We develop a novel database Alpha&ESMhFolds which allows the direct comparison of AlphaFold2 and ESMFold predicted models for 42,942 proteins of the Reference Human Proteome, and when available, their comparison with 2,900 directly associated PDB structures with at least a structure to sequence coverage of 70%. Statistics indicate that good quality models tend to overlap with a TM-score >0.6 as long as some PDB structural information is available.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current paper investigated differences in secure attachment levels and behavioral problems among four groups of children in out-of-home care in Italy: closed adoption (child and birth parents not in contact following adoption), open adoption (child and birth parents still in contact after placement), foster care (child living temporarily with relatives or unrelated foster parents) and institutional care (child in residential care for large groups of children). One hundred and thirty children aged 10-19 were included in this study. The Attachment Interview for Childhood and Adolescence and the Achenbach Youth Self-Report were employed to measure participants' secure attachment levels and behavioral problems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe study addresses some gaps in the current understanding of adolescents' Problematic Social Network Site Use (PSNSU) by exploring the role of parenting as a precursor, and dysregulation and self-esteem as possible mediators. The sample includes 148 parents (15% fathers) and their adolescent offspring (23% male, age ranging from 14 to 18 years old, = 15.96, = 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe treatment of recurrent high-grade gliomas remains a major challenge of daily neuro-oncology practice, and imaging findings of new therapies may be challenging. Regorafenib is a multi-kinase inhibitor that has recently been introduced into clinical practice to treat recurrent glioblastoma, bringing with it a novel panel of MRI imaging findings. On the basis of the few data in the literature and on our personal experience, we have identified the main MRI changes during regorafenib therapy, and then, we defined two different patterns, trying to create a simple summary line of the main changes of pathological tissue during therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrognosis of patients with acute ischemic stroke is strictly related to the patency and prominence of the collateral leptomeningeal pathways distal to the arterial occlusion. The gold standard for assessment of collateral circulation is conventional angiography, but it is invasive and used in selected cases. To date, the most reliable technique is multiphase CTA; currently, the available classifications of collateral circles are often complex, time-consuming, and require a trained observer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe far lateral approach (FLA) is a technique performed nowadays to gain access to and remove intradural lesions located ventrolaterally to the brainstem and to the craniovertebral junction (CVJ).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMore than 100 years after the first description by Kanavel of a transoral-transpharyngeal approach to remove a bullet impacted between the atlas and the clivus [1], the transoral approach (TOA) still represents the 'gold standard' for surgical treatment of a variety of conditions resulting in anterior craniocervical compression and myelopathy [2, 3]. Nevertheless, some concerns-such as the need for a temporary tracheostomy and a postoperative nasogastric tube, and the increased risk of infection resulting from possible bacterial contamination and nasopharyngeal incompetence [4-6]-led to the introduction of the endoscopic endonasal approach (EEA) by Kassam et al. [7] in 2005.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaternal mind-mindedness has been shown to be a powerful predictor of many developmental outcomes and to buffer the impact of psychosocial risk conditions, but no study has investigated whether this parental feature might support child development in the presence of biological risk, such as preterm birth. The present study addresses this gap, by investigating whether early maternal mind-mindedness contributes to the growth of a child's linguistic abilities in the following two years of life, and if the contribution of this maternal feature might be stronger in the presence of preterm birth. Forty mother-child dyads (twenty with a preterm infant) were followed longitudinally, with maternal mind-mindedness assessed at 14 months of age and child's expressive linguistic abilities at 24 and 36 months through observational measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne of the most striking pieces of evidence in attachment research is that attachment security is transmitted from 1 generation to the next. Although there has been an enormous advance in the understanding of this process, this area of research suffers from some significant gaps, as for example the transmission across 3 generations when considering the 2 parents as well as the 2 couples of grandparents. The current study was designed to fill this gap in existing literature by investigating AAI attachment representations in the members of 3 generations, belonging to a total of 32 families, each including an adult offspring, both parents and the 4 grandparents (N = 224).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA group of sex offenders (clinical group: n = 19) was compared to a nonclinical sample matched by age, years of education, and gender (control group A: n = 19) to verify a higher incidence of insecure attachment models among sex offenders. In addition, we tested whether sex offenders were characterized by specific childhood experiences, compared to control adults (control group B: n = 19) with the same secure/insecure attachment classification. Results showed significant differences between offenders and control adults on both the AAI continuous score and the distribution of the two-way attachment classifications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThanks to the advances in grid technologies, we are able to propose here an evolution of our molecular simulator that, when moving to larger systems, instead of reducing the granularity of the dynamical treatment (as is often done in molecular dynamics studies of such systems) exploits the extra power of the grid approach to the end of preserving the detailed nature of theatomistic formulation of the interaction. Key steps of such evolution are: (1) the assemblage of the interaction based on a composition of the ab initio intramolecular data and a portable parameterization of the intermolecular potential linking ab initio evaluation of intramolecular potentials and the partitioning of molecular polarizability; (2) the exploitation of an efficient coordinated porting and running of molecular dynamics codes on the European grid distributed computing infrastructure. As a prototype case study, the N-methylacetamide dimer in vacuo has been considered and the formation of possible conformers is analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Endoscopy represents both an alternative and useful complement to the standard microsurgical approach to the anterior craniovertebral junction (CVJ). Nevertheless, few studies provide an experimental comparison between transnasal and transoral endoscopic control on CVJ. We compared the surgical exposition angle and the working channel volume of both the transnasal and transoral approaches in the cadaver.