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Objective Binge drinking and heavy alcohol use are highly prevalent among college students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lockdown restrictions and other challenges, many college students were burdened with loneliness, which can contribute to chronic stress, and substance use. The current study explores the association between loneliness and various levels of alcohol use among college students in the rural, underserved region of Central Appalachia, USA. Methods Data were collected from a regional sample (n = 320) of college age adults, age 18-25 in the Central Appalachian region. The UCLA-3 item Loneliness Scale (UCLA-3) was used in the study to evaluate loneliness. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the association between levels of loneliness and three separate outcomes, including past year binge drinking, past year heavy alcohol use, and past year weekly alcohol use. Results Overall, 25.5% of the participants reported severe loneliness, 33.6% reported moderate, and 40.9% reported low levels of loneliness. Results of the adjusted models revealed that severe loneliness was associated with higher odds of heavy alcohol use (AOR = 1.89, 95% CI [1.02, 3.50]) and binge drinking (AOR = 2.96, 95% CI [1.16, 7.51]), and not associated with weekly alcohol use. Conclusion The study found that higher levels of loneliness were linked to both binged drinking and heavy alcohol use. Further efforts for counseling and treatment among college students who are burdened with severe loneliness should be considered. The chronic stress associated with severe loneliness needs to be further addressed, particularly among emerging adults.

Recent studies have unveiled an association between an L61R substitution within the human histone H3.3 protein and the presentation of neurodevelopmental disorders in two patients. In both cases, the mutation responsible for this substitution is encoded by one allele of the H3F3A gene and, if this mutation is indeed responsible for the disease phenotypes, it must act in a dominant fashion since the genomes of these patients also harbour three other alleles encoding wild-type histone H3.3. In our previous work in yeast, we have shown that most amino acid substitutions at H3-L61 cause an accumulation of the Spt16 component of the yFACT histone chaperone complex at the 3’ end of transcribed genes, a defect we have attributed to impaired yFACT dissociation from chromatin following transcription. In those studies, however, the H3-L61R mutant had not been tested since it does not sustain viability when expressed as the sole source of histone H3 in cells. In the present work, we show that H3-L61R impairs proper Spt16 dissociation from genes when co-expressed with wild-type histone H3 in haploid cells as well as in diploid cells that express the mutant protein from one of four histone H3-encoding alleles. These results, combined with other studies linking loss of function mutations in human Spt16 and neurodevelopmental disorders, provide a possible molecular mechanism underlying the neurodevelopmental disorders seen in patients expressing the histone H3.3 L61R mutant.

Objective: Binge drinking and heavy alcohol use are highly prevalent among college students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lockdown restrictions and other challenges, many college students were burdened with loneliness, which can contribute to chronic stress, and substance use. The current study explores the association between loneliness and various levels of alcohol use among college students in the rural, underserved region of Central Appalachia, USA. Methods: Data were collected from a regional sample (n = 320) of college age adults, age 18-25 in the Central Appalachian region. The UCLA-3 item Loneliness Scale (UCLA-3) was used in the study to evaluate loneliness. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to assess the association between levels of loneliness and three separate outcomes, including past year binge drinking, past year heavy alcohol use, and past year weekly alcohol use. Results: Overall, 25.5% of the participants reported severe loneliness, 33.6% reported moderate, and 40.9% reported low levels of loneliness. Results of the adjusted models revealed that severe loneliness was associated with higher odds of heavy alcohol use (AOR = 1.89, 95% CI [1.02, 3.50]) and binge drinking (AOR = 2.96, 95% CI [1.16, 7.51]), and not associated with weekly alcohol use. Conclusion: The study found that higher levels of loneliness were linked to both binged drinking and heavy alcohol use. Further efforts for counseling and treatment among college students who are burdened with severe loneliness should be considered. The chronic stress associated with severe loneliness needs to be further addressed, particularly among emerging adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultraviolet spectra were taken of 25 detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) with spectral types O, B, and early A with the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite in the 1150–1900 Å region. The spectra were compared with BOSZ model atmospheres. The composite spectra of the DEBs were modeled by a combination of models representing the hot and cool components, and the temperatures of the hottest components of the systems were determined. From these temperatures a direct mass–temperature relation was obtained for stars close to the main sequence with solar metallicity for B and early A stars: log M/M _⊙ = −5.90 ± 0.27 + (1.56 ± 0.07) × log T . This relation allows a mass to be inferred for comparable stars from an ultraviolet spectrum. The five chemically peculiar Am stars in the sample have larger radii than normal A stars of the same mass.

