Local gun violence, mental health, and sleep: A neighborhood analysis in one hundred US Cities.

Rationale: Community gun violence significantly shapes public health and collective well-being. Understanding how gun violence is associated with community health outcomes like mental health and sleep is crucial for developing interventions to mitigate disparities exacerbated by violence exposure.

Objective: This study examines the associations between community gun violence , insufficient sleep, and poor mental health across neighborhoods in the United States.

Why Do Some Lineages Radiate While Others Do Not? Perspectives for Future Research on Adaptive Radiations.

Understanding the processes that drive phenotypic diversification and underpin speciation is key to elucidating how biodiversity has evolved. Although these processes have been studied across a wide array of clades, adaptive radiations (ARs), which are systems with multiple closely related species and broad phenotypic diversity, have been particularly fruitful for teasing apart the factors that drive and constrain diversification. As such, ARs have become popular candidate study systems for determining the extent to which ecological features, including aspects of organisms and the environment, and inter- and intraspecific interactions, led to evolutionary diversification.

A Robust and Efficient Method to Purify DNA-Scaffolded Nanostructures by Gravity-Driven Size Exclusion Chromatography.

In recent decades, nucleic acid self-assemblies have emerged as popular nanomaterials due to their programmable and robust assembly, prescribed geometry, and versatile functionality. However, it remains a challenge to purify large quantities of DNA nanostructures or DNA-templated nanocomplexes for various applications. Commonly used purification methods are either limited by a small scale or incompatible with functionalized structures.

Spatial organization of bacterial sphingolipid synthesis enzymes.

Sphingolipids are produced by nearly all eukaryotes where they play significant roles in cellular processes such as cell growth, division, programmed cell death, angiogenesis, and inflammation. While it was previously believed that sphingolipids were quite rare among bacteria, bioinformatic analysis of the recently identified bacterial sphingolipid synthesis genes suggests that these lipids are likely to be produced by a wide range of microbial species. The sphingolipid synthesis pathway consists of three critical enzymes.

Exploring temperature-responsive drug delivery with biocompatible fatty acids as phase change materials in ethyl cellulose nanofibers.

This study introduces a novel temperature-responsive drug delivery system using ethyl cellulose (EC) nanofibers encapsulating a eutectic mixture of lauric acid/stearic acid (LA/SA) as phase change materials (PCMs) and Rhodamine B (RhB) as a model drug. Employing blend electrospinning, the nanofibers achieved controlled drug release responsive to temperature changes. The peak shift of the carbonyl group in FTIR analysis confirmed drug-polymer compatibility, while the absence of RhB peaks in the XRD and DSC assessments revealed RhB's amorphous distribution within the fibers.

Firearm Access and Gun Violence Exposure Among American Indian or Alaska Native and Black Adults.

Importance: American Indian or Alaska Native and Black adults experience elevated rates of firearm injury and death, but both groups are severely underrepresented in research on firearm exposure and behaviors.

Objective: To explore geodemographic differences in firearm behaviors and violence exposure among American Indian or Alaska Native and Black adults in the US.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this survey study, nationally representative samples of American Indian or Alaska Native and/or Black adults recruited from KnowledgePanel were surveyed cross-sectionally.

Geometry for low-inertia aerosol capture: Lessons from fog-basking beetles.

Water in the form of windborne fog droplets supports life in many coastal arid regions, where natural selection has driven nontrivial physical adaptation toward its separation and collection. For two species of Namib desert beetle whose body geometry makes for a poor filter, subtle modifications in shape and texture have been previously associated with improved performance by facilitating water drainage from its collecting surface. However, little is known about the relevance of these modifications to the flow physics that underlies droplets' impaction in the first place.

The genetic architecture of dewlap pattern in Hispaniola anoles (Anolis distichus).

Color and pattern are often critical to survival and fitness, but we know little about their genetic architecture and heritability in groups like reptiles. We investigated the genetic architecture for the pattern of the dewlap-an extensible throat fan important for communication-in anole lizards. We studied the Hispaniolan bark anole (Anolis distichus)-a species that exhibits impressive intraspecific dewlap polymorphism across its range-by conducting multigenerational experimental crosses with 2 populations, one with a solid pale yellow dewlap and another with an orange dewlap surrounded by a yellow margin.

Mechanisms of sleep disturbances in long-term cancer survivors: a childhood cancer survivor study report.

Background: Sleep problems following childhood cancer treatment may persist into adulthood, exacerbating cancer-related late effects and putting survivors at risk for poor physical and psychosocial functioning. This study examines sleep in long-term survivors and their siblings to identify risk factors and disease correlates.

Methods: Childhood cancer survivors (≥5 years from diagnosis; n = 12 340; 51.

The blobulator: a webtool for identification and visual exploration of hydrophobic modularity in protein sequences.

Motivation: Clusters of hydrophobic residues are known to promote structured protein stability and drive protein aggregation. Recent work has shown that identifying contiguous hydrophobic residue clusters (termed "blobs") has proven useful in both intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) simulation and human genome studies. However, a graphical interface was unavailable.

