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The amplitude modulation following response (AMFR) is the steady-state auditory response signaling phase-locking to slow variations in the amplitude (AM) of auditory stimuli that provide fundamental acoustic information. From a developmental perspective, the AMFR has been recorded in sleeping infants, compared to sleeping or awake adults. The lack of AMFR recordings in awake infants limits conclusions on the development of phase-locking to AM. Moreover, previous studies assessing phase-locking to AM using non-speech carriers have not included slow AM rates (<20 Hz), which are particularly important for speech processing. This study aimed at disentangling these issues by recording the AMFR with electroencephalography: in awake infants (3- and 10-month-olds) and awake young adults and for both slow and faster modulation rates (8 and 40 Hz). The AMFR was observable at 8 Hz at all ages (40%, 60%, and 33% of significant AMFR at 3 months, 10 months, and adults, respectively), but only adults showed reliable responses at 40 Hz (6% of significant AMFR at both 3 and 10 months, 100% in adults), thus, ruling out the possibility that sleep has a suppressing effect on the response. This pattern might be explained by developmental differences in the sources of neural processing of faster AM rates., (© 2023 Acoustical Society of America.)

Fauna Europaea is Europe's main zoological taxonomic index, making the scientific names and distributions of all living, currently known, multicellular, European land and freshwater animals species integrally available in one authoritative database. Fauna Europaea covers about 260,000 taxon names, including 145,000 accepted (sub)species, assembled by a large network of (>400) leading specialists, using advanced electronic tools for data collations with data quality assured through sophisticated validation routines. Fauna Europaea started in 2000 as an EC funded FP5 project and provides a unique taxonomic reference for many user-groups such as scientists, governments, industries, nature conservation communities and educational programs. Fauna Europaea was formally accepted as an INSPIRE standard for Europe, as part of the European Taxonomic Backbone established in PESI. Fauna Europaea provides a public web portal at faunaeur.org with links to other key biodiversity services, is installed as a taxonomic backbone in wide range of biodiversity services and actively contributes to biodiversity informatics innovations in various initiatives and EC programs.

Objectives: The association between workplace bullying and psychotropic drug use is not well established. This study was aimed at exploring the association between workplace bullying, and its characteristics, and psychotropic drug use and studying the mediating role of physical and mental health., Methods: The study population consisted of a random sample of 3132 men and 4562 women of the working population in the south-east of France. Workplace bullying, evaluated using the validated instrument elaborated by Leymann, and psychotropic drug use, as well as covariates, were measured using a self-administered questionnaire. Covariates included age, marital status, presence of children, education, occupation, working hours, night work, physico-chemical exposures at work, self-reported health, and depressive symptoms. Statistical analysis was performed using logistic regression analysis and was carried out separately for men and women., Results: Workplace bullying was strongly associated with psychotropic drug use. Past exposure to bullying increased the risk for this use. The more frequent and the longer the exposure to bullying, the stronger the association with psychotropic drug use. Observing bullying on someone else at the workplace was associated with psychotropic drug use. Adjustment for covariates did not modify the results. Additional adjustment for self-reported health and depressive symptoms reduced the magnitude of the associations, especially for men., Conclusions: The association between bullying and psychotropic drug use was found to be significant and strong and was partially mediated by physical and mental health.

The mechanisms of polymer crystallization at the nanometer scale have been investigated with a hot-stage scanning probe microscope (SPM). The processes of lamellar perfection, e.g., lamellar thickening and merging of lamellar fragments, are revealed during the secondary crystallization stage. It is shown that the information contained in SPM images can be comparable to that of time-resolved small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS). In addition, SPM opens the way to examine subtle structural changes that would certainly be overlooked in the global morphological parameters obtained from a simple SAXS correlation function analysis.