‘Will I wear purple?’—a school arts-based research project in the UK to disseminate findings from a qualitative evidence synthesis about living to an extreme age

Background: a change in attitude towards ageing is needed. Arts-based research (ABR) refers to the use of any creative art in research. ABR can provide an environment to reflect on challenging social issues and has the potential to make lasting impressions. Objective: we aimed to explore the use of ABR to disseminate findings from a qualitative evidence synthesis exploring what it means to live well beyond the age of 80. Design: ABR using art as a stimulus for recorded discussions and written annotations. Setting: a mixed catchment state secondary school in the UK. Subjects: fifty-four secondary school pupils aged 14–15. The majority identified as female (ratio 5:1). Methods: school pupils created artwork to represent themes about ageing drawn from a qualitative evidence synthesis. The artwork was a stimulus for recorded discussions. We used thematic analysis to develop themes about children’s response to ageing. Results: we developed six themes. Pupils found comfort in recognising that old age can be lived well; they began to see themselves in the older person; they explored the ambiguous nature of memory; they highlighted the dangers of disconnection; they affirmed a need to restore connection with elders and they recognised the need to cherish time and live meaningfully. Conclusions: this project encouraged pupils to think about what it means to grow old. ABR has the potential to contribute to a more positive relationship with older people and towards ageing. Research stakeholders should not undervalue the potential power of shifts in perspective for powering social change

Association of Training Characteristics with Critical Power in Competitive Recreational Cyclists and Triathletes

Endurance athletes often employ a training zone approach to classify their training intensity, where Zones 1, 2, and 3 (Z1-Z3) correspond to low, moderate, and high intensities. Research has shown that many elite athletes across a multitude of endurance sports employ polarized training distributions (TIDs), i.e., they spend a large percentage of their training in Z1 with much of the remainder in Z3 and little training in Z2. This appears to be beneficial for performance in these populations. The typical TIDs among recreationally competitive endurance athletes and their impact on performance are less well understood. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the TIDs of recreationally competitive cyclists and triathletes and the impact of training characteristics on cycling performance. METHODS: Participants (n = 19, age = 31.7 ± 10.7 years; height = 176.6 ± 8.8 cm; weight = 70.8 ± 8.6 kg, relative CP = 4.3 ± 0.7 W/kg) submitted raw activity files, which they had previously uploaded to Strava, a popular workout tracking site. We used a workout analysis program (Golden Cheetah, V3.5) and R statistical language to analyze training and racing data. We determined each athlete’s highest critical power (CP) relative to body weight by first finding the highest maximum mean power (MMP) over 2, 5, and 10 minutes achieved over the course of a single week and then employing the linear power inverse of time CP model. We considered relative CP (W/kg) as our proxy for endurance performance, as it highly correlates with race performances. We then extracted values for estimated maximal aerobic power (MAP), training volume (training hours), training intensity (mean training power as a percent of MAP), training frequency (number of sessions), and training polarization (polarization index (PI) calculated from percent time in power Z1-3) for the 12 weeks leading up to the performance measure. We determined the association of the training characteristics on relative CP while controlling for participant age and fitness (MAP) by employing a linear regression. RESULTS: Only 4 of 23 participants employed a polarized training approach as defined by a PI \u3e 2.0. Athletes spent on average 71.0 ± 9.5% of their training time in Z1, 16.1% ± 6.1 in Z2, and 12.9% ± 7.3 in Z3. They completed 74.9 ± 22.9 sessions and amassed 110.3 ± 46.9 hours of training time over the 12 weeks leading up the performance measure. In this preliminary analysis of 19 participants, we were unable to detect a statistically significant effect of polarization on relative CP, when controlling for age, fitness, and all other training variables. Yet, polarization was the explanatory variable with the largest impact on relative CP, b (SE) = 0.25 (0.55), t = 0.457, p = 0.656. CONCLUSION: Most of the recreationally competitive cyclists and triathletes in our study did not employ a polarized TID, despite data from elite cohorts and laboratory studies showing its benefits. More research into the effect of TID on performance and health in recreationally competitive athletes is needed to confirm its benefits in this population

Attachment to God as a Function of Mortality Salience and Intrinsic Religiosity

The present study examined the association between intrinsic religiosity and attachment to God following mortality salience. Participants (N = 158) consisted of Christian individuals who were asked to complete the Religious Orientation Scale (Allport & Ross, 1967) as a measure of intrinsic religiosity, a word search puzzle to prime either death-related or neutral words, and the Attachment to God Inventory (Beck & McDonald, 2004). A moderated regression found a significant interaction between MS and intrinsic religiosity on avoidant but not anxious attachment to God. Specifically, following reminders of death, low intrinsic individuals were more avoidant toward God compared to high intrinsic individuals. These findings suggest that MS is associated with bolstering religious beliefs in order to cope with existential anxieties

Climate Change Adaptation Planning for Cultural Heritage, a National Scale Methodology

Ireland’s Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 established the requirement for a National Adaptation Framework (NAF) composed of 9 sectoral plans, of which Built and Archaeological Heritage is one. All the plans were written according to the six step process outlined in Sectoral Planning Guidelines for Climate Change Adaptation produced by the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment (DCCAE, 2018) which is also the government department charged with coordinating the NAF. This article summarises the application of the methodology to heritage resources in Ireland, the issues encountered and the results achieved. The plan was informed by existing research and incorporated expert, stakeholder and public consultation throughout the process. It also closely considered published plans from other sectors in order to aid consistency within the NAF and to ensure cross-cutting issues were highlighted. Of the many potential impacts of climate change, those identified as priorities for adaptation planning in Ireland were flooding (inland & coastal), storm damage, coastal erosion, soil movement (landslip or erosion), changing burial preservation conditions, pests and mould, wildfires, and maladaptation. Goals, objectives and an action plan were developed commensurate with the five-year term of the plan, but also initiating a long-term strategic vision. A monitoring strategy was developed to monitor progress, identify problems and inform improvements to the adaptation plan as part of an iterative process. Much work is being done on the topic of climate change and cultural heritage but it is believed that when Ireland adopted its national adaptation plan for cultural heritage in October 2019 it was the first government to do so

