Publications by authors named "Robert Walters"

Introduction: Ferroptosis is iron-dependent regulated cell death and is a field of research that has been rapidly growing in recent years. Many preclinical studies show therapeutic benefit of ferroptosis modulation in lung cancers. There are advancements using prognostic ferroptosis-related genes to directly predict outcomes in lung cancer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: The purpose of this retrospective study is to evaluate the association of total therapy time during inpatient rehabilitation and gain in functional independence for patients admitted to an inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF).

Materials And Methods: The study utilized a retrospective design that included all IRF patients from three IRFs in California from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2013. Patient data collected as part of usual, routine medical, and rehabilitation care were used and includes demographics, medical variables, and functional outcomes data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with poorer performance on neuropsychological tests in veterans. However, prior studies have generally compared individuals with PTSD to control groups, often excluding individuals with moderate symptoms. The present study evaluated neuropsychological performance among OEF/OIF/OND veterans as a function of overall PTSD severity, while also exploring potential associations between cognitive performance and PTSD symptom clusters.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Quaternary alloys are essential for the development of high-performance optoelectronic devices. However, immiscibility of the constituent elements can make these materials vulnerable to phase segregation, which degrades the optical and electrical properties of the solid. High-efficiency III-V photovoltaic cells are particularly sensitive to this degradation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Urban stormwater samples were collected from five aquatic systems in Melbourne, Australia, on six occasions between October 2011 and March 2012 and tested for 30 herbicides and 14 trace metals. Nineteen different herbicides were observed in one or more water samples from the five sites; chemicals observed at more than 40% of sites were simazine (100%), MCPA (83%), diuron (63%) and atrazine (53%). Using the toxicity unit (TU) concept to assess potential risk to aquatic ecosystems, none of the detected herbicides were considered to pose an individual, group or collective short-term risk to fish or zooplankton in the waters studied.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • PTSD involves both emotional and cognitive issues, with emotional reactivity heightened and cognitive patterns marked by perseverative thinking.
  • A study with 47 veterans assessed the relationship between PTSD symptoms and cognitive/emotional tasks using an emotional faces matching task and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
  • Results indicated specific interactions between increased perseverative errors and heightened brain responses to angry faces, suggesting that different combinations of emotional and cognitive responses are linked to PTSD symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

RNAs besides tRNA and rRNA contain chemical modifications, including the recently described 5' nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide (NAD) RNA in bacteria. Whether 5' NAD-RNA exists in eukaryotes remains unknown. We demonstrate that 5' NAD-RNA is found on subsets of nuclear and mitochondrial encoded mRNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae NAD-mRNA appears to be produced cotranscriptionally because NAD-RNA is also found on pre-mRNAs, and only on mitochondrial transcripts that are not 5' end processed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Converging lines of evidence suggest that individuals with comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) may be characterized by heightened defensive reactivity, which serves to maintain drinking behaviors and anxiety/hyperarousal symptoms. However, it is important to note that very few studies have directly tested whether individuals with PTSD and AUD exhibit greater defensive reactivity compared with individuals with PTSD without AUD. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to test this emerging hypothesis by examining individual differences in error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related component that is larger among anxious individuals and is thought to reflect defensive reactivity to errors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hostile men have reliably displayed an exaggerated sympathetic stress response across multiple experimental settings, with cardiovascular reactivity for blood pressure and heart rate concurrent with lateralized right frontal lobe stress (Trajanoski et al., in Diabetes Care 19(12):1412-1415, 1996; see Heilman et al., in J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 38(1):69-72, 1975).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Canine-assisted therapy (CAT) has been used in many settings with much success, yet no study has assessed its feasibility and receptiveness in hospitalized patients awaiting heart transplantation.

