Like grandparents, like parents: Empirical evidence and psychoanalytic thinking on the transmission of parenting styles

The authors discuss the issue of intergenerational transmission of parenting from an empirical and psychoanalytic perspective. After presenting a framework to explain their conception of parenting, they describe intergenerational transmission of parenting as a key to interpreting and eventually changing parenting behaviors. Then they present (1) the empirical approach aimed at determining if there is actually a stability across generations that contributes to harsh parenting and eventually maltreatment and (2) the psyphoanalytic thinking that seeks to explain the continuity in terms of representations and clinical phenomena. The authors also discuss the relationship between the attachment and the caregiving systems and hypothesize a common base for the two systems in childhood experience. Finally, they propose the psychoanalytic perspective as a fruitful theoretical framework to integrate the evidence for the neurophysiological mediators and moderators of intergenerational transmission. Psychoanalytically informed research can provide clinically relevant insights and hypotheses to be tested

The waiting period of initial public offerings

The length of time it takes an IPO firm to go public (called ‘waiting period’) reflects multiple layers of scrutiny from underwriters, auditors, venture capitalists, institutional investors, and regulators. Accordingly, we show that the waiting period is a good barometer of ex ante uncertainty about future cash flows and that it has predictive power after the firm goes public. We find that firms marked by short waiting periods experience lower underpricing and less uncertainty and superior stock/operating performance in the aftermarket. We also report that smaller firms are taking longer to go public after SOX Act, thus providing justification for the 2012 JOBS Act

Poor Oral Health as a Determinant of Malnutrition and Sarcopenia

Aging is accompanied by profound changes in many physiological functions, leading to a decreased ability to cope with stressors. Many changes are subtle, but can negatively affect nutrient intake, leading to overt malnutrition. Poor oral health may affect food selection and nutrient intake, leading to malnutrition and, consequently, to frailty and sarcopenia. On the other hand, it has been highlighted that sarcopenia is a whole-body process also affecting muscles dedicated to chewing and swallowing. Hence, muscle decline of these muscle groups may also have a negative impact on nutrient intake, increasing the risk for malnutrition. The interplay between oral diseases and malnutrition with frailty and sarcopenia may be explained through biological and environmental factors that are linked to the common burden of inflammation and oxidative stress. The presence of oral problems, alone or in combination with sarcopenia, may thus represent the biological substratum of the disabling cascade experienced by many frail individuals. A multimodal and multidisciplinary approach, including personalized dietary counselling and oral health care, may thus be helpful to better manage the complexity of older people. Furthermore, preventive strategies applied throughout the lifetime could help to preserve both oral and muscle function later in life. Here, we provide an overview on the relevance of poor oral health as a determinant of malnutrition and sarcopenia

Spin-coherent dynamics and carrier lifetime in strained Ge1−xSnx semiconductors on silicon

We demonstrate an effective epitaxial route for the manipulation and further enrichment of the intriguing spin-dependent phenomena boasted by germanium. We show optical initialization and readout of spins in Ge-rich germanium-tin alloys and report on spin quantum beats between Zeeman-split levels under an external magnetic field. While heavy Sn atoms can be readily utilized to strengthen the spin-orbit coupling, our experiments reveal robust spin orientation in a wide temperature range and a persistent spin lifetime that noticeably approaches the nanosecond regime at room temperature. In addition, time decay photoluminescence experiments evidence a temperature-induced monotonic decrease of the carrier lifetime, eventually providing crucial insights also into nonradiative recombination mechanisms

Lack of energy is associated with malnutrition in nursing home residents: Results from the INCUR study

Background: Lack of energy is a symptom frequently complained by older people, leading to the inability to continue functioning at the expected level of activity. This study aimed to investigate whether nutritional status was associated with lack of energy in nursing home (NH) residents. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study. A total of 570 NH residents (72.1% women) in 13 French NHs from the Incidence of pNeumonia and related ConseqUences in nursing home Residents study cohort were included in the study. Lack of energy was measured by the question “Did you feel full of energy during the past week?” from the geriatric depression scale. Nutritional status was evaluated according to Mini Nutritional Assessment Short-Form (MNA-SF). Unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression models were performed to test the association of nutritional status with lack of energy. Results: The mean age of participants was 86.5 (SD 7.5) years. A total of 246 NH residents (43.2%) reported a lack of energy. Overall, 71 (12.5%) residents were malnourished and 323 (56.7%) residents were at risk of malnutrition. Malnutrition was significantly associated with lack of energy (OR = 3.42, 95% CI = 1.92–6.08, P < 0.001), even after adjustment for potential confounders (OR = 2.41, 95% CI = 1.29–4.52, P = 0.006). Among the single items of the MNA-SF, decrease in food intake, low mobility, and psychological stress or acute disease were individually associated with lack of energy, independently of potential confounders (OR = 1.85, 95% CI = 1.24–2.77, P = 0.003; OR = 1.43, 95% CI = 1.10–1.86, P = 0.008; OR = 1.48, 95% CI = 1.19–1.84, P < 0.001; for each point respectively). Conclusions: Lack of energy and malnutrition were closely associated. The reporting of lack of energy should lead to a comprehensive assessment of the aging individual (as happening for malnutrition) in order to preventively/promptly act on potentially reversible causes

