The relationship between nature exposure and depression among Chinese prisoners: a moderated mediation model.

Aim: This study examined the association between self-reported nature exposure and depression among Chinese prisoners, as well as the mediating and moderating effects of meaning in life and callous-unemotional (CU) traits, respectively. Background: Prisoners are more likely to experience depression than any other mental illness. Exposure to nature has been proposed as a highly cost-effective method of treating their depressive symptoms. However, the mechanism underlying the link between nature exposure and depression among prisoners needs further investigation, as the findings may provide new insights into how to address depression in incarcerated populations. Method: Data were collected through a survey conducted in four prisons in southern China from April to May 2022. The participants were 574 prisoners who anonymously completed four questionnaires about nature exposure, meaning in life, depression, and CU traits. Results: The results show that: (1) meaning in life significantly mediates the association between nature exposure and depression, and (2) CU traits moderate the connection between nature exposure and meaning in life. Conclusion: The current study uncovered that prisoners who contact more with the natural environment have a higher meaning in life and lower depression, and individuals with higher CU traits can benefit more from nature exposure.

The Influence of Victim Self-Disclosure on Bystander Intervention in Cyberbullying.

The frequent occurrences of cyberbullying on social platforms have sparked a great deal of social conflict, and bystander intervention plays a crucial role in preventing the escalation of cyberbullying. This research examines the impact of victim self-disclosure on bystander intervention in cyberbullying through two experimental studies. The studies collected data from March to July of 2022, utilizing a convenience sampling approach to recruit university students as experiment participants. Study 1 recruited 247 valid participants, while Study 2 recruited 522 eligible participants. The results of Study 1 indicate that the perceptible dimensions (frequency, privacy, and valence) of victim self-disclosure impact bystander intervention. Specifically, in a low privacy context, positive self-disclosure increases bystander intervention, while negative self-disclosure does the opposite. The results of Study 2 suggest that the valence of self-disclosure affects bystander intervention through the mediation of victim blaming, with interpersonal distance moderating the impact of victim self-disclosure valence on the extent of victim blaming. This moderated mediation model clarifies the psychological process by which the valence of victim self-disclosure affects bystander intervention. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the social psychological process behind bystander intervention, providing a scientific basis and pathway for reducing cyberbullying and fostering a harmonious online environment.

Prevalence and factors associated with anxiety and depression among Chinese prison officers during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: This study examined the prevalence of anxiety and depression-along with the potential risk and protective factors-among Chinese prison officers during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. Method: A cross-sectional survey of 1,268 officers from five prisons in western and southern China was administered between June and July 2022. The questionnaires comprised two sections. In the first section, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) were used to evaluate the prevalence of anxiety and depression, respectively, among prison officers. In the second section, the potential influencing factors were examined. Categorical data were compared using χ2 tests and t-tests; binary logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors associated with anxiety and depression. Results: The prevalence rates of anxiety and depression among the prison officers were 72.6% and 69.8%, respectively. Risk factors for anxiety were older age, being unmarried, work-family conflicts, job demands, and COVID-19 burnout; protective factors were exercise, positive family relationships, and group cohesion. Work-family conflicts, job demands, intolerance of uncertainty regarding COVID-19, and COVID-19 burnout were risk factors for depression, whereas annual income >150,000 RMB, exercise, positive family relationships, group cohesion, and job autonomy were protective factors against depression. Conclusion: The prevalence of anxiety and depression among Chinese prison officers was relatively high during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, and more targeted measures should be implemented to improve their mental health. This study offers a reference for improving prison officers' mental health in response to similar public health emergencies in the future.

