Poly(Sitosterol)-Based Hydrophobic Blocks in Amphiphilic Block Copolymers for the Assembly of Hybrid Vesicles.

Amphiphilic block copolymer and lipids can be assembled into hybrid vesicles (HVs), which are an alternative to liposomes and polymersomes. Block copolymers that have either poly(sitostryl methacrylate) or statistical copolymers of sitosteryl methacrylate and butyl methacrylate as the hydrophobic part and a poly(carboxyethyl acrylate) hydrophilic segment are synthesized and characterized. These block copolymers assemble into small HVs with soybean L-α-phosphatidylcholine (soyPC), confirmed by electron microscopy and small-angle X-ray scattering.

Do Self- and Proxy Reports of Cognitive Problems Reflect Intellectual Functioning in Children and Adolescents with Congenital Heart Defects?

Aim: Children with congenital heart defects (CHD) who suffer from cognitive impairments and school difficulties need to be identified as early as possible in order to set appropriate interventions in place that may enhance the school situation and quality of life for these children. Identifying children and adolescents at risk for cognitive difficulties requires specific screening tools. This study assessed such a tool - Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Cardiac Module subscale: Cognitive Problems - to investigate whether proxy reported and self-reported cognitive problems were associated with measured intellectual functioning in children and adolescents with CHD treated with surgery or by catheter interventions.

Intellectual Functioning in Children with Congenital Heart Defects Treated with Surgery or by Catheter Interventions.

Background: Studies suggest that children with congenital heart defects (CHD) are at risk for adverse intellectual functioning. However, factors related to lower intellectual functioning in this group are largely unknown. This study describes intellectual functioning in children with CHD in relation to severity of the heart defect, the child's age, and the socioeconomic status of the family (SES).

Visual processing speed in old age.

Mental speed is a common concept in theories of cognitive aging, but it is difficult to get measures of the speed of a particular psychological process that are not confounded by the speed of other processes. We used Bundesen's (1990) Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) to obtain specific estimates of processing speed in the visual system controlled for the influence of response latency and individual variations of the perception threshold. A total of 33 non-demented old people (69-87 years) were tested for the ability to recognize briefly presented letters.

Corpus callosum atrophy in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease.

Background/objectives: Several studies have found atrophy of the corpus callosum (CC) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, it remains unclear whether callosal atrophy is already present in the early stages of AD, and to what extent it may be associated with other structural changes in the brain, such as age-related white matter changes (ARWMC) and progression of the disease.

Methods: Twenty-eight patients in the early stages of AD and 50 non-demented elderly subjects with varying degrees of ARWMC were investigated using MRI.