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INTRODUCTION Direct and indirect smoking exposure is highly related to mental health in children. This study aimed to identify the association between exposure to smoking or secondhand smoke (SHS) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). METHODS We used data from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) from 2007 to 2019, including variables such as diagnosed ADHD, smoking status, SHS, and urine cotinine levels among children and adolescents. We estimated the risk of ADHD according to smoking or SHS exposure in various exposure groups using adjusted logistic or linear regression models. RESULTS Among 16434 participants, 133 children were diagnosed with ADHD (0.8%). Of these, 58 (43.6%) were aged <12 years and 75 (56.3%) were aged ≥12 years. Smoking was significantly associated with ADHD (crude odds ratio, OR=1.48; 95% CI: 1.14-3.26 and adjusted odds ratio, AOR=1.22; 95% CI: 1.02-1.64). SHS exposure and ADHD were attenuated after adjustment (OR=2.42; 95% CI: 1.08-4.02; AOR=1.42; 95% CI: 0.86-2.64) in the logistic regression model. Smoking history was statistically associated with a younger age of ADHD diagnosis in the linear regression model. CONCLUSIONS Smoking and the amount of smoking among children and adolescents was associated with ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Several recent studies showed that next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing is a feasible and promising technique for variant calling of highly polymorphic regions. To date, however, no method with sufficient read depth has completely solved the allele phasing issue. In this study, we developed a new method (HLAscan) for HLA genotyping using NGS data. Results: HLAscan performs alignment of reads to HLA sequences from the international ImMunoGeneTics project/ human leukocyte antigen (IMGT/HLA) database. The distribution of aligned reads was used to calculate a score function to determine correctly phased alleles by progressively removing false-positive alleles. Comparative HLA typing tests using public datasets from the 1000 Genomes Project and the International HapMap Project demonstrated that HLAscan could perform HLA typing more accurately than previously reported NGS-based methods such as HLAreporter and PHLAT. In addition, the results of HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 typing by HLAscan using data generated by NextGen were identical to those obtained using a Sanger sequencing--based method. We also applied HLAscan to a family dataset with various coverage depths generated on the Illumina HiSeq X-TEN platform. HLAscan identified allele types of HLA-A, -B, -C, -DQB1, and -DRB1 with 100% accuracy for sequences at ≥ 90 x depth, and the overall accuracy was 96.9%. Conclusions: HLAscan, an alignment-based program that takes read distribution into account to determine true allele types, outperformed previously developed HLA typing tools. Therefore, HLAscan can be reliably applied for determination of HLA type across the whole-genome, exome, and target sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The combination extract of four kinds of herbs, Gastrodia elata, Liriope platyphylla, Dimocarpus longan, and Salvia miltiorrhiza, has shown to have memory improving effects in mice. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy and safety of the herbal mixture for improving working memory as well as microstructural changes in white matter integrity in individuals with subjective memory complaints. Methods Seventy-five individuals with subjective memory complaints were assigned to receive either placebo (n = 15) or herbal mixture (low-dose group, n = 30 and high-dose group, n = 30) supplementation in an 8-week, randomized, double-blind, placebocontrolled clinical trial. Changes in working memory performance and fractional anisotropy (FA) values reflecting white matter integrity from baseline to 8-week endpoint were assessed. Results The herbal mixture group showed an increase in working memory performance compared to the placebo group (p for interaction = 0.001). In addition, the herbal mixture group showed an increase in FA values in the temporo-parietal regions (corrected p < 0.05), which are crucially involved in working memory function and are among the most affected regions in patients with cognitive impairments. Conclusions Findings from this study indicate that the herbal mixture may be a promising therapeutic option for individuals with subjective memory complaints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rhodamine triazole-based fluorescent chemosensor has been developed for the selective detection of platinum ions in aqueous solutions. The rhodamine 6G hydroxamate linked with a propargyl group is converted to the corresponding triazole by a “click” reaction. The dual binding unit composed of a hydroxamate and a triazole shows high selectivity and sensitivity toward Pt2+over a range of other metal ions in water. The fluorescent probe is applied to monitor cisplatin in aqueous solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A highly selective and sensitive fluorescent chemosensor for Au3+has been reported. The system