Mental health challenges of recent immigrants in precarious work environments - a qualitative study.

Introduction: Recent immigrants from racialized minority backgrounds and those who are not proficient in the local language are some of the most vulnerable members of society. Despite having postsecondary educational qualifications and permanent residency status, many are engaged in precarious employment. There is a scarcity of research that has explicitly focused on the work experiences and mental health challenges faced by these immigrants.

Larger lesion volume in people with multiple sclerosis is associated with increased transition energies between brain states and decreased entropy of brain activity.

Quantifying the relationship between the brain's functional activity patterns and its structural backbone is crucial when relating the severity of brain pathology to disability in multiple sclerosis (MS). Network control theory (NCT) characterizes the brain's energetic landscape using the structural connectome and patterns of brain activity over time. We applied NCT to investigate brain-state dynamics and energy landscapes in controls and people with MS (pwMS).

Thermodynamic bounds on ultrasensitivity in covalent switching.

Switch-like motifs are among the basic building blocks of biochemical networks. A common motif that can serve as an ultrasensitive switch consists of two enzymes acting antagonistically on a substrate, one making and the other removing a covalent modification. To work as a switch, such covalent modification cycles must be held out of thermodynamic equilibrium by continuous expenditure of energy.

A Descriptive Analysis of Supermassive Transfusion Recipients Among US and Coalition Forces During Combat Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Introduction: Hemorrhage is the leading cause of potentially preventable death on the battlefield. Resuscitation with blood products is essential to restore circulating volume, repay the oxygen debt, and prevent coagulopathy. Massive transfusion (MT) occurs frequently after major trauma; a subset of casualties requires a supermassive transfusion (SMT), and thus, mobilization of additional resources remains unclear.

Association of cardiovascular risk profile with healthcare expenditure and resource utilization in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, with and without atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Objective: Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are among the leading causes of morbidity, mortality, and economic burden in the United States (US). While previous reports have shown that an optimal cardiovascular risk factor (CRF) profile is associated with improved outcomes among COPD patients, the impact of ASCVD and CRF on healthcare costs and resource utilization is not well described.

Methods: The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) database was used from 2011 to 2016 to study healthcare expenditure for COPD patients with and without ASCVD and across CRF profiles in a nationally representative population of adults in the United States.

Proteoglycans as Therapeutic Targets in Brain Cancer.

Proteoglycans (PGs) are heavily glycosylated diverse proteins consisting of a "core protein" covalently attached to glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and present on the cell surface, extracellular matrix, and intracellular milieu. Extracellular proteoglycans play crucial roles in facilitating cell signaling and migration, interacting with growth factor receptors, intracellular enzymes, extracellular ligands, and matrix components, as well as structural proteins and promoting significant tumor-microenvironment interactions in cancerous settings. As a result of their highly regulated expression patterns, recent research has focused on the role of proteoglycans in the development of nervous tissue, such as their effect on neurite outgrowth, participation in the development of precursor cell types, and regulation of cell behaviors.

Towards Interpretable Skin Lesion Classification with Deep Learning Models.

Skin disease is a prevalent condition all over the world. Computer vision-based technology for automatic skin lesion classification holds great promise as an effective screening tool for early diagnosis. In this paper, we propose an accurate and interpretable deep learning pipeline to achieve such a goal.

Usual Cruciferous Vegetable Consumption and Ovarian Cancer: A Case-Control Study.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women, primarily due to diagnosis at late stages. Therefore, identification of modifiable risk factors for this disease is warranted. Using the Patient Epidemiology Data System (PEDS), collected from 1981 to 1998 at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, we conducted a hospital-based, case-control analysis of self-reported cruciferous vegetable intake and ovarian cancer among 675 women with primary, incident ovarian cancer, and 1275 without cancer.

Role of rare earth oxide nanoparticles (CeO2 and La2O3) in suppressing the photobleaching of fluorescent organic dyes.

Aqueous solutions with Rhodamine dye, and fluorescently labeled polymer samples of fibrin and collagen were mixed with aqueous dispersions of cerium oxide, lanthanum oxide, iron (II) oxide nanoparticles, and OxyFluor, a commonly used reagent for suppressing photobleaching. From time dependent studies of the fluorescence from these samples, we observed that the dyes in samples containing rare earth oxide nanoparticles exhibited significantly slower rates of fluorescence decay compared to control samples without additives, or containing OxyFluor or iron oxide nanoparticles. We posit that this may be related to the oxygen free radical scavenging properties of rare earth oxides.