The Effect of Mentoring on Interns in a Cross-Cultural Setting to Produce Incrteased Missional Engagement

the purpose of writing The Effect of Mentoring on Interns in a Cross- Cultural Setting to Produce Increased Missional Engagement is to examine the relationship between mentoring and mission. this is accomplished through interviewing interns who have served with c&Ma/Envision in a cross-cultural setting for a minimum of two months. for a minimum of 45 minutes, 17 interns were interviewed, and the results show a strong correlation between high mentoring and high missional engagement

Quantifying Activity Levels After Sport-Related Concussion Using Actigraph and Mobile (mHealth) Technologies

Context Interest in identifying the effects of physical and mental activity on recovery after sport-related concussion is growing. Clinical studies of concussed athletes\u27 activities require well-validated methods for tracking their intensity and timing. Objective To develop and validate a novel multimodal approach to monitoring activity postconcussion using mobile (mHealth) technologies. Design Cohort study. Setting Translational research unit. Patients or Other Participants A total of 40 high school and collegiate football players were evaluated at preseason and followed longitudinally after either concussion (n = 25; age = 17.88 ± 1.74 years, height = 182.07 ± 8.08 cm, mass = 98.36 ± 21.70 kg) or selection as a nonconcussed control (n = 15; age = 18.27 ± 1.83 years, height = 180.01 ± 7.19 cm, mass = 93.83 ± 24.56 kg). Main Outcome Measure(s) Participants wore a commercial actigraph and completed a daily mobile survey for 2 weeks. Analyses focused on comparisons between groups for actigraph-based physical activity and self-reported physical and mental activity during the follow-up period. Results For the first 2 days postinjury, objective measures showed fewer daily steps in concussed (6663 ± 2667 steps) than in control (11 148 ± 3381 steps) athletes (P \u3c .001), and both objective and self-reported measures indicated less moderate to vigorous physical activity in concussed (27.6 ± 32.6 min/d and 25.0 ± 43.6 min/d, respectively) than in control (57.3 ± 38.6 min/d and 67.5 ± 40.1 min/d, respectively) athletes (both P values \u3c .05). Correlations between objective and self-reported measures of moderate to vigorous physical activity were moderate across select 1-week and 2-week averages. We observed no group differences in self-reported mental activities. Conclusions Physical activity after sport-related concussion varied widely across athletes but on average was reduced during the acute and early subacute postinjury periods for both objective and self-reported measures. The lack of differences in mental activities between groups may reflect limited change in mental exertion postconcussion or difficulty accurately measuring mental activities. Assessing concussed athletes\u27 activities using actigraphy and self-reported scales may help monitor their compliance with activity recommendations and be useful in studies aimed at better understanding the effects of physical activity on concussion recovery

Study protocol: a randomised controlled trial investigating the effect of exercise training on peripheral blood gene expression in patients with stable angina

Background: Exercise training has been shown to reduce angina and promote collateral vessel development in patients with coronary artery disease. However, the mechanism whereby exercise exerts these beneficial effects is unclear. There has been increasing interest in the use of whole genome peripheral blood gene expression in a wide range of conditions to attempt to identify both novel mechanisms of disease and transcriptional biomarkers. This protocol describes a study in which we will assess the effect of a structured exercise programme on peripheral blood gene expression in patients with stable angina, and correlate this with changes in angina level, anxiety, depression, and exercise capacity. Methods/Design: Sixty patients with stable angina will be recruited and randomised 1: 1 to exercise training or conventional care. Patients randomised to exercise training will attend an exercise physiology laboratory up to three times weekly for supervised aerobic interval training sessions of one hour in total duration. Patients will undergo assessments of angina, anxiety, depression, and peripheral blood gene expression at baseline, after six and twelve weeks of training, and twelve weeks after formal exercise training ceases. Discussion: This study will provide comprehensive data on the effect of exercise training on peripheral blood gene expression in patients with angina. By correlating this with improvement in angina status we will identify candidate peripheral blood transcriptional markers predictive of improvements in angina level in response to exercise training

Reproducibility and Characterization of Head Kinematics During a Large Animal Acceleration Model of Traumatic Brain Injury

Acceleration parameters have been utilized for the last six decades to investigate pathology in both human and animal models of traumatic brain injury (TBI), design safety equipment, and develop injury thresholds. Previous large animal models have quantified acceleration from impulsive loading forces (i.e., machine/object kinematics) rather than directly measuring head kinematics. No study has evaluated the reproducibility of head kinematics in large animal models. Nine (five males) sexually mature Yucatan swine were exposed to head rotation at a targeted peak angular velocity of 250 rad/s in the coronal plane. The results indicated that the measured peak angular velocity of the skull was 51% of the impulsive load, was experienced over 91% longer duration, and was multi- rather than uni-planar. These findings were replicated in a second experiment with a smaller cohort (N = 4). The reproducibility of skull kinematics data was mostly within acceptable ranges based on published industry standards, although the coefficients of variation (8.9% for peak angular velocity or 12.3% for duration) were higher than the impulsive loading parameters produced by the machine (1.1 vs. 2.5%, respectively). Immunohistochemical markers of diffuse axonal injury and blood–brain barrier breach were not associated with variation in either skull or machine kinematics, suggesting that the observed levels of variance in skull kinematics may not be biologically meaningful with the current sample sizes. The findings highlight the reproducibility of a large animal acceleration model of TBI and the importance of direct measurements of skull kinematics to determine the magnitude of angular velocity, refine injury criteria, and determine critical thresholds

Potential climatic transitions with profound impact on Europe

We discuss potential transitions of six climatic subsystems with large-scale impact on Europe, sometimes denoted as tipping elements. These are the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, Arctic sea ice, Alpine glaciers and northern hemisphere stratospheric ozone. Each system is represented by co-authors actively publishing in the corresponding field. For each subsystem we summarize the mechanism of a potential transition in a warmer climate along with its impact on Europe and assess the likelihood for such a transition based on published scientific literature. As a summary, the ‘tipping’ potential for each system is provided as a function of global mean temperature increase which required some subjective interpretation of scientific facts by the authors and should be considered as a snapshot of our current understanding. <br/

Pharmacological Targeting of Native CatSper Channels Reveals a Required Role in Maintenance of Sperm Hyperactivation

The four sperm-specific CatSper ion channel proteins are required for hyperactivated motility and male fertility, and for Ca2+ entry evoked by alkaline depolarization. In the absence of external Ca2+, Na+ carries current through CatSper channels in voltage-clamped sperm. Here we show that CatSper channel activity can be monitored optically with the [Na+]i-reporting probe SBFI in populations of intact sperm. Removal of external Ca2+ increases SBFI signals in wild-type but not CatSper2-null sperm. The rate of the indicated rise of [Na+]i is greater for sperm alkalinized with NH4Cl than for sperm acidified with propionic acid, reflecting the alkaline-promoted signature property of CatSper currents. In contrast, the [Na+]i rise is slowed by candidate CatSper blocker HC-056456 (IC50 ∼3 µM). HC-056456 similarly slows the rise of [Ca2+]i that is evoked by alkaline depolarization and reported by fura-2. HC-056456 also selectively and reversibly decreased CatSper currents recorded from patch-clamped sperm. HC-056456 does not prevent activation of motility by HCO3− but does prevent the development of hyperactivated motility by capacitating incubations, thus producing a phenocopy of the CatSper-null sperm. When applied to hyperactivated sperm, HC-056456 causes a rapid, reversible loss of flagellar waveform asymmetry, similar to the loss that occurs when Ca2+ entry through the CatSper channel is terminated by removal of external Ca2+. Thus, open CatSper channels and entry of external Ca2+ through them sustains hyperactivated motility. These results indicate that pharmacological targeting of the CatSper channel may impose a selective late-stage block to fertility, and that high-throughput screening with an optical reporter of CatSper channel activity may identify additional selective blockers with potential for male-directed contraception

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN