The assessment of trait emotional intelligence: psychometric characteristics of the TEIQue-full form in a large Italian adult sample

Trait Emotional Intelligence (or trait emotional self-efficacy) is a constellation of emotional perceptions assessed through questionnaires and rating scales (Petrides et al., 2007b). This paper examined the psychometric features of the Trait Emotional Questionnaire Full Form (TEIQue-FF; Petrides, 2009b) in the Italian context. Incremental validity in the prediction of depression and anxiety was also tested with respect to the Big Five. Participants were 1343 individuals balanced for gender (690 females and 653 males) whose mean age was 29.65 years (SD = 13.64, range 17-74 years). They completed a questionnaire battery containing the TEIQue and measures of the Big Five, depression, and anxiety (both trait and state). Results indicated that the performance of the TEIQue-FF in the Italian context was comparable to the original United Kingdom version as regards its reliability and factor structure. Moreover, the instrument showed incremental validity in the prediction of depression and state-trait anxiety after controlling for the Big Five

For Business and Pleasure

Mara L. Keire’s history of red-light districts in the United States offers readers a fascinating survey of the business of pleasure from the 1890s through the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Anti-vice reformers in the late nineteenth century accepted that complete eradication of disreputable pleasure was impossible. Seeking a way to regulate rather than eliminate prostitution, alcohol, drugs, and gambling, urban reformers confined sites of disreputable pleasure to red-light districts in cities throughout the United States. They dismissed the extremes of prohibitory law and instead sought to limit the impact of vice on city life through realistic restrictive measures. Keire’s thoughtful work examines the popular culture that developed within red-light districts, as well as efforts to contain vice in such cities as New Orleans; Hartford, Connecticut; New York City; Macon, Georgia; San Francisco; and El Paso, Texas. Keire describes the people and practices in red-light districts, reformers' efforts to limit their impact on city life, and the successful closure of the districts during World War I. Her study extends into Prohibition and discusses the various effects that scattering vice and banning alcohol had on commercial nightlife

Links between intake of ethanol and nicotine and reward-related mechanisms

1. Examination was made of the effects of housing conditions on the preference of mice for dilute ethanol or water in a two-bottle choice. Isolating mice from groups of five after 10 days significantly increased their ethanol preference, compared to mice remaining group- housed or mice accustomed to single housing.2. The effects of sucrose choice, followed by ethanol administration, were examined on behaviour on the plus maze, to determine whether the use of sucrose as a "comparison” solution altered behaviour. It was found that behaviour did not vary significantly with the level of mean daily voluntary sucrose consumption. Ethanol decreased anxiety-related behaviours of mice independent of their level of daily sucrose consumption.3. Dilute nicotine was offered to mice in a two-bottle choice test. The effect of subsequent administration of ethanol was examined on behaviour on the plus maze. Ethanol exerted some behavioural effects indicative of decreased anxiety after nicotine choice, but a wider range of these behaviours were seen in control mice (water drinkers.)4. The effects of offering dilute nicotine, dilute ethanol, or a mixture of the two, in a chronic two-bottle choice paradigm, were measured. The mean daily ethanol intake of mice with and without the addition of nicotine to the drinking solution did not significantly differ. However, the mean daily intake of nicotine alone was significantly lower than the intake of nicotine where ethanol was added to the solution. All mice were exposed to the elevated plus-maze twice: once whilst in withdrawal and once when not in withdrawal. Plus-maze results indicated that withdrawal from both chronic ethanol and nicotine simultaneously showed a wider range of anxiety-indicative behaviours than withdrawing from chronic ethanol alone.5. Alterations were made to the conditioned place preference paradigm but it did not prove possible to obtain conditioned preference to morphine within the time available

