Tobacco Smoking And The Resting Maternal Brain: A Preliminary Study Of Frontal EEG

Tobacco smoking has been attributed to a wide range of detrimental health consequences for both women and their children. In addition to its known physical health effects, smoking may also impact maternal neural responses and subsequent caregiving behavior. To begin investigating this issue, we employed electroencephalography (EEG) to examine resting neural oscillations of tobacco-smoking mothers (n = 35) and non-smoking mothers (n = 35). We examined seven EEG frequency bands recorded from frontal electrode sites (delta, theta, alpha, alpha1, alpha2, beta, and gamma). While no between-group differences were present in high-frequency bands (alpha2, beta, gamma), smokers showed greater spectral power in low-frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, alpha1) compared to non-smokers. This increased power in low-frequency bands of tobacco-smoking mothers is consistent with a less aroused state and may be one mechanism through which smoking might affect the maternal brain and caregiving behavior

The Transition to Motherhood: Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Perspectives

Motherhood is a unique transitional period in adulthood accompanied by distinct changes in the mind and brain. Although psychoanalytic and neuroscientific theory employ different levels of abstraction and methodology, there could be value in considering the synergy between the two fields for understanding this critical transitional period for women. Here, we review this literature and present a joint model of the neurobiological and psychic reorganization that might occur to support motherhood. Our approach highlights the value of considering multiple perspectives theoretically, as well as clinically, given the insight of neuroscience and psychoanalysis to the development and refinement of parenting interventions

Canagliflozin inhibits interleukin-1β-stimulated cytokine and chemokine secretion in vascular endothelial cells by AMP-activated protein kinase-dependent and -independent mechanisms

YesRecent clinical trials of the hypoglycaemic sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, which inhibit renal glucose reabsorption, have reported beneficial cardiovascular outcomes. Whether SGLT2 inhibitors directly affect cardiovascular tissues, however, remains unclear. We have previously reported that the SGLT2 inhibitor canagliflozin activates AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) in immortalised cell lines and murine hepatocytes. As AMPK has anti-inflammatory actions in vascular cells, we examined whether SGLT2 inhibitors attenuated inflammatory signalling in cultured human endothelial cells. Incubation with clinically-relevant concentrations of canagliflozin, but not empagliflozin or dapagliflozin activated AMPK and inhibited IL-1β-stimulated adhesion of pro-monocytic U937 cells and secretion of IL-6 and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). Inhibition of MCP-1 secretion was attenuated by expression of dominant-negative AMPK and was mimicked by the direct AMPK activator, A769662. Stimulation of cells with either canagliflozin or A769662 had no effect on IL-1β-stimulated cell surface levels of adhesion molecules or nuclear factor-κB signalling. Despite these identical effects of canagliflozin and A769662, IL-1β-stimulated IL-6/MCP-1 mRNA was inhibited by canagliflozin, but not A769662, whereas IL-1β-stimulated c-jun N-terminal kinase phosphorylation was inhibited by A769662, but not canagliflozin. These data indicate that clinically-relevant canagliflozin concentrations directly inhibit endothelial pro-inflammatory chemokine/cytokine secretion by AMPK-dependent and -independent mechanisms without affecting early IL-1β signalling.Project Grant (PG/13/82/30483 to IPS and TMP) and PhD studentships (FS/16/55/32731 and FS/14/61/31284 to DB and AS) from the British Heart Foundation and an equipment grant (BDA11/0004309 to IPS and TMP) from Diabetes UK. OJK was supported by a Scholarship from the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. TAA was supported by a Libyan Ministry of Education PhD Studentship

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Variability in gene expression underlies incomplete penetrance

The phenotypic differences between individual organisms can often be ascribed to underlying genetic and environmental variation. However, even genetically identical organisms in homogeneous environments vary, indicating that randomness in developmental processes such as gene expression may also generate diversity. To examine the consequences of gene expression variability in multicellular organisms, we studied intestinal specification in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans in which wild-type cell fate is invariant and controlled by a small transcriptional network. Mutations in elements of this network can have indeterminate effects: some mutant embryos fail to develop intestinal cells, whereas others produce intestinal precursors. By counting transcripts of the genes in this network in individual embryos, we show that the expression of an otherwise redundant gene becomes highly variable in the mutants and that this variation is subjected to a threshold, producing an ON/OFF expression pattern of the master regulatory gene of intestinal differentiation. Our results demonstrate that mutations in developmental networks can expose otherwise buffered stochastic variability in gene expression, leading to pronounced phenotypic variation.National Institutes of Health (U.S.). Pioneer AwardMathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (DMS-0603392)National Institutes of Health (U.S.). Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (5F32GM080966

Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Search for new physics with same-sign isolated dilepton events with jets and missing transverse energy

A search for new physics is performed in events with two same-sign isolated leptons, hadronic jets, and missing transverse energy in the final state. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.98 inverse femtobarns produced in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This constitutes a factor of 140 increase in integrated luminosity over previously published results. The observed yields agree with the standard model predictions and thus no evidence for new physics is found. The observations are used to set upper limits on possible new physics contributions and to constrain supersymmetric models. To facilitate the interpretation of the data in a broader range of new physics scenarios, information on the event selection, detector response, and efficiencies is provided.Comment: Published in Physical Review Letter