Publications

Abstract The present report documents the breeding success of a new colony of common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus jacchus ) and demonstrates a correlation between environmental stress and reproductive success. Environmental conditions ranged chronologically over 40 months, through four periods: I) the initial period, when the colony was formed; II) a phase of relative environmental stability; III) a stage of “environmental stress” (when the colony was disrupted by nearby construction); and IV) a return to a stable environment. Examination of reproductive status during each period indicated that the colony exhibited severe reproductive suppression during the time of the environmental disruption. Parity and the number of live births decreased and the number of spontaneous abortions increased during this period. Reproductive success remained low during period IV. More triplets than twins were born during the period of relative environmental stability.

From ancient years, both the abuse and murder of children have almost been common practices due to the barbarity of the times, which have become a habit and appear in a number of different forms. Infanticide, as one of these forms, legally became a crime in 318 AD. Sacrifices were often made in the name of a god to infants or even older children, with families often feeling proud that their own child was to be sacrificed for the common good. At around the time of the Renaissance and thereafter, public opinion began to slowly react to the idea of abusing vulnerable children, with the Church taking a more proactive stance, creating shelters in monasteries for abandoned children who were usually unwanted by their families. Later, the first institutions for poor children whose families could not raise them or for orphaned children, appeared in Europe and the USA. However, as the years passed on and there was no care for these institutions, the conditions became unsuitable and the children very often eventually died of hunger, diseases or even abuse. All of this was to take its official place in history with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and has now been signed by 191 countries. The Convention on the Rights of the Child now formally defines child abuse, violence and neglect.

Background: Patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) are at increased risk of respiratory muscle fatigue and respiratory failure, secondary to lower airway obstruction and malnutrition. Testing for respiratory muscle fatigue involves complex methodology and the physical presence of the patient in a research facility. The time constant of respiratory muscle relaxation (τ) is a simple bedside test which can be alternatively used to assess CF patients for respiratory muscle fatigue. Measures: For this cross-sectional study, we measured body mass index z-score (BMI), upper arm muscle area (UAMA), Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second z-score (FEV 1 ), Forced Vital Capacity z-score (FVC), maximal inspiratory pressure (Pi max ), τ after maximal inspiration (τ-Pi max ), maximal expiratory pressure (Pe max ) and τ after maximal expiration (τ-Pe max ). Results: Fifty-three CF patients [median age 14 years (interquartile range: 11-19.5)] and 53 age- and sex-matched healthy controls [14 years (11-19.5)]were recruited.Pi max and Pe max did not differ significantly between patients and controls.Median (IQR) τ-Pi max in CF subjects [253(188-406)] was significantly increased compared to median (IQR) τ-Pi max in controls [117(81-185); p max in CF subjects [232 (105-344)] was significantly increased compared to median (IQR) τ-Pe max in controls [101 (78-143); p max was significantly related to FEV 1 (r=-0.205, p=0.031) and FVC (r=-0.294, p=0.002) but not to BMI or UAMA. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that CF patients are predisposed to respiratory muscle fatigue as described by slow respiratory muscle relaxation, which is significantly associated with severity of spirometric abnormalities.

Bullying among children and adolescents can have detrimental effects on their physical and mental health. The first step in the identification of bullying is the detection of relevant signs and behaviours, with the use of appropriate instruments. The widely used Peer Relation Questionnaire (PRQ)has been developed to measure bullying behaviour in children and adolescents. The aim of this study was to translate and validate this instrument in the Greek language in a school sample of children and adolescents. Α sample of 193 students (mean age ± SD 11.44 ± 1.26 years, girls 49.7%), was recruited from elementary and junior high schools of the public and private sector, in the capital of Athens, Greece. Along with the Peer Relation Questionnaire, the Stress in Children questionnaire and a structured inquiry regarding satisfaction from various aspects of life were used to assess the criterion validity of the Peer Relation Questionnaire. Results revealed good psychometric properties of the questionnaire in the Greek language. The principal component analysis resulted in two subscales that demonstrated an adequate internal consistency and a significant correlation with stress and satisfaction parameters, suggesting satisfying criterion validity. Meaningful associations between demographic characteristics and the subscales were also found. The Greek version of the Peer Relation Questionnaire-short form can be used as a valid tool to measure bullying behaviour in children and adolescents.

Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) and fatigue are frequent symptoms in the general population and the chief complaint of the majority of patients at Sleep Disorders Centers. There is evidence that the inflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF alpha), interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta), and IL-6 are involved in physiological sleep regulation and that their administration to humans is associated with sleepiness and fatigue. To explore whether plasma levels of TNF alpha, IL-1beta, and IL-6 are elevated in patients with EDS, we measured morning plasma levels of TNF alpha, IL-1beta, and IL-6 in 12 sleep apneics, 11 narcoleptics, 8 idiopathic hypersomniacs, and 10 normal controls. TNF alpha was significantly elevated in sleep apneics and narcoleptics compared to that in normal controls (P < 0.001 and P = 0.001, respectively). Plasma IL-1beta concentrations were not different between sleep disorder patients and controls, whereas IL-6 was markedly and significantly elevated in sleep apneics compared to that in normal controls (P = 0.028). The primary factor influencing TNF alpha values was the degree of nocturnal sleep disturbance, whereas the primary determinant for IL-6 levels was the body mass index. Our findings suggest that TNF alpha and IL-6 might play a significant role in mediating sleepiness and fatigue in disorders of EDS in humans.

