Search Results (843)

Family empowerment is a key component of effective family-centered practices in healthcare, mental health, and educational services. The Family Empowerment Scale (FES) is the most commonly used instrument to evaluate empowerment in families raising children with emotional, behavioral, or developmental disorders. Despite its importance, the FES for diverse populations, especially Latinx parents, has rarely been evaluated using innovative psychometric approaches. In this study, we evaluated key dimensions and psychometric evidence of the Family Empowerment Scale (FES) for 96 Latinx parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in the United States using an exploratory graph analysis (EGA). The EGA identified a five-dimensional structure, and EGA models outperformed the original CFA 3-factor models for both parents of children with autism and other disabilities. This study identified distinct, meaningful dimensions of empowerment that reflect both shared and unique empowerment experiences across two Latinx parent groups. These insights can inform the design of culturally responsive interventions, instruments, and policies that more precisely capture and boost empowerment in Latinx families. This study contributes to closing a gap in the literature by elevating the voices and experiences of Latinx families by laying the groundwork for more equitable support systems in special education and disability services. Full article

Childhood obesity is a growing global health concern, with established links to physical activity, nutrition, and, increasingly, to prenatal and perinatal factors. Emerging evidence highlights the significant role of maternal conditions such as obesity, comorbidities, nutrition, and environmental exposures in predisposing offspring to long-term metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. The “Developmental Origins of Health and Disease” (DOHaD) paradigm provides a framework for understanding how early life environmental exposures, particularly during the periconceptional, fetal, and neonatal periods, can program future health outcomes through epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetic modifications alter gene expression without changing the DNA sequence and are increasingly recognized as key mediators in the development of obesity. This narrative review summarizes current findings on the early determinants of childhood obesity, emphasizing the molecular and epigenetic pathways involved. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across multiple databases and international sources, focusing on recent studies from the past decade. Both human and animal research were included to provide a broad perspective. This review aims to consolidate recent insights into early life influences on obesity, underscoring the need for preventive strategies starting as early as the preconception period. Full article

Background: Understanding the origin and natural organization of early infant vocalizations is important for predicting communication and language abilities in later years. The very frequent production of speech-like vocalizations (hereafter “protophones”), occurring largely independently of interaction, is part of this developmental process. Objectives: This study aims to investigate the gap durations (time intervals) between protophones, comparing typically developing (TD) infants and infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a naturalistic setting where endogenous protophones occur frequently. Additionally, we explore potential age-related variations and sex differences in gap durations. Methods: We analyzed ~1500 five min recording segments from longitudinal all-day home recordings of 147 infants (103 TD infants and 44 autistic infants) during their first year of life. The data included over 90,000 infant protophones. Human coding was employed to ensure maximally accurate timing data. This method included the human judgment of gap durations specified based on time-domain and spectrographic displays. Results and Conclusions: Short gap durations occurred between protophones produced by infants, with a mode between 301 and 400 ms, roughly the length of an infant syllable, across all diagnoses, sex, and age groups. However, we found significant differences in the gap duration distributions between ASD and TD groups when infant-directed speech (IDS) was relatively frequent, as well as across age groups and sexes. The Generalized Linear Modeling (GLM) results confirmed these findings and revealed longer gap durations associated with higher IDS, female sex, older age, and TD diagnosis. Age-related differences and sex differences were highly significant for both diagnosis groups. Full article

Cannabis sativa L. is a versatile plant with significant medicinal, industrial, and recreational applications. Its therapeutic potential is attributed to cannabinoids like THC and CBD, whose production is influenced by environmental factors, such as radiation, temperature, and humidity. Radiation, for instance, is essential for photosynthetic processes, acting as both a primary energy source and a regulator of plant growth and development. This review covers key factors affecting C. sativa cultivation, including photoperiod, light spectrum, cultivation methods, environmental controls, and plant growth regulators. It highlights how these elements influence flowering, biomass, and cannabinoid production across different growing systems, offering insights for optimizing both medicinal and industrial cannabis cultivation. Studies indicate that photoperiod sensitivity varies among cultivars, with some achieving optimal flowering and cannabinoid production under extended light periods rather than the traditional 12/12 h cycle. Light spectrum adjustments, especially red, far-red, and blue wavelengths, significantly impact photosynthesis, plant morphology, and secondary metabolite accumulation. Advances in LED technology allow precise spectral control, enhancing energy efficiency and cannabinoid profiles compared to conventional lighting. The photoperiod plays a vital role in the cultivation of C. sativa spp., directly impacting the plant’s developmental cycle, biomass production, and the concentration of cannabinoids and terpenes. The response to photoperiod varies among different cannabis cultivars, as demonstrated in studies comparing cultivars of diverse genetic origins. On the other hand, indoor or in vitro cultivation may serve as an excellent alternative for plant breeding programs in C. sativa, given the substantial inter-cultivar variability that hinders the fixation of desirable traits. Full article

