Morality is among the most sophisticated features of human judgement, behaviour and, ultimately, mind. An individual who behaves immorally may violate ethical rules and civil rights, and may threaten ...others' individual liberty, sometimes becoming violent and aggressive. In recent years, neuroscience has shown a growing interest in human morality, and has advanced our understanding of the cognitive and emotional processes involved in moral decisions, their anatomical substrates and the neurology of abnormal moral behaviour. In this article, we review research findings that have provided a key insight into the functional and clinical neuroanatomy of the brain areas involved in normal and abnormal moral behaviour. The 'moral brain' consists of a large functional network including both cortical and subcortical anatomical structures. Because morality is a complex process, some of these brain structures share their neural circuits with those controlling other behavioural processes, such as emotions and theory of mind. Among the anatomical structures implicated in morality are the frontal, temporal and cingulate cortices. The prefrontal cortex regulates activity in subcortical emotional centres, planning and supervising moral decisions, and when its functionality is altered may lead to impulsive aggression. The temporal lobe is involved in theory of mind and its dysfunction is often implicated in violent psychopathy. The cingulate cortex mediates the conflict between the emotional and the rational components of moral reasoning. Other important structures contributing to moral behaviour include the subcortical nuclei such as the amygdala, hippocampus and basal ganglia. Brain areas participating in moral processing can be influenced also by genetic, endocrine and environmental factors. Hormones can modulate moral behaviour through their effects on the brain. Finally, genetic polymorphisms can predispose to aggressivity and violence, arguing for a genetic-based predisposition to morality. Because abnormal moral behaviour can arise from both functional and structural brain abnormalities that should be diagnosed and treated, the neurology of moral behaviour has potential implications for clinical practice and raises ethical concerns. Last, since research has developed several neuromodulation techniques to improve brain dysfunction (deep brain stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation), knowing more about the 'moral brain' might help to develop novel therapeutic strategies for neurologically based abnormal moral behaviour.
Background and Aim
Viral pneumonia is the most relevant clinical presentation of COVID‐19 which may lead to severe acute respiratory syndrome and even death. Eosinopenia was often noticed in patients ...with COVID‐19 pneumonia, but its role is poorly investigated. The aim of the present study was to investigate the characteristics and clinical outcomes of patients with COVID‐19 pneumonia and eosinopenia.
Methods
We revised the records of consecutive patients with COVID‐19 pneumonia admitted to our ER‐COVID‐19 area in order to compare clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with and without eosinopenia. We considered the following clinical outcomes: 4‐weeks survival; need for intensive respiratory support; and hospital discharge.
Results
Out of first 107 consecutive patients with pneumonia and a positive COVID‐19 nasopharyngeal swab, 75 patients showed undetectable eosinophil count (absolute eosinopenia). At 4 weeks, 38 patients (38.4%) had required intensive respiratory treatment, 25 (23.4%) deceased and 42 (39.2%) were discharged. Compared with patients without absolute eosinopenia, patients with absolute eosinopenia showed higher need of intensive respiratory treatment (49.3% vs 13.3%, P < .001), higher mortality (30.6% vs 6.2%, P .006) and lower rate of hospital discharge (28% vs 65.6%, P < .001). Binary logistic regression analyses including neutrophil, lymphocyte, eosinophil, basophil and monocyte counts showed that absolute eosinopenia was an independent factor associated with 4‐weeks mortality, need for intensive respiratory support and hospital discharge.
Conclusions
Absolute eosinopenia is associated with clinical outcomes in patients with COVID‐19 pneumonia and might be used as a marker to discriminate patients with unfavourable prognosis.
