A Correlational Study of Anxiety Level, Spiritual Practices, and Spiritual Well-Being

Research has indicated that anxiety is the most prevalent of all psychological disorders, affecting up to 30 million people in the United States at some point during their lives (Lepine, 2002). It has also been determined that anxiety may be a fairly stable trait that people experience. Some people are more likely to experiencing anxiety than others, and for those who are more likely it is also more difficult to stop having anxiety. Predictors of anxiety have been identified and include such items as: low self-esteem, ineffective social support, high education, low religiosity (Hovey & Magana, 2002), low vocational satisfaction (Knox, Virginia, & Lombardo, 2002), female gender (Fergusson, Swain-Campbell, & Horwood, 2002), and family history of anxiety (Frazier, 2001). The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between anxiety and spirituality in order to provide a basis for further research and to lead to the development of additional strategies to help individuals cope with, and manage anxiety levels. For this current study a convenience sample of undergraduate and graduate college students from a private Pacific Northwest university were surveyed. Both men (n=2 5) and women (n=63 ) were surveyed. A demographic questionnaire, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Spiritual Practices scale, and the Spiritual Well-Being scale were administered. The hypotheses stated that, firstly, Christian Spiritual Practices would be significantly negatively correlated with the level of both Trait and State Anxiety. Secondly, that Spiritual Well-Being would be significantly negatively correlated with both the level of Trait and State Anxiety. And thirdly, that there would be a significant positive correlation between Spiritual Well-Being and Christian Spiritual Practices. Results of the study indicate that all of the hypotheses were fully supported and that there is indeed a strong negative correlation between the level of Anxiety an individual experiences and the specific types of Spiritual Practices and level of Spiritual Well-Being exhibited. Additionally, a strong positive correlation between Spiritual Well-Being and Christian Spiritual Practices was also evidenced. Currently the most widely used treatment modalities for lowering symptoms of anxiety include psychotherapy, pharmacological treatment, or a combination of the two. These can be extremely beneficial in providing symptom relief and changing the individuals\u27 beliefs, roles, or expectations. However, in light of the strong findings of this research, it may be advantageous for clinicians to begin thinking outside of the box in their treatment of individuals suffering from severe anxiety. Encouraging Christian spiritual practices in particular, and possibly other spiritual practices, may also prove effective in reducing anxiety. These may provide an important ancillary treatment to psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy

Cognitive endpoints for therapy development for neuronopathic mucopolysaccharidoses: Results of a consensus procedure

AbstractThe design and conduct of clinical studies to evaluate the effects of novel therapies on central nervous system manifestations in children with neuronopathic mucopolysaccharidoses is challenging. Owing to the rarity of these disorders, multinational studies are often needed to recruit enough patients to provide meaningful data and statistical power. This can make the consistent collection of reliable data across study sites difficult. To address these challenges, an International MPS Consensus Conference for Cognitive Endpoints was convened to discuss approaches for evaluating cognitive and adaptive function in patients with mucopolysaccharidoses. The goal was to develop a consensus on best practice for the design and conduct of clinical studies investigating novel therapies for these conditions, with particular focus on the most appropriate outcome measures for cognitive function and adaptive behavior. The outcomes from the consensus panel discussion are reported here

Cognitive endpoints for therapy development for neuronopathic mucopolysaccharidoses: Results of a consensus procedure

The design and conduct of clinical studies to evaluate the effects of novel therapies on central nervous system manifestations in children with neuronopathic mucopolysaccharidoses is challenging. Owing to the rarity of these disorders, multinational studies are often needed to recruit enough patients to provide meaningful data and statistical power. This can make the consistent collection of reliable data across study sites difficult. To address these challenges, an International MPS Consensus Conference for Cognitive Endpoints was convened to discuss approaches for evaluating cognitive and adaptive function in patients with mucopolysaccharidoses. The goal was to develop a consensus on best practice for the design and conduct of clinical studies investigating novel therapies for these conditions, with particular focus on the most appropriate outcome measures for cognitive function and adaptive behavior. The outcomes from the consensus panel discussion are reported here

Coevolution of dispersal in a parasitoid-host system

Interspecific interactions and the evolution of dispersal are both of interest when considering the potential impact of habitat fragmentation on community ecology, but the interaction between these processes is not well studied. We address this by considering the coevolution of dispersal strategies in a host-parasitoid system. An individual-based host-parasitoid metapopulation model was constructed for a patchy environment, allowing for evolution in dispersal rates of both species. Highly rarefied environments with few suitable patches selected against dispersal in both species, as did relatively static environments. Provided that parasitoids persist, all parameter values studied led to stable equilibria in dispersal rates for both species. There was a tendency towards higher dispersal rates in parasitoids due to the asymmetric relationships of the two species to the patches: vacant patches are most valuable for hosts, but unsuitable for parasitoids, which require an established host population to reproduce. High host dispersal rate was favoured by high host population growth rate, and in the parasitoid by high growth rates in both species

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Comparison of coniferous forest carbon stocks between old-growth and young secondgrowth forests on two soil types in central British

