1,927 research outputs found
Is it possible to enhance immune response after vaccination? The role of a probiotic with a proven positive effect on all components of the immune system
Preventive vaccination is currently the most affordable and economical way to reduce morbidity and mortality from many infections, improve quality and human life expectancy with an almost ideal balance of benefits and risks among all medical procedures. The article deals with the reasons for variability of the immune response caused by vaccines, between individuals and between populations, which is of fundamental importance for human health. The authors have presented data indicating a key role of the gut microbiota in the control of the immune response to vaccination. Particular attention is paid to the microbial diversity in different loci of the body. The role of microorganisms in the proper functioning of the body and the formation of a number of pathological conditions is described. Most modern vaccines are live-attenuated, killed / inactivated or subunit (recombinant) vaccines, and they are designed for the parenteral route of administration. Most of these vaccines elicit a weak immune response, especially in the mucous membranes, due to the route of administration and are associated with weak cell-mediated immunity. Therefore, mechanisms that can enhance virus-specific vaccine immunity in infants and children are required, such as the use of more potent or selective immunity-enhancing adjuvants. Some probiotic strains may be considered as promising vaccine adjuvants. This article evaluates the recent clinical studies of probiotics used to enhance vaccine-specific immunity in adults and infants. The present-day knowledge on the role of the probiotic strain Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG with the aim of activating immunity after vaccination are presented
Infant colic: from theory to practice
Infant colic is one of the most common, yet least studied, functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. Until now, there is no certainty both in the understanding of the nature of this condition and in the approaches to its correction. At the same time, infant crying is of concern to parents, forcing them to seek professional help and incur considerable medical expenses and to resort, sometimes unreasonably, to dietary and medical corrections. This article provides information on the etiology, pathogenesis and management of infantile colic from an evidence-based perspective, based on a review of the current literature. Various preconditions for the occurrence and development of infantile colic are analysed in detail, none of which can affect all occurrences. Evidence for the proven efficacy of including Lactobacillus reuteri in the treatment of intestinal colic in infants is presented. Effects on the gastrointestinal tract microbiome can be of undeniable benefit. Lactobacillus reuteri is one of the most studied and scientifically documented probiotics. 203 completed clinical trials involving 17,200 participants, including 67 trials involving 8,200 participants between 0 and 3 years of age. Numerous placebo-controlled studies have shown that taking Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 17938 can significantly reduce crying time in infants with colic, and in these studies, rates of 50% or more reduction in crying time were 2.3 times higher compared to controls
Using ISS Telescopes for Electromagnetic Follow-up of Gravitational Wave Detections of NS-NS and NS-BH Mergers
The International Space Station offers a unique platform for rapid and inexpensive deployment of space telescopes. A scientific opportunity of great potential later this decade is the use of telescopes for the electromagnetic follow-up of ground-based gravitational wave detections of neutron star and black hole mergers. We describe this possibility for OpTIIX, an ISS technology demonstration of a 1.5 m diffraction limited optical telescope assembled in space, and ISS-Lobster, a wide-field imaging X-ray telescope now under study as a potential NASA mission. Both telescopes will be mounted on pointing platforms, allowing rapid positioning to the source of a gravitational wave event. Electromagnetic follow-up rates of several per year appear likely, offering a wealth of complementary science on the mergers of black holes and neutron stars
Explaining and inducing savant skills: privileged access to lower level, less-processed information
I argue that savant skills are latent in us all. My hypothesis is that savants have privileged access to lower level, less-processed information, before it is packaged into holistic concepts and meaningful labels. Owing to a failure in top-down inhibition, they can tap into information that exists in all of our brains, but is normally beyond conscious awareness. This suggests why savant skills might arise spontaneously in otherwise normal people, and why such skills might be artificially induced by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. It also suggests why autistic savants are atypically literal with a tendency to concentrate more on the parts than on the whole and why this offers advantages for particular classes of problem solving, such as those that necessitate breaking cognitive mindsets. A strategy of building from the parts to the whole could form the basis for the so-called autistic genius. Unlike the healthy mind, which has inbuilt expectations of the world (internal order), the autistic mind must simplify the world by adopting strict routines (external order)
Electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational wave transient signal candidates
Pioneering efforts aiming at the development of multi-messenger gravitational
wave and electromagnetic astronomy have been made. An electromagnetic
observation follow-up program of candidate gravitational wave events has been
performed (Dec 17 2009 to Jan 8 2010 and Sep 4 to Oct 20 2010) during the
