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Purpose: The aim of this study is to determine what modifiable behavioral and sociological factors were predictive of psychological distress and suicide risk in Asian and Asian American students, the ethnic group with the highest unmet mental health need in collegiate populations. We also compared these relationships in Fall 2019 to Fall 2020 to better understand how the impact of these factors changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent increase in Anti-Asian discrimination., Methods: We used factor analysis to extract a wide range of predictor variables from the Fall 2019 and Fall 2020 American College Health Association's National College Health Assessment III. Next, we used structural equation modeling to identify significant drivers of psychological distress (Kessler-6 scale) and suicidality (Suicide Behavior Questionnaire-Revised scale) in Asian and Asian American students (n = 4,681 in 2019 and 1,672 in 2020)., Results: When compared to 2019, experiencing discrimination in 2020 had a substantially larger effect on both psychological distress and suicidality among Asian and Asian American university students. Loneliness and depression were also significant drivers of negative mental health outcomes both years, and their effect magnitudes remained largely unchanged. Being well rested had a protective effect against psychological distress both years., Discussion: During the COVID-19 pandemic, discrimination was an important driver of psychological distress and suicidality in Asian and Asian American students. These findings suggest that organizations should enhance culturally competent mental healthcare services, while also working at the systems level to reduce bias and discrimination., (Copyright © 2023 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Graph refinement, or the task of obtaining subgraphs of interest from over-complete graphs, can have many varied applications. In this work, we extract trees or collection of sub-trees from image data by, first deriving a graph-based representation of the volumetric data and then, posing the tree extraction as a graph refinement task. We present two methods to perform graph refinement. First, we use mean-field approximation (MFA) to approximate the posterior density over the subgraphs from which the optimal subgraph of interest can be estimated. Mean field networks (MFNs) are used for inference based on the interpretation that iterations of MFA can be seen as feed-forward operations in a neural network. This allows us to learn the model parameters using gradient descent. Second, we present a supervised learning approach using graph neural networks (GNNs) which can be seen as generalisations of MFNs. Subgraphs are obtained by training a GNN-based graph refinement model to directly predict edge probabilities. We discuss connections between the two classes of methods and compare them for the task of extracting airways from 3D, low-dose, chest CT data. We show that both the MFN and GNN models show significant improvement when compared to one baseline method, that is similar to a top performing method in the EXACT'09 Challenge, and a 3D U-Net based airway segmentation model, in detecting more branches with fewer false positives., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Catechol 1,2 dioxygenases (C12DOs) have been studied for its ability to cleavage the benzene ring of catechol, the main intermediate in the degradation of aromatic compounds derived from aerobic degradation of hydrocarbons. Here we report the genome sequence of the marine bacterium Pseudomonas stutzeri GOM2, isolated from the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, and the biochemical characterization of its C12DO (PsC12DO). The catA gene, encoding PsC12DO of 312 amino acid residues, was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. Many C12DOs have been described as dimeric enzymes including those present in Pseudomonas species. The purified PsC12DO enzyme was found as an active trimer, with a molecular mass of 107 kDa. Increasing NaCl concentration in the enzyme reaction gradually reduced activity; in high salt concentrations (0.7 M NaCl) quaternary structural analysis determined that the enzyme changes to a dimeric arrangement and causes a 51% decrease in specific activity on catechol substrate. In comparison with other C12DOs, our enzyme showed a broad range of action for PsC12DO in solutions with pH values ranging from neutral to alkaline (70%). The enzyme is still active after incubation at 50°C for 30 min and in low temperatures to long term storage after 6 weeks at 4°C (61%). EDTA or Ca 2+ inhibitors cause no drastic changes on residual activity; nevertheless, the activity of the enzyme was affected by metal ions Fe 3+ , Zn 2+ and was completely inhibited by Hg 2+ . Under optimal conditions the k cat and K m values were 16.13 s -1 and 13.2 μM, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the characterization of a marine C12DOs from P. stutzeri isolated from the Gulf of Mexico that is active in a trimeric state. We consider that our enzyme has important features to be used in environments in presence of EDTA, metals and salinity conditions., (Copyright © 2020 Rodríguez-Salazar, Almeida-Juarez, Ornelas-Ocampo, Millán-López, Raga-Carbajal, Rodríguez-Mejía, Muriel-Millán, Godoy-Lozano, Rivera-Gómez, Rudiño-Piñera and Pardo-López.)

Liver fibrosis occurs in the presence of continuous insults, including toxic or biological agents. Novel treatments must focus on ceasing the progression of cellular damage, promoting the regeneration of the parenchyma and inhibition of the fibrotic process. The present study analyzed the effect of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)‑7 gene therapy with or without co‑treatment with doxazosin in a model of liver cirrhosis in hamsters. The serum alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and albumin levels were analyzed spectrophotometrically. Tissue hepatic samples were analyzed by hematoxylin and eosin for parenchymal structure and Sirius red for collagen fiber content. BMP‑7 and α‑smooth muscle actin (SMA)‑positive cells were detected by immunohistochemistry. BMP‑7 and collagen type I content in hepatic tissue were analyzed by western blotting, and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases (TIMP)‑2 and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)‑13 expression levels were detected by reverse transcription‑quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The present study detected a significant reduction of collagen type I deposits in the group treated with adenoviral‑transduction with BMP‑7 and doxazosin. In animals with BMP‑7 and doxazosin therapy, α‑SMA‑positive cells were 31.7 and 29% significantly decreased compared with animals with placebo, respectively. Adenoviral‑BMP‑7 transduction and/or doxazosin treatments actively induced decrement in type I collagen deposition via increased MMP‑13 and reduced TIMP‑2 expression. In conclusion, the adenovirus‑BMP‑7 gene therapy and the doxazosin therapy are potential candidates for the diminution of fibrosis in the liver, although combination of both therapies does not improve the individual anti‑fibrotic effect once cirrhosis is established.