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Parents' cultural beliefs are associated with their children's socialization and development. Researchers have examined these associations through the lens of parents' ethnotheories, which refer to parents' implicit beliefs about children's developmentally appropriate behavior. In contrast to prior work focused on parents' ethnotheories of desirable behaviors and qualities, there has been a considerable lack of research examining ethnotheories about children's maladaptive behavior. In this article, we address this gap in knowledge by examining cultural differences and similarities in Spanish and American parents' beliefs about the causes of children's maladaptive behaviors. A semi-structured interview was used to assess parents' causal attributions of children's internalizing and externalizing behaviors in a sample of 50 parents from the United States and 51 parents from Spain. Results revealed that US parents made more attributions to children's internal states, social learning, and power motives than Spanish parents for externalizing behaviors. Conversely, Spanish parents made more attributions to attention seeking and material gains than US parents for the same behaviors. There were no cross-cultural differences in attributions for internalizing behaviors. Parents had strikingly different theories of children's disruptive behaviors than they did for children's internalizing behaviors. Differences in parents' explanatory styles may reflect and maintain broader cultural differences between Spain and the United States. This study lends evidence to the growing literature on the relevance of parents' ethnotheories in the context of child development and extends it to the topic of parental attributions regarding maladaptive child behaviors.

Based on molecular and morphological evidence, we report the first record of Eleutherodactylus nitidus (Peters, 1870) from Mexico City, in the urban area of Panteón Xilotepec, Xochimilco. We discuss the remarkable urban adaptability of Eleutherodactylus and the need for additional sampling to determine if E. nitidus is native or introduced to Mexico City.

IntroductionHypertension is one of the main concerns in public health, since it is related with increased morbidity, and potential years of life lost in addition to loss of quality of life. This study aimed to assess: (1) the distribution of indicators of life course SEP in a cohort of Colombian patients with hypertension and (2) to assess the association of life course SEP and control of hypertension among this cohort of patients.MethodsData were obtained using the baseline survey of 258 patients from the Social Determinants and Inequities in the Control of Blood Hypertension Program (ProDSICHA). Mother occupation and housing conditions were measured with the Event History Calendar. Mother educational level was measured with the questionnaire developed by the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (PERLA). Socioeconomic position during adulthood was measured using education, occupation, and income level based in the MacArthur Network.ResultsThe group with a higher lifelong social position and the group of lower lifelong social position showed better control of hypertension (OR = 1.21; p

Abstract Spatially explicit soil information is crucial for comprehending and managing many of Earth´s processes related to carbon, water, and other biogeochemical cycles. We introduced a gridded database of soil physical properties and hydraulic parameters at 100 meters spatial resolution. It covers the continental area of Chile and binational basins shared with Argentina for six standardized depths following the specifications of the GlobalSoilMap project. We generated soil maps based on digital soil mapping techniques based on more than 4000 observations, including unpublished data from remote areas. These maps were used as input for the pedotransfer function Rosetta V3 to obtain predictions of soil hydraulic properties, such as field capacity, permanent wilting point, total available water capacity, and other parameters of the water retention curve. The trained models outperformed several other DSM studies applied at the national and regional scale for soil physical properties (nRMSE ranging from 6.93% to 15.7%) and delivered acceptable predictions (nRMSE ranging from 10.4% to 15.6%) for soil hydraulic properties, making them suitable for countless environmental studies.

Obesity rates in Colombia are increasing, with variations among racial and ethnic groups. Studies on adult obesity often address socio-economic status, gender, and education but neglect racial-ethnic influences, notably in areas like Quibdó. Therefore, based on the theory of triadic influence, we conducted a qualitative study to identify biobehavioural, social, and cultural phenomena that, from the perspectives of the participants, influence the onset of obesity in Afro-Colombian and indigenous in Quibdó in 2022. The stratification variables were race, ethnicity (Afro-Colombian and Indigenous), and educational level (secondary or higher). Based on a literature review of qualitative studies that commonly explored food culture, nutritional status, and physical activity in analysing obesity within racial and ethnic populations, we incorporated these categories into our research methodology through semi-structured interviews. A framework analysis was used as a qualitative methodology to organise and analyse the collected data. We conducted 21 semi-structured interviews, 13 with the Afro-Colombian population and eight with indigenous inhabitants. The results indicate that cultural beliefs, forced displacement/migration, and alterations in public order have resulted in changes in food security, food culture, and physical activity practices, affecting the onset of obesity. Notably, distinctions in cultural beliefs regarding food culture and health as factors influencing obesity were observed between Afro-Colombians and the Indigenous populations; however, educational differences within the same racial ethnic group were not predominant. Findings indicate obesity is influenced by cultural, social, and biobehavioural factors, especially in regions with racial-ethnic communities facing complex conditions, necessitating targeted racial-ethnic public health policies.

In this paper, we introduce a new parameterization for the scale mixture of the Rayleigh distribution, which uses a mean linear regression model indexed by mean and precision parameters to model asymmetric positive real data. To test the goodness of fit, we introduce two residuals for the new model. A Monte Carlo simulation study is performed to evaluate the parameter estimation of the proposed model. We compare our proposed model with existing alternatives and illustrate its advantages and usefulness using Gilgais data in R software version 4.2.3 with the gamlss package.

