The Association Between Discrimination and Sleep is Exacerbated in Individuals with Comorbid Chronic Health Conditions

Introduction: The consequences of recurrent, stressful daily experiences for sleep health appear intensified in individuals with pre-existing health conditions. Although discrimination has been associated with sleep outcomes, the role of comorbid chronic health conditions (CCHCs), and impact of perceived discrimination, remains unclear. The present study investigated (1) the associations between daily discrimination and sleep and (2) moderating roles of CCHCs and daily life interference and hardship. Methods: The current study utilized archival data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Study II. Participants, 174 adults (51% female, Mage=57 yrs., SD=11.5 yrs.), completed 7 days of actigraphy, sleep diary, PSQI, and CCHC-reporting measures. Models examined the moderating effects of CCHCs, daily interference, and hardship on the association between discrimination and sleep. Results: Daily discriminatory experiences predicted numerous poor sleep outcomes, exacerbated for persons with higher CCHCs. Higher comorbidity (95% CI=5.40, 68.75) exacerbated the association between discrimination and TSTactigraphy, further strengthened by perceived hardship (95% CI=-3.75, -.40) and interference (95% CI=-3.65, -.30). Number of CCHCs, qualified by perceived hardship (95% CI=.00, .04) and interference (95% CI=.01, .05), predicted diary sleep quality above discrimination. The interaction between CCHCs and hardship predicted global PSQI scores (95% CI=-.91, -.12) beyond discrimination. Conclusion: Daily experiences of discrimination are associated with decreased sleep duration and quality. These associations were stronger for individuals with multiple CCHCs. Exacerbating CCHC effects were perpetuated by perceived interference and hardships, suggesting individual emotion regulation (ER) differences. Future research should attend to sleep-related consequences of differential discrimination-informed ER by persons with CCHCs.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1042/thumbnail.jp

Quality management in heavy duty manufacturing industry: TQM vs. Six Sigma

‘Is TQM a management fad?’ This question has been extensively documented in the quality management literature; and will be tackled in this research though a critical literature review on the area. ‘TQM versus Six-Sigma’ debate, which has also been a fundamental challenge in this research filed, is addressed by a thematic and chronological review on the peer papers. To evaluate this challenge in practice, a primary research in heavy duty machinery production industry have been conducted using a case-study on, J C Bamford Excavators Ltd (JCB), the largest European construction machinery producer. The result highlights that TQM is a natural foundation to build up Six-Sigma upon; and not surprisingly the quality yield in a TQM approach complemented by Six-sigma is far higher and more stable than when TQM with no Six-Sigma focus is being put in place; thus presenting the overall finding that TQM and Six Sigma are compliments, not substitutes. The study will be concluded with an overview on quality management approaches in the heavy duty manufacturing industry to highlight the way forward for the industry

Mutualist-Provisioned Resources Impact Vector Competency

ABSTRACT Many symbionts supplement their host’s diet with essential nutrients. However, whether these nutrients also enhance parasitism is unknown. In this study, we investigated whether folate (vitamin B9) production by the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.) essential mutualist, Wigglesworthia, aids auxotrophic African trypanosomes in completing their life cycle within this obligate vector. We show that the expression of Wigglesworthia folate biosynthesis genes changes with the progression of trypanosome infection within tsetse. The disruption of Wigglesworthia folate production caused a reduction in the percentage of flies that housed midgut (MG) trypanosome infections. However, decreased folate did not prevent MG trypanosomes from migrating to and establishing an infection in the fly’s salivary glands, thus suggesting that nutrient requirements vary throughout the trypanosome life cycle. We further substantiated that trypanosomes rely on symbiont-generated folate by feeding this vitamin to Glossina brevipalpis, which exhibits low trypanosome vector competency and houses Wigglesworthia incapable of producing folate. Folate-supplemented G. brevipalpis flies were significantly more susceptible to trypanosome infection, further demonstrating that this vitamin facilitates parasite infection establishment. Our cumulative results provide evidence that Wigglesworthia provides a key metabolite (folate) that is “hijacked” by trypanosomes to enhance their infectivity, thus indirectly impacting tsetse species vector competency. Parasite dependence on symbiontderived micronutrients, which likely also occurs in other arthropod vectors, represents a relationship that may be exploited to reduce disease transmission. IMPORTANCE Parasites elicit several physiological changes in their host to enhance transmission. Little is known about the functional association between parasitism and microbiota-provisioned resources typically dedicated to animal hosts and how these goods may be rerouted to optimize parasite development. This study is the first to identify a specific symbiont-generated metabolite that impacts insect vector competence by facilitating parasite establishment and, thus, eventual transmission. Specifically, we demonstrate that the tsetse fly obligate mutualist Wigglesworthia provisions folate (vitamin B9) that pathogenic African trypanosomes exploit in an effort to successfully establish an infection in the vector’s MG. This process is essential for the parasite to complete its life cycle and be transmitted to a new vertebrate host. Disrupting metabolic contributions provided by the microbiota of arthropod disease vectors may fuel future innovative control strategies while also offering minimal nontarget effects

