Perceived Management of Acute Sports Injuries and Medical Conditions by Athletic Trainers and Physical Therapists.

Background: While Athletic Trainers' (ATs) education emphasizes sport event coverage, Physical Therapists' (PTs) education may prepare them for event coverage responsibilities. The objectives of this study were to compare the perceived preparedness and decision-making related to acute injury/medical condition management among ATs and PTs and evaluate the relationship between perceived preparedness and decision-making.

Hypothesis: ATs would report greater perceived preparedness and appropriate decision-making related to acute injury/medical conditions compared to PTs.

Nitric Oxide Synthase Inhibitors into the Clinic at Last.

The 1998 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for the discovery of nitric oxide, a nitrogen containing reactive oxygen species (also termed reactive nitrogen or reactive nitrogen/oxygen species) stirred great hopes. Clinical applications, however, have so far pertained exclusively to the downstream signaling of cGMP enhancing drugs such as phosphodiesterase inhibitors and soluble guanylate cyclase stimulators. All clinical attempts, so far, to inhibit NOS have failed even though preclinical models were strikingly positive and clinical biomarkers correlated perfectly.

Intensive meditation training influences emotional responses to suffering.

Meditation practices purportedly help people develop focused and sustained attention, cultivate feelings of compassionate concern for self and others, and strengthen motivation to help others who are in need. We examined the impact of 3 months of intensive meditative training on emotional responses to scenes of human suffering. Sixty participants were assigned randomly to either a 3-month intensive meditation retreat or a wait-list control group.

Mean-field thalamocortical modeling of longitudinal EEG acquired during intensive meditation training.

Meditation training has been shown to enhance attention and improve emotion regulation. However, the brain processes associated with such training are poorly understood and a computational modeling framework is lacking. Modeling approaches that can realistically simulate neurophysiological data while conforming to basic anatomical and physiological constraints can provide a unique opportunity to generate concrete and testable hypotheses about the mechanisms supporting complex cognitive tasks such as meditation.

Anticipatory sensitization to repeated stressors: the role of initial cortisol reactivity and meditation/emotion skills training.

Anticipation may play a role in shaping biological reactions to repeated stressors-a common feature of modern life. We aimed to demonstrate that: (a) individuals who display a larger cortisol response to an initial stressor exhibit progressive anticipatory sensitization, showing progressively higher cortisol levels before subsequent exposures, and (b) attention/emotional skills training can reduce the magnitude of this effect on progressive anticipatory sensitization. Female school teachers (N=76) were randomly assigned to attention/emotion skills and meditation training or to a control group.

A week-long meditation retreat decouples behavioral measures of the alerting and executive attention networks.

PREVIOUS STUDIES HAVE EXAMINED THE INFLUENCE OF MEDITATION ON THREE FUNCTIONALLY DIFFERENT COMPONENTS OF ATTENTION: executive control, alerting, and orienting. These studies have consistently found that meditation training improves both executive attention and alerting, but there has not been a consistent and clear effect of meditation training on orienting. In addition, while previous studies have shown that the functional coupling of the alerting and executive networks increases the processing of task irrelevant stimuli, it is unknown if participating in a meditation retreat can decouple these components of attention and lead to improved performance.

Cathepsin C inhibitors: property optimization and identification of a clinical candidate.

A lead generation and optimization program delivered the highly selective and potent CatC inhibitor 10 as an in vivo tool compound and potential development candidate. Structural studies were undertaken to generate SAR understanding.

Self-reported mindfulness and cortisol during a Shamatha meditation retreat.

Objective: Cognitive perseverations that include worry and rumination over past or future events may prolong cortisol release, which in turn may contribute to predisease pathways and adversely affect physical health. Meditation training may increase self-reported mindfulness, which has been linked to reductions in cognitive perseverations. However, there are no reports that directly link self-reported mindfulness and resting cortisol output.

Cortisol secretion in children with symptoms of reactive attachment disorder.

Maltreated children with reactive attachment disorder (RAD) have severe problems with social relationships and affect regulation. An association between early maltreatment and changes in the daily rhythm of cortisol secretion has already been reported for maltreated toddlers. We sought to find out whether such changes were apparent in school-age children with symptoms of RAD, who had experienced early maltreatment but were currently adopted in well-functioning families.

Vitamin D in pregnancy at high latitude in Scotland.

The aims of the present study were to determine compliance with current advice on vitamin D and to assess the influence of season, dietary intake, supplement use and deprivation on vitamin D status in pregnant mothers and newborns in the north of Scotland where sunlight exposure is low. Pregnant women (n 1205) and their singleton newborns were studied in the Aberdeen Maternity Hospital (latitude 57°N) between 2000 and 2006. Plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D2 and 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 were measured at 19 weeks of gestation in mothers and at delivery in newborns.

Effects of mindful-attention and compassion meditation training on amygdala response to emotional stimuli in an ordinary, non-meditative state.

The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in emotional processing of both positive and negative-valence stimuli. Previous studies suggest that the amygdala response to emotional stimuli is lower when the subject is in a meditative state of mindful-attention, both in beginner meditators after an 8-week meditation intervention and in expert meditators. However, the longitudinal effects of meditation training on amygdala responses have not been reported when participants are in an ordinary, non-meditative state.

