Positive and Negative Aspects of Transracial Adoption: An Exploratory Study from Korean Transracial Adoptees\u27 Perspectives

This purpose of this study was to learn how transracial adoptees (TRAs) feel about transracial adoption. Ninety-five adult Korean-born adoptees (73 female and 22 male) responded to open-ended questions about the positive and negative aspects of being transracially adopted. More adoptees felt generally positive than negative, but most had mixed feelings. Positive aspects most often cited included: being a part of two cultures; developing personal awareness, open-mindedness, and deeper understandings; and being unique. Common negative aspects included isolation from one’s adoptive and birth families and cultures; the burden of dealing with others’ assumptions and questions about transracial adoption; and identity fragmentation

Design and Implementation of an X-Ray Reflectometer System for Testing X-ray Optic Coatings

No abstract availabl

Risk, Reliability and Resilience: Phytolith Evidence for Alternative 'Neolithization' Pathways at Kharaneh IV in the Azraq Basin, Jordan.

'Neolithization' pathway refers to the development of adaptations that characterized subsequent Neolithic life, sedentary occupations, and agriculture. In the Levant, the origins of these human behaviors are widely argued to have emerged during the Early Epipaleolithic (ca. 23 ka cal BP). Consequently, there has been a pre-occupation with identifying and modeling the dietary shift to cereal and grains during this period, which is considered to have been a key development that facilitated increasing sedentism and, eventually, agriculture. Yet, direct evidence of plant use in the form of macrobotanical remains is extremely limited at Epipaleolithic sites and the expected 'Neolithization' pathway has not been robustly demonstrated. However, new direct microbotanical phytolith evidence from the large aggregation site of Kharaneh IV, in the Azraq Basin, suggests that increasingly settled occupation was not the result of wild grass and cereal use, but rather the result of a typical hunter-gatherer balance, based on the use of mostly reliable resources supplemented by some risky resources. Moreover, and illustrating this balance, the direct botanical evidence emphases the importance of the wetlands as an under-recognized reliable plant resource. Significantly, the use of these reliable wetland plant resources at Kharaneh IV represents an unexpected 'Neolithization' pathway

Achieving Zero Stress in Iridium, Chromium, and Nickel Thin Films

We examine a method for achieving zero intrinsic stress in thin films of iridium, chromium, and nickel deposited by magnetron sputter deposition. The examination of the stress in these materials is motivated by efforts to advance the optical performance of light-weight x-ray space telescopes into the regime of sub-arc second resolution that rely on control of the film stress to values within 10-100 MPa. A characteristic feature of the intrinsic stress behavior in chromium and nickel is their sensitivity to the magnitude and sign of the intrinsic stress with argon gas pressure, including the existence of a critical pressure that results in zero film stress. This critical pressure scales linearly with the film's density. While the effect of stress reversal with argon pressure has been previously reported by Hoffman and others for nickel and chromium, we have discovered a similar behavior for iridium. Additionally, we have identified zero stress in iridium shortly after island coalescence. This feature of film growth is used for achieving a total internal stress of -2.89 MPa for a 15.8 nm thick iridium film. The surface roughness of this low-stress film was examined using scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and x-ray reflectivity (XRR) at CuK and these results presented and discussed

Approaches for Enhanced Extrapolation of Long-Term Survival Outcomes Using Electronic Health Records of Patients With Cancer.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to demonstrate enhanced survival extrapolation methods using electronic health record-derived real-world data (RWD). METHODS: The study population included patients diagnosed of ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer who started first-line treatment with anastrozole or letrozole between November 18, 2014, and November 18, 2015. Two patient cohorts were constructed: a clinical trial cohort from digitized MONARCH-3 clinical trial results and a RWD cohort from a deidentified electronic health record-derived database. RWD patients were weighted to trial baseline covariate distributions. Standard parametric approaches were applied to trial data and a "best-fit" model was selected. We demonstrate traditional and enhanced hybrid (pooling with weighted RWD at start, 75%, or end of trial) extrapolation approaches. RESULTS: Observed and estimated 5-year progression-free survival (PFS) rates in extrapolating the trial control arm (n = 165) were comparable across all methods. Compared with the observed 5-year mean PFS in the RWD cohort (n = 118) of 20.4 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 16.9-23.8), there was some variation among studied methods. Best-fit standard parametric model (log-normal) had 5-year mean PFS of 21.3 months (95% CI 18.2-24.9), and for the hybrid methods in order of estimate conservativeness was start of trial (20.8 months; 95% CI 18.5-23.2), 75% of trial (21.3 months; 95% CI 18.1-24.5), and end of trial (21.8 months; 95% CI 18.8-25.2). CONCLUSIONS: Our study leverages RWD to enhance long-term survival extrapolation. Future use cases should include applying patient eligibility criteria, weighting on baseline characteristics, and choice of time window to add RWD to trial data

Identification of the Changbaishan ‘Millennium’ (B-Tm) eruption deposit in the Lake Suigetsu (SG06) sedimentary archive, Japan: Synchronisation of hemispheric-wide palaeoclimate archives

