402 research outputs found
Role-play Games (RPGs) for Mental Health (Why Not?): Roll for Initiative
COVID-19 has impacted the mental health of the general public negatively, associated with preventative measures, restricting life activities. These restrictions, such as the stay-at-home strategy, resulted in heightened stress, depression, loneliness, substance abuse and domestic violence, violating people’s occupational and personal lives. During the pandemic, the demands for roleplay games (RPGs) have increased: for example, the sales of “Dungeons & Dragons” tripled, underscoring the potential mental health benefits of such games. However, research into the mental health benefits of such games remains under-developed, needing more scientific attention. Accordingly, this commentary paper reviews the existing literature, and suggests areas for application and research about RPGs and mental health including psychotherapy, career guidance, education, and people with disabilities. Insights offered can help practitioners and researchers in RPGs and mental health conduct empirical research and develop alternative approaches for mental health in stressful times
Positive psychology of Malaysian students: impacts of engagement, motivation, self-compassion and wellbeing on mental health
Malaysia plays a key role in education of the Asia Pacific, expanding its scholarly output rapidly. However, mental health of Malaysian students is challenging, and their help-seeking is low because of stigma. This study explored the relationships between mental health and positive psychological constructs (academic engagement, motivation, self-compassion, and wellbeing), and evaluated the relative contribution of each positive psychological construct to mental health in Malaysian students. An opportunity sample of 153 students completed the measures regarding these constructs. Correlation, regression, and mediation analyses were conducted. Engagement, amotivation, self-compassion, and wellbeing were associated with, and predicted large variance in mental health. Self-compassion was the strongest independent predictor of mental health among all the positive psychological constructs. Findings can imply the strong links between mental health and positive psychology, especially selfcompassion. Moreover, intervention studies to examine the effects of self-compassion training on mental health of Malaysian students appear to be warranted.N/
Sources of UHECRs in view of the TUS and JEM-EUSO experiments
The origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is one of the most
intriguing problems of modern cosmic ray physics. We briefly review the main
astrophysical models of their origin and the forthcoming orbital experiments
TUS and JEM-EUSO, and discuss how the new data can help one solve the
long-standing puzzle.Comment: 4 pages; prepared for ECRS-2012 (http://ecrs2012.sinp.msu.ru/); v2: a
reference adde
POEMMA: Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics
The Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) mission is being
designed to establish charged-particle astronomy with ultra-high energy cosmic
rays (UHECRs) and to observe cosmogenic tau neutrinos (CTNs). The study of
UHECRs and CTNs from space will yield orders-of-magnitude increase in
statistics of observed UHECRs at the highest energies, and the observation of
the cosmogenic flux of neutrinos for a range of UHECR models. These
observations should solve the long-standing puzzle of the origin of the highest
energy particles ever observed, providing a new window onto the most energetic
environments and events in the Universe, while studying particle interactions
well beyond accelerator energies. The discovery of CTNs will help solve the
puzzle of the origin of UHECRs and begin a new field of Astroparticle Physics
with the study of neutrino properties at ultra-high energies.Comment: 8 pages, in the Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray
Conference, ICRC217, Busan, Kore
Functional Group and Substructure Searching as a Tool in Metabolomics
BACKGROUND: A direct link between the names and structures of compounds and the functional groups contained within them is important, not only because biochemists frequently rely on literature that uses a free-text format to describe functional groups, but also because metabolic models depend upon the connections between enzymes and substrates being known and appropriately stored in databases. METHODOLOGY: We have developed a database named "Biochemical Substructure Search Catalogue" (BiSSCat), which contains 489 functional groups, >200,000 compounds and >1,000,000 different computationally constructed substructures, to allow identification of chemical compounds of biological interest. CONCLUSIONS: This database and its associated web-based search program (http://bisscat.org/) can be used to find compounds containing selected combinations of substructures and functional groups. It can be used to determine possible additional substrates for known enzymes and for putative enzymes found in genome projects. Its applications to enzyme inhibitor design are also discussed
Nucleocytoplasmic transport: a thermodynamic mechanism
The nuclear pore supports molecular communication between cytoplasm and
nucleus in eukaryotic cells. Selective transport of proteins is mediated by
soluble receptors, whose regulation by the small GTPase Ran leads to cargo
accumulation in, or depletion from the nucleus, i.e., nuclear import or nuclear
export. We consider the operation of this transport system by a combined
analytical and experimental approach. Provocative predictions of a simple model
were tested using cell-free nuclei reconstituted in Xenopus egg extract, a
system well suited to quantitative studies. We found that accumulation capacity
is limited, so that introduction of one import cargo leads to egress of
another. Clearly, the pore per se does not determine transport directionality.