The Relationship between Job Demands and Turnover Intention among Chinese Prison Officers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Moderated Mediation Model.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought enormous challenges to both employees and organizations all over the world. Previous studies have found high turnover rates among prison officers since the outbreak of COVID-19. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the mediating role of job burnout between job demands and turnover intention, as well as the moderating role of the perceived efficacy in overcoming COVID-19 in Chinese prison officers. In total, 1316 prison officers were recruited to complete an online questionnaire between May 2022 and June 2022 (during the COVID-19 pandemic). The bootstrapping approach was used to assess the moderated mediation model in this study. The results showed that prison officers' job demands were positively associated with their turnover intention. Job burnout mediated the relationship between job demands and turnover intention. Perceived efficacy in overcoming COVID-19 moderated the effect of job burnout on turnover intention. Based on these results, suggestions were provided to reduce the high turnover rate of prison officers in public health events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Microgel-Assisted Delivery of Adenosine to Accelerate Fracture Healing.

Extracellular adenosine plays a key role in promoting bone tissue formation. Local delivery of adenosine could be an effective therapeutic strategy to harness the beneficial effect of extracellular adenosine on bone tissue formation following injury. Herein, we describe the development of an injectable in situ curing scaffold containing microgel-based adenosine delivery units. The two-component scaffold includes adenosine-loaded microgels and functionalized hyaluronic acid (HA) molecules. The microgels were generated upon copolymerization of 3-acrylamidophenylboronic acid (3-APBA)- and 2-aminoethylmethacrylamide (2-AEMA)-conjugated HA (HA-AEMA) in an emulsion suspension. The PBA functional groups were used to load the adenosine molecules. Mixing of the microgels with the HA polymers containing clickable groups, dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO) and azide (HA-DBCO and HA-Azide), resulted in a 3D scaffold embedded with adenosine delivery units. Application of the in situ curing scaffolds containing adenosine-loaded microgels following tibial fracture injury showed improved bone tissue healing in a mouse model as demonstrated by the reduced callus size, higher bone volume, and increased tissue mineral density compared to those treated with the scaffold without adenosine. Overall, our results suggest that local delivery of adenosine could potentially be an effective strategy to promote bone tissue repair.

Self-Healing of Hyaluronic Acid to Improve In Vivo Retention and Function.

Convergent advances in the field of soft matter, macromolecular chemistry, and engineering have led to the development of biomaterials that possess autonomous, adaptive, and self-healing characteristics similar to living systems. These rationally designed biomaterials can surpass the capabilities of their parent material. Herein, the modification of hyaluronic acid (HA) to exhibit self-healing properties is described, and its physical and biological function both in vitro and in vivo is studied. The in vitro findings showed that self-healing HA designed to undergo self-repair improves lubrication, enhances free radical scavenging, and attenuates enzymatic degradation compared to unmodified HA. Longitudinal imaging following intraarticular injection of self-healing HA shows improved in vivo retention despite its low molecular weight. Concomitant with these functions, intraarticular injection of self-healing HA mitigates anterior cruciate ligament injury-mediated cartilage degeneration in rodents. This proof-of-concept study shows how incorporation of functional properties such as self-healing can be used to surpass the existing capabilities of biolubricants.

Bone targeting nanocarrier-assisted delivery of adenosine to combat osteoporotic bone loss.

Extracellular adenosine has been shown to play a key role in maintaining bone health and could potentially be used to treat bone loss. However, systemic administration of exogenous adenosine to treat bone disorders remains a challenge due to the ubiquitous presence of adenosine receptors in different organs and the short half-life of adenosine in circulation. Towards this, we have developed a bone-targeting nanocarrier and determined its potential for systemic administration of adenosine. The nanocarrier, synthesized via emulsion suspension photopolymerization, is comprised of hyaluronic acid (HA) copolymerized with phenylboronic acid (PBA), a moiety that can form reversible bonds with adenosine. The bone binding affinity of the nanocarrier was achieved by alendronate (Aln) conjugation. Nanocarriers functionalized with the alendronate (Aln-NC) showed a 45% higher accumulation in the mice vertebrae in vivo compared to those lacking alendronate molecules (NCs). Systemic administration of adenosine via bone-targeting nanocarriers (Aln-NC) attenuated bone loss in ovariectomized (OVX) mice. Furthermore, bone tissue of mice treated with adenosine-loaded Aln-NC displayed trabecular bone characteristics comparable to healthy controls as shown by microcomputed tomography, histochemical staining, bone labeling, and mechanical strength. Overall, our results demonstrate the use of a bone-targeting nanocarrier towards systemic administration of adenosine and its application in treating bone degenerative diseases such as osteoporosis.

