Positive impact of mindfulness meditation on mental health of female teachers during the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy

The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent public health measures were shown to impact negatively on people\u2019s mental health. In particular, women were reported to be at higher risk than men of developing symptoms of stress/anxiety/depression, and resilience was considered a key factor for positive mental health outcomes. In the present study, a sample of Italian female teachers (n = 66, age: 51.5 \ub1 7.9 years) was assessed with self-report instruments one month before and one month after the start of the Covid-19 lockdown: mindfulness skills, empathy, personality profiles, interoceptive awareness, psychological well-being, emotional distress and burnout levels were measured. Meanwhile, they received an 8-week Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) course, through two group meetings and six individual video-lessons. Based on baseline personality profiles, analyses of variance were performed in a low-resilience (LR, n = 32) and a high-resilience (HR, n = 26) group. The LR and HR groups differed at baseline in most of the self-report measures. Pre\u2013post MOM significant improvements were found in both groups in anxiety, depression, affective empathy, emotional exhaustion, psychological well-being, interoceptive awareness, character traits and mindfulness levels. Improvements in depression and psychological well-being were higher in the LR vs. HR group. We conclude that mindfulness-based training can effectively mitigate the psychological negative consequences of the Covid-19 outbreak, helping in particular to restore well-being in the most vulnerable individuals

cranial nerve abnormalities in oculo auriculo vertebral spectrum

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Cranial nerve abnormalities might be observed in hemifacial microsomia and microtia (oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectrum), but the rate, features, and relationship with functional impairment or phenotype severity have not yet been defined. This study aimed at investigating absence/asymmetry, abnormal origin, morphology and course of cranial nerves, and presence/asymmetry of the foramen ovale and inferior alveolar nerve canal in a cohort of oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectrum patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-nine patients with oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectrum (mean age, 7 years; age range, 0.2–31 years; 12 females) underwent brain MR imaging, CT, and neurologic evaluation; 19 patients had a more severe phenotype (Goldenhar syndrome). RESULTS: Cranial nerve abnormalities were detected only in patients with Goldenhar syndrome (17/19, bilaterally in 8) and were involved the second (4/19), third (1/18), fifth (11/19), sixth (8/16), seventh (11/18), and eighth (8/18) cranial nerves. Multiple cranial nerve abnormalities were common (11/17). Eleven patients showed bone foramina abnormalities. Trigeminal and facial nerve dysfunctions were common (44% and 58%, respectively), especially in patients with Goldenhar syndrome. Trigeminal abnormalities showed a good correlation with ipsilateral dysfunction ( P = .018), which further increased when bone foramina abnormalities were included. The facial nerve showed a trend toward correlation with ipsilateral dysfunction ( P = .081). Diplopia was found only in patients with Goldenhar syndrome and was associated with third and sixth cranial nerve abnormalities ( P = .006). CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectrum, cranial nerve morphologic abnormalities are common, correlate with phenotype severity, and often entail a functional impairment. The spectrum of cranial nerve abnormalities appears wider than simple hypo-/aplasia and includes an anomalous cisternal course and partial/complete fusion of diverse cranial nerves. CN : cranial nerve OAVS : oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectru

Área do dano causado pelo percevejo marrom em sementes de soja com diferentes porcentagens de lignina.

A lignina no tegumento das sementes de soja reduz a incidência de danos mecânicos durante a colheita. Todavia, pouco se conhece sobre seu efeito na alimentação dos percevejos. O objetivo dos experimentos foi avaliar a área do dano causado pelo percevejo marrom, Euschistus heros, na fase adulta, em sementes de soja contendo diferentes porcentagens de lignina, em laboratório e em casa de vegetação. Em laboratório, foram usadas sementes de soja dos cultivares Doko (6,20% de lignina), BRS-255 RR (5,09%), BRS-284 (3,15%) e BRS-232 (1,65%) hidratadas por 16 h, e submetidas individualmente ao ataque do percevejo, em delineamento inteiramente casualizado com quatro repetições (50 sementes/repetição). A atividade dos insetos foi monitorada durante seis horas, para registro do tempo de alimentação e da quantidade de insetos que atacaram as sementes. As sementes atacadas foram submetidas ao teste de tetrazólio para a obtenção de imagens fotográficas do dano causado pelos percevejos, e posterior medição da área danificada no programa Photop (IAPAR). Em casa de vegetação, legumes de cada cultivar no estágio R5/R6 foram individualizados no interior de gaiolas contendo um percevejo. Foram utilizadas cinco plantas por cultivar, com cada planta contendo quatro gaiolas. As vagens ficaram disponíveis ao ataque dos insetos durante 48 horas. As sementes foram colhidas após a secagem natural das plantas, e submetidas ao teste de tetrazólio para obtenção de imagens fotográficas dos danos causados pelos percevejos em 30 sementes por cultivar, para medição das áreas dos danos. As sementes de cultivares com menor porcentagem de lignina no tegumento apresentaram áreas de danos significativamente maiores (Tukey, P?0,05) que as com maiores porcentagens de lignina

