Predictors of homework engagement in group CBT for social anxiety: client beliefs about homework, its consequences, group cohesion, and working alliance.

Objective: Group cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD) is effective, but little data exist on generic relational components of the therapeutic process, such as group cohesion and therapy alliance, and central CBT-specific components such as homework engagement, beliefs, and perceived consequences. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between homework, group cohesion, and working alliance during group CBT for social anxiety disorder.

Method: Participants ( = 105) with SAD engaged in 12 sessions of group CBT.

The relationships among working alliance, group cohesion and homework engagement in group cognitive behaviour therapy for social anxiety disorder.

Objective: Few studies have investigated the role of generic relational factors, such as group cohesion and working alliance, in group cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD). The aim of this study was to examine the temporal associations among working alliance, group cohesion, and an index of a CBT-specific factor, homework engagement, as correlates of fear of negative evaluation and symptoms of social anxiety in group CBT for SAD.

Method: There were 105 participants with a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder who were randomly assigned to 12 sessions of group imagery-enhanced or standard CBT.

Measurement Invariance of Disorder-Specific and Transdiagnostic Measures of Repetitive Negative Thinking.

Background: Repetitive negative thinking is conceptualized to be a transdiagnostic process linked to the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Prior research distinguishes between disorder-specific exemplars (worry, rumination) and transdiagnostic measures of repetitive negative thinking with differences across disorders reported. However, establishing the measurement invariance of these measures is necessary to support meaningful comparisons across clinical groups.

Unguided low intensity cognitive behaviour therapy for anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic: A randomised trial.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on mental health worldwide, with increased rates of anxiety and depression widely documented. The aim of this study was to examine unguided low intensity cognitive behaviour therapy for anxiety and depression during the pandemic. A sample of 225 individuals in Australia and the United Kingdom (M age 37.

Does voluntary assisted dying cause public stigma for the bereaved? A vignette-based experiment.

Objective: Studies in countries where assisted dying is legal show that bereaved people express concern over the potential for social disapproval and social stigma because of the manner of death. There are indications that voluntary assisted dying is judged as less acceptable if the deceased is younger. A vignette-based experiment was used to determine whether public stigma (i.

A longitudinal assessment of the bivalent fear of evaluation model with social interaction anxiety in social anxiety disorder.

Background: The Bivalent Fear of Evaluation Model proposes that the fears of positive and negative evaluation each uniquely contribute to social anxiety severity. However, the debate continues as to whether these are distinct constructs, and, if so, the degree of influence each has on social anxiety severity. This study used a longitudinal evaluation of these relationships in a clinical sample to identify whether the two fears differentially change over time and differentially relate to social anxiety severity.

Imagery-enhanced verbally-based group cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder: a randomized clinical trial.

Background: Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is effective for most patients with a social anxiety disorder (SAD) but a substantial proportion fails to remit. Experimental and clinical research suggests that enhancing CBT using imagery-based techniques could improve outcomes. It was hypothesized that imagery-enhanced CBT (IE-CBT) would be superior to verbally-based CBT (VB-CBT) on pre-registered outcomes.

Challenges in Palliative Care Research on Family Caregivers: Who Volunteers for Interviews?

Interviews are a common method of data collection in palliative care research because they facilitate the gathering of rich, experiential data that are important for theory and practice. What is less clear is the extent to which those interviewed are representative of the larger group. The aim of this study was to determine if family caregivers who volunteer to be interviewed were similar or different to those who do not.

Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry as an Efficient Tool for Identification of Streptorubin B in M145.

Ion mobility spectrometry was utilized to corroborate the identity of streptorubin B () as the natural product produced by . Natural product was initially assigned as butylcycloheptylprodigiosin (), and only relatively recently was this assignment clarified. We present additional evidence of this assignment by comparing collisional cross sections (Ω) of synthetic standards of , , and metacycloprodigiosin () to the cyclic prodiginine produced by .

Effect of caregiving at end of life on grief, quality of life and general health: A prospective, longitudinal, comparative study.

Background: Determining the effect of caregiving and bereavement remains a challenge. To date, no study has employed a comparison group to investigate caregivers' grief, quality of life and general health in relation to non-caregivers.

Aim: We aimed to determine how caregivers' grief, quality of life and general health changed following death compared to non-caregivers and whether pre-death grief predicted these outcomes.

Silencing cryptic specialized metabolism in by the nucleoid-associated protein Lsr2.

Lsr2 is a nucleoid-associated protein conserved throughout the actinobacteria, including the antibiotic-producing species encode paralogous Lsr2 proteins (Lsr2 and Lsr2-like, or LsrL), and we show here that of the two, Lsr2 has greater functional significance. We found that Lsr2 binds AT-rich sequences throughout the chromosome, and broadly represses gene expression. Strikingly, specialized metabolic clusters were over-represented amongst its targets, and the cryptic nature of many of these clusters appears to stem from Lsr2-mediated repression.

Structure Elucidation of Macrolide Antibiotics Using MS Analysis and Deuterium Labelling.

