Effectiveness of a Cognitive Behavioral Coaching Program Delivered via Video in Real World Settings.

Background: Many employees experience high levels of stress in the workplace, which negatively impact their productivity and well-being. Effective stress management interventions exist, but are inaccessible due to insufficient numbers of mental health providers, long waiting times to initiate care, high out-of-pocket cost of care, and stigma related to receiving psychotherapy. Introduction: The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy, in real-world circumstances, of a structured, cognitive behavioral coaching (CBC) program delivered through video or telephone. Materials and Methods: Retrospective data on 289 subjects who had sought support for emotional health through a behavioral health benefit offered through employers were examined. Changes in perceived stress and well-being over the course of the program were measured using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS), respectively. Rates of reliable change and satisfaction with the coaching program were also assessed. Results: Scores on both the PSS and WEMWBS improved between baseline and follow-up. Approximately 61.9% (n = 289) of participants demonstrated reliable improvement on either measure. Discussion: CBC is a promising intervention that has the potential to significantly expand access to effective and more affordable interventions for emotional health care. Conclusions: Coaching, when delivered by accredited professionals trained in cognitive behavioral theory and interventions and working in real-world settings, can be efficacious in decreasing perceived stress and increasing well-being when delivered through video or telephone.

Navigating through the r packages for movement.

The advent of miniaturized biologging devices has provided ecologists with unprecedented opportunities to record animal movement across scales, and led to the collection of ever-increasing quantities of tracking data. In parallel, sophisticated tools have been developed to process, visualize and analyse tracking data; however, many of these tools have proliferated in isolation, making it challenging for users to select the most appropriate method for the question in hand. Indeed, within the r software alone, we listed 58 packages created to deal with tracking data or 'tracking packages'. Here, we reviewed and described each tracking package based on a workflow centred around tracking data (i.e. spatio-temporal locations (x, y, t)), broken down into three stages: pre-processing, post-processing and analysis, the latter consisting of data visualization, track description, path reconstruction, behavioural pattern identification, space use characterization, trajectory simulation and others. Supporting documentation is key to render a package accessible for users. Based on a user survey, we reviewed the quality of packages' documentation and identified 11 packages with good or excellent documentation. Links between packages were assessed through a network graph analysis. Although a large group of packages showed some degree of connectivity (either depending on functions or suggesting the use of another tracking package), one third of the packages worked in isolation, reflecting a fragmentation in the r movement-ecology programming community. Finally, we provide recommendations for users when choosing packages, and for developers to maximize the usefulness of their contribution and strengthen the links within the programming community.

Artificial light at night confounds broad-scale habitat use by migrating birds.

With many of the world's migratory bird populations in alarming decline, broad-scale assessments of responses to migratory hazards may prove crucial to successful conservation efforts. Most birds migrate at night through increasingly light-polluted skies. Bright light sources can attract airborne migrants and lead to collisions with structures, but might also influence selection of migratory stopover habitat and thereby acquisition of food resources. We demonstrate, using multi-year weather radar measurements of nocturnal migrants across the northeastern U.S., that autumnal migrant stopover density increased at regional scales with proximity to the brightest areas, but decreased within a few kilometers of brightly-lit sources. This finding implies broad-scale attraction to artificial light while airborne, impeding selection for extensive forest habitat. Given that high-quality stopover habitat is critical to successful migration, and hindrances during migration can decrease fitness, artificial lights present a potentially heightened conservation concern for migratory bird populations.

Recent trends in movement ecology of animals and human mobility.

Movement is fundamental to life, shaping population dynamics, biodiversity patterns, and ecosystem structure. In 2008, the movement ecology framework (MEF Nathan et al. in PNAS 105(49):19052-19059, 2008) introduced an integrative theory of organismal movement-linking internal state, motion capacity, and navigation capacity to external factors-which has been recognized as a milestone in the field. Since then, the study of movement experienced a technological boom, which provided massive quantities of tracking data of both animal and human movement globally and at ever finer spatio-temporal resolutions. In this work, we provide a quantitative assessment of the state of research within the MEF, focusing on animal movement, including humans and invertebrates, and excluding movement of plants and microorganisms. Using a text mining approach, we digitally scanned the contents of [Formula: see text] papers from 2009 to 2018 available online, identified tools and methods used, and assessed linkages between all components of the MEF. Over the past decade, the publication rate has increased considerably, along with major technological changes, such as an increased use of GPS devices and accelerometers and a majority of studies now using the R software environment for statistical computing. However, animal movement research still largely focuses on the effect of environmental factors on movement, with motion and navigation continuing to receive little attention. A search of topics based on words featured in abstracts revealed a clustering of papers among marine and terrestrial realms, as well as applications and methods across taxa. We discuss the potential for technological and methodological advances in the field to lead to more integrated and interdisciplinary research and an increased exploration of key movement processes such as navigation, as well as the evolutionary, physiological, and life-history consequences of movement.

