Maternal and cord blood betatrophin (angiopoietin-like protein 8) in pregnant women with gestational diabetes and normoglycemic controls: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression

Aims: This systematic review and meta-analysis examined maternal and cord blood betatrophin levels in pregnant women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and normoglycemic controls. Material and Methods: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, LILACS, WangFang, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure were searched for literature from inception until May 2022. The primary outcomes were maternal and cord blood betatrophin levels. A random-effect meta-analysis was used to estimate the pooled results. The mean differences (MDs) or standardised MDs (SMD) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. I2 tests were used to evaluate the heterogeneity. The quality of studies was evaluated using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale. Results: Betatrophin levels were reported in 22 studies with a total of 3034 pregnant women, and in seven studies including cord blood from 456 infants. Women with GDM display higher betatrophin levels than the normoglycemic controls (SMD = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.38–1.31) during the second half of the pregnancy. The sensitivity analysis indicated that no single study had significantly influenced the betatrophin overall outcomes. There was heterogeneity between the studies as evidenced by high I2 values. Meta-regression analysis indicated a significant regression coefficient for maternal betatrophin and glycosilated haemoglobin. There was no significant difference in cord blood betatrophin in infants from women with and without GDM (SMD = 0.34, 95% CI: −0.15–0.83). Women with GDM also had significantly higher insulin, glucose, glycosylated haemoglobin, HOMA-IR, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, and body mass index compared with the normoglycemic controls. Conclusions: Maternal betatrophin levels were higher in women with GDM than in the normoglycemic controls. There was no difference in cord blood betatrophin

Transient interference of transmission and incidence

Due to a transient quantum interference during a wavepacket collision with a potential barrier, a particular momentum, that depends on the potential parameters but is close to the initial average momentum, becomes suppressed. The hole left pushes the momentum distribution outwards leading to a significant constructive enhancement of lower and higher momenta. This is explained in the momentum complex-plane language in terms of a saddle point and two contiguous ``structural'' poles, which are not associated with resonances but with incident and transmitted components of the wavefunction.Comment: 4 pages of text, 6 postscript figures, revte

Etiopathogenesis of ovarian cancer. An inflamm-aging entity?

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common gynecologic cancers and has the highest mortality rate. The risk/protective factors of ovarian cancer suggest that its etiology is multifactorial. Several factors are involved in age-related increases in carcinogenesis, including the accumulation of senescent cells, inflammaging (a chronic inflammatory state that persists in the elderly), and immunosenescence (aging of the immune system) changes associated with poor immune surveillance. At sites of inflammation, exposure to high levels of inflammatory mediators, such as reactive oxygen species, cytokines, prostaglandins, and growth factors, contributes to increased cell division and genetic and epigenetic changes. These exposure-induced changes promote excessive cell proliferation, increased survival, malignant transformation, and cancer development. Furthermore, the proinflammatory tumor microenvironment contributes to ovarian cancer metastasis and chemoresistance. This narrative review of the literature was carried out to delineate the possible role of inflammaging in the etiopathogenesis of ovarian cancer development. We discuss the current carcinogenic hypotheses, sites of origin, and etiological factors of ovarian cancer. Treatment of inflammation may represent an attractive strategy for both the prevention and therapy of ovarian cancer. © 2022 The Author(s

Avaliação da Lista de Controle de Regulação da Emoção para Crianças e Adolescentes

