The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Mothers' Experiences of Parenting

Background: The death of a child has been found to have long term consequences for both individual and family functioning. This is particularly true for bereaved siblings who have been found to be at increased risk of developing mental health difficulties in later life. Literature on parental bereavement proposes that the parenting phenomenon, such as replacement child syndrome, subsequent child syndrome and the parenting paradox, which can emerge after the death of a child, may account for this. However, there is very little research on these labels of observed parenting phenomenon and, as a result, any hypothesis offered remains under elaborated. In addition, limited evidence suggests that, due to the sudden, unexpected and unexplained nature of the loss, SIDS parents are more likely to experience a greater degree of distress and adjustment difficulties than other perinatally bereaved populations. Given this, it could be hypothesised that SIDS parents may be likely to experience these parenting phenomena. Despite this, however, SIDS remains a neglected area of research. Aims: As a consequence of this research gap, the study aims to explore mothers’ experiences of parenting in their transition from being a parent unaffected by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome to a parent affected by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Methodology: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven mothers who had experienced an incident of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The interviews were then transcribed and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results: Five master themes emerged from the analysis: ‘Channelling the Parent Within’, a naturally developing and responsive parenting style that is facilitated by internal mechanisms, such as flexibility and confidence; ‘Parenting Outside of Yourself’, a parenting style that develops in the aftermath of a SIDS event, which is characterised by self doubt and a reliance on external mechanisms such as reassurance and restriction; ‘Restoration Through You’, the restorative effect of the subsequent and surviving children, which allows vindication and re-establishes happiness; ‘The Bitter Restoration’, a restoration that encompasses internal knowledge and external evidence of loss, including a disrupted family composition and a continued awareness of existential threat; ‘A Disruptive Appreciation’, the development of a greater appreciation for the subsequent and surviving children that impacts discipline and incorporates indulgence. These, along with the subthemes contributing to them, are presented as a narrative account. Conclusion: The results imply that mothers who have experienced a SIDS event shift into a permissive and anxious style of parenting which is characterised by safety behaviours. A model of parenting in the aftermath of SIDS has been proposed in order to explain the underlying cognitions and processes which drive this behaviour and the factors which serve to maintain it. By doing this it is hoped that, when working with bereaved parents and siblings, clinicians will be better positioned to frame parenting practices and intervene at a cognitive level

Identification of enzymatic processes for the breakdown of crystalline cellulose

Issued as final reportLignin, cellulose and hemicellulose, the key components of lignocellulosic biomass are closely associated with each other at the plant cell level. This close association, together with the partly crystalline nature of cellulose serves to protect cellulose in native biomass from enzymatic hydrolysis. The predominant polysaccharide in most plant cell walls is cellulose, which forms long liner fibrils of approximately 30-40 hydrogen-bonded chains of β-(1,4) glucopyranosides that have a native degree of polymerization (DP) of ~2,000-15,000 depending the starting bioresource (O’Sullivan, 1997). Cellulose can exhibit several different supra-molecular structures, including amorphous, para-crystalline and crystalline. Native cellulose has been shown to be composed of two different crystalline forms in addition to para-crystalline and amorphous (Attala, et al., 1984). In general, the bioavailability of cellulose is controlled by a variety of factors including the degree of cellulose crystallinity, lignin content and structure, acetylated hemicelluloses and lignin-carbohydrate complexes (Clark, A.J., 1997). The deconstruction of cellulose to glucose has become a key technological challenge for green biofuel production. Researchers are searching for novel cellulolytic enzymatic properties in many organisms including termites, sea worms, and the gut section of several mammalians (Baker, J.O., et al., 1998; Mansfield, S.D., et al., 2003; McCarter, S.L., et al., 2002; Wyman, C.E., 2005). The crystalline regions of cellulose are normally considered to be more difficult to degrade than amorphous domains due to chains tightly-held by intermolecular hydrogen bonding. Several researchers demonstrated increased crystallinity during enzymatic hydrolysis, and concluded that the loosely structured amorphous regions were hydrolyzed more rapid than the crystalline domains (Cao, Y., et al., 2002; Cao, Y., et al. 2004). The intestinal Fortitude Fibro-biotic program did find two bacterial isolates that had a unique enzyme activity on cellulose resulting in treated cellulose samples having a decrease in crystallinity. This type of enzymatic activity has not been previously reported or isolated for biofuel production. Two bacterial isolates (SDCC 1b and SDCC 2a) have had their genomes sequenced and are in the process of genome annotation. This research program was directed at determining how cellulosic ultrastructure changes when fermented with these novel mammalian bacterial isolated as a function of time and multiply bioresources. In addition, the ability of related pig fecal bacteria to degrade and modify the structure of cellulosic biomass were determined. These results will help determine how effective the fermentation of cellulose with SDCC 1b/2a and pig fecal bacterial is on the reactivity and ultrastructure of cellulose.United States. Department of AgricultureUnited States. Agricultural Research Service. Midwest AreaUnited States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc

Exploring the associations between auditory hallucinations and psychopathological experiences in 10,933 patient narratives: moving beyond diagnostic categories and surveys