Abstract
We present a MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) and KMOS (K-band Multi-Object Spectrograph) dynamical study 405 star-forming galaxies
at redshift z = 0.28–1.65 (median redshift
...$\bar{z}$
= 0.84). Our sample is representative of the star-forming ‘main sequence’, with star formation rates of SFR = 0.1–30 M⊙ yr−1 and stellar masses M
⋆ = 108–1011 M⊙. For 49 ± 4 per cent of our sample, the dynamics suggest rotational support, 24 ± 3 per cent are unresolved systems and 5 ± 2 per cent appear to be early-stage major mergers with components on 8–30 kpc scales. The remaining 22 ± 5 per cent appear to be dynamically complex, irregular (or face-on systems). For galaxies whose dynamics suggest rotational support, we derive inclination-corrected rotational velocities and show that these systems lie on a similar scaling between stellar mass and specific angular momentum as local spirals with j
⋆ = J/
$M_\star \propto M_\star ^{2/3}$
but with a redshift evolution that scales as j
⋆ ∝ M
$_\star ^{2/3}(1+z)^{-1}$
. We also identify a correlation between specific angular momentum and disc stability such that galaxies with the highest specific angular momentum (log(j
⋆/M
$_\star ^{2/3}$
) > 2.5) are the most stable, with Toomre Q = 1.10 ± 0.18, compared to Q = 0.53 ± 0.22 for galaxies with log(j
⋆/M
$_\star ^{2/3}$
) < 2.5. At a fixed mass, the Hubble Space Telescope morphologies of galaxies with the highest specific angular momentum resemble spiral galaxies, whilst those with low specific angular momentum are morphologically complex and dominated by several bright star-forming regions. This suggests that angular momentum plays a major role in defining the stability of gas discs: at z ∼ 1, massive galaxies that have discs with low specific angular momentum are globally unstable, clumpy and turbulent systems. In contrast, galaxies with high specific angular momentum have evolved into stable discs with spiral structure where star formation is a local (rather than global) process.
Data on the long-term outcome of children who are exposed to maternal cancer with or without treatment during pregnancy are lacking.
In this multicenter case-control study, we compared children whose ...mothers received a diagnosis of cancer during the pregnancy with matched children of women without a cancer diagnosis. We used a health questionnaire and medical files to collect data regarding neonatal and general health. All children were prospectively assessed (by means of a neurologic examination and the Bayley Scales of Infant Development) at 18 months, 36 months, or both. A cardiac assessment was performed at 36 months.
A total of 129 children (median age, 22 months; range, 12 to 42) were included in the group whose mother had cancer (prenatal-exposure group) with a matching number in the control group. During pregnancy, 96 children (74.4%) were exposed to chemotherapy (alone or in combination with other treatments), 11 (8.5%) to radiotherapy (alone or in combination), 13 (10.1%) to surgery alone, 2 (1.6%) to other drug treatments, and 14 (10.9%) to no treatment. Birth weight was below the 10th percentile in 28 of 127 children (22.0%) in the prenatal-exposure group and in 19 of 125 children (15.2%) in the control group (P=0.16). There was no significant between-group difference in cognitive development on the basis of the Bayley score (P=0.08) or in subgroup analyses. The gestational age at birth was correlated with the cognitive outcome in the two study groups. Cardiologic evaluation among 47 children at 36 months of age showed normal cardiac findings.
Prenatal exposure to maternal cancer with or without treatment did not impair the cognitive, cardiac, or general development of children in early childhood. Prematurity was correlated with a worse cognitive outcome, but this effect was independent of cancer treatment. (Funded by Research Foundation-Flanders and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00330447.).
Abstract
We present a study of the effective (half-light) radii and other structural properties of a systematically selected sample of young, massive star clusters (≥5 × 10
3
and ≤200 Myr) in two ...nearby spiral galaxies, NGC 628 and NGC 1313. We use
Hubble Space Telescope
(
HST
) WFC3/UVIS and archival ACS/WFC data obtained by the Legacy Extragalactic UV Survey (LEGUS), an
HST
Treasury Program. We measure effective radii with GALFIT, a two-dimensional image-fitting package, and with a new technique to estimate effective radii from the concentration index of observed clusters. The distribution of effective radii from both techniques spans ∼0.5–10 pc and peaks at 2–3 pc for both galaxies. We find slight positive correlations between effective radius and cluster age in both galaxies, but no significant relationship between effective radius and galactocentric distance. Clusters in NGC 1313 display a mild increase in effective radius with cluster mass, but the trend disappears when the sample is divided into age bins. We show that the vast majority of the clusters in both galaxies are much older than their dynamical times, suggesting they are gravitationally bound objects. We find that about half of the clusters in NGC 628 are underfilling their Roche lobes, based on their Jacobi radii. Our results suggest that the young, massive clusters in NGC 628 and NGC 1313 are expanding, due to stellar mass loss or two-body relaxation, and are not significantly influenced by the tidal fields of their host galaxies.
