Sex Trafficking Awareness Among Adolescents

Sex Trafficking is a growing concern for the United States of America. This research investigation identifies the level of awareness from a group of individuals about 14 to 18 years old, allowing for the improvement of prevention methods for younger populations. The data for this study reported an overall trend in which students had an insufficient understanding for sex trafficking and its occurrences. Student responses contained higher mean scores as the grade levels increased. The data supports the argument that students are not as aware as they may need to be; however, 10th grade students responded either “slightly agree” or “strongly agree” more frequently than the 9th, 11th, and 12th grade students, leading them to have higher averages. This group of students in particular deviated from the trend established by the other grade level; on average, 10th grade students had higher mean scores than the other grade levels. Survey results summarize a lack of awareness that may originate from ineffective, or nonexistent, awareness programs from the students’ middle schools. Individuals should be informed prior to their entrance into high school. The data followed a distribution in which students were becoming progressively more aware through each school year. During the developmental period between the ages of 11 and 15, individuals often seek closer relationships with perceived friends. Sex traffickers often take the form of a close friend, allowing for an an uninformed individual to put their trust in an potential trafficker

How Can the European Federation for Colposcopy Promote High Quality Colposcopy Throughout Europe?

Since its inception in 1998, the European Federation for Colposcopy (EFC) now comprises 26 member societies. Its principle aim is to promote high quality colposcopy throughout Europe with special emphasis on training, education and treatment. This review summarises EFC’s activities and achievements to date

Data_Sheet_1_Self-compassion moderates the relationship between neuroticism and depression in junior high school students.ZIP

Neuroticism, an emotion-related personality trait, is often associated with a greater susceptibility to depression. On the other hand, self-compassion involves treating oneself in a peaceful, mindful, and friendly manner, particularly in the face of failure or frustration. The study investigated the relationship between neuroticism and depression in junior high school students, as well as the moderating role of self-compassion. A total of 757 junior high school students participated in the survey, which included the Children’s Depression Inventory, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised, Short Scale for Chinese, and the Chinese version of the Self-Compassion Scale. The results revealed that neuroticism positively predicted depression, while self-compassion had a significant moderating effect on the relationship between neuroticism and depression. Specifically, higher levels of self-compassion were associated with a weaker link between neuroticism and depression. These findings suggest that interventions promoting self-compassion may be beneficial for students exhibiting neurotic tendencies.</p

Epigenomic annotation of noncoding mutations identifies mutated pathways in primary liver cancer

<div><p>Evidence that noncoding mutation can result in cancer driver events is mounting. However, it is more difficult to assign molecular biological consequences to noncoding mutations than to coding mutations, and a typical cancer genome contains many more noncoding mutations than protein-coding mutations. Accordingly, parsing functional noncoding mutation signal from noise remains an important challenge. Here we use an empirical approach to identify putatively functional noncoding somatic single nucleotide variants (SNVs) from liver cancer genomes. Annotation of candidate variants by publicly available epigenome datasets finds that 40.5% of SNVs fall in regulatory elements. When assigned to specific regulatory elements, we find that the distribution of regulatory element mutation mirrors that of nonsynonymous coding mutation, where few regulatory elements are recurrently mutated in a patient population but many are singly mutated. We find potential gain-of-binding site events among candidate SNVs, suggesting a mechanism of action for these variants. When aggregating noncoding somatic mutation in promoters, we find that genes in the ERBB signaling and MAPK signaling pathways are significantly enriched for promoter mutations. Altogether, our results suggest that functional somatic SNVs in cancer are sporadic, but occasionally occur in regulatory elements and may affect phenotype by creating binding sites for transcriptional regulators. Accordingly, we propose that noncoding mutation should be formally accounted for when determining gene- and pathway-mutation burden in cancer.</p></div

Liver cancer SNV pathway enrichment.

<p>Right: Heat map of 25 pathways tested. Color intensity represents the significance of enrichment (–log10(P-value)) for PLC SNVs in promoters that are found in genes for each pathway. WGS = whole genome resequencing-derived PLC SNVs; ExomeSeq = ExomeSeq-derived PLC SNVs. Left: Colored boxes depict a sample of top hits from significantly enriched pathways. Genes listed have the most recurrently hit promoters for the given pathway. Green box = ERBB signaling pathway; blue box = transcriptional misregulation in cancer; purple box = MAPK signaling pathway; gold box = MTOR signaling pathway.</p

Revisiting Oxytocin through the Medium of Isonitriles

The reaction of thioamino acids and N-terminal peptides, mediated by hindered isonitriles and hydroxybenzotriazole, gives rise to peptide bonds. In one pathway, oxytocin was synthesized by eight such reiterative amidations. In another stereospecific track, oxytocin was constructed by native chemical ligation, wherein the two building blocks were assembled by thioacid amine amidation. The NMR spectra of oxytocin and dihydrooxytocin suggest a high level of preorganization in the latter, perhaps favoring oxidative folding

A Single Outer-Sphere Mutation Stabilizes apo-Mn Superoxide Dismutase by 35 °C and Disfavors Mn Binding

The catalytic active site of Mn-specific superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) is organized around a redox-active Mn ion. The most highly conserved difference between MnSODs and the homologous FeSODs is the origin of a Gln in the second coordination sphere. In MnSODs it derives from the C-terminal domain whereas in FeSODs it derives from the N-terminal domain, yet its side chain occupies almost superimposable positions in the active sites of these two types of SODs. Mutation of this Gln69 to Glu in Escherichia coli FeSOD increased the Fe^3+/2+ reduction midpoint potential by >0.6 V without disrupting the structure or Fe binding [Yikilmaz, E., Rodgers, D. W., and Miller, A.-F. (2006) Biochemistry 45 (4), 1151−1161]. We now describe the analogous Q146E mutant of MnSOD, explaining its low Mn content in terms increased stability of the apo-Mn protein. In 0.8 M guanidinium HCl, Q146E-apoMnSOD displays an apparent melting midpoint temperature (<i>T</i>_m) 35 °C <i>higher</i> that of wild-type (WT) apoMnSOD, whereas the <i>T</i>_m of WT-holoMnSOD is only 20 °C higher than that of WT-apoMnSOD. In contrast, the <i>T</i>_m attributed to Q146E-holoMnSOD is 40 °C <i>lower</i> than that of Q146E-apoMnSOD. Thus, our data refute the notion that the WT residues optimize the structural stability of the protein and instead are consistent with conservation on the basis of enzyme function and therefore ability to bind metal ion. We propose that the WT-MnSOD protein conserves a destabilizing amino acid at position 146 as part of a strategy to favor metal ion binding