Methods: Patients admitted to our institution with a status I for heart transplantation during a 12-month period (April 2014-April 2015) were prospectively included in a feasibility pilot study. Patients were included if there was no history of transmittable disease or active infectious process and consented for study participation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Stress granules are mRNA-protein granules that form when translation initiation is limited, and they are related to pathological granules in various neurodegenerative diseases. Super-resolution microscopy reveals stable substructures, referred to as cores, within stress granules that can be purified. Proteomic analysis of stress granule cores reveals a dense network of protein-protein interactions and links between stress granules and human diseases and identifies ATP-dependent helicases and protein remodelers as conserved stress granule components.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Water and sediment samples were collected from up to 17 sites in waterways entering the Corner Inlet Marine National Park monthly between November 2009 and April 2010, with the Chemcatcher passive sampler system deployed at these sites in November 2009 and March 2010. Trace metal concentrations were low, with none occurring at concentrations with the potential for adverse ecological effects. The agrochemical residues data showed the presence of a small number of pesticides at very low concentration (ng/L) in the surface waters of streams entering the Corner Inlet, and as widespread, but still limited contamination of sediments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Hsp70 protein chaperones, alongside Hsp40 partners, play a crucial role in managing both mRNA degradation and translation processes.
  • * The findings suggest that mRNA metabolism is closely linked to the cell's proteostatic state, particularly when there are issues with protein folding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Stress granules and P-bodies are conserved assemblies of nontranslating mRNAs in eukaryotic cells that can be related to RNA-protein aggregates found in some neurodegenerative diseases. Herein, we examine how the Hsp70/Hsp40 protein chaperones affected the assembly and disassembly of stress granules and P-bodies in yeast. We observed that Hsp70 and the Ydj1 and Sis1 Hsp40 proteins accumulated in stress granules and defects in these proteins led to decreases in the disassembly and/or clearance of stress granules.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Drying is a commonly used technique for improving the product stability of biotherapeutics. Typically, drying is accomplished through freeze-drying, as evidenced by the availability of several lyophilized products on the market. There are, however, a number of drawbacks to lyophilization, including the lengthy process time required for drying, low energy efficiency, high cost of purchasing and maintaining the equipment, and sensitivity of the product to freezing and various other processing-related stresses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In eukaryotic cells many mRNAs are localized to specific regions of the cytosol, thereby allowing the local production of proteins. The process of mRNA localization can be coordinated with mRNA turnover, which can also be spatially controlled to increase the degree of mRNA localization. The coordination of mRNA localization, translation repression during transport, and mRNA degradation suggests the hypothesis that an additional layer of mRNA quality control exists in cells to degrade mRNAs that fail to be appropriately localized.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The control of mRNA translation and degradation is mediated in part by a set of proteins that can inhibit translation and promote decapping, as well as function in the assembly of cytoplasmic mRNP granules referred to as processing bodies (P-bodies). The conserved enhancer of mRNA decapping 3 (Edc3) protein functions to promote both decapping and P-body assembly. Crystal structures of the YjeF_N domain in hEdc3 identified a putative binding site for a small molecule.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • This study explores solar cell anti-reflection coatings designed to produce specific colors when illuminated by sunlight.
  • It successfully demonstrates that these patterned coatings can achieve significant color contrast while allowing high light transmission.
  • Using models and practical testing, the research verifies how these coatings can improve the photocurrent generation in silicon solar cells, culminating in the creation of a patterned sample with effective performance and appealing aesthetics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Abnormally expanded polyglutamine domains in proteins are associated with several neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington's disease. Expansion of the polyglutamine (polyQ) domain facilitates aggregation of the affected protein, and several studies directly link aggregation to neurotoxicity. Studies of synthetic polyQ peptides have contributed substantially to our understanding of the mechanism of aggregation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A dependence of poliovirus on an unorthodox translation initiation mode can be targeted selectively to drive viral protein synthesis and cytotoxicity in malignant cells. Transformed cells are naturally susceptible to poliovirus, due to widespread ectopic upregulation of the poliovirus receptor, Necl-5, in ectodermal/neuroectodermal cancers. Viral tumor cell killing and the host immunologic response it engenders produce potent, lasting antineoplastic effects in animal tumor models.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The aim was to investigate the influence of a daily mixed nutritional supplement during an 8-week arduous training programme on immune indices and mediators including circulating leucocyte counts; bacterially stimulated neutrophil degranulation; interleukin-6 (IL-6), cortisol and saliva secretory immunoglobulin-A (SIgA). Thirty men (mean (SD): age 25 (3) years; body mass, 80.9 (7.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Abnormally expanded polyglutamine domains are associated with at least nine neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington's disease. Expansion of the glutamine region facilitates aggregation of the impacted protein, and aggregation has been linked to neurotoxicity. Studies of synthetic peptides have contributed substantially to our understanding of the mechanism of aggregation because the underlying biophysics of polyglutamine-mediated association can be probed independent of their context within a larger protein.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A 57-year-old man status post several myocardial infarcts and heart transplantation presented with a slowly growing violaceous plaque on his lateral left knee at the site of prior minor trauma. A biopsy revealed a suppurative dermatitis with associated pseudocarcinomatous epithelial hyperplasia. There were multiple non-pigmented eosinophilic organisms with clear cytoplasmic halos within the infiltrate.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of carbohydrate (CHO) intake, with and without protein (PRO), immediately after prolonged strenuous exercise on circulating bacterially stimulated neutrophil degranulation. Twelve male runners completed 3 feeding interventions, 1 week apart, in randomized order after 2 hr of running at 75% VO2max. The feeding interventions included a placebo solution, a CHO solution equal to 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We report on the design, fabrication, and measurement of ultrathin film a-Si:H solar cells with nanostructured plasmonic back contacts, which demonstrate enhanced short circuit current densities compared to cells having flat or randomly textured back contacts. The primary photocurrent enhancement occurs in the spectral range from 550 nm to 800 nm. We use angle-resolved photocurrent spectroscopy to confirm that the enhanced absorption is due to coupling to guided modes supported by the cell.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF