Dominant strictures in primary sclerosing cholangitis: A multicenter survey of clinical definitions and practices.

Dominant strictures (DSs) of the biliary tree occur in approximately 50% of patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and may cause significant morbidity. Nevertheless, the definition and management of DSs lacks consensus. We aimed to better understand current perceptions and practices regarding PSC-associated DSs.

HOMBRE: A randomized controlled trial to compare two approaches to weight loss for overweight and obese Latino men (Hombres con Opciones para Mejorar el Bienestar y bajar el Riesgo de Enfermedades crónicas; men with choices to improve well-being and decrease chronic disease risk).

Latino men bear a disproportionate burden of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.However, limited behavioral lifestyle intervention research has focused on Latino men. This trial compares two approaches to weight loss for overweight and obese Latino men: 1) HOMBRE is a culturally adapted intervention that provides individual choice of either self-directed online videos, coach-facilitated in-person groups, and coach-facilitated online groups; and 2) a minimal intensity intervention that uses online videos with a coach available, if solicited by the participant.

Feature selective temporal prediction of Alzheimer's disease progression using hippocampus surface morphometry.

Introduction: Prediction of Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression based on baseline measures allows us to understand disease progression and has implications in decisions concerning treatment strategy. To this end, we combine a predictive multi-task machine learning method (cFSGL) with a novel MR-based multivariate morphometric surface map of the hippocampus (mTBM) to predict future cognitive scores of patients.

Methods: Previous work has shown that a multi-task learning framework that performs prediction of all future time points simultaneously (cFSGL) can be used to encode both sparsity as well as temporal smoothness.

Toward Usable Evidence: Optimizing Knowledge Accumulation in HCI Research on Health Behavior Change.

Over the last ten years, HCI researchers have introduced a range of novel ways to support health behavior change, from glanceable displays to sophisticated game dynamics. Yet, this research has not had as much impact as its originality warrants. A key reason for this is that common forms of evaluation used in HCI make it difficult to effectively accumulate-and use-knowledge across research projects.

Eating Decisions Based on Alertness Levels After a Single Night of Sleep Manipulation: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Study Objectives: To determine the relationship between an ecologically-relevant change in sleep behavior and its subsequent effects on daytime alertness and feeding behavior.

Methods: Fifty healthy, young participants (10 male, 40 female) completed two 3-hour study sessions that were at least five days apart. The first session was a baseline evaluation.

Update on pharmacotherapies for cholestatic liver disease.

Cholestatic liver diseases are conditions with impaired bile formation and/or flow due to genetic, immunologic, environmental, or other causes. Unless successfully treated, this can lead to chronic liver injury and end-stage liver disease. Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) embody the most prominent adult cholestatic liver diseases with regard to incidence, morbidity, and mortality.

Multiplex social ecological network analysis reveals how social changes affect community robustness more than resource depletion.

Network analysis provides a powerful tool to analyze complex influences of social and ecological structures on community and household dynamics. Most network studies of social-ecological systems use simple, undirected, unweighted networks. We analyze multiplex, directed, and weighted networks of subsistence food flows collected in three small indigenous communities in Arctic Alaska potentially facing substantial economic and ecological changes.

Angels and Demons: Using Behavioral Types in a Real-Effort Moral Dilemma to Identify Expert Traits.

In this article, we explore how independently reported measures of subjects' cognitive capabilities, preferences, and sociodemographic characteristics relate to their behavior in a real-effort moral dilemma experiment. To do this, we use a unique dataset, the Chapman Preferences and Characteristics Instrument Set (CPCIS), which contains over 30 standardized measures of preferences and characteristics. We find that simple correlation analysis provides an incomplete picture of how individual measures relate to behavior.

Brain and behavior changes associated with an abbreviated 4-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course in back pain patients.

Introduction: Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) reduces depression, anxiety, and pain for people suffering from a variety of illnesses, and there is a growing need to understand the neurobiological networks implicated in self-reported psychological change as a result of training. Combining complementary and alternative treatments such as MBSR with other therapies is helpful; however, the time commitment of the traditional 8-week course may impede accessibility. This pilot study aimed to (1) determine if an abbreviated MBSR course improves symptoms in chronic back pain patients and (2) examine the neural and behavioral correlates of MBSR treatment.

The role of personal self-regulation and regulatory teaching to predict motivational-affective variables, achievement, and satisfaction: a structural model.

The present investigation examines how personal self-regulation (presage variable) and regulatory teaching (process variable of teaching) relate to learning approaches, strategies for coping with stress, and self-regulated learning (process variables of learning) and, finally, how they relate to performance and satisfaction with the learning process (product variables). The objective was to clarify the associative and predictive relations between these variables, as contextualized in two different models that use the presage-process-product paradigm (the Biggs and DEDEPRO models). A total of 1101 university students participated in the study.

Dust deposition on the decks of the Mars Exploration Rovers: 10 years of dust dynamics on the Panoramic Camera calibration targets.

The Panoramic Cameras on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers have each returned more than 17,000 images of their calibration targets. In order to make optimal use of this data set for reflectance calibration, a correction must be made for the presence of air fall dust. Here we present an improved dust correction procedure based on a two-layer scattering model, and we present a dust reflectance spectrum derived from long-term trends in the data set.

Effects of Self-induced Unclassified Therapeutic Tremors on Quality of Life Among Non-professional Caregivers: A Pilot Study.

Background: Chronic stress has a negative effect on health-related quality of life. In challenging environments with multiple stressors, limited access to mental health resources, and cultural impediments to health care delivery, effective and accessible methods of stress management are critical. Activation of self-induced therapeutic tremors (SUTT) may mitigate excess stress and improve quality of life (QoL) under such conditions.

A pooling-LiNGAM algorithm for effective connectivity analysis of fMRI data.

The Independent Component Analysis (ICA)-linear non-Gaussian acyclic model (LiNGAM), an algorithm that can be used to estimate the causal relationship among non-Gaussian distributed data, has the potential value to detect the effective connectivity of human brain areas. Under the assumptions that (a): the data generating process is linear, (b) there are no unobserved confounders, and (c) data have non-Gaussian distributions, LiNGAM can be used to discover the complete causal structure of data. Previous studies reveal that the algorithm could perform well when the data points being analyzed is relatively long.