Pediapod from Pediatric Research

Talks

Nature Research

Malnutrition and cystic fibrosis in India: Case studies in the US show that children with cystic fibrosis often suffer from vitamin deficiencies. In India, this problem is exacerbated by malnutrition, as Dr Angurana discovered when he studied patients in the northern city of Candigarh. http://www.nature.com/pr/index.html

Pediapod: 24 July 2014 - malnutrition and cystic fibrosis

The Bayley Scales are a suite of IQ-like tests for babies and young children. They're used to assess infant development. But the latest edition of the tests, the Bayley-III, seems to produce higher test scores than its predecessor, the Bayley-II. This is causing problems for researchers like Neil Marlow who use the tests to check the effectiveness of different interventions. Neil decided to compare the two tests. He talks about the results of his study, and its implications, on this month's podcast. http://www.nature.com/pr/index.html

Pediapod: 22 May 2014 - The Bayley Scales

In this podcast we're focusing on children born with extremely low birth weights. Researchers are interested in how quickly these children grow and catch up with their normal birth weight peers. A new study, of children born in the 1990s, suggests that improvements in neonatal nutrition have led to improvements in catch-up growth. The study also looked at gender differences and obesity. Study leader Maureen Hack talks us through the findings. http://www.nature.com/pr/index.html

Pediapod: 20 March 2014 - Catch-up growth

Researchers normally use a radioactive label to track red blood cell survival. But this method is deemed unsafe for infants and children. So an alternative method - one using biotin to label the cells, instead of radioactive Chromium 51 - is good news for pediatrics. Dr. Jack Widness and colleagues from the University of Iowa have tested the biotin labeling method on a group of critically ill premature babies. In this podcast Dr. Widness presents their results and explains how the method could be used to improve transfusion practices for infants with anemia. http://www.nature.com/pr/index.html

Pediapod: 23 January 2014 - A new way to track red blood cell survival in infants

Occasionally, a baby under a year dies unexpectedly in sleep, for no apparent reason. This is known as sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. Studies have thrown up genes and molecules that are sometimes associated with SIDS deaths, but we're a long way from fully understanding the causes. Now, Nathan Salomonis has created a systems-level model of SIDS, to help researchers see how pathways in the brain, heart and immune system are involved - and to identify new targets for research.
www.nature.com/pr/index.html

Pediapod: 25 September 2014 - A new way to understand SIDS

On Outlines of Pyrrhonism , Book 1, from around 200 CE.

Are our beliefs warranted? Skeptics following in the footsteps of Pyrrho (who lived just after Aristotle, around 300 BCE, but didn’t leave us any writings, so Sextus, centuries later, has to fill us in) think that for any argument someone puts forward (at least about the nature of reality), you can come up with a plausible counter-argument, and that after you’ve done this enough, you achieve a relaxed state where you you’re satisfied in not being able to decide.

Is this really true? And is there a sharp distinction between beliefs you need to accept in order to live (this is food; that is poison) and theoretical ones? Can a philosopher really get beyond philosophizing in this way? Can one be a scientist and still be a skeptic of this sort? Jessica Berry joins Mark, Wes, and Dylan to defend this position.

Go to blog

Pyrrhonian Skepticism According to Sextus Empiricus

NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale: 1-month normative data and variation from birth to 1 month

Livio Provenzi is based at the Scientific Institute IRCCS Eugenio Medea in Italy, where he is involved in the Preterm Behavioral Epigenetics Project, a longitudinal research project in very pre-term infants looking at the long and short-term epigenetic and behavioral effects of painful and invasive procedures during the NICU stay.

Livio and his colleagues sought to provide normative neurobehavioral data for healthy infants over the first month of life using the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Network Neurobehavioural Scale (NNNS).

Acquiring normative comparisons for at-risk populations (e.g. pre-term infants) is key for behavioral studies and for research on early epigenetic biomarkers of developmental risk.

Related article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/pr201825

Pediatric Research

NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale...

This episode is a celebration of the Heredity Special Issue: Evolutionary Consequences of Epigenetic Inheritance. Join us as we talk about the motivation behind the Special Issue with Editor Dr Foteini Spagopoulou. Then, PhD student Erin Macartney discusses the role of paternal epigenetic inheritance—a particular focus of the issue— and Dr Yuan-Ye Zhang explains her experiential work on the evolutionary potential of epigenetic variation. Importantly, this episode also celebrates the achievements of ambitious students. Tune in and find out what we mean!

Related articles:

Epigenetic paternal effects as costly, condition-dependent traits
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-018-0096-8

Understanding the evolutionary potential of epigenetic variation: a comparison of heritable phenotypic variation in epiRILs, RILs, and natural ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-018-0095-9

Special Issue Podcast: Evolutionary Consequences of Epigenetic Inheritance

PhD candidate Shannon Kjeldsen, from James Cook University, discusses the ecology, history, population genomics and conservation of an iconic Australian species: the koala! Exciting things are also happening at Heredity Podcast HQ—the way we bring you the latest and greatest genetics research is about to get a whole lot better!

Related article:

Genomic comparisons reveal biogeographic and anthropogenic impacts in the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus): a dietary-specialist species distributed across heterogeneous environments
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-018-0144-4

Koala population genetics

In this episode we explore a hybrid approach for genotyping one of the most variable parts of the vertebrate genome: the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Join Dr Silvia Fuselli (University of Ferrara) and Dr Rodrigo Baptista (University of Georgia) as they explain their work combining the best aspects of both next and third generation sequencing platforms—an approach that is bringing us ever closer to solving the genome puzzle.

Related article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-018-0070-5

The long and the short of MHC genotyping

Aggression is an evolutionary behavior seen throughout the animal world. When it comes to humans, however, some forms of aggression can be seen as pathological, dangerous, and quite costly to society. And yet there's a dearth of approved, effective treatments for aggression. Meghan Flanigan is a graduate student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and one of the authors of a new article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, titled "Recent advances in the study of aggression," in which she argues that there isn't much data about the causes of abnormal aggression in humans, and part of the problem has been that it hasn't been modeled well in animals.

Related article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0226-2

Brainpod - Recent advances in the study of aggression

Related article:

Improved diagnostics by exome sequencing following raw data reevaluation by clinical geneticists involved in the medical care of the individuals tested
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41436-018-0343-7

Improved diagnostic yield from exome sequencing following re-evaluation by clinical geneticists

Welcome to the Springer Nature Soundcloud page! Here you will find several podcasts from our journals across a range of scientific subjects, including Gene Pod, ModPath Chat, Pediapod, Hereditypod and Brainpod.