ABSTRACT
We present the goals, design, and first results of the MUSE Ultra Deep Field (MUDF) survey, a large programme using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the ESO Very ...Large Telescope. The MUDF survey is collecting ≈150 h on-source of integral field optical spectroscopy in a 1.5 × 1.2 arcmin2 region which hosts several astrophysical structures along the line of sight, including two bright z ≈ 3.2 quasars with close separation (≈500 kpc). Following the description of the data reduction procedures, we present the analysis of the galaxy environment and gaseous properties of seven groups detected at redshifts 0.5 < z < 1.5, spanning a large dynamic range in halo mass, $\log (M_h/\rm {M_\odot }) \approx 11 - 13.5$. For four of the groups, we find associated Mg ii absorbers tracing cool gas in high-resolution spectroscopy of the two quasars, including one case of correlated absorption in both sightlines at distance ≈480 kpc. The absorption strength associated with the groups is higher than what has been reported for more isolated galaxies of comparable mass and impact parameters. We do not find evidence for widespread cool gas giving rise to strong absorption within these groups. Combining these results with the distribution of neutral and ionized gas seen in emission in lower redshift groups, we conclude that gravitational interactions in the group environment strip gas from the galaxy haloes into the intragroup medium, boosting the cross-section of cool gas and leading to the high fraction of strong Mg ii absorbers that we detect.
Oncogene-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been proposed to be signaling molecules that mediate proliferative cues. However, ROS may also cause DNA damage and proliferative arrest. How these ...apparently opposite roles can be reconciled, especially in the context of oncogene-induced cellular senescence, which is associated both with aberrant mitogenic signaling and DNA damage response (DDR)-mediated arrest, is unclear. Here, we show that ROS are indeed mitogenic signaling molecules that fuel oncogene-driven aberrant cell proliferation. However, by their very same ability to mediate cell hyperproliferation, ROS eventually cause DDR activation. We also show that oncogenic Ras-induced ROS are produced in a Rac1 and NADPH oxidase (Nox4)-dependent manner. In addition, we show that Ras-induced ROS can be detected and modulated in a living transparent animal: the zebrafish. Finally, in cancer we show that Nox4 is increased in both human tumors and a mouse model of pancreatic cancer and specific Nox4 small-molecule inhibitors act synergistically with existing chemotherapic agents.
ABSTRACT
We study the effect of stellar feedback (photodissociation/ionization, radiation pressure, and winds) on the evolution of a Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC), by means of a 3D radiative transfer, ...hydrosimulation implementing a complex chemical network featuring H2 formation and destruction. We track the formation of individual stars with mass $M\gt 1\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$ with a stochastic recipe. Each star emits radiation according to its spectrum, sampled with 10 photon bins from near-infrared to extreme ultraviolet bands; winds are implemented by energy injection in the neighbouring cells. We run a simulation of a GMC with mass $M=10^5\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$, following the evolution of different gas phases. Thanks to the simultaneous inclusion of different stellar feedback mechanisms, we identify two stages in the cloud evolution: (1) radiation and winds carve ionized, low-density bubbles around massive stars, while FUV radiation dissociates most H2 in the cloud, apart from dense, self-shielded clumps; (2) rapid star formation (SFR$\simeq 0.1\, {\rm M}_{\odot }\, {\rm yr}^{-1}$) consumes molecular gas in the dense clumps, so that UV radiation escapes and ionizes the remaining $\mathrm{H\,{\small I}}$ gas in the GMC. H2 is exhausted in 1.6 Myr, yielding a final star formation efficiency of 36 per cent. The average intensity of FUV and ionizing fields increases almost steadily with time; by the end of the simulation (t = 2.5 Myr) we find 〈G0〉 ≃ 103 (in Habing units), and a ionization parameter 〈Uion〉 ≃ 102, respectively. The ionization field has also a more patchy distribution than the FUV one within the GMC. Throughout the evolution, the escape fraction of ionizing photons from the cloud is fion, esc ≲ 0.03.
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