Measurement of motherinfant interactions and the home environment in a European setting: preliminary results from a cross-cultural

Background: Infant development is adversely affected in the context of postnatal depression. This relationship may be mediated by both the nature of early motherinfant interactions and the quality of the home environment. Aim: To establish the usefulness of the Global Ratings Scales of MotherInfant Interaction and the InfantToddler version of the Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment (ITHOME), and to test expected associations of the measures with characteristics of the social context and with major or minor depression. Method: Both assessments were administered postnatally in four European centres; 144 mothers were assessed with the Global Ratings Scales and 114 with the ITHOME. Affective disorder was assessed by means of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSMIV Disorders. Results: Analyses of motherinfant interaction indicated no main effect for depression but maternal sensitivity to infant behaviour was associated with better infant communication, especially for women who were not depressed. Poor overall emotional support also reduced sensitivity scores. Poor support was also related to poorer ITHOME scores, but there was no effect of depression. Conclusions: The Global Ratings Scales were effectively applied but there was lessCIHR184pub152

A Nonlinear Adiabatic Theorem for Coherent States

We consider the propagation of wave packets for a one-dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equation with a matrix-valued potential, in the semi-classical limit. For an initial coherent state polarized along some eigenvector, we prove that the nonlinear evolution preserves the separation of modes, in a scaling such that nonlinear effects are critical (the envelope equation is nonlinear). The proof relies on a fine geometric analysis of the role of spectral projectors, which is compatible with the treatment of nonlinearities. We also prove a nonlinear superposition principle for these adiabatic wave packets.Comment: 21 pages, no figur

Palladium-catalyzed domino carbopalladation/5-exo-allylic amination of \u3b1-amino allenamides: an efficient entry to enantiopure imidazolidinones

Allenamides of alpha-amino acids were converted into enantiopure 2-vinylimidazolidin-4-ones by a carbopalladation/exo-cyclization process. The products were obtained in 2.5:1-5.5:1 dr, with 94-99% ee. The palladium-catalyzed carbonylative cyclization of the same substrates afforded enone structures. Starting from properly substituted allenamides, an intramolecular carbopalladation followed by intramolecular amination gave rise to tricyclic fused-ring imidazolidinones

Metabolic characterization of directly reprogrammed renal tubular epithelial cells (iRECs)

Fibroblasts can be directly reprogrammed to induced renal tubular epithelial cells (iRECs) using four transcription factors. These engineered cells may be used for disease modeling, cell replacement therapy or drug and toxicity testing. Direct reprogramming induces drastic changes in the transcriptional landscape, protein expression, morphological and functional properties of cells. However, how the metabolome is changed by reprogramming and to what degree it resembles the target cell type remains unknown. Using untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and targeted liquid chromatography-MS, we characterized the metabolome of mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), iRECs, mIMCD-3 cells, and whole kidneys. Metabolic fingerprinting can distinguish each cell type reliably, revealing iRECs are most similar to mIMCD-3 cells and clearly separate from MEFs used for reprogramming. Treatment with the cytotoxic drug cisplatin induced typical changes in the metabolic profile of iRECs commonly occurring in acute renal injury. Interestingly, metabolites in the medium of iRECs, but not of mIMCD-3 cells or fibroblast could distinguish treated and non-treated cells by cluster analysis. In conclusion, direct reprogramming of fibroblasts into renal tubular epithelial cells strongly influences the metabolome of engineered cells, suggesting that metabolic profiling may aid in establishing iRECs as in vitro models for nephrotoxicity testing in the future

Mitigating Worst-Case Exozodiacal Dust Structure in High-contrast Images of Earth-like Exoplanets

Detecting Earth-like exoplanets in direct images of nearby Sun-like systems brings a unique set of challenges that must be addressed in the early phases of designing a space-based direct imaging mission. In particular, these systems may contain exozodiacal dust, which is expected to be the dominant source of astrophysical noise. Previous work has shown that it may be feasible to subtract smooth, symmetric dust from observations; however, we do not expect exozodiacal dust to be perfectly smooth. Exozodiacal dust can be trapped into mean motion resonances with planetary bodies, producing large-scale structures that orbit in lock with the planet. This dust can obscure the planet, complicate noise estimation, or be mistaken for a planetary body. Our ability to subtract these structures from high-contrast images of Earth-like exoplanets is not well understood. In this work, we investigate exozodi mitigation for Earth--Sun-like systems with significant mean motion resonant disk structures. We find that applying a simple high-pass filter allows us to remove structured exozodi to the Poisson noise limit for systems with inclinations $< 60^\circ$ and up to 100 zodis. However, subtracting exozodiacal disk structures from edge-on systems may be challenging, except for cases with densities $<5$ zodis. For systems with three times the dust of the Solar System, which is the median of the best fit to survey data in the habitable zones of nearby Sun-like stars, this method shows promising results for mitigating exozodiacal dust in future HWO observations, even if the dust exhibits significant mean-motion resonance structure.Comment: Accepted to AJ. 18 pages, 10 figure

Candidate gene analysis of femoral neck trabecular and cortical volumetric bone mineral density in older men.

