Parenting behavior and the risk of becoming a victim and a bully/victim : a meta-analysis study

Objective: Being bullied has adverse effects on children's health. Children's family experiences and parenting behavior before entering school help shape their capacity to adapt and cope at school and have an impact on children's peer relationship, hence it is important to identify how parenting styles and parent–child relationship are related to victimization in order to develop intervention programs to prevent or mitigate victimization in childhood and adolescence. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of the published literature on parenting behavior and peer victimization using MEDLINE, PsychINFO, Eric and EMBASE from 1970 through the end of December 2012. We included prospective cohort studies and cross-sectional studies that investigated the association between parenting behavior and peer victimization. Results: Both victims and those who both bully and are victims (bully/victims) were more likely to be exposed to negative parenting behavior including abuse and neglect and maladaptive parenting. The effects were generally small to moderate for victims (Hedge's g range: 0.10–0.31) but moderate for bully/victims (0.13–0.68). Positive parenting behavior including good communication of parents with the child, warm and affectionate relationship, parental involvement and support, and parental supervision were protective against peer victimization. The protective effects were generally small to moderate for both victims (Hedge's g: range: −0.12 to −0.22) and bully/victims (−0.17 to −0.42). Conclusions: Negative parenting behavior is related to a moderate increase of risk for becoming a bully/victim and small to moderate effects on victim status at school. Intervention programs against bullying should extend their focus beyond schools to include families and start before children enter school

ARPES: A probe of electronic correlations

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is one of the most direct methods of studying the electronic structure of solids. By measuring the kinetic energy and angular distribution of the electrons photoemitted from a sample illuminated with sufficiently high-energy radiation, one can gain information on both the energy and momentum of the electrons propagating inside a material. This is of vital importance in elucidating the connection between electronic, magnetic, and chemical structure of solids, in particular for those complex systems which cannot be appropriately described within the independent-particle picture. Among the various classes of complex systems, of great interest are the transition metal oxides, which have been at the center stage in condensed matter physics for the last four decades. Following a general introduction to the topic, we will lay the theoretical basis needed to understand the pivotal role of ARPES in the study of such systems. After a brief overview on the state-of-the-art capabilities of the technique, we will review some of the most interesting and relevant case studies of the novel physics revealed by ARPES in 3d-, 4d- and 5d-based oxides.Comment: Chapter to appear in "Strongly Correlated Systems: Experimental Techniques", edited by A. Avella and F. Mancini, Springer Series in Solid-State Sciences (2013). A high-resolution version can be found at: http://www.phas.ubc.ca/~quantmat/ARPES/PUBLICATIONS/Reviews/ARPES_Springer.pdf. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:cond-mat/0307085, arXiv:cond-mat/020850

Electronic data safes as an infrastructure for transformational government? A case study

This article introduces and explores the potential of an active electronic data safe (AEDS) serving as an infrastructure to achieve transformational government. An AEDS connects individuals and organizations from the private and the public sector to exchange information items related to business processes following the user-managed access paradigm. To realize the transformational government’s vision of user-centricity, fundamental changes in the service provision and collaboration of public and private sector organizations are needed. Findings of a user study with a prototype of an AEDS are used to identify four barriers for the adoption of an AEDS in the light of transformational government: (1.) offering citizens unfamiliar services having the character of experience-goods; (2.) failing to fulfill common service expectations of the customers; (3.) failing to establish contextual integrity for data sharing, and, (4.) failing to establish and run an AEDS as a multi-sided platform providing an attractive business model

Electroanatomical Characteristics of Idiopathic Left Ventricular Tachycardia and Optimal Ablation Target during Sinus Rhythm: Significance of Preferential Conduction through Purkinje Fibers

∙ The authors have no financial conflicts of interest. © Copyright: Yonsei University College of Medicine 2012 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licens

Autism as a disorder of neural information processing: directions for research and targets for therapy

