556 results match your criteria: "University of Houston - Clear Lake[Affiliation]"

Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to develop a non-hormonal contraceptive for men by identifying specific genes in male reproductive tissues that could serve as drug targets.
  • Researchers analyzed human and mouse RNA-seq data, discovering 1,178 previously unannotated genes showing male reproductive tract-specific expression, with 51 confirmed using RT-PCR.
  • Six selected genes were studied using CRISPR/Cas9 in mouse models; some were found important for fertility, while others were not essential, expanding the understanding of male reproductive biology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Individuals who engage in aggression often display precursors or agitated behavior first, and it is important for caregivers to learn how to minimize risk of injury in the event that aggression were to occur. In this study, behavioral skills training was used to teach 4 caregivers of children who engage in aggression to position their body safely and prevent access to dangerous items during agitated states. Confederates were used during all baseline, training, and posttraining sessions to maintain consistency and the safety of the caregivers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Subcortical brain morphometry of avoidant personality disorder.

J Affect Disord

September 2020

Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza - room A277, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA; Center for Translational Research on Inflammatory Diseases, Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center, Houston, TX, USA; The Menninger Clinic, Houston, TX, USA. Electronic address:

Background: Avoidant personality disorder (AvPD) is a condition typified by social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation. AvPD has a high comorbidity rate with other personality disorders and other psychological diagnostic categories. There is very little research investigating subcortical volumetry in AvPD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Over the past 20 years, there has been an increased focus on quality improvement (QI) in health care, which is critical in achieving care that is patient-centered, safer, timelier, and more effective, efficient, and equitable. At the center of this movement is QI education, which is known to lead to learning, behavior change, and improved outcomes. However, there is a need for the development and provision of long-duration, interactive, interprofessional training in QI, to allow for in-depth learning and application of learned skills.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Natural disasters can lead to mental health problems, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Higher levels of loss and/or disruption and prior trauma exposure constitute risk factors for mental illness, whereas protective factors, including hope and resilience, support positive functioning. The present cross-sectional study used structural equation modeling to examine the relative influence of resilience and hope on mental health and well-being 1-3 months after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in August 2017, among a sample of 829 adults in the Greater Houston, Texas area.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Developing a safe and effective male contraceptive remains a challenge in the field of medical science. Molecules that selectively target the male reproductive tract and whose targets are indispensable for male reproductive function serve among the best candidates for a novel non-hormonal male contraceptive method. To determine the function of these genes in vivo, mutant mice carrying disrupted testis- or epididymis-enriched genes were generated by zygote microinjection or electroporation of the CRISPR/Cas9 components.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As the world population continues to increase to unsustainable levels, the importance of birth control and the development of new contraceptives are emerging. To date, male contraceptive options have been lagging behind those available to women, and those few options available are not satisfactory to everyone. To solve this problem, we have been searching for new candidate target proteins for non-hormonal contraceptives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

School Mental Health prevention approaches that use multi-tiered systems are advancing rapidly. However, there is a relative shortage of effective selective prevention programs feasible to implement within the school context. To optimize the effectiveness of selective prevention in this context, a Motivational Interviewing (MI)-based prevention program for an adolescent student population was developed and tested.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The two main problems in the pharmacotherapy of epilepsy are resistance to currently available first-line medications (which occurs in about one third of patients) and the high incidence of side effects. To address these two challenges, extensive efforts are being undertaken to design new, structurally distinct antiepileptic drugs with a broad spectrum of anticonvulsant activity. Tests in animal models of epilepsy indicate that α-substituted lactams and acetamides show a broad spectrum of anticonvulsant activity (including very promising activity in drug-resistant models) as well as an excellent safety profile.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Studies have shown that the multiple-stimulus without replacement (MSWO) preference assessment is an effective assessment format for identifying preferred items. However, it is possible that factors other than reinforcer quality might influence selections by some individuals when the MSWO array consists of edible items. The validity of the MSWO results was evaluated by comparing items identified as most and least preferred by the MSWO assessment in a concurrent-schedule (CS) format.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Many glove manufacturers of chemical protective clothing produce chemical resistance guides to aid in selection of an appropriate product. Some manufacturers provide permeation data, but others provide a general rating system without reporting testing their own products. A critical issue is that considerable variation in chemical resistance, both with breakthrough times and steady-state permeation rates, have been observed with disposable nitrile gloves.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

With the continued steep rise of the global human population, and the paucity of safe and practical contraceptive options available to men, the need for development of effective and reversible non-hormonal methods of male fertility control is widely recognized. Currently there are several contraceptive options available to men, however, none of the non-hormonal alternatives have been clinically approved. To advance progress in the development of a safe and reversible contraceptive for men, further identification of novel reproductive tract-specific druggable protein targets is required.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Ground Effect in Anguilliform Swimming.

