Factors influencing the relationship between socioeconomic status and prenatal smoking.

The prevalence of prenatal smoking is highest among women from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The adverse effects of smoking on pregnancy outcomes are widely known and current intervention efforts appear to have reached their maximum effectiveness. Improving interventions, particularly for those who are most vulnerable to this behavior demands a deeper and more contextualized understanding of contributing factors. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore factors that influence the relationship between SES and prenatal smoking. This was done in three ways: a critical review of literature on prenatal smoking in low SES women; an examination of the state of nicotine dependence measurement with a psychometric evaluation of three nicotine dependence measures; and a study testing psychosocial variables as mediators and moderators of the relationship between SES and prenatal smoking. The critical review of literature showed that the profile of the low SES prenatal smoker is similar to that of the broader prenatal smoking population. More contextualized characteristics included: unique sources of stress; living in a working class-neighborhood; higher rates of alcohol consumption, substance abuse, and physical abuse; and issues with access to care. In the next manuscript, the psychometric properties of the most commonly used measures of nicotine dependence in perinatal smoking studies -- the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence and two of its derivatives - were examined. Of these three measures, the Heaviness of Smoking Index is the briefest and demonstrated strong predictive validity for behavioral and biomarker indices. Cotinine measurements by saliva or urine are recommended as a helpful way to validate self-reports. In the final manuscript, a data-based study of 371 pregnant women, six predictors of prenatal smoking status were identified: SES, secondhand smoke exposure, race, parity, chronic stressors, and depressive symptoms. Chronic stressors, the quality of the primary intimate relationship, and depressive symptoms were mediators of the relationship between SES and prenatal smoking. The findings of this dissertation support the widely held belief that prenatal smoking is a complex phenomenon. Truly effective prevention and intervention approaches must address relevant psychosocial factors and future research must consider the multifactorial and interrelated nature of factors that influence prenatal smoking behavior

Nitrate and Inhibition of Ruminal Methanogenesis : Microbial Ecology, Obstacles, and Opportunities for Lowering Methane Emissions from Ruminant Livestock

Acknowledgments CY was supported by a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council. IC was supported by the SRUC International Engagement Strategy Fund. The nitrate project was funded by EBLEX, a Division of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. RINH and SRUC are funded by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) of the Scottish Government.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

NNKGC: Improving Knowledge Graph Completion with Node Neighborhoods

Knowledge graph completion (KGC) aims to discover missing relations of query entities. Current text-based models utilize the entity name and description to infer the tail entity given the head entity and a certain relation. Existing approaches also consider the neighborhood of the head entity. However, these methods tend to model the neighborhood using a flat structure and are only restricted to 1-hop neighbors. In this work, we propose a node neighborhood-enhanced framework for knowledge graph completion. It models the head entity neighborhood from multiple hops using graph neural networks to enrich the head node information. Moreover, we introduce an additional edge link prediction task to improve KGC. Evaluation on two public datasets shows that this framework is simple yet effective. The case study also shows that the model is able to predict explainable predictions.Comment: DL4KG Workshop, ISWC 202

Freezing distributed entanglement in spin chains

We show how to freeze distributed entanglement that has been created from the natural dynamics of spin chain systems. The technique that we propose simply requires single-qubit operations and isolates the entanglement in specific qubits at the ends of branches. Such frozen entanglement provides a useful resource, for example for teleportation or distributed quantum processing. The scheme can be applied to a wide range of systems -- including actual spin systems and alternative qubit embodiments in strings of quantum dots, molecules or atoms.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. A (Rapid Communication

Interferometric phase-dispersion microscopy

We describe a new scanning microscopy technique, phase-dispersion microscopy (PDM). The technique is based on measuring the phase difference between the fundamental and the second-harmonic light in a novel interferometer. PDM is highly sensitive to subtle refractive-index differences that are due to dispersion (differential optical path sensitivity, 5 nm). We apply PDM to measure minute amounts of DNA in solution and to study biological tissue sections. We demonstrate that PDM performs better than conventional phase-contrast microscopy in imaging dispersive and weakly scattering samples

Mte1 interacts with Mph1 and promotes crossover recombination and telomere maintenance

Mph1 is a member of the conserved FANCM family of DNA motor proteins that play key roles in genome maintenance processes underlying Fanconi anemia, a cancer predisposition syndrome in humans. Here, we identify Mte1 as a novel interactor of the Mph1 helicase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In vitro, Mte1 (Mph1-associated telomere maintenance protein 1) binds directly to DNA with a preference for branched molecules such as D loops and fork structures. In addition, Mte1 stimulates the helicase and fork regression activities of Mph1 while inhibiting the ability of Mph1 to dissociate recombination intermediates. Deletion of MTE1 reduces crossover recombination and suppresses the sensitivity of mph1Δ mutant cells to replication stress. Mph1 and Mte1 interdependently colocalize atDNAdamage-induced foci and dysfunctional telomeres, and MTE1 deletion results in elongated telomeres. Taken together, our data indicate that Mte1 plays a role in regulation of crossover recombination, response to replication stress, and telomere maintenance