Emotion regulation during childhood and adolescence has implications in different areas, both in these stages and in adult life. The objective of this article was to evaluate an emotional regulation test, Emotional Regulation Checklist (ERC), using CET-R as a frame of reference. We analyzed 71 articles that used the ERC for the evaluation of emotional regulation. The information was sorted according to test description, reliability and validity. All reliability results were shown using the Cronbach alpha coefficient. In relation to validity the average of the ERC correlations with the criteria was adequate but with some shortcomings. It is advisable to conduct research using advanced psychometric models.Durante la infancia y la adolescencia la regulación de las emociones tiene repercusiones en diferentes ámbitos, tanto en estas etapas como en la vida adulta. El objetivo de este artículo fue evaluar un test de regulación emocional, Emotional Regulation Checklist (ERC), utilizando el CET-R como marco de referencia. Se analizaron 71 artículos que emplearon el ERC para la evaluación de la regulación emocional. La información se clasificó teniendo en cuenta la descripción del test, su fiabilidad y validez. Todos los resultados de fiabilidad se mostraron mediante el coeficiente alfa de Cronbach. En relación a la validez, fue adecuado el promedio de las correlaciones del ERC con sus criterios, pero con algunas carencias. Es recomendable plantear investigaciones con modelos psicométricos avanzados.A regulação das emoções na infância e adolescência tem implicações em diferentes áreas, tanto nestas fases como na vida adulta. O objetivo deste artigo foi avaliar um teste de regulação emocional, Emotional Regulation Checklist (ERC), usando o CET-R como marco de referência. Foram analisados 71 artigos que utilizaram o ERC para a avaliação da regulação emocional. A informação foi classificada de acordo com a descrição do teste, confiabilidade e validade. Todos os resultados de confiabilidade foram mostrados usando o coeficiente alfa Cronbach. Em relação à validade, a média das correlações do ERC com os critérios foi adequada, mas com algumas falhas. É aconselhável a realização de pesquisas utilizando modelos psicométricos avançados

3D Hydrodynamical Simulations of Surface Convection in Red Giant Stars. Impact on spectral line formation and abundance analysis

We investigate the impact of 3D hydrodynamical model atmospheres of red giant stars at different metallicities on the formation of spectral lines of a number of ions and molecules. We carry out realistic 3D simulations of surface convection in red giant stars with varying stellar parameters. We use the simulations as time-dependent hydrodynamical model stellar atmospheres to compute atomic (Li, O, Na, Mg, Ca, Fe) and molecular (CH, NH, OH) spectral lines under the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). We compare the line strengths computed in 3D with the results of analogous line formation calculations for 1D, hydrostatic, plane-parallel MARCS model atmospheres in order to estimate the impact of 3D models on the derivation of elemental abundances. The temperature and density inhomogeneities and correlated velocities in 3D models, as well as the differences between the 1D and mean 3D structures significantly affect the predicted line strengths. Under the assumption of LTE, the low atmospheric temperatures of very metal-poor 3D model atmospheres cause the lines from neutral species and molecules to appear stronger than in 1D. Therefore, elemental abundances derived from these lines using 3D models are significantly lower than according to 1D analyses. Differences between 3D and 1D abundances of C, N, and O derived from CH, NH, and OH weak low-excitation lines are found to be in the range -0.5 dex to -1.0 dex for the the red giant stars at [Fe/H]=-3 considered here. At this metallicity, large negative corrections (about -0.8 dex) are also found for weak low-excitation Fe I lines. We caution, however, that departures from LTE might be significant for these and other elements and comparable to the effects due to stellar granulation.Comment: Accepted for publication on A&A, 23 pages, 15 figure

Nuclear astrophysics with radioactive ions at FAIR

The nucleosynthesis of elements beyond iron is dominated by neutron captures in the s and r processes. However, 32 stable, proton-rich isotopes cannot be formed during those processes, because they are shielded from the s-process flow and r-process beta-decay chains. These nuclei are attributed to the p and rp process. For all those processes, current research in nuclear astrophysics addresses the need for more precise reaction data involving radioactive isotopes. Depending on the particular reaction, direct or inverse kinematics, forward or time-reversed direction are investigated to determine or at least to constrain the desired reaction cross sections. The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will offer unique, unprecedented opportunities to investigate many of the important reactions. The high yield of radioactive isotopes, even far away from the valley of stability, allows the investigation of isotopes involved in processes as exotic as the r or rp processes

High-resolution optical imaging of the core of the globular cluster M15 with FastCam