Structural basis of the antiproliferative activity of largazole, a depsipeptide inhibitor of the histone deacetylases.

Largazole is a macrocyclic depsipeptide originally isolated from the marine cyanobacterium Symploca sp., which is indigenous to the warm, blue-green waters of Key Largo, Florida (whence largazole derives its name). Largazole contains an unusual thiazoline-thiazole ring system that rigidifies its macrocyclic skeleton, and it also contains a lipophilic thioester side chain. Hydrolysis of the thioester in vivo yields largazole thiol, which exhibits remarkable antiproliferative effects and is believed to be the most potent inhibitor of the metal-dependent histone deacetylases (HDACs). Here, the 2.14 Å-resolution crystal structure of the HDAC8-largazole thiol complex is the first of an HDAC complexed with a macrocyclic inhibitor and reveals that ideal thiolate-zinc coordination geometry is the key chemical feature responsible for its exceptional affinity and biological activity. Notably, the core structure of largazole is conserved in romidepsin, a depsipeptide natural product formulated as the drug Istodax recently approved for cancer chemotherapy. Accordingly, the structure of the HDAC8-largazole thiol complex is the first to illustrate the mode of action of a new class of therapeutically important HDAC inhibitors.

Inward remodeling of resistance arteries requires reactive oxygen species-dependent activation of matrix metalloproteinases.

Inward eutrophic remodeling is the most prevalent structural change of resistance arteries in hypertension. Sympathetic and angiotensin (ANG)-induced vasoconstriction has been associated with hypertension and with the production of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and ROS. Therefore, we hypothesize that prolonged exposure to norepinephrine (NE) and ANG II induces arteriolar inward remodeling dependent on the activation of MMPs and the production of ROS. This hypothesis was tested on rat cremaster arterioles that were isolated, cannulated, pressurized, and exposed to either NE (10(-5.5) mol/l) + ANG II (10(-7) mol/l) or vehicle (control) for 4 h. The prolonged exposure to NE + ANG II induced inward remodeling, as evidenced by the reduced maximal arteriolar passive diameter observed after versus before exposure to the vasoconstrictor agonists. NE + ANG II also increased the arteriolar expression and activity of MMP-2 and the production of ROS as determined, respectively, by real-time RT-PCR, gel and in situ zymography, and the use of ROS-sensitive dyes with multiphoton microscopy. Inhibition of MMP activation (with GM-6001) or ROS production (with apocynin or tempol) prevented the NE + ANG II-induced inward remodeling. Inhibition of ROS production prevented the activation of MMPs and the remodeling process, whereas inhibition of MMP activation did not affect ROS production. These results indicate that prolonged stimulation of resistance arterioles with NE + ANG II induces a ROS-dependent activation of MMPs necessary for the development of arteriolar inward remodeling. These mechanisms may contribute to the structural narrowing of resistance vessels in hypertension.

Biomimetic syntheses from squalene-like precursors: synthesis of ent-abudinol B and reassessment of the structure of muzitone.

We achieved the stereoselective syntheses of two different structural patterns corresponding to the enantiomers of the marine natural products abudinol B and muzitone, by developing two-directional tandem biomimetic cyclizations of polyepoxides of squalene analogues in which one alkene was functionalized as an enolsilane. In the course of this work, we demonstrated that the structure of muzitone was misassigned.

Evaluating the data quality of iNaturalist termite records.