The B-Tm tephra, dispersed during the highly explosive Changbaishan ‘Millennium’ eruption (ca. 940–950 CE) and a key marker layer within the Greenland ice cores, has now been identified in the Lake Suigetsu (SG06) sedimentary sequence, central Japan. The major element geochemistry of the volcanic glasses within this tephra layer are compared to a new glass dataset from the distal type-locality (Tomakomai Port, Hokkaido) and other published ‘Millennium’ eruption/B-Tm deposits, to verify this correlation. The discovery of the B-Tm tephra in the Lake Suigetsu record provides, to date, the most southerly identification of this ash and, crucially, the first direct tie-point between this high-resolution, mid-latitude palaeoclimate archive and the Greenland ice cores. These findings present significant encouragement for on-going research into the tephrostratigraphy of East Asia, focusing on the identification of widely-dispersed tephra layers which can facilitate the synchronisation of disparate palaeoclimate archives and thus enable the assessment of spatio-temporal variations in past climatic change

A Synthetic, Small, Sulfated Agent Is a Promising Inhibitor of Chlamydia spp. Infection in vivo

Chlamydia is the most frequently reported sexually transmitted bacteria causing 2.9 million infections annually in the United States. Diagnosis, treatment, and sequelae of chlamydial disease cost billions of dollars each year in the United States alone. Considering that a heparin sulfate-like cell surface receptor is involved in Chlamydia infections, we reasoned that sulfated and sulfonated mimics of heparin sulfate would be useful in topical prophylactic prevention of Chlamydia. In this study, we tested a small, synthetic sulfated agent sulfated pentagalloyl glucoside (SPGG) and three synthetic sulfonated polymers PSS and SPS with average molecular weight in the range of 11 to 1000 kDa for inhibition against Chlamydia. Infection of HeLa cells with C. muridarum or C. trachomatis in the presence of increasing concentrations of SPGG or sulfonated polymers were quantified by immunofluorescence of Chlamydia inclusions. To determine whether in vitro pre-treatment of SPGG inhibits infection of C. muridarum, HeLa monolayers were incubated with SPGG-containing media, and then infected with Chlamydia. Our in vitro results show that SPGG pre-treatment inhibits Chlamydia infection in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, we further determined if SPGG treatment has an inhibitory effect during infection, therefore cell monolayers were infected with C. muridarum in the concurrent presence of SPGG. Our results show that SPGG inhibits C. muridarum infection with an IC50 at 10 μg/ml levels. We also tested the inhibitory effect of synthetic polymers PSS and SPS against Chlamydia and found inhibition of C. muridarum and C. trachomatis infections with IC50 ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 μg/ml. SPGG, PSS, and SPS inhibit formation of Chlamydia inclusions in a concentration-dependent manner. For evaluation of in vivo efficacy of the most effective agent in blocking C. muridarum, SPGG, we intravaginally pre-treated mice with SPGG before infection with C. muridarum. Cervical swabs were collected post-infection to quantify Chlamydia inclusions in vitro. Our in vivo data show that the SPGG-treated group has a statistically significant reduction of infection compared to the no-treatment control. Overall, our results show that SPGG could serve as a promising topical inhibitor for preventing Chlamydia infection

The environmental setting of Epipalaeolithic aggregation site Kharaneh IV

The archaeological site of Kharaneh IV in Jordan's Azraq Basin, and its relatively near neighbour Jilat 6 show evidence of sustained occupation of substantial size through the Early to Middle Epipalaeolithic (c. 24,000 - 15,000 cal BP). Here we review the geomorphological evidence for the environmental setting in which Kharaneh IV was established. The on-site stratigraphy is clearly differentiated from surrounding sediments, marked visually as well as by higher magnetic susceptibility values. Dating and analysis of off-site sediments show that a significant wetland existed at the site prior to and during early site occupation (~ 23,000 - 19,000 BP). This may explain why such a substantial site existed at this location. This wetland dating to the Last Glacial Maximum also provides important information on the palaeoenvironments and potential palaeoclimatic scenarios for today's eastern Jordanian desert, from where such evidence is scarce

Ambulatory function in spinal muscular atrophy: Age-related patterns of progression

Individuals with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 3 are able to walk but they have weakness, gait impairments and fatigue. Our primary study objective was to examine longitudinal changes in the six-minute walk test (6MWT) and to evaluate whether age and SMA type 3 subtype are associated with decline in ambulatory function. Data from three prospective natural history studies were used. Seventy-three participants who performed the 6MWT more than once, at least 6 months apart, were included; follow-up ranged from 0.5–9 years. Only data from patients who completed the 6MWT were included. The mean age of the participants was 13.5 years (range 2.6–49.1), with 52 having disease onset before age 3 years (type 3A). At baseline, type 3A participants walked a shorter distance on average (257.1 m) than type 3B participants (390.2 m) (difference = 133.1 m, 95% confidence interval [CI] 71.8–194.3, p < 0.001). Distance walked was weakly associated with age (r = 0.25, p = 0.04). Linear mixed effects models were used to estimate the mean annual rate of change. The overall mean rate of change was -7.8 m/year (95% CI -13.6 –-2.0, p = 0.009) and this did not differ by subtype (type 3A: -8.5 m/year, type 3B: -6.6 m/year, p = 0.78), but it did differ by age group (< 6: 9.8 m/year; 6–10: -7.9 m/year; 11–19: -20.8 m/year; ≥ 20: -9.7 m/year; p = 0.005). Our results showed an overall decline on the 6MWT over time, but different trajectories were observed depending on age. Young ambulant SMA patients gain function but in adolescence, patients lose function. Future clinical trials in ambulant SMA patients should consider in their design the different trajectories of ambulatory function over time, based on age