Publications by authors named "L Sheets"
Background: The global obesity epidemic demands innovative approaches to understand its complex environmental and social determinants. Spatial technologies, such as geographic information systems, remote sensing, and spatial machine learning, offer new insights into this health issue. This study uses deep learning and spatial modeling to predict obesity rates for census tracts in Missouri.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis research study investigates and predicts the obesity prevalence in Missouri, utilizing deep neural visual features extracted from medium-resolution satellite imagery (Sentinel-2). By applying a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN), the study aims to predict the obesity rate of census tracts based on visual features in the satellite imagery that covers each tract. The study utilizes Sentinel-2 satellite images, processed using the ResNet-50 DCNN, to extract deep neural visual features (DNVF).
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- Cisplatin, a chemotherapy drug, leads to irreversible hearing loss by damaging cochlear hair cells, with mitochondrial activity playing a crucial role in this process.
- * Researchers used zebrafish to show that increased redox history heightens hair cell vulnerability to cisplatin, and observed significant changes in mitochondrial and calcium levels before hair cell death.
- * The study found that cisplatin accumulates specifically in hair cell mitochondria prior to causing mitochondrial dysfunction, highlighting the mitochondria's essential role in the drug's toxic effects.*
Article Synopsis
- Sensory hair cells in the inner ear use ribbon synapses to relay sensory information, which requires a rapid release of neurotransmitters supported by a large pool of synaptic vesicles.
- The study identifies that the kinesin motor protein Kif1a is essential for transporting these vesicles along microtubules to the presynapse in hair cells.
- Disruptions of Kif1a and microtubule integrity in zebrafish lead to a reduction in synaptic vesicles, impairing functions such as vesicle release and sensory processing.
American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) persons in the US experience a disparity in chronic respiratory diseases compared to white persons. Using Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data, we previously showed that the AI/AN race/ethnicity variable was not associated with asthma and/or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in a BRFSS-defined subset of 11 states historically recognized as having a relatively high proportion of AI/AN residents. Here, we investigate the contributions of the AI/AN variable and other sociodemographic determinants to disease disparity in the remaining 39 US states and territories.
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