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LncRNA PVT1 (plasmacytoma variant translocation 1) has become a staple of the lncRNA profile in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Common dysregulation in renal tumors outlines the essential role of PVT1 in the development of RCC. ALK inhibitor cancer There is already a plethora of publications trying to uncover the cellular mechanisms of PVT1-mediated regulation and its potential exploitation in management of RCC. In this review, we summarize the literature focused on PVT1 in RCC and aim to synthesize the current knowledge on its role in the cells of the kidney. Further, we provide an overview of the lncRNA profiling studies that have identified a more or less significant association of PVT1 with the clinical behavior of RCC. Based on our search, we analyzed the 17 scientific papers discussed in this review that provide robust support for the indispensable role of PVT1 in RCC development and future personalized therapy.Head Start is a nationwide developmental program for low-income families. This study aimed to investigate the association between the Head Start program and children’s BMI status, as well as their quality of life with respect to socioecological obesogenic factors. This cross-sectional study employed the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort (ECLS-K) in which the data were collected in 2007 and analyzed in 2019. Propensity-score matching analysis was performed to examine the association between the Head Start program and children’s BMI status, as well as the quality of life, controlling for socioecological obesogenic factors. A total of 3753 children (representing 1,284,209 at the population level) were recruited in this study (mean age 13.69 years; girls 49.42%). In the final matched model, the program did not have a statistically significant effect on children’s obesity. Fewer African American children participated in school-sponsored activities, perceived themselves as overweight, lived in a household with fewer family members, had less strict TV regulations, and were more likely to be overweight than their counterparts. Outcomes suggest that multiple dimensions of sociological obesogenic factors including individual, parental, familial, and community support factors affect the weight of children from low-income families and should be considered when establishing behavioral and policy interventions to thwart the childhood obesity epidemic.Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease with the pathological hallmark of Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites composed of α-synuclein. The SNP rs591323 is one of the risk loci located near the FGF20 gene that has been implicated in PD. The variation of FGF20 in the 3′ untranslated region was shown to increase α-synuclein expression. We examined the association of rs591323 with the risk of PD in a Taiwanese population and conducted a meta-analysis, including our study and two other studies from China, to further confirm the role of this SNP in Taiwanese/Chinese populations. A total of 586 patients with PD and 586 health controls (HCs) were included in our study. We found that the minor allele (A) and the AA + GA genotype under the dominant model are significantly less frequent in PD than in controls. The meta-analysis consisted of 1950 patients with PD and 2073 healthy controls from three studies. There was significant association between rs591323 and the risk of PD in the additive (Z = -3.96; p less then 0.0001) and the dominant models (Z = -4.01; p less then 0.0001). Our study results and the meta-analysis support the possible protective role of the rs591323 A allele in PD in Taiwanese/Chinese populations.The most important first step in the management and remediation of contaminated groundwater aquifers is unknown contaminant source characterization. Often, the hydrogeological field data available for accurate source characterization are very sparse. In addition, hydrogeological and geochemical parameter estimates and field measurements are uncertain. Particularly in complex contaminated sites such as abandoned mine sites, the geochemical processes are very complex and identifying the sources of contamination in terms of location, magnitude, and duration, and determination of the pathways of pollution become very difficult. The reactive nature of the contaminant species makes the geochemical transport process very difficult to model and predict. Additionally, the source identification inverse problem is often non-unique and ill posed. This study is about developing and demonstrating a source characterization methodology for a complex contaminated aquifer with multiple reactive species. This study presents linked simulation optimization-based methodologies for characterization of unknown groundwater pollution source characteristics, i.e., location, magnitude and duration or timing. Optimization models are solved using an adaptive simulated annealing (ASA) optimization algorithm. The performance of the developed methodology is evaluated for different complex scenarios of groundwater pollution such as distributed mine waste dumps with reactive chemical species. The method is also applied to a real-life contaminated aquifer to demonstrate the potential applicability and optimal characterization results. The illustrative example site is a mine site in Northern Australia that is no longer active.Ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC) is a rare but chemorefractory tumor. About 50% of all OCCC patients have inactivating mutations of ARID1A, a member of the SWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling complex. Members of the SWI/SNF remodeling have emerged as regulators of the energetic metabolism of mammalian cells; however, the role of ARID1A as a modulator of the mitochondrial metabolism in OCCCs is yet to be defined. Here, we show that ARID1A loss results in increased mitochondrial metabolism and renders ARID1A-mutated cells increasingly and selectively dependent on it. The increase in mitochondrial activity following ARID1A loss is associated with increase in c-Myc expression and increased mitochondrial number and reduction of their size consistent with a higher mitochondrial cristae/outer membrane ratio. Significantly, preclinical testing of the complex I mitochondrial inhibitor IACS-010759 showed it extends overall survival in a preclinical model of ARID1A-mutated OCCC. These findings provide for the targeting mitochondrial activity in ARID1A-mutated OCCCs.