Short-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy with depressed adolescents: Comparing in-session interactions in good and poor outcome cases

OBJECTIVE: To identify and describe in-session interaction patterns between psychoanalytic therapists and adolescents diagnosed with major depressive disorder, comparing good and poor outcome cases. METHOD: Audio recordings for 100 psychotherapy sessions from 10 Short-Term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies were analysed using the Adolescent Psychotherapy Q-Set (APQ). The cases and sessions were evenly divided into two groups (poor outcome and good outcome, 5 patients and 50 sessions per group). Interaction patterns were analysed with an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), while group differences were assessed through t-tests. RESULTS: The EFA revealed three factors: (1) "Open, engaged young person working collaboratively with a therapist to make sense of their experiences", (2) "Directive therapist with a young person fluctuating in emotional state and unwilling to explore", (3) "Young person expressing anger and irritation and challenging the therapist". Factor 1 was significantly more prominent in the good outcome cases, while factor 3, on the contrary, was more significantly related to the poor outcome cases. Factor 2 was equally present in both groups. CONCLUSION: Besides reinforcing to researchers and clinicians the association between a collaborative psychotherapy process with good outcomes, our findings also provide empirical data regarding the role of anger in adolescent depression and the psychotherapy process

WaterBench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Watermarks for Large Language Models

To mitigate the potential misuse of large language models (LLMs), recent research has developed watermarking algorithms, which restrict the generation process to leave an invisible trace for watermark detection. Due to the two-stage nature of the task, most studies evaluate the generation and detection separately, thereby presenting a challenge in unbiased, thorough, and applicable evaluations. In this paper, we introduce WaterBench, the first comprehensive benchmark for LLM watermarks, in which we design three crucial factors: (1) For \textbf{benchmarking procedure}, to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison, we first adjust each watermarking method's hyper-parameter to reach the same watermarking strength, then jointly evaluate their generation and detection performance. (2) For \textbf{task selection}, we diversify the input and output length to form a five-category taxonomy, covering $9$ tasks. (3) For \textbf{evaluation metric}, we adopt the GPT4-Judge for automatically evaluating the decline of instruction-following abilities after watermarking. We evaluate $4$ open-source watermarks on $2$ LLMs under $2$ watermarking strengths and observe the common struggles for current methods on maintaining the generation quality. The code and data are available at \url{https://github.com/THU-KEG/WaterBench}.Comment: 22pages, 7 figure

Gender-Specific Risk of Central Compartment Lymph Node Metastasis in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Our aim was to evaluate the impact of gender on the predictive factors of central compartment lymph node metastasis (CLNM) in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). A retrospective study of 590 patients treated for PTC was performed. Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that gender (female; P=0.001), age (≥45 y; P<0.001), tumor size (>1 cm; P<0.001), and multifocality (P=0.004) were independent predictive factors of CLNM in PTC patients. Patients were divided into male group (n=152) and female group (n=438). Age (≥45 y; P=0.001), T4 (P=0.006) and multifocality (P=0.024) were independent predictive risk factors of CLNM in male patients. As for female patients, age (≥45 y; P<0.001), tumor size (>1 cm; P<0.001), multifocality (P=0.002), and microcalcification (P=0.027) were independently correlated with CLNM. The sensitivity of the multivariate model for predicting CLNM in male patients was 64.9%, specificity was 82.9%, and area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.764. As for female patients, the sensitivity was 55.7%, specificity was 77.9%, and AUC was 0.73. This study showed that the predictive factors of CLNM indeed varied according to gender. To have a more accurate evaluation of CLNM, different predictive systems should be used for male and female patients

Calcium interactions in amelogenin-derived peptide assembly

Phosphorylation of serine residues has been recognized as a pivotal event in the evolution of mineralized tissues in many biological systems. During enamel development, the extracellular matrix protein amelogenin is most abundant and appears to be critical to the extreme high aspect ratios (length:width) of apatite mineral fibers reaching several millimeters in larger mammalian teeth. A 14-residue peptide (14P2, residues Gly8 to Thr21) was previously identified as a key sequence mediating amelogenin assembly formation, the domain also contains the native single phosphoserine residue (Ser16) of the full-length amelogenin. In this research, 14P2 and its phosphorylated form (p14P2) were investigated at pH 6.0 with various calcium and phosphate ion concentrations, indicating that both peptides could self-assemble into amyloid-like conformation but with differences in structural details. With calcium, the distance between 31P within the p14P2 self-assemblies is averaged to be 4.4 ± 0.2Å, determined by solid-state NMR 31P PITHIRDS-CT experiments. Combining with other experimental results, solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (SSNMR) suggests that the p14P2 self-assemblies are in parallel in-register β-sheet conformation and divalent calcium ions most likely connect two adjacent peptide chains by binding to the phosphate group of Ser16 and the carboxylate of Glu18 side-chain. This study on the interactions between calcium ions and amelogenin-derived peptides provides insights on how amelogenin may self-assemble in the presence of calcium ions in early enamel development

MUC1 Contributes to BPDE-Induced Human Bronchial Epithelial Cell Transformation through Facilitating EGFR Activation

