Interaction of hope and optimism with anxiety and depression in a specific group of cancer survivors: a preliminary study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Anxiety and depression have been identified as a common psychological distress faced by the majority of cancer patients. With the increasing number of cancer cases, increasing demands will be placed on health systems to address effective psychosocial care and therapy. The objective of this study was to assess the possible role of hope and optimism on anxiety and depression. We also wanted to investigate if there is a specific component of hope that could play a role in buffering anxiety and depression amongst cancer patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A retrospective cross sectional study was conducted in the outpatient station of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, PR-China. Fifty patients successfully treated for OC cancer were recruited after their informed consents had been obtained during the review clinic. During their regular follow-up controls in the outpatient clinic the patients compiled the hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS), hope scale (HS) and the life orientation scale-revised (LOT-R).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Hope was negatively correlated with depression (<it>r </it>= -.55, <it>p </it>< .001) and anxiety (r = -.38, <it>p </it>< .05). Similar pattern was found between optimism and the latter adjustment outcomes (depression: <it>r </it>= -.55, <it>p </it>< .001; anxiety: <it>r </it>= -.35, <it>p </it>< .05). Regression analyses indentified that both hope and optimism were significant predictors of depression. Hope and optimism had equal association with depression (hope: <it>β </it>= .40 versus optimism: <it>β </it>= .38). Hope and optimism together were significantly predictive of anxiety, whereas neither hope nor optimism alone was significant individual predictors of anxiety.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Hope and optimism both negatively correlated with patients' level of anxiety and depression. Besides theoretical implications, this study brings forward relevant findings related to developing specific clinical psychological care in the field of oncology that to date has not been researched specifically in the field of oncology. The results of this study will help guide the direction of future prospective studies in the field of oncology. This will contribute significantly to increasing patients quality of life as well enabling health care facilities to provide all cancer patients a more holistic cancer care.</p

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

Protected areas conserved forests from fire and deforestation in Vietnam’s central highlands: 2001-2020

Nature conservation and poverty alleviation should not be mutually exclusive. REDD+ is a United Nations initiative that was designed to facilitate payments from wealthy to developing countries for forest protection and carbon monitoring. As one of the first UN-REDD partner countries, case studies from Vietnam’s REDD+ pilot programs can give insights of common successes and failures, to guide future program success. We searched for REDD+ case studies from Vietnam in Open-Access journals and reviewed six REDD+ case studies from five provinces. We analyzed REDD+ applications funded by USAID, UN-REDD Programme and NGO operations. In our review, we found illegal logging and agricultural conversion were two major drivers of deforestation and degradation in Vietnam. Additionally, we compared payments from REDD+ to the opportunity cost to prevent deforestation from timber exploitation or agricultural land use. Although Vietnam’s REDD+ programs have garnered millions of US dollars in support, there was a large gap in funds paid to voluntary participants of REDD+, thereby compromising the long-term sustainability and support of the system. Future initiatives should take a bottom-up approach to address the root drivers of poverty, rather than a top-down approach that prioritizes carbon benefits to wealthy countries and has been plagued by elite-capture in developing nations. Knowledge co-production with local and indigenous communities can improve the success of REDD+ projects by including marginalized and vulnerable communities. As a biodiversity hotspot with ~40% forested land area and 290 protected areas, Vietnam is a global conservation priority. Vietnam’s forests have faced a complex history of change, including anthropogenic impacts from warfare, development, and global warming. Vietnam is one of few tropical countries to reverse trends in forest loss, has shown a net gain in forest cover since the 1990s, and was one of the first countries to take part in UN-REDD programs. However, a considerable amount of Vietnam’s forest gain has been from plantation forestry, as Vietnam’s policy has promoted economic development to support the population. Natural resource intensification, expansion, and residential development in the historically agrarian Central Highlands region has favored forest conversion to croplands and timber plantations. We selected a key region of the Central Highlands to ask four questions in our study: (1) How has forest cover changed in the Da Lat Plateau from 2001-2020? (2) How has fire affected the same landscape? (3) How are forest loss and fire linked spatially and temporally? And (4) how do these patterns vary between areas with legal protection status and those without? To answer these questions, we integrated the Global Forest Change (Hansen et al., 2013) and FIRED VIETNAM datasets (Balch et al., 2020; Mahood et al., 2022) to investigate forest cover change, fire, and fire-linked deforestation in the region from 2001-2020. Our study area is 1,524,783 ha near the Da Lat Plateau and roughly equivalent areas of legally protected areas (802,791 ha) and surrounding landscape (721,992 ha) without formal protection status. We used five spatial categories for analysis: Cat Tien National Park, Bidoup Nui-Ba N.P., Dong Nai Biosphere Reserve, the total area of smaller protected areas, and the land matrix outside protected areas. Between 2001 and 2020, 3,794 fires burned 132,216 ha (8.7% total area), and 208,356 ha of deforestation occurred (13.6% total area). Nearly half of all fires overlapped with forest loss in the same year, but fire-linked deforestation only accounted for 6,692 ha, 3.2% forest loss, and 0.4% of the study area. Fifty-four percent of fire-linked deforestation occurred in natural forests and 46% in plantations. Fire ignitions were almost exclusively in the regional dry season, December to April. Long-term climate data, 1971-2020, showed statistically significant increasing trends in minimum, mean, and maximum temperatures. However, the total area burned does not show significant increasing trends between 2001-2020 or from 2001 to the peak in 2010. Between 2001 to 2020, 70% of fires, 57% of forest loss, and 74% of fire-linked forests occurred outside formally protected areas. Overall, protected areas in the Central Highlands have effectively achieved national and international conservation goals, while adjacent land use and land cover change contributed to Vietnam’s development

