Build Your Money Muscles: Nine Simple Exercises for Improving Your Relationship with Money

In her book, Build Your Money Muscles: Nine Simple Exercises for Improving Your Relationship with Money , Joan Sotkin outlines a step-by-step process of how to identify, interpret, and repair relationships with money. This book focuses more on the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions (referred to as TBE) around money than actual money management skills. These thoughts, beliefs, and emotions create behaviors which ultimately construct financial situations for better or worse

Healing Gardens for Assisted Living: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Health Education

There is a serious lack of health promotion programs for seniors transitioning from living in their own homes to assisted living. Research has demonstrated that horticulture and gardening can benefit people who are institutionalized. Aging and horticulture specialists at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension collaborated to create a healing garden project at Nevada\u27s first low-income assisted living facility in Las Vegas. The goal was to enhance residents\u27 quality-of life through a less traditional educational process. This process expands the scope and reach of Extension programs to a much larger and more diverse audience

Build Your Money Muscles: Nine Simple Exercises for Improving Your Relationship with Money

In her book, "Build Your Money Muscles: Nine Simple Exercises for Improving Your Relationship with Money", Joan Sotkin outlines a step-by-step process of how to identify, interpret, and repair relationships with money. This book focuses more on the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions (referred to as TBE) around money than actual money management skills. These thoughts, beliefs, and emotions create behaviors which ultimately construct financial situations for better or worse

A linguistic approach to the psychosis continuum: (dis)similarities and (dis)continuities in how clinical and non-clinical voice-hearers talk about their voices

Introduction: “Continuum” approaches to psychosis have generated reports of similarities and differences in voice-hearing in clinical and non-clinical populations at the cohort level, but not typically examined overlap or degrees of difference between groups. Methods: We used a computer-aided linguistic approach to explore reports of voice-hearing by a clinical group (Early Intervention in Psychosis service-users; N = 40) and a non-clinical group (spiritualists; N = 27). We identify semantic categories of terms statistically overused by one group compared with the other, and by each group compared to a control sample of non-voice-hearing interview data (log likelihood (LL) value 6.63+=p < .01; effect size measure: log ratio 1.0+). We consider whether individual values support a continuum model. Results: Notwithstanding significant cohort-level differences, there was considerable continuity in language use. Reports of negative affect were prominent in both groups (p < .01, log ratio: 1.12+). Challenges of cognitive control were also evident in both cohorts, with references to “disengagement” accentuated in service-users (p < .01, log ratio: 1.14+). Conclusion: A corpus linguistic approach to voice-hearing provides new evidence of differences between clinical and non-clinical groups. Variability at the individual level provides substantial evidence of continuity with implications for cognitive mechanisms underlying voice-hearing

Paying to Listen: Notes from a Survey of Sexual Commerce

As the study of sexual commerce has grown dramatically in recent decades due to interest in HIV/AIDS, an expanded literature has scrutinized how research teams manage the operational challenges of accessing spaces that typically resist scrutiny. This paper ventures a combination of both scholarly reflections on the utility of ethical listening and specific methodologies for working with hard-to-reach populations, and selective use of field notes to illustrate the ethical and operational challenges of data collection with marginalized youth. The paper highlights several pivotal commitments and procedures for generating an effective community-based research project, the extent of time demanded for such research, and collective reflections on the potential for both harm and good in such projects. Efforts to understand the social context in which young adults engage in sexual exchange—both on the street and in erotic dance clubs—requires a commitment to ethical listening, and to progressive learning

The Super-Seniors Study: Phenotypic Characterization of a Healthy 85+ Population

Background To understand why some people live to advanced age in good health and others do not, it is important to study not only disease, but also long-term good health. The Super-Seniors Study aims to identify factors associated with healthy aging. Methods 480 healthy oldest-old ‘Super-Seniors’ aged 85 to 105 years and never diagnosed with cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dementia, or major pulmonary disease, were compared to 545 mid-life controls aged 41–54, who represent a group that is unselected for survival from late-life diseases. Health and lifestyle information, personal and family medical history, and blood samples were collected from all participants. Super-Seniors also underwent four geriatric tests. Results Super-Seniors showed high cognitive (Mini-Mental State Exam mean = 28.3) and functional capacity (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale mean = 21.4), as well as high physical function (Timed Up and Go mean = 12.3 seconds) and low levels of depression (Geriatric Depression Scale mean = 1.5). Super-Seniors were less likely to be current smokers than controls, but the frequency of drinking alcohol was the same in both groups. Super-Seniors were more likely to have 4 or more offspring; controls were more likely to have no children. Female Super-Seniors had a mean age of last fertility 1.9 years older than controls, and were 2.3 times more likely to have had a child at ≥ 40 years. The parents of Super-Seniors had mean ages of deaths of 79.3 years for mothers, and 74.5 years for fathers, each exceeding the life expectancy for their era by a decade. Conclusions Super-Seniors are cognitively and physically high functioning individuals who have evaded major age-related chronic diseases into old age, representing the approximately top 1% for healthspan. The familiality of long lifespan of the parents of Super-Seniors supports the hypothesis that heritable factors contribute to this desirable phenotype

A mitochondria-targeted mass spectrometry probe to detect glyoxals: implications for diabetes