In Vivo Sequestration of Innate Small Molecules to Promote Bone Healing.

Approaches that enable innate repair mechanisms hold great potential for tissue repair. Herein, biomaterial-assisted sequestration of small molecules is described to localize pro-regenerative signaling at the injury site. Specifically, a synthetic biomaterial containing boronate molecules is designed to sequester adenosine, a small molecule ubiquitously present in the human body. The biomaterial-assisted sequestration of adenosine leverages the transient surge of extracellular adenosine following injury to prolong local adenosine signaling. It is demonstrated that implantation of the biomaterial patch following injury establishes an in situ stockpile of adenosine, resulting in accelerated healing by promoting both osteoblastogenesis and angiogenesis. The adenosine content within the patch recedes to the physiological level as the tissue regenerates. In addition to sequestering endogenous adenosine, the biomaterial is also able to deliver exogenous adenosine to the site of injury, offering a versatile solution to utilizing adenosine as a potential therapeutic for tissue repair.

Biomaterial-assisted local and systemic delivery of bioactive agents for bone repair.

Although bone tissues possess an intrinsic capacity for repair, there are cases where bone healing is either impaired or insufficient, such as fracture non-union, osteoporosis, osteomyelitis, and cancers. In these cases, treatments like surgical interventions are used, either alone or in combination with bioactive agents, to promote tissue repair and manage associated clinical complications. Improving the efficacy of bioactive agents often requires carriers, with biomaterials being a pivotal player. In this review, we discuss the role of biomaterials in realizing the local and systemic delivery of biomolecules to the bone tissue. The versatility of biomaterials enables design of carriers with the desired loading efficiency, release profile, and on-demand delivery. Besides local administration, systemic administration of drugs is necessary to combat diseases like osteoporosis, warranting bone-targeting drug delivery systems. Thus, chemical moieties with the affinity towards bone extracellular matrix components like apatite minerals have been widely utilized to create bone-targeting carriers with better biodistribution, which cannot be achieved by the drugs alone. Bone-targeting carriers combined with the desired drugs or bioactive agents have been extensively investigated to enhance bone healing while minimizing off-target effects. Herein, these advancements in the field have been systematically reviewed. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Drug delivery is imperative when surgical interventions are not sufficient to address various bone diseases/defects. Biomaterial-assisted delivery systems have been designed to provide drugs with the desired loading efficiency, sustained release, and on-demand delivery to enhance bone healing. By surveying recent advances in the field, this review outlines the design of biomaterials as carriers for the local and systemic delivery of bioactive agents to the bone tissue. Particularly, biomaterials that bear chemical moieties with affinity to bone are attractive, as they can present the desired bioactive agents to the bone tissue efficiently and thus enhance the drug efficacy for bone repair.

Functionally graded multilayer scaffolds for in vivo osteochondral tissue engineering.

