The Use of Pain in Childbirth Recorded in Chinese Medical Works

In pre-modern China, midwives and pregnant mothers used pain description as a tool to gauge the progress of childbirth. This was recorded in the twelfth century medical work Shichan lun 十產論 (Ten Topics on Birth), which takes the form of a list, describing routine childbirth, birth complications and the techniques used to manage those specific complications.It was the most widely quoted and disseminated work on childbirth and birth complications in late imperial China. The description of childbirth pain in Shichan lun would shift in meaning and use by the end of the imperial period, leading to the representation of childbirth pain as inevitable, nondescript and immutable. This study examines how pain was a tool for the pregnant woman and birth attendants in Shichan lun. This reading of pain challenges our current understanding of the value and meaning of pain in childbirth physiology

How the New York Times uses information graphics and data visualizations for hard news and soft news and to foster audience engagement

Professional project report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Journalism from the School of Journalism, University of Missouri--Columbia.As data visualizations and interactive graphics are gaining more significance in journalistic storytelling, more research is needed to study their impact. This study assessed the differences in the use and production of infographics and visualizations in hard and soft news and the built-in features that could help foster conversations and audience engagement. A content analysis and two in-depth case studies were conducted to analyze the common practice of employing infographics and visualization in newspapers' digital (web) forms for hard news and soft news at the New York Times in 2012. It was found that more infographics and data visualizations were used in hard news and more interactive features were used in soft news. The main design principles included simple layout, clear content, unique presentation and engaging exploration to viewers. Three NYT editors from the graphics and interactive teams were interviewed to provide an industry perspective on how infographics and visualizations could help audience engagement. They revealed that it was harder for editors and reporters to come up with unique features for hard news due to tighter deadlines. In contrast, visualizations for soft news are usually planned ahead of time and allow sufficient time to experiment with unique interactive features. Visualization that is entertaining and offers viewers an opportunity to figure out data related to them personally could improve audience engagement.Includes bibliographic references

White Twitter: Tracing the evolution of the alt-right in retweets, 2009-2016

The alt-right White Nationalist movement, which emerged in response to the election of America’s first Black president, adopted Twitter from the outset. Tracing its evolution over eight years in retweets, our study suggests that the movement was relatively small and factionalized until 2015—but its subgroups closed ranks following Donald Trump’s candidacy and became a blowhorn for his campaign. Integrating social network theory with the emerging view of race and politics as dynamic processes, our study advances a “technosocial” understanding of White Nationalism and its journey from the fringes to the center stage of American politics

Comparisons of Growth Rates of KB and L-Cell Lines in L-15 Media as Measured by Hemocytometer and Coulter Counter Techniques

Zoolog

Helping chronically ill or disabled people into work: what can we learn from international comparative analyses?

This project has added to knowledge in five main areas: It has mapped the range and types of policies and interventions that have been implemented in Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the UK that may influence employment chances for chronically ill and disabled people. By doing so it has added to understanding about what has actually been tried in each country and what might be considered in others. It has refined a typology of the focussed interventions that have been identified, based on the underlying programme logic of the intervention, which aids strategic thinking about national efforts to help chronically ill and disabled people into work. It has produced systematic reviews of the impact of the focussed interventions on the employment chances of chronically ill and disabled people and demonstrated the use of the typology in helping to interpret the results of the evaluations. The project’s empirical analyses of individual-level data have identified how chronically ill people from different socio-economic groups have fared in the labour markets of the five countries over the past two decades. It has then tested these findings against hypotheses about the impact of macro-level labour market policies on chronically ill people to provide insights into the influence of the policy context. The project has contributed to methodological development in evidence synthesis and the evaluation of natural policy experiments. By studying a small number of countries in great depth, we gained greater understanding of the policies and interventions that have been tried in these countries to help chronically ill and disabled people into work, against the backdrop of the wider labour market and macro-economic trends in those countries. We then integrated evidence from the wider policy context into the findings of systematic reviews of effectiveness of interventions, to advance interpretation of the natural policy experiments that have been implemented in these countries

Mutation screening of CHD5 in melanoma-prone families linked to 1p36 revealed no deleterious coding or splice site changes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A subset of cutaneous malignant melanoma and dysplastic nevi (CMM/DN) families is linked to 1p36. To date, no CMM/DN susceptibility gene has been identified at this locus. Data from mouse studies identified chromodomain helicase DNA binding protein 5 (<it>CHD5</it>) as a tumor suppressor affecting cellular proliferation and apoptosis via the <it>CDKN2A</it>/p53 pathway. Based on these findings, we felt it was important to screen <it>CHD5 </it>as a familial CMM/DN susceptibility gene.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Eight unrelated CMM/DN families showing prior evidence of linkage to the 1p36 locus were identified for <it>CHD5 </it>mutation screening. One CMM/DN affected and one unaffected individual from each family were selected for sequencing of the <it>CHD5 </it>coding exons and their respective intron-exon boundaries. <it>CHD5 </it>variants that were identified solely among affecteds in the screening panel were further assessed by sequencing additional affected and unaffected members of these families to determine if the variant co-segregated with the CMM/DN phenotype.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Single nucleotide polymorphisms in the <it>CHD5 </it>intronic and coding regions were identified among affecteds in the screening panel. None of these variants completely co-segregated with CMM/DN affection status among these eight families.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>There is no evidence to support <it>CHD5 </it>as a major melanoma susceptibility gene among the eight CMM/DN families screened.</p

