Examining tobacco use at the intersection of gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity using national U.S. data of sexual and gender diverse youth.

Objectives: To expand the literature documenting that tobacco use inequities persist and continue to increase for minoritized youth populations by exploring patterns of tobacco use across multiple intersections of sexual, gender, racial, and ethnic identities. Studies with this focus are needed to understand the degree to which tobacco use varies across groups who hold multiple minoritized identities.

Methods: The current study used a novel analytical approach- Exhaustive Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection - to examine lifetime cigarette use among a U.

Contrasting topologies of synchronous and asynchronous functional brain networks.

We generated asynchronous functional networks (aFNs) using a novel method called optimal causation entropy and compared aFN topology with the correlation-based synchronous functional networks (sFNs), which are commonly used in network neuroscience studies. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time series from 212 participants of the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence study were used to generate aFNs and sFNs. As a demonstration of how aFNs and sFNs can be used in tandem, we used multivariate mixed effects models to determine whether age interacted with node efficiency to influence connection probabilities in the two networks.

LGBTQ+ youth policy and mental health: Indirect effects through school experiences.

The link between state policies and LGBTQ+ youth mental health is well-established, yet less well-understood are the mechanisms that drive these associations. We used a sample from the LGBTQ+ National Teen Survey (n = 8368) collected in 2022 to examine whether and to what degree LGBTQ+ inclusive school strategies, student perceptions of school safety, and experiences with bias-based bullying and peer victimization explain the association between state LGBTQ+ youth-focused policies and LGBTQ+ youth mental health symptomology. We observed significant indirect effects between policy and LGBTQ+ youth mental health through all four constructs, suggesting that each of these more proximal school experiences was independently implicated in this association.

Diffuse functional and structural abnormalities in fibrosis: Potential structural basis for sustaining atrial fibrillation.

Background: Structural remodeling has been associated with increased incidence of atrial fibrillation, but how fibrotic regions allow atrial fibrillation to be sustained remains unclear.

Objective: With a novel transgenic goat model, we evaluated structural and functional differences between structurally remodeled and healthy regions of the atria.

Methods: A novel transgenic goat model with cardiac-specific overexpression of transforming growth factor β1 was used.

Individuals with SATB2-associated syndrome have impaired vitamin and energy metabolism pathways.

Special AT-rich sequence-binding protein 2 (SATB2) is a master regulator of gene expression. Mutations of the SATB2 gene results in the SATB2-associated syndrome (SAS), a genetic disorder characterized by neurodevelopmental disabilities and autism-related phenotype. The importance of plasma as an indicator of SAS phenotypes is unknown.