How Do Maternal Subclinical Symptoms Influence Infant Motor Development during the First Year of Life?

An unavoidable reciprocal influence characterizes the mother-child dyad. Within this relationship, the presence of depression, somatization, hostility, paranoid ideation, and interpersonal sensitivity symptoms at a subclinical level and their possible input on infant motor competences has not been yet considered. Bearing in mind that motor abilities represent not only an indicator of the infant\u2019s health-status, but also the principal field to infer his/her needs, feelings and intentions, in this study the quality of infants\u2019 movements were assessed and analyzed in relationship with the maternal attitudes. The aim of this research was to investigate if/how maternal symptomatology may pilot infant\u2019s motor development during his/her first year of life by observing the characteristics of motor development in infants aged 0\u201311 months. Participants included 123 mothers and their infants (0\u201311 months-old). Mothers\u2019 symptomatology was screened with the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), while infants were tested with the Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-Second Edition. All dyads belonged to a non-clinical population, however, on the basis of SCL-90-R scores, the mothers\u2019 sample was divided into two groups: normative and subclinical. Descriptive, t-test, correlational analysis between PDMS-2 scores and SCL-90-R results are reported, as well as regression models results. Both positive and negative correlations were found between maternal perceived symptomatology, Somatization (SOM), Interpersonal Sensitivity (IS), Depression (DEP), Hostility (HOS), and Paranoid Ideation (PAR) and infants\u2019 motor abilities. These results were further verified by applying regression models to predict the infant\u2019s motor outcomes on the basis of babies\u2019 age and maternal status. The presence of positive symptoms in the SCL-90-R questionnaire (subclinical group) predicted good visual-motor integration and stationary competences in the babies. In particular, depressive and hostility feelings in mothers seemed to induce an infant motor behavior characterized by a major control of the environmental space. When mothers perceived a higher level of hostility and somatization, their babies showed difficulties in sharing action space, such as required in the development of stationary positions and grasping abilities. In a completely different way, when infants can rely on a mother with low-perceived symptoms (normative group) his/her motor performances develop with a higher degree of freedom/independence. These findings suggest, for the first time, that even in a non- clinical sample, mother\u2019s perceived-symptoms can produce important consequences not in infant motor development as a whole, but in some specific areas, contributing to shape the infant\u2019s motor ability and his/her capability to act in the world

The two-loop five-particle amplitude in N=8\mathcal{N}=8 supergravity

We compute for the first time the two-loop five-particle amplitude in $\mathcal{N}=8$ supergravity. Starting from the known integrand, we perform an integration-by-parts reduction and express the answer in terms of uniform weight master integrals. The latter are known to evaluate to non-planar pentagon functions, described by a 31-letter symbol alphabet. We express the final result for the amplitude in terms of uniform weight four symbols, multiplied by a small set of rational factors. The amplitude satisfies the expected factorization properties when one external graviton becomes soft, and when two external gravitons become collinear. We verify that the soft divergences of the amplitude exponentiate, and extract the finite remainder function. The latter depends on fewer rational factors, and is independent of one of the symbol letters. By analyzing identities involving rational factors and symbols we find a remarkably compact representation in terms of a single seed function, summed over all permutations of external particles. Finally, we work out the multi-Regge limit, and present explicitly the leading logarithmic terms in the limit. The full symbol of the IR-subtracted hard function is provided as an ancillary file.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure, 8 ancillary file

I CANALI HCN E IL LORO RUOLO NELL'ECCITABILITÀ CARDIACA E NEURONALE - PARTE I: CARATTERIZZAZIONE DI CELLULE 'SINOATRIAL-LIKE' DA PRECURSORI CD166+ DERIVATI DA MESCS - PARTE II: SCREENING GENETICO DI PAZIENTI AFFETTI DA EPILESSIA DEL LOBO TEMPORALE

TITLE: I CANALI HCN E IL LORO RUOLO NELL\u2019ECCITABILIT\uc0 CARDIACA E NEURONALE PARTE I: CARATTERIZZAZIONE DI CELLULE \u201cSINOATRIAL-LIKE\u201d DA PRECURSORI CD166+ DERIVATI DA mESCs PARTE II: SCREENING GENETICO DI PAZIENTI AFFETTI DA EPILESSIA DEL LOBO TEMPORALE - GENERAL INTRODUCTION HCN channels and the related current (If/h) contribute to many important physiological processes, such as cardiac pacemaker activity and neuronal excitability, in particular setting the membrane resting potential and integrating dendritic signals. - PART I This part of my project was aimed at developing a biological pacemaker, that is a cellular substrate able to induce ectopic spontaneous activity in the host tissue. Our strategy is based on differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and selection of cell progenitors based on expression of the marker CD166, at day 8 of mouse ESC differentiation. CD166 is transiently co-expressed with HCN4, a marker of the cardiac pacemaker tissue, during heart development. In culture, CD166-selected cells develop into spontaneously beating cells that express low levels of ventricular genes (Cx43, Kv4.2, HCN2, Nkx2.5) and high levels of genes involved both in SAN development (Tbx18, Tbx3, Isl-1, Shox2) and function (Cx30.2, HCN4, HCN1, CaV1.3). Furthermore CD166+ cells form an autorhythmic syncytium made of cells morphologically similar to and with the electrophysiological properties of murine SAN myocytes. Acetylcholine decreases ( 1223%) and isoproterenol increases (+57%) their beating rate because of the presence of both the muscarinic and \u3b2-adrenergic receptors. In co-cultures, these CD166+ cells are also able to pace neonatal ventricular myocytes at a rate faster than their own. Finally, CD166-selected cells do not express pluripotency genes and don\u2019t induce teratomas in vivo. - PART II Because Ih current is important in the control of neuronal excitability we have carried out a genomic screening of patients affected by temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) in the search of rare nucleotidic alterations (SNPs) in the genes encoding for the HCN1 and HCN2 isoforms and MiRP1 (KCNE2) which contribute to native Ih. After DNA extraction from blood samples and efforts in PCR condition setting, we\u2019ve been analyzing their sequencings. Up to now, we\u2019ve found 12 synonymous polymorphisms (SNPs) in hHcn2 and only a deletion in hHcn1 (del 2 gly 73-74). All these DNA variations have been already recorded in the specific database (dbSNP) and were not correlated to epilepsy. Furthermore, we\u2019ve not found any alteration in KCNE2 sequence. - GENERAL CONCLUSIONS Due to the importance of HCN channels in cellular excitability, they may represent important targets for therapeutic interventions. A cell-based biological pacemaker development would contribute to ameliorate decisively patient quality of life overcoming the major drawbacks associated with electronic devices. Understanding HCN-mediated epilepsy pathological mechanisms could therefore allow to discover drugs able to limit the channel alterations and thus contribute to improve patient everyday life

Perceived maternal symptomatology and its influence on newborn’s motor development. Study on non-clinical mother-infant (1-11 months) dyads.

Introduction: Newborn’s first approach to the world takes place in the relationship with his/her mother. He/she builds his/her-own experiences from mother's repertoire of facial expressions, voices, gestures. Contemporarily, the process of becoming mother entails a wide range of changes, which may lead to psychopathology conditions, among which post-partum depression is the most common. This disease is known to negatively influence maternal abilities and produce feelings of greater struggle in caring the infant, sense of guilty and poor self-efficacy. Motor development represents the principal field of observation in helping to infer infant's needs, feelings and intentions. Its investigation may be a powerful means to understand the influence of maternal attitudes (e.g. depressive-symptoms) on infant motor-development. Aims of the study: The main aim of this research was to investigate the characteristics of motor- development in infants aged 1-11 months, and if/how maternal depressive-symptomatology may influence infant's motor-development during his/her first year of life. Material&Methods: Data were collected within the wider Italian-validation-project of the Peabody Developmental Motor Scale-II (PDMS-2). Participants included 123 infants (1-11 months old) with their mothers. Infants were tested with PDMS-2 and mothers’ symptomatology was screened with SCL-90-TR and CES-D. All dyads belong to non-clinical population. We calculated correlational- and regression-analysis between PDMS-2,SCL-90 and CES-D. Results: The best predictor of infants’ motor-performance is the age in months. Perceived maternal somatization negatively predicted infants’ Fine-Motor-scores. On the contrary, positive correlations were found between depressive perceived symptoms, InterpersonalSensitivity, Hostility and Paranoid Ideation and infants Gross- Motor abilities, especially Locomotion. Conclusions: Results suggest that mother's perceived symptoms influence the ability of the infant to move trough the space, while perceived levels of somatization negatively predict his/her fine- motor development. Age-in-months is the most accurate predictor of motor-performance. Further analyses are needed to better understand relationship between maternal-symptomatology and infant motor-skills

