Negative intrusive thoughts and dissociation as risk factors for self-harm.

Relationships between self-harm and vulnerability factors were studied in a general population of 432 participants, of whom 30% reported some experience of self-harm. This group scored higher on dissociation and childhood trauma, had lower self-worth, and reported more negative intrusive thoughts. Among the non-harming group, 10% scored similarly to the self-harmers on the dissociation and self-worth scales, and engaged in potentially maladaptive behaviors that are not defined as indicating clinical self-harm, but experienced fewer negative intrusive thoughts. This group may be at risk of future self-harm if they begin to experience negative intrusive thoughts. If negative intrusive thoughts are playing a causal role, then therapeutic approaches tackling them may help those who are currently self-harming

Factors associated with severity of hepatic fibrosis in people with chronic hepatitis C infection

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included.OBJECTIVE: To determine factors associated with hepatic fibrosis development in people with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. METHODS: As a requirement for access to interferon therapy through the S100 scheme in Australia, individual pretreatment demographic and clinical information was collected on 2986 patients from 61 hospital-based liver clinics from 1 October 1994 through 31 December 1996. Patients with both a hepatic fibrosis score and an estimated duration of HCV infection (910) were divided into 540 with no or minimal hepatic fibrosis (stage 0–1) and 370 with moderate to severe hepatic fibrosis (stage 2–3). Seven factors were examined: age at HCV infection, sex, ethnicity, source of infection, duration of infection, alcohol intake, and mean ALT level. A further analysis was performed for all 1135 patients with a hepatic fibrosis score disregarding age at and duration of HCV infection. RESULTS: In multivariate analysis, four factors were significantly associated with moderate to severe hepatic fibrosis: age at infection (OR, 2.33 for age 31–40 years, 5.27 for age > 40 years, and 0.20 for age 30 years, compared with 3 times, compared with 1.5–2 times the upper limit of normal). In the analysis disregarding age at HCV infection and duration of HCV infection, older age was strongly associated with moderate to severe hepatic fibrosis (OR, 2.32 for age 36–40 years, 2.46 for age 41–50 years, 7.87 for age 51–60 years, and 7.15 for age > 60 years, compared with 16–30 years). There was no association in either analysis with sex or source of HCV infection. CONCLUSION: These factors may assist in targeting patients for both liver biopsy-based investigation and therapeutic intervention.Mark Danta, Gregory J Dore, Lisa Hennessy, Yueming Li, Chris R Vickers, Hugh Harley, Meng Ngu, William Reed, Paul V Desmond, William Sievert, Geoff C Farrell, John M Kaldor and Robert G Bate

Murfreesboro Addresses

https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/crs_books/1086/thumbnail.jp

Human factors and missed solutions to Enigma design weaknesses

The German World War II Enigma suffered from design weaknesses that facilitated its large-scale decryption by the British throughout the war. The author shows that the main technical weaknesses (self-coding and reciprocal coding) could have been avoided using simple contemporary technology, and therefore the true cause of the weaknesses is not technological but must be sought elsewhere. Specifically, human factors issues resulted in the persistent failure to seek out more effective designs. Similar limitations seem to beset the literature on the period, which misunderstands the Enigma weaknesses and therefore inhibits broader thinking about design or realising the critical role of human factors engineering in cryptography

Cocrystal structure of a class-I preQ1 riboswitch reveals a pseudoknot recognizing an essential hypermodified nucleobase

Riboswitches are mRNA domains that bind metabolites and modulate gene expression in cis. We report cocrystal structures of a remarkably compact riboswitch (34 nucleotides suffice for ligand recognition) from Bacillus subtilis selective for the essential nucleobase preQ1 (7-aminomethyl-7-deazaguanine). These reveal a previously unrecognized pseudoknot fold, and suggest a conserved gene-regulatory mechanism whereby ligand binding promotes sequestration of an RNA segment that otherwise assembles into a transcriptional anti-terminator

Multiple segmental and selective isotope labeling of large RNA for NMR structural studies

Multiple segmental and selective isotope labeling of RNA with three segments has been demonstrated by introducing an RNA segment, selectively labeled with 13C9/15N2/2H(1′, 3′, 4′, 5′, 5′′)-labeled uridine residues, into the central position of the 20 kDa ε-RNA of Duck Hepatitis B Virus. The RNA molecules were produced via two efficient protocols: a two-step protocol, which uses T4 DNA ligase and T4 RNA ligase 1, and a one-pot protocol, which uses T4 RNA ligase 1 alone. With T4 RNA ligase 1 all not-to-be-ligated termini are usually protected to prevent formation of side products. We show that such labor-intensive protection of termini is not required, provided segmentation sites can be chosen such that the segments fold into the target structure or target-like structures and thus are not trapped into stable alternate structures. These sites can be reliably predicted via DINAMelt. The simplified NMR spectrum provided evidence for the presence of a U28 H3-imino resonance, previously obscured in the fully labeled sample, and thus of the non-canonical base pair U28:C37. The demonstrated multiple segmental labeling protocols are generally applicable to large RNA molecules and can be extended to more than three segments