Contextualization of Protestant church liturgical gestures, among the Kankana-ey people, Benguet, Northern Philippines

A field-survey indicated that gesture forms used in Protestant Church liturgy arc not identified with the general culture among Kankana-ey, Northern Philippines. Based on an open-system approach to communication, the project identified two categories of gestures, ceremonial and spontaneous, within which eighteen gestures were compared between their use in Sunday church services and the general culture. In a sample of respondents, quantified data was obtained through in-depth interviews and photo-elicitation conducted in four selected congregations, within two denominations: the Episcopal Church and the Assemblies of God. These denominations represent two end points in the Protestant Church liturgical spectrum and results indicate that a difference exists in the forms used in both categories of gestures by both denominations between church and culture.Two reasons are offered to account for this difference in findings between gestures used in the liturgy and their use in culture: the slow pace adopted by Protestant missions to contextualize the church in the Philippines; and a "culture of dependence" that still existed in Protestant churches after independence from their parent body. Further research is needed to determine the level of contextualization on other forms of communication in the church such as preaching, teaching, counselling.The study findings indicate: that an emphasis on contextualization by Protestant misions at church planting level will help to avoid possible conflict between liturgical church forms and culture; that local church bodies must continually adapt forms of communication to the cultural context where they are located, while avoiding blandness, or the alienation of followers who are used to particular forms

A suitable waiting room? Hospital transfer outcomes and delays from two London prisons

Aims and Method To describe a group of prisoners who required transfer to mental health units from two London prisons. Data were collected from prison clinical records. Results Overall, 149 patient-prisoners were transferred over a 17-month period. Around a quarter were not previously known to services. the aggregate wait was 36.5 years (averaging between 93 and 102 days per prisoner) and the total saving to the National Health Service (NHS) has been estimated at £6.759 million. Clinical Implications Both prisons manage a large number of prisoners with untreated psychosis. While in prison, they save the NHS considerable sums of money, but transfer delays prevent timely treatment and could now be legally challenged

Patterns of emergency admission for IBD patients over the last 10 years in Lothian, Scotland: A retrospective prevalent cohort analysis

OBJECTIVE: It is unclear how the compounding prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has translated into the causes and rates of hospitalisation, particularly in an era of increased biologic prescribing. We aimed to analyse these trends in a population-based IBD cohort over the last 10 years. DESIGN: The Lothian IBD registry is a complete, validated, prevalent database of IBD patients in NHS Lothian, Scotland. ICD-10 coding of hospital discharge letters from all IBD patient admissions to secondary care between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2019 was interrogated for admission cause, with linkage to local/national data sets on death and prescribed drugs. RESULTS: Fifty-seven per cent (4673/8211) of all IBD patients were admitted to secondary care for >24 h between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2019. In patients 60 years (19% of admissions). Three per cent (243/8211) of IBD patients accounted for 50% of the total IBD bed-days over the study period. Age-standardised IBD admission rates fell from 39.4 to 25.5 admissions per 100,000 population between 2010 and 2019, an average annual percentage reduction of 3% (95% CI -4.5% to -2.1%, p < 0.0001). Non-IBD admission rates were unchanged overall (145-137 per 100,000 population) and specifically for serious (hospitalisation) and severe (ITU admission or death) infection over the same period. CONCLUSION: Despite compounding prevalence and increased biologic use, IBD admission rates are falling. The cause of admission varies with age, with infection the predominant cause in older patients

Human and murine fibroblast single cell transcriptomics reveals fibroblast clusters are differentially affected by ageing, and serum cholesterol

