Prognostic value of tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) and its complex with the type-1 inhibitor (PAI-1) in breast cancer

Item does not contain fulltex

Effects of music therapy in the treatment of children with delayed speech development - results of a pilot study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Language development is one of the most significant processes of early childhood development. Children with delayed speech development are more at risk of acquiring other cognitive, social-emotional, and school-related problems. Music therapy appears to facilitate speech development in children, even within a short period of time. The aim of this pilot study is to explore the effects of music therapy in children with delayed speech development.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 18 children aged 3.5 to 6 years with delayed speech development took part in this observational study in which music therapy and no treatment were compared to demonstrate effectiveness. Individual music therapy was provided on an outpatient basis. An ABAB reversal design with alternations between music therapy and no treatment with an interval of approximately eight weeks between the blocks was chosen. Before and after each study period, a speech development test, a non-verbal intelligence test for children, and music therapy assessment scales were used to evaluate the speech development of the children.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Compared to the baseline, we found a positive development in the study group after receiving music therapy. Both phonological capacity and the children's understanding of speech increased under treatment, as well as their cognitive structures, action patterns, and level of intelligence. Throughout the study period, developmental age converged with their biological age. Ratings according to the Nordoff-Robbins scales showed clinically significant changes in the children, namely in the areas of client-therapist relationship and communication.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study suggests that music therapy may have a measurable effect on the speech development of children through the treatment's interactions with fundamental aspects of speech development, including the ability to form and maintain relationships and prosodic abilities. Thus, music therapy may provide a basic and supportive therapy for children with delayed speech development. Further studies should be conducted to investigate the mechanisms of these interactions in greater depth.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>The trial is registered in the German clinical trials register; Trial-No.: DRKS00000343</p

Coexistence via Resource Partitioning Fails to Generate an Increase in Community Function

Classic ecological theory suggests that resource partitioning facilitates the coexistence of species by reducing inter-specific competition. A byproduct of this process is an increase in overall community function, because a greater spectrum of resources can be used. In contrast, coexistence facilitated by neutral mechanisms is not expected to increase function. We studied coexistence in laboratory microcosms of the bactivorous ciliates Paramecium aurelia and Colpidium striatum to understand the relationship between function and coexistence mechanism. We quantified population and community-level function (biomass and oxygen consumption), competitive interactions, and resource partitioning. The two ciliates partitioned their bacterial resource along a size axis, with the larger ciliate consuming larger bacteria than the smaller ciliate. Despite this, there was no gain in function at the community level for either biomass or oxygen consumption, and competitive effects were symmetrical within and between species. Because other potential coexistence mechanisms can be ruled out, it is likely that inter-specific interference competition diminished the expected gain in function generated by resource partitioning, leading to a system that appeared competitively neutral even when structured by niche partitioning. We also analyzed several previous studies where two species of protists coexisted and found that the two-species communities showed a broad range of biomass levels relative to the single-species states

Siderophore production by Bacillus megaterium : effect of growth-phase and cultural conditions

Siderophore production by Bacillus megaterium was detected, in an iron-deficient culture medium, during the exponential growth phase, prior to the sporulation, in the presence of glucose; these results suggested that the onset of siderophore production did not require glucose depletion and was not related with the sporulation. The siderophore production by B. megaterium was affected by the carbon source used. The growth on glycerol promoted the very high siderophore production (1,182 μmol g−1 dry weight biomass); the opposite effect was observed in the presence of mannose (251 μmol g−1 dry weight biomass). The growth in the presence of fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, maltose or sucrose, originated similar concentrations of siderophore (546–842 μmol g−1 dry weight biomass). Aeration had a positive effect on the production of siderophore. Incubation of B. megaterium under static conditions delayed and reduced the growth and the production of siderophore, compared with the incubation in stirred conditions.The authors thank Porto University/Totta Bank for their financial support through the project "Microbiological production of chelating agents" (Ref: 180). The authors also thank the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Portuguese Government for their financial support of this work through the grants Strategic project-LA23/2013-2014 (IBB) and PEST-C/EQB/LA0006/2011 (REQUIMTE). Manuela D. Machado gratefully acknowledges the postdoctoral (SFRH/BPD/72816/2010) grant from FCT

Absence of Ca2+-stimulated adenylyl cyclases leads to reduced synaptic plasticity and impaired experience-dependent fear memory

Ca2+-stimulated adenylyl cyclase (AC) 1 and 8 are two genes that have been shown to play critical roles in fear memory. AC1 and AC8 couple neuronal activity and intracellular Ca2+ increases to the production of cyclic adenosine monophosphate and are localized synaptically, suggesting that Ca2+-stimulated ACs may modulate synaptic plasticity. Here, we first established that Ca2+-stimulated ACs modulate protein markers of synaptic activity at baseline and after learning. Primary hippocampal cell cultures showed that AC1/AC8 double-knockout (DKO) mice have reduced SV2, a synaptic vesicle protein, abundance along their dendritic processes, and this reduction can be rescued through lentivirus delivery of AC8 to the DKO cells. Additionally, phospho-synapsin, a protein implicated in the regulation of neurotransmitter release at the synapse, is decreased in vivo 1 h after conditioned fear (CF) training in DKO mice. Importantly, additional experiments showed that long-term potentiation deficits present in DKO mice are rescued by acutely replacing AC8 in the forebrain, further supporting the idea that Ca2+-stimulated AC activity is a crucial modulator of synaptic plasticity. Previous studies have demonstrated that memory is continually modulated by gene–environment interactions. The last set of experiments evaluated the effects of knocking out AC1 and AC8 genes on experience-dependent changes in CF memory. We showed that the strength of CF memory in wild-type mice is determined by previous environment, minimal or enriched, whereas memory in DKO mice is unaffected. Thus, overall these results show that AC1 and AC8 modulate markers of synaptic activity and help integrate environmental information to modulate fear memory

