Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine: Volume 2

Annotated and edited transcripts of 4 Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey. First published by the Wellcome Trust, 1998 Occasional Publication no. 6, 1998. ©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 1998.All volumes are freely available online following the links to Publications/Wellcome Witnesses at www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed.Annotated and edited transcripts of 4 Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcripts of 4 Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcripts of 4 Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcripts of 4 Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcripts of 4 Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcripts of 4 Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Second volume of four Witness Seminar transcripts of meetings held between 1996 and 1997: ‘Making the Human Body Transparent: The Impact of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Magnetic Resonance Imaging’ (Tansey E M, Christie D A, eds); ‘Research in General Practice’ (Tansey E M, Reynolds L A, eds); ‘Drugs in Psychiatric Practice’ (Tansey E M, Christie D A, eds); ‘The MRC Common Cold Unit (Tansey E M, Reynolds L A, eds). Tansey E M, Christie D A, Reynolds L A. (eds) (1998) Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine: Volume 2. London: The Wellcome Trust.The Wellcome Trust is a registered charity, no. 210183

Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine: Volume 1

Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey First published by the Wellcome Trust, 1997. ©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 1997.In Volume One (Occasional Publication no. 4, 1997).All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Four Witness Seminar transcripts of meetings held between 1993 and 1996: ‘Technology Transfer in Britain: The case of Monoclonal Antibodies’ (E M Tansey and P P Catterall, eds); ‘Self and Non-Self: A History of Autoimmunity’ (E M Tansey, S V Willhoft and D A Christie, eds); ‘Endogenous Opiates’ (E M Tansey and D A Christie, eds); ‘The Committee on Safety of Drugs’ (E M Tansey and L A Reynolds, eds). Introduction by E M Tansey, ‘What is a Witness Seminar’, separate index for each meeting. Tansey E M, Catterall P P, Christie D A, Willhoft S V, Reynolds L A. (eds) (1997) Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, volume 1. London: The Wellcome Trust.The Wellcome Trust is a registered charity, no. 210183

Cultivating Habits of Faith: The Power of Latina Stories and Practices to Educate U.S. Catholics in the Faith

Thesis advisor: Hosffman OspinoThe Catholic Church’s formal documents throughout the centuries have celebrated and affirmed the role of parents educating their children on faith matters in the context of the home. Nevertheless, the Church offers parents very little practical guidance as to how they can make their home a domestic church or what they can do to organically and consistently incorporate the faith into daily life. As the Church analyzes why presently 6 Catholics are disaffiliating for every new member that joins, it must reconsider the lack of attention the home has received as an authoritative space for religious transmission. The home, as a sacramental space, has the potential to call attention to the divinity that surrounds us and invites us to action and awakening. It is also the haven where we nurture our most important and loving relationships that initiate us into the faith. The home is also a space for negotiation, that is, where we learn to wrestle with mystery and ambiguity. Critical dialogues within the home are imperative to engaging the present world from a Catholic perspective. This dissertation conducted an ethnographic study of a group of Miami-based Cuban American Catholic women across two generations. The women were chosen based on their active involvement within the Catholic Church. The study found that 100% of the women were successful in transmitting their Catholic faith to their daughters due to four socialization practices. Faith modeling by extended kin, engagement in social justice vocations across the community, explicitly affirming the personalization of daily rituals such as prayer, and finally, ongoing intergenerational dialogues were found in the stories of all the women participants. Religious imagination is the glue that holds all of the moving pieces (home, women and socializing praxis) in this dissertation. I provide herein a midrash of Matthew 27:57-61 to illustrate how the physical and relational components of the Cuban-American home serve to negotiate a hermeneutic that is matriarchal, bottom-up, and interdisciplinary. The hermeneutic echoes the message of the women studied herein; namely, that a community working together in the midst of dislocation is already being liberated. Noting the psycho-social importance of a cohesive narrative identity and its impact on authentic faith transmission calls into question whether the pedestrian nature of the home has led to mistaken notions of this pedagogy being too simplistic. Nevertheless, in telling stories and (de/re)constructing life narratives, individuals are placed within the larger scheme of history, redemptive sequences are analyzed and building resilience, and the stories themselves become a safe space from which to discern larger questions. This dissertation proposes communal, home-based activities as an effective method for faith transmission as it fosters the necessary intimacy to share relevant and passionate stories that powerfully answer why being Catholic truly matters now and to our next generation.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry

Lengthened Predelivery Stay and Antepartum Complications in Women with Depressive Symptoms During Pregnancy

Background: It is crucial to understand the timing and mechanisms behind depression's effect on peripartum stay because attempts to intervene will vary based on the time period involved. We designed this study to compare predelivery and postdelivery length of stay in women with and without elevated depressive symptoms during pregnancy. Methods: This study involved secondary data analysis of a larger study exploring antepartum depression. Each subject completed the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) during pregnancy at a mean of 25.8 weeks' gestation. We used time-stamped data to compare total peripartum, predelivery, and postdelivery lengths of stay in women with and without elevated depressive symptoms during pregnancy. In addition, we used a Cox proportional hazards regression model to evaluate potential mechanisms for depression's effect on length of stay. Results: The study sample included 802 pregnant women. Overall, 18% of study subjects scored >=16 on the CES-D. Bivariate analyses demonstrated a significant association between elevated depressive symptoms and longer predelivery stays (time from admission to delivery). Interaction analyses demonstrated a significant interaction effect between depressive symptoms and parity, such that depressive symptoms were significantly associated with predelivery length of stay in multiparas but not so in primiparous subjects. In a multivariate model of multiparous subjects, depression's effect on length of stay was partially influenced by sociodemographic confounders but remained significant until antepartum complications were added to the model. Conclusions: Depressive symptoms during pregnancy are significantly associated with a subsequent increase in predelivery length of stay, and this association is mediated in part by antepartum complications, even after controlling for sociodemographic factors. These longer hospital stays can present significant burdens to the patient, her family, and the healthcare system. Future studies should evaluate whether interventions for depression during pregnancy can impact this relationship among depressive symptoms during pregnancy, antepartum complications, and extensive predelivery hospitalizations.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90486/1/jwh-2E2010-2E2380.pd

Mutation-Independent Allele-Specific Editing by CRISPR-Cas9, a Novel Approach to Treat Autosomal Dominant Disease

CRISPR-Cas9 provides a tool to treat autosomal dominant disease by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) gene disruption of the mutant allele. In order to discriminate between wild-type and mutant alleles, Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 (SpCas9) must be able to detect a single nucleotide change. Allele-specific editing can be achieved by using either a guide-specific approach, in which the missense mutation is found within the guide sequence, or a protospacer-adjacent motif (PAM)-specific approach, in which the missense mutation generates a novel PAM. While both approaches have been shown to offer allele specificity in certain contexts, in cases where numerous missense mutations are associated with a particular disease, such as TGFBI (transforming growth factor β-induced) corneal dystrophies, it is neither possible nor realistic to target each mutation individually. In this study, we demonstrate allele-specific CRISPR gene editing independent of the disease-causing mutation that is capable of achieving complete allele discrimination, and we propose it as a targeting approach for autosomal dominant disease. Our approach utilizes natural variants in the target region that contain a PAM on one allele that lies in cis with the causative mutation, removing the constraints of a mutation-dependent approach. Our innovative patient-specific guide design approach takes into account the patient’s individual genetic make-up, allowing on- and off-target activity to be assessed in a personalized manner

Gad65 is recognized by t-cells, but not by antibodies from nod-mice

Since the 64kDa-protein glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) is one of the major autoantigens in T-cell mediated Type 1 diabetes, its relevance as a T-cell antigen needs to be clarified. After isolation of splenic T-cells from non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice, a useful model for human Type 1 diabetes, we found that these T-cells proliferate spontaneously when incubated with human GAD65, but only marginally after incubation with GAD67, both recombinated in the baculovirus system. No effect was observed with non-diabetic NOD mice or with T-cells from H-2 identical NON-NOD-H-2g7 control mice. It has been published previously that NOD mice develop autoantibodies against a 64kDa protein detected with mouse beta cells. In immunoprecipitation experiments with sera from the same NOD mice and 33S-methionine-labelled GAD, no autoantibody binding could be detected. We conclude firstly that GAD65 is an important T-cell antigen which is relevant early in the development of Type 1 diabetes and secondly that there is an antigenic epitope in the human GAD65 molecule recognized by NOD T-cells, but not by NOD autoantibodies precipitating conformational epitopes. Our results therefore provide further evidence that GAD65 is a T-cell antigen in NOD mice, being possibly also involved in very early processes leading to the development of human Type 1 diabetes

Do Breast Cancer Patients Tested in the Oncology Care Setting Share BRCA

BRCA genetic test results provide important information to manage cancer risk for patients and their families. Little is known on the communication of genetic test results by mutation status with family members and physicians in the oncology care setting. As part of a longitudinal study evaluating the impact of genetic counseling and testing among recently diagnosed breast cancer patients, we collected patients' self-reported patterns of disclosure. Descriptive statistics characterized the sample and determined the prevalence of disclosure of BRCA test results to family members and physicians. Of 100 patients who completed the baseline and the 6-month followup survey, 77 reported pursuing testing. The majority shared test results with female first-degree relatives; fewer did with males. Participants were more likely to share results with oncologists compared to surgeons, primary care physicians, or other specialty physicians. These findings suggest that while breast cancer patients may communicate results to at-risk female family members and their medical oncologist, they may need education and support to facilitate communication to other first-degree relatives and providers

Towards a sustainable and equitable blue economy

The global rush to develop the \u2018blue economy\u2019 risks harming both the marine environment and human wellbeing. Bold policies and actions are urgently needed. We identify five priorities to chart a course towards an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable blue economy

Recent advances in the structural and molecular biology of type IV secretion systems

Bacteria use type IV secretion (T4S) systems to deliver DNA and protein substrates to a diverse range of prokaryotic and eukaryotic target cells. T4S systems have great impact on human health, as they are a major source of antibiotic resistance spread among bacteria and are central to infection processes of many pathogens. Therefore, deciphering the structure and underlying translocation mechanism of T4S systems is crucial to facilitate development of new drugs. The last five years have witnessed considerable progress in unraveling the structure of T4S system subassemblies, notably that of the T4S system core complex, a large 1 MegaDalton (MDa) structure embedded in the double membrane of Gram-negative bacteria and made of 3 of the 12 T4S system components. However, the recent determination of the structure of ∼3 MDa assembly of 8 of these components has revolutionized our views of T4S system architecture and opened up new avenues of research, which are discussed in this review