Chronic and/or extreme stress in early life, often referred to as early adversity, childhood trauma, or early life stress, has been associated with a wide range of adverse effects on development. ...However, while early life stress has been linked to negative effects on a number of neural systems, the specific mechanisms through which early life stress influences development and individual differences in children's outcomes are still not well understood.
The current paper reviews the existing literature on the neurobiological effects of early life stress and their ties to children's psychological and behavioral development.
Early life stress has persistent and pervasive effects on prefrontal-hypothalamic-amygdala and dopaminergic circuits that are at least partially mediated by alterations in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function. However, to date, this research has primarily utilized methods of assessment that focus solely on children's event exposures. Incorporating assessment of factors that influence children's interpretation of stressors, along with stressful events, has the potential to provide further insight into the mechanisms contributing to individual differences in neurodevelopmental effects of early life stress. This can aid in further elucidating specific mechanisms through which these neurobiological changes influence development and contribute to risk for psychopathology and health disorders.
We use the recently developed Heat-bath Configuration Interaction (HCI) algorithm as an efficient active space solver to perform multiconfiguration self-consistent field calculations (HCISCF) with ...large active spaces. We give a detailed derivation of the theory and show that difficulties associated with non-variationality of the HCI procedure can be overcome by making use of the Lagrangian formulation to calculate the HCI relaxed two-body reduced density matrix. HCISCF is then used to study the electronic structure of butadiene, pentacene, and Fe–porphyrin. One of the most striking results of our work is that the converged active space orbitals obtained from HCISCF are relatively insensitive to the accuracy of the HCI calculation. This allows us to obtain nearly converged CASSCF energies with an estimated error of less than 1 mHa using the orbitals obtained from the HCISCF procedure in which the integral transformation is the dominant cost. For example, an HCISCF calculation on the Fe–porphyrin model complex with an active space of (44e, 44o) took only 412 s per iteration on a single node containing 28 cores, out of which 185 s was spent in the HCI calculation and the remaining 227 s was used mainly for integral transformation. Finally, we also show that active space orbitals can be optimized using HCISCF to substantially speed up the convergence of the HCI energy to the Full CI limit because HCI is not invariant to unitary transformations within the active space.
The unique ability to obtain molecular recognition of an analyte at very low concentrations in situ in aqueous environments using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and surface enhanced ...resonance Raman scattering (SERRS) detection makes these spectroscopies of considerable interest. Improved understanding of the effect coupled to improvements in practical techniques make the use of SERS/SERRS much simpler than has been the case in the past. This article is designed as a tutorial review targeted at aiding in the development of practical applications.
Taxes on alcohol and tobacco have long been an important means of raising revenues for public spending in many countries but there is increasing interest in using taxes on these, and other unhealthy ...products, to achieve public health goals. We present a systematic review of the research on health taxes, and aim to generate insights into how such taxes can: (i) reduce consumption of targeted products and related harms; (ii) generate revenues for health objectives and distribute the tax burden across income groups in an efficient and equitable manner; and (iii) be made politically sustainable.
Six scientific and four grey-literature databases were searched for empirical studies of 'health taxes' - defined as those intended to increase the costs of manufacturing, distributing, retailing and/or consuming health-damaging products. Since reviews already exist of the evidence relating to traditional alcohol and tobacco excise taxes, we focus on other taxes such as taxes on retailers and manufacturers of unhealthy products, and consumer taxes targeting unhealthy foods, such as sugar-sweetened beverages.
Ninety-one peer-reviewed and 11 grey-literature studies met our inclusion criteria. The review highlights a recent, rapid rise in research in this area, most of which focuses on high-income countries and on taxes on food products or nutrients. Findings demonstrate that high tax rates on sugar-sweetened beverages are likely to have a positive impact on health behaviours and outcomes, and, while taxes on products reduce demand, they add to fiscal revenues. Common concerns about health taxes are also discussed.
If the primary policy goal of a health tax is to reduce consumption of unhealthy products, then evidence supports the implementation of taxes that increase the price of products by 20% or more. However, where taxes are effective in changing health behaviours, the predictability of the revenue stream is reduced. Hence, policy actors need to be clear about the primary goal of any health tax and frame the tax accordingly - not doing so leaves taxes vulnerable to hostile lobbying. Conversely, earmarking health taxes for health spending tends to increase public support so long as policymakers follow through on specified spending commitments.
CRD42016048603.
Recent research on arbuscular mycorrhizas has demonstrated that AM fungi play a significant role in plant phosphorus (P) uptake, regardless of whether the plant responds positively to colonization in ...terms of growth or P content. Here we focus particularly on implications of this finding for consideration of the balance between organic carbon (C) use by the fungi and P delivery (i.e. the C-P trade between the symbionts). Positive growth responses to arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) colonization are attributed frequently to increased P uptake via the fungus, which results in relief of P deficiency and increased growth. Zero AM responses, compared with non-mycorrhizal (NM) plants, have conventionally been attributed to failure of the fungi to deliver P to the plants. Negative responses, combined with excessive C use, have been attributed to this failure. The fungi were viewed as parasites. Demonstration that the AM pathway of P uptake operates in such plants indicates that direct P uptake by the roots is reduced and that the fungi are not parasites but mutualists because they deliver P as well as using C. We suggest that poor plant growth is the result of P deficiency because AM fungi lower the amount of P taken up directly by roots but the AM uptake of P does compensate for the reduction. The implications of interplay between direct root uptake and AM fungal uptake of P also include increased tolerance of AM plants to toxins such as arsenate and increased success when competing with NM plants. Finally we discuss the new information on C-P trade in the context of control of the symbiosis by the fungus or the plant, including new information (from NM plants) on sugar transport and on the role of sucrose in the signaling network involved in responses of plants to P deprivation.
