Cerebral Palsy-Trends in Epidemiology and Recent Development in Prenatal Mechanisms of Disease, Treatment, and Prevention.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common motor disability in childhood. This syndrome is the manifestation of intrauterine pathologies, intrapartum complications, and the postnatal sequel, especially among preterm neonates. A double hit model theory is proposed suggesting that an intrauterine condition along with intrapartum or postnatal insult lead to the development of CP. Recent reports demonstrated that treatment during the process of preterm birth such as magnesium sulfate and postnatal modalities such as cooling may prevent or reduce the prevalence of this syndrome. Moreover, animal models demonstrated that postnatal treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs coupled with nanoparticles may affect the course of the disease in pups with neuroinflammation. This review will describe the changes in the epidemiology of this disease, the underlying prenatal mechanisms, and possible treatments that may reduce the prevalence of CP and alter the course of the disease

Structural Theory for Laminated Anisotropic Elastic Shells

A linear theory is formulated for analysis of small deflections of thin shells with arbitrary geometrical configuration and laminated of an arbitrary number of layers of different thicknesses, orientations, and anisotropic elastic coefficients. An accurate shell theory (Vlasov's) is used, and the composite-shell constitutive relation incorporates the anisotropic stretching-bending coupling effects considered by Stavsky. For shells of arbitrary geometry, it is found necessary to introduce a new parameter Fij ≡ ∫h z 3Qijdz in the con stitutive relation. This parameter is zero for homogeneous aniso tropic materials and for anisotropic materials laminated symmetri cally with respect to the middle surface. However, for a two-layer filament-wound shell, this parameter can increase the flexural rigidity by 3%, which is greater than a 2% effect considered in a previous layered-anisotropic cylindrical shell analysis.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

New England Early Care and Education Workforce Models for Data Collection

Through this document NEW Partners will provide concrete examples of ways to collect early care and education workforce dat

Liposomal and Suspension Forms of Immunoglobulins Against Ebola Fever as the New Medical Preparations

Presented are the results of investigation of therapeutic effectiveness of liposomal and suspension forms of immunoglobulins, prepared on the basis of 10 % goat immunoglobulin against Ebola fever. The most pronounced therapeutic and preventive effect on guinea pigs with experimental Ebola fever was achieved by double administration of suspended immunoglobulin against Ebola fever. The incubation period increased twofold, 37,5 % of infected animals survived. The results achieved are perspective for further development of new immunoglobulin preparations on the basis of liposomes and nanoemulsions

Aberrant activity of mitochondrial NCLX is linked to impaired synaptic transmission and is associated with mental retardation

Calcium dynamics control synaptic transmission. Calcium triggers synaptic vesicle fusion, determines release probability, modulates vesicle recycling, participates in long-term plasticity and regulates cellular metabolism. Mitochondria, the main source of cellular energy, serve as calcium signaling hubs. Mitochondrial calcium transients are primarily determined by the balance between calcium influx, mediated by the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU), and calcium efflux through the sodium/lithium/calcium exchanger (NCLX). We identified a human recessive missense SLC8B1 variant that impairs NCLX activity and is associated with severe mental retardation. On this basis, we examined the effect of deleting NCLX in mice on mitochondrial and synaptic calcium homeostasis, synaptic activity, and plasticity. Neuronal mitochondria exhibited basal calcium overload, membrane depolarization, and a reduction in the amplitude and rate of calcium influx and efflux. We observed smaller cytoplasmic calcium transients in the presynaptic terminals of NCLX-KO neurons, leading to a lower probability of release and weaker transmission. In agreement, synaptic facilitation in NCLX-KO hippocampal slices was enhanced. Importantly, deletion of NCLX abolished long term potentiation of Schaffer collateral synapses. Our results show that NCLX controls presynaptic calcium transients that are crucial for defining synaptic strength as well as short- and long-term plasticity, key elements of learning and memory processes. Stavsky et al. examined the effects of deleting the mitochondrial sodium/lithium/calcium exchanger, NCLX, on mitochondrial and synaptic calcium homeostasis, synaptic activity, and plasticity in mice. Having identified a human mutation that impairs NCLX activity and is associated with mental retardation, they show that NCLX is crucial for defining synaptic strength and plasticity, which are pivotal elements of learning and memory

Development of the Multiplex Real-Time PCR for Marburg, Ebola, and Lassa Viruses Identification

Presented are the data on the development and approbation of the method of Marburg, Ebola, and Lassa viruses identification based on real-time multiplex PCR with hybridization-fluorescent detection. This method is meant for the differential diagnostics of hemorrhagic fevers caused by these viruses. Displayed are the results of determination of multiplex PCR analytical sensitivity and specific activity

Mindboggling morphometry of human brains

Mindboggle (http://mindboggle.info) is an open source brain morphometry platform that takes in preprocessed T1-weighted MRI data and outputs volume, surface, and tabular data containing label, feature, and shape information for further analysis. In this article, we document the software and demonstrate its use in studies of shape variation in healthy and diseased humans. The number of different shape measures and the size of the populations make this the largest and most detailed shape analysis of human brains ever conducted. Brain image morphometry shows great potential for providing much-needed biological markers for diagnosing, tracking, and predicting progression of mental health disorders. Very few software algorithms provide more than measures of volume and cortical thickness, while more subtle shape measures may provide more sensitive and specific biomarkers. Mindboggle computes a variety of (primarily surface-based) shapes: area, volume, thickness, curvature, depth, Laplace-Beltrami spectra, Zernike moments, etc. We evaluate Mindboggle’s algorithms using the largest set of manually labeled, publicly available brain images in the world and compare them against state-of-the-art algorithms where they exist. All data, code, and results of these evaluations are publicly available