Facial emotion recognition in refugee children with a history of war trauma.

Over 36 million children are currently displaced due to war, yet we know little about how these experiences of war and displacement affect their socioemotional development-notably how they perceive facial expressions. Across three different experiments, we investigated the effects of war trauma exposure on facial emotion recognition in Syrian refugee (n = 130, Mage = 9.3 years, 63 female) and Jordanian nonrefugee children (n = 148, Mage = 9.4 years, 66 female) living in Jordan (data collected 2019-2020). Children in the two groups differed in trauma exposure, but not on any of our measures of mental health. In Experiment 1, we measured children's biases to perceive an emotion using morphed facial expressions and found no evidence that biases differed between refugees and nonrefugees. In Experiment 2, we adapted a novel perceptual scaling task that bypasses semantic knowledge, and again found no differences between the two group's discrimination of facial expressions. Finally, in Experiment 3, we recorded children's eye movements as they identified Middle Eastern actors' facial expressions, and again found no differences between the groups in either their identification accuracies or scanning strategies. Taken together, our results suggest that exposure to war-related trauma and displacement during early development, when reported by the caregiver but not always recollected by the child, does not appear to alter emotion recognition of facial expressions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Effectiveness of a community-led shared book reading intervention in Syrian refugee children: a randomised controlled trial.

Community-led, shared book reading programs may help improve refugee children's reading abilities and attitudes towards reading. We Love Reading (WLR)-a light-touch, community-led, shared book reading program-was evaluated in a pre-registered, wait-listed, randomised controlled trial (AEARCTR-0006523). 322 Syrian refugee mother-child dyads (children: 4-8-year-olds, 50.0% female) in Jordan were tested at two timepoints, 15 weeks apart. WLR did not significantly affect child literacy or child-reported child attitudes toward reading (ps > 0.05). Mothers did report improved child attitudes toward reading from WLR (p = 0.046, η2 = 0.013). The intervention did not lead to improvements in family relationships (ps > 0.05). WLR may have promise in improving attitudes toward reading in forcibly displaced children but did not affect literacy or child-reported attitudes toward reading; these results provide insight into what changes are needed for effective shared book reading interventions in this population

Predictors of Literacy and Attitudes Toward Reading Among Syrian Refugee Children in Jordan

Refugee children often face disruptions to their education before and during displacement. However, little is known about either levels or predictors of refugee children’s literacy or about their attitudes toward reading in low- or middle-income countries. To address this, we conducted in-home literacy assessments using the Holistic Assessment of Learning and Development Outcomes with 322 Syrian refugee mother–child dyads who lived in Jordan (child age range 4–8 years, M = 6.32 years, 50% female). Overall, the children had quite low levels of literacy, although they indicated a strong enthusiasm for reading. Child age, maternal education, and maternal ability to read all predicted child literacy, although maternal literacy predicted it only among children enrolled in school. Among those enrolled in school (64.9% of the total sample, 88.7% of those aged ≥ 6), students attending hybrid classes had better literacy than those attending either solely in-person or solely online, although the frequency of school attendance did not predict literacy. A less consistent pattern emerged for predicting children’s attitudes toward reading. Our results suggest an urgent need to improve literacy skills among refugee children in Jordan, as well as a need for validated measures of attitudes toward reading for use with Arabic-speaking youth. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13158-022-00334-x

Adenosine-mono-phosphate-activated protein kinase-independent effects of metformin in T cells

The anti-diabetic drug metformin regulates T-cell responses to immune activation and is proposed to function by regulating the energy-stress-sensing adenosine-monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK). However, the molecular details of how metformin controls T cell immune responses have not been studied nor is there any direct evidence that metformin acts on T cells via AMPK. Here, we report that metformin regulates cell growth and proliferation of antigen-activated T cells by modulating the metabolic reprogramming that is required for effector T cell differentiation. Metformin thus inhibits the mammalian target of rapamycin complex I signalling pathway and prevents the expression of the transcription factors c-Myc and hypoxia-inducible factor 1 alpha. However, the inhibitory effects of metformin on T cells did not depend on the expression of AMPK in T cells. Accordingly, experiments with metformin inform about the importance of metabolic reprogramming for T cell immune responses but do not inform about the importance of AMPK

Feedback Control of the National Airspace System

This paper proposes a general modeling framework adapted to the feedback control of traffic flows in Eulerian models of the National Airspace System. It is shown that the problems of scheduling and routing aircraft flows in the National Airspace System can be posed as the control of a network of queues with load-dependent service rates. Focus can then shift to developing techniques to ensure that the aircraft queues in each airspace sector, which are an indicator of the air traffic controller workloads, are kept small. This paper uses the proposed framework to develop control laws that help prepare the National Airspace System for fast recovery from a weather event, given a probabilistic forecast of capacities. In particular, the model includes the management of airport arrivals and departures subject to runway capacity constraints, which are highly sensitive to weather disruptions.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Contract ECCS-0745237)United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Contract NNA06CN24A

A New Hierarchy of Research Evidence for Tumor Pathology: A Delphi Study to Define Levels of Evidence in Tumor Pathology

