Lehman College

Despite the importance of romantic relationships for psychological health, there is limited research exploring how communication about relationships unfolds in families during adolescence and emerging adulthood (beyond the narrower topic of sex). As such, the current research explored the nature of caregiver-child communication about relationships and assessed whether this communication is associated with young people’s psychological health. We hypothesized that young people will have fewer and lower quality conversations about relationships in comparison to other developmental goals but that communication quality would improve with age. We also hypothesized that the quality of relationships communication would predict psychological health as indexed by self-esteem and psychological distress. In a series of two survey studies, adolescents (n = 129) and emerging adults (n = 716) reported on the frequency and quality of communication about relationships (and other developmentally-relevant topics including education, career, race/ethnicity) with their primary female caregiver and reported on their own psychological health. A subset of Study 1 participants additionally completed a daily diary assessing the frequency with which they discussed these topics and/or reported on their psychological health a second time. Results showed that conversations about relationships generally occurred less frequently than other topics and were also seen as the lowest in quality across assessments, though quality did improve with age. Moreover, even when controlling for communication about other topics, the frequency and quality of relationships communication positively predicted aspects of psychological health. Results indicate that young people may benefit from interventions designed to improve family communication about relationships.

Conformational flexibility complicates the identification of lead molecules that are shape and charge complementary to target proteins. Solvation thermodynamics has typically not been integrated into the exploration of alternate protein conformations. Here, we study the variation of solvation thermodynamic potentials as proteins adopt different conformations. Specifically, we analyze solvation thermodynamics of protein binding cavities with conformations obtained from molecular dynamics simulations with mobile side chains and side chains restrained about their cognate bound structure. We find that the reorganization of protein side chains has a significant effect on the structure and thermodynamics of binding site solvation and, in the vast majority of cases, that there is a significant solvation free energetic cost to forming cognate ligand bound structures when the ligand is absent. We discuss how understanding the interplay between solvation thermodynamics and protein structural fluctuations is crucial for discovering alternative binding pockets, estimating the contribution to binding affinity of displacing water upon ligand binding, and assessing revealed cryptic pocket bindability.

Background In comparison to robust evidence for cognitive reserve (CR) in individuals with Alzheimer’s‐related dementia, the literature on CR in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is still emerging. A clear consensus on the relationship among CR, brain status, and clinical performance has not been reached. The aims of this systematic review were to: 1) document the FTD disorders represented in this literature and their diagnosis descriptions, 2) classify the sociobehavioral proxies of CR used, 3) identify the tools used to measure disease severity, clinical performance, and brain status, and 4) examine the relationship between CR and brain status in individuals with FTD. Method Systematic review of the literature was conducted using a comprehensive range of relevant search terms in Medline, PsychINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science. Eligibility criteria were for studies to: include at least one proxy of CR and one brain status measure for individuals with FTD, be published in a peer‐reviewed journal, and be published in English. The Newcastle‐Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale was used to assess the quality of the included studies and risk of bias based on three domains: participant selection, comparability of included groups, and quality of outcome measures. Result A total of 220 titles and abstracts were screened, with 13 studies meeting inclusion criteria. Together, these studies report 1,423 participants diagnosed with FTD. Across studies, three proxies of CR were incorporated as either continuous or categorical variables: education, occupation, and leisure. Seven tools were used to measure disease severity and three neuroimaging tools were used to measure brain status. All included studies reported significant associations between a CR proxy and a brain measure. However, only partial support was demonstrated for the CR theory in individuals with FTD when education, occupation, and leisure involvement were analyzed in relation to disease severity. Conclusion The variable results among studies could be related to the different tools used to measure CR, the numerous brain status measures incoporated, and the different ways researchers determine disease severity. Recommendations for future studies include incorporating longitudinal designs, using in‐depth neuropsychological testing, improving measurement of disease duration, and transparant reporting of statistical output.

