Non-Traditional Extension Education Using Video Conference

This article describes Extension efforts to connect clients in remote rural areas to a wide variety of educational opportunities. This includes improving access to the land-grant system for people who live a great distance from campus as well as establishing new relationships with educational providers that are not a part of our traditional offerings. We describe some success stories in delivering non-traditional programming to new clients and discuss some of the issues arising from this new venture

LATINOS’ EXPERIENCES IN THE US: ACCULTURATION, DISCRIMINATION, STRESS, SOCIAL COHESION AND PSYCHIATRIC DISORDER

Background: Latinos are the largest foreign-born group and one of the fastest growing minority groups in the United States. As such, they will increasingly contribute to the burden of mental and behavioral disorders. Acculturation and other related experiences are associated with the development of mental disorder in US-residing Latinos, however most studies treat Latinos as a homogeneous group. This obscures meaningful between-group differences and hinders the elucidation of potential mechanisms contributing to the association between acculturation and mental health outcomes. Further, despite its importance, acculturation has been measured insufficiently and inconsistently. This is especially problematic due to the complex nature of these constructs. To understand the mechanism by which acculturation impacts mental health, novel methods are needed. Latent variable methods are one such approach that has been recommended as a way to capture nuance of complex constructs such as acculturation. Methods: Data come from the National Latino and Asian American Study, a nationally-representative, cross-sectional survey of 2,554 Latinos in the United States. Results: The six scales of acculturation (English and Spanish language preference and proficiency, ethnic identity) and related experiences (discrimination, acculturative stress, neighborhood context, family context) had good construct validity. No scales achieved full measurement invariance, but some scales were more variant across subgroups than others. Four latent classes of Latinos’ acculturative experiences emerged: Positive Experiences (n=1,743, 69%), Cohesive-Conflict (n=424, 17%), Marginalized Conflict (n=237, 9%), and Marginalized (n=137, 5%). These classes were highly associated with all three categories of DSM-IV disorder: depressive, anxiety, and substance use disorders after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, subethnicity and generational status. The Positive Experiences class had the lowest lifetime prevalence of all three disorders (14.8%, 13.6% and 7.1%, respectively). The class associated with the highest disorder prevalence (34.0%, 26.6%, and 22.5%, respectively) was those Latinos with a Marginalized Conflict experience. After accounting for acculturative experiences, direct associations between subethnicity and generational status and disorder varied. There were no significant direct effects between subethnicity and substance use disorder prevalence, but a strong dose-response relationship of generational status. Conversely, subethnicity was directly related to depressive and anxiety disorder prevalence, but generational status was not. Conclusions: Acculturation and other experiences related to immigrant and minority status in the US are complex constructs and should be treated as such. Latent variable methods help account for measurement variance by subgroup and the unobserved nature of the constructs. Latinos have varied acculturative experiences in the US, which are highly personal and not fully accounted for by observed characteristics such as country of origin

Loss of angiotensin II type 2 receptor improves blood pressure in elastin insufficiency

There is ample evidence supporting a role for angiotensin II type 2 receptor (A

Convolution Lagrangian perturbation theory for biased tracers

We present a new formulation of Lagrangian perturbation theory which allows accurate predictions of the real- and redshift-space correlation functions of the mass field and dark matter halos. Our formulation involves a non-perturbative resummation of Lagrangian perturbation theory and indeed can be viewed as a partial resummation of the formalism of Matsubara (2008a,b) in which we keep exponentiated all of the terms which tend to a constant at large separation. One of the key features of our method is that we naturally recover the Zel'dovich approximation as the lowest order of our expansion for the matter correlation function. We compare our results against a suite of N-body simulations and obtain good agreement for the correlation functions in real-space and for the monopole correlation function in redshift space. The agreement becomes worse for higher multipole moments of the redshift-space, halo correlation function. Our formalism naturally includes non-linear bias and explains the strong bias-dependence of the multipole moments of the redshift-space correlation function seen in N-body simulations.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Updated to match version accepted by MNRAS. Minor typos fixed in the appendice

