The Importance of Sibling Relationships for Children in Foster Care.

There are approximately 500,000 children in the foster care system in the United States of America. With exposure to chronic and cumulative trauma, they constitute a population with an increased risk of developing mental health concerns and adverse outcomes in later life, including contact with the forensic system. Legislative frameworks that have been developed to facilitate improved outcomes are outlined, although these vary between states, and the focus is often on the parental relationship. Several studies have emphasized the importance of sibling relationships and that placing siblings in the same foster home is associated with higher rates of placement stability, reunification, adoption and guardianship, and fostering positive sibling relations. The multifaceted role of the clinician in promoting recovery from trauma, enhancing resiliency, and thoughtfully prescribing and advocating for familial relationships is discussed.

Early Detection of Forest Fire Using Mixed Learning Techniques and UAV.

Over the last few decades, forest fires are increased due to deforestation and global warming. Many trees and animals in the forest are affected by forest fires. Technology can be efficiently utilized to solve this problem. Forest fire detection is inevitable for forest fire management. The purpose of this work is to propose deep learning techniques to predict forest fires, which would be cost-effective. The mixed learning technique is composed of YOLOv4 tiny and LiDAR techniques. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are promising options to patrol the forest by making them fly over the region. The proposed model deployed on an onboard UAV has achieved 1.24 seconds of classification time with an accuracy of 91% and an F1 score of 0.91. The onboard CPU is able to make a 3D model of the forest fire region and can transmit the data in real time to the ground station. The proposed model is trained on both dense and rainforests in detecting and predicting the chances of fire. The proposed model outperforms the traditional methods such as Bayesian classifiers, random forest, and support vector machines.

Real-Time Twitter Spam Detection and Sentiment Analysis using Machine Learning and Deep Learning Techniques.

In this modern world, we are accustomed to a constant stream of data. Major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Quora face a huge dilemma as a lot of these sites fall victim to spam accounts. These accounts are made to trap unsuspecting genuine users by making them click on malicious links or keep posting redundant posts by using bots. This can greatly impact the experiences that users have on these sites. A lot of time and research has gone into effective ways to detect these forms of spam. Performing sentiment analysis on these posts can help us in solving this problem effectively. The main purpose of this proposed work is to develop a system that can determine whether a tweet is "spam" or "ham" and evaluate the emotion of the tweet. The extracted features after preprocessing the tweets are classified using various classifiers, namely, decision tree, logistic regression, multinomial naïve Bayes, support vector machine, random forest, and Bernoulli naïve Bayes for spam detection. The stochastic gradient descent, support vector machine, logistic regression, random forest, naïve Bayes, and deep learning methods, namely, simple recurrent neural network (RNN) model, long short-term memory (LSTM) model, bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) model, and 1D convolutional neural network (CNN) model are used for sentiment analysis. The performance of each classifier is analyzed. The classification results showed that the features extracted from the tweets can be satisfactorily used to identify if a certain tweet is spam or not and create a learning model that will associate tweets with a particular sentiment.

The clinical course of actinic keratosis correlates with underlying molecular mechanisms.

BACKGROUND: Actinic keratoses (AKs) are common premalignant skin lesions triggered by excessive ultraviolet exposure. The majority of AKs regress or persist, but some progress to squamous cell carcinomas. Biomarkers associated with their persistence, progression and regression have not been characterized. OBJECTIVES: We performed skin biopsies in patients with extensive actinic damage to identify biomarkers that correlate with clinical progression and regression of AKs. METHODS: This was an observational study of a cohort of patients with extensive actinic damage. AKs were mapped on a clear plastic template in 26 patients at months 3, 6, 9 and 11. Biopsies were taken from randomly selected, predetermined AKs and were evaluated for p53, E-cadherin, Snail, Slug and Twist. The study is registered at Clinicaltrials.gov: NCT00027976. RESULTS: p53 exhibited greater expression in clinically apparent AKs (histological score 2·89 ± 1·45) than in regressed AKs (0·75 ± 0·96); P < 0·01. There was also significantly less membrane E-cadherin, the lack of which is a marker of epithelial-mesenchymal transition, in clinically apparent AKs (1·89 ± 1·81) than in sun-exposed skin (3·07 ± 1·75); P < 0·005. The E-cadherin transcription repressors Snail, Slug and Twist were increased in AKs compared with sun-exposed skin. A limitation of the study is that measurement of histological biomarkers was not a primary end point. In addition, patients were allowed to apply sunscreens. CONCLUSIONS: At the molecular level, loss of E-cadherin and an increase in p53 are linked to the dynamic interplay between the persistence, progression and regression of AKs. What's already known about this topic? Actinic keratoses (AKs) are common dysplastic epidermal lesions that result from chronic and excessive ultraviolet exposure. Biomarkers associated with progression and regression of AK have not been characterized. What does this study add? Decreased E-cadherin and increased p53, Snail, Slug and Twist (E-cadherin transcription factors) were associated with progression from AK to nonmelanoma skin cancer. What is the translational message? Strategies targeting these molecules may be effective in reversing rising skin cancer rates. E-cadherin, p53, Snail, Slug and Twist are potential biomarkers that may be used to assess the efficacy of existing chemopreventive agents.

