The Influence of the Group Context on the Associations Between Social Behaviours and Popularity Trajectories in Pre-Adolescents

The objectives of this study were to: a) examine group influences on the associations between popularity and individual behavioural characteristics and b) to assess the trajectory of popularity during the first six months of school. It was expected that the group context would moderate the individual behavioural characteristics associated with popularity. Pre-adolescents (N = 342) in grades five and six (Mage = 11.5) from four schools across Montreal, Quebec completed self-report and peer-nomination items to assess nine behavioural characteristics: care, proactive help, reactive help, justice, relational aggression, physical aggression, collectivism, individualism, and popularity. Popularity was assessed across three time points separated by 8-week intervals from the month of September. A three-level hierarchical linear model was used to examine the behavioural characteristics associated with popularity at the level of the individual and group. The sole predictor at Level 1 was an index of time. The eight measures of individual behavioural characteristics were included as Level 2 predictors. Group means of the behavioural characteristics and a measure of SES and gender were added as Level 3 predictors. Both the intercept and slope were associated with individual characteristics (Level 2) and features of the group context (Level 3). Features of the group context moderated effects of individual characteristics on the intercept and slope. The use of a three-level hierarchical linear model highlights popularity amongst pre-adolescents as a social construct

Examining the effect of The Leventhal Self-Regulatory Model on Sexual Satisfaction for Women with Breast Cancer: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Purpose: The main goal of this study was to investigate whether the Self-Regulation Model could improve sexual satisfaction for women diagnosed with breast cancer. Methods: Adult women diagnosed with breast cancer were recruited from a hospital in Qazvin, Iran. Participants were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (n = 40) or a control group (n = 40). All participants were administered a demographic questionnaire and an Index of Sexual Satisfaction (ISS) pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and 1, 2, and 3 months following the intervention. The control group completed the assessments along the same time line as the intervention group. Women in the experimental group were provided three sessions of a psychological individual intervention which included psychoeducation regarding their diagnosis and personalized intervention strategies to improve their overall sexual satisfaction with sexual intercourse. Each intervention took between 60 to 90 minutes to administer. Results: The experimental and control group participants were well balance in demographic characteristics and sexual satisfaction scores before the intervention. Interestingly, the intervention group showed a positive increasing trend in the sexual satisfaction scores over time but the controls had a negative trend (p < 0.05). There were also statistical differences in the sexual satisfaction scores at each month (p < 0.05) adjusted for baseline score and relevant demographical variables showing a demonstrated longstanding effects with a significant increase in sexual satisfaction over time.Conclusion: Providing a psychoeducational based intervention provided an increase of sexual satisfaction during intercourse for women diagnosed with breast cancer. The2 psychoeducation based intervention provided an opportunity for participants to dispel common myths regarding their disease and obtain new strategies and skills to improve their sexual satisfaction from intercourse with their partners. Keywords: Breast Cancer, Sexual Satisfaction, Self-Regulation Mode

Examining the effect of a brief psychoeducation intervention based on Self-Regulation Model on Sexual Satisfaction for Women with Breast Cancer: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Purpose: The main goal of this study was to investigate whether the Self-Regulation Model could improve sexual satisfaction for women diagnosed with breast cancer. Methods: Adult women diagnosed with breast cancer were recruited from a hospital in Qazvin, Iran. Participants were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (n = 40) or a control group (n = 40). All participants were administered a demographic questionnaire and an Index of Sexual Satisfaction (ISS) pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and 1, 2, and 3 months following the intervention. The control group completed the assessments along the same time line as the intervention group. Women in the experimental group were provided three sessions of a psychological individual intervention which included psychoeducation regarding their diagnosis and personalized intervention strategies to improve their overall sexual satisfaction with sexual intercourse. Each intervention took between 60 to 90 minutes to administer. Results: The experimental and control group participants were well balance in demographic characteristics and sexual satisfaction scores before the intervention. Interestingly, the intervention group showed a positive increasing trend in the sexual satisfaction scores over time but the controls had a negative trend (p < 0.05). There were also statistical differences in the sexual satisfaction scores at each month (p < 0.05) adjusted for baseline score and relevant demographical variables showing a demonstrated longstanding effects with a significant increase in sexual satisfaction over time. Conclusion: Providing a psychoeducational based intervention provided an increase of sexual satisfaction during intercourse for women diagnosed with breast cancer. The psychoeducation based intervention provided an opportunity for participants to dispel common myths regarding their disease and obtain new strategies and skills to improve their sexual satisfaction from intercourse with their partner

An Association Rule Mining Approach to Discover lncRNAs Expression Patterns in Cancer Datasets

In the past few years, the role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in tumor development and progression has been disclosed although their mechanisms of action remain to be elucidated. An important contribution to the comprehension of lncRNAs biology in cancer could be obtained through the integrated analysis of multiple expression datasets. However, the growing availability of public datasets requires new data mining techniques to integrate and describe relationship among data. In this perspective, we explored the powerness of the Association Rule Mining (ARM) approach in gene expression data analysis. By the ARM method, we performed a meta-analysis of cancer-related microarray data which allowed us to identify and characterize a set of ten lncRNAs simultaneously altered in different brain tumor datasets. The expression profiles of the ten lncRNAs appeared to be sufficient to distinguish between cancer and normal tissues. A further characterization of this lncRNAs signature through a comodulation expression analysis suggested that biological processes specific of the nervous system could be compromised