Scattering theory on graphs (2): the Friedel sum rule

We consider the Friedel sum rule in the context of the scattering theory for the Schr\"odinger operator -\Dc_x^2+V(x) on graphs made of one-dimensional wires connected to external leads. We generalize the Smith formula for graphs. We give several examples of graphs where the state counting method given by the Friedel sum rule is not working. The reason for the failure of the Friedel sum rule to count the states is the existence of states localized in the graph and not coupled to the leads, which occurs if the spectrum is degenerate and the number of leads too small.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX, 6 eps figure

Towards an accurate model of the redshift space clustering of halos in the quasilinear regime

Observations of redshift-space distortions in spectroscopic galaxy surveys offer an attractive method for measuring the build-up of cosmological structure, which depends both on the expansion rate of the Universe and our theory of gravity. Galaxies occupy dark matter halos, whose redshift space clustering has a complex dependence on bias that cannot be inferred from the behavior of matter. We identify two distinct corrections on quasilinear scales (~ 30-80 Mpc/h): the non-linear mapping between real and redshift space positions, and the non-linear suppression of power in the velocity divergence field. We model the first non-perturbatively using the scale-dependent Gaussian streaming model, which we show is accurate at the <0.5 (2) per cent level in transforming real space clustering and velocity statistics into redshift space on scales s>10 (s>25) Mpc/h for the monopole (quadrupole) halo correlation functions. We use perturbation theory to predict the real space pairwise halo velocity statistics. Our fully analytic model is accurate at the 2 per cent level only on scales s > 40 Mpc/h. Recent models that neglect the corrections from the bispectrum and higher order terms from the non-linear real-to-redshift space mapping will not have the accuracy required for current and future observational analyses. Finally, we note that our simulation results confirm the essential but non-trivial assumption that on large scales, the bias inferred from real space clustering of halos is the same one that determines their pairwise infall velocity amplitude at the per cent level.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, submitted to MNRA

Loss of function mutations in HARS cause a spectrum of inherited peripheral neuropathies

Using linkage analysis and whole-exome sequencing, Safka Brozkova et al. reveal missense mutations in the histidyl-tRNA synthetase gene in 23 patients from four families with axonal and demyelinating neuropathies of varying severity. The mutations cause loss of function in yeast complementation assays and neurotoxicity in a C. elegans mode

HL-Histamine receptor affinity predicts short-term weight gain for typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs

As a result of superior efficacy and overall tolerability, atypical antipsychotic drugs have become the treatment of choice for schizophrenia and related disorders, despite their side effects. Weight gain is a common and potentially serious complication of some antipsychotic drug therapy, and may be accompanied by hyperlipidemia, hypertension and hyperglycemia and, in some extreme cases, diabetic ketoacidosis. The molecular mechanism(s) responsible for antipsychotic drug-induced weight gain are unknown, but have been hypothesized to be because of interactions of antipsychotic drugs with several neurotransmitter receptors, including 5-HT2A and 5-HT2Cserotonin receptors, H1-histamine receptors, α1- and α2-adrenergic receptors, and m3-muscarinic receptors. To determine the receptor(s) likely to be responsible for antipsychotic-drug-induced weight gain, we screened 17 typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs for binding to 12 neurotransmitter receptors. H1-histamine receptor affinities for this group of typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs were significantly correlated with weight gain (Spearman ρ=−0.72; p less than 0.01), as were affinities for α1A adrenergic (ρ=−0.54; p less than 0.05), 5-HT2C (ρ=−0.49; p less than 0.05) and 5-HT6 receptors (ρ=−0.54; p less than 0.05), whereas eight other receptors' affinities were not. A principal components analysis showed that affinities at the H1, α2A, α2B, 5-HT2A, 5-HT2C, and 5-HT6 receptors were most highly correlated with the first principal component, and affinities for the D2, 5-HT1A, and 5-HT7 receptors were most highly correlated with the second principal component. A discriminant functions analysis showed that affinities for the H1 and α1A receptors were most highly correlated with the discriminant function axis. The discriminant function analysis, as well as the affinity for the H1-histamine receptor alone, correctly classified 15 of the 17 drugs into two groups; those that induce weight gain and those that do not. Because centrally acting H1-histamine receptor antagonists are known to induce weight gain with chronic use, and because H1-histamine receptor affinities are positively correlated with weight gain among typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs, it is recommended that the next generation of atypical antipsychotic drugs be screened to avoid H1-histamine receptors