Renegotiating father’s identity following stillbirth: what and who am I?

This study examines the experiences of men following stillbirth in particular the challenges they face in claiming their identity as a father of an absent child. Fathers felt diminished when concerns about how they were coping were directed only to the women. Contrary to the notion that father’s experience suggests men suffer less distress, this research shows that men also deal with loss at an emotional level. This investigation into men’s accounts of loss forms part of a larger study in which 28 men and women participated in interviews and focus groups about their experiences of perinatal death. By listening to narrative accounts of loss, the passage to parenthood for bereaved men represents a disruption and re-evaluation of who they are, what they knew about the world as they negotiate the incomprehensibility of the death itself. Narratives by bereaved men also reveal how their sense of self and identity is mediated by the social and cultural milieu to which they belong and are largely disenfranchising experiences when friends, family and others, at times, fail to acknowledge the enormity of their loss. The findings suggest that recognition of the death of baby who is stillborn as well as the impact of the death for father’s is intertwined with personal identity. Men in this study needed to receive recognition as fathers, both at the time of their loss and after. In examining the reproductive and bereavement journey of men, several domains occurred to illuminate the experience of men including; men as support partners; the impact of the death; parenting an absent child [advocate, protector]. The findings from this study will offer insight into the experiences of men that will resonate for others including practitioners who support individuals going through similar experiences. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the University of Bristol Ethics Committee as part of doctoral research. Written informed consent was obtained by all study participants. No formal recruitment was obtained through the National Health Service or Government Institution and was entirely voluntary

Early vocabulary development in deaf native signers: a British Sign Language adaptation of the communicative development inventories

Background: There is a dearth of assessments of sign language development in young deaf children. This study gathered age-related scores from a sample of deaf native signing children using an adapted version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Fenson et al., 1994). Method: Parental reports on children’s receptive and expressive signing were collected longitudinally on 29 deaf native British Sign Language (BSL) users, aged 8–36 months, yielding 146 datasets. Results: A smooth upward growth curve was obtained for early vocabulary development and percentile scores were derived. In the main, receptive scores were in advance of expressive scores. No gender bias was observed. Correlational analysis identified factors associated with vocabulary development, including parental education and mothers’ training in BSL. Individual children’s profiles showed a range of development and some evidence of a growth spurt. Clinical and research issues relating to the measure are discussed. Conclusions: The study has developed a valid, reliable measure of vocabulary development in BSL. Further research is needed to investigate the relationship between vocabulary acquisition in native and non-native signers

How do midwives facilitate women to give birth during physiological second stage of labour? A protocol for a systematic review

BackgroundMidwives’ practices during the second stage of labour vary nationally and internationally. We aim to retrieve evidence that supports high-quality intrapartum care by conducting a systematic review of the literature.MethodsElectronic bibliographic databases including PubMed, EMBASE.com, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycINFO, Maternity and Infant Care Database (through MIDIRS), and The Cochrane Library will be searched to identify studies that meet the inclusion criteria. No language or publication date constraints will be applied. Articles that pass the two-stage screening process will then be assessed for risk of bias and have their reference lists hand searched.DiscussionA midwife’s practice can be influenced by education and cultural practices but ultimately it should be informed by up-to-date research evidence. By analysing and synthesising the results of the studies, this systematic review will provide valuable insight into high-quality evidence-based midwifery care, which can inform practice, education and future research

How do midwives facilitate women to give birth during physiological second stage of labour? A protocol for a systematic review

BackgroundMidwives’ practices during the second stage of labour vary nationally and internationally. We aim to retrieve evidence that supports high-quality intrapartum care by conducting a systematic review of the literature.MethodsElectronic bibliographic databases including PubMed, EMBASE.com, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycINFO, Maternity and Infant Care Database (through MIDIRS), and The Cochrane Library will be searched to identify studies that meet the inclusion criteria. No language or publication date constraints will be applied. Articles that pass the two-stage screening process will then be assessed for risk of bias and have their reference lists hand searched.DiscussionA midwife’s practice can be influenced by education and cultural practices but ultimately it should be informed by up-to-date research evidence. By analysing and synthesising the results of the studies, this systematic review will provide valuable insight into high-quality evidence-based midwifery care, which can inform practice, education and future research