The broad variation in phenotypes and severities within autism spectrum disorders suggests the involvement of multiple predisposing factors, interacting in complex ways with normal developmental courses and gradients. Identification of these factors, and the common developmental path into which theyfeed, is hampered bythe large degrees of convergence from causal factors to altered brain development, and divergence from abnormal brain development into altered cognition and behaviour. Genetic, neurochemical, neuroimaging and behavioural findings on autism, as well as studies of normal development and of genetic syndromes that share symptoms with autism, offer hypotheses as to the nature of causal factors and their possible effects on the structure and dynamics of neural systems. Such alterations in neural properties may in turn perturb activity-dependent development, giving rise to a complex behavioural syndrome many steps removed from the root causes. Animal models based on genetic, neurochemical, neurophysiological, and behavioural manipulations offer the possibility of exploring these developmental processes in detail, as do human studies addressing endophenotypes beyond the diagnosis itself

Stomatin Inhibits Pannexin-1-Mediated Whole-Cell Currents by Interacting with Its Carboxyl Terminal

The pannexin-1 (Panx1) channel (often referred to as the Panx1 hemichannel) is a large-conductance channel in the plasma membrane of many mammalian cells. While opening of the channel is potentially detrimental to the cell, little is known about how it is regulated under physiological conditions. Here we show that stomatin inhibited Panx1 channel activity. In transfected HEK-293 cells, stomatin reduced Panx1-mediated whole-cell currents without altering either the total or membrane surface Panx1 protein expression. Stomatin coimmunoprecipitated with full-length Panx1 as well as a Panx1 fragment containing the fourth membrane-spanning domain and the cytosolic carboxyl terminal. The inhibitory effect of stomatin on Panx1-mediated whole-cell currents was abolished by truncating Panx1 at a site in the cytosolic carboxyl terminal. In primary culture of mouse astrocytes, inhibition of endogenous stomatin expression by small interfering RNA enhanced Panx1-mediated outward whole-cell currents. These observations suggest that stomatin may play important roles in astrocytes and other cells by interacting with Panx1 carboxyl terminal to limit channel opening

Transcriptomic analysis of crustacean neuropeptide signaling during the moult cycle in the green shore crab, Carcinus maenas

Abstract Background Ecdysis is an innate behaviour programme by which all arthropods moult their exoskeletons. The complex suite of interacting neuropeptides that orchestrate ecdysis is well studied in insects, but details of the crustacean ecdysis cassette are fragmented and our understanding of this process is comparatively crude, preventing a meaningful evolutionary comparison. To begin to address this issue we identified transcripts coding for neuropeptides and their putative receptors in the central nervous system (CNS) and Y-organs (YO) within the crab, Carcinus maenas, and mapped their expression profiles across accurately defined stages of the moult cycle using RNA-sequencing. We also studied gene expression within the epidermally-derived YO, the only defined role for which is the synthesis of ecdysteroid moulting hormones, to elucidate peptides and G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that might have a function in ecdysis. Results Transcriptome mining of the CNS transcriptome yielded neuropeptide transcripts representing 47 neuropeptide families and 66 putative GPCRs. Neuropeptide transcripts that were differentially expressed across the moult cycle included carcikinin, crustacean hyperglycemic hormone-2, and crustacean cardioactive peptide, whilst a single putative neuropeptide receptor, proctolin R1, was differentially expressed. Carcikinin mRNA in particular exhibited dramatic increases in expression pre-moult, suggesting a role in ecdysis regulation. Crustacean hyperglycemic hormone-2 mRNA expression was elevated post- and pre-moult whilst that for crustacean cardioactive peptide, which regulates insect ecdysis and plays a role in stereotyped motor activity during crustacean ecdysis, was elevated in pre-moult. In the YO, several putative neuropeptide receptor transcripts were differentially expressed across the moult cycle, as was the mRNA for the neuropeptide, neuroparsin-1. Whilst differential gene expression of putative neuropeptide receptors was expected, the discovery and differential expression of neuropeptide transcripts was surprising. Analysis of GPCR transcript expression between YO and epidermis revealed 11 to be upregulated in the YO and thus are now candidates for peptide control of ecdysis. Conclusions The data presented represent a comprehensive survey of the deduced C. maenas neuropeptidome and putative GPCRs. Importantly, we have described the differential expression profiles of these transcripts across accurately staged moult cycles in tissues key to the ecdysis programme. This study provides important avenues for the future exploration of functionality of receptor-ligand pairs in crustaceans

