Impact of a Yoga and Meditation Intervention on Students\u27 Stress and Anxiety Levels

Objective: To evaluate the impact of a 6-week yoga and meditation intervention on college students’ stress perception, anxiety levels and mindfulness skills. Methods. College students participated in a 6-week pilot program consisting of a 60-minute vinyasa yoga class followed by guided meditation once weekly, delivered by trained faculty at the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy. Students completed pre- and post-questionnaires to evaluate changes in the following outcomes: stress levels, anxiety levels, and mindfulness skills. The questionnaire was comprised of three self reporting tools: Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Changes from baseline were assessed using numerical and categorical scales (low, medium, and high). Results. Seventeen participants (ages 19-23) completed the study. Thirteen participants were female, and four were male. Nine of the students were enrolled in the PharmD program and eight from other majors. Anxiety and stress scores decreased while total mindfulness increased, with all changes statistically significant. Categorical pre-post data from BAI and PSS were statistically significant with no students reported being in the “high” category of both stress and anxiety post intervention. Conclusion. Students demonstrated a reduction in stress and anxiety levels after completing a 6-week yoga and meditation program preceding final exams. Results suggest adopting a mindfulness practice for as little as once per week may reduce stress and anxiety in college students. Higher education may consider the inclusion of nonpharmacologic methods, such as yoga and meditation, to support student self-care

The Ursinus Weekly, March 9, 1959

J. Robbins is \u2759 May queen; Court, committees are picked • Folk song concert presented, Mar. 21 • Juniors plan to present prom • Dr. Helen Cam to speak at Forum Wed. • Junior men should apply for Cub and Key • 90th anniversary of its charter celebrated by Ursinus on Feb. 19 • Campus Chest opens annual charity drive • APO plans for future events • SEAP hears pupils discuss teachers • Editorial: Giving? • Weavers • Letters to the editor • Sun dial was fast • Intramural night to be held Tuesday, March 24 • Badminton team wins third in row • Courtmen end season; Lose 2 more contests • Grapplers end season with 3-5 record • Religion in life week presented • Curtain Club begins tryouts for Spring play • Student faculty show to be new & different • Sophs present dancehttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1379/thumbnail.jp

Accuracy, Stability, and Corrective Behavior in a Visuomotor Tracking Task: A Preliminary Study

Visuomotor tracking tasks have been used to elucidate the underlying mechanisms that allow for the coordination of a movement to an environmental event. The main purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between accuracy and stability of tracking performance and the amount of corrective movements that emerge for various coordination patterns in a unimanual visuomotor tracking task. Participants (N = 6) produced rhythmic elbow flexion–extension motions and were required to track an external sinusoidal signal at five different relative phases, 0°, 45°, 90°, 135°, and 180°. Differential accuracy and stability were found among the five tracking patterns with the 0° relative phase pattern being the most accurate and stable pattern. Corrective movements were correlated with changes in accuracy only for the 0° relative phase pattern, with more corrections emerging for less accurate performance. The amount of corrective movements decreased as the stability of tracking performance increased for the 0°, 45°, and 135° patterns. For the 90° and 180° tracking patterns, the amount of corrective movements was not correlated with pattern accuracy or pattern stability. The results demonstrate that corrective behaviors are an important motor process in maintaining the stability of stable perception-action coordination patterns, while offering little benefit for unstable perception-action patterns

Impaired glucose tolerance or newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus diagnosed during admission adversely affects prognosis after myocardial infarction: An observational study

Objective To investigate the prognostic effect of newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus (NDM) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) post myocardial infarction (MI). Research Design and Methods Retrospective cohort study of 768 patients without preexisting diabetes mellitus post-MI at one centre in Yorkshire between November 2005 and October 2008. Patients were categorised as normal glucose tolerance (NGT n = 337), IGT (n = 279) and NDM (n = 152) on predischarge oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Primary end-point was the first occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) including cardiovascular death, non-fatal MI, severe heart failure (HF) or non-haemorrhagic stroke. Secondary end-points were all cause mortality and individual components of MACE. Results Prevalence of NGT, impaired fasting glucose (IFG), IGT and NDM changed from 90%, 6%, 0% and 4% on fasting plasma glucose (FPG) to 43%, 1%, 36% and 20% respectively after OGTT. 102 deaths from all causes (79 as first events of which 46 were cardiovascular), 95 non fatal MI, 18 HF and 9 non haemorrhagic strokes occurred during 47.2 ± 9.4 months follow up. Event free survival was lower in IGT and NDM groups. IGT (HR 1.54, 95% CI: 1.06–2.24, p = 0.024) and NDM (HR 2.15, 95% CI: 1.42–3.24, p = 0.003) independently predicted MACE free survival. IGT and NDM also independently predicted incidence of MACE. NDM but not IGT increased the risk of secondary end-points. Conclusion Presence of IGT and NDM in patients presenting post-MI, identified using OGTT, is associated with increased incidence of MACE and is associated with adverse outcomes despite adequate secondary prevention