We present high-resolution I-band imaging of the core of the globular cluster M15 obtained at the 2.5 m Nordic Optical Telescope with FastCam, a low readout noise L3CCD based instrument. Short exposure times (30 ms) were used to record 200000 images (512 x 512 pixels each) over a period of 2 hours 43 min. The lucky imaging technique was then applied to generate a final image of the cluster centre with FWHM ~ 0".1 and 13" x 13" FoV. We obtained a catalogue of objects in this region with a limiting magnitude of I=19.5. I-band photometry and astrometry are reported for 1181 stars. This is the deepest I-band observation of the M15 core at this spatial resolution. Simulations show that crowding is limiting the completeness of the catalogue. At shorter wavelengths, a similar number of objects has been reported using HST/WFPC observations of the same field. The cross-match with the available HST catalogues allowed us to produce colour-magnitude diagrams where we identify new Blue Straggler star candidates and previously known stars of this class.Comment: 11 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

New ATLAS9 And MARCS Model Atmosphere Grids for the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE)

We present a new grid of model photospheres for the SDSS-III/APOGEE survey of stellar populations of the Galaxy, calculated using the ATLAS9 and MARCS codes. New opacity distribution functions were generated to calculate ATLAS9 model photospheres. MARCS models were calculated based on opacity sampling techniques. The metallicity ([M/H]) spans from -5 to 1.5 for ATLAS and -2.5 to 0.5 for MARCS models. There are three main differences with respect to previous ATLAS9 model grids: a new corrected H2O linelist, a wide range of carbon ([C/M]) and alpha element [alpha/M] variations, and solar reference abundances from Asplund et al. 2005. The added range of varying carbon and alpha element abundances also extends the previously calculated MARCS model grids. Altogether 1980 chemical compositions were used for the ATLAS9 grid, and 175 for the MARCS grid. Over 808 thousand ATLAS9 models were computed spanning temperatures from 3500K to 30000K and log g from 0 to 5, where larger temperatures only have high gravities. The MARCS models span from 3500K to 5500K, and log g from 0 to 5. All model atmospheres are publically available online.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

High contrast optical imaging of companions: the case of the brown dwarf binary HD-130948BC

High contrast imaging at optical wavelengths is limited by the modest correction of conventional near-IR optimized AO systems.We take advantage of new fast and low-readout-noise detectors to explore the potential of fast imaging coupled to post-processing techniques to detect faint companions to stars at small separations. We have focused on I-band direct imaging of the previously detected brown dwarf binary HD130948BC,attempting to spatially resolve the L2+L2 benchmark system. We used the Lucky-Imaging instrument FastCam at the 2.5-m Nordic Telescope to obtain quasi diffraction-limited images of HD130948 with ~0.1" resolution.In order to improve the detectability of the faint binary in the vicinity of a bright (I=5.19 \pm 0.03) solar-type star,we implemented a post-processing technique based on wavelet transform filtering of the image which allows us to strongly enhance the presence of point-like sources in regions where the primary halo dominates. We detect for the first time the BD binary HD130948BC in the optical band I with a SNR~9 at 2.561"\pm 0.007" (46.5 AU) from HD130948A and confirm in two independent dataset that the object is real,as opposed to time-varying residual speckles.We do not resolve the binary, which can be explained by astrometric results posterior to our observations that predict a separation below the NOT resolution.We reach at this distance a contrast of dI = 11.30 \pm 0.11, and estimate a combined magnitude for this binary to I = 16.49 \pm 0.11 and a I-J colour 3.29 \pm 0.13. At 1", we reach a detectability 10.5 mag fainter than the primary after image post-processing. We obtain on-sky validation of a technique based on speckle imaging and wavelet-transform processing,which improves the high contrast capabilities of speckle imaging.The I-J colour measured for the BD companion is slightly bluer, but still consistent with what typically found for L2 dwarfs(~3.4-3.6).Comment: accepted in A\&