Understanding and Measuring Psychological Stress using Social Media

A body of literature has demonstrated that users' mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety, can be predicted from their social media language. There is still a gap in the scientific understanding of how psychological stress is expressed on social media. Stress is one of the primary underlying causes and correlates of chronic physical illnesses and mental health conditions. In this paper, we explore the language of psychological stress with a dataset of 601 social media users, who answered the Perceived Stress Scale questionnaire and also consented to share their Facebook and Twitter data. Firstly, we find that stressed users post about exhaustion, losing control, increased self-focus and physical pain as compared to posts about breakfast, family-time, and travel by users who are not stressed. Secondly, we find that Facebook language is more predictive of stress than Twitter language. Thirdly, we demonstrate how the language based models thus developed can be adapted and be scaled to measure county-level trends. Since county-level language is easily available on Twitter using the Streaming API, we explore multiple domain adaptation algorithms to adapt user-level Facebook models to Twitter language. We find that domain-adapted and scaled social media-based measurements of stress outperform sociodemographic variables (age, gender, race, education, and income), against ground-truth survey-based stress measurements, both at the user- and the county-level in the U.S. Twitter language that scores higher in stress is also predictive of poorer health, less access to facilities and lower socioeconomic status in counties. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of using social media as a new tool for monitoring stress levels of both individuals and counties.Comment: Accepted for publication in the proceedings of ICWSM 201

Essential role of CFTR in PKA-dependent phosphorylation, alkalinization, and hyperpolarization during human dperm capacitation

Mammalian sperm require to spend a limited period of time in the female reproductive tract to become competent to fertilize in a process called capacitation. It is well established that HCO3 − is essential for capacitation because it activates the atypical soluble adenylate cyclase ADCY10 leading to cAMP production, and promotes alkalinization of cytoplasm, and membrane hyperpolarization. However, how HCO3 − is transported into the sperm is not well understood. There is evidence that CFTR activity is involved in the human sperm capacitation but how this channel is integrated in the complex signaling cascades associated with this process remains largely unknown. In the present work, we have analyzed the extent to which CFTR regulates different events in human sperm capacitation. We observed that inhibition of CFTR affects HCO3 −-entrance dependent events resulting in lower PKA activity. CFTR inhibition also affected cAMP/PKA-downstream events such as the increase in tyrosine phosphorylation, hyperactivated motility, and acrosome reaction. In addition, we demonstrated for the first time, that CFTR and PKA activity are essential for the regulation of intracellular pH, and membrane potential in human sperm. Addition of permeable cAMP partially recovered all the PKA-dependent events altered in the presence of inh-172 which is consistent with a role of CFTR upstream of PKA activation.Fil: Puga Molina, Lis del Carmen. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Pinto, Nicolás Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Torres Rodríguez, Paulina. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Romarowski, Ana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Vicens Sanchez, Alberto. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Visconti, Pablo E.. University of Massachussets; Estados UnidosFil: Darszon, Alberto. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Treviño, Claudia L.. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Buffone, Mariano Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; Argentin

Modeling Empathy and Distress in Reaction to News Stories

Computational detection and understanding of empathy is an important factor in advancing human-computer interaction. Yet to date, text-based empathy prediction has the following major limitations: It underestimates the psychological complexity of the phenomenon, adheres to a weak notion of ground truth where empathic states are ascribed by third parties, and lacks a shared corpus. In contrast, this contribution presents the first publicly available gold standard for empathy prediction. It is constructed using a novel annotation methodology which reliably captures empathy assessments by the writer of a statement using multi-item scales. This is also the first computational work distinguishing between multiple forms of empathy, empathic concern, and personal distress, as recognized throughout psychology. Finally, we present experimental results for three different predictive models, of which a CNN performs the best.Comment: To appear at EMNLP 201

Evidence of the presence of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV in human sperm and its involvement in motility regulation