Hookah smoking, nass chewing, and oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma in Kashmir, India.

BACKGROUND: Although cigarette smoking is an established risk factor for oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), there is little information about the association between other smoking and smokeless tobacco products, including hookah and nass, and ESCC risk. We conducted a case-control study in Kashmir Valley, India, where hookah smoking, nass chewing, and ESCC are common, to investigate the association of hookah smoking, nass use, and several other habits with ESCC. METHODS: We recruited 702 histologically confirmed ESCC cases and 1663 hospital-based controls, individually matched to the cases for age, sex, and district of residence from September 2008 to January 2012. Conditional logistic regression models were used to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). RESULTS: Ever-hookah smoking (OR=1.85; 95% CI, 1.41-2.44) and nass chewing (OR=2.88; 95% CI, 2.06-4.04) were associated with ESCC risk. These associations were consistent across different measures of use, including intensity, duration, and cumulative amount of use, and after excluding ever users of the other product and cigarette smokers. Our results also suggest an increased risk of ESCC associated with ever-gutka chewing and -bidi smoking. However, the latter associations were based on small number of participants. CONCLUSION: This study shows that hookah and nass use are associated with ESCC risk. As prevalence of hookah use seems to be increasing among young people worldwide, these results may have relevance not only for the regions in which hookah use has been a traditional habit, but also for other regions, including western countries.

Treatment of dynamic scaphoid instability.

BACKGROUND: Chronic wrist pain attributable to scaphoid instability without fixed deformity (dynamic instability) presents a treatment dilemma. The diagnosis usually is delayed, missing the opportunity for direct repair. The intercarpal fusion, tenodesis, and capsulodesis procedures create a fixed deformity. This report presents an outcome study of a new treatment for dynamic scaphoid instability that spanned more than 5 years. METHODS: Arthroscopic evaluation was used to confirm the diagnosis for 105 wrists of 102 patients who had experienced wrist pain for an average of 24.4 months. The treatment for these patients involved transferring two thirds of the extensor carpi radialis longus through the distal pole of the reduced scaphoid volarly to the intact flexor carpi radialis. The postoperative follow-up period averaged 63 months. RESULTS: The average grip strength increased by 65%. The average active wrist extension-flexion increased by 9%, with an average radial deviation loss of 6 degrees. The overall results, as measured by the modified Green and O'Brien clinical wrist scale, were as follows: excellent (49%), good (24%), and fair (26%). Good to excellent results were reported by 85% of the patients. Pain relief was reported by 94% of the patients, and 93% of the patients would recommend the procedure to others. CONCLUSIONS: Scaphoid instability without fixed deformity is a complex problem. Conventional treatments have drawbacks. The new technique produced positive results that are quite promising for the management of dynamic scaphoid instability.

Blockade of epinephrine priming of the cerebral auditory evoked response by cortical cholinergic deafferentation.