Aberrant DNA methylation has been shown to be a fingerprint characteristic in human colorectal tumors. In this study, we hypothesize that investigating global DNA methylation could offer potential candidates for clinical application in CRC. The epigenome-wide association analysis was conducted in both the tumor area (N = 27) and the adjacent tumor-free (NAT) area (N = 15). We found 78,935 differentially methylated CpG sites (DMCs) (FDR < 0.05), 42,888 hypomethylated and 36,047 hypermethylation showing overall hypomethylation. Gene ontology and KEGG analysis of differentially methylated genes showed significant enrichment in developmental genes, as well as in genes involved in metabolic processes and the cell cycle, such as the TFGβ and cAMP signaling pathways. Through filtered analysis, we identified TNXB as the most epigenetically dysregulated gene, hypomethylated and downregulated in CRC (both with p < 0.001) and associated with poor overall survival. In the functional analysis, TNXB was epigenetically regulated in a dose-dependent manner, suggesting a potential role in CRC. The epigenetic dysregulation and functional role of TNXB in CRC could have clinical implications, serving as indicators of malignant potential, with adverse effects associated with disease origin and progression in CRC. Full article

As sessile organisms, plants adapt to environmental challenges through flexible developmental and physiological programs. Hormones play a central role in this adaptability, integrating environmental signals into coordinated responses that regulate growth and stress tolerance. Comparative studies across photosynthetic lineages reveal that several core hormone functions are remarkably conserved, despite major evolutionary changes in hormone perception, biosynthesis, metabolism, and transport. This conservation suggests that plant hormones have played a pivotal evolutionary role—not only preserving essential biological functions but also enabling increased complexity in plant form and function. A similar dual role is observed in evolutionary endocrinology in animals, where hormones contribute to the emergence and regulation of complex traits. We propose that hormones such as cytokinins, auxins, brassinosteroids, strigolactones, and abscisic acid originated as metabolic derivatives closely tied to core physiological functions essential for survival and reproduction, including reproductive success, nutrient sensing, and dehydration tolerance. Over time, these compounds were progressively integrated into increasingly sophisticated regulatory networks, where they now serve as central coordinators and key targets of evolutionary selection. This model advances our understanding of hormone evolution by providing a structured framework to interpret the persistence, specialization, and integration of plant hormones across evolutionary timescales. Full article

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a key extracellular matrix component of vertebrates, where it mediates cell adhesion, immune regulation, and tissue remodeling through its interaction with specific receptors. Although HA has been detected in a few invertebrate species, the lack of fundamental components of the molecular HA pathway poses relevant objections about its functional role in these species. Mining genomic and transcriptomic data, we considered the conservation of the gene locus encoding for the extracellular link protein (XLINK) in marine mussels as well as its expression patterns. Structural and phylogenetic analyses were undertaken to evaluate possible similarities with vertebrate orthologs and to infer the origin of this gene in invertebrates. Biochemical analysis was used to quantify HA in tissues of Mytilus galloprovincialis. As a result, we confirm that the mussel can produce HA (up to 1.02 ng/mg in mantle) and that its genome encodes two XLINK gene loci. These loci are conserved in Mytilidae species and show a complex evolutionary path. Mussel XLINK genes appeared to be expressed during developmental stages in three mussel species, ranking in the top 100 expressed genes in M. trossulus at 17 h post-fertilization. In conclusion, the presence of HA and an active gene with the potential to bind HA suggests that mussels have the potential to synthesize and use HA and are among the few invertebrates encoding this gene. Full article

Famed lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) argued strongly for an early-life public health approach to crime prevention, one that focused on education, poverty reduction, and equity of resources. Due to his defense of marginalized persons and his positions that were often at odds with his legal colleagues and public opinion, he was known as the Big Minority Man. He argued that the assumption of free will—humans as free moral agents—justifies systems of inequity, retributive punishment, and “unadulterated brutality.” Here, the authors revisit Darrow’s views and expand upon them via contemporary research. We examine increasingly louder argumentation—from scholars across multiple disciplines—contending that prescientific notions of willpower, free will, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility, are contributing to social harms. We draw from biopsychosocial perspectives and recent scientific consensus papers calling for the dismantling of folk psychology ideas of willpower and blameworthiness in obesity. We scrutinize how the status quo of the legal system is justified and argue that outdated notions of ‘moral fiber’ need to be addressed at the root. The authors examine recent arguments for one of Darrow’s ideas—a public health quarantine model of public safety and carceral care that considers the ‘causes of the causes’ and risk assessments through a public health lens. In our view, public health needs to vigorously scrutinize the prescientific “normative” underpinnings of the criminal justice system. Full article

