The effect of weight and duration of carrying backpack on forward head, kyphoses and lordoses in 14-18 year-old girls

Background: In recent years, the weight of school backpack has become a growing concern and carrying the heavy backpack causes postural deformity. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect weight and duration of carrying backpacks on forward head, kyphoses and lordoses in 14-18 year-old girls. Materials and Methods: In this prospective cohort study, 262 girls with the mean age 15.5±1.1 years, height 160±6 cm, weight 56.4±12.5 kg, backpack weight 3.98±1.3 kg, and duration of carrying 17.5±8.5 min were randomly selected. Then, 45 healthy girls (mean age, 15.8 years) were voluntarily selected and randomly divided into three groups based on basic measurements including the weight of backpack 3.5, 4.8 and 6.1 kg in 16, 21 and 27 minutes, walking on the treadmill with 1.6 meters per second. The forward head, kyphoses, and lordoses were measured before and after walking on treadmill. Results: Results showed that carrying backpacks more than 3.5 kg in 16 min increased the kyphoses angle (P=0.048). Moreover, the results showed that carrying backpacks with any weight significantly increased lumbar lordoses angles. However, no significant difference was observed in changes of forward head posture among the three groups. Conclusion: Carrying heavy backpacks can increase kyphoses in girls. So, they should avoid carrying backpacks 6 heavier than their weight for more than 16 minutes

Assessing the resilience of a river management regime: Informal learning in a shadow network in the Tisza River Basin

Global sources of change offer unprecedented challenges to conventional river management strategies, which no longer appear capable of credibly addressing a trap: the failure of conventional river defense engineering to manage rising trends of disordering extreme events, including frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, and water stagnation in the Hungarian reaches of the Tisza River Basin. Extreme events punctuate trends of stagnation or decline in the ecosystems, economies, and societies of this river basin that extend back decades, and perhaps, centuries. These trends may be the long-term results of defensive strategies of the historical river management regime that reflect a paradigm dating back to the Industrial Revolution: "Protect the Landscape from the River." Since then all policies have defaulted to the imperatives of this paradigm such that it became the convention underlying the current river management regime. As an exponent of this convention the current river management regimes' methods, concepts, infrastructure, and paradigms that reinforce one another in setting the basin's development trajectory, have proven resilient to change from wars, political, and social upheaval for centuries. Failure to address the trap makes the current river management regimes resilience appear detrimental to the regions future development prospects and prompts demand for transformation to a more adaptive river management regime. Starting before transition to democracy, a shadow network has generated multiple dialogues in Hungary, informally exploring the roots of this trap as part of a search for ideas and methods to revitalize the region. We report on how international scientists joined one dialogue, applying system dynamics modeling tools to explore barriers and bridges to transformation of the current river management regime and develop the capacity for participatory science to expand the range of perspectives that inform, monitor, and revise learning, policy, and the practice of river management

Long-Term Estrogen Receptor Beta Agonist Treatment Modifies the Hippocampal Transcriptome in Middle-Aged Ovariectomized Rats.

Estradiol (E2) robustly activates transcription of a broad array of genes in the hippocampal formation of middle-aged ovariectomized rats via estrogen receptors (ERalpha, ERbeta, and G protein-coupled ER). Selective ERbeta agonists also influence hippocampal functions, although their downstream molecular targets and mechanisms are not known. In this study, we explored the effects of long-term treatment with ERbeta agonist diarylpropionitrile (DPN, 0.05 mg/kg/day, sc.) on the hippocampal transcriptome in ovariectomized, middle-aged (13 month) rats. Isolated hippocampal formations were analyzed by Affymetrix oligonucleotide microarray and quantitative real-time PCR. Four hundred ninety-seven genes fulfilled the absolute fold change higher than 2 (FC > 2) selection criterion. Among them 370 genes were activated. Pathway analysis identified terms including glutamatergic and cholinergic synapse, RNA transport, endocytosis, thyroid hormone signaling, RNA degradation, retrograde endocannabinoid signaling, and mRNA surveillance. PCR studies showed transcriptional regulation of 58 genes encoding growth factors (Igf2, Igfb2, Igf1r, Fgf1, Mdk, Ntf3, Bdnf), transcription factors (Otx2, Msx1), potassium channels (Kcne2), neuropeptides (Cck, Pdyn), peptide receptors (Crhr2, Oprm1, Gnrhr, Galr2, Sstr1, Sstr3), neurotransmitter receptors (Htr1a, Htr2c, Htr2a, Gria2, Gria3, Grm5, Gabra1, Chrm5, Adrb1), and vesicular neurotransmitter transporters (Slc32a1, Slc17a7). Protein-protein interaction analysis revealed networking of clusters associated with the regulation of growth/troph factor signaling, transcription, translation, neurotransmitter and neurohormone signaling mechanisms and potassium channels. Collectively, the results reveal the contribution of ERbeta-mediated processes to the regulation of transcription, translation, neurogenesis, neuromodulation, and neuroprotection in the hippocampal formation of ovariectomized, middle-aged rats and elucidate regulatory channels responsible for DPN-altered functional patterns. These findings support the notion that selective activation of ERbeta may be a viable approach for treating the neural symptoms of E2 deficiency in menopause

