Promoting 21st Century Health and Wellness Skills in Elementary School Children: a Group Randomized Trial.

In a group randomized trial of 45 elementary schools, a whole-child health and wellness curriculum introduced as a regular part of the educational programming was compared to education as usual over 2 years with a 2-year follow-up. The curriculum focused on integrating multiple SEL skills-mindfulness, compassion, and physical awareness-with the intent to advantage developmental patterns for these skills, academic engagement, personal well-being, and student behavior. The program design and trial implementation were launched with end-use delivery and long-term sustainability as integral considerations.

The Effects of a Relationship-Focused Professional Development Intervention on Infant and Toddler Teachers' Mindfulness-Based Strategies for Coping.

Teaching is a demanding profession with teachers of very young children reporting high rates of stress and exhaustion. We tested the effects of a relationship-focused professional development intervention designed to enhance teachers' use of mindfulness-based strategies to support coping on trajectories of teachers' stress, exhaustion (emotional, physical, and mental), and coping. Infant and toddler teachers ( = 81) from Early Head Start (EHS) or EHS childcare partnerships (CCP) were randomized to the intervention or usual care control condition.

Stress Intensity and Exhaustion Among Infant and Toddler Teachers: Descriptive Analysis and Associations with Sources of Stress and Coping Strategy Use.

Unlabelled: This study described infant/toddler teachers' (N = 106) perceptions of stress intensity and exhaustion (emotional, physical, mental) intensity. We examined the associations between stress and exhaustion and teachers' reports of stress sources and coping strategy use. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), teachers from Early Head Start (EHS), EHS childcare-partnerships, or independent childcare programs (midwestern U.

Transforming Empathy-Based Stress to Compassion: Skillful Means to Preventing Teacher Burnout.

Objectives: Teachers play a critical role in preparing our children and adolescents for a successful future. However, despite the large number of students impacted by trauma and adversity, teachers are often not well prepared to provide trauma-sensitive support. Furthermore, while working to support students exposed to trauma and adversity, teachers may experience empathy-based stress exacerbating already high levels of stress among them.

E-cigarette aerosol impairs male mouse skeletal muscle force development and prevents recovery from injury.

To date, there has been a lag between the rise in E-cigarette use and an understanding of the long-term health effects. Inhalation of E-cigarette aerosol delivers high doses of nicotine, raises systemic cytokine levels, and compromises cardiopulmonary function. The consequences for muscle function have not been thoroughly investigated.

IL-33/ST2 receptor-dependent signaling in the development of pulmonary hypertension in Sugen/hypoxia mice.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. PAH is characterized by pulmonary artery remodeling, elevated right ventricular pressure (RVP) and, ultimately, cardiac failure. Pulmonary endothelial cells can sense danger or damage caused by mechanical injury or pathogens through alarmin cytokines.

A VDAC1-mediated NEET protein chain transfers [2Fe-2S] clusters between the mitochondria and the cytosol and impacts mitochondrial dynamics.

Mitochondrial inner NEET (MiNT) and the outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM) mitoNEET (mNT) proteins belong to the NEET protein family. This family plays a key role in mitochondrial labile iron and reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis. NEET proteins contain labile [2Fe-2S] clusters which can be transferred to apo-acceptor proteins.

Latent Variable Interactions With Ordered-Categorical Indicators: Comparisons of Unconstrained Product Indicator and Latent Moderated Structural Equations Approaches.

Methods to handle ordered-categorical indicators in latent variable interactions have been developed, yet they have not been widely applied. This article compares the performance of two popular latent variable interaction modeling approaches in handling ordered-categorical indicators: unconstrained product indicator (UPI) and latent moderated structural equations (LMS). We conducted a simulation study across sample sizes, indicators' distributions and category conditions.

Unraveling Allostery in a Knotted Minimal Methyltransferase by NMR Spectroscopy.

The methyltransferases that belong to the SpoU-TrmD family contain trefoil knots in their backbone fold. Recent structural dynamic and binding analyses of both free and bound homologs indicate that the knot within the polypeptide backbone plays a significant role in the biological activity of the molecule. The knot loops form the S-adenosyl-methionine (SAM)-binding pocket as well as participate in SAM binding and catalysis.

The Pierced Lasso Topology Leptin has a Bolt on Dynamic Domain Composed by the Disordered Loops I and III.

Leptin is an important signaling hormone, mostly known for its role in energy expenditure and satiety. Furthermore, leptin plays a major role in other proteinopathies, such as cancer, marked hyperphagia, impaired immune function, and inflammation. In spite of its biological relevance in human health, there are no NMR resonance assignments of the human protein available, obscuring high-resolution characterization of the soluble protein and/or its conformational dynamics, suggested as being important for receptor interaction and biological activity.

Long-term impacts of the CARE program on teachers' self-reported social and emotional competence and well-being.

Teacher stress is at an all-time high, negatively impacting the quality of education and student outcomes. In recent years, mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to promote well-being and reduce stress among healthy adults. In particular, mindfulness-based interventions enhance emotion regulation and reduce psychological distress.

Redox-dependent gating of VDAC by mitoNEET.

MitoNEET is an outer mitochondrial membrane protein essential for sensing and regulation of iron and reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis. It is a key player in multiple human maladies including diabetes, cancer, neurodegeneration, and Parkinson's diseases. In healthy cells, mitoNEET receives its clusters from the mitochondrion and transfers them to acceptor proteins in a process that could be altered by drugs or during illness.

