Temporal Effects of Distressed Housing on Early Childhood Risk Factors and Kindergarten Readiness

Poor housing quality and housing crises have been linked to adverse outcomes for children. However, few studies have focused on the early childhood period or been able to pinpoint how the timing and duration of housing problems contributes to early educational success. This longitudinal study draws on linked administrative records from housing, education, social service and health agencies to examine the influence of exposure to housing neighborhood conditions since birth on school readiness of all children entering kindergarten over a four-year period in a big city school system. Using marginal structural models that properly account for dynamic housing and neighborhood selection, we find that children exposed to problematic housing and disadvantaged neighborhoods have lower kindergarten readiness scores after accounting for other factors. The negative effects of housing problems on kindergarten readiness are partially mediated by child maltreatment incidences, residential instability, and elevated blood lead levels. Communities are advised to pay more attention to distressed housing as a cause of disparities in early child development and school readiness

High energy, high resolution photoelectron spectroscopy of Co2Mn(1-x)Fe(x)Si

This work reports on high resolution photoelectron spectroscopy for the valence band of Co2Mn(1-x)Fe(x)Si (x=0,0.5,1) excited by photons of about 8 keV energy. The measurements show a good agreement to calculations of the electronic structure using the LDA+U scheme. It is shown that the high energy spectra reveal the bulk electronic structure better compared to low energy XPS spectra. The high resolution measurements of the valence band close to the Fermi energy indicate the existence of the gap in the minority states for all three alloys.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, submitted to J. Phys. D: Appl. Phy

Medulloblastoma has a global impact on health related quality of life: Findings from an international cohort.

BackgroundUnderstanding the global impact of medulloblastoma on health related quality of life (HRQL) is critical to characterizing the broad impact of this disease and realizing the benefits of modern treatments. We evaluated HRQL in an international cohort of pediatric medulloblastoma patients.MethodsSeventy-six patients were selected from 10 sites across North America, Europe, and Asia, who participated in the Medulloblastoma Advanced Genomics International Consortium (MAGIC). The Health Utilities Index (HUI) was administered to patients and/or parents at each site. Responses were used to determine overall HRQL and attributes (ie specific subdomains). The impact of various demographic and medical variables on HRQL was considered-including molecular subgroup.ResultsThe majority of patients reported having moderate or severe overall burden of morbidity for both the HUI2 and HUI3 (HUI2 = 60%; HUI3 = 72.1%) when proxy-assessed. Self-care in the HUI2 was rated as higher (ie better outcome) for patients from Western versus Eastern sites, P = .02. Patients with nonmetastatic status had higher values (ie better outcomes) for the HUI3 hearing, HUI3 pain, and HUI2 pain, all P < .05. Patients treated with a gross total resection also had better outcomes for the HUI3 hearing (P = .04). However, those who underwent a gross total resection reported having worse outcomes on the HUI3 vision (P = .02). No differences in HRQL were evident as a function of subgroup.ConclusionsBy examining an international sample of survivors, we characterized the worldwide impact of medulloblastoma. This is a critical first step in developing global standards for evaluating long-term outcomes

The lncRNA HOTAIR transcription is controlled by HNF4α-induced chromatin topology modulation

The expression of the long noncoding RNA HOTAIR (HOX Transcript Antisense Intergenic RNA) is largely deregulated in epithelial cancers and positively correlates with poor prognosis and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma and gastrointestinal cancers. Furthermore, functional studies revealed a pivotal role for HOTAIR in the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, as this RNA is causal for the repressive activity of the master factor SNAIL on epithelial genes. Despite the proven oncogenic role of HOTAIR, its transcriptional regulation is still poorly understood. Here hepatocyte nuclear factor 4-α (HNF4α), as inducer of epithelial differentiation, was demonstrated to directly repress HOTAIR transcription in the mesenchymal-to epithelial transition. Mechanistically, HNF4α was found to cause the release of a chromatin loop on HOTAIR regulatory elements thus exerting an enhancer-blocking activity

Cost-effectiveness of HBV and HCV screening strategies:a systematic review of existing modelling techniques