Aims Specific fibroblast markers and in-depth heterogeneity analysis are currently lacking, hindering functional studies in cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Here, we established cell-type markers and heterogeneity in murine and human arteries and studied the adventitial fibroblast response to CVD and its risk factors hypercholesterolaemia and ageing. Methods and results Murine aorta single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis of adventitial mesenchymal cells identified fibroblast-specific markers. Immunohistochemistry and flow cytometry validated platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRA) and dipeptidase 1 (DPEP1) across human and murine aorta, carotid, and femoral arteries, whereas traditional markers such as the cluster of differentiation (CD)90 and vimentin also marked transgelin+ vascular smooth muscle cells. Next, pseudotime analysis showed multiple fibroblast clusters differentiating along trajectories. Three trajectories, marked by CD55 (Cd55+), Cxcl chemokine 14 (Cxcl14+), and lysyl oxidase (Lox+), were reproduced in an independent RNA-seq dataset. Gene ontology (GO) analysis showed divergent functional profiles of the three trajectories, related to vascular development, antigen presentation, and/or collagen fibril organization, respectively. Trajectory-specific genes included significantly more genes with known genome-wide associations (GWAS) to CVD than expected by chance, implying a role in CVD. Indeed, differential regulation of fibroblast clusters by CVD risk factors was shown in the adventitia of aged C57BL/6J mice, and mildly hypercholesterolaemic LDLR KO mice on chow by flow cytometry. The expansion of collagen-related CXCL14+ and LOX+ fibroblasts in aged and hypercholesterolaemic aortic adventitia, respectively, coincided with increased adventitial collagen. Immunohistochemistry, bulk, and single-cell transcriptomics of human carotid and aorta specimens emphasized translational value as CD55+, CXCL14+ and LOX+ fibroblasts were observed in healthy and atherosclerotic specimens. Also, trajectory-specific gene sets are differentially correlated with human atherosclerotic plaque traits. Conclusion We provide two adventitial fibroblast-specific markers, PDGFRA and DPEP1, and demonstrate fibroblast heterogeneity in health and CVD in humans and mice. Biological relevance is evident from the regulation of fibroblast clusters by age and hypercholesterolaemia in vivo, associations with human atherosclerotic plaque traits, and enrichment of genes with a GWAS for CVD

The relationship between a child's postural stability and manual dexterity

The neural systems responsible for postural control are separate from the neural substrates that underpin control of the hand. Nonetheless, postural control and eye-hand coordination are linked functionally. For example, a stable platform is required for precise manual control tasks (e.g. handwriting) and thus such skills often cannot develop until the child is able to sit or stand upright. This raises the question of the strength of the empirical relationship between measures of postural stability and manual motor control. We recorded objective computerised measures of postural stability in stance and manual control in sitting in a sample of school children (n = 278) aged 3–11 years in order to explore the extent to which measures of manual skill could be predicted by measures of postural stability. A strong correlation was found across the whole sample between separate measures of postural stability and manual control taken on different days. Following correction for age, a significant but modest correlation was found. Regression analysis with age correction revealed that postural stability accounted for between 1 and 10 % of the variance in manual performance, dependent on the specific manual task. These data reflect an interdependent functional relationship between manual control and postural stability development. Nevertheless, the relatively small proportion of the explained variance is consistent with the anatomically distinct neural architecture that exists for ‘gross’ and ‘fine’ motor control. These data justify the approach of motor batteries that provide separate assessments of postural stability and manual dexterity and have implications for therapeutic intervention in developmental disorders

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

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Spatial Organization and Molecular Correlation of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Using Deep Learning on Pathology Images

Beyond sample curation and basic pathologic characterization, the digitized H&E-stained images of TCGA samples remain underutilized. To highlight this resource, we present mappings of tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) based on H&E images from 13 TCGA tumor types. These TIL maps are derived through computational staining using a convolutional neural network trained to classify patches of images. Affinity propagation revealed local spatial structure in TIL patterns and correlation with overall survival. TIL map structural patterns were grouped using standard histopathological parameters. These patterns are enriched in particular T cell subpopulations derived from molecular measures. TIL densities and spatial structure were differentially enriched among tumor types, immune subtypes, and tumor molecular subtypes, implying that spatial infiltrate state could reflect particular tumor cell aberration states. Obtaining spatial lymphocytic patterns linked to the rich genomic characterization of TCGA samples demonstrates one use for the TCGA image archives with insights into the tumor-immune microenvironment