In my mind

Chromosome segregation is crucial for the faithful inheritance of DNA to the daughter cells after DNA replication. For this, the kinetochore, a megadalton protein complex, assembles on centromeric chromatin containing the histone H3 variant CENP-A and provides a physical connection to the microtubules. Here, we report an unanticipated role for enzymes required for β-1,6- and β-1,3 glucan biosynthesis in regulating kinetochore function in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These carbohydrates are the major constituents of the yeast cell wall...

From 9 to 12 October 2023, WHO Member States in the Eastern Mediterranean Region came together at the Organization's regional office in Cairo, Egypt, for the 70th Session of its main regional governing body, the WHO Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean. This year's meeting was particularly significant, marking not only the 75th Anniversary of WHO itself, but also my final session as Regional Director. As such, it was an important opportunity to take stock of the public health situation across the Region...

In any meta-analysis, it is critically important to report the dispersion in effects as well as the mean effect. If an intervention has a moderate clinical impact on average we also need to know if the impact is moderate for all relevant populations, or if it varies from trivial in some to major in others. Or indeed, if the intervention is beneficial in some cases but harmful in others. Researchers typically report a series of statistics such as the Q-value, the p-value, and I2 , which are intended to address this issue...

BACKGROUND: e-Health interventions can potentially improve health care. My Viva Plan® (MVP) is a web-based program that focuses on mindfulness, nutrition, and physical fitness. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of this platform on stress indicators and diet quality among first-year university students. METHODS: Ninety-seven university students were enrolled in a randomized, controlled clinical trial. Participants were randomized into control ( n  = 49) and MVP ( n  = 48) groups...

Direct eye contact is essential to understanding others' thoughts and feelings in social interactions. However, those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and exposure to moral injury (MI) may exhibit altered theory-of-mind (ToM)/mentalizing processes and experience shame which precludes one's capacity for direct eye contact. We investigated blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses associated with direct vs averted gaze using a virtual reality paradigm in individuals with PTSD (n = 28) relative to healthy controls (n = 18) following recall of a MI vs a neutral memory...

The neuron doctrine, according to which nerves consist of discontinuous neurons, presented investigators with the challenge of determining what activities occurred between them or between them and muscles. One group of researchers, dubbed the sparks, viewed the electrical current in one neuron as inducing a current in the next neuron or in muscles. For them there was no gap between the activities of neurons or neurons and muscles that required filling with a new type of activity. A competing group, the soups, came to argue for chemicals, subsequently referred to neurotransmitters, as carrying out the activities between neurons or between neurons and muscles...

PURPOSE: People with functional movement disorders (FMD) are commonly seen in neurology clinics. Despite a recent increase in research, no standardised treatment pathway across the UK exists. Currently only a few qualitative studies in FMD with a focus on psychological aspects and diagnosis have been published. This study aimed to understand people with FMD perceptions of their physiotherapy treatment. METHOD: Qualitative web-based interviews were conducted with seven participants and an interpretive phenomenological approach was used to identify themes from the data...

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the current study was to explore the acceptability and feasibility of a resilience-focused mobile application, JoyPop™, for use with Indigenous youth. METHODS: A Haudenosaunee community-based research advisory committee co-developed the research project, in accordance with OCAP™ principles. Adopting a mixed-method approach, five youths from an immersion school used the JoyPop™ app for four consecutive weeks, as well as completed pre-test questions and weekly usage surveys...

In January of this year I received an unexpected request from George Bloom to contribute an historical perspective on "the discovery of tau protein," an event that occurred roughly 50 years ago. My first thought was that it could not have been that long ago, as the memories of what was my first independent scientific discovery are still fresh in my mind today. But 50 years is half a century and, as I thought about the events, I realized how much the practice of science has changed.

Measuring interoception ('perceiving internal bodily states') has diagnostic and wellbeing implications. Since heartbeats are distinct and frequent, various methods aim at measuring cardiac interoceptive accuracy (CIAcc). However, the role of exteroceptive modalities for representing heart rate (HR) across screen-based and Virtual Reality (VR) environments remains unclear. Using a PolarH10 HR monitor, we develop a modality-dependent cardiac recognition task that modifies displayed HR. In a mixed-factorial design (N=50), we investigate how task environment (Screen, VR), modality (Audio, Visual, Audio-Visual), and real-time HR modifications ( ±15%, ±30%, None) influence CIAcc, interoceptive awareness, mind-body measures, VR presence, and post-experience responses...