recent runs of the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors. It involved
ground-based and space electromagnetic facilities observing the sky at optical,
X-ray and radio wavelengths. The joint gravitational wave and electromagnetic
observation study requires the development of specific image analysis
procedures able to discriminate the possible electromagnetic counterpart of
gravitational wave triggers from contaminant/background events. The paper
presents an overview of the electromagnetic follow-up program and the image
analysis procedures.Comment: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on "Topics in
Astroparticle and Underground Physics" (TAUP 2011), Munich, September 2011
(to appear in IoP Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Deaf children's understanding of emotions: desires take precedence
Deaf children frequently have trouble understanding other people's emotions. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind can account for this. This research focused on the spontaneous use of mental states in explaining other people's emotions by 6- and 10-year-old deaf children as compared to their hearing peers. Within both age-groups deaf children referred to others' beliefs as often as their hearing peers and their references to desires even exceeded those of hearing children. This relative priority for the expression of desires is discussed in terms of possible communicative patterns of deaf children. The specific problems that deaf children meet in their daily communication might explain their abundance of desire-references: plausibly, they give a high priority to stress their own desires and needs unambiguously
Phase Diagram for Charge Density Waves in a Magnetic Field
The influence of an external magnetic field on a quasi one-dimensional system
with a charge density wave (CDW) instability is treated within the random phase
approximation which includes both CDW and spin density wave correlations. We
show that the CDW is sensitive to both orbital and Pauli effects of the field.
In the case of perfect nesting, the critical temperature decreases monotonously
with the field, and the wave vector of the instability starts to shift above
some critical value of magnetic field. Depending on the ratio between the spin
and charge coupling constants and on the direction of the applied magnetic
field, the wave vector shift is either parallel ( order) or
perpendicular ( order) to the most conducting direction. The
order is a field dependent linear combination of the charge and spin density
waves and is sensible only to the Pauli effect. The wave vector shift in
depends on the interchain coupling, but the critical temperature does
not. This order is affected by the confinement of the electronic orbits. By
increasing the relative strength of the orbital effect with respect to the
Pauli effect, one can destroy the , establishing either a , or a
(corresponding to perfect nesting wave vector). We also show that by
increasing the imperfect nesting parameter, one passes from the regime where
the critical temperature decreases with the field to the regime where it is
initially enhanced by the orbital effect and eventually suppressed by the Pauli
effect. For a bad nesting, the quantized phases of the field-induced CDW
appear.Comment: 30 pages (LaTeX) + 15 figure
Melody and pitch processing in five musical savants with congenital blindness
Abstract. We examined absolute-pitch (AP) and short-term musical memory abilities of five musical savants with congenital blindness, seven musicians, and seven non-musicians with good vision and normal intelligence in two experiments. In the first, short-term memory for musical phrases was tested and the savants and musicians performed statistically indistinguishably, both signifi- cantly outperforming the non-musicians and remembering more material from the C major scale sequences than random trials. In the second experiment, participants learnt associations between four pitches and four objects using a non-verbal paradigm. This experiment approximates to testing AP ability. Low statistical power meant the savants were not statistically better than the musicians, although only the savants scored statistically higher than the non-musicians. The results are evidence for a musical module, separate from general intelligence; they also support the anecdotal reporting of AP in musical savants, which is thought to be necessary for the development of musical-savant skill
A List of Galaxies for Gravitational Wave Searches
We present a list of galaxies within 100 Mpc, which we call the Gravitational
Wave Galaxy Catalogue (GWGC), that is currently being used in follow-up
searches of electromagnetic counterparts from gravitational wave searches. Due
to the time constraints of rapid follow-up, a locally available catalogue of
reduced, homogenized data is required. To achieve this we used four existing
catalogues: an updated version of the Tully Nearby Galaxy Catalog, the Catalog
of Neighboring Galaxies, the V8k catalogue and HyperLEDA. The GWGC contains
information on sky position, distance, blue magnitude, major and minor
diameters, position angle, and galaxy type for 53,255 galaxies. Errors on these
quantities are either taken directly from the literature or estimated based on
our understanding of the uncertainties associated with the measurement method.
By using the PGC numbering system developed for HyperLEDA, the catalogue has a
reduced level of degeneracies compared to catalogues with a similar purpose and
is easily updated. We also include 150 Milky Way globular clusters. Finally, we
compare the GWGC to previously used catalogues, and find the GWGC to be more
complete within 100 Mpc due to our use of more up-to-date input catalogues and
the fact that we have not made a blue luminosity cut.Comment: Accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity, 13 pages,
7 figure
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