Significance analysis of microarray for relative quantitation of LC/MS data in proteomics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although fold change is a commonly used criterion in quantitative proteomics for differentiating regulated proteins, it does not provide an estimation of false positive and false negative rates that is often desirable in a large-scale quantitative proteomic analysis. We explore the possibility of applying the Significance Analysis of Microarray (SAM) method (PNAS 98:5116-5121) to a differential proteomics problem of two samples with replicates. The quantitative proteomic analysis was carried out with nanoliquid chromatography/linear iron trap-Fourier transform mass spectrometry. The biological sample model included two <it>Mycobacterium smegmatis </it>unlabeled cell cultures grown at pH 5 and pH 7. The objective was to compare the protein relative abundance between the two unlabeled cell cultures, with an emphasis on significance analysis of protein differential expression using the SAM method. Results using the SAM method are compared with those obtained by fold change and the conventional <it>t</it>-test.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have applied the SAM method to solve the two-sample significance analysis problem in liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) based quantitative proteomics. We grew the pH5 and pH7 unlabelled cell cultures in triplicate resulting in 6 biological replicates. Each biological replicate was mixed with a common ¹⁵N-labeled reference culture cells for normalization prior to SDS/PAGE fractionation and LC/MS analysis. For each biological replicate, one center SDS/PAGE gel fraction was selected for triplicate LC/MS analysis. There were 121 proteins quantified in at least 5 of the 6 biological replicates. Of these 121 proteins, 106 were significant in differential expression by the <it>t</it>-test (<it>p </it>< 0.05) based on peptide-level replicates, 54 were significant in differential expression by SAM with Δ = 0.68 cutoff and false positive rate at 5%, and 29 were significant in differential expression by the <it>t</it>-test (<it>p </it>< 0.05) based on protein-level replicates. The results indicate that SAM appears to overcome the false positives one encounters using the peptide-based <it>t</it>-test while allowing for identification of a greater number of differentially expressed proteins than the protein-based <it>t</it>-test.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We demonstrate that the SAM method can be adapted for effective significance analysis of proteomic data. It provides much richer information about the protein differential expression profiles and is particularly useful in the estimation of false discovery rates and miss rates.</p

Complicated skin, skin structure and soft tissue infections - are we threatened by multi-resistant pathogens?

Tissue infections or skin, skin structure, and deep seated soft tissue infections are general terms for infections of the entire skin layer including the subcutaneous and muscle tissue layers and their respective fascia structures. Infections of the different mediastinal fascias (mediastinitis) and retroperitoneal fascia infections also belong to this category. Due to the variability of their clinical presentation, skin and soft tissue infections can be classified according to different features. The following aspects can be used for classification

Ethological principles predict the neuropeptides co-opted to influence parenting

Ethologists predicted that parental care evolves by modifying behavioural precursors in the asocial ancestor. As a corollary, we predict that the evolved mechanistic changes reside in genetic pathways underlying these traits. Here we test our hypothesis in female burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides, an insect where caring adults regurgitate food to begging, dependent offspring. We quantify neuropeptide abundance in brains collected from three behavioural states: solitary virgins, individuals actively parenting or post-parenting solitary adults and quantify 133 peptides belonging to 18 neuropeptides. Eight neuropeptides differ in abundance in one or more states, with increased abundance during parenting in seven. None of these eight neuropeptides have been associated with parental care previously, but all have roles in predicted behavioural precursors for parenting. Our study supports the hypothesis that predictable traits and pathways are targets of selection during the evolution of parenting and suggests additional candidate neuropeptides to study in the context of parenting