Sociodemographic factors linked to food allergy diagnosis among high-risk children with atopic dermatitis.

Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a known risk factor for the development of food allergy (FA). Prior work has suggested disparities in diagnosis/management of FA in urban populations.

Objective: To determine whether socioeconomic conditions, as measured by the area deprivation index and insurance status, or racial/ethnic self-identity was associated with risk of FA diagnosis (DFA), evaluation by an allergist, or objective FA testing among high-risk children with AD.

On free energy barriers in Gaussian priors and failure of cold start MCMC for high-dimensional unimodal distributions.

We exhibit examples of high-dimensional unimodal posterior distributions arising in nonlinear regression models with Gaussian process priors for which Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods can take an exponential run-time to enter the regions where the bulk of the posterior measure concentrates. Our results apply to worst-case initialized ('cold start') algorithms that are local in the sense that their step sizes cannot be too large on average. The counter-examples hold for general MCMC schemes based on gradient or random walk steps, and the theory is illustrated for Metropolis-Hastings adjusted methods such as preconditioned Crank-Nicolson and Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm.

An Unusual Sticky Situation of New-Onset Right Sided Heart Failure.

This case highlights the importance of having constrictive pericarditis (CP) as a differential diagnosis in unexplained sign and symptoms of right-sided heart failure. This case portrays challenges in diagnosing CP caused by certain rheumatologic diseases despite advances in diagnostic modalities, clinical suspicion remains the most important tool for this diagnosis.

Cyclin C regulates adipogenesis by stimulating transcriptional activity of CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein α.

Brown adipose tissue is important for maintaining energy homeostasis and adaptive thermogenesis in rodents and humans. As disorders arising from dysregulated energy metabolism, such as obesity and metabolic diseases, have increased, so has interest in the molecular mechanisms of adipocyte biology. Using a functional screen, we identified cyclin C (CycC), a conserved subunit of the Mediator complex, as a novel regulator for brown adipocyte formation.

Analysis of Transcriptional Variability in a Large Human iPSC Library Reveals Genetic and Non-genetic Determinants of Heterogeneity.

Variability in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines remains a concern for disease modeling and regenerative medicine. We have used RNA-sequencing analysis and linear mixed models to examine the sources of gene expression variability in 317 human iPSC lines from 101 individuals. We found that ∼50% of genome-wide expression variability is explained by variation across individuals and identified a set of expression quantitative trait loci that contribute to this variation.