Investigation of temperature dependence of development and aging

Temperature dependence of maturation and metabolic rates in insects, and the failure of vital processes during development were investigated. The paper presented advances the general hypothesis that aging in biological systems is a consequence of the production of entropy concomitant with metabolic activity

Powiązanie procesów nauczania i wspierania rozwoju z elementami terapii artystycznej w świadomości dokształcających się nauczycieli

The study contains considerations and description of the research (in the qualitative strategy) on the triad of terms included in the title of the study against the background of the teachers’ struggles with the current difficulties arising not only in field of educational system but also in professional training of teachers. The research was conducted by applying method of implicit observation during seminar classes with students working in a kindergarten/school. The qualitative research procedure allowed to attempt to answer the questions whether teachers are aware of the need to combine teaching processes, supporting development and therapy (with artistic means), and whether applying it in practice is related to coping with internal and external difficulties, as well as the systemic ones. The observation resulted in producing detailed notes on the issues of accumulation of teaching processes, therapy and support for students’ development. The analysis of the notes enabled determination of the problems faced by the respondents and identification of sources of mentioned problems.Opracowanie zawiera rozważania i opis badań (w strategii jakościowej) triady pojęć zawartych w tytule, uwzględniono również zmagania nauczycieli z obecnymi trudnościami, mającymi swoje źródło nie tylko w systemie oświatowym, lecz także w przygotowaniu zawodowym nauczycieli. Badania przeprowadzono metodą obserwacji niejawnej w toku zajęć seminaryjnych ze studentkami pracującymi w przedszkolu/szkole. Procedura badań jakościowych pozwoliła na podjęcie próby odpowiedzi na pytania, czy nauczyciele mają świadomość potrzeby łączenia procesów nauczania, wspierania rozwoju oraz terapii (środkami artystycznymi) oraz czy stosowanie tego w praktyce jest związane ze zmaganiem się z trudnościami wewnętrznymi, zewnętrznymi i systemowymi. Wynikiem przeprowadzonej obserwacji są szczegółowe notatki dotyczące podejmowanej przez studentki problematyki kumulacji procesów nauczania, terapii i wspierania rozwoju uczniów. Analiza notatek umożliwiła ustalenie problemów, z jakimi zmagają się badane oraz identyfikację źródeł tych problemów

The teacher facing the difficulties in cultivating regional traditions

The article is a research report on difficulties in implementing selected assumptions of regional education in pre-school and primary school. The results compelled the authors to reflect on the quality of professional teachers’ performance of tasks (and problems that hinder or prevent the process) related to cultivating regional traditions of the local communities in which they work. The conclusions of the said reflections constitute the main topic of the present study

Is BMI alone a sufficient outcome to evaluate interventions for child obesity?

BACKGROUND: BMI is often used to evaluate the effectiveness of childhood obesity interventions, but such interventions may have additional benefits independent of effects on adiposity. We investigated whether benefits to health outcomes following the Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do It! (MEND) childhood obesity intervention were independent of or associated with changes in zBMI. METHODS: A total of 79 obese children were measured at baseline; 71 and 42 participants were followed-up at 6 and 12 months respectively, and split into four groups depending on magnitude of change in zBMI. Differences between groups for waist circumference, cardiovascular fitness, physical and sedentary activities, and self-esteem were investigated. RESULTS: Apart from waist circumference and its z-score, there were no differences or trends across zBMI subgroups for any outcome. Independent of the degree of zBMI change, benefits in several parameters were observed in children participating in this obesity intervention. CONCLUSION: We concluded that isolating a single parameter like zBMI change and neglecting other important outcomes is restrictive and may undermine the evaluation of childhood obesity intervention effectiveness

Koncertowa aktywność nauczycieli akademickich a ich postawy wobec dziecięcej i młodzieżowej publiczności niepełnosprawnej

The subject-matter of the empirical studies is the measurement of the attitude of the academic teachers under the influence of the concert activity. The studies covered 21 teachers from the University of Music in Katowice. The results showed that the teachers’ attitudes change according to the personality features, value system, attitude to the work performed and emotional resistance to various audience reactions of the pedagogue-artist. The text was enriched with the model examples of research tools, as well as theoretical considerations within the scope of the concept of attitude

Dietary and serum tyrosine, white matter microstructure and inter-individual variability in executive functions in overweight adults: Relation to sex/gender and age

Tyrosine (tyr), the precursor of the neurotransmitter dopamine, is known to modulate cognitive functions including executive attention. Tyr supplementation is suggested to influence dopamine-modulated cognitive performance. However, results are inconclusive regarding the presence or strength and also the direction of the association between tyr and cognitive function. This pre-registered cross-sectional analysis investigates whether diet-associated serum tyr relates to executive attention performance, and whether this relationship is moderated by differences in white matter microstructure. 59 healthy, overweight, young to middle-aged adults (20 female, 28.3 ± 6.6 years, BMI: 27.3 ± 1.5 kg/m2) drawn from a longitudinal study reported dietary habits, donated blood and completed diffusion-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging and the attention network test. Main analyses were performed using linear regressions and non-parametric voxel-wise inference testing. Confirmatory analyses did neither support an association between dietary and serum tyr nor a relationship between relative serum tyr/large neutral amino acids (LNAA) levels or white matter microstructure and executive attention performance. However, exploratory analyses revealed higher tyr intake, higher serum tyr and better executive attention performance in the male sex/gender group. In addition, older age was associated with higher dietary tyr intake and lower fractional anisotropy in a widespread cluster across the brain. Finally, a positive association between relative serum tyr/LNAA and executive attention performance was found in the male sex/gender group when accounting for age effects. Our analysis advances the field of dopamine-modulated cognitive functions by revealing sex/gender and age differences which might be diet-related. Longitudinal or intervention studies and larger sample sizes are needed to provide more reliable evidence for links between tyr and executive attention