Abstract Background Previous research suggests that auditory hallucinations are prevalent within both the clinical and general populations. Yet, we know little about how these phenomena are associated with other psychopathology symptoms and experiences. The current study aids investigations towards preventing, predicting and more effectively responding to such distressing occurrences. There have been substantial efforts in the literature to propose models of auditory hallucination and attempts to verify them. However, many of these studies used survey methods that restrict the person’s responses to a set of pre-defined criteria or experiences and do not allow exploration of potential important other symptoms beyond them. This is the first study to explore the correlates of auditory hallucination using a qualitative dataset consisting of unrestricted responses of patients about their lived experiences with mental illness. Method The study used a dataset consisting of 10,933 narratives from patients diagnosed with mental illnesses. For analysis, the study used correlation on the text-based data. This approach is an alternative to the knowledge-based approach where experts manually read the narratives and infer the rules and relationships from the dataset. Result This study found at least 8 correlates of auditory hallucination (small correlation coefficients), with the unusual ones being “pain.” The study also found that auditory hallucinations were independent of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours, and dissociation, in contrast with the literature. Conclusion This study presents an innovative approach to explore the possible associations between symptoms without the restrictions of (or outside the confines of) traditional diagnostic categories. The study exemplified this by finding the correlates of auditory hallucination. However, any other symptom or experience of interest can be studied similarly. Potential future directions of these findings are discussed in the context of mental healthcare screening and treatment

What can we learn about the psychiatric diagnostic categories by analysing patients’ lived experiences with Machine-Learning?

BACKGROUND: To deliver appropriate mental healthcare interventions and support, it is imperative to be able to distinguish one person from the other. The current classification of mental illness (e.g., DSM) is unable to do that well, indicating the problem of diagnostic heterogeneity between disorders (i.e., the disorder categories have many common symptoms). As a result, the same person might be diagnosed with two different disorders by two independent clinicians. We argue that this problem might have resulted because these disorders were created by a group of humans (APA taskforce members) who relied on more intuition and consensus than data. Literature suggests that human-led decisions are prone to biases, group-thinking, and other factors (such as financial conflict of interest) that can enormously influence creating diagnostic and treatment guidelines. Therefore, in this study, we inquire that if we prevent such human intervention (and thereby their associated biases) and use Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to form those disorder structures from the data (patient-reported symptoms) directly, then can we come up with homogenous clusters or categories (representing disorders/syndromes: a group of co-occurring symptoms) that are adequately distinguishable from each other for them to be clinically useful. Additionally, we inquired how these A.I.-created categories differ (or are similar) from human-created categories. Finally, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study, that demonstrated how to use narrative qualitative data from patients with psychopathology and group their experiences using an A.I. Therefore, the current study also attempts to serve as a proof-of-concept. METHOD: We used secondary data scraped from online communities and consisting of 10,933 patients’ narratives about their lived experiences. These patients were diagnosed with one or more DSM diagnoses for mental illness. Using Natural Language Processing techniques, we converted the text data into a numeric form. We then used an Unsupervised Machine Learning algorithm called K-Means Clustering to group/cluster the symptoms.  RESULTS: Using the data mining approach, the A.I. found four categories/clusters formed from the data. We presented ten symptoms or experiences under each cluster to demonstrate the practicality of application and understanding. We also identified the transdiagnostic factors and symptoms that were unique to each of these four clusters. We explored the extent of similarities between these clusters and studied the difference in data density in them. Finally, we reported the silhouette score of + 0.046, indicating that the clusters are poorly distinguishable from each other (i.e., they have high overlapping symptoms). DISCUSSION: We infer that whether humans attempt to categorise mental illnesses or an A.I., the result is that the categories of mental disorders will not be unique enough to be able to distinguish one service seeker from another. Therefore, the categorical approach of diagnosing mental disorders can be argued to fall short of its purpose. We need to search for a classification system beyond the categorical approaches even if there are secondary merits (such as ease of communication and black-and-white (binary) decision making). However, using our A.I. based data mining approach had several meritorious findings. For example, we found that some symptoms are more exclusive or unique to one cluster. In contrast, others are shared by most other clusters (i.e., identification of transdiagnostic experiences). Such differences are interesting objects of inquiry for future studies. For example, in clear contrast to the traditional diagnostic systems, while some experiences, such as auditory hallucinations, are present in all four clusters, others, such as trouble with eating, are exclusive to one cluster (representing a syndrome: a group of co-occurring symptoms). We argue that trans-diagnostic conditions (e.g., auditory hallucinations) might be prime targets for symptom-level interventions. For syndrome-level grouping and intervention, however, we argue that exclusive symptoms are the main targets. CONCLUSION: Categorical approach to mental disorders is not a way forward because the categories are not unique enough and have several shared symptoms. We argue that the same symptoms can be present in more than one syndrome, although dimensionally different. However, we need additional studies to test this hypothesis. Future directions and implications were discussed. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-022-03984-2

Metal template synthesis of a tripodal tris(bipyridyl) receptor that encapsulates a proton and an iron(II) centre in a pseudo cage

The Fe(ii) template synthesis of the first member of a new category of tripodal tris-bipyridine ligands incorporating a nitrogen bridgehead is reported. The X-ray structure of the reaction product shows that the ligand adopts a pseudo cage-like structure that encapsulates both a proton and an Fe(ii) ion in its cavity. The complex shows an extended helical arrangement that is effectively 'capped' at its open end by a hydrogen bonded PF6– counter ion that is symmetrically aligned with the 3-fold axis of the helix. A 1H NMR study demonstrated that the encapsulated proton can be reversibly exchanged under acid/base conditions in CD3CN