Social and Economic Costs of Inequality in the State of Virginia

This study examined selected social and economic costs of inequality in the state of Virginia. We explored the extent of inequality of place across the state, finding significant inequalities between counties on measures such as household income, poverty, college completion, single parenthood, and racial segregation. These inequalities of place were strongly associated with inequalities in the adult outcomes of children raised in different areas of the state, including unequal household income and unequal rates of upward mobility, college completion, incarceration, and marriage in adulthood. When examining the association between homicides and concentrated disadvantage in the capital city of Richmond, our mapping techniques demonstrated a strong association. Finally, we estimated that child poverty results in billions of dollars of economic costs to the state each year.

Predicting Dynamic Clinical Outcomes of the Chemotherapy for Canine Lymphoma Patients Using a Machine Learning Model

First-line treatments of cancer do not always work, and even when they do, they cure the disease at unequal rates mostly owing to biological and clinical heterogeneity across patients. Accurate prediction of clinical outcome and survival following the treatment can support and expedite the process of comparing alternative treatments. We describe the methodology to dynamically determine remission probabilities for individual patients, as well as their prospects of progression-free survival (PFS). The proposed methodology utilizes the ex vivo drug sensitivity of cancer cells, their immunophenotyping results, and patient information, such as age and breed, in training machine learning (ML) models, as well as the Cox hazards model to predict the probability of clinical remission (CR) or relapse across time for a given patient. We applied the methodology using the three types of data obtained from 242 canine lymphoma patients treated by (L)-CHOP chemotherapy. The results demonstrate substantial enhancement in the predictive accuracy of the ML models by utilizing features from all the three types of data. They also highlight superior performance and utility in predicting survival compared to the conventional stratification method. We believe that the proposed methodology can contribute to improving and personalizing the care of cancer patients.

Novel Structural Variation and Evolutionary Characteristics of Chloroplast tRNA in Gossypium Plants

Cotton is one of the most important fiber and oil crops in the world. Chloroplast genomes harbor their own genetic materials and are considered to be highly conserved. Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) act as “bridges” in protein synthesis by carrying amino acids. Currently, the variation and evolutionary characteristics of tRNAs in the cotton chloroplast genome are poorly understood. Here, we analyzed the structural variation and evolution of chloroplast tRNA (cp tRNA) based on eight diploid and two allotetraploid cotton species. We also investigated the nucleotide evolution of chloroplast genomes in cotton species. We found that cp tRNAs in cotton encoded 36 or 37 tRNAs, and 28 or 29 anti-codon types with lengths ranging from 60 to 93 nucleotides. Cotton chloroplast tRNA sequences possessed specific conservation and, in particular, the Ψ-loop contained the conserved U-U-C-X3-U. The cp tRNAs of Gossypium L. contained introns, and cp tRNAIle contained the anti-codon (C-A-U), which was generally the anti-codon of tRNAMet. The transition and transversion analyses showed that cp tRNAs in cotton species were iso-acceptor specific and had undergone unequal rates of evolution. The intergenic region was more variable than coding regions, and non-synonymous mutations have been fixed in cotton cp genomes. On the other hand, phylogeny analyses indicated that cp tRNAs of cotton were derived from several inferred ancestors with greater gene duplications. This study provides new insights into the structural variation and evolution of chloroplast tRNAs in cotton plants. Our findings could contribute to understanding the detailed characteristics and evolutionary variation of the tRNA family.

Ultraviolet Light-Responsive Photorheological Fluid for Sensors and Actuators Realized by Phosphorescence Effects and LSTM RNN

A photo-rheological fluid (PRF) is a smart fluid which exhibits different viscosity under UV irradiation. A PRF is comprehensively presented in this work, with particular focus on its responses under UV off/on conditions. The isomeric conversion from SP to MC and vice versa under UV off and on, respectively, showed unequal rates of transformation. As a result, a complex non-linear hysteretic response was observed. To be used indifferent types of sensors and actuators which can exploit its rheological properties, it is essential the PRF have linearized hysteresis behavior. To minimize the asymmetric non-linear hysteresis characteristics under UV on and off conditions, the well-known long-lasting phosphor SAO (SrAl2O4:Eu2+, Dy3+) was incorporated. The incorporation of SAO in the PRF improved the linearity of the PRF response, although the conversion rate was not identical under UV off/on conditions. The SAO particles were observed to settle over time due to phase splitting, undermining the usefulness of the SAO-PRF composite. Instead of improving the PRF response by further adjusting the PRF composite, a software approach based on Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks (LSTM RNN) was employed to model and compensate the asymmetric non-linear hysteresis response, ensuring the realization of sensors and actuators that exploit PRF as hardware.

The unequal impact of parenthood in academia

Across academia, men and women tend to publish at unequal rates. Existing explanations include the potentially unequal impact of parenthood on scholarship, but a lack of appropriate data has prevented its clear assessment. Here, we quantify the impact of parenthood on scholarship using an extensive survey of the timing of parenthood events, longitudinal publication data, and perceptions of research expectations among 3064 tenure-track faculty at 450 Ph.D.-granting computer science, history, and business departments across the United States and Canada, along with data on institution-specific parental leave policies. Parenthood explains most of the gender productivity gap by lowering the average short-term productivity of mothers, even as parents tend to be slightly more productive on average than nonparents. However, the size of productivity penalty for mothers appears to have shrunk over time. Women report that paid parental leave and adequate childcare are important factors in their recruitment and retention. These results have broad implications for efforts to improve the inclusiveness of scholarship.

Asymmetrical cleavages ofSleeping Beautytransposons generate multiple excised transposon fragments during transposition

ABSTRACTAlthough theSleeping Beauty(SB) transposon is the most validated DNA transposon used as a gene delivery vehicle in vertebrates, many details of the excision and integration steps in the transposition process are unclear. We have probed in detail the products of the excision step and apparent selective integration of a subset of those products during transposition. The standard model of SB transposase-mediated transposition includes symmetrical cleavages at both ends of the transposon for excision and re-integration in another DNA sequence. In our analysis of excised transposon fragments (ETFs), we found evidence for the requirement of certain flanking sequences for efficient cleavage and a significant rate of asymmetrical cleavage during the excision process that generates multiple ETFs. Our results suggest that the cleavage step by SB transposase is not as precise as indicated in most models. Repair of the donor ends can produce eight footprint sequences (TACTGTA, TACAGTA, TACATA, TACGTA, TATGTA, TACTA, TAGTA and TATA). Our data also suggest that mismatch repair (MMR) is not an essential requirement for footprint formation. Among the twenty liberated ETFs, only eight appear to effectively re-integrate into TA sites distributed across the genome, supporting earlier findings of unequal rates of excision and reintegration during SB transposition. These findings may be important in considerations of efficiency of SB transposon remobilization, selection of TA integration sites and detection of SB excision and integration loci, all of which may be important in human gene therapy.