Adrenomedullin in pancreatic carcinoma. a case-control study of 22 patients

Pancreatic carcinoma is a leading cause of cancer-related death. Reduction of the diagnostic delay is mandatory. Adrenomedullin (AM) is overexpressed in pancreatic cancer. A case-control study including 12 patients with pathological diagnosis of pancreatic carcinoma and 10 healthy controls was conducted at our Institution. Blood samples were obtained at the time of hospitalization and post-operatively for cases. Controls’ samples were obtained from healthy volunteers. AM was measured by using enzyme immunoassay method. AM showed significant increase in pancreatic carcinoma patients vs controls (4.51 ng/ml vs 1.91 ng/ml, p value = 0.04) regardless of tumor stage, differentiation, resecability/unresecability, diabetes. A cut-off of 1.75 ng/ml reaches a sensibility of 83% and a specificity of 70% (p value = 0.0147; CL 95%; AUC 0.767). The increase of AM didn’t correlate with the increase of other common tumor markers (CA 19-9 and CEA), nor direct bilirubin. These data confirm the utility of studying the role of AM in pancreatic cancer, in order to achieve an early diagnosis in high risk populations

Hyperglycemia triggers HIPK2 protein degradation

Homeodomain interacting protein kinase-2 (HIPK2) is an evolutionary conserved kinase that modulates several key molecular pathways to restrain tumor growth and induce p53-depending apoptotic cell-death in response to anticancer therapies. HIPK2 silencing in cancer cells leads to chemoresistance and cancer progression, in part due to p53 inhibition. Recently, hyperglycemia has been shown to reduce p53 phosphorylation at serine 46 (Ser46), the target residue of HIPK2, thus impairing p53 apoptotic function. Here we asked whether hyperglycemia could, upstream of p53, target HIPK2. We focused on the effect of high glucose (HG) on HIPK2 protein stability and the underlying mechanisms. We found that HG reduced HIPK2 protein levels, therefore impairing HIPK2-induced p53 apoptotic activity. HG-triggered HIPK2 protein downregulation was rescued by both proteasome inhibitor MG132 and by protein phosphatase inhibitors Calyculin A (CL-A) and Okadaic Acid (OA). Looking for the phosphatase involved, we found that protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) induced HIPK2 degradation, as evidenced by directly activating PP2A with FTY720 or by silencing PP2A with siRNA in HG condition. The effect of PP2A on HIPK2 protein degradation could be in part due to hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) activity which has been previously shown to induce HIPK2 proteasomal degradation through several ubiquitin ligases. Validation analysed performed with HIF-1α dominant negative or with silencing of Siah2 ubiquitin ligase clearly showed rescue of HG-induced HIPK2 degradation. These findings demonstrate how hyperglycemia, through a complex protein cascade, induced HIPK2 downregulation and consequently impaired p53 apoptotic activity, revealing a novel link between diabetes/obesity and tumor resistance to therapies

OPUS: an Alternate Reality Game to learn SQL at university

The project aims to test the effectiveness of applying the principles of experiential learning within a university course. In particular, the objective of the paper is to investigate the educational effectiveness of the Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and of their characterizing elements: the immersive storytelling, which blends reality and fiction, and the collaborative approach, which activates collective intelligence dynamics. The project combines the concepts of a Database course with the transmedial interaction techniques of a Transmedia course. The idea was to stimulate the interest of Databases course’s students in this subject and help them learn and consolidate SQL. The result was the creation of a playful experience that is classified as Alternate Reality Game, a realistic and highly immersive interactive storytelling, set in a likely fictional universe where the basic rule is “This is not a game”. The ARG was designed to complement the laboratory practice in the context of a Databases university course. In this way, students can practice, review and consolidate the skills acquired during the course. Furthermore, the playful component is accompanied by on-demand educational content, which players have the opportunity to request when they experience difficulties in solving puzzles that require querying the database

Quotas have led to more women on corporate boards in Europe

But the effect on firm performance has been mixed across the different countries, write Simona Comi, Mara Grasseni, Federica Origo and Laura Pagan

Strategic lesions in the anterior thalamic radiation and apathy in early Alzheimer's disease

