Unlocking the Power of Gesture: Using Movement-Based Instruction to Improve First Grade Children's Spatial Unit Misconceptions.

Gestures are hand movements that are produced simultaneously with spoken language and can supplement it by representing semantic information, emphasizing important points, or showing spatial locations and relations. Gestures' specific features make them a promising tool to improve spatial thinking. Yet, there is recent work showing that not all learners benefit equally from gesture instruction and that this may be driven, in part, by children's difficulty understanding what an instructor's gesture is intended to represent.

Examining Relationships between Cognitive Flexibility, Exercise Perceptions, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors.

Adults do not engage in enough physical activity. Investigating cognitive and physiological factors related to improving this behavior-and reducing health risks-remains a public health priority. Our objective was to assess whether cognitive flexibility influenced perceptions and choice of exercise programs and whether flexibility was associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors.

Resident Synovial Macrophages in Synovial Fluid: Implications for Immunoregulation in Infectious and Inflammatory Arthritis.

Objectives: Resident synovial macrophages (RSM) provide immune sequestration of the joint space and are likely involved in initiation and perpetuation of the joint-specific immune response. We sought to identify RSM in synovial fluid (SF) and demonstrate migratory ability, in additional to functional changes that may perpetuate a chronic inflammatory response within joint spaces.

Methods: We recruited human patients presenting with undifferentiated arthritis in multiple clinical settings.

Preschool-based mother-child emotional preparation program improves emotional connection, behavior regulation in the home and classroom: a randomized controlled trial.

Introduction: Based on the theory that increasing emotional connection and reducing emotional stress between mother and child at home will reduce dysregulated behavior in the classroom, we tested a novel family-based school intervention aimed at facilitating mother-child emotional connection. This question has gained great importance following the COVID-19 pandemic, as child mental health has been declared a national emergency.

Methods: Subjects were randomized into two groups; one (Control:  = 32) receiving the standard curriculum in a large community-based preschool education program, and another (MCEP) receiving the standard curriculum plus the Mother Child Emotional Preparation Program (MCEP:  = 30).

The effect of governance structures on optimal control of two-patch epidemic models.

Infectious diseases continue to pose a significant threat to the health of humans globally. While the spread of pathogens transcends geographical boundaries, the management of infectious diseases typically occurs within distinct spatial units, determined by geopolitical boundaries. The allocation of management resources within and across regions (the "governance structure") can affect epidemiological outcomes considerably, and policy-makers are often confronted with a choice between applying control measures uniformly or differentially across regions.

Reduced visual context effects in global motion processing in depression.

Research supports abnormal inhibitory visual motion processing in adults with remitted and current depression, but all studies to date have used paradigms with simple grating stimuli. Global motion processing, where multiple motion signals must be integrated, has not been explored in depression, nor have inhibitory processes within that domain. Depressed participants (n = 46) and healthy controls (n = 28) completed a direction discrimination task featuring a random dot pattern stimulus.

Biochemical investigation of the tryptophan biosynthetic enzyme anthranilate phosphoribosyltransferase in plants.

While mammals require the essential amino acid tryptophan (Trp) in their diet, plants and microorganisms synthesize Trp de novo. The five-step Trp pathway starts with the shikimate pathway product, chorismate. Chorismate is converted to the aromatic compound anthranilate, which is then conjugated to a phosphoribosyl sugar in the second step by anthranilate phosphoribosyltransferase (PAT1).

Income and Insurance Status Impact Access to Health Care for Hip Osteoarthritis.

Purpose: To explore differences in the affordability of and accessibility to health care among adults with hip osteoarthritis with respect to race/ethnicity, income, and insurance status.

Methods: This cross-sectional retrospective study was conducted using 2016 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data. NHIS data collection occurred continuously from January to December 2016.

Physiological constraints and cognitive chunking: Sequence organization in the songs of zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

Learned bird songs often have a hierarchical organization. In the case of zebra finches, each bird's song is made up of a string of notes delivered in a stereotyped sequence to form a "motif," and motifs are repeated to form a song bout. During song learning, young males copy "chunks" of two or more consecutive notes from their tutors' songs.

Maternal childhood trauma and observed maternal care behaviors with 4-month-old infants.

Objective: To examine the relationship between maternal childhood trauma and early maternal caregiving behaviors (MCB).

Method: Participants included 74 mother-infant dyads (maternal age 20-45 years; ethnicity 64.9% Latina) from a longitudinal pregnancy cohort study.

The "Partial Innocence" Effect: False Guilty Pleas to Partially Unethical Behaviors.

Although research has focused on the "innocence problem," "partial innocence" may also plague individuals who plead guilty to crimes they did not commit, but that are either comparable, more severe, or less severe than their actual crimes. Using a high-stake experimental paradigm and an immersive role-playing paradigm, we examined the psychology of partial innocence. Students were randomly induced (or imagined themselves) to be innocent, guilty, or partially innocent of committing an academic transgression and then given the choice to accept or reject a deal to avoid disciplinary sanction.

Demonstration of in vivo engineered tandem duplications of varying sizes using CRISPR and recombinases in Drosophila melanogaster.

Tandem gene duplicates are important parts of eukaryotic genome structure, yet the phenotypic effects of new tandem duplications are not well-understood, in part owing to a lack of techniques to build and modify them. We introduce a method, Recombinase-Mediated Tandem Duplication, to engineer specific tandem duplications in vivo using CRISPR and recombinases. We describe construction of four different tandem duplications of the Alcohol Dehydrogenase (Adh) gene in Drosophila melanogaster, with duplicated block sizes ranging from 4.

Molecular and long-term behavioral consequences of neonatal opioid exposure and withdrawal in mice.

