Early Social-Emotional Functioning and Public Health: The Relationship Between Kindergarten Social Competence and Future Wellness

A new 20-year study shows a link between children's social skills in kindergarten and their well-being in early adulthood.Researchers from Pennsylvania State and Duke Universities analyzed what happened to nearly 800 kindergarteners from four locations after their teachers measured their social competency skills in 1991. The children were evaluated on a range of social behaviors, such as whether they resolve peer problems, listen to others, share materials, cooperate, and are helpful. Each student then received a composite score representing his or her overall level of positive social skills/behavior, on a scale from ("not at all") to 4 ("very well"). The research team monitored these students and the positive and negative milestones each obtained until they turned 25.Using a variety of data sources, including official records; reports from parents; and self-reporting by the participants, researchers recorded whether the students obtained high school diplomas, college degrees, and full-time jobs. They also kept track of whether students developed a criminal record or substance abuse problems, among other negative outcomes

Twenty-five years of random asset exchange modeling

The last twenty-five years have seen the development of a significant literature within the subfield of econophysics which attempts to model economic inequality as an emergent property of stochastic interactions among ensembles of agents. In this article, the literature surrounding this approach to the study of wealth and income distributions, henceforth the "random asset exchange" literature following the terminology of Sinha (2003), is thoroughly reviewed for the first time. The foundational papers of Dragulescu and Yakovenko (2000), Chakraborti and Chakrabarti (2000), and Bouchaud and Mezard (2000) are discussed in detail, and principal canonical models within the random asset exchange literature are established. The most common variations upon these canonical models are enumerated, and significant papers within each kind of modification are introduced. The successes of such models, as well as the limitations of their underlying assumptions, are discussed, and it is argued that the literature should move in the direction of more explicit representations of economic structure and processes to acquire greater explanatory power

Other statistical lives

While recent scholarship has considered how algorithmic risk assessment is both shaped by and impacts social inequity, public health has not adequately considered the ways that statistical risk functions in the social world. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data collected in interpersonal violence prevention programs, this manuscript theorizes three "other lives" of statistically produced risk factors: the past lives of risk factors as quantifiable lived experience, the professional lives of risk as a practical vocabulary shaping social interactions, and the missing lives of risk as a meaningful social category for those marked as at risk. The manuscript considers how understanding these other lives of statistical risk can help public health scholars better understand barriers to social equity.https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/19/10369/ht

Restoration of CD28 Expression in CD28− CD8+ Memory Effector T Cells Reconstitutes Antigen-induced IL-2 Production

The control of many persistent viral infections by Ag-specific cytolytic CD8+ T cells requires a concurrent virus-specific CD4+ Th cell response. This reflects in part a requirement of activated effector CD8+ T cells for paracrine IL-2 production as a growth and survival factor. In human CMV and HIV infection, the majority of differentiated virus-specific CD8+ T cells notably lose the ability to produce IL-2 but also lose expression of CD28, a costimulatory molecule. Analysis of the fraction of memory CD8+ T cells that continue to express CD28 revealed these cells retain the ability to produce IL-2. Therefore, we examined if IL-2 production by CD28− CD8+ T cells could be restored by introduction of a constitutively expressed CD28 gene. Expression of CD28 in CD28− CD8+ CMV- and HIV-specific CD8+ T cells reconstituted the ability to produce IL-2, which could sustain an autocrine proliferative response after Ag recognition. These results suggest that the loss of CD28 expression during differentiation of memory/effector CD8+ T cells represents a decisive step in establishing regulation of responding CD8+ T cells, increasing the dependence on CD4+ Th for proliferation after target recognition, and has implications for the treatment of viral disease with adoptively transferred CD8+ T cells

An improved model to study tumor cell autonomous metastasis programs using MTLn3 cells and the Rag2−/− γc−/− mouse

The occurrence of metastases is a critical determinant of the prognosis for breast cancer patients. Effective treatment of breast cancer metastases is hampered by a poor understanding of the mechanisms involved in the formation of these secondary tumor deposits. To study the processes of metastasis, valid in vivo tumor metastasis models are required. Here, we show that increased expression of the EGF receptor in the MTLn3 rat mammary tumor cell-line is essential for efficient lung metastasis formation in the Rag mouse model. EGFR expression resulted in delayed orthotopic tumor growth but at the same time strongly enhanced intravasation and lung metastasis. Previously, we demonstrated the critical role of NK cells in a lung metastasis model using MTLn3 cells in syngenic F344 rats. However, this model is incompatible with human EGFR. Using the highly metastatic EGFR-overexpressing MTLn3 cell-line, we report that only Rag2−/−γc−/− mice, which lack NK cells, allow efficient lung metastasis from primary tumors in the mammary gland. In contrast, in nude and SCID mice, the remaining innate immune cells reduce MTLn3 lung metastasis formation. Furthermore, we confirm this finding with the orthotopic transplantation of the 4T1 mouse mammary tumor cell-line. Thus, we have established an improved in vivo model using a Rag2−/− γc−/− mouse strain together with MTLn3 cells that have increased levels of the EGF receptor, which enables us to study EGFR-dependent tumor cell autonomous mechanisms underlying lung metastasis formation. This improved model can be used for drug target validation and development of new therapeutic strategies against breast cancer metastasis formation

Prediction of emerging technologies based on analysis of the US patent citation network

Abstract The network of patents connected by citations is an evolving graph, which provides a representation of the innovation process. A patent citing another implies that the cited patent reflects a piece of previously existing knowledge that the citing patent builds upon. A methodology presented here (1) identifies actual clusters of patents: i.e., technological branches, an

Combined searches for the production of supersymmetric top quark partners in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A combination of searches for top squark pair production using proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb(-1) collected by the CMS experiment, is presented. Signatures with at least 2 jets and large missing transverse momentum are categorized into events with 0, 1, or 2 leptons. New results for regions of parameter space where the kinematical properties of top squark pair production and top quark pair production are very similar are presented. Depending on themodel, the combined result excludes a top squarkmass up to 1325 GeV for amassless neutralino, and a neutralinomass up to 700 GeV for a top squarkmass of 1150 GeV. Top squarks with masses from 145 to 295 GeV, for neutralino masses from 0 to 100 GeV, with a mass difference between the top squark and the neutralino in a window of 30 GeV around the mass of the top quark, are excluded for the first time with CMS data. The results of theses searches are also interpreted in an alternative signal model of dark matter production via a spin-0 mediator in association with a top quark pair. Upper limits are set on the cross section for mediator particle masses of up to 420 GeV