Osteochondral tissue repair remains a significant challenge in orthopedic surgery. Tissue engineering of osteochondral tissue has transpired as a potential therapeutic solution as it can effectively regenerate bone, cartilage, and the bone-cartilage interface. While advancements in scaffold fabrication and stem cell engineering have made significant progress towards the engineering of composite tissues, such as osteochondral tissue, new approaches are required to improve the outcome of such strategies. Herein, we discuss the use of a single-unit trilayer scaffold with depth-varying pore architecture and mineral environment to engineer osteochondral tissues in vivo. The trilayer scaffold includes a biomineralized bottom layer mimicking the calcium phosphate (CaP)-rich bone microenvironment, a cryogel middle layer with anisotropic pore architecture, and a hydrogel top layer. The mineralized bottom layer was designed to support bone formation, while the macroporous middle layer and hydrogel top layer were designed to support cartilage tissue formation. The bottom layer was kept acellular and the top two layers were loaded with cells prior to implantation. When implanted in vivo, these trilayer scaffolds resulted in the formation of osteochondral tissue with a lubricin-rich cartilage surface. The osteochondral tissue formation was a result of continuous differentiation of the transplanted cells to form cartilage tissue and recruitment of endogenous cells through the mineralized bottom layer to form bone tissue. Our results suggest that integrating exogenous cell-based cartilage tissue engineering along with scaffold-driven in situ bone tissue engineering could be a powerful approach to engineer analogs of osteochondral tissue. In addition to offering new therapeutic opportunities, such approaches and systems could also advance our fundamental understanding of osteochondral tissue regeneration and repair. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: In this work, we describe the use of a single-unit trilayer scaffold with depth-varying pore architecture and mineral environment to engineer osteochondral tissues in vivo. The trilayer scaffold was designed to support continued differentiation of the donor cells to form cartilage tissue while supporting bone formation through recruitment of endogenous cells. When implanted in vivo, these trilayer scaffolds partially loaded with cells resulted in the formation of osteochondral tissue with a lubricin-rich cartilage surface. Approaches such as the one presented here that integrates ex vivo tissue engineering along with endogenous cell-mediated tissue engineering can have a significant impact in tissue engineering composite tissues with diverse cell populations and functionality.

Reproducibly creating hierarchical 3D carbon to study the effect of Si surface functionalization on the oxygen reduction reaction.

We report a new method to reproducibly fabricate functional 3D carbon structures directly on a current collector, e.g. stainless steel. The 3D carbon platform is formed by direct growth of upright arrays of carbon nanofiber bundles on a roughened surface of stainless steel via the seed-assisted approach. Each bundle consists of about 30 individual carbon nanofibers with a diameter of 18 nm on average. We have found that this new platform offers adequate structural integrity. As a result, no reduction of the surface area during downstream chemical functionalization was observed. With a fixed and reproducible 3D structure, the effect of the chemistry of the grafted species on the oxygen reduction reaction has been systematically investigated. This investigation reveals for the first time that non-conductive Si with an appropriate electronic structure distorts the carbon electronic structure and consequently enhances ORR electrocatalysis. The strong interface provides excellent electron connectivity according to electrochemical analysis. This highly reproducible and stable 3D platform can serve as a stepping-stone for the investigation of the effect of carbon surface functionalization on electrochemical reactions in general.

Optothermally responsive nanocomposite generating mechanical forces for cells enabled by few-walled carbon nanotubes.

We have designed and fabricated a nanocomposite substrate that can deliver spatially and temporally defined mechanical forces onto cells. This nanocomposite substrate comprises a 1.5-mm-thick near-infrared (NIR) mechanoresponsive bottom layer of few-walled carbon nanotubes (FWCNTs) that are uniformly distributed and covalently connected to thermally responsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) and an approximately 0.15-mm-thick cell-seeding top layer of collagen-functionalized poly(acrylic acid)-co-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) that interpenetrates into the bottom layer. Covalent coupling of all the components and uniform distribution of FWCNTs lead to a large local mechanoresponse. As an example, 50% change in strain at the point of irradiation on the order of 0.05 Hz can be produced reversibly under NIR stimulation with 0.02 wt % FWCNTs. We have further demonstrated that the mechanical strain imposed by NIR stimulation can be transmitted onto cells. Human fetal hepatocytes change shape with no sign of detrimental effect on cell viability. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a nanocomposite platform that can generate fast and controlled mechanical force to actuate cells. Since the amplitude, location, and timing of force can be controlled remotely with NIR, the nanocomposite substrate offers the potential to provide accurately designed force sequences for tissue engineering.