Gender Differences in Response to a School-Based Mindfulness Training Intervention for Early Adolescents

Mindfulness training has been used to improve emotional wellbeing in early adolescents. However, little is known about treatment outcome moderators, or individual differences that may differentially impact responses to treatment. The current study focused on gender as a potential moderator for affective outcomes in response to school-based mindfulness training. Sixth grade students (N = 100) were randomly assigned to either the six weeks of mindfulness meditation or the active control group as part of a history class curriculum. Participants in the mindfulness meditation group completed short mindfulness meditation sessions four to five times per week, in addition to didactic instruction (Asian history). The control group received matched experiential activity in addition to didactic instruction (African history) from the same teacher with no meditation component. Self-reported measures of emotional wellbeing/affect, mindfulness, and self-compassion were obtained at pre and post intervention. Meditators reported greater improvement in emotional wellbeing compared to those in the control group. Importantly, gender differences were detected, such that female meditators reported greater increases in positive affect compared to females in the control group, whereas male meditators and control males displayed equivalent gains. Uniquely among females but not males, increases in self-reported self-compassion were associated with improvements in affect. These findings support the efficacy of school-based mindfulness interventions, and interventions tailored to accommodate distinct developmental needs of female and male adolescents

Compression of Complex-Valued SAR Imagery

Synthetic Aperture Radars are coherent imaging systems that produce complex-valued images of the ground. Because modern systems can generate large amounts of data, there is substantial interest in applying image compression techniques to these products. In this paper, we examine the properties of complex-valued SAR images relevant to the task of data compression. We advocate the use of transform-based compression methods but employ radically different quantization strategies than those commonly used for incoherent optical images. The theory, methodology, and examples are presented

Application of pixel segmentation to the low rate compression of complex SAR imagery

This paper describes a technique to identify pixels within a subregion (chip) of a complex or detected SAR image which are to be losslessly compressed while the remainder of the image is subjected to a high compression ratio. This multi-modal compression is required for the intelligent low rate compression of SAR imagery, which addresses the problem of transmitting massive amounts of high resolution complex SAR data from a remote airborne sensor to a ground station for exploitation by an automatic target recognition (ATR) system, in a real time environment, over a narrow bandwidth. The ATR system results might then be presented to an image analyst who, using the contextual information from the SAR image, makes final target determination

The nature of iron-oxygen vacancy defect centers in PbTiO3

The iron(III) center in ferroelectric PbTiO3 together with an oxygen vacancy forms a charged defect associate, oriented along the crystallographic c-axis. Its microscopic structure has been analyzed in detail comparing results from a semi-empirical Newman superposition model analysis based on finestructure data and from calculations using density functional theory. Both methods give evidence for a substitution of Fe3+ for Ti4+ as an acceptor center. The position of the iron ion in the ferroelectric phase is found to be similar to the B-site in the paraelectric phase. Partial charge compensation is locally provided by a directly coordinated oxygen vacancy. Using high-resolution synchrotron powder diffraction, it was verified that lead titanate remains tetragonal down to 12 K, exhibiting a c/a-ratio of 1.0721.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.

Monitoring solifluction movement in space and time: A semi-automated high-resolution approach

Solifluction is the slow downslope movement of soil mass due to freeze-thaw processes. It is widespread on hillslopes in Polar and Alpine regions and contributes substantially to sediment transport. As solifluction lobe movement is in the order of millimeters to centimeters per year, it is difficult to measure with high spatial and temporal resolution and accuracy. In this study we developed a semi-automated approach to monitor movement using unmanned aerial vehicles, image co-alignment, and COSI-Corr (Co-registration of Optically Sensed Images and Correlation) to track slope movement from orthophotos. The method was applied on yearly images acquired between 2017 and 2021 of three solifluction lobes with different degrees of vegetation cover along an elevational gradient in Turtmann Valley, Swiss Alps. We found movement patterns across all three lobes with highest movement rates at the solifluction lobes center and lowest rates at lobe fronts. Overall, at the highest elevations (2560 m) lobe movement rates were highest with up to 14.0 cm yr−1 and intermediate elevations (2417 m) had the lowest values up to 2.9 cm yr−1. The lobe at the lowest elevation (2170 m) showed intermediate movement rates with up to 4.9 cm yr−1 for single years. Our monitoring approach provides yearly, spatially extensive movement estimates across the complete spatial extent of a lobe for each 1 cm2 of its surface, strongly increasing measurement resolution in comparison to traditional solifluction monitoring approaches using point measurements. In comparison to previous close-range remote sensing approaches, the use of a co-alignment procedure for the acquired drone data enabled a time-saving field setup without Ground Control Points (GCPs). The resulting high co-registration accuracy enabled us to detect solifluction movement if it exceeds 5 mm with sparse vegetation cover. Dense vegetation cover limited feature-tracking but detected movement rates and patterns are in the same order of magnitude and matched previous measurements using classical total station measurements at the lowest, mostly vegetated lobe. This study demonstrates the use of drone-based Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and orthophotos in a semi-automated method which reaches the high spatiotemporal resolution necessary to detect subtle movements of solifluction lobes at yearly intervals at the sub-centimeter scale. This provides new insights into solifluction movement and how much it contributes to sediment transport. Therefore, our semi-automated approach has a great potential to uncover the fundamental processes and better understand solifluction movement