Mesenchymal stem cell-conditioned medium reduces disease severity and immune responses in inflammatory arthritis

We evaluated the therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cell-conditioned medium (CM-MSC) as an alternative to cell therapy in an antigen-induced model of arthritis (AIA). Disease severity and cartilage loss were evaluated by histopathological analysis of arthritic knee joints and immunostaining of aggrecan neoepitopes. Cell proliferation was assessed for activated and naïve CD4+ T cells from healthy mice following culture with CM-MSC or co-culture with MSCs. T cell polarization was analysed in CD4+ T cells isolated from spleens and lymph nodes of arthritic mice treated with CM-MSC or MSCs. CM-MSC treatment significantly reduced knee-joint swelling, histopathological signs of AIA, cartilage loss and suppressed TNFα induction. Proliferation of CD4+ cells from spleens of healthy mice was not affected by CM-MSC but reduced when cells were co-cultured with MSCs. In the presence of CM-MSC or MSCs, increases in IL-10 concentration were observed in culture medium. Finally, CD4+ T cells from arthritic mice treated with CM-MSC showed increases in FOXP3 and IL-4 expression and positively affected the Treg:Th17 balance in the tissue. CM-MSC treatment reduces cartilage damage and suppresses immune responses by reducing aggrecan cleavage, enhancing Treg function and adjusting the Treg:Th17 ratio. CM-MSC may provide an effective cell-free therapy for inflammatory arthritis

Primary Raynaud's phenomenon in an infant: a case report and review of literature

Raynaud's phenomenon (RP) is an extremely unusual finding in early infancy. In the present report we describe a one-month-old previously healthy male infant who presented with unilateral acrocyanosis. Although infantile acrocyanosis is known to be a benign and self-resolving condition, it is generally bilateral and symmetric. The unilateral nature of the acrocyanosis was an atypical finding in this infant. Consequently, he was closely monitored to evaluate the progression of his acrocyanosis. Based on his benign clinical course and failure to demonstrate other etiologies contributing to his acrocyanosis, he was diagnosed to have primary RP. Due to the rarity of RP in children, we review the progress in understanding the pathophysiology, epidemiology and management of RP and additionally discuss the differential diagnosis of unilateral and bilateral acrocyanosis in infants

Why Robots Should Be Social: Enhancing Machine Learning through Social Human-Robot Interaction.

Social learning is a powerful method for cultural propagation of knowledge and skills relying on a complex interplay of learning strategies, social ecology and the human propensity for both learning and tutoring. Social learning has the potential to be an equally potent learning strategy for artificial systems and robots in specific. However, given the complexity and unstructured nature of social learning, implementing social machine learning proves to be a challenging problem. We study one particular aspect of social machine learning: that of offering social cues during the learning interaction. Specifically, we study whether people are sensitive to social cues offered by a learning robot, in a similar way to children's social bids for tutoring. We use a child-like social robot and a task in which the robot has to learn the meaning of words. For this a simple turn-based interaction is used, based on language games. Two conditions are tested: one in which the robot uses social means to invite a human teacher to provide information based on what the robot requires to fill gaps in its knowledge (i.e. expression of a learning preference); the other in which the robot does not provide social cues to communicate a learning preference. We observe that conveying a learning preference through the use of social cues results in better and faster learning by the robot. People also seem to form a "mental model" of the robot, tailoring the tutoring to the robot's performance as opposed to using simply random teaching. In addition, the social learning shows a clear gender effect with female participants being responsive to the robot's bids, while male teachers appear to be less receptive. This work shows how additional social cues in social machine learning can result in people offering better quality learning input to artificial systems, resulting in improved learning performance

Geohelminth Infections among Pregnant Women in Rural Western Kenya; a Cross-Sectional Study

In rural western Kenya, both malaria and intestinal infections with worms are common. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to infection with malaria, but the effect on pregnancy of intestinal infections with worms is not clear and may depend both on how heavy the worm infection is and on the type of worm. Additionally, it is not clear whether infections with worms may affect malaria infections. In this article, we begin to disentangle some of these issues. Intestinal infections with worms were diagnosed in three-quarters of 390 pregnant women in western Kenya who provided a stool sample. In these women, intestinal worm infections caused a modest decrease both in haemoglobin levels and indicators of nutritional status. Women in their second and third pregnancies who were diagnosed with one particular type of worm infection (Ascaris lumbricoides) were less likely to have malaria than other women in their second or third pregnancies who did not have this type of worm infection. Although our results suggest that it would be good advice to treat women with drugs for intestinal worm infections during their pregnancy in this area, the effect on maternal and infant health and malaria infection needs further study