In this article, we introduce a new model with positive support. This model is an extension of the truncated Gumbel distribution, where a shape parameter is incorporated that provides greater flexibility to the new model. The model is parameterized in terms of the p-th quantile of the distribution to perform quantile regression in this model. An extensive simulation study demonstrates the good performance of the maximum likelihood estimators in finite samples. Finally, two applications to real datasets related to the level of beta-carotene and body mass index are presented.

In this paper we study some methods to reduce the bias for maximum likelihood estimation in the general class of alpha power models, specifically for the shape parameter. We find the modified maximum likelihood estimator using Firth's method and we show that this estimator is the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator (UMVUE) in this class. We consider three special cases of this class, namely the exponentiated exponential (EE), the power half-normal and the power piecewise exponential models. We compare the bias in simulation studies and find that the modified method is definitely superior, especially for small sample sizes, in both the bias and the root mean squared error. We illustrate our modified estimator in four real data set examples, in each of which the modified estimates better explain the variability.

Summary: In several long-lived Caenorhabditis elegans strains, such as insulin/IGF-1 receptor daf-2 mutants, enhanced proteostatic mechanisms are accompanied by elevated intestinal lipid stores, but their role in longevity is unclear. Here, while determining the regulatory network of the selective autophagy receptor SQST-1/SQSTM1, we uncovered an important role for lipid droplets in proteostasis and longevity. Using genome-wide RNAi screening, we identified several SQST-1 modulators, including lipid droplets-associated and aggregation-prone proteins. Expansion of intestinal lipid droplets by silencing the conserved cytosolic triacylglycerol lipase gene atgl-1/ATGL enhanced autophagy, and extended lifespan. Notably, a substantial amount of ubiquitinated proteins were found on lipid droplets. Reducing lipid droplet levels exacerbated the proteostatic collapse when autophagy or proteasome function was compromised, and significantly reduced the lifespan of long-lived daf-2 animals. Altogether, our study uncovered a key role for lipid droplets in C. elegans as a proteostatic mediator that modulates ubiquitinated protein accumulation, facilitates autophagy, and promotes longevity.

Background: Knowledge on the management of kaposiform hemanigioendothelioma (KHE) with kasabach-merritt phenomenon (KMP) rely on single case reports, case series and a few retrospective studies. Case report: A 3-month old girl was admitted for a violaceous, palpable mass in the right posterior neck. Laboratory studies showed thrombocytopenia and consumptive coagulopathy with hypofibrinogenemia and raised Dimer-D values. A diagnosis of KHE with KMP was confirmed histopathologically. Treatment regimen for KMP was commenced with oral prednisone and salicylic acid, followed by oral sirolimus at 1 mg/m2/day. It led to an involution of the vascular lesion at 12-month follow-up. Conclusion: The case contributes with another example of KHE with KMP that was effectively treated with the novel mTOR inhibitor. Prospective studies for sirolimus are urged and clinical guidelines are yet to be defined.

The anterior segment dysgeneses are a broad group of heterogeneous disorders characterized by developmental abnormalities of the anterior segment of the eye, including primary congenital aphakia, Peters sequence, aniridia, and Axenfeld–Rieger spectrum. These conditions can have overlapping phenotypes and both genotypic and phenotypic heterogeneity. This article provides a strategy for both phenotyping and then genotyping using a targeted stepwise approach.

The family Polychrotidae Fitzinger, 1843 is represented in Honduras by a single species, Polychrus gutturosus Berthold, 1845. This canopy dweller is distributed in the lowland moist forests and riparian forest within pine savannah of the northern and eastern regions of Honduras. Only 13 records and nine localities support the presence of the species in the country; therefore, the distribution and natural history of the species in Honduras is essentially unknown. Herein, we provide a new locality and natural history observations of a specimen captured in the core zone of the Reserva del Hombre y La Biosfera del Río Plátano. This record represents the north-western most occurrence of Polychrus gutturosus in a region known as the Mosquitia and fills an important distributional gap for this poorly known species.

A novel cure rate model is introduced by considering, for the number of concurrent causes, the modified power series distribution and, for the time to event, the recently proposed power piecewise exponential distribution. This model includes a wide variety of cure rate models, such as binomial, Poisson, negative binomial, Haight, Borel, logarithmic, and restricted generalized Poisson. Some characteristics of the model are examined, and the estimation of parameters is performed using the Expectation–Maximization algorithm. A simulation study is presented to evaluate the performance of the estimators in finite samples. Finally, an application in a real medical dataset from a population-based study of incident cases of lobular carcinoma diagnosed in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, illustrates the advantages of the proposed model compared to other common cure rate models in the literature, particularly regarding the underestimation of the cure rate in other proposals and the improved precision in estimating the cure rate of our proposal.

Abstract Cell-free biosensors are promising tools for medical diagnostics, yet their performance can be affected by matrix effects arising from the sample itself or from external components. Here we systematically evaluate the performance and robustness of cell-free systems in serum, plasma, urine, and saliva using two reporter systems, sfGFP and luciferase. In all cases, clinical samples have a strong inhibitory effect. Of the different inhibitors, only RNase inhibitor mitigated matrix effects. However, we found that the recovery potential of RNase inhibitor was partially muted by interference from glycerol contained in the commercial buffer. We solved this issue by designing a strain producing an RNase inhibitor protein requiring no additional step in extract preparation. Furthermore, our new extract yielded higher reporter levels than previous conditions and tempered interpatient variability associated with matrix effects. This systematic evaluation and improvements of cell-free system robustness unified across many types of clinical samples is a significant step towards developing cell-free diagnostics for a wide range of conditions.