Citizen science (CS) contributes to the knowledge about species distributions, which is a critical foundation in the studies of invasive species, biological conservation, and response to climatic change. In this study, we assessed the value of CS for termites worldwide. First, we compared the abundance and species diversity of geo-tagged termite records in iNaturalist to that of the University of Florida termite collection (UFTC) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Second, we quantified how the combination of these data sources affected the number of genera that satisfy data requirements for ecological niche modeling. Third, we assessed the taxonomic correctness of iNaturalist termite records in the Americas at the genus and family level through expert review based on photo identification. Results showed that iNaturalist records were less abundant than those in the UFTC and in GBIF, although they complemented the latter two in selected world regions. A combination of GBIF and the UFTC led to a significant increase in the number of termite genera satisfying the abundance criterion for niche modeling compared to either of those two sources alone, whereas adding iNaturalist observations as a third source only had a moderate effect on the number of termite genera satisfying that criterion. Although research grade observations in iNaturalist require a community-supported and agreed upon identification (ID) below the family taxonomic rank, our results indicated that iNaturalist data do not exhibit a higher taxonomic classification accuracy when they are designated research grade. This means that non-research grade observations can be used to more completely map the presence of termite locations in certain geographic locations without significantly jeopardizing data quality. We concluded that CS termite observation records can, to some extent, complement expert termite collections in terms of geographic coverage and species diversity. Based on recent data contribution patterns in CS data, the role of CS termite contributions is expected to grow significantly in the near future.

Analysis of movement recursions to detect reproductive events and estimate their fate in central place foragers.

BACKGROUND: Recursive movement patterns have been used to detect behavioral structure within individual movement trajectories in the context of foraging ecology, home-ranging behavior, and predator avoidance. Some animals exhibit movement recursions to locations that are tied to reproductive functions, including nests and dens; while existing literature recognizes that, no method is currently available to explicitly target different types of revisited locations. Moreover, the temporal persistence of recursive movements to a breeding location can carry information regarding the fate of breeding attempts, but it has never been used as a metric to quantify recursive movement patterns. Here, we introduce a method to locate breeding attempts and estimate their fate from GPS-tracking data of central place foragers. We tested the performance of our method in three bird species differing in breeding ecology (wood stork (Mycteria americana), lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni), Mediterranean gull (Ichthyaetus melanocephalus)) and implemented it in the R package 'nestR'. METHODS: We identified breeding sites based on the analysis of recursive movements within individual tracks. Using trajectories with known breeding attempts, we estimated a set of species-specific criteria for the identification of nest sites, which we further validated using non-reproductive individuals as controls. We then estimated individual nest survival as a binary measure of reproductive fate (success, corresponding to fledging of at least one chick, or failure) from nest-site revisitation histories during breeding attempts, using a Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach that accounted for temporally variable revisitation patterns, probability of visit detection, and missing data. RESULTS: Across the three species, positive predictive value of the nest-site detection algorithm varied between 87 and 100% and sensitivity between 88 and 92%, and we correctly estimated the fate of 86-100% breeding attempts. CONCLUSIONS: By providing a method to formally distinguish among revisited locations that serve different ecological functions and introducing a probabilistic framework to quantify temporal persistence of movement recursions, we demonstrated how the analysis of recursive movement patterns can be applied to estimate reproduction in central place foragers. Beyond avian species, the principles of our method can be applied to other central place foraging breeders such as denning mammals. Our method estimates a component of individual fitness from movement data and will help bridge the gap between movement behavior, environmental factors, and their fitness consequences.

Stereo- and regioselective synthesis of squalene tetraepoxide.

Squalene tetraepoxide, a putative biosynthetic precursor to a variety of oxacyclic triterpenoid natural products, has been efficiently synthesized by anionic coupling of two farnesol-derived diepoxides, which have arisen from electronic control of the regioselectivity in organocatalytic enantioselective epoxidations.

The role of psychological flexibility in the relationship between self-concealment and disordered eating symptoms.

The present cross-sectional study investigated whether psychological flexibility mediates the association between self-concealment and disordered eating (DE) symptoms among non-clinical college students. Data of 209 male and female participants (nfemale =165), aged 18-22 years old, were used for analyses. Self-concealment was found to be positively associated with DE symptoms (i.e., general eating disorder symptoms and eating disorder-related cognitions) and negatively associated with psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility was inversely associated with DE symptoms. Finally, psychological flexibility was found to mediate the association between self-concealment and DE symptoms after accounting for gender, ethnic background, and body mass index (BMI).

1,5-Alpha-D-mannoseptanosides, ring-size isomers that are impervious to alpha-mannosidase-catalyzed hydrolysis.

1,5-D-mannoseptanosyl di- and trisaccharide ring-size isomers of the corresponding mannopyranosyl oligosaccharides have been prepared. Remarkably, these compounds show no inhibition of the alpha-mannosidase-catalyzed hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl-alpha-D-mannopyranoside.