Associations between anxiety, body mass index, and sex hormones in women

Background: Several studies have shown a positive association between anxiety and obesity, particularly in women. We aimed to study whether sex hormone alterations related to obesity might play a role in this association. Patients and methods: Data for this study were obtained from a population-based cohort study (the LIFE-Adult-Study). A total of 3,124 adult women (970 premenopausal and 2,154 postmenopausal) were included into the analyses. The anxiety symptomatology was assessed using the GAD-7 questionnaire (cut-off ≥ 10 points). Sex hormones were measured from fasting serum samples. Results: We did not find significant differences in anxiety prevalence in premenopausal obese women compared with normal-weight controls (4.8% vs. 5.5%). Both obesity and anxiety symptomatology were separately associated with the same sex hormone alteration in premenopausal women: higher total testosterone level (0.97 ± 0.50 in obese vs. 0.86 ± 0.49 nmol/L in normal-weight women, p = 0.026 and 1.04 ± 0.59 in women with vs. 0.88 ± 0.49 nmol/L in women without anxiety symptomatology, p = 0.023). However, women with anxiety symptomatology had non-significantly higher estradiol levels than women without anxiety symptomatology (548.0 ± 507.6 vs. 426.2 ± 474.0 pmol/L), whereas obesity was associated with lower estradiol levels compared with those in normal-weight group (332.7 ± 386.5 vs. 470.8 ± 616.0 pmol/L). Women with anxiety symptomatology had also significantly higher testosterone and estradiol composition (p = 0.006). No associations of sex hormone levels and BMI with anxiety symptomatology in postmenopausal women were found. Conclusions: Although both obesity and anxiety symptomatology were separately associated with higher testosterone level, there was an opposite impact of anxiety and obesity on estradiol levels in premenopausal women. We did not find an evidence that the sex hormone alterations related to obesity are playing a significant role in anxiety symptomatology in premenopausal women. This could be the explanation why we did not find an association between obesity and anxiety. In postmenopausal women, other mechanisms seem to work than in the premenopausal group

Association of postpartum maternal mood with infant speech perception at 2 and 6.5 months of age

Importance: Language development builds on speech perception, with early disruptions increasing the risk for later language difficulties. Although a major postpartum depressive episode is associated with language development, this association has not been investigated among infants of mothers experiencing a depressed mood at subclinical levels after birth, even though such a mood is frequently present in the first weeks after birth. Understanding whether subclinical depressed maternal mood after birth is associated with early language development is important given opportunities of coping strategies for subclinical depressed mood.Objective: To examine whether depressed maternal mood at subclinical levels 2 months after birth is associated with infant speech perception trajectories from ages 2 to 6.5 months.Design, setting, and participants: In this longitudinal cohort study conducted between January 1, 2018, and October 31, 2019, 46 healthy, monolingual German mother-infant dyads were tested. The sample was recruited from the infants database of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Initial statistical analysis was performed between January 1 and March 31, 2021; the moderation analysis (results reported herein) was conducted between July 1 and July 31, 2022.Exposures: Mothers reported postpartum mood via the German version of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (higher scores indicated higher levels of depressed mood, with a cutoff of 13 points indicating a high probability of clinical depression) when their infants were 2 months old.Main outcomes and measures: Electrophysiological correlates of infant speech perception (mismatch response to speech stimuli) were tested when the infants were aged 2 months (initial assessment) and 6.5 months (follow-up).Results: A total of 46 mothers (mean [SD] age, 32.1 [3.8] years) and their 2-month-old children (mean [SD] age, 9.6 [1.2] weeks; 23 girls and 23 boys) participated at the initial assessment, and 36 mothers (mean [SD] age, 32.2 [4.1] years) and their then 6.5-month-old children (mean [SD] age, 28.4 [1.5 weeks; 18 girls and 18 boys) participated at follow-up. Moderation analyses revealed that more depressed maternal subclinical postpartum mood (mean [SD] Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale score, 4.8 [3.6]) was associated with weaker longitudinal changes of infants' electrophysiological brain responses to syllable pitch speech information from ages 2 to 6.5 months (coefficient: 0.68; 95% CI, 0.03-1.33; P = .04).Conclusions and relevance: The results of this cohort study suggest that infant speech perception trajectories are correlated with subclinical depressed mood in postpartum mothers. This finding lays the groundwork for future research on early support for caregivers experiencing depressed mood to have a positive association with children's language development

Między obrazem a dźwiękiem : nauczyciel wobec współczesnej kultury medialnej

The discussion presented in this paper aims at a broadened reflection on the teacher and their role in conditions of the contemporary media culture, which constitutes a difficult-to-define blend of “the non-obvious and the possible.” The authors of the paper consider the relations between the teacher and the media culture, the manifestations and products of which can influence their stance on the world, art and profession practised. The assumed perspective leads to the outlining of the area of necessary changes in the whole educational system and raises the problem of the quality of cultural education of teachers