Fractionation of cellulose nanocrystals : enhancing liquid crystal ordering without promoting gelation

Colloids of electrically charged nanorods can spontaneously develop a fluid yet ordered liquid crystal phase, but this ordering competes with a tendency to form a gel of percolating rods. The threshold for ordering is reduced by increasing the rod aspect ratio, but the percolation threshold is also reduced with this change; hence, prediction of the outcome is nontrivial. Here, we show that by establishing the phase behavior of suspensions of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) fractionated according to length, an increased aspect ratio can strongly favor liquid crystallinity without necessarily influencing gelation. Gelation is instead triggered by increasing the counterion concentration until the CNCs lose colloidal stability, triggering linear aggregation, which promotes percolation regardless of the original rod aspect ratio. Our results shine new light on the competition between liquid crystal formation and gelation in nanoparticle suspensions and provide a path for enhanced control of CNC self-organization for applications in photonic crystal paper or advanced composites

New Mechanics of Traumatic Brain Injury

The prediction and prevention of traumatic brain injury is a very important aspect of preventive medical science. This paper proposes a new coupled loading-rate hypothesis for the traumatic brain injury (TBI), which states that the main cause of the TBI is an external Euclidean jolt, or SE(3)-jolt, an impulsive loading that strikes the head in several coupled degrees-of-freedom simultaneously. To show this, based on the previously defined covariant force law, we formulate the coupled Newton-Euler dynamics of brain's micro-motions within the cerebrospinal fluid and derive from it the coupled SE(3)-jolt dynamics. The SE(3)-jolt is a cause of the TBI in two forms of brain's rapid discontinuous deformations: translational dislocations and rotational disclinations. Brain's dislocations and disclinations, caused by the SE(3)-jolt, are described using the Cosserat multipolar viscoelastic continuum brain model. Keywords: Traumatic brain injuries, coupled loading-rate hypothesis, Euclidean jolt, coupled Newton-Euler dynamics, brain's dislocations and disclinationsComment: 18 pages, 1 figure, Late

Repeated Radionuclide therapy in metastatic paraganglioma leading to the highest reported cumulative activity of 131I-MIBG

131I-MIBG therapy for neuroendocrine tumours may be dose limited. The common range of applied cumulative activities is 10-40 GBq. We report the uneventful cumulative administration of 111 GBq (= 3 Ci) 131I-MIBG in a patient with metastatic paraganglioma. Ten courses of 131I-MIBG therapy were given within six years, accomplishing symptomatic, hormonal and tumour responses with no serious adverse effects. Chemotherapy with cisplatin/vinblastine/dacarbazine was the final treatment modality with temporary control of disease, but eventually the patient died of progression. The observed cumulative activity of 131I-MIBG represents the highest value reported to our knowledge, and even though 12.6 GBq of 90Y-DOTATOC were added intermediately, no associated relevant bone marrow, hepatic or other toxicity were observed. In an individual attempt to palliate metastatic disease high cumulative activity alone should not preclude the patient from repeat treatment

Saccade dysmetria indicates attenuated visual exploration in autism spectrum disorder

Background: Visual exploration in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by attenuated social attention. The underlying oculomotor function during visual exploration is understudied, whereas oculomotor function during restricted viewing suggested saccade dysmetria in ASD by altered pontocerebellar motor modulation. Methods: Oculomotor function was recorded using remote eye tracking in 142 ASD participants and 142 matched neurotypical controls during free viewing of naturalistic videos with and without human content. The sample was heterogenous concerning age (6–30 years), cognitive ability (60–140 IQ), and male/female ratio (3:1). Oculomotor function was defined as saccade, fixation, and pupil-dilation features that were compared between groups in linear mixed models. Oculomotor function was investigated as ASD classifier and features were correlated with clinical measures. Results: We observed decreased saccade duration (∆M = −0.50, CI [−0.21, −0.78]) and amplitude (∆M = −0.42, CI [−0.12, −0.72]), which was independent of human video content. We observed null findings concerning fixation and pupil-dilation features (POWER =.81). Oculomotor function is a valid ASD classifier comparable to social attention concerning discriminative power. Within ASD, saccade features correlated with measures of restricted and repetitive behavior. Conclusions: We conclude saccade dysmetria as ASD oculomotor phenotype relevant to visual exploration. Decreased saccade amplitude and duration indicate spatially clustered fixations that attenuate visual exploration and emphasize endogenous over exogenous attention. We propose altered pontocerebellar motor modulation as underlying mechanism that contributes to atypical (oculo-)motor coordination and attention function in ASD

