Religion and mental health among Hindu young people in England

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between mental health and attitude toward their religious tradition among a sample of 330 young people attending the Hindu Youth Festival in London. The participants completed the Santosh-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Hinduism together with the abbreviated form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire which provides measures of neuroticism and psychoticism. The data indicated that a more positive attitude toward Hinduism was associated with lower psychoticism scores but unrelated to neuroticism scores. There is no evidence, therefore, to associate higher levels of religiosity with poorer mental health among young people within the Hindu community

Likelihood inference for exponential-trawl processes

Integer-valued trawl processes are a class of serially correlated, stationary and infinitely divisible processes that Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen has been working on in recent years. In this Chapter, we provide the first analysis of likelihood inference for trawl processes by focusing on the so-called exponential-trawl process, which is also a continuous time hidden Markov process with countable state space. The core ideas include prediction decomposition, filtering and smoothing, complete-data analysis and EM algorithm. These can be easily scaled up to adapt to more general trawl processes but with increasing computation efforts.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures, forthcoming in: "A Fascinating Journey through Probability, Statistics and Applications: In Honour of Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen's 80th Birthday", Springer, New Yor

Psychological type and prayer preferences: a study among Anglican clergy in the United Kingdom

This study applies the framework of Jungian psychological type theory to define eight aspects of prayer preference, namely: introverted prayer, extraverted prayer, sensing prayer, intuitive prayer, feeling prayer, thinking prayer, judging prayer, and perceiving prayer. On the basis of data provided by 1,476 newly ordained Anglican clergy from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, eight 7-item scales were developed to access these aspects of prayer preferences. Significant correlations were found between each prayer preference and the relevant aspect of psychological type accessed by the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. These data support the theory that psychological type influences the way in which people pray

Widespread translational control contributes to the regulation of Arabidopsis photomorphogenesis

Environmental light regulates and optimizes plant growth and development. Genomic profiling of polysome-associated mRNA reveals that light stimulates dramatic changes in translational regulation, which contribute more to light-induced gene expression changes than transcriptional regulation

New trends for metal complexes with anticancer activity

Medicinal inorganic chemistry can exploit the unique properties of metal ions for the design of new drugs. This has, for instance, led to the clinical application of chemotherapeutic agents for cancer treatment, such as cisplatin. The use of cisplatin is, however, severely limited by its toxic side-effects. This has spurred chemists to employ different strategies in the development of new metal-based anticancer agents with different mechanisms of action. Recent trends in the field are discussed in this review. These include the more selective delivery and/or activation of cisplatin-related prodrugs and the discovery of new non-covalent interactions with the classical target, DNA. The use of the metal as scaffold rather than reactive centre and the departure from the cisplatin paradigm of activity towards a more targeted, cancer cell-specific approach, a major trend, are discussed as well. All this, together with the observation that some of the new drugs are organometallic complexes, illustrates that exciting times lie ahead for those interested in ‘metals in medicine

Decreased expression of breast cancer resistance protein in the duodenum in patients with obstructive cholestasis

Background/Aims: The expression of transporters involved in bile acid homeostasis is differentially regulated during obstructive cholestasis. Since the drug efflux transporter breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) is known to transport bile acids, we investigated whether duodenal BCRP expression could be altered during cholestasis. Methods: Using real-time RT-PCR analysis we determined mRNA expression levels in duodenal tissue of 19 cholestatic patients. Expression levels were compared to 14 healthy subjects. BCRP protein staining was determined in biopsies of 6 cholestatic and 6 healthy subjects by immunohistochemistry. Results: We found that in patients with obstructive cholestasis mean duodenal BCRP mRNA levels were significantly reduced to 53% and mean protein staining was reduced to 57%. Conclusions: BCRP, a transporter for bile acids and numerous drugs, appears to be down-regulated in the human duodenum during cholestasis. The clinical impact of these results has to be investigated in further studies. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel

The ideal healthcare: priorities of people with chronic conditions and their carers

Background It is well established that health consumer opinions should be considered in the design, delivery, and evaluation of health services. However, the opinions of people with chronic conditions and their carers and what they actually consider as ideal healthcare is limited. The aim of this study is to investigate the healthcare priorities of consumers with chronic conditions and their carers, if there are differences between these two groups, and if priorities differ depending on geographical location. Methods The nominal group technique was used as a method to identify what is currently important to, or valued by, participants. This method was also particularly suited to learning about healthcare problems and generating important solutions, thereby helping to bridge the gap between research and policy. Recruitment was carried out via purposive sampling, with the assistance of community pharmacies, general practices, various health agencies, government and non-government organisations. A total of 11 nominal groups were conducted; five groups consisted predominantly of consumers (n = 33 participants), two groups consisted predominantly of carers (n = 12 participants) and four were mixed groups, i.e. consumers, carers, and both (n = 26 participants). Results The findings suggested that to create a model of ideal healthcare for people with chronic conditions and their carers, appropriate and timely healthcare access was of paramount importance. Continuity and coordinated care, patient-centred care and affordability were equally the second most important healthcare priorities for all groups. When compared with other groups, access was discussed more frequently among participants residing in the rural area of Mount Isa. Compared to consumers, carers also discussed priorities that were more reminiscent with their caring roles, such as increased access and continuity and coordinated care. Conclusions Access to healthcare is the most important priority for people with chronic conditions and their carers. In the event of inappropriate access for certain groups, all other efforts to increase the quality of healthcare delivery, e.g. patient-centred care, may be pointless. However, health professionals alone may be limited in their ability to address the concerns related to healthcare access; structural changes by health policy makers may be needed

Interleukin-1β sequesters hypoxia inducible factor 2α to the primary cilium.

BACKGROUND: The primary cilium coordinates signalling in development, health and disease. Previously we have shown that the cilium is essential for the anabolic response to loading and the inflammatory response to interleukin-1β (IL-1β). We have also shown the primary cilium elongates in response to IL-1β exposure. Both anabolic phenotype and inflammatory pathology are proposed to be dependent on hypoxia-inducible factor 2 alpha (HIF-2α). The present study tests the hypothesis that an association exists between the primary cilium and HIFs in inflammatory signalling. RESULTS: Here we show, in articular chondrocytes, that IL-1β-induces primary cilia elongation with alterations to cilia trafficking of arl13b. This elongation is associated with a transient increase in HIF-2α expression and accumulation in the primary cilium. Prolyl hydroxylase inhibition results in primary cilia elongation also associated with accumulation of HIF-2α in the ciliary base and axoneme. This recruitment and the associated cilia elongation is not inhibited by blockade of HIFα transcription activity or rescue of basal HIF-2α expression. Hypomorphic mutation to intraflagellar transport protein IFT88 results in limited ciliogenesis. This is associated with increased HIF-2α expression and inhibited response to prolyl hydroxylase inhibition. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that ciliary sequestration of HIF-2α provides negative regulation of HIF-2α expression and potentially activity. This study indicates, for the first time, that the primary cilium regulates HIF signalling during inflammation

Export of functional Streptomyces coelicolor alditol oxidase to the periplasm or cell surface of Escherichia coli and its application in whole-cell biocatalysis

Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) alditol oxidase (AldO) is a soluble monomeric flavoprotein in which the flavin cofactor is covalently linked to the polypeptide chain. AldO displays high reactivity towards different polyols such as xylitol and sorbitol. These characteristics make AldO industrially relevant, but full biotechnological exploitation of this enzyme is at present restricted by laborious and costly purification steps. To eliminate the need for enzyme purification, this study describes a whole-cell AldO biocatalyst system. To this end, we have directed AldO to the periplasm or cell surface of Escherichia coli. For periplasmic export, AldO was fused to endogenous E. coli signal sequences known to direct their passenger proteins into the SecB, signal recognition particle (SRP), or Twin-arginine translocation (Tat) pathway. In addition, AldO was fused to an ice nucleation protein (INP)-based anchoring motif for surface display. The results show that Tat-exported AldO and INP-surface-displayed AldO are active. The Tat-based system was successfully employed in converting xylitol by whole cells, whereas the use of the INP-based system was most likely restricted by lipopolysaccharide LPS in wild-type cells. It is anticipated that these whole-cell systems will be a valuable tool for further biological and industrial exploitation of AldO and other cofactor-containing enzymes.

Interleukin-1 polymorphisms associated with increased risk of gastric cancer

Helicobacter pylori infection is associated with a variety of clinical outcomes including gastric cancer and duodenal ulcer disease. The reasons for this variation are not clear, but the gastric physiological response is influenced by the severity and anatomical distribution of gastritis induced by H. pylori. Thus, individuals with gastritis predominantly localized to the antrum retain normal (or even high) acid secretion, whereas individuals with extensive corpus gastritis develop hypochlorhydria and gastric atrophy, which are presumptive precursors of gastric cancer. Here we report that interleukin-1 gene cluster polymorphisms suspected of enhancing production of interleukin-1-beta are associated with an increased risk of both hypochlorhydria induced by H. pylori and gastric cancer. Two of these polymorphism are in near-complete linkage disequilibrium and one is a TATA-box polymorphism that markedly affects DNA-protein interactions in vitro. The association with disease may be explained by the biological properties of interleukin-1-beta, which is an important pro-inflammatory cytokine and a powerful inhibitor of gastric acid secretion. Host genetic factors that affect interleukin-1-beta may determine why some individuals infected with H. pylori develop gastric cancer while others do no