Introduction: Infants exposed to opioids are at high risk of exhibiting Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS), a combination of somatic withdrawal symptoms including high pitched crying, sleeplessness, irritability, gastrointestinal distress, and in the worst cases, seizures. The heterogeneity of opioid exposure, particularly exposure to polypharmacy, makes it difficult to investigate the underlying molecular mechanisms that could inform early diagnosis and treatment of NOWS, and challenging to investigate consequences later in life.

Methods: To address these issues, we developed a mouse model of NOWS that includes gestational and post-natal morphine exposure that encompasses the developmental equivalent of all three human trimesters and assessed both behavior and transcriptome alterations.

Optimal Information Transfer and the Uniform Measure over Probability Space.

For a quantum system with a -dimensional Hilbert space, suppose a pure state |ψ⟩ is subjected to a complete orthogonal measurement. The measurement effectively maps |ψ⟩ to a point (p1,…,pd) in the appropriate probability simplex. It is a known fact-which depends crucially on the complex nature of the system's Hilbert space-that if |ψ⟩ is distributed uniformly over the unit sphere, then the resulting ordered set (p1,…,pd) is distributed uniformly over the probability simplex; that is, the resulting measure on the simplex is proportional to dp1⋯dpd-1.

Searching for a Home Port in a Polyvectic World: Molecular Analysis and Global Biogeography of the Marine Worm (Annelida: Spionidae).

The spionid polychaete Claparède, 1868 is a shell borer widely occurring across the world and considered introduced in many areas. It was originally described in the Gulf of Naples, Italy. Adult diagnostic features are the palps with black bands, prostomium weakly incised anteriorly, caruncle extending to the end of chaetiger 3, short occipital antenna, and heavy sickle-shaped spines in the posterior notopodia.

Discomforting surplus: gender, sexualization, and omissions in ethnographic fieldwork.

As sisters and sociologists, we shared an unnerving experience of sexual harassment in one of our preliminary field sites. Our research pursuits split thereafter, with one of us leaning into questions of gender and sexuality and the other steering clear. Despite our diverging interests, we both encountered discomforting moments that raise questions about what data we render surplus in our analysis.

The use of Escherichia coli strain Nissle 1917 shows promise for improving gastrointestinal and urinary health in dogs.

Objectives: To investigate the probiotic Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) in canine idiopathic diarrhea and urinary tract infections.

Animals/samples: The utility of EcN was explored in a 3-phase study from March 2017 to June 2020. Eighty-nine dogs with idiopathic diarrhea were included in phase 1, 3 healthy dogs were included in phase 2, and uropathogenic E coli (UPEC) isolates from 38 dogs with urinary tract infections were included in phase 3.

"Biosynthesis of psilocybin and its nonnatural derivatives by a promiscuous psilocybin synthesis pathway in Escherichia coli".

Traditional psychedelics are undergoing a transformation from recreational drugs, to promising pharmaceutical drug candidates with the potential to provide an alternative treatment option for individuals struggling with mental illness. Sustainable and economic production methods are thus needed to facilitate enhanced study of these drug candidates to support future clinical efforts. Here, we expand upon current bacterial psilocybin biosynthesis by incorporating the cytochrome P450 monooxygenase, PsiH, to enable the de novo production of psilocybin as well as the biosynthesis of 13 psilocybin derivatives.

Effect of Trainee Level on Surgical Time and Postoperative Complications of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction.

Purpose: The objective of this study was to investigate the association between trainee level and surgical time and postoperative complications of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR).

Methods: A retrospective chart review of patients who underwent ACLR at an academic orthopaedic ambulatory surgery center collected demographic and clinical information, including the number of trainees present and trainee level. Unadjusted and adjusted regression analyses assessed the association between trainee number and level with surgical time (time from skin incision to closure) and postoperative complications.

Dispersion-engineered metasurfaces reaching broadband 90% relative diffraction efficiency.

Dispersion results from the variation of index of refraction as well as electric field confinement in sub-wavelength structures. It usually results in efficiency decrease in metasurface components leading to troublesome scattering into unwanted directions. In this letter, by dispersion engineering, we report a set of eight nanostructures whose dispersion properties are nearly identical to each other while being capable of providing 0 to 2π full-phase coverage.

Kernel-based genetic association analysis for microbiome phenotypes identifies host genetic drivers of beta-diversity.

Background: Understanding human genetic influences on the gut microbiota helps elucidate the mechanisms by which genetics may influence health outcomes. Typical microbiome genome-wide association studies (GWAS) marginally assess the association between individual genetic variants and individual microbial taxa. We propose a novel approach, the covariate-adjusted kernel RV (KRV) framework, to map genetic variants associated with microbiome beta-diversity, which focuses on overall shifts in the microbiota.

Extent and reproduction of coastal species on plastic debris in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

We show that the high seas are colonized by a diverse array of coastal species, which survive and reproduce in the open ocean, contributing strongly to its floating community composition. Analysis of rafting plastic debris in the eastern North Pacific Subtropical Gyre revealed 37 coastal invertebrate taxa, largely of Western Pacific origin, exceeding pelagic taxa richness by threefold. Coastal taxa, including diverse taxonomic groups and life history traits, occurred on 70.

Joint COVID-19 and influenza-like illness forecasts in the United States using internet search information.

Background: As the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic continues, severe seasonal Influenza (flu) may happen alongside COVID-19. This could cause a "twindemic", in which there are additional burdens on health care resources and public safety compared to those occurring in the presence of a single infection. Amidst the raising trend of co-infections of the two diseases, forecasting both Influenza-like Illness (ILI) outbreaks and COVID-19 waves in a reliable and timely manner becomes more urgent than ever.