Linguistic Characteristics of Health Anxiety from Online Discourse

Health anxiety prevalence is increasing (Tyrer et al., 2019). Health anxiety is a preoccupation or overestimation of the serious physiological symptoms that cause significant distress (Salkovskis & Warwick, 2001). Those with health anxiety may endure significant suffering, intense misery, and for some health anxiety leads to suicide (Tyrer & Tyrer 2018). It is a condition that is often under diagnosed and the average patient may go years prior to appropriate diagnosis (Hedman et al, 2011; Tyrer & Tyrer 2018). The study of language has long history within the field of mental health. Language use can provide information about an individual’s beliefs, social relationships, personality, thinking patterns, and fears (Pennebaker et al., 2015). Additionally, language can be investigated to identify important psychological markers that are indicative of an individual’s inner workings (Choundry et al., 2013). Little is known about the linguistic attributes specific to health anxiety in online discourse. To address the research gap, two studies were conducted to determine the linguistic attributes of individuals with health anxiety. The first study used the Language and Inquiry Word (LIWC) application to evaluate categorical data for online health anxiety communication (Pennebaker et al., 2015). The second study utilized AntConc to identify keywords and collocations associated to identify what words make health anxiety discourse distinct from other forms of online communication (Anthony, 2020). The first study examined the summary, linguistic, and psycholinguistic frequencies of word usage for health anxiety communication. One year of posts and comments were extracted from the subreddit r/HealthAnxiety to create a study corpus. The Corpus of Contemporary American English was used as a reference corpus (COCA; The COCA, 2021). The research questions were: 1. What is the score of summary variables about health anxiety? 2. What is the level of use of linguistic processes in online posts about health anxiety? 3. What is the pattern of use of linguistic processes variables in online posts about health anxiety compared to a reference corpus? 4. What is the level of use of psychological processes in online posts about health anxiety? 5. What is the pattern of use of psychological processes in online posts about health anxiety compared to a reference corpus? Descriptive statistics were reported related to scores and level of use in the study corpus. For the study corpus, summary variables scores indicate that those in the study corpus are high in authenticity, low in emotional tone, low in analytic processes, and low in clout. For linguistic and psychological process variables, log-likelihood ratio (G2) and Bayes Information Criterion (BIC) were used to compare the study and reference corpus. Log-likelihood for all variables understudy exceeded the critical value for significance (G2 = 484579.4 to 276.0733, df = 1, p < .01). Bayes factor (BIC) scores for results were “very strong” (BIC = 465696.04 to 257.09, df = 1). For the second study, a keyword and collocation analysis were completed on the study corpus. Keyness refers to the “aboutness” of a text—that is, what distinguishes a text from other texts (Egbert & Biber, 2019). The study and reference corpus from study one were used for the analysis. Our research questions were: 1. What are the keywords of online posts about health anxiety? 2. What words distinguish general online posts from online posts about health anxiety? 3. What are the most common collocations of the strongest keyword of online posts about health anxiety? 4. What are the most common collocations of the term “health anxiety” in online posts about health anxiety? The log-likelihood scale was used to determine significance with p < .01 for the top 100 keywords in both corpora. All keywords for study corpus exceeded the critical value (6.63) for significance (G2 = 9127.9 to 94.26, df = 1, p < .01). All keywords for the reference corpus exceeded the critical value for significance (G2 = 6901.08 to 295.55, df = 1, p < .01). Hardie’s (2014) log-ratio (LR) was used to determine effect size (LR = 13.381 to 9.1715). The results from the study corpus were used to identify collocates associated with the top 5 keywords and the term “health anxiety.” The mutual information (MI) score was used to measure the strength of association between two words of interest. MI scores above three are considered of linguistic interest (Hunston, 2002). The results for most common collocates measures above and below the threshold of three for linguistic interest (MI = 11.06 to 2.31). The results of both studies indicate a significant difference between health anxiety communication and other web-based discourse. Summary scores suggest that communication is authentic and has a degree of negative emotion. Negative emotion amongst those with health anxiety is consistent with previous research (Marcus et al., 2008; Mor & Winquist, 2002). Those in the health anxiety corpus used high levels of first-person pronouns indicative of increased self-focus similar to other pathologies (Marcus et al., 2008; O’Bryan et al., 2017). Percentage of use of first-person pronoun words corresponded with other anxiety groups in an in-person context reported in previous research (Sonnenschein et al., 2018). Additionally, a linguistic profile emerged. Those with health anxiety present as high in authenticity, low in clout, low in tone, low in analytic thinking, high in first-person pronoun usage, negative emotion and biological terminology. Those with health anxiety were unique in words related to medical conditions or diseases, medication and supplements, medical tests, symptom words, body words, and anxiety words. The findings may inform clinicians regarding the linguistic attributes of those with health anxiety to increase accurate diagnosis and understanding of the experience of those with health anxiety. Counselor-educators should consider integrating discourse analysis in training programs for counselors-in-training to view the experiences of those with health anxiety, especially descriptions of acute episodes which may not be disclosed during clinical sessions. Researchers may use the results as a baseline measurement for future quantitative or qualitative analysis

