Maternal psychological distress and temperament traits in children from infancy to late childhood.

Background: Maternal psychological distress during pregnancy is associated with infant temperament. Whether associations persist into late childhood, whether maternal distress is associated with temperament change from infancy to late childhood, whether associations are independent of maternal concurrent distress, and whether maternal distress has sensitive exposure periods on child temperament remain unclear.

Methods: Our study includes mother-child dyads from Finnish, prospective Prediction and Prevention of Preeclampsia and Intrauterine Growth Restriction study.

Optimized efficient attention-based network for facial expressions analysis in neurological health care.

Facial Expression Analysis (FEA) plays a vital role in diagnosing and treating early-stage neurological disorders (NDs) like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Manual FEA is hindered by expertise, time, and training requirements, while automatic methods confront difficulties with real patient data unavailability, high computations, and irrelevant feature extraction. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel approach: an efficient, lightweight convolutional block attention module (CBAM) based deep learning network (DLN) to aid doctors in diagnosing ND patients.

Recommendations for data collection in cohort studies of preterm born individuals - The RECAP Preterm Core Dataset.

Background: Preterm birth (before 37 completed weeks of gestation) is associated with an increased risk of adverse health and developmental outcomes relative to birth at term. Existing guidelines for data collection in cohort studies of individuals born preterm are either limited in scope, have not been developed using formal consensus methodology, or did not involve a range of stakeholders in their development. Recommendations meeting these criteria would facilitate data pooling and harmonisation across studies.

Risk of immune-related diseases in childhood after intrapartum antibiotic exposure.

Background: Intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis is effective in preventing early-onset group B streptococcal disease in newborn infants, but it influences gut microbiota development. Gut microbiota composition is, in turn, associated with immune-related diseases in childhood.

Objective: This study hypothesized that intrapartum antibiotic exposure is associated with immune-related diseases in childhood.

Positive maternal mental health during pregnancy and psychiatric problems in children from early childhood to late childhood.

Negative maternal mental health during pregnancy increases the risk of psychiatric problems in children, but research on the potential benefits of positive maternal mental health during pregnancy is scarce. We investigated associations between positive maternal mental health composite score, based on reports of maternal positive affect, curiosity, and social support during pregnancy, and children's psychiatric problems (Child Behavior Checklist) at ages 1.9-5.

Healthy ageing from birth to age 84 years in the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, Finland: a longitudinal study.

Background: The true prevalence of healthy ageing on a population level is unknown. In this study we aimed to examine the upper limit for the prevalence of healthy ageing, by quantifying the probability of surviving and remaining free of chronic diseases that could impact functioning (ie, healthy survival) across adulthood. We also estimated the prevalence of clinically assessed healthy ageing, and the determinants of healthy survival and healthy ageing.

Transcriptional development of the hippocampus and the dorsal-intermediate-ventral axis in rats.

Risk and resilience for neuropsychiatric illnesses are established during brain development, and transcriptional markers of risk may be identifiable in early development. The dorsal-ventral axis of the hippocampus has behavioral, electrophysiological, anatomical, and transcriptional gradients and abnormal hippocampus development is associated with autism, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and mood disorders. We previously showed that differential gene expression along the dorsoventral hippocampus in rats was present at birth (postnatal day 0, P0), and that a subset of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) was present at all postnatal ages examined (P0, P9, P18, and P60).

Intergenerational educational trajectories and inequalities in longevity: A population-based study of adults born before 1965 in 14 European countries.

Background: While educational gradients in longevity have been observed consistently in adult Europeans, these inequalities have been understudied within the context of family- and country-level influences. We utilized population-based multi-generational multi-country data to assess the role (1) of parental and individual education in shaping intergenerational inequalities in longevity, and (2) of country-level social net expenditure in mitigating these inequalities.

Methods: We analyzed data from 52,271 adults born before 1965 who participated in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, comprising 14 countries.

Organization of projections from the entorhinal cortex to the hippocampal formation of the Egyptian fruit bat Rousettus aegyptiacus.

The hippocampal formation and entorhinal cortex are crucially involved in learning and memory as well as in spatial navigation. The conservation of these structures across the entire mammalian lineage demonstrates their importance. Information on a diverse set of spatially tuned neurons has become available, but we only have a rudimentary understanding of how anatomical network structure affects functional tuning.

Gestational age at birth and cognitive outcomes in adolescence: population based full sibling cohort study.

Objective: To investigate the association between gestational age at birth and cognitive outcomes in adolescence.

Design: Nationwide population based full sibling cohort study.

Setting: Denmark.

Maternal exposure to childhood maltreatment and mental and behavioral disorders in children.

Exposure to maltreatment in childhood is associated with lifelong risk of mental and behavioral disorders. Whether the effects extend to the next generation remains unclear. We examined whether maternal exposure to childhood abuse and neglect in her own childhood were associated with mental and behavioral disorders and psychiatric symptoms in her children, and whether maternal lifetime mental and behavioral disorders or lower education level mediated or added to the effects.

Maternal mental health and adverse birth outcomes.

Recent research in economics emphasizes the role of in utero conditions for the health endowment at birth and in early childhood and for social as well as economic outcomes in later life. This paper analyzes the relation between maternal mental health during pregnancy and birth outcomes of the child. In particular, we analyze the relationship between maternal mental health during pregnancy and the probability of giving birth preterm (PT), having a newborn at low birth weight (LBW) or being small for gestational age (SGA).