Dissection, Culture, and Analysis of Xenopus laevis Embryonic Retinal Tissue

The process by which the anterior region of the neural plate gives rise to the vertebrate retina continues to be a major focus of both clinical and basic research. In addition to the obvious medical relevance for understanding and treating retinal disease, the development of the vertebrate retina continues to serve as an important and elegant model system for understanding neuronal cell type determination and differentiation(1-16). The neural retina consists of six discrete cell types (ganglion, amacrine, horizontal, photoreceptors, bipolar cells, and Muller glial cells) arranged in stereotypical layers, a pattern that is largely conserved among all vertebrates (12,14-18). While studying the retina in the intact developing embryo is clearly required for understanding how this complex organ develops from a protrusion of the forebrain into a layered structure, there are many questions that benefit from employing approaches using primary cell culture of presumptive retinal cells (7,19-23). For example, analyzing cells from tissues removed and dissociated at different stages allows one to discern the state of specification of individual cells at different developmental stages, that is, the fate of the cells in the absence of interactions with neighboring tissues (8,19-22,24-33). Primary cell culture also allows the investigator to treat the culture with specific reagents and analyze the results on a single cell level (5,8,21,24,27-30,33-39). Xenopus laevis, a classic model system for the study of early neural development (19,27,29,31-32,40-42), serves as a particularly suitable system for retinal primary cell culture (10,38,43-45). Presumptive retinal tissue is accessible from the earliest stages of development, immediately following neural induction (25,38,43). In addition, given that each cell in the embryo contains a supply of yolk, retinal cells can be cultured in a very simple defined media consisting of a buffered salt solution, thus removing the confounding effects of incubation or other sera-based products (10,24,44-45). However, the isolation of the retinal tissue from surrounding tissues and the subsequent processing is challenging. Here, we present a method for the dissection and dissociation of retinal cells in Xenopus laevis that will be used to prepare primary cell cultures that will, in turn, be analyzed for calcium activity and gene expression at the resolution of single cells. While the topic presented in this paper is the analysis of spontaneous calcium transients, the technique is broadly applicable to a wide array of research questions and approaches (Figure 1)

Circulating biomarkers are not associated wtih endoleaks after endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms

Objective: Endoleak is a common complication of endovascular repair (EVAR) for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), but can only be detected through prolonged follow-up with repeated aortic imaging. This study examined the potential for circulating matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP9), osteoprotegerin (OPG), D-dimer, homocysteine (HCY) and C-reactive protein (CRP) to act as diagnostic markers for endoleak in AAA patients undergoing elective EVAR. Methods: Linear mixed effects models were constructed to assess differences in AAA diameter after EVAR, between groups of patients who did, and did not develop endoleak during follow-up, adjusting for potential confounders. Circulating MMP9, OPG, D-dimer, HCY and CRP concentrations were measured in pre- and post-operative plasma samples. The association of these markers with endoleak diagnosis was assessed using linear mixed effects adjusted as above. The potential for each marker to diagnose endoleak was assessed using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: Seventy-five patients were included in the current study, 24 of whom developed an endoleak during follow-up. Patients with an endoleak had significantly large AAA sac diameters than those that did not have an endoleak. None of the assessed markers showed a significant association with endoleak. This was confirmed through ROC curve analyses indicating poor diagnostic ability for all markers. Conclusions: Circulating concentrations of MMP9, OPG, D-dimer, HCY and CRP were not associated with endoleak in patients undergoing EVAR in this study

Critical evaluation of HPV16 gene copy number quantification by SYBR green PCR

Background: Human papilloma virus (HPV) load and physical status are considered useful parameters for clinical evaluation of cervical squamous cell neoplasia. However, the errors implicit in HPV gene quantification by PCR are not well documented. We have undertaken the first rigorous evaluation of the errors that can be expected when using SYBR green qPCR for quantification of HPV type 16 gene copy numbers. We assessed a modified method, in which external calibration curves were generated from a single construct containing HPV16 E2, HPV16 E6 and the host gene hydroxymethylbilane synthase in a 1: 1: 1 ratio.Results: When testing dilutions of mixed HPV/host DNA in replicate runs, we observed errors in quantifying E2 and E6 amplicons of 5 - 40%, with greatest error at the lowest DNA template concentration (3 ng/mu l). Errors in determining viral copy numbers per diploid genome were 13 - 53%. Nevertheless, in cervical keratinocyte cell lines we observed reasonable agreement between viral loads determined by qPCR and Southern blotting. The mean E2/E6 ratio in episome-only cells was 1.04, but with a range of 0.76 - 1.32. In three integrant-only lines the mean E2/E6 ratios were 0.20, 0.72 and 2.61 (values confirmed by gene-specific Southern blotting). When E2/E6 ratios in fourteen HPV16-positive cervical carcinomas were analysed, conclusions regarding viral physical state could only be made in three cases, where the E2/E6 ratio was <= 0.06.Conclusion: Run-to-run variation in SYBR green qPCR produces unavoidable inaccuracies that should be allowed for when quantifying HPV gene copy number. While E6 copy numbers can be considered to provide a useable indication of viral loads, the E2/E6 ratio is of limited value. Previous studies may have overestimated the frequency of mixed episomal/integrant HPV infections