Coping with stressful events: a pre-post-test of a psycho-educational intervention for undergraduate nursing and midwifery students

Background: Knowledge of coping mechanisms is important for nursing and midwifery students to cope with stressful events during undergraduate education. Objectives: To evaluate the impact of a psycho-educational intervention “Coping with Stressful Events” with first year undergraduate nursing and midwifery students. Design: A quasi-experimental, one-group pre-post-test. Settings: One school of nursing/midwifery in one university in Ireland. Participants: A convenience sample of all first year undergraduate nursing and midwifery students (n = 197). Of these 166 completed the pretest and 138 students completed the post test. Methods: Using the COPE Inventory questionnaire (Carver et al., 1989) data was collected pre and post-delivery of the psycho-educational intervention “Coping with Stressful Events” by two research assistants. Data were analysed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 22 (NY, USA). Results: Results demonstrated improved coping skills by students. There were statistically significant differences between pre and post intervention for some coping subscales. For example, the mean subscale scores were lower post-intervention for restraint and mental disengagement, and higher for use of emotional and instrumental social support indicating improved coping strategies. Conclusions: This intervention has the potential to influence undergraduate nursing and midwifery students coping skills during their first year of an undergraduate programme

Resource Planning for Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Control Programs: Feasibility Study of the Tool for Integrated Planning and Costing (TIPAC).

<p>Resource Planning for Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Control Programs: Feasibility Study of the Tool for Integrated Planning and Costing (TIPAC)</p

Managing digital contention in China

This paper explores new developments in cyber content management strategies in China by highlighting the rise of participatory, peer-to-peer censoring practices, and examining how the People's Daily have responded to the contentious events in the top 20 public opinion incidents of 2016, to illustrate how official media uses different types of management strategies to mediate and demobilise contention, on top of information containment strategies such as censorship. I also discuss briefly the creation of a Digital United Front which seeks to incorporate social influencers and cyber elites into mainstream political institutions such as the CPPCC. Not only do these strategies further undermine the formation of a political locus opposite the state, they continue to subsume previously oppositional narratives into grander narratives of stability and national progress. Online political participation in Chinese cyberspace must seek further paternalistic protection from Party authorities in order to legitimise their contention. Although this strengthens the Party-state's claim to legitimacy, ultimately this weakens the emergence of civil society in China as the only form of contention that can survive is those that are legitimised by the Party-state, and the political space oppositional to the state remain closed off

A High-Density EEG Investigation into Steady State Binaural Beat Stimulation

Binaural beats are an auditory phenomenon that has been suggested to alter physiological and cognitive processes including vigilance and brainwave entrainment. Some personality traits measured by the NEO Five Factor Model have been found to alter entrainment using pulsing light stimuli, but as yet no studies have examined if this occurs using steady state presentation of binaural beats for a relatively short presentation of two minutes. This study aimed to examine if binaural beat stimulation altered vigilance or cortical frequencies and if personality traits were involved. Thirty-one participants were played binaural beat stimuli designed to elicit a response at either the Theta (7 Hz) or Beta (16 Hz) frequency bands while undertaking a zero-back vigilance task. EEG was recorded from a high-density electrode cap. No significant differences were found in vigilance or cortical frequency power during binaural beat stimulation compared to a white noise control period. Furthermore, no significant relationships were detected between the above and the Big Five personality traits. This suggests a short presentation of steady state binaural beats are not sufficient to alter vigilance or entrain cortical frequencies at the two bands examined and that certain personality traits were not more susceptible than others

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Spatial Organization and Molecular Correlation of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Using Deep Learning on Pathology Images

Beyond sample curation and basic pathologic characterization, the digitized H&E-stained images of TCGA samples remain underutilized. To highlight this resource, we present mappings of tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) based on H&E images from 13 TCGA tumor types. These TIL maps are derived through computational staining using a convolutional neural network trained to classify patches of images. Affinity propagation revealed local spatial structure in TIL patterns and correlation with overall survival. TIL map structural patterns were grouped using standard histopathological parameters. These patterns are enriched in particular T cell subpopulations derived from molecular measures. TIL densities and spatial structure were differentially enriched among tumor types, immune subtypes, and tumor molecular subtypes, implying that spatial infiltrate state could reflect particular tumor cell aberration states. Obtaining spatial lymphocytic patterns linked to the rich genomic characterization of TCGA samples demonstrates one use for the TCGA image archives with insights into the tumor-immune microenvironment

Spin-state studies with XES and RIXS: From static to ultrafast

We report on extending hard X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) along with resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) to study ultrafast phenomena in a pump-probe scheme at MHz repetition rates. The investigated systems include low-spin (LS) Fe-II complex compounds, where optical pulses induce a spin-state transition to their (sub)nanosecond-lived high-spin (HS) state. Time-resolved XES clearly reflects the spin-state variations with very high signal-to-noise ratio, in agreement with HS-LS difference spectra measured at thermal spin crossover, and reference HS-LS systems in static experiments, next to multiplet calculations. The 1s2p RIXS, measured at the Fe Is pre-edge region, shows variations after laser excitation, which are consistent with the formation of the HS state. Our results demonstrate that X-ray spectroscopy experiments with overall rather weak signals, such as RIXS, can now be reliably exploited to study chemical and physical transformations on ultrafast time scales. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved