Poverty, Maternal Depression, Family Status and Children's Cognitive and Behavioural Development in Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Study

Improving children's lives is high on the UK policy agenda. In this study for a recent birth cohort of UK children we examine how three aspects of parental resources - income, mother's mental well-being and family status - in early childhood enhance or compromise their children's cognitive and behavioural development. As well as examining how these three aspects of parental resources separately and jointly affect children's well-being, we also enquire whether persistent poverty or persistent maternal depression are more deleterious for children's current well-being than periodic episodes of poverty and depression. We find strong associations between poverty and young children's intellectual and behavioural development, and persistent poverty was found to be particularly important in relation to children's cognitive development. Maternal depression (net of other factors) was more weakly related to cognitive development but strongly related to whether children were exhibiting behaviour problems, and persistent depression amplified the situation. Family status, net of other factors (most noticeably poverty), was only weakly associated with children's development

Radiocarbon dating of mumiyo from the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica

Accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon dating of mumiyo deposited by snow petrels at nesting sites in the Vestfold Hills indicates the colonies were established after 4800 yr BP (uncorrected for marine reservoir effect). Sites on the highest hills were probably established first, but colonisation took place long after initial deglaciation, which was well advanced by 12.5k yr BP. The reason for late colonisation is not known. Perhaps older sites exist, but current evidence suggests the main colonisation occurred after the mid-Holocene re-advance of the Sorsdal Glacier. (il3C values indicate a diet of krill

Quantitative Mass Spectrometry Evaluation of Human Retinol Binding Protein 4 and Related Variants

Background: Retinol Binding Protein 4 (RBP4) is an exciting new biomarker for the determination of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. It is known that circulating RBP4 resides in multiple variants which may provide enhanced clinical utility, but conventional immunoassay methods are blind to such differences. A Mass Spectrometric immunoassay (MSIA) technology that can quantitate total RBP4 as well as individual isoforms may provide an enhanced analysis for this biomarker. Methods: RBP4 was isolated and detected from 0.5 uL of human plasma using MSIA technology, for the simultaneous quantification and differentiation of endogenous human RBP4 and its variants. Results: The linear range of the assay was 7.81–500 ug/mL, and the limit of detection and limit of quantification were 3.36 ug/mL and 6.52 ug/mL, respectively. The intra-assay CVs were determined to be 5.1 % and the inter-assay CVs were 9.6%. The percent recovery of the RBP4-MSIA ranged from 95 – 105%. Method comparison of the RBP4 MSIA vs the Immun Diagnostik ELISA yielded a Passing & Bablok fit of MSIA = 1.056 ELISA – 3.09, while the Cusum linearity p-value was.0.1 and the mean bias determined by the Altman Bland test was 1.2%. Conclusion: The novel RBP4 MSIA provided a fast, accurate and precise quantitative protein measurement as compared to the standard commercially available ELISA. Moreover, this method also allowed for the detection of RBP4 variants that are present in each sample, which may in the future provide a new dimension in the clinical utility of this biomarker

Families' social backgrounds matter : socio-economic factors, home learning and young children's language, literacy and social outcomes

Parental support with children's learning is considered to be one pathway through which socio-economic factors influence child competencies. Utilising a national longitudinal sample from the Millennium Cohort Study, this study examined the relationship between home learning and parents' socio-economic status and their impact on young children's language/literacy and socio-emotional competence. The findings consistently showed that, irrespective of socio-economic status, parents engaged with various learning activities (except reading) roughly equally. The socio-economic factors examined in this study, i.e., family income and maternal educational qualifications, were found to have a stronger effect on children's language/literacy than on social-emotional competence. Socio-economic disadvantage, lack of maternal educational qualifications in particular, remained powerful in influencing competencies in children aged three and at the start of primary school. For children in the first decade of this century in England, these findings have equity implications, especially as the socio-economic gap in our society widens

The Hilbert-Schmidt Theorem Formulation of the R-Matrix Theory

Using the Hilbert-Schmidt theorem, we reformulate the R-matrix theory in terms of a uniformly and absolutely convergent expansion. Term by term differentiation is possible with this expansion in the neighborhood of the surface. Methods for improving the convergence are discussed when the R-function series is truncated for practical applications.Comment: 16 pages, Late

Youth experience matters: participation in physical activity by young people with physical disability. A protocol for a national participation snapshot and Delphi consensus study