The Ursinus Weekly, October 6, 1958

Helfferich succeeds McClure as President • Dr. Allan L. Rice has new Swedish book published • Messiah begins; Students register on Tues. and Wed. • New look in uniforms brightens band this year • APO holds open meeting Tues. evening, October 7 • Presidents speak: Welcome class of 1962 • Y starts program; Commissions meet • New jazz magazine hits the market • Spirit Committee plans dance • Doctor C. N. Parkinson to address Forum Tues. • Student teachers receive positions • Pre-medical society views symposium at Pennsylvania • New senators hold first meeting of Fall semester • Editorial: Entertainment • Letters to the editor • Selecting a house • Amigo speaks • Lantern chooses Miller, McCabe as new editors • Hockey squad to meet Swarthmore for first game • Soccermen begin practice; Season opens October 15 • Crusader\u27s early TD edges Bear eleven 6-0 • Middle Atlantic Conference opens season Oct. 2nd • Fall intramurals offer speedball • Danforth releases applications for graduate study • Dr. E. H. Miller appears on television program • But still try... • Former basketball coach dies of polio in Virginia • Last season • Cadaverism • Engagement • J. Von Koppenfels • Beta Sigma Lambda frat. holds dance Sat. at L.A.M. • Curtain Club reception planned for October 9https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/weekly/1367/thumbnail.jp

Timing of transcranial direct current stimulation at M1 does not affect motor sequence learning

Administering anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) at the primary motor cortex (M1) at various temporal loci relative to motor training is reported to affect subsequent performance gains. Stimulation administered in conjunction with motor training appears to offer the most robust benefit that emerges during offline epochs. This conclusion is made, however, based on between-experiment comparisons that involved varied methodologies. The present experiment addressed this shortcoming by administering the same 15-minute dose of anodal tDCS at M1 before, during, or after practice of a serial reaction time task (SRTT). It was anticipated that exogenous stimulation during practice with a novel SRTT would facilitate offline gains. Ninety participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups: tDCS before practice, tDCS during practice, tDCS after practice, or no tDCS. Each participant was exposed to 15 min of 2 mA of tDCS and motor training of an eight-element SRTT. The anode was placed at the right M1 with the cathode at the left M1, and the left hand was used to execute the SRTT. Test blocks were administered 1 and 24 h after practice concluded. The results revealed significant offline gain for all conditions at the 1-hour and 24-hour test blocks. Importantly, exposure to anodal tDCS at M1 at any point before, during, or after motor training failed to change the trajectory of skill development as compared to the no-stimulation control condition. These data add to the growing body of evidence questioning the efficacy of a single bout of exogenous stimulation as an adjunct to motor training for fostering skill learning.</p

Patterns and predictors of fast food consumption with acute myocardial infarction

Computational Infrastructure & Informatics Poster SessionBackground: Fast food is affordable and convenient, yet high in calories, saturated fat and sodium. The prevalence of fast food intake at the time of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and patterns of fast food intake in recovery are unknown. Moreover, the association between dietary counseling at hospital discharge and fast food intake after MI has not been described. Methods: We assessed baseline, 1 and 6-month fast food intake in 2494 patients in TRIUMPH, a 26-center, prospective registry of AMI patients. Fast food intake was divided into frequent (≥ weekly) vs. infrequent (< weekly) consumption. Multivariable regression was used to identify predictors of frequent fast food intake at 6-months, adjusted for baseline fast food consumption, sociodemographics and clinical factors. Results: Frequent fast food intake was common at the time of AMI (36%), but decreased substantially after AMI to 17% at 1-month and 20% at 6-months (p-value <0.0001). Patient characteristics independently associated with frequent fast food intake at 6-months included white race, male gender, health literacy, financial difficulty, dyslipidemia and diabetes. College education, heart failure and coronary revascularization during AMI admission were inversely associated with 6-month fast food consumption. Importantly, dietary counseling at discharge was not associated with lower 6-month fast food intake. Conclusion: Fast food consumption declined substantially after AMI. Certain populations, including patients with financial difficulty and lower health literacy continued to eat fast food frequently after their event. Although several patient groups are at risk for persistent high fast food intake, current dietary counseling efforts appear ineffective at altering behavior and new counseling strategies are needed

