Design of a randomized superiority trial of a brief couple treatment for PTSD.

Interpersonal difficulties are common among veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and are associated with poorer treatment response. Treatment outcomes for PTSD, including relationship functioning, improve when partners are included and engaged in the therapy process. Cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy for PTSD (CBCT) is a manualized 15-session intervention designed for couples in which one partner has PTSD. CBCT was developed specifically to treat PTSD, engage a partner in treatment, and improve interpersonal functioning. However, recent research suggests that an abbreviated CBCT protocol may lead to sufficient gains in PTSD and relationship functioning, and yield lower dropout rates. Likewise, many veterans report a preference for receiving psychological treatments through clinical videoteleconferencing (CVT) rather than traditional face-to-face modalities that require travel to VA clinics. This manuscript describes the development and implementation of a novel randomized controlled trial (RCT) that examines the efficacy of an abbreviated 8-session version of CBCT ("brief CBCT," or B-CBCT), and compares the efficacy of this intervention delivered via CVT to traditional in-person platforms. Veterans and their partners were randomized to receive B-CBCT in a traditional Veterans Affairs office-based setting (B-CBCT-Office), CBCT through CVT with the veteran and partner at home (B-CBCT-Home), or an in office-delivered, couple-based psychoeducation control condition (PTSD Family Education). This study is the first RCT designed to investigate the delivery of B-CBCT specifically to veterans with PTSD and their partners, as well as to examine the delivery of B-CBCT over a CVT modality; findings could increase access to care to veterans with PTSD and their partners

Nanotopography controls cell cycle changes involved with skeletal stem cell self-renewal and multipotency

In culture isolated bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (more precisely termed skeletal stem cells, SSCs) spontaneously differentiate into fibroblasts, preventing the growth of large numbers of multipotent SSCs for use in regenerative medicine. However, the mechanisms that regulate the expansion of SSCs, while maintaining multipotency and preventing fibroblastic differentiation are poorly understood. Major hurdles to understanding how the maintenance of SSCs is regulated are (a) SSCs isolated from bone marrow are heterogeneous populations with different proliferative characteristics and (b) a lack of tools to investigate SSC number expansion and multipotency. Here, a nanotopographical surface is used as a tool that permits SSC proliferation while maintaining multipotency. It is demonstrated that retention of SSC phenotype in culture requires adjustments to the cell cycle that are linked to changes in the activation of the mitogen activated protein kinases. This demonstrates that biomaterials can offer cross-SSC culture tools and that the biological processes that determine whether SSCs retain multipotency or differentiate into fibroblasts are subtle, in terms of biochemical control, but are profound in terms of determining cell fat

Nanotopography reveals metabolites that maintain the immunomodulatory phenotype of mesenchymal stromal cells

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are multipotent progenitor cells that are of considerable clinical potential in transplantation and anti-inflammatory therapies due to their capacity for tissue repair and immunomodulation. However, MSCs rapidly differentiate once in culture, making their large-scale expansion for use in immunomodulatory therapies challenging. Although the differentiation mechanisms of MSCs have been extensively investigated using materials, little is known about how materials can influence paracrine activities of MSCs. Here, we show that nanotopography can control the immunomodulatory capacity of MSCs through decreased intracellular tension and increasing oxidative glycolysis. We use nanotopography to identify bioactive metabolites that modulate intracellular tension, growth and immunomodulatory phenotype of MSCs in standard culture and during larger scale cell manufacture. Our findings demonstrate an effective route to support large-scale expansion of functional MSCs for therapeutic purposes

Minimum Technical Data Elements for Liquid Biopsy Data Submitted to Public Databases

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154656/1/cpt1747.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154656/2/cpt1747-sup-0001-FigS1.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154656/3/cpt1747_am.pd

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI