Voice of the Inaudible: Well-Being of Chinese American Young Adults, Chinese American Parents’ Parenting Competency, and the Correlation of the Two

Violence against Asian Americans since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic has become a national crisis in the United States. Racism against Asian Americans in the country, however, has been deep-rooted since the nineteenth century. Chinese American adolescents, who are susceptible to identity crisis as young adults and confront racial discrimination as a minority race, face distressing challenges. It is critical to inquire into their lived narratives and hear their voices. The author investigated the early life experiences of nine Chinese Americans and identified how racial identity is shaped at a young age with negative external inputs, as well as how racial identity intersects with linguistic identity and food identity. Additionally, the author confirmed a well-being instrument appropriate for Chinese American youth and discovered that the 130 survey participants measured from fair to very good in psychological well-being, emotional intelligence, and academic well-being. Furthermore, the author proposed and tested a new parenting instrument that measures parent-child interaction style, family acculturation choice, and Anti-Racism Parenting. The same survey revealed that there was room for improvement for Chinese American parents. A Pearson correlation analysis informs that there are 37 correlations between the 10 parenting variables and the 14 well-being variables. The author, using a system thinking approach, argues for the establishment of a Chinese American parenting center in Northern California as a practical first step to improve the well-being of Chinese American youth

Azole fungicide sensitivity and molecular mechanisms of reduced sensitivity in Irish Pyrenopeziza brassicae populations

© 2022 The Authors. Pest Management Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/BACKGROUND: Light leaf spot, caused by Pyrenopeziza brassicae, is amongst the most damaging diseases of winter oilseed rape(Brassica napus), and currently the sterol 14⊍-demethylase (CYP51) inhibitors (azoles) represent the main class of fungicides used to control light leaf spot development. However, a shift in sensitivity to azole fungicides in P. brassicae populations has been observed in different European countries, including Ireland. RESULTS: To assess the sensitivity status of Irish P. brassicae populations to azole fungicides, three collections of P. brassicae from 2018–2020 were tested in vitro against tebuconazole and prothioconazole-desthio, and the PbCYP51 gene targeted by this class of fungicides was genotyped in different isolates. A change in sensitivity to azole fungicides was observed and differences in sensitivity to tebuconazole between Irish populations were present. There were two substitutions within PbCYP51 (G460Sand S508T) and inserts of different sizes in its promoter region. The presence of the G460S/S508T double mutant was reported for the first time, and the diversity in insert size was greater than previously known. Compared to wild type isolates, those carrying G460S or S508T were less sensitive to both fungicides and, where inserts were also identified, they further reduced sensitivity to azole fungicides. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that azole fungicides are still very effective in controlling light leaf spot in Ireland. However, using azole fungicides in mixtures of fungicides with different modes of action is recommendedPeer reviewe

Development and Pilot Test of a Chinese Medicine as Longevity Modality (CALM) Videos in Improving Hypertension Management in Chinese Immigrants: Feasibility of Educational and Storytelling Video

Currently, there are minimal educational materials customized for first-generation Chinese immigrants on hypertension management. The San Francisco Bay area has an increasingly large population of first-generation Chinese immigrants. Thus, the need for culturally sensitive and appropriate educational materials is critical for this vulnerable population to manage their hypertension. The aim of this study was to update and test the feasibility of the Chinese Medicine as Longevity Modality (CALM) DVD videos, including: 1) a patient education program using a Powerpoint file, conveyed via a video format; and 2) a storytelling video. The feasibility of the CALM videos was assessed by individual interviews using structured, open-ended questions to determine the participants’ comprehension of the video content and offering feedback and suggestions for the refinement of the videos. Findings generally demonstrated helpfulness of the proposed intervention protocol suggesting that educational materials that are culturally sensitive and appropriate are beneficial for the target population

Investigation of molecular mechanisms associated with fungicide sensitivity in Irish Pyrenopeziza brassicae populations

© 2020 The Author(s). This an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Light leaf spot is amongst the most damaging diseases of oilseed rape and a significant threat to Irish crops. Unfortunately, the epidemiology of Pyrenopeziza brassicae, the agent causing this disease, remains poorly understood under Irish growing conditions and fungicides are relied upon to provide control. To investigate if the cropping strategies currently used are the best for the control of disease, we screened three populations of P. brassicae isolates from different regions of Ireland for alterations in the genes targeted by azole and Methyl benzamidazole carbamate fungicides. As molecular mechanisms associated with a decrease in fungicide sensitivity were observed in the populations, the results will be correlated with data from fungicide sensitivity tests using these classes of fungicides.Non peer reviewe

Investigation of Carbon Corrosion Resistance of CNT Containing Electrode

Carbon support corrosion is one of the major degradation mechanisms of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell. Carbon oxidation occurs in PEM electrode and is accelerated at high potential created by adverse operating conditions and improper distribution of reactants and products [1, 2, 3]. Carbon corrosion can lead to the thinning of the electrode layer and severe performance degradation. The detailed mechanisms of carbon support corrosion induced performance loss are still not fully understood; it is believed that the following events contribute to the decay: (1) structural collapse of the porous electrode due to the loss of carbon; (2) carbon surface modification due to the formation of hydrophilic surface groups which can induce water accumulation and flooding of the electrode; (3) detachment and dissolution of platinum, which results in the reduction of platinum surface area. Together, these processes contribute to the loss of electrode performance

Investigating the cross-lingual translatability of VerbNet-style classification.