Sequencing and de novo analysis of a coral larval transcriptome using 454 GSFlx

Background: New methods are needed for genomic-scale analysis of emerging model organisms that exemplify important biological questions but lack fully sequenced genomes. For example, there is an urgent need to understand the potential for corals to adapt to climate change, but few\ud molecular resources are available for studying these processes in reef-building corals. To facilitate genomics studies in corals and other non-model systems, we describe methods for transcriptome sequencing using 454, as well as strategies for assembling a useful catalog of genes from the output. We have applied these methods to sequence the transcriptome of planulae larvae from the coral Acropora millepora.\ud Results: More than 600,000 reads produced in a single 454 sequencing run were assembled into ~40,000 contigs with five-fold average sequencing coverage. Based on sequence similarity with known proteins, these analyses identified ~11,000 different genes expressed in a range of conditions including thermal stress and settlement induction. Assembled sequences were annotated with gene names, conserved domains, and Gene Ontology terms. Targeted searches using these annotations identified the majority of genes associated with essential metabolic pathways and conserved signaling pathways, as well as novel candidate genes for stress-related processes. Comparisons with the genome of the anemone Nematostella vectensis revealed ~8,500\ud pairs of orthologs and ~100 candidate coral-specific genes. More than 30,000 SNPs were detected in the coral sequences, and a subset of these validated by re-sequencing.\ud Conclusion: The methods described here for deep sequencing of the transcriptome should be widely applicable to generate catalogs of genes and genetic markers in emerging model organisms. Our data provide the most comprehensive sequence resource currently available for reef-building\ud corals, and include an extensive collection of potential genetic markers for association and population connectivity studies. The characterization of the larval transcriptome for this widelystudied coral will enable research into the biological processes underlying stress responses in corals\ud and evolutionary adaptation to global climate change

Threshold bounce — occupancy-dependent modulation of the discriminating threshold in silicon detectors

The front-end electronics of silicon detectors are typically designed to ensure optimal noise performance for the expected input charge. A combination of preamplifiers and shaper circuits result in a nontrivial response of the front-end to injected charge, and the magnitude of the response may be sizeable in readout windows subsequent to that in which the charge was initially injected. The modulation of the discriminator threshold due to the superposition of the front-end response across multiple readout windows is coined “threshold bounce”. In this paper, we report a measurement of threshold bounce using silicon modules built for the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. These modules utilize ATLAS Binary Chips for their hit readout. The measurement was performed using a micro-focused 15 keV photon beam at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron. The effect of the choice of photon flux and discriminator threshold on the magnitude of the threshold bounce is studied. A Monte Carlo simulation which accounts for the front-end behaviour of the silicon modules is developed, and its predicted hit efficiency is found to be in good agreement with the measured hit efficiency

Colorectal cancer linkage on chromosomes 4q21, 8q13, 12q24, and 15q22

A substantial proportion of familial colorectal cancer (CRC) is not a consequence of known susceptibility loci, such as mismatch repair (MMR) genes, supporting the existence of additional loci. To identify novel CRC loci, we conducted a genome-wide linkage scan in 356 white families with no evidence of defective MMR (i.e., no loss of tumor expression of MMR proteins, no microsatellite instability (MSI)-high tumors, or no evidence of linkage to MMR genes). Families were ascertained via the Colon Cancer Family Registry multi-site NCI-supported consortium (Colon CFR), the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. A total of 1,612 individuals (average 5.0 per family including 2.2 affected) were genotyped using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism linkage arrays; parametric and non-parametric linkage analysis used MERLIN in a priori-defined family groups. Five lod scores greater than 3.0 were observed assuming heterogeneity. The greatest were among families with mean age of diagnosis less than 50 years at 4q21.1 (dominant HLOD = 4.51, α = 0.84, 145.40 cM, rs10518142) and among all families at 12q24.32 (dominant HLOD = 3.60, α = 0.48, 285.15 cM, rs952093). Among families with four or more affected individuals and among clinic-based families, a common peak was observed at 15q22.31 (101.40 cM, rs1477798; dominant HLOD = 3.07, α = 0.29; dominant HLOD = 3.03, α = 0.32, respectively). Analysis of families with only two affected individuals yielded a peak at 8q13.2 (recessive HLOD = 3.02, α = 0.51, 132.52 cM, rs1319036). These previously unreported linkage peaks demonstrate the continued utility of family-based data in complex traits and suggest that new CRC risk alleles remain to be elucidated. © 2012 Cicek et al