Background/Objectives: Motor creativity is a vital component of preschoolers’ growth and development. However, its underlying determinants remain largely underexplored. This study investigates the interrelationship among playful behavior, social profile, and motor creativity in preschool children, emphasizing its implications for holistic health and development. Methods: A total of 200 children and their kindergarten teachers from Greece participated in the study. The Children’s Playfulness Scale (CPS) was employed to assess the children’s playfulness, while a sociometric test was used to evaluate their social standing within peer groups. Motor creativity was measured through TCAM, a performance-based test focusing on fluency, imagination, and originality. Results: The findings revealed that the dimensions of playful behavior, particularly motor and social playfulness, significantly and positively influenced motor creativity, a core component of physical and mental health in early childhood. Conversely, certain aspects of social behavior had a negative association with imaginative capacities. Conclusions: The study underscores the critical role of movement-based playful activities in fostering children’s physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health. It highlights the need for educators to design developmentally appropriate motor play activities that cultivate creativity and social integration, promoting a balanced and health-oriented early education framework. The results contribute to educational policy and practice by reinforcing the importance of structured motor play in supporting preschoolers’ well-being and comprehensive development. Full article

Coach development is typically considered to consist of a complex mix of experiences, including formal, informal and non-formal. Elements of the early research in this area led to the production of a model of long-term coach development (LTCD) over a decade ago, consisting of three core categories of experience: athletic, coaching and education, later published in a number of significant coaching documents. Whilst this model has clearly been of benefit in providing a framework to consider long-term coach development, it can also be considered to have its limitations in focusing on a somewhat narrow coaching context (typically Olympic sports in North America) and lacking currency. This study therefore attempted to consider and update this model to a professional team sport context away from North America by investigating the life stories of head coaches in English rugby league. Data collection consisted of a novel life story approach, whilst analysis utilised elements of constructivist grounded theory. Though supporting elements of the original LTCD model, results here provide an additional category of experience occurring prior to athletic experience, childhood, consisting of a number of sub-themes, alongside several other novel elements with implications for both research and practice. This work points towards a need to further understand coaches’ lifelong developmental journeys across a range of sports and contexts. Full article

Glycoside hydrolase family 1 (GH1) enzymes are essential for plant cell wall digestion and the detoxification of plant metabolites in insects, yet their evolutionary history in Lepidoptera remains unresolved. This study systematically identified GH1 genes across 61 Lepidopteran genomes and analyzed their evolutionary dynamics. In addition, the expression profiles of GH1 genes in the silkworm (Bombyx mori) across various developmental stages and tissues were related to their evolutionary histories. A total of 996 GH1 genes were annotated and classified into 11 groups, with each showing distinct species diversity. Gene duplication and loss analysis revealed frequent duplications and losses during Lepidoptera evolution; these duplications primarily originated through tandem and dispersed duplications and were located in syntenic regions. Transcriptomic analysis of the silkworm revealed that the groups and duplications of GH1 genes were correlated to their expression patterns, with high expression in the larval midgut and fat body. These findings suggest that GH1 gene duplications and losses and expression have played a significant role in Lepidopteran adaptation to diverse host plants. Overall, this study provides comprehensive insights into the evolutionary trajectories of GH1 genes, highlighting their potential contribution to insect–plant interactions in Lepidoptera. Full article

Background/Objectives: Iron stores accrued in utero are critical for fetal and infant neurodevelopment. Low neonatal hemoglobin (Hb) may indicate inadequate iron capture and storage. Prior studies differ on whether and under what conditions maternal anemia predicts neonatal Hb; whether sex differences are present is unknown. Methods: Maternal and neonatal Hb and sociodemographic and health characteristics were abstracted from electronic medical records for biorepository participants at a tertiary academic medical center. Maternal anemia was defined as Hb < 11 g/dL in trimesters T1 and T3 and Hb < 10.5 g/dL in T2. Adjusted linear regression models were used to estimate associations of maternal anemia with neonatal Hb. Sex differences were evaluated with product terms and stratification. Results: In 228 participants with maternal Hb measured, the prevalence of prenatal (pre-delivery) and delivery anemia was 54% and 44%, respectively. Maternal race and ethnicity but no other sociodemographic characteristics were associated with maternal anemia. Neonatal hematology was available for 114 newborns < 7 days old (50%; 52% male). The median (IQR) neonatal Hb was 16.7 g/dL (14.9, 18.0) and did not differ by sex, but it was lower among infants of mothers with vs. without delivery anemia (15.9 vs. 17.1, p = 0.032) and those identifying as Black vs. Hispanic or other (16.0, 17.9, 17.0, respectively; p = 0.003). Independent associations of maternal anemia and race and ethnicity with neonatal Hb were stronger in males and attenuated to null in females. Conclusions: Maternal anemia was highly prevalent and associated sex-specifically with neonatal Hb independent of maternal race and ethnicity. Future studies to replicate these findings with a more comprehensive panel of iron biomarkers are needed. Functional consequences of greater susceptibility to risk factors for low neonatal Hb in male infants need to be further investigated. Full article