Neural Correlates of True Memory, False Memory, and Deception

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine whether neural activity can differentiate between true memory, false memory, and deception. Subjects heard a series of semantically related words and were later asked to make a recognition judgment of old words, semantically related nonstudied words (lures for false recognition), and unrelated new words. They were also asked to make a deceptive response to half of the old and unrelated new words. There were 3 main findings. First, consistent with the notion that executive function supports deception, 2 types of deception (pretending to know and pretending not to know) recruited prefrontal activity. Second, consistent with the sensory reactivation hypothesis, the difference between true recognition and false recognition was found in the left temporoparietal regions probably engaged in the encoding of auditorily presented words. Third, the left prefrontal cortex was activated during pretending to know relative to correct rejection and false recognition, whereas the right anterior hippocampus was activated during false recognition relative to correct rejection and pretending to know. These findings indicate that fMRI can detect the difference in brain activity between deception and false memory despite the fact that subjects respond with “I know” to novel events in both processes

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

Aberration hubs in protein interaction networks highlight actionable targets in cancer

Despite efforts for extensive molecular characterization of cancer patients, such as the international cancer genome consortium (ICGC) and the cancer genome atlas (TCGA), the heterogeneous nature of cancer and our limited knowledge of the contextual function of proteins have complicated the identification of targetable genes. Here, we present Aberration Hub Analysis for Cancer (AbHAC) as a novel integrative approach to pinpoint aberration hubs, i.e. individual proteins that interact extensively with genes that show aberrant mutation or expression. Our analysis of the breast cancer data of the TCGA and the renal cancer data from the ICGC shows that aberration hubs are involved in relevant cancer pathways, including factors promoting cell cycle and DNA replication in basal-like breast tumors, and Src kinase and VEGF signaling in renal carcinoma. Moreover, our analysis uncovers novel functionally relevant and actionable targets, among which we have experimentally validated abnormal splicing of spleen tyrosine kinase as a key factor for cell proliferation in renal cancer. Thus, AbHAC provides an effective strategy to uncover novel disease factors that are only identifiable by examining mutational and expression data in the context of biological networks

Neural bases of enhanced attentional control: Lessons from action video game players.

OBJECTIVES: The ability to resist distraction and focus on-task-relevant information while being responsive to changes in the environment is fundamental to goal-directed behavior. Such attentional control abilities are regulated by a constant interplay between previously characterized bottom-up and top-down attentional networks. Here we ask about the neural changes within these two attentional networks that may mediate enhanced attentional control. MATERIALS AND METHODS: To address this question, we contrasted action video game players (AVGPs) and nonvideo game players (NVGPs) in a Posner-cueing paradigm, building on studies documenting enhanced attentional control in AVGPs. RESULTS: Behavioral results indicated a trend for more efficient target processing in AVGPs, and better suppression in rare catch trials for which responses had to be withheld. During the cue period, AVGPs recruited the top-down network less than NVGPs, despite showing comparable validity effects, in line with a greater efficiency of that network in AVGPs. During target processing, as previously shown, recruitment of top-down areas correlated with greater processing difficulties, but only in NVGPs. AVGPs showed no such effect, but rather greater activation across the two networks. In particular, the right temporoparietal junction, middle frontal gyrus, and superior parietal cortex predicted better task performance in catch trials. A functional connectivity analysis revealed enhanced correlated activity in AVGPs compared to NVGPs between parietal and visual areas. CONCLUSIONS: These results point to dynamic functional reconfigurations of top-down and bottom-up attentional networks in AVGPs as attentional demands vary. Aspects of this functional reconfiguration that may act as key signatures of high attentional control are discussed