Moreover, different cargo reach a similar ratio of nuclear to cytoplasmic
concentration in steady-state. The model shows that this ratio should in fact
be independent of the receptor-cargo affinity, though kinetics may be strongly
influenced. Numerical conservation of the system components highlights a
conflict between the observations and the popular concept of transport cycles.
We suggest that chemical partitioning provides a framework to understand the
capacity to generate concentration gradients by equilibration of the
receptor-cargo intermediary.Comment: in press at HFSP Journal, vol 3 16 text pages, 1 table, 4 figures,
plus Supplementary Material include
Automatic Assignment of EC Numbers
A wide range of research areas in molecular biology and medical biochemistry require a reliable enzyme classification system, e.g., drug design, metabolic network reconstruction and system biology. When research scientists in the above mentioned areas wish to unambiguously refer to an enzyme and its function, the EC number introduced by the Nomenclature Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) is used. However, each and every one of these applications is critically dependent upon the consistency and reliability of the underlying data for success. We have developed tools for the validation of the EC number classification scheme. In this paper, we present validated data of 3788 enzymatic reactions including 229 sub-subclasses of the EC classification system. Over 80% agreement was found between our assignment and the EC classification. For 61 (i.e., only 2.5%) reactions we found that their assignment was inconsistent with the rules of the nomenclature committee; they have to be transferred to other sub-subclasses. We demonstrate that our validation results can be used to initiate corrections and improvements to the EC number classification scheme
Characteristics and prognosis of coexisting adnexa malignancy with endometrial cancer: a single institution review of 51 cases
Measurements of KL Branching Fractions and the CP Violation Parameter |eta+-|
We present new measurements of the six largest branching fractions of the KL
using data collected in 1997 by the KTeV experiment (E832) at Fermilab. The
results are B(KL -> pi e nu) = 0.4067 +- 0.0011 B(KL -> pi mu nu) = 0.2701 +-
0.0009 B(KL -> pi+ pi- pi0) = 0.1252 +- 0.0007 B(KL -> pi0 pi0 pi0) = 0.1945 +-
0.0018 B(KL -> pi+ pi-) = (1.975 +- 0.012)E-3, and B(KL -> pi0 pi0) = (0.865 +-
0.010)E-3, where statistical and systematic errors have been summed in
quadrature. We also determine the CP violation parameter |eta+-| to be (2.228
+- 0.010)E-3. Several of these results are not in good agreement with averages
of previous measurements.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. D; 20 pages, 22 figure
Constraining Very Heavy Dark Matter Using Diffuse Backgrounds of Neutrinos and Cascaded Gamma Rays
We consider multi-messenger constraints on very heavy dark matter (VHDM) from
recent Fermi gamma-ray and IceCube neutrino observations of isotropic
background radiation. Fermi data on the diffuse gamma-ray background (DGB)
shows a possible unexplained feature at very high energies (VHE), which we have
called the "VHE Excess" relative to expectations for an attenuated power law
extrapolated from lower energies. We show that VHDM could explain this excess,
and that neutrino observations will be an important tool for testing this
scenario. More conservatively, we derive new constraints on the properties of
VHDM for masses of 10^3-10^10 GeV. These generic bounds follow from cosmic
energy budget constraints for gamma rays and neutrinos that we developed
elsewhere, based on detailed calculations of cosmic electromagnetic cascades
and also neutrino detection rates. We show that combining both gamma-ray and
neutrino data is essential for making the constraints on VHDM properties both
strong and robust. In the lower mass range, our constraints on VHDM
annihilation and decay are comparable to other results; however, our
constraints continue to much higher masses, where they become relatively
stronger.Comment: 33 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in JCA
- …