Health-related quality of life among individuals with long-standing spinal cord injury: a comparative study of veterans and non-veterans

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Spinal cord-injured (SCI) patients experience poor health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and they usually report lower HRQOL than the general population or population subgroups in Iran and elsewhere. The aim of this study was to compare HRQOL between veterans and non-veterans with SCI in Iran.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This was a cross-sectional study. HRQOL was measured using the 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). Thirty-nine male veterans and 63 non-veteran males with SCI were included in the study. Regression analyses were applied to determine the variables affecting physical and mental health-related quality of life among the patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The male veterans had a lower HRQOL than the non-veterans with SCI. The differences were significant for all measures except for physical and social functioning. The greatest difference was observed for bodily pain (P = 0.001). The regression analysis results indicated that a longer time since injury was associated (P = 0.01) with better physical health-related quality of life (PCS), while being a veteran (P < 0.001) and having a spinal lesion in the cervical region (P = 0.001) were associated with poorer PCS. Older age (P < 0.001) and higher education (P = 0.01) were associated with better mental health-related quality of life (MCS), while being a veteran and having a spinal lesion in the cervical region (P = 0.02) were associated with poorer MCS.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The study findings showed that veterans with SCI experienced lower HRQOL than their non-veteran counterparts. A qualitative study is recommended to evaluate why HRQOL was lower in veterans than in non-veterans with SCI although veterans had higher incomes as a result of their pensions and increased access to equipment, and medications. To improve quality of life in both veterans and non-veterans with spinal cord injuries, policy changes or implementation of new interventions may be essential so that veterans could receive additional support (e.g. counseling, recreation therapy, vocational therapy, etc.) and non-veterans could meet their basic needs.</p

Steel and bone: Mesoscale modeling and middle-out strategies in physics and biology

Mesoscale modeling is often considered merely as a practical strategy used when information on lower-scale details is lacking, or when there is a need to make models cognitively or computationally tractable. Without dismissing the importance of practical constraints for modeling choices, we argue that mesoscale models should not just be considered as abbreviations or placeholders for more “complete” models. Because many systems exhibit different behaviors at various spatial and temporal scales, bottom-up approaches are almost always doomed to fail. Mesoscale models capture aspects of multi-scale systems that cannot be parameterized by simple averaging of lower-scale details. To understand the behavior of multi-scale systems, it is essential to identify mesoscale parameters that “code for” lower-scale details in a way that relate phenomena intermediate between microscopic and macroscopic features. We illustrate this point using examples of modeling of multi-scale systems in materials science (steel) and biology (bone), where identification of material parameters such as stiffness or strain is a central step. The examples illustrate important aspects of a so-called “middle-out” modeling strategy. Rather than attempting to model the system bottom-up, one starts at intermediate (mesoscopic) scales where systems exhibit behaviors distinct from those at the atomic and continuum scales. One then seeks to upscale and downscale to gain a more complete understanding of the multi-scale systems. The cases highlight how parameterization of lower-scale details not only enables tractable modeling but is also central to understanding functional and organizational features of multi-scale systems

FGFR4 Arg388 allele correlates with tumour thickness and FGFR4 protein expression with survival of melanoma patients

A single nucleotide polymorphism in the gene for FGFR4 (−Arg388) has been associated with progression in various types of human cancer. Although fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) belong to the most important growth factors in melanoma, expression of FGF receptor subtype 4 has not been investigated yet. In this study, the protein expression of this receptor was analysed in 137 melanoma tissues of different progression stages by immunohistochemistry. FGFR4 protein was expressed in 45% of the specimens and correlated with pTNM tumour stages (UICC, P=0.023 and AJCC, P=0.046), presence of microulceration (P=0.009), tumour vascularity (P=0.001), metastases (P=0.025), number of primary tumours (P=0.022), overall survival (P=0.047) and disease-free survival (P=0.024). Furthermore, FGFR4 Arg388 polymorphism was analysed in 185 melanoma patients by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). The Arg388 allele was detected in 45% of the melanoma patients and was significantly associated with tumour thickness (by Clark's level of invasion (P=0.004) and by Breslow in mm (P=0.02)) and the tumour subtype nodular melanoma (P=0.002). However, there was no correlation of the FGFR4 Arg388 allele with overall and disease-free survival. In conclusion, the Arg388 genotype and the protein expression of FGFR4 may be potential markers for progression of melanoma