Progressive axonopathy when oligodendrocytes lack the myelin protein CMTM5

Oligodendrocytes facilitate rapid impulse propagation along the axons they myelinate and support their long-term integrity. However, the functional relevance of many myelin proteins has remained unknown. Here, we find that expression of the tetraspan-transmembrane protein CMTM5 (chemokine-like factor-like MARVEL-transmembrane domain containing protein 5) is highly enriched in oligodendrocytes and central nervous system (CNS) myelin. Genetic disruption of the Cmtm5 gene in oligodendrocytes of mice does not impair the development or ultrastructure of CNS myelin. However, oligodendroglial Cmtm5 deficiency causes an early-onset progressive axonopathy, which we also observe in global and tamoxifen-induced oligodendroglial Cmtm5 mutants. Presence of the WldS mutation ameliorates the axonopathy, implying a Wallerian degeneration-like pathomechanism. These results indicate that CMTM5 is involved in the function of oligodendrocytes to maintain axonal integrity rather than myelin biogenesis

Clostridial Glucosylating Toxins Enter Cells via Clathrin-Mediated Endocytosis

Clostridium difficile toxin A (TcdA) and toxin B (TcdB), C. sordellii lethal toxin (TcsL) and C. novyi α-toxin (TcnA) are important pathogenicity factors, which represent the family of the clostridial glucosylating toxins (CGTs). Toxin A and B are associated with antibiotic-associated diarrhea and pseudomembraneous colitis. Lethal toxin is involved in toxic shock syndrome after abortion and α-toxin in gas gangrene development. CGTs enter cells via receptor-mediated endocytosis and require an acidified endosome for translocation of the catalytic domain into the cytosol. Here we studied the endocytic processes that mediate cell internalization of the CGTs. Intoxication of cells was monitored by analyzing cell morphology, status of Rac glucosylation in cell lysates and transepithelial resistance of cell monolayers. We found that the intoxication of cultured cells by CGTs was strongly delayed when cells were preincubated with dynasore, a cell-permeable inhibitor of dynamin, or chlorpromazine, an inhibitor of the clathrin-dependent endocytic pathway. Additional evidence about the role of clathrin in the uptake of the prototypical CGT family member toxin B was achieved by expression of a dominant-negative inhibitor of the clathrin-mediated endocytosis (Eps15 DN) or by siRNA against the clathrin heavy chain. Accordingly, cells that expressed dominant-negative caveolin-1 were not protected from toxin B-induced cell rounding. In addition, lipid rafts impairment by exogenous depletion of sphingomyelin did not decelerate intoxication of HeLa cells by CGTs. Taken together, our data indicate that the endocytic uptake of the CGTs involves a dynamin-dependent process that is mainly governed by clathrin

Inositol Hexakisphosphate-Induced Autoprocessing of Large Bacterial Protein Toxins

Large bacterial protein toxins autotranslocate functional effector domains to the eukaryotic cell cytosol, resulting in alterations to cellular functions that ultimately benefit the infecting pathogen. Among these toxins, the clostridial glucosylating toxins (CGTs) produced by Gram-positive bacteria and the multifunctional-autoprocessing RTX (MARTX) toxins of Gram-negative bacteria have distinct mechanisms for effector translocation, but a shared mechanism of post-translocation autoprocessing that releases these functional domains from the large holotoxins. These toxins carry an embedded cysteine protease domain (CPD) that is activated for autoprocessing by binding inositol hexakisphosphate (InsP6), a molecule found exclusively in eukaryotic cells. Thus, InsP6-induced autoprocessing represents a unique mechanism for toxin effector delivery specifically within the target cell. This review summarizes recent studies of the structural and molecular events for activation of autoprocessing for both CGT and MARTX toxins, demonstrating both similar and potentially distinct aspects of autoprocessing among the toxins that utilize this method of activation and effector delivery