The mechanisms involved in the regulation of mammalian sperm motility are not well understood. Calcium ions (Ca(2+)) have been suggested to play a key role in the maintenance of motility; nevertheless, how Ca(2+) modulates this process has not yet been completely characterized. Ca(2+) can bind to calmodulin and this complex regulates the activity of multiple enzymes, including Ca(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinases (CaM kinases). Results from this study confirmed that the presence of Ca(2+) in the incubation medium is essential for maintaining human sperm motility. The involvement of CaM kinases in Ca(2+) regulation of human sperm motility was evaluated using specific inhibitors (KN62 and KN93) or their inactive analogues (KN04 and KN92 respectively). Sperm incubation in the presence of KN62 or KN93 led to a progressive decrease in the percentage of motile cells; in particular, incubation with KN62 also reduced sperm motility parameters. These inhibitors did not alter sperm viability, protein tyrosine phosphorylation or the follicular fluid-induced acrosome reaction; however, KN62 decreased the total amount of ATP in human sperm. Immunological studies showed that Ca(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IV (CaMKIV) is present and localizes to the human sperm flagellum. Moreover, CaMKIV activity increases during capacitation and is inhibited in the presence of KN62. This report is the first to demonstrate the presence of CaMKIV in mammalian sperm and suggests the involvement of this kinase in the regulation of human sperm motility.Fil: Marin Briggiler, Clara Isabel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Jha, Kula N.. University of Virginia; Estados UnidosFil: Chertihin, Olga. University of Virginia; Estados UnidosFil: Buffone, Mariano Gabriel. Laboratorio de Estudios en Reproducción; ArgentinaFil: Herr, John C,. University of Virginia; Estados UnidosFil: Vazquez, Monica Hebe. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: Visconti, Pablo E.. University of Massachussets; Estados Unido

Analysis of CAPZA3 localization reveals temporally discrete events during the acrosome reaction

In mammals, the starting point of development is the fusion between sperm and egg. It is well established that sperm fuse with the egg through the equatorial/post-acrosomal region. Apart from this observation and the requirement of two proteins (CD9 in the egg and IZUMO1 in the sperm) very little is known about this fundamental process. Actin polymerization correlates with sperm capacitation in different mammalian species and it has been proposed that F-actin breakdown is needed during the acrosome reaction. Recently, we have presented evidence that actin polymerization inhibitors block the movement of IZUMO1 that accompany the acrosome reaction. These results suggest that actin dynamics play a role in the observed changes in IZUMO1 localization. This finding is significant because IZUMO1 localization in acrosome-intact sperm is not compatible with the known location of the initiation of the fusion between the sperm and the egg. To further understand the actin-mediated changes in protein localization during the acrosome reaction, the distribution of the sperm- specific plus-end actin capping protein CAPZA3 was analyzed. Like IZUMO1, CAPZA3 shows a dynamic pattern of localization; however, these movements follow a different temporal pattern than the changes observed with IZUMO1. In addition, the actin polymerization inhibitor latrunculin A was unable to alter CAPZA3 movement.Fil: Sosnik, Julian. University Of Massachussets; Estados UnidosFil: Buffone, Mariano Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Visconti, Pablo E.. University Of Massachussets; Estados Unido

El sistema renal hídrico: una herramienta para la recuperación de humedales pampeanos

Actualmente los humedales son un centro de atención internacional debido a la importancia que se les reconoce como fuente de diversidad biológica y cultural, sustento de masas de agua de calidad, capacidad de purificación de aguas negras y grises, y mantenimiento de sistemas productivos; entre otras funciones. Es por eso que la protección de los mismos figura en la agenda de diversos organismos, gobiernos y referentes de relevancia internacional. El carácter de espontánea con que se ha producido la expansión Urbana e industrial en las últimas décadas, ejerce múltiples presiones sobre los recursos hídricos y en particular sobre los humedales afectando su calidad, cantidad y el acceso a ellos por parte de la población. Este es el caso de las laguna pampeanas, poco profundas, que no estratifican térmicamente, con tiempos de permanencia del agua y salinidad altamente variables, naturalmente meso-eutróficos, y actualmente bajo estrés ambiental manifiesto lo cual incrementa aún más sus contenidos de nutrientes, contaminantes como metales y pesticidas y sustenta la proliferación de florecimientos cianobacterianos. La eutrofización de cuerpos de agua constituye un problema ambiental persistente, caracterizado por una elevada carga de nutrientes, turbidez del agua, presencia de algas tóxicas, mortandad de pece por anoxias, enfermedades de origen hídrico y pérdida de diversidad biológica en los ecosistemas acuáticos (Carpenter et al. 1999). Esta situación ambiental afecta a las lagunas pampeanas, entre otros cuerpos de agua, y están relacionados con descargas puntuales no tratadas provenientes de áreas urbanas y con fuentes difusas de descargas que no están reguladas provenientes de diversas actividades industriales (Quiros, 2000). Una de las consecuencias de la eutrofización son los florecimientos algales nocivos (FAN), dominados fundamentalmente por distintas especies de cianobacterias, y favorecidos por el cambio climático (Codd y col., 1989; Paerl y Huisman, 2008). Otra de las consecuencias de los impactos antrópicos, es la presencia de metales pesados en estos cuerpos de agua. Sus efectos tóxicos sobre la biota y su dispersión en el ambiente dependen de su especiación, la cual esta a su vez relacionada con parámetros fisicoquímicos de los cuerpos de agua como pH y calidad y concentración de materia orgánica. En este contexto, la presencia de metales pesados en el agua puede generar bioacumulación, fenómeno que afecta a los organismos de todo el ecosistema y plantea consecuencias perjudiciales para la salud de todas las formas de vida

Heads or tails? Structural events and molecular mechanisms that promote mammalian sperm acrosomal exocytosis and motility

Sperm structure has evolved to be very compact and compartmentalized to enable the motor (the flagellum) to transport the nuclear cargo (the head) to the egg. Furthermore, sperm do not exhibit progressive motility and are not capable of undergoing acrosomal exocytosis immediately following their release into the lumen of the seminiferous tubules, the site of spermatogenesis in the testis. These cells require maturation in the epididymis and female reproductive tract before they become competent for fertilization. Here we review aspects of the structural and molecular mechanisms that promote forward motility, hyperactivated motility, and acrosomal exocytosis. As a result, we favor a model articulated by others that the flagellum senses external signals and communicates with the head by second messengers to affect sperm functions such as acrosomal exocytosis. We hope this conceptual framework will serve to stimulate thinking and experimental investigations concerning the various steps of activating a sperm from a quiescent state to a gamete that is fully competent and committed to fertilization. The three themes of compartmentalization, competence, and commitment are key to an understanding of the molecular mechanisms of sperm activation. Comprehending these processes will have a considerable impact on the management of fertility problems, the development of contraceptive methods, and, potentially, elucidation of analogous processes in other cell systems.Fil: Buffone, Mariano Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); Argentina. University of Pennsylvania; Estados UnidosFil: Ijiri, Takashi W.. University of Pennsylvania; Estados UnidosFil: Cao, Wenlei. University of Pennsylvania; Estados UnidosFil: Merdiushev, Tanya. University of Pennsylvania; Estados UnidosFil: Aghajanian, Haig K.. University of Pennsylvania; Estados UnidosFil: Gerton, George L.. University of Pennsylvania; Estados Unido

AMH sérico pode predizer o risco de cancelamento de ciclo e as chances de boa resposta ovariana, independentemente da idade ou FSH

In the recent years, anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) has been shown to represent a reliable marker of the ovarian reserve. In this study, we evaluate the risk of cycle cancellation and the chances of good ovarian response to controlled hyperstimulation and of pregnancy according to serum AMH measured prior to assisted reproduction procedures in females undergoing intracytoplasmic sperm injection. An analytic observational study included females undergoing ICSI between in a single center. Subgroup analyses were performed by grouping patients according to FSH levels or to their age. The risk of cycle cancellation decreased from 64% in patients with serum AMH ≤3 pmol/L (0.42 ng/mL) to 21% with AMH ≥15 pmol/L (2.10 ng/mL). The rate of good response increased from almost null in patients with AMH ≤3 pmol/L to 61% in those with AMH ≥15 pmol/L. Pregnancy rate increased moderately, but significantly, from 31% with AMH ≤3 pmol/L to 35% with AMH ≥15 pmol/L. Here we provide estimates of those outcomes according to the values of serum AMH, in general and in subgroups according to patient’s age or serum FSH, which are helpful for the clinician and the couple in their decision making about starting an ART treatment.Nos últimos anos, o hormonio anti-mülleriano (AMH) tem sido demonstrado como um marcador confiável da reserva ovariana. Neste estudo, avaliamos o risco de cancelamento do ciclo e as chances de boa resposta ovariana à hiperestimulação controlada e de gravidez, de acordo com o HAM no soro, medido antes de procedimentos de reprodução assistida em mulheres submetidas à injeção intracitoplasmática de espermatozóides. Um estudo analítico observacional incluiu mulheres submetidas a ICSI em um único centro. As análises dos subgrupos foram realizadas em pacientes agrupadas de acordo com os níveis de FSH ou para a sua idade. O risco de cancelamento do ciclo diminuiu de 64% em doentes com níveis séricos de HAM ≤% 3 pmol / L (0,42 ng / mL) a 21% com HAM ≥ 15 pmol / L (2,10 ng / mL). A taxa deboa resposta aumentou de quase nula em pacientes com HAM ≤ 3 pmol / L a 61% naqueles com AMH ≥ 15 pmol / L. A taxa de gravidez aumentou moderada, mas significativamente, de 31%, com HAM ≤ 3 pmol / L até 35% com HAM ≥ 15 pmol / L. Aqui fornecemos estimativas desses resultados de acordo com os valores de HAM no soro, em geral e em subgrupos de acordo com a idade do paciente ou de FSH, que são úteis para o clínico e para o casal em sua tomada de decisão sobre como iniciar um tratamento de RA.Fil: Calamera, Patricio. Centro Médico Seremas; ArgentinaFil: Buffone, Mariano Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Fundación de Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental; ArgentinaFil: de Vincentiis, Sabrina. Centro Médico Seremas; ArgentinaFil: Rey, Rodolfo Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Centro de Investigaciones Endocrinológicas; ArgentinaFil: Brugo Olmedo, Santiago. Centro Médico Seremas; Argentin

Heterogeneous distribution of histone methylation in mature human sperm

Purpose To analyze the presence of various histone modifications in ejaculated human spermatozoa Methods In this prospective study, seminal ejaculates from 39 normozoospermic individuals were evaluated for semen analysis and the presence of histone modifications in isolated nuclei. Results We observed heterogeneous presence of histone methylation in normal mature human sperm. We observed that 12 to 30 % of the nuclei of normal sperm contain a heterogeneous distribution of the marks H3K4Me1, H3K9Me2, H3K4Me3, H3K79Me2, and H3K36Me3. Moreover, the presence of these marks is higher in the poor motile fraction of the ejaculate, which is associated with poor morphology and functional quality. In contrast, we did not observe histone acetylation (H3K4Ac and H4K5Ac) in normal or abnormal mature human sperm Conclusions Defects in the process of spermatogenesis may alter the correct epigenetic programing in mature sperm. Further studies are required to evaluate the impact of these findings in human infertilityFil: la Spina, Florenza Antonella. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Romanato, Marina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Brugo Olmedo, Santiago. Centro Médico Seremas; ArgentinaFil: de Vicentiis, Sabrina. Centro Médico Seremas; ArgentinaFil: Julianelli, Vanina Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); ArgentinaFil: Rivera, Rocío M.. University Of Missouri; Estados UnidosFil: Buffone, Mariano Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); Argentin