Clergy work-related psychological health : listening to the Ministers of Word and Sacrament within the United Reformed Church in England

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect proposed by Bradburn (The structure of psychological well-being, Aldine, Chicago, IL, 1969), this study conceptualised poor work-related psychological health in terms of high levels of negative affect in the absence of acceptable levels of positive affect. In order to illuminate self-perceptions of work-related psychological health among a well-defined group of clergy, a random sample of 58 ministers of word and sacrament serving within the west midlands synod of the United Reformed Church in England completed an open-ended questionnaire concerned with the following six guiding questions. Do you enjoy your work? How would you define stress? How would you define burnout? What stresses are there in your ministry? What do you do to keep healthy? What can the church do to enhance the work-related psychological health of ministers? Content analysis highlighted the main themes recurring through these open-ended responses. The conclusion is drawn that ministers of word and sacrament within the United Reformed Church in England are exposed to a number of recurrent recognisable sources of stress. Suggestions are advanced regarding the need for future more detailed research and for the development of more effective pastoral strategies

Reading the back page : listening to clergy serving in the presbyterian church (USA) reflecting on professional burnout

This volume includes a wide range of papers that explore individual and institutional aspects of religion from a social-science perspective. The special section has articles from research groups in Europe, the USA and Australia on clergy work-related psychological health, stress, burnout and coping strategies. The general papers include studies on coping strategies among Buddhists, gender differences in response to church decline, teenage participation in religion, social capital among Friends of Cathedrals, psychological profiles of clergy, education effects on Roman Catholic deacons, and an analysis of prayer requests. Together these papers form a valuable collection indicating the depth and vibrancy of research in these field

Clustered mutations in the <i>GRIK2</i> kainate receptor subunit gene underlie diverse neurodevelopmental disorders

Kainate receptors (KARs) are glutamate-gated cation channels with diverse roles in the central nervous system. Bi-allelic loss of function of the KAR-encoding gene GRIK2 causes a nonsyndromic neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) with intellectual disability and developmental delay as core features. The extent to which mono-allelic variants in GRIK2 also underlie NDDs is less understood because only a single individual has been reported previously. Here, we describe an additional eleven individuals with heterozygous de novo variants in GRIK2 causative for neurodevelopmental deficits that include intellectual disability. Five children harbored recurrent de novo variants (three encoding p.Thr660Lys and two p.Thr660Arg), and four children and one adult were homozygous for a previously reported variant (c.1969G&gt;A [p.Ala657Thr]). Individuals with shared variants had some overlapping behavioral and neurological dysfunction, suggesting that the GRIK2 variants are likely pathogenic. Analogous mutations introduced into recombinant GluK2 KAR subunits at sites within the M3 transmembrane domain (encoding p.Ala657Thr, p.Thr660Lys, and p.Thr660Arg) and the M3-S2 linker domain (encoding p.Ile668Thr) had complex effects on functional properties and membrane localization of homomeric and heteromeric KARs. Both p.Thr660Lys and p.Thr660Arg mutant KARs exhibited markedly slowed gating kinetics, similar to p.Ala657Thr-containing receptors. Moreover, we observed emerging genotype-phenotype correlations, including the presence of severe epilepsy in individuals with the p.Thr660Lys variant and hypomyelination in individuals with either the p.Thr660Lys or p.Thr660Arg variant. Collectively, these results demonstrate that human GRIK2 variants predicted to alter channel function are causative for early childhood development disorders and further emphasize the importance of clarifying the role of KARs in early nervous system development.</p

Clustered mutations in the <i>GRIK2</i> kainate receptor subunit gene underlie diverse neurodevelopmental disorders

