Search

Using a biopsychosocial framework, our study examines the biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors associated with depression among a cross-sectional sample of undergraduate international students (N = 712) attending 28 U.S. colleges and universities. Consistent with hypotheses, regression analysis reveals that self-esteem, life satisfaction, and coping self-efficacy are negatively associated with depressive symptoms, and that ethnic minority status, perceived discrimination, and financial concerns are positively associated with depressive symptoms. Contrary to predictions, age, optimism, friendships, and school belonging are not significant predictors, and perseverance predicted increases depression in this sample. The novel findings highlight adaptation issues among international undergraduate students and suggest preventive measures and interventions against depression for university administrators and counselors.

Special education teacher (SET) burnout is a significant concern, especially for SETs serving students with emotional-behavioral disorders (EBD), as they tend to experience higher burnout than other teachers. Working conditions, especially social support, have the potential to ameliorate burnout, but prior research has not articulated the sources and types of social support that are most important. The authors conducted a longitudinal study, surveying 230 SETs serving students with EBD at three time points across one school year. Data revealed administrative support, adequacy of planning time, and autonomy in fall predicted emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment in winter and spring. Associations between working conditions and burnout components were partially mediated by SETs' perceptions of workload manageability. SET change in well-being due to COVID-19 during the early months of the pandemic was not associated with burnout. The authors discuss implications, limitations, and directions for future inquiry.

We examined changes in burnout across three timepoints in one school year, in a sample (N = 230) of special educators serving students with emotional-behavioral disorders, in 15 school districts selected through stratified random sampling at the national level. Emotional exhaustion decreased at each timepoint in the school year and personal accomplishment increased from fall to spring. Latent growth curve modeling did not produce latent trajectories of burnout among teachers; however, cross-lagged panel structure equation modeling revealed that emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment had both direct and indirect effects on depersonalization. Differences in burnout were significant by race/ethnicity but not by gender. Participants reported higher emotional exhaustion, lower depersonalization, and higher personal accomplishment than a national sample. We provide implications for researchers and practitioners.

Purpose: Previous studies highlight paraspinal muscles' significance in spinal stability. This study aims to assess paraspinal muscle predictiveness for postoperative recurrent lumbar disc herniation (PRLDH) after lumbar disc herniation patients undergo percutaneous endoscopic transforaminal discectomy (PETD). Patients and Methods: Retrospectively collected data from 232 patients undergoing PETD treatment at our institution between January 2020 and January 2023, randomly allocated into training (60%) and validation (40%) groups. Utilizing Lasso regression and multivariable logistic regression, independent risk factors were identified in the training set to construct a Nomogram model. Internal validation employed Enhanced Bootstrap, with Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) assessing accuracy. Calibration was evaluated through calibration curves and the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test. Decision curve analysis (DCA) and clinical impact curve (CIC) were employed for clinical utility analysis. Results: Diabetes, Modic changes, and ipsilesional multifidus muscle skeletal muscle index (SMI) were independent predictive factors for PRLDH following PETD (P< 0.05). Developed Nomogram model based on selected predictors, uploaded to a web page. AUC for training: 0.921 (95% CI 0.872– 0.970), validation: 0.900 (95% CI 0.828– 0.972), respectively. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test yielded χ2=5.638/6.259, P=0.688/0.618, and calibration curves exhibited good fit between observed and predicted values. DCA and CIC demonstrate clinical net benefit for both models at risk thresholds of 0.02– 1.00 and 0.02– 0.80. Conclusion: The Nomogram predictive model developed based on paraspinal muscle parameters in this study demonstrates excellent predictive capability and aids in personalized risk assessment for PRLDH following PETD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the problem of traffic data distribution shift caused by new unknown attacks in the industrial Internet, a malicious traffic identification method based on neighborhood filtering and stable learning was proposed to enhance the effectiveness and robustness of the existing graph neural network model in identifying known malicious traffic. Firstly, the graph structure of the traffic data was modeled to capture the topological relationship and interaction mode in communication behavior. Secondly, the traffic subgraph was divided based on the neighborhood filtering mechanism of biased sampling to eliminate the pseudo-homogeneity between communication behaviors. Finally, the statistical independence of high-dimensional traffic features was realized by applying graph representation learning and stable learning strategies, combined with adaptive sample weighting and collaborative loss optimization methods. The experimental results on two benchmark datasets show that compared with the baseline method, the recognition performance of the proposed method is increased by more than 2.7% in the new unknown attack scenario, which shows its high efficiency and practicability in the industrial Internet environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