The glycation of protein and nucleic acids that occurs as a consequence of hyperglycaemia disrupts cell function and contributes to many pathologies, including those associated with diabetes and aging. Intracellular glycation occurs following the generation of the reactive 1,2-dicarbonyls methylglyoxal and glyoxal and disruption to mitochondrial function is associated with hyperglycemia. However, the contribution of these reactive dicarbonyls to mitochondrial damage in pathology is unclear due to uncertainties about their levels within mitochondria in cells and in vivo. To address this we have developed a mitochondria-targeted reagent (MitoG) designed to assess the levels of mitochondrial dicarbonyls within cells. MitoG comprises a lipophilic triphenylphosphonium cationic function, which directs the molecules to mitochondria within cells and an o-phenylenediamine moiety that reacts with dicarbonyls to give distinctive and stable products. The extent of accumulation of these diagnostic heterocyclic products can be readily and sensitively quantified by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), enabling changes to be determined. Using the MitoG-based analysis we assessed the formation of methylglyoxal and glyoxal in response to hyperglycaemia in cells in culture and in the Akita mouse model of diabetes in vivo. These findings indicated that the levels of methylglyoxal and glyoxal within mitochondria increase during hyperglycaemia in both cells and in vivo, suggesting that they can contribute to the pathological mitochondrial dysfunction that occurs in diabetes and aging

The ADP receptor P2RY12 regulates osteoclast function and pathologic bone remodeling

The adenosine diphosphate (ADP) receptor P2RY12 (purinergic receptor P2Y, G protein coupled, 12) plays a critical role in platelet aggregation, and P2RY12 inhibitors are used clinically to prevent cardiac and cerebral thrombotic events. Extracellular ADP has also been shown to increase osteoclast (OC) activity, but the role of P2RY12 in OC biology is unknown. Here, we examined the role of mouse P2RY12 in OC function. Mice lacking P2ry12 had decreased OC activity and were partially protected from age-associated bone loss. P2ry12(–/–) OCs exhibited intact differentiation markers, but diminished resorptive function. Extracellular ADP enhanced OC adhesion and resorptive activity of WT, but not P2ry12(–/–), OCs. In platelets, ADP stimulation of P2RY12 resulted in GTPase Ras-related protein (RAP1) activation and subsequent α(IIb)β(3) integrin activation. Likewise, we found that ADP stimulation induced RAP1 activation in WT and integrin β(3) gene knockout (Itgb3(–/–)) OCs, but its effects were substantially blunted in P2ry12(–/–) OCs. In vivo, P2ry12(–/–) mice were partially protected from pathologic bone loss associated with serum transfer arthritis, tumor growth in bone, and ovariectomy-induced osteoporosis: all conditions associated with increased extracellular ADP. Finally, mice treated with the clinical inhibitor of P2RY12, clopidogrel, were protected from pathologic osteolysis. These results demonstrate that P2RY12 is the primary ADP receptor in OCs and suggest that P2RY12 inhibition is a potential therapeutic target for pathologic bone loss

Ethnicity data resource in population-wide health records:completeness, coverage and granularity of diversity

Intersectional social determinants including ethnicity are vital in health research. We curated a population-wide data resource of self-identified ethnicity data from over 60 million individuals in England primary care, linking it to hospital records. We assessed ethnicity data in terms of completeness, consistency, and granularity and found one in ten individuals do not have ethnicity information recorded in primary care. By linking to hospital records, ethnicity data were completed for 94% of individuals. By reconciling SNOMED-CT concepts and census-level categories into a consistent hierarchy, we organised more than 250 ethnicity sub-groups including and beyond “White”, “Black”, “Asian”, “Mixed” and “Other, and found them to be distributed in proportions similar to the general population. This large observational dataset presents an algorithmic hierarchy to represent self-identified ethnicity data collected across heterogeneous healthcare settings. Accurate and easily accessible ethnicity data can lead to a better understanding of population diversity, which is important to address disparities and influence policy recommendations that can translate into better, fairer health for all.<br/

Retroviral DNA Integration: Viral and Cellular Determinants of Target-Site Selection

Retroviruses differ in their preferences for sites for viral DNA integration in the chromosomes of infected cells. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) integrates preferentially within active transcription units, whereas murine leukemia virus (MLV) integrates preferentially near transcription start sites and CpG islands. We investigated the viral determinants of integration-site selection using HIV chimeras with MLV genes substituted for their HIV counterparts. We found that transferring the MLV integrase (IN) coding region into HIV (to make HIVmIN) caused the hybrid to integrate with a specificity close to that of MLV. Addition of MLV gag (to make HIVmGagmIN) further increased the similarity of target-site selection to that of MLV. A chimeric virus with MLV Gag only (HIVmGag) displayed targeting preferences different from that of both HIV and MLV, further implicating Gag proteins in targeting as well as IN. We also report a genome-wide analysis indicating that MLV, but not HIV, favors integration near DNase I–hypersensitive sites (i.e., +/− 1 kb), and that HIVmIN and HIVmGagmIN also favored integration near these features. These findings reveal that IN is the principal viral determinant of integration specificity; they also reveal a new role for Gag-derived proteins, and strengthen models for integration targeting based on tethering of viral IN proteins to host proteins