The hidden costs of mental depression: implications on social trust and life satisfaction

Mental health conditions such as depression is a rapidly rising epidemic and a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease. In addition to the direct medical costs and indirect economic costs that falls into the traditional boundary of disease burden estimation, many social costs associated with depression are hidden yet important. This paper provides empirical evidence on the existence of two hidden costs associated with depression: negative impact on social trust and life satisfaction. Based on the data obtained from 2012 China Family Panel Studies, our estimated results indicate that individuals who have a high tendency for depression or depressive symptoms are less likely to trust other people, and they also have significantly lower life satisfaction than their counterparts who are relatively mentally healthy. Given that trust is an important component of social capital, which in turn is an important input to foster economic growth in general and innovation in particular, the reduction in trust induced by the increasing prevalence of depression imposes a significant cost to the society in terms of poor economic performance. Similarly, as life satisfaction has been widely recognized as an important measure of well-being, our study also highlights that the increase in the prevalence of depression leads to a reduction in the well-being that individual can enjoy. All these costs are real, but did not receive sufficient attention in the previous research. The contribution of our research is to shed light on the existence of these hidden costs and to quantify the magnitude of such costs in the context of China

Naringin attenuates diabetic retinopathy by inhibiting inflammation, oxidative stress and NF-κB activation in vivo and in vitro

Objective(s): Naringin, an essential flavonoid, inhibits inflammatory response and oxidative stress in diabetes. However, whether naringin has beneficial effects on diabetic retinopathy (DR) remains unknown. Materials and Methods: Streptozotocin (STZ, 65 mg/kg) was intraperitoneally injected into male rats (8 weeks old weighting 200-250 g) to establish diabetic model, then naringin (20, 40 or 80 mg/kg/day) was intraperitoneally injected into the diabetic rats for twelve weeks. Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) level, thickness of ganglion cell layer (GCL) and ganglion cell counts were assessed in diabetic retina in vivo. Naringin (50 μM) that significantly inhibited high glucose (HG, 25 mM)-induced cell proliferation was used to treat rat Muller cell line (rMC1) in vitro. Inflammatory response, oxidative stress and activation of nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) p65 were evaluated in retina in vivo and in rMC1 cells in vitro. Results: Naringin alleviated DR symptoms as evidenced by the increased retinal ganglion cells and decreased GFAP level in rat retina. Naringin exhibited anti-inflammatory and antioxidative effects as confirmed by the down-regulated pro-inflammatory cytokines, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), and the up-regulated antioxidants, glutathione (GSH), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) in DR rats. Moreover, we found that naringin inhibited HG-induced proliferation, abnormal inflammatory response and oxidative stress in rMC1 cells. In addition, the enhanced nuclear translocation of NF-κB p65 in diabetic rat retina and HG-induced rMC1 cells was suppressed by naringin. Conclusion: Naringin attenuates inflammatory response, oxidative stress and NF-κB activation in experimental models of DR

The hidden costs of mental depression: implications on social trust and life satisfaction

Mental health conditions such as depression is a rapidly rising epidemic and a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease. In addition to the direct medical costs and indirect economic costs that falls into the traditional boundary of disease burden estimation, many social costs associated with depression are hidden yet important. This paper provides empirical evidence on the existence of two hidden costs associated with depression: negative impact on social trust and life satisfaction. Based on the data obtained from 2012 China Family Panel Studies, our estimated results indicate that individuals who have a high tendency for depression or depressive symptoms are less likely to trust other people, and they also have significantly lower life satisfaction than their counterparts who are relatively mentally healthy. Given that trust is an important component of social capital, which in turn is an important input to foster economic growth in general and innovation in particular, the reduction in trust induced by the increasing prevalence of depression imposes a significant cost to the society in terms of poor economic performance. Similarly, as life satisfaction has been widely recognized as an important measure of well-being, our study also highlights that the increase in the prevalence of depression leads to a reduction in the well-being that individual can enjoy. All these costs are real, but did not receive sufficient attention in the previous research. The contribution of our research is to shed light on the existence of these hidden costs and to quantify the magnitude of such costs in the context of China

Phylogenetic analysis and in vitro culture of mosses from the Antarctic Fildes Peninsula

Molecular genetic techniques have proven very useful for initial analysis of the extent of genetic variation and dispersal in several Antarctic moss species. In the present study, the small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rDNA) and internal transcribed spacers of the nuclear ribosomal DNA (ITS rDNA) were sequenced in nine individuals of different mosses from the Fildes Peninsula of Antarctica. Sequence alignment showed that the extreme environment tended to increase the genetic diversity of Antarctic mosses. In addition, in our phylogenetic analysis, one previously unidentified Antarctic moss species was characterized by comparison with SSU and ITS rDNA sequences of known moss species. Moreover, the optimal culture medium and conditions for surface explant sterilization and protonemata induction in tissue culture of Pohlia nutans were investigated. The successful establishment of a tissue culture protocol together with the phylogenetic analysis of Antarctic mosses will provide technological support to establish an effective resource regeneration method for discovering new functional genes and gaining novel insights into the mechanisms of stress acclimation

