Objectives: Exposure to psychosocial stressors is associated with increases in adverse mental health outcomes and inflammatory markers. Limited research has investigated if acculturative stress, ...related to cultural adaptation in Latinos, one of the fastest growing minority groups in the United States, follows a similar pattern. This study hypothesized that acculturative stress would be associated with increased mental health symptoms as well as increases in salivary inflammatory markers. In addition, it was hypothesized that higher levels of salivary inflammatory markers would mediate the pathways between acculturative stress and mental health symptoms. The ability of salivary inflammatory markers to moderate the relationship between acculturative stress and mental health symptoms was also tested. Method: One hundred and fifty-four Latino participants were recruited from a local university. Participants completed measures of acculturative stress, perceived stress, state/trait anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Saliva samples measured C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin (IL)-1β. Results: Acculturative stress was significantly associated with increases in perceived stress, state/trait anxiety and depressive symptoms. Salivary inflammatory markers did not mediate the relationship between acculturative stress and mental health symptoms. Alternatively, CRP, but not IL-1β, moderated the relationship between acculturative stress and state anxiety, such that when salivary CRP levels were low, there was a positive association between acculturative stress and state anxiety symptoms. Discussion: Results suggests that the interplay between acculturative stress and salivary inflammation might indicate risk for anxiety in vulnerable populations.
Associations between prenatal SARS-CoV-2 exposure and neurodevelopmental outcomes have substantial public health relevance. A previous study found no association between prenatal SARS-CoV-2 infection ...and parent-reported infant neurodevelopmental outcomes, but standardized observational assessments are needed to confirm this finding.
To assess whether mild or asymptomatic maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection vs no infection during pregnancy is associated with infant neurodevelopmental differences at ages 5 to 11 months.
This cohort study included infants of mothers from a single-site prospective cross-sectional study (COVID-19 Mother Baby Outcomes COMBO Initiative) of mother-infant dyads and a multisite prospective cohort study (Epidemiology of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 in Pregnancy and Infancy ESPI) of pregnant individuals. A subset of ESPI participants was subsequently enrolled in the ESPI COMBO substudy. Participants in the ongoing COMBO study were enrolled beginning on May 26, 2020; participants in the ESPI study were enrolled from May 7 to November 3, 2021; and participants in the ESPI COMBO substudy were enrolled from August 2020 to March 2021. For the current analysis, infant neurodevelopment was assessed between March 2021 and June 2022. A total of 407 infants born to 403 mothers were enrolled (204 from Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, New York; 167 from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; and 36 from the University of Alabama in Birmingham). Mothers of unexposed infants were approached for participation based on similar infant gestational age at birth, date of birth, sex, and mode of delivery to exposed infants.
Maternal symptomatic or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Infant neurodevelopment was assessed using the Developmental Assessment of Young Children, second edition (DAYC-2), adapted for telehealth assessment. The primary outcome was age-adjusted standard scores on 5 DAYC-2 subdomains: cognitive, gross motor, fine motor, expressive language, and receptive language.
Among 403 mothers, the mean (SD) maternal age at delivery was 32.1 (5.4) years; most mothers were of White race (240 59.6%) and non-Hispanic ethnicity (253 62.8%). Among 407 infants, 367 (90.2%) were born full term and 212 (52.1%) were male. Overall, 258 infants (63.4%) had no documented prenatal exposure to SARS-CoV-2 infection, 112 (27.5%) had confirmed prenatal exposure, and 37 (9.1%) had exposure before pregnancy or at an indeterminate time. In adjusted models, maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy was not associated with differences in cognitive (β = 0.31; 95% CI, -2.97 to 3.58), gross motor (β = 0.82; 95% CI, -1.34 to 2.99), fine motor (β = 0.36; 95% CI, -0.74 to 1.47), expressive language (β = -1.00; 95% CI, -4.02 to 2.02), or receptive language (β = 0.45; 95% CI, -2.15 to 3.04) DAYC-2 subdomain scores. Trimester of exposure and maternal symptom status were not associated with DAYC-2 subdomain scores.
In this study, results of a novel telehealth-adapted observational neurodevelopmental assessment extended a previous finding of no association between prenatal exposure to maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection and infant neurodevelopment. Given the widespread and continued high prevalence of COVID-19, these data offer information that may be helpful for pregnant individuals who experience asymptomatic or mild SARS-CoV-2 infections.
Amylose content is a parameter that correlates with the cooking behavior of rice. It is measured at the earliest possible stages of rice improvement programs to enable breeders to build the ...foundations of appropriate grain quality during cultivar development. Amylose is usually quantified by absorbance of the amylose-iodine complex. The International Network for Quality Rice (INQR) conducted a survey to determine ways that amylose is measured, reproducibility between laboratories, and sources of variation. Each laboratory measured the amylose content of a set of 17 cultivars of rice. The study shows that five different versions of the iodine binding method are in use. The data show that repeatability was high within laboratories but reproducibility between laboratories was low. The major sources of variability were the way the standard curve was constructed and the iodine binding capacity of the potato amylose used to produce the standard. Reproducibility is much lower between laboratories using a standard curve of potato amylose alone compared with those using calibrated rice cultivars. This study highlights the need to standardize the way amylose is measured, and presents research avenues for doing so.
