Psychological wellness and health-related stigma: A pilot study of an acceptance-focused cognitive behavioural intervention for people with lung cancer

People with lung cancer experience health-related stigma that is related to poorer psychosocial and quality of life outcomes. The present Phase 1 study applied mixed methods to test the acceptability of an acceptance-focused cognitive behavioural intervention targeting stigma for this patient group. Fourteen lung cancer patients completed a 6-week Psychological Wellness intervention with pre- and post-test outcome measures of psychological and cancer-specific distress, depression, health-related stigma and quality of life. In-depth interviews applying interpretative phenomenological analysis assessed participants\u27 experiences of the intervention. Moderate to large improvements were observed in psychological (ηp 2=0.182) and cancer-specific distress (ηp 2=0.056); depression (ηp 2=0.621); health-related stigma (ηp 2=0.139). In contrast, quality of life declined (ηp 2=0.023). The therapeutic relationship; self-management of distress; and relationship support were highly valued aspects of the intervention. Barriers to intervention included avoidance and practical issues. The lung cancer patients who completed the Psychological Wellness intervention reported improvements in psychological outcomes and decreases in stigma in the face of declining quality of life with patients reporting personal benefit from their own perspectives. A randomised controlled trial is warranted to establish the effectiveness of this approach

Celebrating 40 Years of the Midwest Nursing Research Society

The Midwest Nursing Research Society (MNRS) recently held its 40th annual conference and celebrated four decades of nursing research in the Midwest. MNRS continues to be one of the largest nursing research societies in the United States. Over the years, a vast majority of programmatic initiatives included education and tangible support for novice and experienced nurse researchers. In this article, the background for development of MNRS is reviewed with examination of driving forces that led to its creation. Three past presidents, Dr. Joyce Fitzpatrick, the first President of MNRS (1980- 1981); Dr. Nancy Bergstrom, the eighth President (1993-1995); and Dr. Sally Lusk, the 14th President (2005-2007), discuss challenges, opportunities, and the exceptional progress made toward fostering excellence in nursing research for the Midwest and contributing to nursing science on a national and global scale. Lessons from the past as well as opportunities for the future are addressed

Identification of Novel and Rare Variants Associated with Handgrip Strength Using Whole Genome Sequence Data from the NHLBI Trans-Omics in Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program

Handgrip strength is a widely used measure of muscle strength and a predictor of a range of morbidities including cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality. Previous genome-wide association studies of handgrip strength have focused on common variants primarily in persons of European descent. We aimed to identify rare and ancestry-specific genetic variants associated with handgrip strength by conducting whole-genome sequence association analyses using 13,552 participants from six studies representing diverse population groups from the Trans-Omics in Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program. By leveraging multiple handgrip strength measures performed in study participants over time, we increased our effective sample size by 7-12%. Single-variant analyses identified ten handgrip strength loci among African-Americans: four rare variants, five low-frequency variants, and one common variant. One significant and four suggestive genes were identified associated with handgrip strength when aggregating rare and functional variants; all associations were ancestry-specific. We additionally leveraged the different ancestries available in the UK Biobank to further explore the ancestry-specific association signals from the single-variant association analyses. In conclusion, our study identified 11 new loci associated with handgrip strength with rare and/or ancestry-specific genetic variations, highlighting the added value of whole-genome sequencing in diverse samples. Several of the associations identified using single-variant or aggregate analyses lie in genes with a function relevant to the brain or muscle or were reported to be associated with muscle or age-related traits. Further studies in samples with sequence data and diverse ancestries are needed to confirm these findings

The Future of American Sentencing: A National Roundtable on Blakely

In the wake of the dramatic Supreme Court decision in Blakely v. Washington, Stanford Law School convened an assembly of the most eminent academic and professional sentencing experts in the country to jointly assess the meaning of the decision and its implications for federal and state sentencing reform. The event took place on October 8 and 9, just a few months after Blakely came down and the very week that the Supreme Court heard the arguments in United States v. Booker and United States v. Fanfan, the cases that will test Blakely\u27s application to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Thus the Roundtable offered these experts an intellectual breathing space at a crucial point in American criminal law. The event was built around six sessions, with shifting panels of participants doing brief presentations on the subject of the session, and with others then joining in the discussion. We are pleased that FSR is able to publish this version of the proceedings of the event-a condensed and edited transcript of the sessions

