Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and autonomic nervous system reactivity in children prenatally exposed to maternal depression:A systematic review of prospective studies

Depression is a common condition affecting up to 20% of all pregnant women, and is associated with subsequent developmental and behavioral problems in children, such as conduct disorder and ADHD. One proposed mechanism underlying these associations is modification of the fetal hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA)-axis and the autonomic nervous system (ANS), resulting in altered responses to stress. This review examined the evidence regarding altered HPA-axis and ANS reactivity in children prenatally exposed to high maternal depressive symptoms. A systematic search was conducted in the electronic databases MEDLINE, EMBASE and PsycINFO, for studies published till 25 July 2017. A total of 13 studies comprising 2271 mother-infant dyads were included. None of the studies were suitable for meta-analysis. Risk of bias assessment showed low risk for four studies. Only three studies described an independent association between exposure to high maternal prenatal depressive symptoms and altered stress reactivity in children. There is limited evidence of an independent association between prenatal exposure to maternal depression and altered HPA or ANS reactivity in children

Monitoramento da multidisciplinaridade no processo de transferência de tecnologia em uma universidade: proposta de análise de cluster

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the management of the technology transfer process conducted by a Technology Transfer Office (TTO) of a federal public university. Patent co-authorship and multidisciplinarity were used as concepts to evaluate and monitor the quality of academic and practical contribution and their potential for commercial application, using descriptive statistics and cluster analysis. Considering only multidisciplinary patents, binary cluster analysis was conducted, using Jaccard similarity measurement and single linkage method to determine proximity among academic units. Apart from the analysis of the number of patents, the approach enabled discussions and questions regarding the differences between patent generation patterns, resultant from the specific organizational culture and structures. The discussions are relevant to improve the identification of opportunities in technology transfer processes by the TTO

Process issues for a multi-layer microelectrofluidic platform

We report on the development of some process capabilities for a polymer-based, multi-layer microelectrofluidic platform, namely : the hot embossing process, metallization on polymer and polymer bonding. Hot embossing experiments were conducted to look at the effects of load applied, embossing temperature and embossing time on the fidelity of line arrays representing micro channels. The results revealed that the embossing temperature is a more sensitive parameter than the others due to its large effect on the polymer material’s viscoelastic properties. Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) revealed a steep glass transition over a 20 oC range, with the material losing more than 95 % of its storage modulus. The data explained the hot embossing results which showed large change in the embossed channel dimensions when the temperature is within the glass transition range. It was demonstrated that the micro-printing of silver epoxy is a possible low-cost technique in the mass production of disposable lab chips. An interconnecting network of electrical traces was fabricated in the form of a four-layer PMMA-based device. A four PMMA layer device with interconnecting microfluidic channels was also fabricated and tested

Enhanced Reliability of Photovoltaic Systems with Energy Storage and Controls

This report summarizes efforts to reconfigure loads during outages to allow individual customers the opportunity to enhance the reliability of their electric service through the management of their loads, photovoltaics, and energy storage devices

Charge dependent azimuthal correlations in Pb--Pb collisions at sNN=2.76\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76 TeV

Separation of charges along the extreme magnetic field created in non-central relativistic heavy--ion collisions is predicted to be a signature of local parity violation in strong interactions. We report on results for charge dependent two particle azimuthal correlations with respect to the reaction plane for Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 2.76$ TeV recorded in 2010 with ALICE at the LHC. The results are compared with measurements at RHIC energies and against currently available model predictions for LHC. Systematic studies of possible background effects including comparison with conventional (parity-even) correlations simulated with Monte Carlo event generators of heavy--ion collisions are also presented.Comment: Published in the proceedings of "Quark Matter 2011", Annecy-Franc