What's missing? Violently injured Black men's narratives around Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

Background: Adverse childhood experiences have been associated with future outcomes; however, Felitti's 1998 ACEs questionnaire fails to capture the experiences of Black populations living in disinvested neighborhoods making it necessary to expand the ACEs questionnaire to examine the life experiences of violently injured Black men.

Objective: The aim of the study was to advance the understanding of ACEs among Black male firearm violence survivors using the ACEs questionnaire and semi-structured interviews.

Participants And Setting: Ten Black male firearm violence survivors were recruited from an urban HVIP.

Multiple Myeloma: Validation of the Values and Preferences Elicitation Questionnaire- Cure and Survival Preference Scale (VPEQ-CSPS).

Background: With the emergence of many novel therapies, the treatment decisions for multiple myeloma (MM) are increasingly guided by concerns of quality of life, achievement of cancer-free remission, living a longer overall survival, and a relentless search for a cure; however, the impact of various decision-making factors on patients' actual therapy choices and the patients' desire for cure and survival is mainly unknown. The lack of a valid and reliable measure for uncovering patients' preferences for cure and survival makes it more challenging to put this factor into the actual treatment decision equation.

Purpose: This study examined the psychometric properties of the Values and Preferences Elicitation Questionnaire-Cure and Survival Preference Scale (VPEQ-CSPS) instrument.

Alchemical Free Energy Calculations on Membrane-Associated Proteins.

Membrane proteins have diverse functions within cells and are well-established drug targets. The advances in membrane protein structural biology have revealed drug and lipid binding sites on membrane proteins, while computational methods such as molecular simulations can resolve the thermodynamic basis of these interactions. Particularly, alchemical free energy calculations have shown promise in the calculation of reliable and reproducible binding free energies of protein-ligand and protein-lipid complexes in membrane-associated systems.

Long-term mediation of a sexual risk-reduction intervention for South African adolescents.

Objective: Black adolescents in South Africa are disproportionately affected by HIV. A cluster-randomized controlled experiment examining the effects of a sexual risk-reduction intervention successfully reduced self-reported intercourse and unprotected intercourse. Based on long-term follow-up assessments, the present research examines theoretical constructs that could potentially mediate the intervention effects and how time and gender, respectively, moderated the mediation.

Firearm availability and police shootings of citizens: a city level analysis of fatal and injurious shootings in California and Florida.

Background: A growing body of research has found a link between firearm availability and police shootings of citizens across place. The problem, however, is that the previous studies on the topic tend to suffer from several limitations: a near exclusive focus on citizen fatalities, units of analysis at the state or county levels, and a variety of proxy measures tapping into community-level firearm access. The current study set out to address these issues by examining the relationship between different forms of firearm availability and both fatal and nonfatal injurious police shootings of citizens at the city level.

De Novo Whole Genome Assemblies for Two Southern African Dwarf Chameleons (Bradypodion, Chamaeleonidae).

A complete and high-quality reference genome has become a fundamental tool for the study of functional, comparative, and evolutionary genomics. However, efforts to produce high-quality genomes for African taxa are lagging given the limited access to sufficient resources and technologies. The southern African dwarf chameleons (Bradypodion) are a relatively young lineage, with a large body of evidence demonstrating the highly adaptive capacity of these lizards.

Variation in Caregiver-Reported Child Sleep Patterns and Problems by Family Socioeconomic Indicators.

Objective: Previous studies of sleep patterns, as well as rates and correlates of perceived problems in early childhood, indicate variation by neighborhood-level socioeconomic indicators. The purpose of this study was to examine variation in (1) sleep patterns, behaviors, and problems by family-based socioeconomic indicators (income-to-needs ratio and caregiver education level) and (2) sociodemographic and sleep correlates of a caregiver-endorsed child sleep problem across and within socioeconomic indicator groups in a diverse sample.

Methods: Two hundred eighty-three caregiver-child dyads (ages 1-5 years) completed the Brief Child Sleep Questionnaire.

Transient strain differences in an operant delayed non-match to position task.

Working memory refers to the temporary retention of a small amount of information used in the execution of a cognitive task. Working memory impairments are one of the common hallmarks of many neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders including schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. Here, we investigated Fischer 344 and Long-Evans rats for strain and sex differences in working memory using the operant-based DNMTP task.

Refining our Understanding of Anxiety in Autistic Youth: Examining the Role of Behavioral Inflexibility.

Prior research has demonstrated that cognitive inflexibility is associated with anxiety in autistic individuals. Everyday patterns of behavioral inflexibility (e.g.

The Relationship between Concealed Carry Licenses and Firearm Homicide in the US: A Reciprocal County-Level Analysis.

This study investigates the reciprocal county-level relationship between the number of concealed carry weapon (CCW) licenses issued and homicides between 2010 and 2019 in a sample of eleven states. We utilize a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) approach accounting for reciprocal effects over time between homicide and concealed carry licenses, providing a robust methodological approach to the study of concealed carry and homicide. The results of the RI-CLPM found that increases in the number of CCWs in 2010-2017 were statistically associated with increases in total gun homicide in 2011-2018.