Sex Differences in Early Cognitive Development After Prenatal Exposure to Opioids

Abstract Objective Prenatal opioid exposure has been linked with impaired cognitive development, with boys potentially at elevated risk. In the present study, we examined cognitive and language development of children prenatally exposed to opioids, with an additional focus on sex differences. Methods A sample of 378 children (n = 194 girls and n = 184 boys) aged 1.2–42.8 months was drawn from the Danish Family Outpatient Clinic database. Developmental outcomes were assessed using the Bayley-III cognitive and language scales, and substance exposure was determined with urine screening and/or verbal report. Children exposed to opioids (n = 94) were compared to children with no prenatal substance exposure (n = 38), and children exposed to alcohol (n = 131) or tobacco (n = 115). Group and sex differences were investigated with separate linear mixed models for each Bayley scale, controlling for concurrent cannabis exposure. Results There were significantly reduced scores in opioid-exposed boys compared to boys with no prenatal substance exposure, but no difference between opioid-exposed and nonexposed girls. Additionally, alcohol-exposed boys had lower cognitive scores than nonexposed boys, and alcohol-exposed girls had lower scores on both scales compared to opioid-exposed girls. There were otherwise no significant differences according to group, sex, or scale. Conclusions The present findings indicate poorer cognitive and language development in boys after prenatal opioid exposure. As academic performance is rooted in cognitive functioning, long-term follow-up might be necessary for exposed children

Assessing environmental actions from modern meteorology

This paper gives an overview of current achievements where modern weather forecasting techniques are implemented for the assessment of especially ice and wind loadings on electrical overhead lines, TV towers, masts and similar infrastructure. Modern numerical weather prediction models (NWP ) incorporate far more details on e.g. cloud physics and dynamics than those generally necessary for regular weather forecasts. Such models describe in principle all physical and dynamical processes in the atmosphere in 3-D. In combination with detailed data on the physical properties of land and water surfaces, it is now possible to obtain realistic values of weather parameters related to wind, turbulence, precipitation and atmospheric icing down to a horizontal scale of a few hundred meters. Such models are therefore powerful tools for the planning and final design for various infrastructures in remote terrain where little or no weather data can provide sufficient bases for the establishment of extreme weather loads necessary for their design

Effects of the ICE-T Microphysics Scheme in HARMONIE-AROME on Estimated Ice Loads on Transmission Lines

In-cloud icing can cause damage to infrastructure and is challenging to forecast due to lack of a good representation of supercooled liquid water (SLW) in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. We validate the new microphysics scheme, ICE-T, implemented into the NWP model HARMONIE-AROME, in full 3D simulations running over a 3 month period from December 1st 2016 to February 28th 2017. Output from the model simulations are first compared with conventional observations to evaluate the overall quality, and then used as input to an ice accretion model (IAM) and compared against measured ice loads at the two test sites Hardingnuten and Ålvikfjellet. The results show a clear shift towards more cloud water and snow, and less graupel and cloud ice. This shift leads to less precipitation along the coast and more inland. The estimated ice loads based on the cloud water from the simulations are generally increased. We also focus on two different icing events during January 9–18 and February 1–14. During the first event, both the run in its original configuration and the run with ICE-T overestimated the ice loads, while the second event was underestimated. For Ålvikfjellet ICE-T gives the best estimates, while for Hardingnuten the ice loads are overestimated when the wind direction is from the southeast. This is due to local terrain shielding not captured by the model. During the Feb 1–14 event, the wind direction was generally easterly, which makes comparison between the simulations and the observations more reliable. In this case, ICE-T gives a better ice load estimate. Although there are major uncertainties, especially concerning the number concentration of cloud droplets, and local terrain effects, ICE-T appears to give a better estimate of the ice loads.publishedVersio

The Genomic HyperBrowser: inferential genomics at the sequence level

The immense increase in the generation of genomic scale data poses an unmet analytical challenge, due to a lack of established methodology with the required flexibility and power. We propose a first principled approach to statistical analysis of sequence-level genomic information. We provide a growing collection of generic biological investigations that query pairwise relations between tracks, represented as mathematical objects, along the genome. The Genomic HyperBrowser implements the approach and is available at http://hyperbrowser.uio.no

En vurdering av økologisk risiko ved bruk av introduserte bartreslag i Norge. Erfaringer ved bruk av kriteriesettet for Norsk svarteliste 2007

