Prenatal Maternal Anxiety in South Asia: A Rapid Best-Fit Framework Synthesis

Background: Most research efforts toward prenatal maternal anxiety has been situated in high-income countries. In contrast, research from low- and middle-income countries has focused on maternal depression and prenatal maternal anxiety in low- and middle-income countries remains poorly understood.Objectives: To examine whether dimensions and attributes of current maternal anxiety assessment tools appropriately capture South Asia women's experiences of perinatal distress during pregnancy.Design: We conducted a rapid review with best fit framework synthesis, as we wished to map study findings to an a priori framework of dimensions measured by prenatal maternal anxiety tools.Data Sources: We searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL and gray literature in November 2016. Studies were included if published in English, used any study design, and focused on women's experiences of prenatal/antenatal anxiety in South Asia.Review Methods: Study quality was assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project Quality Assessment Tool and Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Qualitative Checklist. Study findings were extracted to an a priori framework derived from pregnancy-related anxiety tools.Results: From 4,177 citations, 9 studies with 19,251 women were included. Study findings mapped to the a priori framework apart from body image. A new theme, gender inequality, emerged from the studies and was overtly examined through gender disparity, gender preference of fetus, or domestic violence.Conclusions: Gender inequality and societal acceptability of domestic violence in South Asian women contextualizes the experience of prenatal maternal anxiety. Pregnancy-related anxiety tools should include domains related to gender inequality to better understand their influence on pregnancy outcomes

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Observing Empathy in Informal Engineering Activities with Girls Ages 7–14

Empathy is a critical part of the engineering design process. It allows engineers to more deeply understand their clients’ perspectives and design solutions that meet the needs of diverse stakeholders. Studies also show that reframing engineering education to prioritize empathy for others can counteract stereotypes of engineering as impersonal and invite a wider range of identities into the field. This approach can help to address persistent gender disparities in engineering, which reflect a need for engineering education to increase its efforts to include girls’ perspectives. Informal learning environments have developed strategies for framing engineering problems in human-centered ways, but more evidence is needed about how children express empathy during engineering design tasks and how expressions of empathy intersect with and support specific engineering design practices in these settings. The present study involved the development of observational methods for documenting empathy within museum-based engineering activities among girls ages 7–14. Engineering activities used elements of narratives (characters, settings, and problem frames) to prompt learners to think about who they were designing for and why. Data included observations and interviews with 245 girls, and iterative cycles of coding and qualitative analyses to develop a set of observable indicators of empathy and engineering design practices. Indicators defined how multiple facets of empathy were expressed (affective, cognitive, and prosocial, as well as connections to familiar personal experiences) based on theoretical understandings of empathy and its development. Final coding of the dataset with these indicators showed that girls’ expressions of empathy supported multiple engineering design practices as learners defined problems to solve, and as they generated and iterated solutions with the needs of others in mind. We describe connections between individual facets of empathy and specific engineering practices and discuss implications for practice within formal and informal settings

Thrive: Thriving Women

Thrive Magazine is a student led magazine that showcases how students express themselves and their personalities. In this issue, the female students of Bryant University are showcased

Pretreatment antimüllerian hormone levels determine rate of posttherapy ovarian reserve recovery: acute changes in ovarian reserve during and after chemotherapy

To identify factors associated with ovarian reserve (OR) impairment during and immediately after chemotherapy