Intensive training induces longitudinal changes in meditation state-related EEG oscillatory activity.

The capacity to focus one's attention for an extended period of time can be increased through training in contemplative practices. However, the cognitive processes engaged during meditation that support trait changes in cognition are not well characterized. We conducted a longitudinal wait-list controlled study of intensive meditation training.

Contemplative/emotion training reduces negative emotional behavior and promotes prosocial responses.

Contemplative practices are believed to alleviate psychological problems, cultivate prosocial behavior and promote self-awareness. In addition, psychological science has developed tools and models for understanding the mind and promoting well-being. Additional effort is needed to combine frameworks and techniques from these traditions to improve emotional experience and socioemotional behavior.

Enhanced response inhibition during intensive meditation training predicts improvements in self-reported adaptive socioemotional functioning.

We examined the impact of training-induced improvements in self-regulation, operationalized in terms of response inhibition, on longitudinal changes in self-reported adaptive socioemotional functioning. Data were collected from participants undergoing 3 months of intensive meditation training in an isolated retreat setting (Retreat 1) and a wait-list control group that later underwent identical training (Retreat 2). A 32-min response inhibition task (RIT) was designed to assess sustained self-regulatory control.

The discovery of novel, potent and highly selective inhibitors of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS).

By careful analysis of experimental X-ray ligand crystallographic protein data across several inhibitor series we have discovered a novel, potent and selective series of iNOS inhibitors exemplified by compound 8.

Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators.

Background: Telomerase activity is a predictor of long-term cellular viability, which decreases with chronic psychological distress (Epel et al., 2004). Buddhist traditions claim that meditation decreases psychological distress and promotes well-being (e.

Intensive meditation training improves perceptual discrimination and sustained attention.

The ability to focus one's attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary attention cannot be sustained for extended periods of time. In the laboratory, sustained-attention failure is manifest as a decline in perceptual sensitivity with increasing time on task, known as the vigilance decrement. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training (approximately 5 hr/day for 3 months), which consisted of meditation practice that involved sustained selective attention on a chosen stimulus (e.

Identification of iNOS inhibitors using InteraX.

Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) is active as a homodimer. A cell-based assay suitable for high-throughput screening (HTS) was generated to identify inhibitors of iNOS dimerization using the InteraX enzyme complementation technology of Applied Biosystems. The cells contain 2 chimeric proteins of complementing deletion mutants of beta-galactosidase, each fused to the oxygenase domain of human iNOS.

Anchored plasticity opens doors for selective inhibitor design in nitric oxide synthase.

Nitric oxide synthase (NOS) enzymes synthesize nitric oxide, a signal for vasodilatation and neurotransmission at low concentrations and a defensive cytotoxin at higher concentrations. The high active site conservation among all three NOS isozymes hinders the design of selective NOS inhibitors to treat inflammation, arthritis, stroke, septic shock and cancer. Our crystal structures and mutagenesis results identified an isozyme-specific induced-fit binding mode linking a cascade of conformational changes to a new specificity pocket.

Mental balance and well-being: building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology.

Clinical psychology has focused primarily on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disease, and only recently has scientific attention turned to understanding and cultivating positive mental health. The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, has focused for over 2,500 years on cultivating exceptional states of mental well-being as well as identifying and treating psychological problems. This article attempts to draw on centuries of Buddhist experiential and theoretical inquiry as well as current Western experimental research to highlight specific themes that are particularly relevant to exploring the nature of mental health.

Selective inhibitors of inducible nitric oxide synthase: potential agents for the treatment of inflammatory diseases?

Nitric Oxide (NO) is widely recognized as an important messenger and effector molecule in a variety of biological systems. There is strong evidence from animal models that elevated or lowered NO levels are associated with a variety of pathological states. In nature, NO is synthesised from the amino acid l-arginine by a small family of closely related oxygenase enzymes: the nitric oxide synthases (NOS).

Hit-to-Lead studies: the discovery of potent, orally bioavailable thiazolopyrimidine CXCR2 receptor antagonists.

A Hit-to-Lead optimisation programme was carried out on a high throughput screening hit, the thiazolopyrimidine 1, resulting in the discovery of the potent, orally bioavailable CXCR2 antagonist 29.

2-aminopyridines as highly selective inducible nitric oxide synthase inhibitors. Differential binding modes dependent on nitrogen substitution.

4-Methylaminopyridine (4-MAP) (5) is a potent but nonselective nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitor. While simple N-methylation in this series results in poor activity, more elaborate N-substitution such as with 4-piperidine carbamate or amide results in potent and selective inducible NOS inhibition. Evidently, a flipping of the pyridine ring between these new inhibitors allows the piperidine to interact with different residues and confer excellent selectivity.

1,2-Dihydro-4-quinazolinamines: potent, highly selective inhibitors of inducible nitric oxide synthase which show antiinflammatory activity in vivo.

The discovery of a novel class of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitors, 2-substituted 1,2-dihydro-4-quinazolinamines, and the related 4'-aminospiro[piperidine-4,2'(1'H)-quinazolin]-4'-amines is described. Members of both series exhibit nanomolar potency and high selectivity for the inducible isoform of the enzyme (i-NOS) relative to the constitutive isoforms in vitro. Efficacy in acute and chronic animal models of inflammatory disease following oral administration has also been demonstrated using these compounds.