN) method. The query protein sequence is dissected into overlapping short sequence segments. Ten different physicochemical features describe each amino acid; therefore nine residues long segment is represented as a point in a 90 dimensional space. The database of sequence segments with confirmed by experiments post-translational modification sites are used for training a set of ANNs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The efficiency of the classification for each type of modification and the prediction power of the method is estimated here using recall (sensitivity), precision values, the area under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and leave-one-out tests (LOOCV). The significant differences in the performance for differently optimized neural networks are observed, yet the AMS 3.0 tool integrates those heterogeneous classification schemes into the single consensus scheme, and it is able to boost the precision and recall values independent of a PTM type in comparison with the currently available state-of-the art methods.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The standalone version of AMS 3.0 presents an efficient way to indentify post-translational modifications for whole proteomes. The training datasets, precompiled binaries for AMS 3.0 tool and the source code are available at <url>http://code.google.com/p/automotifserver</url> under the Apache 2.0 license scheme.</p