Abstract: Carbon (C) stocks were assessed for hybrid interior spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss × Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm.)-dominated upland forests within the Aleza Lake Research Forest in central British Columbia, Canada. Four old-growth (141-250 years old) and four young second-growth (<20 years old) forest plots were established on the two dominant soil texture types, coarse and fine, for a total of 16 plots. Mean total C stocks for oldgrowth stands ranged from 423 Mg C·ha -1 (coarse) to 324 Mg C·ha -1 (fine), intermediate between Pacific Northwest temperate forests and upland boreal forests. Total C was lower in second-growth stands because of lower tree (mostly large tree stem), forest floor, and woody debris C stocks. In contrast, old-growth forest-floor C stocks ranged from 78 Mg C·ha -1 (coarse) to 35 Mg C·ha -1 (fine), 2.9-and 1.2-fold higher than in corresponding second-growth stands, respectively. Woody debris C stocks in old-growth stands totaled 35 Mg C·ha -1 (coarse) and 31 Mg C·ha -1 (fine), 2.7-and 3.4-fold higher than in second-growth stands, respectively. Mineral soil C to 1.07 m depth was similar across soil type and age-class, with totals ranging from 115 to 106 Mg C·ha -1 . Harvesting of old-growth forests in sub-boreal British Columbia lowers total C stocks by 54%-41%. Résumé : Les stocks de carbone (C) ont été évalués pour les forêts de montagne dominées par l'épinette hybride de l'intérieur (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss × Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm.) dans les limites de la forêt expérimen-tale du lac Aleza située dans le centre de la Colombie-Britannique, au Canada. Des parcelles-échantillons ont été éta-blies dans quatre vieilles forêts (141-250 ans) et quatre jeunes forêts de seconde venue (<20 ans) sur les deux types dominants de texture du sol, grossière et fine, pour un total de 16 parcelles-échantillons. Les stocks totaux moyens de C pour les vieilles forêts variaient de 423 Mg C·ha -1 (grossière) à 324 Mg C·ha -1 (fine), à mi-chemin entre les forêts tempérées du Pacifique Nord-Ouest et les forêts boréales de montagne. Le C total était plus faible dans les peuplements de seconde venue parce que les stocks de C étaient plus faibles dans les arbres (surtout des arbres avec de grosses tiges), la couverture morte et les débris ligneux. À l'inverse, les stocks de C dans la couverture morte des vieilles forêts variaient de 78 Mg C·ha -1 (grossière) à 35 Mg C·ha -1 (fine), soit respectivement 2,9 et 1,2 fois plus que dans les peuplements de seconde venue correspondants. Les stocks de C dans les débris ligneux des vieilles forêts totalisaient 35 Mg C·ha -1 (grossière) et 31 Mg C·ha -1 (fine), soit respectivement 2,7 et 3,4 fois plus que dans les peuplements de seconde venue. Le contenu en C du sol minéral, jusqu'à une profondeur de 1,07 m, était similaire pour tous les types de sol et toutes les classes d'âge avec des totaux variant de 115 à 106 Mg C·ha -1 . La récolte des vieilles forêts dans la zone sub-boréale en Colombie-Britannique réduit les stocks totaux de C de 54 % à 41 %. [Traduit par la Rédaction] Fredeen et al. 142

Impact of high-throughput screening in biomedical research

High Throughput Screening (HTS) has been postulated in several quarters to be a contributory factor to the widespread decline in Pharma industry productivity. Moreover, it has been promoted as anti-scientific and labeled as responsible for stifling the creativity that has long been the lifeblood of drug discovery. In this article we aim to dispel some of these myths and present the case for the use of HTS as part of a proven scientific toolkit, the wider use of which is essential for the discovery of new chemotypes. As we gain an even deeper understanding of the underlying mechanistic causes of disease, HTS has been further embraced in academic quarters for the discovery of tool compounds. Its wide adoption in industry and academia is a clear indicator that this technique is a valuable asset for the discovery of novel bioactive substances that can be used as molecular probes or optimized to pharmaceutical products

Identification of a peptide inhibitor for the histone methyltransferase WHSC1

<div><p>WHSC1 is a histone methyltransferase that is responsible for mono- and dimethylation of lysine 36 on histone H3 and has been implicated as a driver in a variety of hematological and solid tumors. Currently, there is a complete lack of validated chemical matter for this important drug discovery target. Herein we report on the first fully validated WHSC1 inhibitor, PTD2, a norleucine-containing peptide derived from the histone H4 sequence. This peptide exhibits micromolar affinity towards WHSC1 in biochemical and biophysical assays. Furthermore, a crystal structure was solved with the peptide in complex with SAM and the SET domain of WHSC1L1. This inhibitor is an important first step in creating potent, selective WHSC1 tool compounds for the purposes of understanding the complex biology in relation to human disease.</p></div

Norleucine-containing peptides can inhibit WHSC1 and WHSC1L1 activity in vitro.

<p>Representative peptide inhibitor biochemical dose-response curves for (A) WHSC1 941–1240 and (B) WHSC1L1 1054–1285. Error bars represent the standard deviation of three independent replicates. Resulting IC₅₀ values are reported in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0197082#pone.0197082.t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>.</p