Conflicting Frames about Ownership and Land Use Drive Wildfire Ignitions in a Protected Conservation Area

The creation of protected conservation areas may result in protracted conflicts between stakeholders. In this study we examine the drivers of anthropogenic wildfire ignitions in the National Park of “los Alerces” (NPA) in Patagonia, Argentina. The NPA was established in 1937 to protect the native “andino-patagónico” forests from wildfires as well as preserving its scenic beauty and native flora and fauna. At the time of its creation state authorities prohibited all extractive human activities in the “intangible”—fully protected—“National Park” section, while other regulated extractive and ecotourism activities were allowed to continue in the “Natural Reserve” section in an effort to accommodate the historical entitlements of the displaced populations of “pobladores” (settlers) that had been living in the NPA for over a century. Here we interviewed the main stakeholder groups—“pobladores”, forest rangers and administrators, ecolodge owners and angler club members—to identify the drivers of wildfire ignitions in the park. Wildfires have been singled out by state authorities as the main threat to the NPA though considerable scientific uncertainty exists regarding their complex ecological effects. This study argues, based on the human and biophysical system data collected, that two conflicting cultural frames exist within the NPA that provide the necessary backdrop for understanding the drivers of wildfire ignitions. In turn, these findings raise puzzling dilemmas for the main theoretical approaches that have been used to inform and design conflict management strategies in protected conservation areas.Fil: Seijo, Francisco. No especifíca;Fil: Godoy, Maria Marcela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Centro de Investigación y Extensión Forestal Andino Patagónico; ArgentinaFil: Guglielmin, Dante. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; ArgentinaFil: Ciampoli, Cecilia. Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible. Administracion de Parques Nacionales. Direccion Regional Noreste; ArgentinaFil: Ebright, Samuel. University of Arizona; Estados UnidosFil: Picco, Omar Aníbal. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; ArgentinaFil: Defossé, Guillermo Emilio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Centro de Investigación y Extensión Forestal Andino Patagónico; Argentin

Structure of the Escherichia coli RNA polymerase α subunit C-terminal domain

The crystal structure of the dimethyllysine derivative of the E. coli RNA polymerase α subunit C-terminal domain is reported at 2.0 Å resolution