Towards the Identification of Biomarkers for Muscle Function Improvement in Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1.

Background: Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is the most common muscular dystrophy in adults. In DM1 patients, skeletal muscle is severely impaired, even atrophied and patients experience a progressive decrease in maximum strength. Strength training for these individuals can improve their muscle function and mass, however, the biological processes involved in these improvements remain unknown.

A feedback loop between heterochromatin and the nucleopore complex controls germ-cell-to-oocyte transition during Drosophila oogenesis.

Germ cells differentiate into oocytes that launch the next generation upon fertilization. How the highly specialized oocyte acquires this distinct cell fate is poorly understood. During Drosophila oogenesis, H3K9me3 histone methyltransferase SETDB1 translocates from the cytoplasm to the nucleus of germ cells concurrently with oocyte specification.

First Dark Matter Search Results from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Experiment.

The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment is a dark matter detector centered on a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber operating at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, USA. This Letter reports results from LUX-ZEPLIN's first search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with an exposure of 60 live days using a fiducial mass of 5.5 t.

Activation of ATF3 via the Integrated Stress Response Pathway Regulates Innate Immune Response to Restrict Zika Virus.

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a re-emerging mosquito-borne flavivirus that can have devastating health consequences. The developmental and neurological effects from a ZIKV infection arise in part from the virus triggering cellular stress pathways and perturbing transcriptional programs. To date, the underlying mechanisms of transcriptional control directing viral restriction and virus-host interaction are understudied.

A Generational Shift: Race and the Declining Lifetime Risk of Imprisonment.

Mass incarceration fundamentally altered the life course for a generation of American men, but sustained declines in imprisonment in recent years raise questions about how incarceration is shaping current generations. This study makes three primary contributions to a fuller understanding of the contemporary landscape of incarceration in the United States. First, we assess the scope of decarceration.

A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of the Feasibility and Acceptability of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Comorbid Social Anxiety Disorder in a Routine Practice Setting.

A prior open trial of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for comorbid social anxiety disorder (SAD) and depression showed clinically significant improvement over the course of 16 sessions. The aim of the current study was to test the feasibility and acceptability of ACT for this population in a pilot randomized trial within a routine practice setting. Patients ( = 26) were randomly assigned to 16 weeks of medication treatment as usual (mTAU) versus mTAU plus ACT (mTAU + ACT).

Individual transcriptomic response to strength training for patients with myotonic dystrophy type 1.

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), the most common form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy, is caused by a CTG expansion resulting in significant transcriptomic dysregulation that leads to muscle weakness and wasting. While strength training is clinically beneficial in DM1, molecular effects had not been studied. To determine whether training rescued transcriptomic defects, RNA-Seq was performed on vastus lateralis samples from 9 male patients with DM1 before and after a 12-week strength-training program and 6 male controls who did not undergo training.

Patterns of West Nile Virus in the Northeastern United States Using Negative Binomial and Mechanistic Trait-Based Models.

West Nile virus (WNV) primarily infects birds and mosquitoes but has also caused over 2,000 human deaths, and >50,000 reported human cases in the United States. Expected numbers of WNV neuroinvasive cases for the present were described for the Northeastern United States, using a negative binomial model. Changes in temperature-based suitability for WNV due to climate change were examined for the next decade using a temperature-trait model.

Information geometry and Bose-Einstein condensation.

It is a long held conjecture in the connection between information geometry (IG) and thermodynamics that the curvature endowed by IG diverges at phase transitions. Recent work on the IG of Bose-Einstein (BE) gases challenged this conjecture by saying that in the limit of fugacity approaching unit-where BE condensation is expected-the curvature does not diverge; rather, it converges to zero. However, as the discontinuous behavior that identifies condensation is only observed at the thermodynamic limit, a study of the IG curvature at a finite number of particles, N, is in order from which the thermodynamic behavior can be observed by taking the thermodynamic limit ( N→∞) posteriorly.

Development of an Empirically Derived Measure of Food Safety Culture in Restaurants.

A poor food safety culture has been described as an emerging risk factor for foodborne illness outbreaks, yet there has been little research on this topic in the retail food industry. The purpose of this study was to identify and validate conceptual domains around food safety culture and develop an assessment tool that can be used to assess food workers' perceptions of their restaurant's food safety culture. The study, conducted from March 2018 through March 2019, surveyed restaurant food workers for their level of agreement with 28 statements.

Interacting with tumor cells weakens the intrinsic clockwise chirality of endothelial cells.

Endothelial cells (ECs) possess a strong intrinsic clockwise (CW, or rightward) chirality under normal conditions. Enervating this chirality of ECs significantly impairs the function of the endothelial barrier. Malignant tumor cells (TCs) undergo metastasis by playing upon the abnormal leakage of blood vessels.

Fast absolute 3D CGO-based electrical impedance tomography on experimental tank data.