Mathematical risk assessment models based on empirical data and supported by the principles of physics and engineering have been used in the insurance industry for more than three decades to support informed decisions for a wide variety of purposes, including insurance and reinsurance pricing. To supplement scarce data from historical events, these models provide loss estimates caused to portfolios of structures by simulated but realistic scenarios of future events with estimated annual rates of occurrence. The reliability of these estimates has evolved steadily from those based on the rather simplistic and, in many aspects, semi-deterministic approaches adopted in the very early days to those of the more recent models underpinned by a larger wealth of data and fully probabilistic methodologies. Despite the unquestionable progress, several modeling decisions and techniques still routinely adopted in commercial models warrant more careful scrutiny because of their potential to cause biased results. In this chapter we will address two such cases that pertain to the risk assessment for earthquakes. With the help of some illustrative but simple applications we will first motivate our concerns with the current state of practice in modeling earthquake occurrence and building vulnerability for portfolio risk assessment. We will then provide recommendations for moving towards a more comprehensive, and arguably superior, approach to earthquake risk modeling that capitalizes on the progress recently made in risk assessment of single buildings. In addition to these two upgrades, which in our opinion are ready for implementation in commercial models, we will also describe an enhancement in ground motion prediction that will certainly be considered in the models of tomorrow but is not yet ready for primetime. These changes are implemented in example applications that highlight their importance for portfolio risk assessment. Special consideration will be given to the potential bias in the Average Annual Loss estimates, which constitutes the foundation of insurance and reinsurance policies’ pricing, that may result from the application of the traditional approaches.

Urocortin, a newly isolated 40-amino-acid mammalian peptide homologous to corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), activates both CRH type 1 and 2 receptors, but may be an endogenous ligand for CRH receptor type 2. Urocortin given systemically inhibited heat-induced paw edema in the rat, and was therefore ascribed anti-inflammatory properties. We examined the effects of urocortin in the carrageenin-induced subcutaneous inflammation model. Rats were treated with urocortin 200 (n = 6) or 20 nmol/kg (n = 6); inflammatory exudates were reduced by approximately 30% compared to controls (n = 7) at both doses. However, since subcutaneous urocortin has been shown to reduce arterial blood pressure, we tested the hypothesis that its antiedema and antiextravasatory effects were secondary to arterial hypotension. Therefore, we examined the parallel effects of urocortin- and hydralazine-induced hypotension on acute inflammation induced by carrageenin in the rat. Rats were treated with subcutaneous carrageenin and control injections (n = 8), carrageenin and urocortin (20 nmol/kg, n = 9), or carrageenin and intraperitoneal hydralazine (10 mg/kg, n = 8). Mean arterial blood pressure was measured hourly for 7 h in 12 animals, and after 2 h, the nadir of treatment, in a further 13 animals. Rats were then sacrificed, and the inflammatory exudate volume and leukocyte count were measured. Mean exudate volumes were reduced from 4.8 ± 0.5 ml (controls) to 2.4 ± 0.3 ml (p = 0.004) and 2.9 ± 0.6 ml (p = 0.007) in urocortin- and hydralazine-treated animals, respectively. Urocortin and hydralazine both produced a significant fall in blood pressure compared to controls, with mean arterial pressure 2 h after carrageenin injection falling to 51.0 ± 4.1 (p &lt; 0.001) and 34.6 ± 4.6 (p &lt; 0.001) vs. 92.9 ± 3.7 mm Hg in controls, respectively. A significant positive correlation was noted between blood pressure and inflammatory exudate volume (r = 0.52, p = 0.007). As both hydralazine and urocortin lowered blood pressure and inflammatory exudate volume, we suggest that the anti-inflammatory effects of urocortin and related neuropeptides may be nonspecific, acting through hypotension rather than through direct anti-inflammatory mechanisms. The use of inflammatory models which rely on extravasation may be inappropriate for the study of substances that produce hypotension.

No abstract is provided for this article.

Abstract Growing evidence suggests that chronic low-grade inflammation can be reduced through mindfulness-based mental training interventions. However, these results are inconsistent and based on patient populations with heterogeneous conditions. Similar research in healthy adults is lacking. Moreover, common intervention protocols involve varying combinations of different contemplative practices, such that it remains unclear which types of training most effectively influence biomarkers of inflammation. The present study investigated the effect of three distinct 3-month training modules cultivating a) interoception and present-moment focus (Presence), b) socio-affective skills (Affect), or c) socio-cognitive skills (Perspective) on the inflammatory biomarkers interleukin-6 (IL-6) and high sensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) in 298 healthy adults. We observed no group-level effect of training on either biomarker, but trend-level interactions of training type and participant sex. In additionally exploring the influence of participants’ baseline inflammation, a selective training effect emerged: Following the Presence module, participants with relatively higher inflammatory load showed stronger reduction in IL-6 on average, and in hs-CRP if they were male. Mindfulness- and attention-based mental practice thus appears most effective when targeting chronic low-grade inflammation in healthy adults, particularly in men. Overall, our data point to a floor effect in the reduction of inflammatory markers through contemplative mental training, suggesting that mental training may be less effective in improving basal biological health outcomes in healthy, low-stressed adults than in vulnerable populations.