Pseudouridine guides germline small RNA transport and epigenetic inheritance.

Developmental epigenetic modifications in plants and animals are mostly reset during gamete formation but some are inherited from the germline. Small RNAs guide these epigenetic modifications but how inherited small RNAs are distinguished in plants and animals is unknown. Pseudouridine (Ψ) is the most abundant RNA modification but has not been explored in small RNAs.

Using latent variables to improve the management of depression among hemodialysis patients.

Background: Screening for depression can be challenging among hemodialysis patients due to the overlap of depressive symptoms with dialysis or kidney disease related symptoms. The aim of this study was to understand these overlapping symptoms and develop a depression screening tool for better clinical assessment of depressive symptoms in dialysis patients.

Methods: We surveyed 1,085 dialysis patients between March 1, 2018 and February 28, 2023 at 15 dialysis facilities in Northeast Ohio with the 9-item patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) and kidney disease quality of life (KDQOL) instrument.

Influence of Aberration-Free, Narrowband Light on the Choroidal Thickness and Eye Length.

Purpose: To determine whether light chromaticity without defocus induced by longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA) is sufficient to regulate eye growth.

Methods: An interferometric setup based on a spatial light modulator was used to illuminate the dominant eyes of 23 participants for 30 minutes with three aberration-free stimulation conditions: (1) short wavelength (450 nm), (2) long wavelength (638 nm), and (3) broadband light (450-700 nm), covering a retinal area of 12°. The non-dominant eye was occluded and remained as the control eye.

"They should've talked to us more": lay health advisors' experiences with community-engaged hypertension research.

Background: Lay health advisors (LHAs) are increasingly being used to increase patient and public involvement in research, disseminate health information, and work toward preventing health disparities within communities at risk. This research explored LHAs' experiences with training and recruiting for a hypertension research project which ended due to minimal enrollment.

Methods: The methodological design was qualitative description.

Building Research for Academic and Community Equity (BRACE): A Toolkit for Community Research Partnerships.

Health and human service community organizations and researchers have important insights and resources to share with each other, yet often have very little information about how to interact in meaningful and equitable ways. Conceptualized by and for community organization professionals wanting to equitably interact with academic researchers, BRACE (Building Research for Academic and Community Equity) is a toolkit easily accessible to community members which explains research information and jargon in clear terms. BRACE uses community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles to guide both community organizations and academics seeking to partner on research.

Provider perspectives on equity in use of mobile health autism screening tools.

Families may find information about autism online, and health care and education providers may use online tools to screen for autism. However, we do not know if online autism screening tools are easily used by families and providers. We interviewed primary care and educational providers, asking them to review results from online tools that screen for autism.

Pseudouridine guides germline small RNA transport and epigenetic inheritance.

Epigenetic modifications that arise during plant and animal development, such as DNA and histone modification, are mostly reset during gamete formation, but some are inherited from the germline including those marking imprinted genes. Small RNAs guide these epigenetic modifications, and some are also inherited by the next generation. In , these inherited small RNAs have poly (UG) tails, but how inherited small RNAs are distinguished in other animals and plants is unknown.

The expanding role of RNA modifications in plant RNA polymerase II transcripts: highlights and perspectives.

Regulation of gene expression is a complicated process based on the coordination of many different pathways, including epigenetic control of chromatin state, transcription, RNA processing, export of mature transcripts to the cytoplasm, and their translation into proteins. In recent years, with the development of high-throughput sequencing techniques, the importance of RNA modifications in gene expression has added another layer to this regulatory landscape. To date, >150 different types of RNA modifications have been found.

Hyponastic Leaves 1 Interacts with RNA Pol II to Ensure Proper Transcription of MicroRNA Genes.

Hyponastic Leaves 1 (HYL1) [also known as Double-stranded RNA-Binding protein 1 (DRB1)] is a double-stranded RNA-binding protein involved in microRNA (miRNA) processing in plants. It is a core component of the Microprocessor complex and enhances the efficiency and precision of miRNA processing by the Dicer-Like 1 protein. In this work, we report a novel function of the HYL1 protein in the transcription of miRNA (MIR) genes.

Association between Depressive Symptom Trajectory and Chronic Kidney Disease Progression: Findings from the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort Study.

Key Points: Depressive symptoms are largely stable over time among individuals with mild-to-moderate CKD. Low educational attainment, cigarette smoking, and poor quality of life are associated with persistent depressive symptoms. Persistent depressive symptoms are associated with nonlinear and rapid decline in kidney function.

Consistency and reliability of automated language measures across expressive language samples in autism.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with substantial clinical heterogeneity, especially in language and communication ability. There is a need for validated language outcome measures that show sensitivity to true change for this population. We used Natural Language Processing to analyze expressive language transcripts of 64 highly-verbal children and young adults (age: 6-23 years, mean 12.

Increasing research capacity in community organizations: Findings from the Community Research Scholars Initiative.

Increasing research capacity in community-based organizations (CBOs) can equip the organizations to be more equal partners in academic/community partnerships and can help them be more accountable to their clients and funders. In this study, we report on findings from four years of data collected from the Community Research Scholars Initiative (CRSI) in Cleveland, Ohio. CRSI provided intensive research training over two years to two cohorts (N = 9) of frontline workers ("Scholars") from CBOs focused on health disparities.