To present the first 3D CGO-based absolute EIT reconstructions from experimental tank data.CGO-based methods for absolute EIT imaging are compared to traditional TV regularized non-linear least squares reconstruction methods. Additional robustness testing is performed by considering incorrect modeling of domain shape.

Living Alone During Old Age and the Risk of Dementia: Assessing the Cumulative Risk of Living Alone.

Objectives: This study examines the association between living alone during old age and dementia. Whereas most previous studies on this topic utilize measures of living alone status that were obtained at a single point in time, we compare this typical approach to one that measures long-term exposure to living alone among older adults and assesses whether dementia is more likely to occur within individuals with more accumulated time living alone.

Methods: Data come from the Health and Retirement Study, with a follow-up period of 2000-2018.

Chemistry-Informed Machine Learning Enables Discovery of DNA-Stabilized Silver Nanoclusters with Near-Infrared Fluorescence.

DNA can stabilize silver nanoclusters (Ag-DNAs) whose atomic sizes and diverse fluorescence colors are selected by nucleobase sequence. These programmable nanoclusters hold promise for sensing, bioimaging, and nanophononics. However, DNA's vast sequence space challenges the design and discovery of Ag-DNAs with tailored properties.

Early effects of COVID-19 pandemic-related state policies on housing market activity in the United States.

I use daily and weekly data from 100 metropolitan areas in 2020 to investigate the effects of state-level policies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic on various indicators of U.S. housing market activity.

Comparative Analysis of Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Platforms and Methods.

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) offers great new opportunities for increasing our understanding of complex biological processes. In particular, development of an accurate Human Cell Atlas is largely dependent on the rapidly advancing technologies and molecular chemistries employed in scRNA-seq. These advances have already allowed an increase in throughput for scRNA-seq from 96 to 80,000 cells on a single instrument run by capturing cells within nanoliter droplets.

Raman spectroscopy based molecular signatures of methamphetamine and HIV induced mitochondrial dysfunction.

METH and HIV Tat treatment results in increased oxidative stress which affects cellular metabolism and causes DNA damage in the treated microglia. Both, METH ± HIV Tat impair mitochondrial respiration, leading to dysfunction in bioenergetics and increased ROS in microglial cells. Our data indicate that mitochondrial dysfunction may be key to the METH and/or HIV Tat-induced neuropathology.

Dynamic regulation of ribosome levels and translation during development.

The ability of ribosomes to translate mRNAs into proteins is the basis of all life. While ribosomes are essential for cell viability, reduction in levels of ribosomes can affect cell fate and developmental transitions in a tissue specific manner and can cause a plethora of related diseases called ribosomopathies. How dysregulated ribosomes homeostasis influences cell fate and developmental transitions is not fully understood.

The Trump Administration and the COVID-19 crisis: Exploring the warning-response problems and missed opportunities of a public health emergency.

This article examines the Trump Administration's inability to mount a timely and effective response to the COVID-19 outbreak, despite ample warning. Through an empirical exploration guided by three explanatory perspectives-psychological, bureau-organizational, and agenda-political-developed from the strategic surprise, public administration, and crisis management literature, the authors seek to shed light on the mechanisms that contributed to the underestimation of the coronavirus threat by the Trump Administration and the slow and mismanaged federal response. The analysis highlights the extent to which the factors identified by previous studies of policy surprise and failure in other security domains are relevant for health security.

Oo-site: A dashboard to visualize gene expression during Drosophila oogenesis suggests meiotic entry is regulated post-transcriptionally.

Determining how stem cell differentiation is controlled has important implications for understanding the etiology of degenerative disease and designing regenerative therapies. In vivo analyses of stem cell model systems have revealed regulatory paradigms for stem cell self-renewal and differentiation. The germarium of the female Drosophila gonad, which houses both germline and somatic stem cells, is one such model system.

Molecular characterization of myotonic dystrophy fibroblast cell lines for use in small molecule screening.

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) and type 2 (DM2) are common forms of adult onset muscular dystrophy. Pathogenesis in both diseases is largely driven by production of toxic-expanded repeat RNAs that sequester MBNL RNA-binding proteins, causing mis-splicing. Given this shared pathogenesis, we hypothesized that diamidines, small molecules that rescue mis-splicing in DM1 models, could also rescue mis-splicing in DM2 models.

Racial discrimination and trauma symptoms: Further support for the Race-Based Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale.

Objectives: This study provides further validity for scores produced by the Race-Based Traumatic Stress Symptom Scale (RBTSSS), through examining the relationship between perceived discrimination, trauma symptoms, and mental health symptoms with the RBTSSS.

Method: Participants consisted of 148 people of color (54% women) with an average age of 33.38 years.

Couple and family therapists' experiences with Telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic: a phenomenological analysis.

In designing this study, we aimed to obtain a rich, phenomenological understanding of the experiences of couple and family therapists who transitioned their practice to telehealth due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Twelve experienced therapists from the U.S.