Introduction: Studies evaluating the cost-effectiveness of screening for Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) are generally heterogeneous in terms of risk groups, settings, screening intervention, outcomes and the economic modelling framework. It is therefore difficult to compare cost-effectiveness results between studies. This systematic review aims to summarise and critically assess existing economic models for HBV and HCV in order to identify the main methodological differences in modelling approaches. Methods: A structured search strategy was developed and a systematic review carried out. A critical assessment of the decision-analytic models was carried out according to the guidelines and framework developed for assessment of decision-analytic models in Health Technology Assessment of health care interventions. Results: The overall approach to analysing the cost-effectiveness of screening strategies was found to be broadly consistent for HBV and HCV. However, modelling parameters and related structure differed between models, producing different results. More recent publications performed better against a performance matrix, evaluating model components and methodology. Conclusion: When assessing screening strategies for HBV and HCV infection, the focus should be on more recent studies, which applied the latest treatment regimes, test methods and had better and more complete data on which to base their models. In addition to parameter selection and associated assumptions, careful consideration of dynamic versus static modelling is recommended. Future research may want to focus on these methodological issues. In addition, the ability to evaluate screening strategies for multiple infectious diseases, (HCV and HIV at the same time) might prove important for decision makers

Interventions to Modify Psychological Well-Being: Progress, Promises, and an Agenda for Future Research

Psychological well-being, characterized by feelings, cognitions, and strategies that are associated with positive functioning (including hedonic and eudaimonic well-being), has been linked with better physical health and greater longevity. Importantly, psychological well-being can be strengthened with interventions, providing a strategy for improving population health. But are the effects of well-being interventions meaningful, durable, and scalable enough to improve health at a population-level? To assess this possibility, a cross-disciplinary group of scholars convened to review current knowledge and develop a research agenda. Here we summarize and build on the key insights from this convening, which were: (1) existing interventions should continue to be adapted to achieve a large-enough effect to result in downstream improvements in psychological functioning and health, (2) research should determine the durability of interventions needed to drive population-level and lasting changes, (3) a shift from individual-level care and treatment to a public-health model of population-level prevention is needed and will require new infrastructure that can deliver interventions at scale, (4) interventions should be accessible and effective in racially, ethnically, and geographically diverse samples. A discussion examining the key future research questions follows

Can a key boreal Calanus copepod species now complete its life-cycle in the Arctic? Evidence and implications for Arctic food-webs

The changing Arctic environment is affecting zooplankton that support its abundant wildlife. We examined how these changes are influencing a key zooplankton species, Calanus finmarchicus, principally found in the North Atlantic but expatriated to the Arctic. Close to the ice-edge in the Fram Strait, we identified areas that, since the 1980s, are increasingly favourable to C. finmarchicus. Field-sampling revealed part of the population there to be capable of amassing enough reserves to overwinter. Early developmental stages were also present in early summer, suggesting successful local recruitment. This extension to suitable C. finmarchicus habitat is most likely facilitated by the long-term retreat of the ice-edge, allowing phytoplankton to bloom earlier and for longer and through higher temperatures increasing copepod developmental rates. The increased capacity for this species to complete its life-cycle and prosper in the Fram Strait can change community structure, with large consequences to regional food-webs

Proteome-wide analysis of a malaria vaccine study reveals personalized humoral immune profiles in Tanzanian adults

Tanzanian adult male volunteers were immunized by direct venous inoculation with radiation-attenuated, aseptic, purified, cryopreserved; Plasmodium falciparum; (Pf) sporozoites (PfSPZ Vaccine) and protective efficacy assessed by homologous controlled human malaria infection (CHMI). Serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) responses were analyzed longitudinally using a Pf protein microarray covering 91% of the proteome, providing first insights into naturally acquired and PfSPZ Vaccine-induced whole parasite antibody profiles in malaria pre-exposed Africans. Immunoreactivity was identified against 2239 functionally diverse Pf proteins, showing a wide breadth of humoral response. Antibody-based immune 'fingerprints' in these individuals indicated a strong person-specific immune response at baseline, with little changes in the overall humoral immunoreactivity pattern measured after immunization. The moderate increase in immunogenicity following immunization and the extensive and variable breadth of humoral immune response observed in the volunteers at baseline suggest that pre-exposure reduces vaccine-induced antigen reactivity in unanticipated ways