The present study tested hypotheses derived from a neurobehavioral model of anxiety that posits an important role of the basal forebrain cholinergic system in the cortical processing of anxiety-associated stimuli and contexts. We hypothesized that visceral afferent activity induced by systemic administration of epinephrine would enhance the processing of auditory stimuli as evidenced by the cerebral auditory evoked response. We further predicted that selective lesions of the basal forebrain cortical cholinergic projection system would disrupt this processing, and would further block the effects of epinephrine. Results confirmed these hypotheses. Epinephrine was found to enhance the amplitude of the P70 component of the auditory evoked response in rats. Selective lesions of the basal forebrain corticopetal cholinergic projection, by intrabasalis infusions of 192 IgG saporin, delayed and reduced the amplitude of the P70 component, and blocked the potentiating effects of epinephrine on the auditory evoked response. The present results are consistent with the view that visceral afferent input may modulate cortical processing of sensory signals via the basal forebrain cholinergic system. These considerations emphasize the potential importance of ascending, bottom-up modulation of processing by telencephalic circuits that may impact on a wide range of behavioral functions.

Specific contributions of the basal forebrain corticopetal cholinergic system to electroencephalographic activity and sleep/waking behaviour.

The present study examined the role of the basal forebrain corticopetal cholinergic projection in the regulation of cortical electroencephalographic activity across sleep/wake states in rats. Selective lesions of this projection were effected by local intraparenchymal infusions of the immunotoxin 192 IgG-saporin. Lesions spared the septo-hippocampal cholinergic system, as well as p75-receptor-bearing noncholinergic neurons in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Relative to sham-lesioned control animals, rats with lesions of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons displayed a significant reduction in high frequency EEG activity, characterized especially by a reduction in gamma EEG power. Lesions did not significantly alter the overall proportion of sleeping and waking states as defined behaviourally, but the attenuation of high frequency EEG activity was apparent across all stages, including REM-like periods. Results are consistent with the view that the basal forebrain corticopetal cholinergic system exerts a general activational effect on the cortical mantle. Although this system may not be essential for sleep/wake stage-switching, it does impact on the cortical states associated with those stages.

The O-GlcNAc transferase gene resides on the X chromosome and is essential for embryonic stem cell viability and mouse ontogeny.

Nuclear and cytoplasmic protein glycosylation is a widespread and reversible posttranslational modification in eukaryotic cells. Intracellular glycosylation by the addition of N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) to serine and threonine is catalyzed by the O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT). This "O-GlcNAcylation" of intracellular proteins can occur on phosphorylation sites, and has been implicated in controlling gene transcription, neurofilament assembly, and the emergence of diabetes and neurologic disease. To study OGT function in vivo, we have used gene-targeting approaches in male embryonic stem cells. We find that OGT mutagenesis requires a strategy that retains an intact OGT gene as accomplished by using Cre-loxP recombination, because a deletion in the OGT gene results in loss of embryonic stem cell viability. A single copy of the OGT gene is present in the male genome and resides on the X chromosome near the centromere in region D in the mouse spanning markers DxMit41 and DxMit95, and in humans at Xq13, a region associated with neurologic disease. OGT RNA expression in mice is comparably high among most cell types, with lower levels in the pancreas. Segregation of OGT alleles in the mouse germ line with ZP3-Cre recombination in oocytes reveals that intact OGT alleles are required for completion of embryogenesis. These studies illustrate the necessity of conditional gene-targeting approaches in the mutagenesis and study of essential sex-linked genes, and indicate that OGT participation in intracellular glycosylation is essential for embryonic stem cell viability and for mouse ontogeny.

Pathogenesis of the B variant of encephalomyocarditis virus.

Variants of encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV) are immunologically indistinguishable by hyperimmune serum, but, with the exception of EMCV-B, each produces a different disease syndrome and infects the central nervous system in mice infected via the intraperitoneal route of inoculation. The B variant is benign in that it does not produce any overt signs of infection at doses as high as 10(6) pfu per animal. The present study was carried out to determine if EMCV-B was pathogenic when administered via the intracranial route and, if so, to delineate the area(s) of the brain infected. The results show that, when given i.c., EMCV-B is similar to other variants of EMCV in that it infects and replicates in the brain, causing encephalitis, neuronal necrosis in Ammon's horn of the hippocampus, and clinical signs of infection. The data indicate that receptor sites for EMCV-B are present on brain cells and suggest that its benign nature when given by the intraperitoneal route reflects an inability to cross the blood-brain barrier.