In contrast to conventional dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, quantitative computed tomography separately measures trabecular and cortical volumetric bone mineral density (vBMD). Little is known about the genetic variants associated with trabecular and cortical vBMD in humans, although both may be important for determining bone strength and osteoporotic risk. In the current analysis, we tested the hypothesis that there are genetic variants associated with trabecular and cortical vBMD at the femoral neck by genotyping 4608 tagging and potentially functional single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 383 bone metabolism candidate genes in 822 Caucasian men aged 65 years or older from the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study (MrOS). Promising SNP associations then were tested for replication in an additional 1155 men from the same study. We identified SNPs in five genes (IFNAR2, NFATC1, SMAD1, HOXA, and KLF10) that were robustly associated with cortical vBMD and SNPs in nine genes (APC, ATF2, BMP3, BMP7, FGF18, FLT1, TGFB3, THRB, and RUNX1) that were robustly associated with trabecular vBMD. There was no overlap between genes associated with cortical vBMD and trabecular vBMD. These findings identify novel genetic variants for cortical and trabecular vBMD and raise the possibility that some genetic loci may be unique for each bone compartment

Time-temperature superposition in viscous liquids

Dielectric relaxation measurements on supercooled triphenyl phosphite show that at low temperatures time-temperature superposition (TTS) is accurately obeyed for the primary (alpha) relaxation process. Measurements on 6 other molecular liquids close to the calorimetric glass transition indicate that TTS is linked to an $\omega^{-1/2}$ high-frequency decay of the alpha loss, while the loss peak width is nonuniversal.Comment: 4 page

Equilibration times in numerical simulation of structural glasses: Comparing parallel tempering and conventional molecular dynamics

Generation of equilibrium configurations is the major obstacle for numerical investigation of the slow dynamics in supercooled liquid states. The parallel tempering (PT) technique, originally proposed for the numerical equilibration of discrete spin-glass model configurations, has recently been applied in the study of supercooled structural glasses. We present an investigation of the ability of parallel tempering to properly sample the liquid configuration space at different temperatures, by mapping the PT dynamics into the dynamics of the closest local potential energy minima (inherent structures). Comparing the PT equilibration process with the standard molecular dynamics equilibration process we find that the PT does not increase the speed of equilibration of the (slow) configurational degrees of freedom.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Coevolution of activating and inhibitory receptors within mammalian carcinoembryonic antigen families

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Most rapidly evolving gene families are involved in immune responses and reproduction, two biological functions which have been assigned to the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) gene family. To gain insights into evolutionary forces shaping the CEA gene family we have analysed this gene family in 27 mammalian species including monotreme and marsupial lineages.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Phylogenetic analysis provided convincing evidence that the primordial CEA gene family in mammals consisted of five genes, including the immune inhibitory receptor-encoding <it>CEACAM1 </it>(CEA-related cell adhesion molecule) ancestor. Our analysis of the substitution rates within the nucleotide sequence which codes for the ligand binding domain of CEACAM1 indicates that the selection for diversification is, perhaps, a consequence of the exploitation of CEACAM1 by a variety of viral and bacterial pathogens as their cellular receptor. Depending on the extent of the amplification of an ancestral <it>CEACAM1</it>, the number of <it>CEACAM1</it>-related genes varies considerably between mammalian species from less than five in lagomorphs to more than 100 in bats. In most analysed species, ITAM (immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motifs) or ITAM-like motif-containing proteins exist which contain Ig-V-like, ligand binding domains closely related to that of CEACAM1. Human CEACAM3 is one such protein which can function as a CEACAM1 decoy receptor in granulocytes by mediating the uptake and destruction of specific bacterial pathogens via its ITAM-like motif. The close relationship between <it>CEACAM1 </it>and its ITAM-encoding relatives appears to be maintained by gene conversion and reciprocal recombination. Surprisingly, secreted CEACAMs resembling immunomodulatory CEACAM1-related trophoblast-specific pregnancy-specific glycoproteins (PSGs) found in humans and rodents evolved only in a limited set of mammals. The appearance of <it>PSG</it>-like genes correlates with invasive trophoblast growth in these species.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These phylogenetic studies provide evidence that pathogen/host coevolution and a possible participation in fetal-maternal conflict processes led to a highly species-specific diversity of mammalian CEA gene families.</p