Artsdatabanken har etablert en arbeidsgruppe (Treslagsgruppen) som har vurdert økologisk risiko for et utvalg av introduserte bartreslag. Arbeidet tok utgangspunkt i kriteriesettet for risikovurdering som lå til grunn for Norsk svarteliste 2007. Gruppen har dernest vurdert egnetheten av dette kriteriesettet for trær, og har trukket følgende hovedkonklusjoner: • Vurderinger av 11 utvalgte bartreslag viste høy eller ukjent risiko for flere arter, men resultatet var mer knyttet til egenskaper ved kriteriene enn vitenskaplig dokumentasjon. Arbeidsgruppen utelukker likevel ikke at introduserte bartrær kan ha noen av de negative effektene som er beskrevet i Norsk svarteliste 2007. • Gruppen mener at gjeldende kriteriesett ikke følger naturvitenskapelige prinsipper og arbeidsmåter og derfor ikke er egnet for økologisk risikovurdering av bartrær. Flere av kriteriene fremstår som upresise, og viktige definisjoner mangler. • Når dokumentasjon mangler må dette fremgå eksplisitt, og systemene bør være transparente slik at det fremgår klart hvilke vurderinger som er dokumentert, og hvilke som baseres på faglig skjønn. • Det anbefales at fremtidige vurderinger graderer risiko i flere klasser for å gi et mer presist forvaltningsverktøy. • Et fremtidig kriteriesett for trær bør i sterkere grad vektlegge spredning og populasjonsendringer, og vurderes innen definerte arealrammer og i forhold til definerte, målbare effekter. • For å unngå for stor grad av subjektivitet anbefaler gruppen at risikovurderingene i fremtiden gjennomføres i paneler med minimum tre fagpersoner med solid kunnskap om de artene som skal vurderes. • Treslagsgruppen har sammenstilt økologisk informasjon om elleve introduserte bartrær (VITEN, Skog og landskap, 1/09). Informasjonen kan være et utgangspunkt for risikovurderinger etter et nytt kriteriesett. • Gruppen påpeker at det er betydelig kunnskapsmangel knyttet til spredning og effekter for flere introduserte treslag og at det er behov for en større FoU-innsats på fagfeltet

The Genomic HyperBrowser: an analysis web server for genome-scale data

The immense increase in availability of genomic scale datasets, such as those provided by the ENCODE and Roadmap Epigenomics projects, presents unprecedented opportunities for individual researchers to pose novel falsifiable biological questions. With this opportunity, however, researchers are faced with the challenge of how to best analyze and interpret their genome-scale datasets. A powerful way of representing genome-scale data is as feature-specific coordinates relative to reference genome assemblies, i.e. as genomic tracks. The Genomic HyperBrowser (http://hyperbrowser.uio.no) is an open-ended web server for the analysis of genomic track data. Through the provision of several highly customizable components for processing and statistical analysis of genomic tracks, the HyperBrowser opens for a range of genomic investigations, related to, e.g., gene regulation, disease association or epigenetic modifications of the genome

The Genomic HyperBrowser: an analysis web server for genome-scale data

The immense increase in availability of genomic scale datasets, such as those provided by the ENCODE and Roadmap Epigenomics projects, presents unprecedented opportunities for individual researchers to pose novel falsifiable biological questions. With this opportunity, however, researchers are faced with the challenge of how to best analyze and interpret their genome-scale datasets. A powerful way of representing genome-scale data is as feature-specific coordinates relative to reference genome assemblies, i.e. as genomic tracks. The Genomic HyperBrowser (http://hyperbrowser.uio.no) is an open-ended web server for the analysis of genomic track data. Through the provision of several highly customizable components for processing and statistical analysis of genomic tracks, the HyperBrowser opens for a range of genomic investigations, related to, e.g., gene regulation, disease association or epigenetic modifications of the genome.publishedVersio

Family structure and posttraumatic stress reactions: a longitudinal study using multilevel analyses

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is limited research on the relevance of family structures to the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress following disasters. We longitudinally studied the effects of marital and parental statuses on posttraumatic stress reactions after the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami and whether persons in the same households had more shared stress reactions than others.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>The study included a tourist population of 641 Norwegian adult citizens, many of them from families with children. We measured posttraumatic stress symptoms with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised at 6 months and 2 years post-disaster. Analyses included multilevel methods with mixed effects models.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Results showed that neither marital nor parental status was significantly related to posttraumatic stress. At both assessments, adults living in the same household reported levels of posttraumatic stress that were more similar to one another than adults who were not living together. Between households, disaster experiences were closely related to the variance in posttraumatic stress symptom levels at both assessments. Within households, however, disaster experiences were less related to the variance in symptom level at 2 years than at 6 months.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results indicate that adult household members may influence one another's posttraumatic stress reactions as well as their interpretations of the disaster experiences over time. Our findings suggest that multilevel methods may provide important information about family processes after disasters.</p