Mathematical model for preoperative identification of obstructed nasal subsites

The planning of experimental studies for evaluation of nasal airflow is particularly challenging given the difficulty in obtaining objective measurements in vivo. Although standard rhinomanometry and acoustic rhinometry are the most widely used diagnostic tools for evaluation of nasal airflow, they provide only a global measurement of nasal dynamics, without temporal or spatial details. Furthermore, the numerical simulation of nasal airflow as computational fluid dynamics technology is not validated. Unfortunately, to date, there are no available diagnostic tools to objectively evaluate the geometry of the nasal cavities and to measure nasal resistance and the degree of nasal obstruction, which is of utmost importance for surgical planning. To overcame these limitations, we developed a mathematical model based on Bernoulli's equation, which allows clinicians to obtain, with the use of a particular direct digital manometry, pressure measurements over time to identify which nasal subsite is obstructed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to identify two limiting curves, one below and one above an average representative curve, describing the time dependence of the gauge pressure inside a single nostril. These upper and lower curves enclosed an area into which the airflow pattern of healthy individuals falls. In our opinion, this model may be useful to study each nasal subsite and to objectively evaluate the geometry and resistances of the nasal cavities, particularly in preoperative planning and follow-up

LARES/WEBER-SAT and the equivalence principle

It has often been claimed that the proposed Earth artificial satellite LARES/WEBER-SAT-whose primary goal is, in fact, the measurement of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect at a some percent level-would allow to greatly improve, among (many) other things, the present-day (10^-13) level of accuracy in testing the equivalence principle as well. Recent claims point towards even two orders of magnitude better, i.e. 10^-15. In this note we show that such a goal is, in fact, unattainable by many orders of magnitude being, instead, the achievable level of the order of 10^-9.Comment: LaTex, 4 pages, no figures, no tables, 26 references. Proofs corrections included. To appear in EPL (Europhysics Letters

Simultaneous learning of instantaneous and time-delayed genetic interactions using novel information theoretic scoring technique

BACKGROUND: Understanding gene interactions is a fundamental question in systems biology. Currently, modeling of gene regulations using the Bayesian Network (BN) formalism assumes that genes interact either instantaneously or with a certain amount of time delay. However in reality, biological regulations, both instantaneous and time-delayed, occur simultaneously. A framework that can detect and model both these two types of interactions simultaneously would represent gene regulatory networks more accurately. RESULTS: In this paper, we introduce a framework based on the Bayesian Network (BN) formalism that can represent both instantaneous and time-delayed interactions between genes simultaneously. A novel scoring metric having firm mathematical underpinnings is also proposed that, unlike other recent methods, can score both interactions concurrently and takes into account the reality that multiple regulators can regulate a gene jointly, rather than in an isolated pair-wise manner. Further, a gene regulatory network (GRN) inference method employing an evolutionary search that makes use of the framework and the scoring metric is also presented. CONCLUSION: By taking into consideration the biological fact that both instantaneous and time-delayed regulations can occur among genes, our approach models gene interactions with greater accuracy. The proposed framework is efficient and can be used to infer gene networks having multiple orders of instantaneous and time-delayed regulations simultaneously. Experiments are carried out using three different synthetic networks (with three different mechanisms for generating synthetic data) as well as real life networks of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, E. coli and cyanobacteria gene expression data. The results show the effectiveness of our approach