Kainate receptors (KARs) are glutamate-gated cation channels with diverse roles in the central nervous system. Bi-allelic loss of function of the KAR-encoding gene GRIK2 causes a nonsyndromic neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) with intellectual disability and developmental delay as core features. The extent to which mono-allelic variants in GRIK2 also underlie NDDs is less understood because only a single individual has been reported previously. Here, we describe an additional eleven individuals with heterozygous de novo variants in GRIK2 causative for neurodevelopmental deficits that include intellectual disability. Five children harbored recurrent de novo variants (three encoding p.Thr660Lys and two p.Thr660Arg), and four children and one adult were homozygous for a previously reported variant (c.1969G>A [p.Ala657Thr]). Individuals with shared variants had some overlapping behavioral and neurological dysfunction, suggesting that the GRIK2 variants are likely pathogenic. Analogous mutations introduced into recombinant GluK2 KAR subunits at sites within the M3 transmembrane domain (encoding p.Ala657Thr, p.Thr660Lys, and p.Thr660Arg) and the M3-S2 linker domain (encoding p.Ile668Thr) had complex effects on functional properties and membrane localization of homomeric and heteromeric KARs. Both p.Thr660Lys and p.Thr660Arg mutant KARs exhibited markedly slowed gating kinetics, similar to p.Ala657Thr-containing receptors. Moreover, we observed emerging genotype-phenotype correlations, including the presence of severe epilepsy in individuals with the p.Thr660Lys variant and hypomyelination in individuals with either the p.Thr660Lys or p.Thr660Arg variant. Collectively, these results demonstrate that human GRIK2 variants predicted to alter channel function are causative for early childhood development disorders and further emphasize the importance of clarifying the role of KARs in early nervous system development

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

Getting out in the countryside walking : the health, lifestyle, and recreational pursuits of URC ministers

In order to illuminate self-perceptions of health, lifestyle and recreational pursuits, a sample of 58 ministers of word and sacrament serving on the West Midlands Synod of the United Reformed Church completed an open-ended questionnaire concerned with the following six themes: medical record, home life, holiday entitlement, leisure time, exercise, and strategies for keeping healthy. Content analysis of their replies described a group of challenged professional people, showing high levels of contact with their GPs, who found themselves constrained from taking full use of their holiday entitlement and impeded from taking proper opportunities for exercise and recreation by two matters: pressure of work and lack of finance. In this situation several drew attention to the importance of getting out in the countryside walking as a key resource for keeping healthy amid the pressures of ministry and personal life. Some practical recommendations are offered regarding ways in which rural churches could help to support ministers by enabling them to benefit more readily from spending periods of refreshment in the countryside

The Acetyl Group Buffering Action of Carnitine Acetyltransferase Offsets Macronutrient-Induced Lysine Acetylation of Mitochondrial Proteins

Lysine acetylation (AcK), a posttranslational modification wherein a two-carbon acetyl group binds covalently to a lysine residue, occurs prominently on mitochondrial proteins and has been linked to metabolic dysfunction. An emergent theory suggests mitochondrial AcK occurs via mass action rather than targeted catalysis. To test this hypothesis, we performed mass spectrometry-based acetylproteomic analyses of quadriceps muscles from mice with skeletal muscle-specific deficiency of carnitine acetyltransferase (CrAT), an enzyme that buffers the mitochondrial acetyl-CoA pool by converting short-chain acyl-CoAs to their membrane permeant acylcarnitine counterparts. CrAT deficiency increased tissue acetyl-CoA levels and susceptibility to diet-induced AcK of broad-ranging mitochondrial proteins, coincident with diminished whole body glucose control. Sub-compartment acetylproteome analyses of muscles from obese mice and humans showed remarkable overrepresentation of mitochondrial matrix proteins. These findings reveal roles for CrAT and L-carnitine in modulating the muscle acetylproteome and provide strong experimental evidence favoring the nonenzymatic carbon pressure model of mitochondrial AcK

Towards a Labouring-Class Poetics: Recovering Edward Rushton

The notion of ‘lost Romantics’ requires one to engage in questions of historical and ideological as well as aesthetic order, pointing as it does towards the processes underlying the inclusion, no less than the exclusion, of texts, discourses, and histories from the perceived canon of literature (itself a contested notion), as produced over that particular historical segment—in other words, its own status as synecdoche of a ‘whole’, the nature of which is permeable to change.It also implicitly questions the way we teach Romanticism, how we shape and hand down knowledge to the younger generations of undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral students. The subject is of great relevance, to the extent that the acquisition and transmission of critical awareness of the mechanisms whereby a canon is constructed, and texts are absorbed into or expelled from the circuits of knowledge transmission, is in many ways a matter regarding politics, as integral in the method no less than the merit of what we do.As to the merit, it may well be argued that focalising on ‘marginal’, or ‘forgotten’, or ‘lost’ Romantics inherently embraces the study of how power relations are substantiated into and shape the repositories of literary culture