utilizes an irreversible Au3+-promoted cyclization reaction of a rhodamine amide tethered with an alkyne. The probe can sense Au3+ions selectively over other biologically relevant metal ions, and ∼50 nM of Au3+could be readily detected in aqueous media. Fluorescent imaging of Au3+in living cells is also successfully demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major interest in gene expression microarray studies is to develop an accurate classifier which can be adopted in clinical practice. The usage of large numbers of genes with small data samples may lead to overfitting in classification, and generate promising, but often nonreproducible results. Therefore, assessing the reproducibility of a classifier is necessary. Appropriate methods for validating a developed classifier and estimating its predicting accuracy are discussed. In addition, some mistakes that can arise in the cross validation process are reviewed using published articles in prominent medical journals, to prevent the indefinite results of a classifier development from leading to inappropriate treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

H. Dye defined the parity mapping for a virtual knot diagram, which is a map from the set of real crossings of the diagram to Z. The notion generalizes the parity which is studied extensively by V. Manturov. The mapping induces the ith writhe (i ? Z\{0}) which is an invariant of the representing virtual knot. She applied the parity mapping to introduce a grade to the Henrich S-invariant for a virtual knot, and showed that the invariants are Vassiliev invariants of degree one. Following it, we define the parity mappings for a virtual link diagram, and define the similar invariants as above for a virtual link by using the parity mappings. We show that some of the invariants are Vassiliev invariants of degree one. We also checked necessary conditions for invertibility and amphicheirality via the invariants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining isotopic clusters and their monoisotopic masses is a first step in interpreting complex mass spectra generated by high-resolution mass spectrometers. We propose a mathematical model for isotopic distributions of polypeptides and an effective interpretation algorithm. Our model uses two types of ratios: intensity ratio of two adjacent peaks and intensity ratio product of three adjacent peaks in an isotopic distribution. These ratios can be approximated as simple functions of a polypeptide mass, the values of which fall within certain ranges, depending on the polypeptide mass. Given a spectrum as a peak list, our algorithm first finds all isotopic clusters consisting of two or more peaks. Then, it scores clusters using the ranges of ratio functions and computes the monoisotopic masses of the identified clusters. Our method was applied to high-resolution mass spectra obtained from a Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) mass spectrometer coupled to reverse-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC). For polypeptides whose amino acid sequences were identified by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), we applied both THRASH. based software implementations and our method. Our method was observed to find more masses of known peptides when the numbers of the total clusters identified by both methods were fixed. Experimental results show that our method performed better for isotopic mass clusters of weak intensity where the isotopic distributions deviate significantly from their theoretical distributions. Also, it correctly identified some isotopic clusters that were not found by THRASH-based implementations, especially those for which THRASH gave 1 Da mismatches. Another advantage of our method is that it is very fast, much faster than THRASH that calculates the least-squares fit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Although there have been studies that examine sex differences of the brain structures using magnetic resonance imaging, studies that specifically investigate cerebellar structural differences between men and women are scarce. The purpose of current study was to examine sex differences in structures of the cerebellum using cerebellar template and cerebellum analysis methods. Methods Sixteen men and twenty women were included in the study. A MATLAB based program (MathWorks, Natick, MA, USA), Statistical Parametric Mapping 5 (SPM5) using the spatially unbiased infra-tentorial atlas template (SUIT) as the cerebellum template, was used to analyze the brain imaging data. Results There was no significant difference in age between men (mean age = 28.1) and women (mean age = 27.2). Men showed higher gray matter density than women in two left cerebellar areas including the clusters in the lobules IV and V (a cluster located across the lobules IV and V), and the lobule VIIIb (lobules IV and V, t = 4.75, p < 0.001 ; lobule VIIIb, t = 3.08, p = 0.004). Conclusions The current study found differences in cerebellar gray matter density between men and women. The current study holds its significance for applying the template specifically developed for the analysis of cerebellum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]