Excess nitrogen responsive HvMADS27 transcription factor controls barley root architecture by regulating abscisic acid level.

Nitrogen (N) is an important element for plant growth and development. Although several studies have examined plants' response to N deficiency, studies on plants' response to excess N, which is common in fertilizer-based agrosystems, are limited. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the response of barley to excess N conditions, specifically the root response.

Chromatin-associated microprocessor assembly is regulated by the U1 snRNP auxiliary protein PRP40.

In plants, microRNA (miRNA) biogenesis involves cotranscriptional processing of RNA polymerase II (RNAPII)-generated primary transcripts by a multi-protein complex termed the microprocessor. Here, we report that Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) PRE-MRNA PROCESSING PROTEIN 40 (PRP40), the U1 snRNP auxiliary protein, positively regulates the recruitment of SERRATE, a core component of the plant microprocessor, to miRNA genes. The association of DICER-LIKE1 (DCL1), the microprocessor endoribonuclease, with chromatin was altered in prp40ab mutant plants.

Serving young children with communication disabilities from Latinx backgrounds and their families with equity: Provider perspectives.

Introduction: Latinx children with communication disorders from birth to age 5 and their families are increasingly served in United States (US) educational and medical settings where longstanding structural barriers threaten their access to equitable assessment and intervention. However, little is known about providers' perceptions serving this highly diverse population as they relate to reducing disparities in care for communication disorders.

Methods: This exploratory qualitative study interviewed 24 speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and early intervention (EI)/early childhood special education (ECSE) developmental specialists serving young Latinx children with communication disorders to offer targeted recommendations toward improving equity.

Mobile and online consumer tools to screen for autism do not promote equity.

Many parents wonder if their child might have autism. Many parents use their smartphones to answer health questions. We asked, "How easy or hard is it for parents to use their smartphones to find 'tools' to test their child for signs of autism?" After doing pretend parent searches, we found that only one in 10 search results were tools to test children for autism.

Pragmatic Language Markers of Autism Diagnosis and Severity.

Purpose: Assessment of pragmatic language difficulties is limited with conventional tests but can be performed with informant reports. We evaluated the performance of a parent-completed language scale in differentiating autism from typical development (TD) and another neurodevelopmental disorder. Specifically, we aimed to gauge the respective values of structural and pragmatic language scores for diagnostic discrimination and for predicting severity of social impairment in autistic children.

"Um" and "Uh" Usage Patterns in Children with Autism: Associations with Measures of Structural and Pragmatic Language Ability.

Pragmatic language difficulties, including unusual filler usage, are common among children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This study investigated "um" and "uh" usage in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) controls. We analyzed transcribed Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) sessions for 182 children (117 ASD, 65 TD), aged 4 to 15.

Directly Observed Weekly Fluoxetine for Major Depressive Disorder Among Hemodialysis Patients: A Single-Arm Feasibility Trial.

Rationale & Objective: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is common among hemodialysis patients, but treatment can add to their pill burden and may be limited by nonadherence. We sought to investigate the value of directly observed, once-weekly fluoxetine dosing in MDD.

Study Design: Feasibility trial of adult hemodialysis patients with untreated MDD.

Spliceosome Factor SmD3 Modulates Immunity to Infection.

SmD3 is a core component of the small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (snRNP) that is essential for pre-mRNA splicing. The role of SmD3 in plant immunity was assessed by testing sensitivity of and mutants to pv. () DC3000 infection and its pathogenesis effectors flagellin (flg22), EF-Tu (elf18) and coronatine (COR).

Automated Scoring of Tablet-Administered Expressive Language Tests.

Speech and language impairments are common pediatric conditions, with as many as 10% of children experiencing one or both at some point during development. Expressive language disorders in particular often go undiagnosed, underscoring the immediate need for assessments of expressive language that can be administered and scored reliably and objectively. In this paper, we present a set of highly accurate computational models for automatically scoring several common expressive language tasks.

A Pseudo-Value Approach to Analyze the Semantic Similarity of the Speech of Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Conversational impairments are well known among people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but their measurement requires time-consuming manual annotation of language samples. Natural language processing (NLP) has shown promise in identifying semantic difficulties when compared to clinician-annotated reference transcripts. Our goal was to develop a novel measure of lexico-semantic similarity - based on recent work in natural language processing (NLP) and recent applications of pseudo-value analysis - which could be applied to transcripts of children's conversational language, without recourse to some ground-truth reference document.

Evaluating atypical language in autism using automated language measures.

Measurement of language atypicalities in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is cumbersome and costly. Better language outcome measures are needed. Using language transcripts, we generated Automated Language Measures (ALMs) and tested their validity.

Improving ASR Systems for Children with Autism and Language Impairment Using Domain-Focused DNN Transfer Techniques.

This study explores building and improving an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system for children aged 6-9 years and diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), language impairment (LI), or both. Working with only 1.5 hours of target data in which children perform the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Recalling Sentences task, we apply deep neural network (DNN) weight transfer techniques to adapt a large DNN model trained on the LibriSpeech corpus of adult speech.