[Prenatal bonding and effect of recalled maternal overprotection in its development]. / Lien prénatal et effet du vécu de la surprotection maternelle sur son développement.

OBJECTIVES: Explore the relationship between the recalled bond of pregnant women to their own mothers and the development of prenatal attachment. METHODS: Women with a single-fetal pregnancy who consulted the outpatient service of the maternity "C" ward of the center of maternity and neonatology of Tunis and had perceived fetal movements were included. Maternal-fetal attachment was assessed by the Prenatal Attachment Inventory (PAI), and the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) was used to evaluate experienced bond to mother. Socio demographic and clinical data were collected on a pre-established form. RESULTS: Eighty respondents were retained from 95 recruited pregnant women. Their ages ranged from 19 to 44 with an average of 32 years. The rate of primiparity was of 28.7 % and half of pregnancies were identified at risk. The mean score of PAI was 55.3 (ET=10.79). Means scores of PBI "care" dimension and "overprotection" dimension were respectively of 26.26 (ET=5.82) and 17 (ET=6.38). The four types of maternal bonding according to the PBI scores were distributed as follow: affectionate constraint (31.3 %), affectionless control (35 %), optimal bonding (21.3 %) and weak bonding (12.5 %). The two PBI dimensions "care" and "overprotection" were significantly and negatively correlated (P<0.05). The PAI scores were not correlated with the PBI "care" dimension scores but were significantly and negatively correlated with the "overprotection" dimension scores (P<0.,01). In order to better explore this association, the "overprotection" dimension scores were studied according to the 21 items of the PAI. A negative and significant correlation was found only with three of the PAI items: item 12 (P<0;01), 15, and 20 (P<0;05). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that pregnant women whose mothers showed more overprotective and controlling behaviors could be at risk of developing a weak maternofetal attachment. Further research is needed.

Theoretical Investigation of the Electronic Structure and Spectra of Mg(2+)He and Mg(+)He.

The ground and many excited states of the Mg(+)He van der Waals molecular system have been explored using a one-electron pseudopotential approach. In this approach, effective potentials are used to consider the Mg(2+) core and the electron-He effects. Furthermore, a core-core interaction is included. This has reduced the number of active electrons of the Mg(+)He, to be considered in the calculation, to a single valence electron. This has permitted to use extended Gaussian basis sets for Mg and He. Therefore, the potentianl energy and dipole moments calculations are carried out at the Hartree-Fock level of theory, and the spin-orbit effect is included using a semiclassical approach. The core-core interaction for the Mg(2+)He ground state is included using accurate CCSD(T) calculations. The spectroscopic constants of the Mg(+)He electronic states are extracted and compared with the existing theoretical works, where very good agreement is observed. Moreover, the transition dipole function has been determined for a large and dense grid of internuclear distances including the spin-orbit effect.

Theoretical study of the CsNa molecule: adiabatic and diabatic potential energy and dipole moment.

The adiabatic and diabatic potential energy curves of the low-lying electronic states of the NaCs molecule dissociating into Na (3s, 3p) + Cs (6s, 6p, 5d, 7s, 7p, 6d, 8s, 4f) have been investigated. The molecular calculations are performed using an ab initio approach based on nonempirical pseudopotential, parametrized l-dependent polarization potentials and full configuration interaction calculations through the CIPCI quantum chemistry package. The derived spectroscopic constants (Re, De, Te, ωe, ωexe, and Be) of the ground state and lower excited states are compared with the available theoretical and experimental works. Moreover, accurate permanent and transition dipole moment have been determined as a function of the internuclear distance. The adiabatic permanent dipole moment for the first nine (1)Σ(+) electronic states have shown both ionic characters associated with electron transfer related to Cs(+)Na(-) and Cs(-)Na(+) arrangements. By a simple rotation, the diabatic permanent dipole moment is determined and has revealed a linear behavior, particularly at intermediate and large distances. Many peaks around the avoided crossing locations have been observed for the transition dipole moment between neighbor electronic states.

Theoretical study of the LiCs molecule: adiabatic and diabatic potential energy and dipole moment.