Obesity rates among American youth have prompted an examination of food advertisements geared towards children. Research indicates children’s high exposure to these advertisements and their influence on food preferences. Less is known about the presence of these advertisements in parenting magazines. This study’s objective was to examine prevalence of food advertisements in popular parenting magazines and identify products by USDA food category. We analyzed 116 issues of two popular U.S. parenting magazines across five years. All food and beverage advertisements for USDA Food Category were coded. Breakfast cereals were coded for nutritional quality. The coding took place at varied libraries in New Jersey, in the United States. A total of 19,879 food and beverage products were analyzed. One-third of advertisements (32.5%) were for baked goods, snacks, and sweets -- products generally low in nutrient density. Two-thirds of the breakfast cereals were low in nutritional quality (64.6%). Beverages comprised 11% of the advertisements, fruit juices the highest proportion. Less than 3% of advertisements were for fruits and vegetables combined. No significant food product trends were evident across the five-year period. Food advertisements identified in parenting magazines were generally low in nutritional value. Additional research is necessary to determine the influence of food advertisements on parents’ purchasing habits.

The desire to be tan is a phenomenon that public health researchers have investigated, as exposure to UV radiation increases the chances of developing skin cancer. Media messages in women’s magazines have been shown to contribute to this problem. Much less is known about the prevalence of skin cancer prevention messages in these magazines. This study's aim was to identify the number and type of articles and advertised products devoted to skin health (sun protection and skin cancer prevention in particular) within five popular U.S. greater than women’s health and fitness magazines. We analyzed articles and advertisements over seven months of issues of the following popular women’s health and fitness magazines: Fitness, Health, Self, Shape, and Women's Health, March 2013 through September 2013. Overall, 31 issues of the five magazines with a total of 780 articles and 1,986 advertisements were analyzed. Of the 780 articles, a mere 2.9% (n=23) were devoted to skin. Of the 258 skin product advertisements, less than 20% of the products contained sun protection factor (SPF). These findings suggest that women’s health and fitness magazines can improve their efforts in informing women of skin cancer risks and preventive measures to minimize these risks. The role of these magazines in building health literacy among their readers is also discussed.

The objective of this paper is to obtain estimates of the effect of HIV prevalence on economic performance in selected economies of Latin America using a panel regression to identify plausible interventions to fight the epidemic in the region and ameliorate the negative effect of this epidemic on human capital accumulation. Due to the suspicion that either all variables of interest are endogenous, or the explanatory variables are mainly lagged variables, this analysis requires the construction of an econometric device to model multivariate time series. Even though, the epidemic remains at relative low levels compared with other countries and seemingly has not caused harm to the economy, there are worrisome signs showing the potential risk of not taking the proper course of action to make sure that the HIV epidemic would not get out of control as has occurred in others part of the world.

More than a third of children and adolescents in the United States take vitamins even though professional medical organizations do not endorse their use in healthy children. Regardless of their efficacy, children’s vitamin products are aggressively promoted. Therefore, the goal of this study was to describe and analyze advertisements related to vitamins in the following three popular parenting magazines, Parents, Parenting Early Years, and Parenting School Years. A total of 135 magazines across four years were reviewed. There were 207 advertisements for children’s vitamins, all in the form of chewy or gummy. None of these advertisements included a dosage or a warning. Almost all (92.3%) included a cartoon in the advertisement. Almost a quarter (23.2%) of the advertisements promoted their product with the theme of prevention and more than half (51.2%) included the theme of peace of mind. Parenting magazines are a popular medium for providing exposure to products geared towards children. Companies that market children’s vitamins in these magazines can increase awareness among parents of the risks by providing warning and dosage information in their advertisements. Magazines can also play a role by encouraging responsible marketing and providing editorial content on children’s vitamins and potential consequences of pediatric overdose.

This paper argues the paradox that industrial countries and international financial organizationsrecommended less developed countries (LDCs) to reinforce their financial liberalization progressions. However, due to the current financial crisis, developed economies have to admit not taking the necessary policies themselves to circumvent the worst period of unbridled risk-taking by financial institutions. During the 1980s, industrialized economies feared LDCs fragile financial systems and their potential policy mismanagement given their lack of familiarity. Incongruously, markets have taken revenge on the “rentiers” and empirical evidence has shown that technocrats running the international financial system are also prone to big mistakes with adverse economic consequences.