MPIWiz: subgroup reproducible replay of MPI applications

ABSTRACT Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a widely used standard for managing coarse-grained concurrency on distributed computers. Debugging parallel MPI applications, however, has always been a particularly challenging task due to their high degree of concurrent execution and non-deterministic behavior. Deterministic replay is a potentially powerful technique for addressing these challenges, with existing MPI replay tools adopting either data-replay or orderreplay approaches. Unfortunately, each approach has its tradeoffs. Data-replay generates substantial log sizes by recording every communication message. Order-replay generates small logs, but requires all processes to be replayed together. We believe that these drawbacks are the primary reasons that inhibit the wide adoption of deterministic replay as the critical enabler of cyclic debugging of MPI applications. This paper describes subgroup reproducible replay (SRR), a hybrid deterministic replay method that provides the benefits of both data-replay and order-replay while balancing their trade-offs. SRR divides all processes into disjoint groups. It records the contents of messages crossing group boundaries as in data-replay, but records just message orderings for communication within a group as in order-replay. In this way, SRR can exploit the communication locality of traffic patterns in MPI applications. During replay, developers can then replay each group individually. SRR reduces recording overhead by not recording intra-group communication, and at the same time reduces replay overhead by limiting the size of each replay group. Exposing these tradeoffs gives the user the necessary control for making deterministic replay practical for MPI applications. We have implemented a prototype, MPIWiz, to demonstrate and evaluate SRR. MPIWiz employs a replay framework that allows transparent binary instrumentation of both library and system calls. As a result, MPIWiz replays MPI applications with no source code modification and relinking, and handles non-determinism in both MPI and OS system calls. Our preliminary results show that MPIWiz can reduce recording overhead by over a factor of four relative to data-replay, yet without requiring the entire application to be replayed as in order-replay. Recording increases execution time by 27% while the application can be replayed in just 53% of its base execution time

Precessing jet nozzle connecting to a spinning black hole in M87

The nearby radio galaxy M87 offers a unique opportunity to explore the connections between the central supermassive black hole and relativistic jets. Previous studies of the inner region of M87 revealed a wide opening angle for the jet originating near the black hole. The Event Horizon Telescope resolved the central radio source and found an asymmetric ring structure consistent with expectations from General Relativity. With a baseline of 17 years of observations, there was a shift in the jet's transverse position, possibly arising from an eight to ten-year quasi-periodicity. However, the origin of this sideways shift remains unclear. Here we report an analysis of radio observations over 22 years that suggests a period of about 11 years in the position angle variation of the jet. We infer that we are seeing a spinning black hole that induces the Lense-Thirring precession of a misaligned accretion disk. Similar jet precession may commonly occur in other active galactic nuclei but has been challenging to detect owing to the small magnitude and long period of the variation.Comment: 41 pages, 7 figures, 7 table

Screening natural libraries of human milk oligosaccharides against lectins using CaR-ESI-MS

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) afford many health benefits to breast-fed infants, such as protection against infection and regulation of the immune system, through the formation of noncovalent interactions with protein receptors. However, the molecular details of these interactions are poorly understood. Here, we describe the application of catch-and-release electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (CaR-ESI-MS) for screening natural libraries of HMOs against lectins. The HMOs in the libraries were first identified based on molecular weights (MWs), ion mobility separation arrival times (IMS-ATs) and collision-induced dissociation (CID) fingerprints of their deprotonated anions. The libraries were then screened against lectins and the ligands identified from the MWs, IMS-ATs and CID fingerprints of HMOs released from the lectin in the gas phase. To demonstrate the assay, four fractions, extracted from pooled human milk and containing ≥35 different HMOs, were screened against a C-terminal fragment of human galectin-3 (hGal-3C), for which the HMOs specificities have been previously investigated, and a fragment of the blood group antigen-binding adhesin (BabA) from Helicobacter pylori, for which the HMO specificities have not been previously established. The structures of twenty-one ligands, corresponding to both neutral and acidic HMOs, of hGal-3C were identified; all twenty one were previously shown to be ligands for this lectin. The presence of HMO ligands at six other MWs was also ascertained. Application of the assay to BabA revealed nineteen specific HMO structures that are recognized by the protein and HMO ligands at two other MWs. Notably, it was found that BabA exhibits broad specificity for HMOs, and recognizes both neutral HMOs, including non-fucosylated ones, and acidic HMOs. The results of competitive binding experiments indicate that HMOs can interact with BabA at previously unknown binding sites. The affinities of eight purified HMOs for BabA were measured by ESI-MS and found to be in the 103 M-1 to 104 M-1 range