For nearly all the states dissociating into Cs (6s, 6p, 5d, 7s, 7p, 6d, 8s) and Li (2s, 2p, 3s), we present an extensive adiabatic study for (1,3)Sigma(+), (1,3)Pi, and (1,3)Delta symmetries of the LiCs molecule. We have used an ab initio approach based on nonempirical pseudopotentials, parametrized l-dependent polarization potentials, and full configuration interaction calculations. A diabatisation procedure based on the effective Hamiltonian theory and an effective metric is used to produce the quasi-diabatic potential energy for all studied states. The spectroscopic constants (R(e), D(e), T(e), omega(e), omega(e)x(e), and B(e)) of these states are derived and compared with the available theoretical and experimental works. In addition to the potential energies, accurate permanent and transition dipole moment have been determined for a wide range of internuclear distances. The adiabatic permanent dipole moment for the first 10 (1)Sigma(+) electronic states has revealed ionic characters relating to electron transfer and yielding both Li(-)Cs(+) and Li(+)Cs(-) arrangements. The quasi-diabatic permanent moments show linear behaviors, especially at intermediate and large distance. The transition dipole moment between neighbor states has revealed many peaks located around the avoided crossing positions.

Comparison of stroke volume (SV) and stroke volume respiratory variation (SVV) measured by the axillary artery pulse-contour method and by aortic Doppler echocardiography in patients undergoing aortic surgery.

BACKGROUND: The goal of the study was to compare stroke volume (SV) and respiratory stroke volume variation (SVV) measured by pulse-contour analysis and aortic Doppler. METHODS: These were measured by pulse-contour analysis and thermodilution (PiCCO) and by aortic pulsed wave Doppler with transoesophageal echocardiography in patients undergoing abdominal aortic surgery. Simultaneous measurements were done at different times of surgery. All data were recorded on PiCCOwin software and videotape and analysed off-line by a blinded investigator. RESULTS: A total of 114 measurements were achieved in 20 patients. There was a good correlation and small bias between the PiCCO and the echo-Doppler values of the mean SV [r=0.885; bias=0.2 (8) ml], and between the minimum [r=0.842; bias=1 (9) ml] and maximum SV [r=0.840; bias=2 (10) ml] values. CONCLUSIONS: There is a fair correlation between pulse-contour analysis and aortic Doppler for beat-by-beat measurement of SV but not for calculation of SV respiratory ventilation.

Detection and validation of single gene inversions.

MOTIVATION: The biologically meaningful algorithmic study of genome rearrangement should take into account the distribution of sizes of the rearranged genomic fragments. In particular, it is important to know the prevalence of short inversions in order to understand the patterns of gene order disruption observed in comparative genomics. RESULTS: We find a large excess of short inversions, especially those involving a single gene, in comparison with a random inversion model. This is demonstrated through comparison of four pairs of bacterial genomes, using a specially-designed implementation of the Hannenhalli-Pevzner theory, and validated through experimentation on pairs of random genomes matched to the real pairs.

On the Reconstruction of Ancient Doubled Circular Genomes Using Minimum Reversals.

We propose a model of the doubling of a bacterial genome followed by gene order rearrangement to explain present-day patterns of duplicated genes. On the hypothesis that inversion (reversal) is the predominant mechanism of rearrangement, we ask how to reconstruct the ancestral genome at the moment of genome duplication. We present a polynomial algorithm for finding such a genome that minimizes (within 2 reversals) the Hannenhalli-Pevzner formula for reversal distance from the modern genome. We illustrate by applying the algorithm to a set of duplicate genes in the Marchantia polymorpha mitochondrial genome.

Very fast identification of RNA motifs in genomic DNA. Application to tRNA search in the yeast genome.

A common strategy characterises the various methods independently defined to identify almost unambiguously different types of RNA molecules in DNA fragments. So far, the good quality of detection of RNA motif has been the prior motivation and effectively delayed the optimisation of programs. As an illustration of possible improvements, a modified version of tRNAscan is described. The previous algorithm was altered to run 500 times faster and to lower both rates of false positives and false negatives. The newly sequenced genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is scanned both ways in less than three minutes and results match annotations found in databanks with three exceptions, two of which being arguably not real tRNAs.