Data availability: Underlying data: No underlying data are associated with this article. Extended data: Figshare: Youth Experience Matters: Parent Information Leaflet https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23278283.v1 This project contains the following extended data: AD6791_YEM_Parent_A5Booklet_V6.pdf Figshare: Youth Experience Matters: Young Person Information Leaflet https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23278316.v1 This project contains the following extended data: AD6791_YEM_YoungPerson_A5Booklet_V3.pdf Figshare: Youth Experience Matters: Promotional material https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23278370.v1 This project contains the following extended data: AD6791_YEM_Pull-Up-V1.pdf Figshare: Youth Experience Matters: Round 1 survey (Parts 1 and 2) - for information only (not for completion by participants.) https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23280209.v1 This project contains the following extended data: YEM_SurveyR1_reproduced.pdf Figshare: Youth Experience Matters Data Management Plan 02 May 2023 https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23277638.v1 This project contains the following extended data: HRCI-HRB-2022-006_Youth_Experience_Matters-DMP_v1.2_02May2023.pdf Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).Copyright: © 2023 Brady K et al. Young people with physical disability experience challenges to being physically active. To attain the health benefits of physical activity (PA) and sustain engagement, it is essential that participation is meaningful and enjoyable. This study aims to understand “what really matters” for participating in PA, from the perspectives of adolescents with physical disability. A parallel convergent mixed methods study will be undertaken, comprising a national cross-sectional quantitative assessment of PA participation (“Participation Snapshot”) and Delphi consensus study (“Delphi”). Young people (n=100) aged 13-17 years with a primary physical disability diagnosis will be invited to take part. The Participation Snapshot primary outcome is the Children’s Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE). Contextual factors including disability diagnosis, demographics, mobility (Functional Mobility Scale), hand function (Manual Ability Classification System) and health related quality of life (Child Health Utility 9D) will also be collected. The Delphi will comprise two to four survey rounds, until consensus is reached. Round 1 (“Your Experience”) consists of a bespoke survey, designed and piloted with a public and patient involvement (PPI) panel, with open-ended questions and Likert scales inviting contributions from young people on their prior experience, barriers and facilitators, and ideas on participation in PA. Responses will be analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to construct the key themes, conceptualized under the “F-words” framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). These themes will be presented back to participants in subsequent rounds for selection and ranking, until consensus is achieved on the “top 10 priorities”. The project team and PPI panel will then co-design dissemination material and identify targets for dissemination to relevant stakeholder or policy groups. The findings will provide a basis for developing interventions aiming to empower, encourage and sustain future physical activity participation in a meaningful way by young people with physical disability.Health Research Board Ireland (HRCI-JFS-2022-006) via the Health Research Charities Ireland / Health Research Board Joint Funding Scheme 2022

Dielectronic Recombination of Ground-State and Metastable Li+ Ions

Dielectronic recombination has been investigated for Delta-n = 1 resonances of ground-state Li+(1s^2) and for Delta-n = 0 resonances of metastable Li+(1s2s ^3S). The ground-state spectrum shows three prominent transitions between 53 and 64 eV, while the metastable spectrum exhibits many transitions with energies < 3.2 eV. Reasonably good agreement of R-matrix, LS coupling calculations with the measured recombination rate coefficient is obtained. The time dependence of the recombination rate yields a radiative lifetime of 52.2 +- 5.0 s for the 2 ^3S level of Li+.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. A; REVTeX, 4 pages, 3 figure

Generation, characterization, and medical utilization of laser-produced emission continua

Intense continua of electromagnetic radiation of very brief duration are formed in the interaction of focused ultra-short terawatt laser pulses with matter. Two different kinds of experiments, which have been performed utilizing the Lund 10 Hz titanium-doped sapphire terawatt laser system are being described, where visible radiation and X-rays, respectively, have been generated. Focusing into water leads to the generation of a light continuum through self-phase modulation. The propagation of the light through tissue was studied addressing questions related to optical mammography and specific chromophore absorption. When terawatt laser pulses are focused onto a solid target with high nuclear charge Z, intense X-ray radiation of few ps duration and with energies exceeding hundreds of keV is emitted. Biomedical applications of this radiation are described, including differential absorption and gated-viewing imaging

Photoelectron spectroscopy measurements and theoretical calculations of the lowest doubly hollow lithium state

We have measured, using electron spectroscopy, the lowest-energy doubly hollow lithium triply excited (3l3l′3l″) 2P state. Energies, widths, and partial cross sections have been measured and calculated using the saddle-point technique and the R-matrix approximation. Our results show good agreement between experimental and theoretical data for the energy and the width of the doubly hollow state

Cerebellar Integrity in the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis - Frontotemporal Dementia Continuum

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) are multisystem neurodegenerative disorders that manifest overlapping cognitive, neuropsychiatric and motor features. The cerebellum has long been known to be crucial for intact motor function although emerging evidence over the past decade has attributed cognitive and neuropsychiatric processes to this structure. The current study set out i) to establish the integrity of cerebellar subregions in the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia spectrum (ALS-bvFTD) and ii) determine whether specific cerebellar atrophy regions are associated with cognitive, neuropsychiatric and motor symptoms in the patients. Seventy-eight patients diagnosed with ALS, ALS-bvFTD, behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), most without C9ORF72 gene abnormalities, and healthy controls were investigated. Participants underwent cognitive, neuropsychiatric and functional evaluation as well as structural imaging using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to examine the grey matter subregions of the cerebellar lobules, vermis and crus. VBM analyses revealed: i) significant grey matter atrophy in the cerebellum across the whole ALS-bvFTD continuum; ii) atrophy predominantly of the superior cerebellum and crus in bvFTD patients, atrophy of the inferior cerebellum and vermis in ALS patients, while ALS-bvFTD patients had both patterns of atrophy. Post-hoc covariance analyses revealed that cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms were particularly associated with atrophy of the crus and superior lobule, while motor symptoms were more associated with atrophy of the inferior lobules. Taken together, these findings indicate an important role of the cerebellum in the ALS-bvFTD disease spectrum, with all three clinical phenotypes demonstrating specific patterns of subregional atrophy that associated with different symptomology