Positive maternal mental health during pregnancy and mental and behavioral disorders in children: A prospective pregnancy cohort study.

Background: The role of positive maternal mental health during pregnancy in child mental health remains largely unknown. We investigated whether positive maternal mental health during pregnancy is associated with lower hazards of mental and behavioral disorders in children and mitigates the adverse effects of negative maternal mental health.

Methods: Among 3,378 mother-child dyads of the Prediction and Prevention of Preeclampsia and Intrauterine Growth Restriction study, mothers reported their positive mental health biweekly throughout pregnancy with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory Curiosity scale, and a visual analogue scale for social support, and negative mental health with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.

Seasonal diversity dynamics of a boreal zooplankton community under climate impact.

Seasonality and long-term environmental variability affect species diversity through their effects on the dynamics of species. To investigate such effects, we fitted a dynamic and heterogeneous species abundance model generating the lognormal species abundance distribution to an assemblage of freshwater zooplankton sampled five times a year (June-October) during the ice-free period over 28 years (1990-2017) in Lake Atnsjøen (Norway). By applying a multivariate stochastic community dynamics model for describing the fluctuations in abundances, we show that the community dynamics was driven by environmental variability in spring (i.

Wild epigenetics: insights from epigenetic studies on natural populations.

Epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs are increasingly targeted in studies of natural populations. Here, I review some of the insights gained from this research, examine some of the methods currently in use and discuss some of the challenges that researchers working on natural populations are likely to face when probing epigenetic mechanisms. While studies supporting the involvement of epigenetic mechanisms in generating phenotypic variation in natural populations are amassing, many of these studies are currently correlative in nature.

The association between female reproductive performance and leukocyte telomere length in wild Soay sheep.

Telomere length (TL), typically measured across a sample of blood cells, has emerged as an exciting potential marker of physiological state and of the costs of investment in growth and reproduction within evolutionary ecology. While there is mounting evidence from studies of wild vertebrates that short TL predicts raised subsequent mortality risk, the relationship between reproductive investment and TL is less clear cut, and previous studies report both negative and positive associations. In this study, we examined the relationship between TL and different aspects of maternal reproductive performance in a free-living population of Soay sheep.

Effect of High-Dose vs Standard-Dose Vitamin D Supplementation on Neurodevelopment of Healthy Term Infants: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Vitamin D may be important for neurodevelopment. The optimal daily dose of vitamin D for early brain development is not known.

Objectives: To test whether a higher (1200 IU) vs standard (400 IU) dose of vitamin D3 has beneficial effects on neurodevelopment in the first 2 years of life and whether serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration is associated with neurodevelopment.

Looking Through the COVID-19 Window of Opportunity: Future Scenarios Arising From the COVID-19 Pandemic Across Five Case Study Sites.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused (and continues to cause) severe disruption in global and local economies and has forced countries, societies, and individuals to adapt quickly to the unprecedented and unpredictable situations. Despite the obvious negative consequences of the pandemic, many have called for efforts to identify transformative opportunities for sustainable development throughout this disorderly time. In the present paper, we explore such potential opportunities in the context of an interdisciplinary, international research project, which is focusing on sustainable marine management in biosphere reserves and marine parks in Southeast Asia.

The Significance of Enabling Human Consideration in Policymaking: How to Get the E-Ferry That You Want.

There is broad agreement in literature and policy that the transport sector needs to maximise electric mobility, in order to lower both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This ongoing transformation continues to require a high degree of technological innovation. Consequently, policymakers are striving to reward innovation in procurement tender contracts, in order to achieve sustainable innovation.

Heritable variation in telomere length predicts mortality in Soay sheep.

Telomere length (TL) is considered an important biomarker of whole-organism health and aging. Across humans and other vertebrates, short telomeres are associated with increased subsequent mortality risk, but the processes responsible for this correlation remain uncertain. A key unanswered question is whether TL-mortality associations arise due to positive effects of genes or early-life environment on both an individual's average lifetime TL and their longevity, or due to more immediate effects of environmental stressors on within-individual TL loss and increased mortality risk.

A polyepigenetic glucocorticoid exposure score at birth and childhood mental and behavioral disorders.

Background: Maternal depression and anxiety during pregnancy may enhance fetal exposure to glucocorticoids (GCs) and harm neurodevelopment. We tested whether a novel cross-tissue polyepigenetic biomarker indicative of exposure to GC is associated with mental and behavioral disorders and their severity in children, possibly mediating the associations between maternal prenatal depressive and anxiety symptoms and these child outcomes.

Methods: Children (n = 814) from the Prediction and Prevention of Preeclampsia and Intrauterine Growth Restriction (PREDO) study were followed-up from birth to age 7.

Back to WHAT? The role of research ethics in pandemic times.

The Covid-19 pandemic creates an unprecedented threatening situation worldwide with an urgent need for critical reflection and new knowledge production, but also a need for imminent action despite prevailing knowledge gaps and multilevel uncertainty. With regard to the role of research ethics in these pandemic times some argue in favor of exceptionalism, others, including the authors of this paper, emphasize the urgent need to remain committed to core ethical principles and fundamental human rights obligations all reflected in research regulations and guidelines carefully crafted over time. In this paper we disentangle some of the arguments put forward in the ongoing debate about Covid-19 human challenge studies (CHIs) and the concomitant role of health-related research ethics in pandemic times.