VerbNet-the most extensive online verb lexicon currently available for English-has proved useful in supporting a variety of NLP tasks. However, its exploitation in multilingual NLP has been limited by the fact that such classifications are available for few languages only. Since manual development of VerbNet is a major undertaking, researchers have recently translated VerbNet classes from English to other languages. However, no systematic investigation has been conducted into the applicability and accuracy of such a translation approach across different, typologically diverse languages. Our study is aimed at filling this gap. We develop a systematic method for translation of VerbNet classes from English to other languages which we first apply to Polish and subsequently to Croatian, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian, and Finnish. Our results on Polish demonstrate high translatability with all the classes (96% of English member verbs successfully translated into Polish) and strong inter-annotator agreement, revealing a promising degree of overlap in the resultant classifications. The results on other languages are equally promising. This demonstrates that VerbNet classes have strong cross-lingual potential and the proposed method could be applied to obtain gold standards for automatic verb classification in different languages. We make our annotation guidelines and the six language-specific verb classifications available with this paper

Prediction of adverse pregnancy outcomes by extreme values of first trimester screening markers

Background To determine the association between extreme values of first trimester markers and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Methods A retrospective cohort study of 916 women who underwent first-trimester combined screening during 2015 was performed. Extreme values of NT, pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) and free -hCG, and their association with adverse pregnancy outcomes were analyzed. Results Low PAPP-A (<10th percentile) was associated with an increased risk for preeclampsia (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 4.13), fetal growth restriction (AOR 3.94) and abruptio placentae (AOR 52.63). Abnormally low or high free -hCG, high PAPP-A or increased NT was not associated with an increased risk for adverse outcomes. Discussion PAPP-A <10th percentile could be associated with an increased risk for adverse outcomes. However, the majority of patients with these events do not have abnormal PAPP-A and few patients with PAPP-A <10th percentile will have an adverse outcome.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Bayesian optimization for materials design

We introduce Bayesian optimization, a technique developed for optimizing time-consuming engineering simulations and for fitting machine learning models on large datasets. Bayesian optimization guides the choice of experiments during materials design and discovery to find good material designs in as few experiments as possible. We focus on the case when materials designs are parameterized by a low-dimensional vector. Bayesian optimization is built on a statistical technique called Gaussian process regression, which allows predicting the performance of a new design based on previously tested designs. After providing a detailed introduction to Gaussian process regression, we introduce two Bayesian optimization methods: expected improvement, for design problems with noise-free evaluations; and the knowledge-gradient method, which generalizes expected improvement and may be used in design problems with noisy evaluations. Both methods are derived using a value-of-information analysis, and enjoy one-step Bayes-optimality

ATM activation accompanies histone H2AX phosphorylation in A549 cells upon exposure to tobacco smoke

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In response to DNA damage or structural alterations of chromatin, histone H2AX may be phosphorylated on <it>Ser</it>139 by phosphoinositide 3-kinase related protein kinases (PIKKs) such as <it>ataxia telangiectasia </it>mutated (ATM), ATM-and Rad-3 related (ATR) kinase, or by DNA dependent protein kinase (DNA-PKcs). When DNA damage primarily involves formation of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), H2AX is preferentially phosphorylated by ATM rather than by the other PIKKs. We have recently reported that brief exposure of human pulmonary adenocarcinoma A549 cells or normal human bronchial epithelial cells (NHBE) to cigarette smoke (CS) induced phosphorylation of H2AX.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report here that H2AX phosphorylation in A549 cells induced by CS was accompanied by activation of ATM, as revealed by ATM phosphorylation on <it>Ser</it>1981 (ATM-S1981^P) detected immunocytochemically and by Western blotting. No cell cycle-phase specific differences in kinetics of ATM activation and H2AX phosphorylation were observed. When cells were exposed to CS from cigarettes with different tobacco and filter combinations, the expression levels of ATM-S1981^Pcorrelated well with the increase in expression of phosphorylated H2AX (γH2AX) (R = 0.89). In addition, we note that while CS-induced γH2AX expression was localized within discrete foci, the activated ATM was distributed throughout the nucleoplasm.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data implicate ATM as the PIKK that phosphorylates H2AX in response to DNA damage caused by CS. Based on current understanding of ATM activation, expression and localization, these data would suggest that, in addition to inducing potentially carcinogenic DSB lesions, CS may also trigger other types of DNA lesions and cause chromatin alterations. As checkpoint kinase (Chk) 1, Chk2 and the p53 tumor suppressor gene are known to be phosphorylated by ATM, the present data indicate that exposure to CS may lead to their phosphorylation, with the downstream consequences related to the halt in cell cycle progression and increased propensity to undergo apoptosis. Defining the nature and temporal sequence of molecular events that are disrupted by CS through activation and eventual dysregulation of normal defense mechanisms such as ATM and its downstream effectors may allow a more precise understanding of how CS promotes cancer development.</p