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present extended applications of an established theoretical and computational machinery suitable for the study of the dynamics of CO2+CO2 collisions, focusing on vibrational energy exchange, considered over a wide range of energies and rotational temperatures. Calculations are based on quasi-classical trajectories on a potential energy function (a critical component of dynamics simulations), tailored to accurately describe the intermolecular interactions, modeled by the recently proposed bond-bond semiempirical formulation that allows the colliding molecules to be stretchable, rather than frozen at their equilibrium geometry. In a previous work, the same potential energy surface has been used to show that modifications in the geometry (and in physical properties such as polarizability and charge distribution) of the colliding partners affect the intermolecular interaction and determine the features of the energy exchange, to a large extent driven by long-range forces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA new six-dimensional (6D) global potential energy surface (PES) is proposed for the full range description of the interaction of the N2(1Σg+)+N2(1Σg+) system governing collisional processes, including N atom exchange. The related potential energy values were determined using high-level ab initio methods. The calculations were performed at a coupled-cluster with single and double and perturbative triple excitations level of theory in order to have a first full range picture of the PES.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current research reports that mothers' security of attachment predicts their children's sense of God's closeness. A total of 71 mother-child dyads participated (children's M age = 7.5).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Empirical findings show that the child's illness can interfere with parental well-being and with the construction of a well-functioning effective relationship between the child and his/her caregivers. In line with these findings, the present study aims at investigating the negative impact of the baby's diagnosis of clubfoot on the mother and the protective function of social support; moreover, the study aims at implementing, as a pilot experience, an intervention protocol directed to the same sample of mothers, providing emotional and informational support.
Methods: A sample of 34 mothers was recruited within the first 3 months of the baby's life, including 2 groups: a clinical one, with 17 mothers of babies diagnosed with clubfoot, and a control one, with 17 mothers of healthy full-term babies.
This study examined the antecedents of preschool age children's mental representations of attachment, assessed using the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT). Antecedent predictors were maternal attachment scripts, assessed using the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA), and the child's secure base behaviors, assessed using the Attachment Q-Set (AQS). Participants were 121 mothers and their preschool children assessed in three samples (Portuguese sample, n = 31; US Midwestern sample, n = 38; US Southeastern sample, n = 52).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe psychological correlates of enuresis are receiving growing attention, coherently with a multi-factorial approach to this problem, but to date the empirical findings are still inconsistent and incomplete. The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the socio-affective functioning of enuretic children by exploring four central dimensions: attachment, self-esteem, self-control, and temperament. Twenty-two enuretic children with their mothers were enrolled in the study and matched, based on gender and age, to a control group of continent healthy children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe objective of this study is to evaluate language outcome in pre-term children, considering multiple factors. The hypothesis is that early communicative capacity (pre-verbal communicative utterances) is affected mainly by biological (prematurity, birth weight, and gender) and social factors (maternal education), while more advanced linguistic abilities (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBased on the idea that believers' perceived relationships with God develop from their attachment-related experiences with primary caregivers, the authors explored the quality of such experiences and their representations among individuals who differed in likelihood of experiencing a principal attachment to God. Using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), they compared attachment-related experiences and representations in a group of 30 Catholic priests and religious with a matched group of lay Catholics and with the worldwide normal distribution of AAI classifications. They found an overrepresentation of secure-autonomous states regarding attachment among those more likely to experience a principal attachment to God (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe influence of prematurity and maternal attachment organization on sensitivity was investigated in 40 mother-infant dyads. Results show a main effect of attachment and an interaction between attachment and prematurity. Sensitivity was differently associated with medical risk and mothers' traumatic reaction, depending on the quality of attachment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study provides data supporting the reliability and validity of an Italian version of the adult attachment script representation task, designed by Waters & Rodrigues-Doolabh (2004). Specifically, we tested hypotheses concerning positive relations between attachment scriptedness scores and two other representational measures, derived from the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). In addition, we tested the hypothesis that secure base script scores should predict maternal sensitivity in the context of mother - infant interaction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe case of a female patient who had undergone mastectomy for infiltrating ductal carcinoma and come to the Orthopedics Division for lumbosacral pain unresponsive to conventional treatment is discussed. Pelvic X-ray, CT and scintigraphy were performed. The presence of multiple areas of selerosis of the pelvis and proximal femurs were documented.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe case of a patient with dysphonia and ingravescent dysphagia, associated with crises of lipothymia "ab ingestis" is discussed. ENT examination with videolaryngoscopy evidenced a swelling of the posterior hypopharyngeal wall. X-ray study of the upper digestive tract was discontinued for inhalation.
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