‘RE/TRS’ is a Girl’s Subject: Talking about Gender and the Discourse of ‘Religion’ in UK Educational Spaces

This article addresses what appears to be a retrenchment into narrower forms of identification and an increased suspicion of difference in the context of educational policy in the UK – especially in relation to ‘Religious Education’. The adoption of standardized management protocols – ‘managerialism’ – across most if not all policy contexts including public educational spaces reduces spaces for encountering or addressing genuine difference and for discovering something new and different. A theory of the ‘feminization of religion’ associated historically with Barbara Welter, provides some useful insights as to why this might be, suggesting that those in British society who would prefer to see greater separation from ‘religion’ in ‘secular’ schools may well also be caught up in forms of gender stereotyping

Can We Distinguish Age-Related Frailty from Frailty Related to Diseases? Data from the MAPT Study

Abstract Background No study has tried to distinguish subjects that become frail due to diseases (frailty related to diseases) or in the absence of specific medical events; in this latter case, it is possible that aging process would act as the main frailty driver (age-related frailty). Objectives To classify subjects according to the origin of physical frailty: age-related frailty, frailty related to diseases, frailty of uncertain origin, and to compare their clinical characteristics. Materials and methods We performed a secondary analysis of the Multidomain Alzheimer Preventive Trial (MAPT), including 195 subjects ≥70 years non-frail at baseline who became frail during a 5-year follow-up (mean age 77.8 years ± 4.7; 70% female). Physical frailty was defined as presenting ≥3 of the 5 Fried criteria: weight loss, exhaustion, weakness, slowness, low physical activity. Clinical files were independently reviewed by two different clinicians using a standardized assessment method in order to classify subjects as: "age-related frailty", "frailty related to diseases" or "frailty of uncertain origin". Inconsistencies among the two raters and cases of uncertain frailty were further assessed by two other experienced clinicians. Results From the 195 included subjects, 82 (42%) were classified as age-related frailty, 53 (27%) as frailty related to diseases, and 60 (31%) as frailty of uncertain origin. Patients who became frail due to diseases did not differ from the others groups in terms of functional, cognitive, psychological status and age at baseline, however they presented a higher burden of comorbidity as measured by the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale (CIRS) (8.20 ± 2.69; vs 6.22 ± 2.02 frailty of uncertain origin; vs. 3.25 ± 1.65 age-related frailty). Time to incident frailty (23.4 months ± 12.1 vs. 39.2 ± 19.3 months) and time spent in a pre-frailty condition (17.1 ± 11.4 vs 26.6 ± 16.6 months) were shorter in the group of frailty related to diseases compared to age-related frailty. Orthopedic diseases (n=14, 26%) were the most common pathologies leading to frailty related to diseases, followed by cardiovascular diseases (n=9, 17%) and neurological diseases (n = 8, 15%). Conclusion People classified as age-related frailty and frailty related to diseases presented different frailty-associated indicators. Future research should target the underlying biological cascades leading to these two frailty classifications, since they could ask for distinct strategies of prevention and management

Automatic speech analysis to early detect functional cognitive decline in elderly population

This study aimed at evaluating whether people with a normal cognitive function can be discriminated from subjects with a mild impairment of cognitive function based on a set of acoustic features derived from spontaneous speech. Voice recordings from 90 Italian subjects (age >65 years; group 1: 47 subjects with MMSE>26; group 2: 43 subjects with 20≤ MMSE ≤26) were collected. Voice samples were processed using a MATLAB-based custom software to derive a broad set of known acoustic features. Linear mixed model analyses were performed to select the features able to significantly distinguish between groups. The selected features (% of unvoiced segments, duration of unvoiced segments, % of voice breaks, speech rate, and duration of syllables), alone or in addition to age and years of education, were used to build a learning-based classifier. The leave-one-out cross validation was used for testing and the classifier accuracy was computed. When the voice features were used alone, an overall classification accuracy of 0.73 was achieved. When age and years of education were additionally used, the overall accuracy increased up to 0.80. These performances were lower than the accuracy of 0.86 found in a recent study. However, in that study the classification was based on several tasks, including more cognitive demanding tasks. Our results are encouraging because acoustic features, derived for the first time only from an ecologic continuous speech task, were able to discriminate people with a normal cognitive function from people with a mild cognitive decline. This study poses the basis for the development of a mobile application performing automatic voice analysis on-the-fly during phone calls, which might potentially support the detection of early signs of functional cognitive decline

On Schrödinger’s Cat and Evaluation of Trials Disrupted by the Covid19 Pandemic: A Critical Appraisal

From the beginning of 2020, the world has been fighting the SARS-Cov-2 outbreak. The life of each one of us has profoundly hanged. Unavoidably, our clinical routine has drastically modified in its priorities and methodologies (1). The COVID-19 pandemic has also raised significant issues in the field of research. The investigators’ responsibility has increased with the need to thoughtfully weigh the risk-benefit ratio for each protocol in an emergency and evolving scenario (2)