Although it is well known that epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is involved in lung cancer progression, whether EGFR contributes to lung epithelial cell transformation is less clear. Mucin 1 (MUC1 in human and Muc1 in animals), a glycoprotein component of airway mucus, is overexpressed in lung tumors; however, its role and underlying mechanisms in early stage lung carcinogenesis is still elusive. This study provides strong evidence demonstrating that EGFR and MUC1 are involved in bronchial epithelial cell transformation. Knockdown of MUC1 expression significantly reduced transformation of immortalized human bronchial epithelial cells induced by benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide (BPDE), the active form of the cigarette smoke (CS) carcinogen benzo(a)pyrene (BaP)s. BPDE exposure robustly activated a pathway consisting of EGFR, Akt and ERK, and blocking this pathway significantly increased BPDE-induced cell death and inhibited cell transformation. Suppression of MUC1 expression resulted in EGFR destabilization and inhibition of the BPDE-induced activation of Akt and ERK and increase of cytotoxicity. These results strongly suggest an important role for EGFR in BPDE-induced transformation, and substantiate that MUC1 is involved in lung cancer development, at least partly through mediating carcinogen-induced activation of the EGFR-mediated cell survival pathway that facilitates cell transformation

The Impact of Self-Criticism and Dependency on Adolescent Depression, Treatment Outcome, and Therapeutic Process in Brief Psychotherapies for Depression

BACKGROUND: Studies in adults have suggested that personality dimensions of self-criticism and dependency convey vulnerability to depression and negatively influence treatment response. Yet, there is a dearth of studies on these personality dimensions in adolescents. This PhD research, therefore, adopts a mixed-method approach to investigate the relationship between self-criticism, dependency, depression and its treatment in youths with clinical depression. METHODS: Data from a pre-existing clinical trial were used, in which 465 depressed adolescents diagnosed with depression who received either cognitive behaviour therapy, short-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy, or brief psychosocial intervention were assessed at baseline, 6-, 12-, 36-week treatment end, 52-, and 86-week post-randomisation. Participants’ self-criticism and dependency were measured at baseline, and the therapeutic alliance as rated by both youths and therapists was collected during the treatment. The young people were also interviewed about their expectations and experiences of the therapy after treatment. For this PhD, multiple regression, multilevel modelling, and interpretative phenomenological analysis were the major analytical approaches. RESULTS: Greater self-criticism in the adolescents was associated with maladaptive pre-treatment functioning (e.g., depression) and difficulties in engaging with the therapy (e.g., having poor ratings on the alliance and expressing mistrust in therapists during interviews), which, in turn, were associated with poorer outcomes over time. Findings for dependency were more mixed, as dependency was associated with improvements in general and social functioning during the treatment, but also with a tendency to relapse after treatment. There was some evidence for gender-incongruency, as self-criticism in girls and dependency in boys tended to associate with poorer functioning and poorer alliance as rated by therapists. DISCUSSION: Overall, findings reported in this thesis provide further evidence for the role of both self- criticism and dependency in adolescent depression, and how these personality dimensions may interact with the therapeutic process. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed

Envy-Free and Pareto-Optimal Allocations for Agents with Asymmetric Random Valuations

We study the problem of allocating $m$ indivisible items to $n$ agents with additive utilities. It is desirable for the allocation to be both fair and efficient, which we formalize through the notions of envy-freeness and Pareto-optimality. While envy-free and Pareto-optimal allocations may not exist for arbitrary utility profiles, previous work has shown that such allocations exist with high probability assuming that all agents' values for all items are independently drawn from a common distribution. In this paper, we consider a generalization of this model where each agent's utilities are drawn independently from a distribution specific to the agent. We show that envy-free and Pareto-optimal allocations are likely to exist in this asymmetric model when $m=\Omega\left(n\log n\right)$, which is tight up to a log log gap that also remains open in the symmetric subsetting. Furthermore, these guarantees can be achieved by a polynomial-time algorithm.Comment: Appeared in IJCAI 22

In-frame fusion of SUMO1 enhances βarrestin2's association with activated GPCRs as well as with nuclear pore complexes

Small ubiquitin like modifier (SUMO) conjugation or SUMOylation of βarrestin2 promotes its association with the clathrin adaptor protein AP2 and facilitates rapid β2 adrenergic receptor (β2AR) internalization. However, disruption of the consensus SUMOylation site in βarrestin2, did not prevent βarrestin2's association with activated β2ARs, dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs), angiotensin type 1a receptors (AT1aRs) and V2 vasopressin receptors (V2Rs). To address the role of SUMOylation in the trafficking of βarrestin and GPCR complexes, we generated and characterized a yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) tagged βarrestin2-SUMO1 chimeric protein, which is resistant to de-SUMOylation. In HEK-293 cells, YFP-SUMO1 predominantly localized in the nucleus, whereas YFP-βarrestin2 is cytoplasmic. YFP-βarrestin2-SUMO1 in addition to being cytoplasmic, is localized at the nuclear membrane. Nonetheless, βarrestin2-SUMO1 associated robustly with agonist-activated β2ARs as evaluated by co-immunoprecipitation, confocal microscopy and bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET). βarrestin2-SUMO1 associated strongly with the D2R, which forms transient complexes with βarrestin2. But, βarrestin2-SUMO1 and βarrestin2 showed equivalent binding with the V2R, which forms stable complexes with βarrestin2. βarrestin2 expression level directly correlated with the steady state levels of the unmodified form of RanGAP1, which upon SUMOylation associates with nuclear membrane. On the other hand, βarrestin2-SUMO1 not only localized at the nuclear membrane, but also formed a macromolecular complex with RanGAP1. Taken together, our data suggest that SUMOylation of βarrestin2 promotes its protein interactions at both cell and nuclear membranes. Furthermore, βarrestin2-SUMO1 presents as a useful tool to characterize βarrestin2 recruitment to GPCRs, which form transient and unstable complex with βarrestin2