BACKGROUND Behavioural disorders and psychological symptoms of Dementia (BPSD) are commonly observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD), and strongly contribute to increasing patients' disability. Using voxel-lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM), we investigated the impact of white matter lesions (WMLs) on the severity of BPSD in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI). METHODS Thirty-one a-MCI patients (with a conversion rate to AD of 32% at 2 year follow-up) and 26 healthy controls underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination at 3T, including T2-weighted and fluid-attenuated-inversion-recovery images, and T1-weighted volumes. In the patient group, BPSD was assessed using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory-12. After quantitative definition of WMLs, their distribution was investigated, without an a priori anatomical hypothesis, against patients' behavioural symptoms. Unbiased regional grey matter volumetrics was also used to assess the contribution of grey matter atrophy to BPSD. RESULTS Apathy, irritability, depression/dysphoria, anxiety and agitation were shown to be the most common symptoms in the patient sample. Despite a more widespread anatomical distribution, a-MCI patients did not differ from controls in WML volumes. VLSM revealed a strict association between the presence of lesions in the anterior thalamic radiations (ATRs) and the severity of apathy. Regional grey matter atrophy did not account for any BPSD. CONCLUSIONS This study indicates that damage to the ATRs is strategic for the occurrence of apathy in patients with a-MCI. Disconnection between the prefrontal cortex and the mediodorsal and anterior thalamic nuclei might represent the pathophysiological substrate for apathy, which is one of the most common psychopathological symptoms observed in dementia

Disentangling Neuron Representations with Concept Vectors

Mechanistic interpretability aims to understand how models store representations by breaking down neural networks into interpretable units. However, the occurrence of polysemantic neurons, or neurons that respond to multiple unrelated features, makes interpreting individual neurons challenging. This has led to the search for meaningful vectors, known as concept vectors, in activation space instead of individual neurons. The main contribution of this paper is a method to disentangle polysemantic neurons into concept vectors encapsulating distinct features. Our method can search for fine-grained concepts according to the user's desired level of concept separation. The analysis shows that polysemantic neurons can be disentangled into directions consisting of linear combinations of neurons. Our evaluations show that the concept vectors found encode coherent, human-understandable features

Involvement of aryl hydrocarbon receptor signaling in the development of small cell lung cancer induced by HPV E6/E7 oncoproteins

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Lung cancers consist of four major types that and for clinical-pathological reasons are often divided into two broad categories: small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). All major histological types of lung cancer are associated with smoking, although the association is stronger for SCLC and squamous cell carcinoma than adenocarcinoma. To date, epidemiological studies have identified several environmental, genetic, hormonal and viral factors associated with lung cancer risk. It has been estimated that 15-25% of human cancers may have a viral etiology. The human papillomavirus (HPV) is a proven cause of most human cervical cancers, and might have a role in other malignancies including vulva, skin, oesophagus, head and neck cancer. HPV has also been speculated to have a role in the pathogenesis of lung cancer. To validate the hypothesis of HPV involvement in small cell lung cancer pathogenesis we performed a gene expression profile of transgenic mouse model of SCLC induced by HPV-16 E6/E7 oncoproteins.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Gene expression profile of SCLC has been performed using Agilent whole mouse genome (4 × 44k) representing ~ 41000 genes and mouse transcripts. Samples were obtained from two HPV16-E6/E7 transgenic mouse models and from littermate's normal lung. Data analyses were performed using GeneSpring 10 and the functional classification of deregulated genes was performed using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (Ingenuity^®Systems, <url>http://www.ingenuity.com</url>).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Analysis of deregulated genes induced by the expression of E6/E7 oncoproteins supports the hypothesis of a linkage between HPV infection and SCLC development. As a matter of fact, comparison of deregulated genes in our system and those in human SCLC showed that many of them are located in the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Signal transduction pathway.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In this study, the global gene expression of transgenic mouse model of SCLC induced by HPV-16 E6/E7 oncoproteins led us to identification of several genes involved in SCLC tumor development. Furthermore, our study reveled that the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Signaling is the primarily affected pathway by the E6/E7 oncoproteins expression and that this pathway is also deregulated in human SCLC. Our results provide the basis for the development of new therapeutic approaches against human SCLC.</p