Publications by authors named "James Custer"

Divergent conceptualization of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5) and International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (11th ed..

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Key Points: Adaptive coping behaviors are associated with lower odds of incident CKD. Coping behaviors could represent a target to prevent CKD.

Background: How someone copes may alter the trajectory of their kidney function.

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Background: Heart failure (HF) is the leading cause of hospitalization among older adults in the United States. There are substantial racial and geographic disparities in HF outcomes, with patients living in southern US states having a mortality rate 69% higher than the national average. Self-management behaviors, particularly daily weight monitoring and physical activity, are extremely important in improving HF outcomes; however, patients typically have particularly low adherence to these behaviors.

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Objective: Minimal guidance is available in the literature to develop protocols for training non-clinician raters to administer semi-structured psychiatric interviews in large, multi-site studies. Previous work has not produced standardized methods for maintaining rater quality control or estimating interrater reliability (IRR) in such studies. Our objective is to describe the multi-site Texas Childhood Trauma Research Network (TX-CTRN) rater training protocol and activities used to maintain rater calibration and evaluate protocol effectiveness.

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Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting to produce hydrogen fuel was first reported 50 years ago, yet artificial photosynthesis has not become a widespread technology. Although planar Si solar cells have become a ubiquitous electrical energy source economically competitive with fossil fuels, analogous PEC devices have not been realized, and standard Si p-type/n-type (p-n) junctions cannot be used for water splitting because the bandgap precludes the generation of the needed photovoltage. An alternative paradigm, the particle suspension reactor (PSR), forgoes the rigid design in favour of individual PEC particles suspended in solution, a potentially low-cost option compared with planar systems.

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Importance: Little is known about the association between insurance type and tumor or treatment characteristics among patients undergoing Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) for nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC).

Objective: To investigate whether there are differences in tumor and treatment characteristics among patients undergoing MMS for NMSC by insurance type.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective cohort study included patients with NMSC who presented for surgery at an academic MMS practice between May 2017 and May 2019.

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To assess depression, anxiety, and burnout among health care workers using well-established validated scales and to examine associations of these mental health outcomes with personal protective equipment (PPE) and high-risk patient contact. This prospective survey was conducted between August and October 2020 among 970 essential health care workers from 2 health systems in central Texas. The survey captured basic demographic, occupational, and baseline health information including history of mental health disorders.

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Background: Neighborhood and caregiver characteristics have each been linked to children's asthma outcomes, but less is known about how caregiver psychosocial functioning may explain the link between neighborhood characteristics and asthma outcomes.

Objective: To examine associations between neighborhood safety, caregiver stress and depressive symptoms, and children's asthma outcomes, and to evaluate whether caregiver stress and depressive symptoms mediate the relationship between neighborhood safety and asthma outcomes.

Methods: We analyzed baseline data from a prospective cohort study of the effects of a housing mobility program on children's asthma-related outcomes.

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Introduction: Past studies have shown mixed results about the accuracy of store-and-forward (SAF) teledermatology in the evaluation of skin lesions. The objective of this study is to determine the accuracy of SAF teledermatology in the diagnosis of skin lesions and biopsy decision compared to in-person clinical evaluation.

Methods: Histories and photographs of skin lesions gathered at clinic visits were sent as SAF consults to teledermatologists, whose diagnoses and biopsy decisions were recorded and compared statistically to the clinic data.

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Background: Oropharyngeal cancers associated with high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) infection are increasing in the United States, especially among men. We evaluated the prevalence and predictors of concurrent (genital and oral) and concordant (same-type) HR-HPV infections in the United States.

Methods: We used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2009 to 2016.

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Activation of the kynurenine pathway (KP), an important downstream effect of inflammation, is a driver of depression and neurodegeneration. Damage from the end product of KP activation, quinolinic acid, may be responsible specifically for impairment in hippocampally mediated memory function, among its effects. We hypothesized that associative memory - the ability to recall relationships between items - would be sensitive to KP activation because it is heavily dependent on the hippocampus.

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Ratcheting effects play an important role in systems ranging from mechanical socket wrenches to biological motor proteins. The underlying principle is to convert a fluctuating, unbiased force into unidirectional motion. Here, we report the ratcheting of electrons at room temperature using a semiconductor nanowire with precisely engineered asymmetry.

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Nanoscale carbon lubricants such as graphene, have garnered increased interest as protective surface coatings for devices, but its tribological properties have been shown to depend on its interactions with the underlying substrate surface and its degree of surface conformity. This conformity is especially of interest as real interfaces exhibit roughness on the order of ∼10 nm that can dramatically impact the contact area between the graphene film and the substrate. To examine the combined effects of surface interaction strength and roughness on the frictional properties of graphene, a combination of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Raman microspectroscopy has been used to explore substrate interactions and the frictional properties of single and few-layer graphene as a coating on silica nanoparticle films, which yield surfaces that mimic the nanoscaled asperities found in realistic devices.

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