Cosmic evolution of the atomic and molecular gas contents of galaxies

We study the evolution of the cold gas content of galaxies by splitting the interstellar medium into its atomic and molecular hydrogen components, using the galaxy formation model galform in the Λ cold dark matter framework. We calculate the molecular-to-atomic hydrogen mass ratio, H₂/H i, in each galaxy using two different approaches, the pressure-based empirical relation of Blitz & Rosolowsky and the theoretical model of Krumholz, McKeee & Tumlinson, and apply them to consistently calculate the star formation rates of galaxies. We find that the model based on the Blitz & Rosolowsky law predicts an H i mass function, ¹²CO (1–0) luminosity function, correlations between H₂/H i and stellar and cold gas mass, and infrared–¹²CO molecule luminosity relation in good agreement with local and high-redshift observations. The H i mass function evolves weakly with redshift, with the number density of high-mass galaxies decreasing with increasing redshift. In the case of the H₂ mass function, the number density of massive galaxies increases strongly from z = 0 to 2, followed by weak evolution up to z = 4. We also find that H₂/H i of galaxies is strongly dependent on stellar and cold gas mass, and also on redshift. The slopes of the correlations between H₂/H i and stellar and cold gas mass hardly evolve, but the normalization increases by up to two orders of magnitude from z = 0 to 8. The strong evolution in the H₂ mass function and H₂/H i is primarily due to the evolution in the sizes of galaxies and, secondarily, in the gas fractions. The predicted cosmic density evolution of H i agrees with the observed evolution inferred from damped Lyα systems, and is always dominated by the H i content of low- and intermediate-mass haloes. We find that previous theoretical studies have largely overestimated the redshift evolution of the global H₂/H i due to limited resolution. We predict a maximum of ρH₂/ρH i ≈ 1.2 at z ≈ 3.5

Expression of Regulatory Platelet MicroRNAs in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease

Background: Increased platelet activation in sickle cell disease (SCD) contributes to a state of hypercoagulability and confers a risk of thromboembolic complications. The role for post-transcriptional regulation of the platelet transcriptome by microRNAs (miRNAs) in SCD has not been previously explored. This is the first study to determine whether platelets from SCD exhibit an altered miRNA expression profile. Methods and Findings: We analyzed the expression of miRNAs isolated from platelets from a primary cohort (SCD = 19, controls = 10) and a validation cohort (SCD = 7, controls = 7) by hybridizing to the Agilent miRNA microarrays. A dramatic difference in miRNA expression profiles between patients and controls was noted in both cohorts separately. A total of 40 differentially expressed platelet miRNAs were identified as common in both cohorts (p-value 0.05, fold change>2) with 24 miRNAs downregulated. Interestingly, 14 of the 24 downregulated miRNAs were members of three families - miR-329, miR-376 and miR-154 - which localized to the epigenetically regulated, maternally imprinted chromosome 14q32 region. We validated the downregulated miRNAs, miR-376a and miR-409-3p, and an upregulated miR-1225-3p using qRT-PCR. Over-expression of the miR-1225-3p in the Meg01 cells was followed by mRNA expression profiling to identify mRNA targets. This resulted in significant transcriptional repression of 1605 transcripts. A combinatorial approach using Meg01 mRNA expression profiles following miR-1225-3p overexpression, a computational prediction analysis of miRNA target sequences and a previously published set of differentially expressed platelet transcripts from SCD patients, identified three novel platelet mRNA targets: PBXIP1, PLAGL2 and PHF20L1. Conclusions: We have identified significant differences in functionally active platelet miRNAs in patients with SCD as compared to controls. These data provide an important inventory of differentially expressed miRNAs in SCD patients and an experimental framework for future studies of miRNAs as regulators of biological pathways in platelets. © 2013 Jain et al