The quantum interference effects of mixing the most non-classical states of light, number states, with the most classical-like of pure field states, the coherent state, are investigated. We demonstrate how the non-classicality of a single photon when mixed with a coherent field can transform the statistical properties of the output and further demonstrate that the entanglement of the output is independent of the coherent state amplitude. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The quantum theory of light’.

The field of phenomics is experiencing unprecedented advances thanks to the rapid growth of morphological quantification based on three-dimensional (3D) imaging, online data repositories, team-oriented collaborations, and open data-sharing policies. In line with these progressions, we present an extensive primate phenotypic dataset comprising >6,000 3D scans (media) representing skeletal morphologies of 386 individual specimens covering all hominoid genera (except humans) and other selected primates. The digitized specimens are housed in physical collections at the American Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Natural History, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium), the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Stony Brook University. Our technical validation indicates that despite the diverse digitizing devices used to produce the scans, the final 3D models (meshes) can be safely combined to collect comparable morphometric data. The entire dataset (and detailed associated metadata) is freely available through MorphoSource. Hence, these data contribute to empowering the future of primate phenomics and providing a roadmap for future digitization and archiving of digital data from other collections.

There are currently over 160,000 protein crystal structures obtained by X-ray diffraction with resolutions of 1.5Å or greater in the Protein Data Bank. At these resolutions hydrogen atoms do not resolve and heavy atoms such as oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen are indistinguishable. This leads to ambiguity in the rotamer and protonation states of multiple amino acids, notably asparagine, glutamine, histidine, serine, tyrosine, and threonine. When the rotamer and protonation states of these residues changes, so too does the electrochemical surface of a binding site. A variety of computational tools have been developed to assign these states for these residues based on a crystal protein structure by evaluating the possible states and typically deciding on one single state for each residue. We posit that multiple rotamer and protonation states of residues are consistent with the resolved structure of the proteins and introduce a protonation and rotamer assignment tool that identifies an ensemble of rotamer and protonation states that are consistent with the X-ray scattering data of the protein. Here, we present a Rotamer and Protonation state Assignment (RAPA) tool that analyzes local hydrogen bonding environments in the resolved structures of proteins and identifies a set of unique rotamer and protonation states that are energetically consistent with the crystal structure. We evaluate all RAPA predicted states in unrestrained molecular dynamics simulations and find that there are multiple configurations for each protein which match the X-ray results with RMSDs of less than 1.0Å for the atoms with the lowest 90% B-factors. We find that for most protein systems (62 of 77) there are 8 or fewer possible states suggesting that there is no combinatorial explosion of accessible configurations for a majority of proteins. This suggests that investigating all energetically accessible rotamer and protonation states for most proteins is computationally feasible and that the selection of single states is arbitrary.

This study investigated the effects of increasing previous resistance training (RT) weekly set volume by 30% (G30) and 60% (G60) on muscle hypertrophy and strength. Fifty-five resistance-trained men were randomly allocated to the experimental groups, while 29 completed the study, as follows: control group (CON): n=10, G30: n=10, and G60: n=9. Participants underwent a lower body RT program twice a week for eight weeks. We assessed pre- and post-study thigh region-of-interest fat-free mass (ROI-FFM), anterior thigh muscle thickness (MT) at two sites: proximal (PMT) and distal (DMT) and their sum (ΣMT), one-repetition maximum (1RM), and strength-endurance via repetitions to failure (RTF) at 70% of 1RM. ROI-FFM and MT demonstrated a significant increase from pre- to post-training (main time effect, p<0.001), (ΔΣMT CON: 1.07cm, G30: 0.76cm, G60: 0.70cm; ΔROI-FFM CON: 1.57kg, G30: 0.47kg, G60: 1.55kg). All groups increased back squat 1RM (p<0.0001). However, the main group effect (p<0.0268) indicated that the CON group showcased a greater overall 1RM (174.7kg), than the G30(159.0kg), and G60(149.0kg). Only the G30 group increased RTF at the post-test (CON: 0.13reps, G30: 5.45reps, G60: -0.41reps), (p<0.0263). Our findings suggest that trained males can experience significant muscle growth and strength adaptations while maintaining their previous weekly set number above a certain weekly set volume threshold.