The Effect of Teacher-Child Race/Ethnicity Matching and Classroom Diversity on Children's Socioemotional and Academic Skills.

Mounting evidence suggests teacher-child race/ethnicity matching and classroom diversity benefit Black and Latinx children's academic and socioemotional development. However, less is known about whether the effects of teacher-child matching differ across levels of classroom diversity. This study examined effects of matching on teacher-reported child outcomes in a racially/ethnically diverse sample of teachers and children, and classroom diversity moderation using multilevel models.

Cigarette Smoke Triggers IL-33-associated Inflammation in a Model of Late-Stage Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a worldwide threat. Cigarette smoke (CS) exposure causes cardiopulmonary disease and COPD and increases the risk for pulmonary tumors. In addition to poor lung function, patients with COPD are susceptible to bouts of dangerous inflammation triggered by pollutants or infection.

The anti-apoptotic proteins NAF-1 and iASPP interact to drive apoptosis in cancer cells.

Suppression of apoptosis is a key Hallmark of cancer cells, and reactivation of apoptosis is a major avenue for cancer therapy. We reveal an interaction between the two anti-apoptotic proteins iASPP and NAF-1, which are overexpressed in many types of cancer cells and tumors. iASPP is an inhibitory member of the ASPP protein family, whereas NAF-1 belongs to the NEET 2Fe-2S protein family.

Contemplative neuroscience, self-awareness, and education.

Accumulating research in education shows that contemplative practices contribute to and foster well-being of individuals in sustainable ways. This bears special importance for teachers, as it affects not only them but also their students. Based on accumulating behavioral and neuroscientific findings, it has been suggested that a key process by which mindfulness meditation enhances self-regulation is the altering of self-awareness.

Designing bacterial signaling interactions with coevolutionary landscapes.

Selecting amino acids to design novel protein-protein interactions that facilitate catalysis is a daunting challenge. We propose that a computational coevolutionary landscape based on sequence analysis alone offers a major advantage over expensive, time-consuming brute-force approaches currently employed. Our coevolutionary landscape allows prediction of single amino acid substitutions that produce functional interactions between non-cognate, interspecies signaling partners.

Uncovering the molecular mechanisms behind disease-associated leptin variants.

The pleiotropic hormone leptin has a pivotal role in regulating energy balance by inhibiting hunger and increasing energy expenditure. Homozygous mutations found in the leptin gene are associated with extreme obesity, marked hyperphagia, and impaired immune function. Although these mutations have been characterized , a detailed understanding of how they affect leptin structure and function remains elusive.

Phylogenetic analysis of the CDGSH iron-sulfur binding domain reveals its ancient origin.

The iron-sulfur (2Fe-2S) binding motif CDGSH appears in many important plant and animal proteins that regulate iron and reactive oxygen metabolism. In human it is found in CISD1-3 proteins involved in diabetes, obesity, cancer, aging, cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration. Despite the important biological role of the CDGSH domain, its origin, evolution and diversification, are largely unknown.

NEET Proteins: A New Link Between Iron Metabolism, Reactive Oxygen Species, and Cancer.

Significance: Cancer cells accumulate high levels of iron and reactive oxygen species (ROS) to promote their high metabolic activity and proliferation rate. However, high levels of iron and ROS can also lead to enhanced oxidative stress and the activation of cell death pathways such as apoptosis and ferroptosis. This has led to the proposal that different drugs that target iron and/or ROS metabolism could be used as anticancer drugs.

The unique fold and lability of the [2Fe-2S] clusters of NEET proteins mediate their key functions in health and disease.

NEET proteins comprise a new class of [2Fe-2S] cluster proteins. In human, three genes encode for NEET proteins: cisd1 encodes mitoNEET (mNT), cisd2 encodes the Nutrient-deprivation autophagy factor-1 (NAF-1) and cisd3 encodes MiNT (Miner2). These recently discovered proteins play key roles in many processes related to normal metabolism and disease.

Structure of the human monomeric NEET protein MiNT and its role in regulating iron and reactive oxygen species in cancer cells.

The NEET family is a relatively new class of three related [2Fe-2S] proteins (CISD1-3), important in human health and disease. While there has been growing interest in the homodimeric gene products of CISD1 (mitoNEET) and CISD2 (NAF-1), the importance of the inner mitochondrial CISD3 protein has only recently been recognized in cancer. The CISD3 gene encodes for a monomeric protein that contains two [2Fe-2S] CDGSH motifs, which we term mitochondrial inner NEET protein (MiNT).

Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the [2Fe-2S] Cluster-Binding Domain of NEET Proteins Reveal Key Molecular Determinants That Induce Their Cluster Transfer/Release.

The NEET proteins are a novel family of iron-sulfur proteins characterized by an unusual three cysteine and one histidine coordinated [2Fe-2S] cluster. Aberrant cluster release, facilitated by the breakage of the Fe-N bond, is implicated in a variety of human diseases, including cancer. Here, the molecular dynamics in the multi-microsecond timescale, along with quantum chemical calculations, on two representative members of the family (the human NAF-1 and mitoNEET proteins), show that the loss of the cluster is associated with a dramatic decrease in secondary and tertiary structure.

Educators' emotion regulation strategies and their physiological indicators of chronic stress over 1 year.

Studies show teaching is a highly stressful profession and that chronic work stress is associated with adverse health outcomes. This study analysed physiological markers of stress and self-reported emotion regulation strategies in a group of middle school teachers over 1 year. Chronic physiological stress was assessed with diurnal cortisol measures at three time points over 1 year (fall, spring, fall).