Optimized labeling of NOTA-conjugated octreotide with F-18

We recently reported a facile method based on the chelation of [18F]aluminum fluoride (Al18F) by NOTA (1,4,7-triazacyclononane-1,4,7-triacetic acid). Here, we present a further optimization of the 18F labeling of NOTA-octreotide (IMP466). Octreotide was conjugated with the NOTA chelate and was labeled with 18F in a two-step, one-pot method. The labeling procedure was optimized with regard to the labeling buffer, ionic strength, peptide concentration, and temperature. Radiochemical yield, specific activity, in vitro stability, and receptor affinity were determined. Biodistribution of 18F-IMP466 was studied in AR42J tumor-bearing mice. In addition, microPET/CT images were acquired. IMP466 was labeled with Al18F in a single step with 97% yield in the presence of 80% (v/v) acetonitrile or ethanol. The labeled product was purified by HPLC to remove unlabeled peptide and unbound Al18F. The radiolabeling, including purification, was performed for 45 min. Specific activities of 48,000 GBq/mmol could be obtained. 18F-IMP466 showed a high tumor uptake and excellent tumor-to-blood ratios at 2 h post-injection. In addition, the low bone uptake indicated that the Al18F–NOTA complex was stable in vivo. PET/CT scans revealed excellent tumor delineation and specific accumulation in the tumor. Uptake in receptor-negative organs was low. NOTA-octreotide could be labeled with 18F in quantitative yields using a rapid two-step, one-pot, method. The compound was stable in vivo and showed rapid accretion in SSTR2-receptor-expressing AR42J tumors in nude mice. This method can be used to label other NOTA-conjugated compounds such as RGD peptides, GRPR-binding peptides, and Affibody molecules with 18F

Familial co-occurrence of congenital heart defects follows distinct patterns

Aims Congenital heart defects (CHD) affect almost 1% of all live born children and the number of adults with CHD is increasing. In families where CHD has occurred previously, estimates of recurrence risk, and the type of recurring malformation are important for counselling and clinical decision-making, but the recurrence patterns in families are poorly understood. We aimed to determine recurrence patterns, by investigating the co-occurrences of CHD in 1163 families with known malformations, comprising 3080 individuals with clinically confirmed diagnosis. Methods and results We calculated rates of concordance and discordance for 41 specific types of malformations, observing a high variability in the rates of concordance and discordance. By calculating odds ratios for each of 1640 pairs of discordant lesions observed between affected family members, we were able to identify 178 pairs of malformations that co-occurred significantly more or less often than expected in families. The data show that distinct groups of cardiac malformations co-occur in families, suggesting influence from underlying developmental mechanisms. Analysis of human and mouse susceptibility genes showed that they were shared in 19% and 20% of pairs of co-occurring discordant malformations, respectively, but none of malformations that rarely co-occur, suggesting that a significant proportion of co-occurring lesions in families is caused by overlapping susceptibility genes. Conclusion Familial CHD follow specific patterns of recurrence, suggesting a strong influence from genetically regulated developmental mechanisms. Co-occurrence of malformations in families is caused by shared susceptibility genes

SSWAP: A Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol for semantic web services

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>SSWAP (<b>S</b>imple <b>S</b>emantic <b>W</b>eb <b>A</b>rchitecture and <b>P</b>rotocol; pronounced "swap") is an architecture, protocol, and platform for using reasoning to semantically integrate heterogeneous disparate data and services on the web. SSWAP was developed as a hybrid semantic web services technology to overcome limitations found in both pure web service technologies and pure semantic web technologies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>There are currently over 2400 resources published in SSWAP. Approximately two dozen are custom-written services for QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci) and mapping data for legumes and grasses (grains). The remaining are wrappers to Nucleic Acids Research Database and Web Server entries. As an architecture, SSWAP establishes how clients (users of data, services, and ontologies), providers (suppliers of data, services, and ontologies), and discovery servers (semantic search engines) interact to allow for the description, querying, discovery, invocation, and response of semantic web services. As a protocol, SSWAP provides the vocabulary and semantics to allow clients, providers, and discovery servers to engage in semantic web services. The protocol is based on the W3C-sanctioned first-order description logic language OWL DL. As an open source platform, a discovery server running at <url>http://sswap.info</url> (as in to "swap info") uses the description logic reasoner Pellet to integrate semantic resources. The platform hosts an interactive guide to the protocol at <url>http://sswap.info/protocol.jsp</url>, developer tools at <url>http://sswap.info/developer.jsp</url>, and a portal to third-party ontologies at <url>http://sswapmeet.sswap.info</url> (a "swap meet").</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>SSWAP addresses the three basic requirements of a semantic web services architecture (<it>i.e</it>., a common syntax, shared semantic, and semantic discovery) while addressing three technology limitations common in distributed service systems: <it>i.e</it>., <it>i</it>) the fatal mutability of traditional interfaces, <it>ii</it>) the rigidity and fragility of static subsumption hierarchies, and <it>iii</it>) the confounding of content, structure, and presentation. SSWAP is novel by establishing the concept of a canonical yet mutable OWL DL graph that allows data and service providers to describe their resources, to allow discovery servers to offer semantically rich search engines, to allow clients to discover and invoke those resources, and to allow providers to respond with semantically tagged data. SSWAP allows for a mix-and-match of terms from both new and legacy third-party ontologies in these graphs.</p

The Ninth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) presents the first spectroscopic data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). This ninth data release (DR9) of the SDSS project includes 535,995 new galaxy spectra (median z=0.52), 102,100 new quasar spectra (median z=2.32), and 90,897 new stellar spectra, along with the data presented in previous data releases. These spectra were obtained with the new BOSS spectrograph and were taken between 2009 December and 2011 July. In addition, the stellar parameters pipeline, which determines radial velocities, surface temperatures, surface gravities, and metallicities of stars, has been updated and refined with improvements in temperature estimates for stars with T_eff<5000 K and in metallicity estimates for stars with [Fe/H]>-0.5. DR9 includes new stellar parameters for all stars presented in DR8, including stars from SDSS-I and II, as well as those observed as part of the SDSS-III Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration-2 (SEGUE-2). The astrometry error introduced in the DR8 imaging catalogs has been corrected in the DR9 data products. The next data release for SDSS-III will be in Summer 2013, which will present the first data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) along with another year of data from BOSS, followed by the final SDSS-III data release in December 2014.Comment: 9 figures; 2 tables. Submitted to ApJS. DR9 is available at http://www.sdss3.org/dr

Compressed representation of a partially defined integer function over multiple arguments

In OLAP (OnLine Analitical Processing) data are analysed in an n-dimensional cube. The cube may be represented as a partially defined function over n arguments. Considering that often the function is not defined everywhere, we ask: is there a known way of representing the function or the points in which it is defined, in a more compact manner than the trivial one

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i=19.9 over 10,000 square degrees to measure BAO to redshifts z<0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Lyman alpha forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g<22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15<z<3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Lyman alpha forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance D_A to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z=0.3 and z=0.57 and measurements of H(z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Lyman alpha forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate D_A(z) and H^{-1}(z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z~2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS.Comment: 49 pages, 16 figures, accepted by A

Effects of noise exposure on young adults with normal audiograms I: electrophysiology

Noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy has been demonstrated in numerous rodent studies. In these animal models, the disorder is characterized by a reduction in amplitude of wave I of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) to high-level stimuli, whereas the response at threshold is unaffected. The aim of the present study was to determine if this disorder is prevalent in young adult humans with normal audiometric hearing. One hundred and twenty six participants (75 females) aged 18-36 were tested. Participants had a wide range of lifetime noise exposures as estimated by a structured interview. Audiometric thresholds did not differ across noise exposures up to 8 kHz, although 16- kHz audiometric thresholds were elevated with increasing noise exposure for females but not for males. ABRs were measured in response to high-pass (1.5 kHz) filtered clicks of 80 and 100 dB peSPL. Frequency-following responses (FFRs) were measured to 80 dB SPL pure tones from 240- 285 Hz, and to 80 dB SPL 4 kHz pure tones amplitude modulated at frequencies from 240-285 Hz (transposed tones). The bandwidth of the ABR stimuli and the carrier frequency of the transposed tones were chosen to target the 3-6 kHz characteristic frequency region which is usually associated with noise damage in humans. The results indicate no relation between noise exposure and the amplitude of the ABR. In particular, wave I of the ABR did not decrease with increasing noise exposure as predicted. ABR wave V latency increased with increasing noise exposure for the 80 dB peSPL click. High carrier-frequency (envelope) FFR amplitudes decreased as a function of noise exposure in males but not females. However, these correlations were not significant after the effects of age were controlled. The results suggest either that noise-induced cochlear synaptopathy is not a significant problem in young, audiometrically normal adults, or that the ABR and FFR are relatively insensitive to this disorder in young humans, although it is possible that the effects become more pronounced with age

Development of a Series of Kynurenine 3-Monooxygenase Inhibitors Leading to a Clinical Candidate for the Treatment of Acute Pancreatitis

Recently, we reported a novel role for KMO in the pathogenesis of acute pancreatitis (AP). A number of inhibitors of kynurenine 3-monooxygenase (KMO) have previously been described as potential treatments for neurodegenerative conditions and particularly for Huntington’s disease. However, the inhibitors reported to date have insufficient aqueous solubility relative to their cellular potency to be compatible with the intravenous (iv) dosing route required in AP. We have identified and optimized a novel series of high affinity KMO inhibitors with favorable physicochemical properties. The leading example is exquisitely selective, has low clearance in two species, prevents lung and kidney damage in a rat model of acute pancreatitis, and is progressing into preclinical development