Proteins are inherently flexible which complicates the identification of lead molecules that are shape and charge complementary to target proteins. While significant effort has been dedicated to exploring alternate protein conformations, solvation thermodynamics has typically not been integrated into these studies. Here, we study how solvation thermodynamics fluctuate as proteins adopt different conformations. We analyze solvation thermodynamics within the binding cavities of conformations for which side chains are mobile in molecular dynamics simulations and compare these to conformations for which they remain restrained about the cognate bound structure. We identify structural motifs that present significant costs to the sampling of cognate ligand bound structures. We find that the reorganization of protein side chains has a significant effect on the structure and thermodynamics of binding site solvation. We discuss how understanding the interplay between solvation thermodynamics and protein structural fluctuations is crucial for both discovering alternative binding pockets, estimating the contribution to binding affinity of displacing water upon ligand binding, and assessing revealed cryptic pocket bindability.

Why blood flow restriction cuff features are an important methodological consideration-a short commentary on "cerebral cortex activation and functional connectivity during low-load resistance training with blood flow restriction: an fNIRS study"

Footprints in Kenya show that hominin bipedalism had a complex evolutionary history

Purpose of review Food as Medicine (FAM) and supplemental nutrition programs like supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), women, infants, and children (WIC), and school meals aim to combat rising diet-related chronic diseases and healthcare costs by addressing poor diet and food insecurity. However, their effectiveness is limited by a lack of community integration in planning, implementation, and evaluation. We introduce the Food Access, Justice, and Sovereignty (FAJS) framework, which expands FAM efforts to address acute food disparity through community-based strategies grounded in justice and sovereignty. Recent findings FAM interventions on adult populations have demonstrated a positive impact on food insecurity and its related chronic illness and shows promise for pediatric populations. However, community-driven solutions are essential for shifting power toward greater integration of the lived experiences of community, which can enhance positive behavioral changes needed for greater prevention and management of chronic illness. Summary Using community driven approaches through the lens of access, justice, and sovereignty address the effects of food insecurity and diet-related chronic diseases for adults and pediatric populations. Through the FAJS Framework, interventionalists can develop sustainable nutrition programs that engender community health, control, and lasting impact.

Terminal anchor groups play a key role in controlling the stability and electronic properties of molecular junctions. Single molecule junctions typically consist of two terminal anchors linking organic molecules to metal electrodes. Here, we show that p-terphenyl derivatives containing only a single terminal anchor exhibit conductance features similar to junctions with two terminal anchors, which arises due to dynamic Au-C bond formation under oriented external electric fields (OEEFs). A set of p-terphenyl derivatives with one terminal anchor was prepared and characterized using automated chemical synthesis, single molecule electronics experiments, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and non-equilibrium Green’s function-density functional theory (NEGF-DFT) calculations. Our results show that 4-amino-p-terphenyl (PPP) exhibits a distinct and well-defined high conductance state that is greatly diminished or absent in other p-terphenyl derivatives with single terminal anchors, whereas a low conductance state is observed in all amino-p-terphenyl derivatives due to non-covalent dimeric interactions. The electronic properties of PPP are characterized using a combination of cyclic voltammetry, electrolysis, and electron spin resonance, revealing that the high conductance state in PPP arises due to robust Au-C bond formation facilitated by a radical-based rigid resonating structure under OEEFs. A series of control experiments on junctions with different anchor groups reveals the role of primary amines in forming dynamic linkages under OEEFs. Overall, these results suggest that OEEFs can trigger Au-C bond formation leading to high conductance pathways in organic molecules containing only one terminal anchor. Insights from this work can be leveraged in the design of molecular electronic devices, particularly in understanding the mechanisms of molecular binding and junction formation.