Comparing genotyping algorithms for Illumina's Infinium whole-genome SNP BeadChips

Background: Illumina's Infinium SNP BeadChips are extensively used in both small and large-scale genetic studies. A fundamental step in any analysis is the processing of raw allele A and allele B intensities from each SNP into genotype calls (AA, AB, BB). Various algorithms which make use of different statistical models are available for this task. We compare four methods (GenCall, Illuminus, GenoSNP and CRLMM) on data where the true genotypes are known in advance and data from a recently published genome-wide association study.Results: In general, differences in accuracy are relatively small between the methods evaluated, although CRLMM and GenoSNP were found to consistently outperform GenCall. The performance of Illuminus is heavily dependent on sample size, with lower no call rates and improved accuracy as the number of samples available increases. For X chromosome SNPs, methods with sex-dependent models (Illuminus, CRLMM) perform better than methods which ignore gender information (GenCall, GenoSNP). We observe that CRLMM and GenoSNP are more accurate at calling SNPs with low minor allele frequency than GenCall or Illuminus. The sample quality metrics from each of the four methods were found to have a high level of agreement at flagging samples with unusual signal characteristics.Conclusions: CRLMM, GenoSNP and GenCall can be applied with confidence in studies of any size, as their performance was shown to be invariant to the number of samples available. Illuminus on the other hand requires a larger number of samples to achieve comparable levels of accuracy and its use in smaller studies (50 or fewer individuals) is not recommended

Association between rheumatoid arthritis disease activity, progression of functional limitation and long-term risk of orthopaedic surgery : Combined analysis of two prospective cohorts supports EULAR treat to target DAS thresholds

Objectives: To examine the association between disease activity in early rheumatoid arthritis (RA), functional limitation and long-term orthopaedic episodes. Methods: Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) disability scores were collected from two longitudinal early RA inception cohorts in routine care; Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Study and Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Network from 1986 to 2012. The incidence of major and intermediate orthopaedic surgical episodes over 25 years was collected from national data sets. Disease activity was categorised by mean disease activity score (DAS28) annually between years 1 and 5; remission (RDAS≤2.6), low (LDAS>2.6-3.2), low-moderate (LMDAS≥3.2-4.19), high-moderate (HMDAS 4.2-5.1) and high (HDAS>5.1). Results: Data from 2045 patients were analysed. Patients in RDAS showed no HAQ progression over 5 years, whereas there was a significant relationship between rising DAS28 category and HAQ at 1 year, and the rate of HAQ progression between years 1 and 5. During 27 986 person-years follow-up, 392 intermediate and 591 major surgeries were observed. Compared with the RDAS category, there was a significantly increased cumulative incidence of intermediate surgery in HDAS (OR 2.59 CI 1.49 to 4.52) and HMDAS (OR 1.8 CI 1.05 to 3.11) categories, and for major surgery in HDAS (OR 2.48 CI 1.5 to 4.11), HMDAS (OR 2.16 CI 1.32 to 3.52) and LMDAS (OR 2.07 CI 1.28 to 3.33) categories. There was no significant difference in HAQ progression or orthopaedic episodes between RDAS and LDAS categories. Conclusions: There is an association between disease activity and both poor function and long-term orthopaedic episodes. This illustrates the far from benign consequences of persistent moderate disease activity, and supports European League Against Rheumatism treat to target recommendations to secure low disease activity or remission in all patients.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Mother Baby Discharge Process

Problem/Impact Statement: MMC\u27s 32-bed Mother Baby Unit is experiencing backed up flow due to high volume and patients not being discharged quickly enough. The current average discharge time on Mother Baby and the Newborn Nursery is 1:36pm. The Mother baby unit has 32 beds, is staffed by 8-9 nurses, and has average discharge of 91 patients a week

Rare Copy Number Variants in \u3cem\u3eNRXN1\u3c/em\u3e and \u3cem\u3eCNTN6\u3c/em\u3e Increase Risk for Tourette Syndrome

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a model neuropsychiatric disorder thought to arise from abnormal development and/or maintenance of cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits. TS is highly heritable, but its underlying genetic causes are still elusive, and no genome-wide significant loci have been discovered to date. We analyzed a European ancestry sample of 2,434 TS cases and 4,093 ancestry-matched controls for rare (\u3c 1% frequency) copy-number variants (CNVs) using SNP microarray data. We observed an enrichment of global CNV burden that was prominent for large (\u3e 1 Mb), singleton events (OR = 2.28, 95% CI [1.39–3.79], p = 1.2 × 10−3) and known, pathogenic CNVs (OR = 3.03 [1.85–5.07], p = 1.5 × 10−5). We also identified two individual, genome-wide significant loci, each conferring a substantial increase in TS risk (NRXN1 deletions, OR = 20.3, 95% CI [2.6–156.2]; CNTN6 duplications, OR = 10.1, 95% CI [2.3–45.4]). Approximately 1% of TS cases carry one of these CNVs, indicating that rare structural variation contributes significantly to the genetic architecture of TS