Crop Updates 2000 Cereals - part 4

This session covers twelve papers from different authors: BREEDING 1.Response to subsoil acidity of wheat genotypes differing in Al-tolerance, C. Tang, Z. Rengel, E. Diatloff and B. McGann, Soil Science and Plant Nutrition/CLIMA, University of Western Australia 2. Application of molecular markers in Barley Improvement, Mehmet Cakir1, Nick Galwey1 and David Poulsen2, 1Plant Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, 2Queensland Department of Primary Industries, Hermitage Research Station, Queensland 3. Implementation of molecular markers for wheat improvement in the Western Region, M. Carter1, A. Briney1, R. Wilson2, R.H. Potter1 and M.G.K. Jones1, 1Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, Murdoch University, 2Crop Industries, Agriculture Western Australia 4. Performance in 1999 of recently released wheat varieties in Western Australia, Robin Wilson, Iain Barclay, Robyn McLean, Dean Diepeveen and Robert Loughman, Agriculture Western Australia ECONOMICS 5. Outlook for prices and implications for rotations, Ross Kingwell1 2, Michael O’Connell1, Simone Blennerhasset1 1Agriculture Western Australia, 2University of Western Australia 6. Price Risk Management and the Western Australian Grain Producer, Benjamin Michael Tiller, Muresk Institute of Agriculture FORECASTING 7. Can we forecast wheat yields in Western Australia, Senthold Asseng1, Holger Meinke2, and Bill Bowden3, 1CSIRO Plant Industry, 2 APSRU/DPI, 3Agriculture Western Australia ON FARM TESTING 8. On-farm testing, the quiet revolution continues, Jeff Russell1, Ivan Lee2 1Agriculture Western Australia, 2 Farmer Kunjin TopCrop group, Corrigin GRAIN STORAGE 9. CD-ROM tool for growers and advisers: Managing on-farm grain storage – effective practices for the delivery of quality assured products, Clare Johnson1, Chris Newman2 1Quality Wheat CRC Ltd, 2Production Resource Protection Services, Agriculture Western Australia 10. The Internet as a tool for managing grain insects, Robert Emery, Romolo Tassone and Ernestos Kostas, Agriculture Western Australia SUMMER CROPS AND WINDBREAK EFFECT ON YIELD 11. Summer crop Update and agronomic considerations, Graeme Ralph, Pioneer Hi-Bred Australia Pty Ltd 12. The effect of tree windbreaks on grain yield in the medium and low rainfall areas in Western Australia, Robert Sudmeyer, David Hall and Harvey Jones, Agriculture Western Australi

A Framework For Detecting Noncoding Rare-Variant associations of Large-Scale Whole-Genome Sequencing Studies

Large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies have enabled analysis of noncoding rare-variant (RV) associations with complex human diseases and traits. Variant-set analysis is a powerful approach to study RV association. However, existing methods have limited ability in analyzing the noncoding genome. We propose a computationally efficient and robust noncoding RV association detection framework, STAARpipeline, to automatically annotate a whole-genome sequencing study and perform flexible noncoding RV association analysis, including gene-centric analysis and fixed window-based and dynamic window-based non-gene-centric analysis by incorporating variant functional annotations. In gene-centric analysis, STAARpipeline uses STAAR to group noncoding variants based on functional categories of genes and incorporate multiple functional annotations. In non-gene-centric analysis, STAARpipeline uses SCANG-STAAR to incorporate dynamic window sizes and multiple functional annotations. We apply STAARpipeline to identify noncoding RV sets associated with four lipid traits in 21,015 discovery samples from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program and replicate several of them in an additional 9,123 toPMed samples. We also analyze five non-lipid toPMed traits

Rare Variants in Long Non-Coding RNAs Are Associated With Blood Lipid Levels in the TOPMed Whole-Genome Sequencing Study

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are known to perform important regulatory functions in lipid metabolism. Large-scale whole-genome sequencing (WGS) studies and new statistical methods for variant set tests now provide an opportunity to assess more associations between rare variants in lncRNA genes and complex traits across the genome. In this study, we used high-coverage WGS from 66,329 participants of diverse ancestries with measurement of blood lipids and lipoproteins (LDL-C, HDL-C, TC, and TG) in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program to investigate the role of lncRNAs in lipid variability. We aggregated rare variants for 165,375 lncRNA genes based on their genomic locations and conducted rare-variant aggregate association tests using the STAAR (variant-set test for association using annotation information) framework. We performed STAAR conditional analysis adjusting for common variants in known lipid GWAS loci and rare-coding variants in nearby protein-coding genes. Our analyses revealed 83 rare lncRNA variant sets significantly associated with blood lipid levels, all of which were located in known lipid GWAS loci (in a ±500-kb window of a Global Lipids Genetics Consortium index variant). Notably, 61 out of 83 signals (73%) were conditionally independent of common regulatory variation and rare protein-coding variation at the same loci. We replicated 34 out of 61 (56%) conditionally independent associations using the independent UK Biobank WGS data. Our results expand the genetic architecture of blood lipids to rare variants in lncRNAs

Powerful, Scalable and Resource-Efficient Meta-Analysis of Rare Variant Associations in Large Whole Genome Sequencing Studies

Meta-analysis of whole genome sequencing/whole exome sequencing (WGS/WES) studies provides an attractive solution to the problem of collecting large sample sizes for discovering rare variants associated with complex phenotypes. Existing rare variant meta-analysis approaches are not scalable to biobank-scale WGS data. Here we present MetaSTAAR, a powerful and resource-efficient rare variant meta-analysis framework for large-scale WGS/WES studies. MetaSTAAR accounts for relatedness and population structure, can analyze both quantitative and dichotomous traits and boosts the power of rare variant tests by incorporating multiple variant functional annotations. Through meta-analysis of four lipid traits in 30,138 ancestrally diverse samples from 14 studies of the Trans Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program, we show that MetaSTAAR performs rare variant meta-analysis at scale and produces results comparable to using pooled data. Additionally, we identified several conditionally significant rare variant associations with lipid traits. We further demonstrate that MetaSTAAR is scalable to biobank-scale cohorts through meta-analysis of TOPMed WGS data and UK Biobank WES data of ~200,000 samples