Examining the Relationship Between Trait Energy and Fatigue and Feelings of Depression in Young Healthy Adults

Depression is usually co-morbid with fatigue. However, we are unaware of studies exploring the relationship between trait energy and fatigue and feelings of depression. Recent evidence suggests that energy and fatigue are two distinct moods. PURPOSE: To examine the association between trait mental and physical energy and fatigue and feelings of depression, within an otherwise healthy young adult cohort. METHODS: Using a cross-sectional design, healthy respondents (n=495) completed a series of self-reported surveys measuring depression, lifestyle factors (sleep, diet, physical activity), and trait mental and physical energy and fatigue. Using a step-wise regression, we controlled for demographics and lifestyle and added trait mental and physical energy and fatigue to the second model. RESULTS: When trait mental and physical energy and fatigue were added to the models, the adjusted R2 increased by 5% (R2 = .112, F(13, 457) = 4.455, p \u3c .001). In our second model, trait mental fatigue was the only significant predictor of depressive mood states (Β = .159, t (457) = 2.512, p = 0.01). CONCLUSION: Young adults, who struggle with high mental fatigue, may also be more likely to report feeling depressed suggesting that fatigue and depression are co-morbid, while low energy and depression are not. Future research should aim to identify epigenetic/genetic factors that influence mental fatigue and how those may be associated with feelings of depression

Blending of nanoscale and microscale in uniform large-area sculptured thin-film architectures

The combination of large thickness ($>3$ $\mu$m), large--area uniformity (75 mm diameter), high growth rate (up to 0.4 $\mu$m/min) in assemblies of complex--shaped nanowires on lithographically defined patterns has been achieved for the first time. The nanoscale and the microscale have thus been blended together in sculptured thin films with transverse architectures. SiO$_x$ ($x\approx 2$) nanowires were grown by electron--beam evaporation onto silicon substrates both with and without photoresist lines (1--D arrays) and checkerboard (2--D arrays) patterns. Atomic self--shadowing due to oblique--angle deposition enables the nanowires to grow continuously, to change direction abruptly, and to maintain constant cross--sectional diameter. The selective growth of nanowire assemblies on the top surfaces of both 1--D and 2--D arrays can be understood and predicted using simple geometrical shadowing equations.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure

Environmental and Parental Influences on Offspring Health and Growth in Great Tits (Parus major)

PMCID: PMC3728352This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

An intervention to improve sleep for people living with dementia: Reflections on the development and co-production of DREAMS:START (Dementia RElAted Manual for Sleep: STrAtegies for RelaTives)

Many people living with dementia experience sleep disturbances yet there are currently no known effective, safe and acceptable treatments. Working with those affected by dementia to co-produce interventions is increasingly promoted to ensure that approaches are fit for purpose and meet the specific needs of target groups. Our aim here is to outline and reflect upon the co-production of Dementia RElAted Manual for Sleep; STrAtegies for RelaTives (DREAMS:START), an intervention to improve sleep for people living with dementia. Our co-production team brought together experts in the development and testing of manualised interventions in dementia care and cognitive behavioural interventions for sleep disorders, with Alzheimer’s Society research network volunteers (ASRNVs) whose lives had been affected by dementia. Here we present the process of intervention development. We worked with (ASRNVs) at each stage of the process bringing together ‘experts by training’ and ‘experts by experience’. (ASRNVs)shared their experiences of sleep disturbances in dementia and how they had managed these difficulties, as well as suggestions for how to overcome barriers to putting the intervention into practice; making (DREAMS:START) more accessible and usable for those in need. In this paper we discuss both the benefits and challenges to this process and what we can learn for future work. Collaborating with ‘experts by experience’ caring for a relative with sleep difficulties helped us to develop a complex intervention in an accessible and engaging way which we have tested and found to be feasible and acceptable in a randomised controlled trial

The education effect: higher educational qualifications are robustly associated with beneficial personal and socio-political outcomes

Level of education is a predictor of a range of important outcomes, such as political interest and cynicism, social trust, health, well-being, and intergroup attitudes. We address a gap in the literature by analyzing the strength and stability of the education effect associated with this diverse range of outcomes across three surveys covering the period 1986–2011, including novel latent growth analyses of the stability of the education effect within the same individuals over time. Our analyses of the British Social Attitudes Survey, British Household Panel Survey, and International Social Survey Programme indicated that the education effect was robust across these outcomes and relatively stable over time, with higher education levels being associated with higher trust and political interest, better health and well-being, and with less political cynicism and less negative intergroup attitudes. The education effect was strongest when associated with political outcomes and attitudes towards immigrants, whereas it was weakest when associated with health and well-being. Most of the education effect appears to be due to the beneficial consequences of having a university education. Our results demonstrate that this beneficial education effect is also manifested in within-individual changes, with the education effect tending to become stronger as individuals age

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

Comprehensive analysis of chromothripsis in 2,658 human cancers using whole-genome sequencing

Chromothripsis is a mutational phenomenon characterized by massive, clustered genomic rearrangements that occurs in cancer and other diseases. Recent studies in selected cancer types have suggested that chromothripsis may be more common than initially inferred from low-resolution copy-number data. Here, as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we analyze patterns of chromothripsis across 2,658 tumors from 38 cancer types using whole-genome sequencing data. We find that chromothripsis events are pervasive across cancers, with a frequency of more than 50% in several cancer types. Whereas canonical chromothripsis profiles display oscillations between two copy-number states, a considerable fraction of events involve multiple chromosomes and additional structural alterations. In addition to non-homologous end joining, we detect signatures of replication-associated processes and templated insertions. Chromothripsis contributes to oncogene amplification and to inactivation of genes such as mismatch-repair-related genes. These findings show that chromothripsis is a major process that drives genome evolution in human cancer