β-thalassemia is an inherited blood disease caused by reduced or inadequate β-globin synthesis due to β-globin gene mutation. Our previous study developed a gene-edited mice model (β654-ER mice) by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing, targeting both the βIVS2-654 (C > T) mutation site and the 3ʹ splicing acceptor site at 579 and corrected abnormal β-globin mRNA splicing in the β654-thalassemia mice. Herein, we further explored the therapeutic effect of the hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from β654-ER mice on β-thalassemia by consecutive HSC transplantation. The results indicated that HSC transplantation derived from gene-edited mice can significantly improve the survival rate of mice after lethal radiation doses and effectively achieve hematopoietic reconstruction and long-term hematopoiesis. Clinical symptoms, including hematologic parameters and tissue pathology of transplanted recipients, were significantly improved compared to the non-transplanted β654 mice. The therapeutic effect of gene-edited HSC transplantation demonstrated no significant difference in hematological parameters and tissue pathology compared with wild-type mouse-derived HSCs. Our data revealed that HSC transplantation from gene-edited mice completely recovered the β-thalassemia phenotype. Our study systematically investigated the therapeutic effect of HSCs derived from β654-ER mice on β-thalassemia and further confirmed the efficacy of our gene-editing approach. Altogether, it provided a reference and primary experimental data for the clinical usage of such gene-edited HSCs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: LentiGlobin BB305 is a self‐inactivating lentiviral vector carrying a human β‐globin expressing cassette for treating β‐thalassemia. Initially, a 2 × 250 bp chicken Locus Control Region fragment of cHS4, functioning as an insulator, was placed at its ΔU3, which was removed after the first clinical trial led by a French team to avoid abnormal splicing, etc. This action could potentially lead to an increasing risk of the transcriptional read‐through rate driven by the β‐globin promoter to a significant level, posing a biosafety risk in clinical trials. Methods: In the present study, a read‐through reducing agent (C‐U+ or WPRE) was designed to be placed at the 3′ UTR of the β‐globin gene. The Enhancer Activities and/or Transcriptional Read‐Through (EATRT) rate at the mRNA level and the protein expression level regarding lentiviral preparation titer were examined. Results: We found that the insertion of the element (C‐U+ or WPRE) reduced the EATRT effectively by 53% or 41%, respectively. C‐U+ has less impact on virus package efficiency. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in the protein expression level after the C‐U+ or WPRE insertion. Conclusions: The results of the present study show that inserting C‐U+ or WPRE before the polyA sequence of the BB305 would reduce the EATRT rate at no cost of its expressing efficacy and viral preparation titers. Thus, we present an alternative improvement for a safer lentiviral vector for β‐thalassemia clinical trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limb‐girdle muscular dystrophy recessive 1 (LGMDR1), previously known as LGMD2A, is a specific LGMD caused by a gene mutation encoding the calcium‐dependent neutral cysteine protease calpain‐3 (CAPN3). In our study, the compound heterozygosity with two missense variants c.635 T > C (p.Leu212Pro) and c.2120A > G (p.Asp707Gly) was identified in patients with LGMDR1. However, the pathogenicity of c.635 T > C has not been investigated. To evaluate the effects of this novel likely pathogenic variant to the motor system, the mouse model with c.635 T > C variant was prepared by CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique. The pathological results revealed that a limited number of inflammatory cells infiltrated the endomyocytes of certain c.635 T > C homozygous mice at 10 months of age. Compared with wild‐type mice, motor function was not significantly impaired in Capn3 c. 635 T > C homozygous mice. Western blot and immunofluorescence assays further indicated that the expression levels of the Capn3 protein in muscle tissues of homozygous mice were similar to those of wild‐type mice. However, the arrangement and ultrastructural alterations of the mitochondria in the muscular tissues of homozygous mice were confirmed by electron microscopy. Subsequently, muscle regeneration of LGMDR1 was simulated using cardiotoxin (CTX) to induce muscle necrosis and regeneration to trigger the injury modification process. The repair of the homozygous mice was significantly worse than that of the control mice at day 15 and day 21 following treatment, the c.635 T > C variant of Capn3 exhibited a significant effect on muscle regeneration of homozygous mice and induced mitochondrial damage. RNA‐sequencing results demonstrated that the expression levels of the mitochondrial‐related functional genes were significantly downregulated in the mutant mice. Taken together, the results of the present study strongly suggested that the LGMDR1 mouse model with a novel c.635 T > C variant in the Capn3 gene was significantly dysfunctional in muscle injury repair via impairment of the mitochondrial function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special education teacher (SET) burnout is a significant concern, especially for SETs serving students with emotional–behavioral disorders (EBD), as they tend to experience higher burnout than other teachers. Working conditions, especially social support, have the potential to ameliorate burnout, but prior research has not articulated the sources and types of social support that are most important. The authors conducted a longitudinal study, surveying 230 SETs serving students with EBD at three time points across one school year. Data revealed administrative support, adequacy of planning time, and autonomy in fall predicted emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment in winter and spring. Associations between working conditions and burnout components were partially mediated by SETs' perceptions of workload manageability. SET change in well-being due to COVID-19 during the early months of the pandemic was not associated with burnout. The authors discuss implications, limitations, and directions for future inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]