Biomimetics (Basel)

March 2020

J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

Some anguilliform swimmers such as eels and lampreys swim near the ground, which has been hypothesized to have hydrodynamic benefits. To investigate whether swimming near ground has hydrodynamics benefits, two large-eddy simulations of a self-propelled anguilliform swimmer are carried out-one swimming far away from the ground (free swimming) and the other near the ground, that is, midline at 0 . 07 of fish length () from the ground creating a gap of 0 .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A follow-up study evaluated the chemical and physical parameters of 10 disposable nitrile glove products in association with the observed variability in chemical permeation performance. The aim was to determine which polymer properties explained or were predictive of the observed wide variation in breakthrough time and steady state permeation rate. The physical and mechanical properties evaluated were thickness, area density, volume fraction and modulus 50-100%.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Nitrated and oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (NPAHs and OPAHs) from the direct atmospheric emission or the degradation of parent PAHs are increasingly recognized because of their potential health risks. Herein, we investigated the effects of four NPAHs/OPAHs (1-NNAP, 9-NANT, 9,10-AQ, and 9-FLU) and their parent PAHs (NAP, ANT, and FLU) on endothelium function with regard to endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) and endothelium-derived nitric oxide (NO) production in human umbilical vein endothelial cells. The eNOS enzymatic activity and NO production were promoted by NAP, ANT, and FLU; however, eNOS activity was dropped by 52.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The loss of vacuolar/lysosomal acidity is an early event during aging that has been linked to mitochondrial dysfunction. However, it is unclear how loss of vacuolar acidity results in age-related dysfunction. Through unbiased genetic screens, we determined that increased iron uptake can suppress the mitochondrial respiratory deficiency phenotype of yeast vma mutants, which have lost vacuolar acidity due to genetic disruption of the vacuolar ATPase proton pump.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Healthcare in the United States has increasingly benefited from the adoption of multidisciplinary providers. Many multidisciplinary teams include psychologists who often conduct psychological and personality assessments in their practice. This special section highlights areas of personality and psychological assessment in applied healthcare contexts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Research suggests that individuals seeking weight loss treatment do so for a variety of reasons. Limited work has explored relations of reasons for weight loss to patient characteristics or to weight loss outcomes. The current study examined these relations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Physician Social Media Abuse: What Would You Do?

Health Care Manag (Frederick)

September 2020

Author Affiliations: Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, Houston (Ms Desai); and Healthcare Administration, University of Houston Clear Lake (Dr Mitchell), Texas.

Over the past decade, physician social media use has been made popular and evolved from simple Facebook pages to rapid, instant media sharing. New social media applications, such as Snapchat and Instagram, are finding welcome homes in personal cell phones of physicians. The purpose of this article is to determine patients' views of not only physician use of these apps but also how they would react if their physician abused this technology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aim: To examine the value of peer support in the self-management of diabetes among veterans in an integrated health care system.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with veterans and clinicians 6 months after their participation in Empowering Patients in Chronic Care (EPIC), a group-based diabetes intervention with a peer-support component. Interviews elicited clinicians' narratives of how peer support unfolded in the groups and veterans' experiences of giving and receiving support from their peers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Psychopathology among liver and kidney transplant patients is prevalent. Although pre-surgical psychological evaluations are routinely conducted, understanding which specific psychological test to use is under-developed. The purpose of this review is to examine the psychometric properties of broadband and narrowband psychological measures in pre-surgical liver and kidney transplant evaluations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Solid organ transplant candidates with alexithymia experience higher psychological distress and depression, negatively affecting their quality of life.
  • This study examined how depression mediates the impact of alexithymia on both physical and psychological quality of life in 707 transplant candidates.
  • Results showed that alexithymia predicts lower quality of life, with depression partially mediating this relationship, emphasizing the need to assess emotional expression issues in these patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The mechanical unloading of spaceflight elicits a host of physiological adaptations including reductions in muscle mass, muscle strength, and muscle function and alterations in central interpretation of visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive information. Upon return to a terrestrial, gravitational environment, these result in reduced function and performance, the potential consequences of which will be exacerbated during exploration missions to austere and distant destinations such as the moon and Mars. Exercise is a potent countermeasure to unloading-induced physiological maladaptations and has been employed since the early days of spaceflight.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Inorganic arsenic (iAs) in its dominant dissolved phase in the environment is known to pose major threats to ecological and human health. While the biological effects in many arsenic-bearing freshwaters have been extensively studied, the behavior and bioaccumulation of dissolved iAS in the presence of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) still remains to be a critical knowledge gap. In this study, the uptakes and kinetic characteristics of iAs were studied using Chlorella pyrenoidosa (a typical freshwater green algae) by addressing the different effects of EPS on arsenite (As) and arsenate (As).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF