The quality of "development talk"

PROBLEM: Kunskap om vad utbildning om utvecklingssamtalet ger för effekter är något som vi anser saknas i den vetenskapliga världen och det är detta vi vill bidra med i denna uppsats. SYFTE: Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva vad ökade utbildningsinsatser till medarbetare kan få för effekter på kvalitén i utvecklingssamtalen. METOD: Då vi arbetar utifrån ett tolkande och beskrivande perspektiv kommer en kvalitativ undersökning att behandlas. Vi är intresserade av att studera indikationer på samband mellan olika begrepp och eftersom inga statistiska samband skall beskrivas anser vi att denna form av studie bör genomföras. Vi ska endast kontakta en organisation vilket gör att vi anser att intervjuer som undersökningsmetod är det mest relevanta att använda. Valet av att undersöka medarbetarna i en organisation föll sig naturligt utifrån vår problemdiskussion. SLUTSATS: En avgörande faktor för att kunna få ut alla önskade effekter av utvecklingssamtalet är att alla är medvetna om syftet med att ha samtalet. Våra slutsatser visar även på att om medarbetarna får utbildning om samtalet leder det till ökat eget ansvar och engagemang

The quality of "development talk"

PROBLEM: Kunskap om vad utbildning om utvecklingssamtalet ger för effekter är något som vi anser saknas i den vetenskapliga världen och det är detta vi vill bidra med i denna uppsats. SYFTE: Syftet med denna uppsats är att beskriva vad ökade utbildningsinsatser till medarbetare kan få för effekter på kvalitén i utvecklingssamtalen. METOD: Då vi arbetar utifrån ett tolkande och beskrivande perspektiv kommer en kvalitativ undersökning att behandlas. Vi är intresserade av att studera indikationer på samband mellan olika begrepp och eftersom inga statistiska samband skall beskrivas anser vi att denna form av studie bör genomföras. Vi ska endast kontakta en organisation vilket gör att vi anser att intervjuer som undersökningsmetod är det mest relevanta att använda. Valet av att undersöka medarbetarna i en organisation föll sig naturligt utifrån vår problemdiskussion. SLUTSATS: En avgörande faktor för att kunna få ut alla önskade effekter av utvecklingssamtalet är att alla är medvetna om syftet med att ha samtalet. Våra slutsatser visar även på att om medarbetarna får utbildning om samtalet leder det till ökat eget ansvar och engagemang

Physical activity and survival following breast cancer

INTRODUCTION:Physical activity (PA) leads to improved survival in women following the diagnosis of breast cancer, but it is less clear whether PA has equally positive effects regardless of age at diagnosis. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the association between post-diagnosis PA and survival in women aged below or over 55 years at diagnosis.METHODS:From a prospective population-based cohort of Swedish women, we included 847 women, aged 34-84 years, who were diagnosed with breast cancer from 1992 to 2012. A PA score was calculated based on three different questions regarding self-reported PA. Cox proportional hazard model was used to estimate the association between PA and mortality.RESULTS:A significant association between PA score and all-cause mortality was observed, in a dose-response manner (ptrend = 0.01). The mortality was clearly lower in the most active compared to the least active group (hazard ratio 0.29, 95% confidence intervals 0.09-0.90). A subgroup analysis showed that the improved survival was only seen in women over 55 years of age at diagnosis.CONCLUSION:Physical activity, which is a modifiable lifestyle factor, should be encouraged after breast cancer diagnosis, especially in women with post-menopausal breast cancer

Molecular identification of commercialized medicinal plants in southern Morocco

Background: Medicinal plant trade is important for local livelihoods. However, many medicinal plants are difficult to identify when they are sold as roots, powders or bark. DNA barcoding involves using a short, agreed-upon region of a genome as a unique identifier for species-ideally, as a global standard. Research Question: What is the functionality, efficacy and accuracy of the use of barcoding for identifying root material, using medicinal plant roots sold by herbalists in Marrakech, Morocco, as a test dataset. Methodology: In total, 111 root samples were sequenced for four proposed barcode regions rpoC1, psbA-trnH, matK and ITS. Sequences were searched against a tailored reference database of Moroccan medicinal plants and their closest relatives using BLAST and Blastclust, and through inference of RAxML phylograms of the aligned market and reference samples. Principal Findings: Sequencing success was high for rpoC1, psbA-trnH, and ITS, but low for matK. Searches using rpoC1 alone resulted in a number of ambiguous identifications, indicating insufficient DNA variation for accurate species-level identification. Combining rpoC1, psbA-trnH and ITS allowed the majority of the market samples to be identified to genus level. For a minority of the market samples, the barcoding identification differed significantly from previous hypotheses based on the vernacular names. Conclusions/Significance: Endemic plant species are commercialized in Marrakech. Adulteration is common and this may indicate that the products are becoming locally endangered. Nevertheless the majority of the traded roots belong to species that are common and not known to be endangered. A significant conclusion from our results is that unknown samples are more difficult to identify than earlier suggested, especially if the reference sequences were obtained from different populations. A global barcoding database should therefore contain sequences from different populations of the same species to assure the reference sequences characterize the species throughout its distributional range

Molecular identification of commercialized medicinal plants in southern Morocco

Background: Medicinal plant trade is important for local livelihoods. However, many medicinal plants are difficult to identify when they are sold as roots, powders or bark. DNA barcoding involves using a short, agreed-upon region of a genome as a unique identifier for species-ideally, as a global standard. Research Question: What is the functionality, efficacy and accuracy of the use of barcoding for identifying root material, using medicinal plant roots sold by herbalists in Marrakech, Morocco, as a test dataset. Methodology: In total, 111 root samples were sequenced for four proposed barcode regions rpoC1, psbA-trnH, matK and ITS. Sequences were searched against a tailored reference database of Moroccan medicinal plants and their closest relatives using BLAST and Blastclust, and through inference of RAxML phylograms of the aligned market and reference samples. Principal Findings: Sequencing success was high for rpoC1, psbA-trnH, and ITS, but low for matK. Searches using rpoC1 alone resulted in a number of ambiguous identifications, indicating insufficient DNA variation for accurate species-level identification. Combining rpoC1, psbA-trnH and ITS allowed the majority of the market samples to be identified to genus level. For a minority of the market samples, the barcoding identification differed significantly from previous hypotheses based on the vernacular names. Conclusions/Significance: Endemic plant species are commercialized in Marrakech. Adulteration is common and this may indicate that the products are becoming locally endangered. Nevertheless the majority of the traded roots belong to species that are common and not known to be endangered. A significant conclusion from our results is that unknown samples are more difficult to identify than earlier suggested, especially if the reference sequences were obtained from different populations. A global barcoding database should therefore contain sequences from different populations of the same species to assure the reference sequences characterize the species throughout its distributional range

Barcoding identifications and GenBank accession numbers in order of transcribed Arab product name.

<p>Barcoding identifications and GenBank accession numbers in order of transcribed Arab product name.</p

Overview of species level identification success (%).

<p>Overview of species level identification success (%).</p

Typical herbalist shop in the medina of Marrakech.

<p>Typical herbalist shop in the medina of Marrakech.</p

Relative identification success per marker, analysis method and taxonomic group.

<p>Relative identification success per marker, analysis method and taxonomic group.</p

The Influence of Age and Sex on Genetic Associations with Adult Body Size and Shape: A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Interaction Study.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 100 genetic variants contributing to BMI, a measure of body size, or waist-to-hip ratio (adjusted for BMI, WHRadjBMI), a measure of body shape. Body size and shape change as people grow older and these changes differ substantially between men and women. To systematically screen for age- and/or sex-specific effects of genetic variants on BMI and WHRadjBMI, we performed meta-analyses of 114 studies (up to 320,485 individuals of European descent) with genome-wide chip and/or Metabochip data by the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium. Each study tested the association of up to ~2.8M SNPs with BMI and WHRadjBMI in four strata (men ≤50y, men >50y, women ≤50y, women >50y) and summary statistics were combined in stratum-specific meta-analyses. We then screened for variants that showed age-specific effects (G x AGE), sex-specific effects (G x SEX) or age-specific effects that differed between men and women (G x AGE x SEX). For BMI, we identified 15 loci (11 previously established for main effects, four novel) that showed significant (FDR<5%) age-specific effects, of which 11 had larger effects in younger (<50y) than in older adults (≥50y). No sex-dependent effects were identified for BMI. For WHRadjBMI, we identified 44 loci (27 previously established for main effects, 17 novel) with sex-specific effects, of which 28 showed larger effects in women than in men, five showed larger effects in men than in women, and 11 showed opposite effects between sexes. No age-dependent effects were identified for WHRadjBMI. This is the first genome-wide interaction meta-analysis to report convincing evidence of age-dependent genetic effects on BMI. In addition, we confirm the sex-specificity of genetic effects on WHRadjBMI. These results may provide further insights into the biology that underlies weight change with age or the sexually dimorphism of body shape