Introduction: The number of glomeruli and glomerulosclerosis evaluated on kidney biopsy slides constitute standard components of a renal pathology report. Prevailing methods for glomerular assessment remain manual, labor intensive, and nonstandardized. We developed a deep learning framework to accurately identify and segment glomeruli from digitized images of human kidney biopsies. Methods: Trichrome-stained images (n = 275) from renal biopsies of 171 patients with chronic kidney disease treated at the Boston Medical Center from 2009 to 2012 were analyzed. A sliding window operation was defined to crop each original image to smaller images. Each cropped image was then evaluated by at least 3 experts into 3 categories: (i) no glomerulus, (ii) normal or partially sclerosed (NPS) glomerulus, and (iii) globally sclerosed (GS) glomerulus. This led to identification of 751 unique images representing nonglomerular regions, 611 images with NPS glomeruli, and 134 images with GS glomeruli. A convolutional neural network (CNN) was trained with cropped images as inputs and corresponding labels as output. Using this model, an image processing routine was developed to scan the test images to segment the GS glomeruli. Results: The CNN model was able to accurately discriminate nonglomerular images from NPS and GS images (performance on test data: Accuracy: 92.67% ± 2.02% and Kappa: 0.8681 ± 0.0392). The segmentation model that was based on the CNN multilabel classifier accurately marked the GS glomeruli on the test data (Matthews correlation coefficient = 0.628). Conclusion: This work demonstrates the power of deep learning for assessing complex histologic structures from digitized human kidney biopsies. Keywords: computational pathology, deep learning, digital pathology, glomerulus, image segmentation, kidney biopsy, trichrome stain

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of preferred versus non-preferred music volume on relative power output, trial time to completion (TTC), heart rate (HR), rate of perceived exertion (RPE), and motivation during endurance rowing exercise. Physically active females (age 18–25) volunteered to participate. In a crossover counterbalanced design, participants completed two trials: non-preferred (NPV) and preferred (PV) music volume. Participants began with a rowing warm-up at 50% of HRmax for 5 min. Following this, participants completed a 2000 m rowing time trial as quickly as possible. Relative power output, HR, and RPE were documented each minute during the exercise bout. TTC and motivation levels were documented at the cessation of exercise. Results showed that there were no significant differences between NPV and PV for relative power output (p = 0.287; d = 0.17), TTC (p = 0.816; d = 0.01), and HR (p = 0.956; d = 0.08). However, RPE was significantly lower (p = 0.002; d = 0.86) and motivation was significantly higher (p < 0.001; d = 2.14) during the PV condition versus NPV. Findings suggest that while PV does not impart performance-enhancing effects during endurance exercise compared to NPV, it may improve psychological responses related to intensity and effort which could have important implications for enduring intense exercise and training.

While histopathology of excised tissue remains the gold standard for diagnosis, several new, non-invasive diagnostic techniques are being developed. They rely on physical and biochemical changes that precede and mirror malignant change within tissue. The basic principle involves simple optical techniques of tissue interrogation. Their accuracy, expressed as sensitivity and specificity, are reported in a number of studies suggests that they have a potential for cost effective, real-time, in situ diagnosis. We review the Third Scientific Meeting of the Head and Neck Optical Diagnostics Society held in Congress Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria on the 11th May 2011. For the first time the HNODS Annual Scientific Meeting was held in association with the International Photodynamic Association (IPA) and the European Platform for Photodynamic Medicine (EPPM). The aim was to enhance the interdisciplinary aspects of optical diagnostics and other photodynamic applications. The meeting included 2 sections: oral communication sessions running in parallel to the IPA programme and poster presentation sessions combined with the IPA and EPPM posters sessions. © 2011 Jerjes et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

The complete surgical removal of disease is a desirable outcome particularly in oncology. Unfortunately much disease is microscopic and difficult to detect causing a liability to recurrence and worsened overall prognosis with attendant costs in terms of morbidity and mortality. It is hoped that by advances in optical diagnostic technology we could better define our surgical margin and so increase the rate of truly negative margins on the one hand and on the other hand to take out only the necessary amount of tissue and leave more unaffected non-diseased areas so preserving function of vital structures. The task has not been easy but progress is being made as exemplified by the presentations at the 2nd Scientific Meeting of the Head and Neck Optical Diagnostics Society (HNODS) in San Francisco in January 2010. We review the salient advances in the field and propose further directions of investigation. © 2011 Upile et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

When surgery requires a colorectal anastomosis, a diverting ostomy may be created to decrease the clinical impact of anastomotic failure. Unfortunately, diverting ileostomies are also associated with significant morbidity. Recent literature suggests that diverting ostomies are not necessary for the majority of patients undergoing colorectal anastomosis and that creation of a virtual ileostomy (VI) may spare patients the complications that accompany diverting ileostomy creation. We present 4 patients with complex medical histories who underwent colorectal resections with primary anastomoses and VI creation. None of these patients suffered anastomotic leak or required conversion of VI to defunctioning ileostomy and there were no major complications associated with VI creation. Our results, although limited by sample size, support the creation of a virtual ileostomy as a safe and effective alternative to diverting ileostomy creation at the time of colorectal anastomosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]