Granzyme A Required for Regulatory T-Cell Mediated Prevention of Gastrointestinal Graft-versus-Host Disease

In our previous work we could identify defects in human regulatory T cells (Tregs) likely favoring the development of graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) following allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT). Treg transcriptome analyses comparing GvHD and immune tolerant patients uncovered regulated gene transcripts highly relevant for Treg cell function. Moreover, granzyme A (GZMA) also showed a significant lower expression at the protein level in Tregs of GvHD patients. GZMA induces cytolysis in a perforin-dependent, FAS- FASL independent manner and represents a cell-contact dependent mechanism for Tregs to control immune responses. We therefore analyzed the functional role of GZMA in a murine standard model for GvHD. For this purpose, adoptively transferred CD4+CD25+ Tregs from gzmA-/- mice were analyzed in comparison to their wild type counterparts for their capability to prevent murine GvHD. GzmA-/- Tregs home efficiently to secondary lymphoid organs and do not show phenotypic alterations with respect to activation and migration properties to inflammatory sites. Whereas gzmA-/- Tregs are highly suppressive in vitro, Tregs require GZMA to rescue hosts from murine GvHD, especially regarding gastrointestinal target organ damage. We herewith identify GZMA as critical effector molecule of human Treg function for gastrointestinal immune response in an experimental GvHD model

Systemic and stratum corneum biomarkers of severity in infant atopic dermatitis include markers of innate and T helper cell-related immunity and angiogenesis

BACKGROUND: Biomarkers of atopic dermatitis (AD) are largely lacking, especially in infant AD. Those that have been examined to date have focused mostly on serum cytokines with few on non-invasive biomarkers in the skin. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to explore biomarkers obtainable from non-invasive sampling of infant skin. We compared these to plasma biomarkers and structural and functional measures of the skin barrier. METHODS: We recruited 100 infants at first presentation with AD, who were treatment naïve to topical or systemic anti-inflammatory therapies and 20 healthy children. We sampled clinically unaffected skin by tape stripping the stratum corneum (SC). Multiple cytokines and chemokines and natural moisturizing factors (NMF) were measured in the SC and plasma. We recorded disease severity and skin barrier function. RESULTS: 19 SC and 12 plasma biomarkers showed significant difference between healthy and AD skin. Some biomarkers were common to both the SC and plasma, and others were compartment-specific. Identified biomarkers of AD severity included Th2 skewed markers (IL-13, CCL17, CCL22, IL-5), markers of innate activation (IL-18, Il-1α, IL1β, CXCL8), angiogenesis (Flt-1, VEGF) and others (sICAM-1, vCAM-1, IL-16, IL-17A). CONCLUSIONS: We identified clinically relevant biomarkers of AD, including novel markers, easily sampled and typed in infants. These markers may provide objective assessment of disease severity and suggest new therapeutic targets, or response measurement targets for AD. Future studies will be required to determine if these biomarkers, seen in very early AD, can predict disease outcomes or comorbidities

“I Want to Become a Better Person, Not Only a Better Artist”. An interview with Andrei ŞERBAN by Eugenia SARVARI

Andrei Șerban was born in Bucharest in 1943. In 1969, after graduating (in Radu Penciulescu’s directing class), he received a scholarship at La MaMa Theatre in New York, followed by an astonishing international career in theater and opera. He worked in more than forty countries. In the USA, he was associated with Robert Brustein’s American Repertory Theatre Company and worked in many famous theatres and Operas in New York, Seattle and Los Angeles. Back to Romania after 1989, he was the artistic and executive director of the National Theatre in Bucharest between 1990 and 1993, but his international career continued. His Fragments of a Greek Trilogy – Medea, at „La MaMa”, 1972; Electra, at the Sainte-Chapelle, in Paris, 1973; The Trojan Women, at „La MaMa”, 1974, reunited in a trilogy at „La MaMa” (1974) and, then, in 1990 at the National Theatre in Bucharest, are considered the most original staging of the Greek tragedy at the end of the 20th century. Between 1992 and 2018 he was Professor at Columbia University, New York. Many volumes were dedicated to his work as a stage director. He published the autobiographical volume O biografie (2007, Polirom)