Cardiovascular–kidney–metabolic (CKM) syndrome underscores the interconnected biology of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, and metabolic disorders such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Although now recognized as a growing global health burden, accumulating preclinical evidence suggests that CKM syndrome may originate in early life—a concept rooted in the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) framework. Animal studies have greatly enhanced our comprehension of these mechanisms, emphasizing the promise of early interventions that focus on antioxidants and gut microbiota modulation to mitigate the development of CKM conditions. Resveratrol, a natural antioxidant and prebiotic, alongside short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), a postbiotic, have demonstrated the ability to modulate gut microbiota and oxidative stress in experimental models. Various resveratrol derivatives have also been engineered to improve bioavailability, though their effects remain largely confined to animal studies. This review synthesizes preclinical findings on the impact of perinatal oxidative stress and gut dysbiosis on CKM outcomes, critically examining the roles of resveratrol, SCFAs, and their derivatives in animal models. Finally, we highlight the significant translational gap between experimental research and clinical application, underscoring the need for human studies to validate these early-life intervention strategies. Full article

This article describes the design and implementation of a Specialized Mental Health Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program for clergy and theological students of all spiritual, religious, and cultural backgrounds. Addressing the need for mental health competencies in religious leaders and chaplains, this training equips participants with specialized skills in individual and group mental health spiritual assessment and spiritual care. Program participants become effective members of a multiprofessional team, gain knowledge of mental health philosophies of concordant and discordant spiritual orienting systems, and gain greater relational capacity. The Mental Health CPE Program includes traditional and novel CPE elements: (1) clinical practice, (2) group and individual supervision, (3) didactic presentations and journal clubs, (4) verbatim (Protocols of patient encounters) and case presentations, (5) group leadership training and practica, and (6) experience of faith reflections. This article provides insights into the origins of CPE, a description of the implementation in a free-standing psychiatric hospital, and observed developmental changes of program participants. We include graduates’ anecdotal feedback about their learning experience and its impact on their leadership in chaplaincy and in religious communities. Additionally, we report on areas for future development and further study of the effectiveness of Mental Health CPE. Full article

The aim of this study was to determine the intraspecific variability among 11 wild-growing populations of wormwood (Artemisia absinthium L.) originating from Central Europe and preserved in the Polish Genebank Collection. The populations were introduced into ex situ conditions, and assessed in terms of selected developmental and chemical traits (essential oil, phenolic acids, polyphenols, and tannins content). Developmental observations and harvest of raw materials were carried out in the second year of plant vegetation, at the beginning of flowering. The populations exhibited significant differences. The greatest variability was observed in the number of shoots per plant (38–51) and dry mass of herb per plant (0.83–1.60 kg). Essential oil (EO) content ranged from 0.75 to 1.69 g/100 g dry weight (DW). A total of 41 compounds were identified in the EOs, with oxygenated monoterpenes (such as sabinyl acetate, cis-chrysanthenol, chrysantenyl acetate, 1,8-cineole, α- and β-thujone) as dominants, showing considerable variation among populations. Based on the EO profiles, several chemotypes were distinguished, mainly (1) a pure sabinyl acetate chemotype; (2) mixed chemotypes with sabinyl acetate accompanied by β-myrcene, cis-chrysanthenol, chrysanthenyl acetate, or 1,8-cineole; and (3) a thujone chemotype. The total content of phenolic acids (expressed as caffeic acid equivalent), tannins, and polyphenols (as pyrogallol equivalent) varied significantly, too (0.37–0.50; 0.10–0.26; 0.58–0.79%, respectively). The results confirm a high level of intraspecific variability in both developmental and chemical traits of A. absinthium populations originating from Poland. This diversity may be valuable for future breeding programs and for the selection of populations with desired phytochemical profiles for medicinal, food, and agricultural applications. It is worth noting that the floristic diversity among populations indicates the habitat heterogeneity, ranging from natural or semi-natural (populations 1, 6) to more anthropogenically influenced ones (populations 2, 4, 5, 7–11). Full article