Private law deals with the interactions of persons in society. If we think about all the effects produced by the relation between each pair of persons and then unlimited chains of such interactions - ...A sells Blackacre to B, who sells to C, who mortgages to D and rents to E, and so on - then prescribing results for such interactions is a potentially intractable problem. Private law would be an impossible enterprise. This is where property comes in.
From the popularity of authoritarian political leaders to the under-representation of women in boardrooms, leadership is an important theme in current human social affairs. Leadership is also a ...prominent research topic in the biological, social, and cognitive sciences. However, these active literatures have evolved somewhat independently and there is a need for synthesis. A comparative-evolutionary approach can integrate seemingly divergent perspectives by making a distinction between two leadership styles, prestige and dominance, that have contrasting expressions, functions, histories, and neural and developmental pathways. The distinction may help to resolve various scientific puzzles, such as: (i) opposing views on the different functions and expressions of leadership; (ii) the appeal of dominance-style leaders; and (iii) sex biases in leadership emergence in modern society.
Eastern and Western philosophers have long recognized the difference between prestige-style and dominance-style leaders.Leadership is an active research area in the social, cognitive, and biological sciences, but there has been limited synthesis among these fields. Recognition that there are two leader types can assist with this integration and generate new ideas for a comparative analysis.Dominance- and prestige-based hierarchies emerge early in development; children use a variety of social and physical cues to learn about different social hierarchies.Leadership is a crucial but under-recognized force in the evolution of human cooperation, aiding the transition from small-scale to large-scale societies.Current male-biased leadership systems result, in part, from evolved follower preferences for dominance-style leaders in the face of intense competition within and between groups.
Mild behavioral impairment (MBI) is a construct that describes the emergence at ≥50 years of age of sustained and impactful neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS), as a precursor to cognitive decline and ...dementia. MBI describes NPS of any severity, which are not captured by traditional psychiatric nosology, persist for at least 6 months, and occur in advance of or in concert with mild cognitive impairment. While the detection and description of MBI has been operationalized in the International Society to Advance Alzheimer's Research and Treatment - Alzheimer's Association (ISTAART-AA) research diagnostic criteria, there is no instrument that accurately reflects MBI as described.
To develop an instrument based on ISTAART-AA MBI criteria.
Eighteen subject matter experts participated in development using a modified Delphi process. An iterative process ensured items reflected the five MBI domains of 1) decreased motivation; 2) emotional dysregulation; 3) impulse dyscontrol; 4) social inappropriateness; and 5) abnormal perception or thought content. Instrument language was developed a priori to pertain to non-demented functionally independent older adults.
We present the Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI-C), a 34-item instrument, which can easily be completed by a patient, close informant, or clinician.
The MBI-C provides the first measure specifically developed to assess the MBI construct as explicitly described in the criteria. Its utility lies in MBI case detection, and monitoring the emergence of MBI symptoms and domains over time. Studies are required to determine the prognostic value of MBI for dementia development, and for predicting different dementia subtypes.
Diffusion MRI streamlines tractography suffers from a number of inherent limitations, one of which is the accurate determination of when streamlines should be terminated. Use of an accurate ...streamlines propagation mask from segmentation of an anatomical image confines the streamlines to the volume of the brain white matter, but does not take full advantage of all of the information available from such an image. We present a modular addition to streamlines tractography, which makes more effective use of the information available from anatomical image segmentation, and the known properties of the neuronal axons being reconstructed, to apply biologically realistic priors to the streamlines generated; we refer to this as “Anatomically-Constrained Tractography”. Results indicate that some of the known false positives associated with tractography algorithms are prevented, such that the biological accuracy of the reconstructions should be improved, provided that state-of-the-art streamlines tractography methods are used.
► Modular improvement to diffusion MRI streamlines tractography. ► Effective use of anatomical information and biological priors. ► Prevents spurious streamline terminations for improved connectome reconstruction.
Equity as meta-law Smith, Henry E
The Yale law journal,
03/2021, Letnik:
130, Številka:
5
Journal Article
With the merger of law and equity almost complete, the idea of equity as a special part of our legal system or a mode of decisionmaking has fallen out of view. This article argues that much of equity ...is best understood as performing a vital function. Equity and related parts of the law solve complex and uncertain problems - including interdependent behavior and misuses of legal rules by opportunists - and do so in a characteristic fashion: as meta-law. From unconscionability to injunctions, equity makes reference to, supplements, and sometimes overrides the result that law would otherwise produce, while primary law operates without reference to equity. Equity operates on a domain of fraud, accident, and mistake, and employs triggers such as bad faith and disproportionate hardship to toggle into a "meta"-mode of more open-ended scrutiny. This article provides a theoretical account of how a hybrid law, consisting of relatively simple and general primary-level law and relatively intense and directed second-order equity can regulate behavior better through these specialized modes than would homogeneous law alone. The article tests this theory on the ostensibly most unpromising aspects of equity, the traditional equitable maxims, as well as equitable fraud, defenses, and remedies. Equity as meta-law sheds light on how the fusion of law and equity spawned multifactor balancing tests, polarized interpretation, and led to the confusion of equity with standards, discretion, purely public law, and "mere" remedies. Viewing equity as meta-law also improves on the tradeoff between formalism and contextualism and ultimately promotes the rule of law.
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