OBJECTIVES: Identify patient-informed strategies through which an urban resident continuity clinic can implement the principles of community oriented primary care (COPC). METHODS: As part of a larger sequential mixed methods study supporting implementation evaluation of a new urban academic medical center in Cleveland, Ohio, semi-structured telephone interviews using a descriptive phenomenological approach were conducted spring 2021 with patients to explore perspectives regarding community involvement by healthcare providers and what they want clinicians to know about their community...

The word "silence" typically refers to the auditory modality, signifying an absence of sound or noise, being quiet. One may then ask: could we attribute the notion of silence to the domain of dance, e.g., when a movement is absent and the dancer stops moving? Is it at all useful to think in terms of silence when referring to dance? In this chapter, my exploration of these questions is based on recent studies in brain research, which demonstrate the remarkable facility of specific regions in the human brain to perceive visually referred biological and, in particular, human motion, leading to prediction of future movements of the human body...

He is an explorer in micro-nano manufacturing, an adventurer in interdisciplinary studies, an impassioned educator; an ever-curious reader, a lover of sports, and a coffee connoisseur. In this episode of Light People Interview, we are honored to have Prof. Huigao Duan from Hunan University share his insights on micro-nano manufacturing, planar optics, teaching, nurturing, reading, growing up, and hobbies. "A man with a great smile", "a good teacher," and "an interesting soul" are just some of the descriptions that came through my mind during my conversation with him...

As social creatures, our relationships with other people have tremendous downstream impacts on health and well-being. However, we still know surprisingly little about how our social interactions regulate how we think and feel through life's challenges. Getting help from other people to change how one thinks about emotional events-known as "social reappraisal"-can be more effective in downregulating negative affect than reappraising on one's own, but it is unknown whether this regulatory boost from social support persists when people face the same events alone in the future...

I have read the article titled, " Efficacy and safety of omalizumab against chronic spontaneous urticaria: Real-world study from China ", by Wang et al with great interest. Nevertheless, there are a couple of questions raised in my mind. And clarification of some aspects of the study will help the reader benefit and have a better understanding of the study.

INTRODUCTION: Associated with learning and social isolation from each other during the pandemic-driven transition to online platforms in Higher Education (HE), many students were, and remain, reluctant to turn on their video cameras to be present with each other during their online meetings.Using the Compassionate Mind Foundation's definition of compassion, not as an emotion, but as a psychobiological motivation to take wise action to help when self or others struggle, this comparative study examined (a) the deployment by students during online, task-focused group/team meetings, of taught verbal and non-verbal communication strategies that were explicitly compassionate and (b) the effects of these strategies on each other's social and learning experiences in these meetings, compared to when they did not use them...

We investigate an ecologically pertinent form of social uncertainty regarding the ability to read another's intentions. We use classic measures (response time, accuracy) and dynamic measures (mouse trajectories) to investigate how people generate or minimize uncertainty regarding their own intentions under different social contexts, and how uncertainty regarding other's intentions affects decision making. Ninety-six participants ( N = 48 dyads) completed a two-player online card game, where the goal was to collect cards with a certain feature (e...

INTRODUCTION: Receiving a diagnosis of young onset dementia is particularly distressing; the person under 65 years is often in employment, with financial commitments, young children, and an active social life. Some of the stress experienced by younger people experiencing cognitive changes can be reduced by an early and accurate diagnosis, but this is contingent on the timing of disclosure and a process which is sensitive and appropriate to the person. The study aim was to explore experiences of giving and receiving a diagnosis of young onset dementia, by triangulating the perspectives of the key parties involved...

Family medicine physicians take care of patients and their families "from womb to tomb." This phrase is particularly apt in Oregon, where the Death with Dignity Act allows for terminally ill patients to end their lives with self-administered medications prescribed by a physician. This story chronicles my first experience caring for a patient under the Death with Dignity Act; that night of her death at home, surrounded by the warmth of her life and loved ones, opened my mind to the possibilities of what the patient-physician relationship entails, from the routine of meeting her family to the intimacy of assisting in her decision to die...

In a recent monograph, my students, colleagues, and I reported on a comprehensive set of tests of the theory of Perceptual Access Reasoning (PAR), a new theory of the development of representational theory of mind (ToM). The central tenet of the theory is that young children acquire a hitherto undetected non-representational ToM (i.e., PAR), the use of which allows them to pass standard false belief tasks without understanding false beliefs. Thus, PAR theory capitalizes on an unrecognized flaw in all standard false belief tasks...