Copyright \ua9 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. The hierarchy of evidence is a fundamental concept in evidence-based medicine, but existing models can be challenging to apply in laboratory-based health care disciplines, such as pathology, where the types of evidence and contexts are significantly different from interventional medicine. This project aimed to define a comprehensive and complementary framework of new levels of evidence for evaluating research in tumor pathology-introducing a novel Hierarchy of Research Evidence for Tumor Pathology collaboratively designed by pathologists with help from epidemiologists, public health professionals, oncologists, and scientists, specifically tailored for use by pathologists-and to aid in the production of the World Health Organization Classification of Tumors (WCT) evidence gap maps. To achieve this, we adopted a modified Delphi approach, encompassing iterative online surveys, expert oversight, and external peer review, to establish the criteria for evidence in tumor pathology, determine the optimal structure for the new hierarchy, and ascertain the levels of confidence for each type of evidence. Over a span of 4 months and 3 survey rounds, we collected 1104 survey responses, culminating in a 3-day hybrid meeting in 2023, where a new hierarchy was unanimously agreed upon. The hierarchy is organized into 5 research theme groupings closely aligned with the subheadings of the WCT, and it consists of 5 levels of evidence-level P1 representing evidence types that merit the greatest level of confidence and level P5 reflecting the greatest risk of bias. For the first time, an international collaboration of pathology experts, supported by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, has successfully united to establish a standardized approach for evaluating evidence in tumor pathology. We intend to implement this novel Hierarchy of Research Evidence for Tumor Pathology to map the available evidence, thereby enriching and informing the WCT effectively

Feasibility studies of the time-like proton electromagnetic form factor measurements with PANDA at FAIR

The possibility of measuring the proton electromagnetic form factors in the time-like region at FAIR with the \PANDA detector is discussed. Detailed simulations on signal efficiency for the annihilation of $\bar p +p$ into a lepton pair as well as for the most important background channels have been performed. It is shown that precision measurements of the differential cross section of the reaction $\bar p +p \to e^++ e^-$ can be obtained in a wide angular and kinematical range. The individual determination of the moduli of the electric and magnetic proton form factors will be possible up to a value of momentum transfer squared of $q^2\simeq 14$ (GeV/c)$^2$. The total $\bar p +p\to e^++e^-$ cross section will be measured up to $q^2\simeq 28$ (GeV/c)$^2$. The results obtained from simulated events are compared to the existing data. Sensitivity to the two photons exchange mechanism is also investigated.Comment: 12 pages, 4 tables, 8 figures Revised, added details on simulations, 4 tables, 9 figure

The polygenic nature of telomere length and the anti-ageing properties of lithium

Telomere length is a promising biomarker for age-related disease and a potential anti-ageing drug target. Here, we study the genetic architecture of telomere length and the repositioning potential of lithium as an anti-ageing medication. LD score regression applied to the largest telomere length genome-wide association study to-date, revealed SNP-chip heritability estimates of 7.29%, with polygenic risk scoring capturing 4.4% of the variance in telomere length in an independent cohort (p = 6.17 × 10-5). Gene-enrichment analysis identified 13 genes associated with telomere length, with the most significant being the leucine rich repeat gene, LRRC34 (p = 3.69 × 10-18). In the context of lithium, we confirm that chronic use in a sample of 384 bipolar disorder patients is associated with longer telomeres (p = 0.03). As complementary evidence, we studied three orthologs of telomere length regulators in a Caenorhabditis elegans model of lithium-induced extended longevity and found all transcripts to be affected post-treatment (p  0.05). Consequently, this suggests that lithium may be catalysing the activity of endogenous mechanisms that promote telomere lengthening, whereby its efficacy eventually becomes limited by each individual's inherent telomere maintenance capabilities. Our work indicates a potential use of polygenic risk scoring for the prediction of adult telomere length and consequently lithium's anti-ageing efficacy

Identification of a Novel β-Cell Glucokinase (GCK) Promoter Mutation (−71G>C) That Modulates GCK Gene Expression Through Loss of Allele-Specific Sp1 Binding Causing Mild Fasting Hyperglycemia in Humans

OBJECTIVE: Inactivating mutations in glucokinase (GCK) cause mild fasting hyperglycemia. Identification of a GCK mutation has implications for treatment and prognosis; therefore, it is important to identify these individuals. A significant number of patients have a phenotype suggesting a defect in glucokinase but no abnormality of GCK. We hypothesized that the GCK beta-cell promoter region, which currently is not routinely screened, could contain pathogenic mutations; therefore, we sequenced this region in 60 such probands. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: The beta-cell GCK promoter was sequenced in patient DNA. The effect of the identified novel mutation on GCK promoter activity was assessed using a luciferase reporter gene expression system. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSAs) were used to determine the impact of the mutation on Sp1 binding. RESULTS: A novel -71G>C mutation was identified in a nonconserved region of the human promoter sequence in six apparently unrelated probands. Family testing established cosegregation with fasting hyperglycemia (> or = 5.5 mmol/l) in 39 affected individuals. Haplotype analysis in the U.K. family and four of the Slovakian families demonstrated that the mutation had arisen independently. The mutation maps to a potential transcriptional activator binding site for Sp1. Reporter assays demonstrated that the mutation reduces promoter activity by up to fourfold. EMSAs demonstrated a dramatic reduction in Sp1 binding to the promoter sequence corresponding to the mutant allele. CONCLUSIONS: A novel beta-cell GCK promoter mutation was identified that significantly reduces gene expression in vitro through loss of regulation by Sp1. To ensure correct diagnosis of potential GCK-MODY (maturity-onset diabetes of the young) cases, analysis of the beta-cell GCK promoter should be included