Physical layer security is a crucial step towards fully secure communications systems. The flexibility and ubiquity of digital signal processors in modern wireless and optical communication systems ...open up a clear path for the development of discrete-signals encryption techniques, which can be implemented relatively cheap. In this paper, we show the fundamental role of amplitude and phase encoding in the security and practical implementation of linear discrete signal cryptography (DSC). We focus on the spectral implementation of these encoding schemes and consider the equivalence between spectral amplitude encoding (SAE) and spectral scrambling (SS). Numerical simulation results show that 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) signals encrypted by SS and spectral phase encoding (SPE) can be recovered only if eavesdroppers know the exact position of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\sim ~95 </tex-math></inline-formula>% of the scrambled samples with a maximum phase error of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\pm ~7^{\circ } </tex-math></inline-formula> for all samples. The number of brute force attacks to break such encrypted signals far exceeds the one provided by the widely deployed data ciphering algorithm Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Physical layer results reveal that the bit error ratio (BER) associated with the encrypted signals is 0.50 regardless of the deployed signal format and DSC scheme. The BER vs. signal-to-noise ratio performance of the encrypted/ decrypted signal is the same as that of signals not encrypted. Finally, the paper proposes the adoption of pseudo-random dynamic keys (PRDKs) to promote encryption randomness, diffusion, and confusion to the encrypted signals. A new numerical methodology shows this strategy outperforms AES diffusion and confusion properties.
Problems with vector surveillance are a major barrier for the effective control of vector-borne disease transmission through Latin America. Here, we present results from a 80-week longitudinal study ...where Aedes aegypti (L.) (Diptera: Culicidae) ovitraps were monitored weekly at 92 locations in Puntarenas, a coastal city in Costa Rica with syndemic Zika, chikungunya and dengue transmission. We used separate models to investigate the association of either Ae. aegypti-borne arboviral cases or Ae. aegypti egg counts with remotely sensed environmental variables. We also evaluated whether Ae. aegypti-borne arboviral cases were associated with Ae. aegypti egg counts. Using cross-correlation and time series modeling, we found that arboviral cases were not significantly associated with Ae. aegypti egg counts. Through model selection we found that cases had a non-linear response to multi-scale (1-km and 30-m resolution) measurements of temperature standard deviation (SD) with a lag of up to 4 weeks, while simultaneously increasing with finely-grained NDVI (30-m resolution). Meanwhile, median ovitrap Ae. aegypti egg counts increased, and respectively decreased, with temperature SD (1-km resolution) and EVI (30-m resolution) with a lag of 6 weeks. A synchrony analysis showed that egg counts had a travelling wave pattern, with synchrony showing cyclic changes with distance, a pattern not observed in remotely sensed data with 30-m and 10-m resolution. Spatially, using generalized additive models, we found that eggs were more abundant at locations with higher temperatures and where EVI was leptokurtic during the study period. Our results suggest that, in Puntarenas, remotely sensed environmental variables are associated with both Ae. aegypti-borne arbovirus transmission and Ae. aegypti egg counts from ovitraps.
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•We sampled Ae. aegypti eggs using ovitraps for 80 weeks in Puntarenas, Costa Rica.•We were able to correlate Ae. aegypti egg-counts and arboviral cases with remotely sensed data.•Egg counts and arboviral cases were correlated with temperature and vegetation indices.•Arboviral cases were not associated with egg counts.
Se determinaron las afectaciones psicológicas, estrategias de afrontamiento y niveles de resiliencia de 677 adultos expuestos al conflicto armado en un municipio colombiano. Los participantes del ...estudio fueron seleccionados mediante muestreo aleatorio por afijación proporcional. Se aplicaron el cuestionario de síntomas, prueba de estrés postraumático y escalas de estrategias de afrontamiento y resiliencia. Las principales afectaciones psicológicas encontradas son el sentimiento de que alguien trata de hacerle daño, consumo de alcohol, alteraciones del estado de ánimo y síntomas de estrés postraumático. Las estrategias de afrontamiento más empleadas son la religión y esperar que las cosas se arreglen solas. El nivel de resiliencia es moderado. La percepción de salud es baja y la necesidad de atención es alta.
Objective: The objective of this article is to study the effect of PC-815, a novel combination microbicide containing carrageenan and the nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) ...MIV-150, in blocking HIV-1 and HIV-2 infections in vitro as compared with Carraguard alone. Goal: The goal of this study was to develop a combination microbicide that is more efficacious than Carraguard against HIV-1 and HIV-2. Study Design: The microtiter syncytial assay was used to evaluate: 1) the antiviral and virucidal activity of MIV-150 against HIV-1MN; 2) the additive effect of MIV-150 when combined with carrageenan; and 3) a possible interference of seminal fluid in the antiviral activity of these compounds. Results: MIV-150 effectively inactivated free virus. Combination of MIV-150 and Carraguard demonstrated an additive antiviral effect. Seminal fluid had no effect on the antiviral activity of MIV-150 or Carraguard. The average concentration that blocks 50% of infection (EC50) for PC-815 was approximately 10 times stronger than Carraguard for the different clinical isolates used in the study. Conclusion: Theoretically, PC-815 is likely to be a more efficacious microbicide than Carraguard.
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