Tutela della salute tra sapere medico e acquisizioni tecnologiche

La medicina tecnologica nella sua applicazione genera profondi conflitti tra pazienti ed operatori sanitari e la formazione bioetica \ue8 oggi giorno indispensabile per acquisire la consapevolezza dei valori che guidano le opinioni e le scelte in materia di sanit\ue0. In tal senso la formazione bioetica \ue8 parte integrante delle conoscenze di cui attualmente l'operatore sanitario non pu\uf2 fare a meno per una professionalit\ue0 all'altezza dei tempi

Cauchy's formulas for random walks in bounded domains

Cauchy's formula was originally established for random straight paths crossing a body $B \subset \mathbb{R}^{n}$ and basically relates the average chord length through $B$ to the ratio between the volume and the surface of the body itself. The original statement was later extended in the context of transport theory so as to cover the stochastic paths of Pearson random walks with exponentially distributed flight lengths traversing a bounded domain. Some heuristic arguments suggest that Cauchy's formula may also hold true for Pearson random walks with arbitrarily distributed flight lengths. For such a broad class of stochastic processes, we rigorously derive a generalized Cauchy's formula for the average length travelled by the walkers in the body, and show that this quantity depends indeed only on the ratio between the volume and the surface, provided that some constraints are imposed on the entrance step of the walker in $B$. Similar results are obtained also for the average number of collisions performed by the walker in $B$, and an extension to absorbing media is discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Бальнеологічно-рекреаційний потенціал санаторію-профілакторію «Журавка»

Метою статті є оцінка природно-рекреаційного потенціалу санаторію-профілакторію «Журавка» для здійснення лікувально-оздоровчої діяльності, реабілітації постраждалих військовослужбовців неоголошеної війни в Україні, відпочинку та активізації туризму. Курортно-оздоровчий заклад руйнується впродовж кількох десятиліть, тому актуальним є питання швидкого відновлення функціонування установи

Екологічний стан деревостанів Турійського лісового господарства Волинської області

Мета дослідження. Проаналізувати породний, віковий стан деревостанів Турійського лісового господарства, лісогосподарські заходи, що проводяться для зниження рівня існуючих загроз. Через значне поширення штучно насаджених лісів, масштабне меліоративне втручання, кліматичні зміни, зниження водності річок та озер, рівня підземних вод і антропогенний вплив поширюються небезпечні процеси захворювання і всихання деревостанів Полісся, площа яких щороку зростає. Необхідні швидкі рішення щодо локалізації поширення уражених площ та відновлення і насадження нових лісових площ із врахуванням лісорослинних умов та природного складу лісів. Життєздатність і довговічність лісів, їх стійкість покращить різновікова структура деревостану мішаних лісів, значний відсоток стиглих дерев різних порід

Fungal aneurism of the right posterior inferior cerebellar artery (PICA)

In this case-report, the Authors show the case of a sudden death occurred in a 38-year-old woman submitted to surgical excision of a right acoustic neurinoma. At the autopsy, was detected a cerebral hemorrhage with multifocal localization by a ruptured rare fungal aneurysm of the Posterior Inferior Cerebellar Arthery (PICA). The PCR analysis, carried out on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue, identified the Aspergillus Penicillioides as the involved pathogen. We discuss the main points of infectious aneurysms, being a potential neurosurgical complication