The 14- and 16-membered macrolide antibiotics are an important structural class. Ubiquitously produced by a number of bacterial strains, namely actinomycetes, purification and structure elucidation of the wide array of analogs is challenging, both for discovery efforts and methodologies to monitor for byproducts, metabolites, and contaminants. Collision-induced dissociation mass spectrometry offers an attractive solution, enabling characterization of mixtures, and providing a wealth of structural information.

Factor Structure of the Ways of Coping Questionnaire in Parkinson's Disease.

The Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WCQ) is used extensively in health research, but the measurement properties and suitability of the WCQ for people with Parkinson's disease (PD) have not been psychometrically assessed. If the WCQ does not align with its original 8-factor structure in a PD population, the use of the WCQ subscales may not be appropriate. The present study used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and multiple-group EFA to determine the ideal factor structure of the WCQ in a PD sample.

Cognitive Training and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Mild Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson's Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

This study examined whether standard cognitive training, tailored cognitive training, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), standard cognitive training + tDCS, or tailored cognitive training + tDCS improved cognitive function and functional outcomes in participants with PD and mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI). Forty-two participants with PD-MCI were randomized to one of six groups: (1) standard cognitive training, (2) tailored cognitive training, (3) tDCS, (4) standard cognitive training + tDCS, (5) tailored cognitive training + tDCS, or (6) a control group. Interventions lasted 4 weeks, with cognitive and functional outcomes measured at baseline, post-intervention, and follow-up.

Neonatal adaptation following intrauterine antidepressant exposure: assessment, drug assay levels, and infant development outcomes.

BackgroundAlthough a meta-analysis has confirmed the association between antidepressant exposure in utero and subsequent poor neonatal adaptation, few identified studies included drug levels or standardized measures and only two studies followed up children who developed symptoms beyond infancy.MethodsThe study draws on the Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Wellbeing Study and reports on 42 women/infant pairs at delivery. In all, 31 women continued to take antidepressants until delivery and 11 ceased earlier in pregnancy.

Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Well-being Study (MPEWS): Understanding maternal mental health, fetal programming and child development. Study design and cohort profile.

Maternal mental health represents a significant global health burden. The Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Well-being Study (MPEWS) was established to provide a comprehensive investigation of early developmental mechanisms and modifiers for maternal, fetal and child emotional well-being. MPEWS is a prospective, longitudinal study from pregnancy to 36 months postpartum that includes diagnostic measures of maternal mental health, observational measures of the mother-infant relationship, measures of child development, and repeat biological sampling.

The relationship between executive function and fine motor control in young and older adults.

The present study examined the relationship between executive function (EF) and fine motor control in young and older healthy adults. Participants completed 3 measures of executive function; a spatial working memory (SWM) task, the Stockings of Cambridge task (planning), and the Intra-Dimensional Extra-Dimensional Set-Shift task (set-shifting). Fine motor control was assessed using 3 subtests of the Purdue Pegboard (unimanual, bimanual, sequencing).

Sharing and community curation of mass spectrometry data with Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking.

The potential of the diverse chemistries present in natural products (NP) for biotechnology and medicine remains untapped because NP databases are not searchable with raw data and the NP community has no way to share data other than in published papers. Although mass spectrometry (MS) techniques are well-suited to high-throughput characterization of NP, there is a pressing need for an infrastructure to enable sharing and curation of data. We present Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking (GNPS; http://gnps.

Suitability of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale in Parkinson's Disease.

Background: The Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale -21 (DASS-21) is a frequently used measure of emotional disturbance symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the factor structure of the DASS-21 in PD has yet to be explored.

Objective: To assess whether the scale is measuring these symptoms in PD in the same way as the general population.

Motor Subtype as a Predictor of Future Working Memory Performance in Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease.

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder associated with reduced spatial and verbal working memory ability. There are two established motor subtypes of PD, tremor dominant (TD) and postural instability and gait difficulty (PIGD). This study used structural equation modelling to explore the longitudinal relationship between the two subtypes and working memory assessed at a 2-year follow-up.

Collision-Induced Dissociation Mass Spectrometry: A Powerful Tool for Natural Product Structure Elucidation.

Mass spectrometry is a powerful tool in natural product structure elucidation, but our ability to directly correlate fragmentation spectra to these structures lags far behind similar efforts in peptide sequencing and proteomics. Often, manual data interpretation is required and our knowledge of the expected fragmentation patterns for many scaffolds is limited, further complicating analysis. Here, we summarize advances in natural product structure elucidation based upon the application of collision induced dissociation fragmentation mechanisms.

Negatively-charged helices in the gas phase.

A polyalanine-based peptide which forms a stable, negatively-charged α-helix in the gas phase is reported. Addition of an N-terminal acidic residue forms a stabilizing hydrogen bond network and an electrostatic interaction with the helical dipole. Formation of this secondary structure was demonstrated using ion mobility-mass spectrometry and molecular modelling techniques.

Integrated metabolomics approach facilitates discovery of an unpredicted natural product suite from Streptomyces coelicolor M145.

Natural products exhibit a broad range of biological properties and have been a crucial source of therapeutic agents and novel scaffolds. Although bacterial secondary metabolomes are widely explored, they remain incompletely cataloged by current isolation and characterization strategies. To identify metabolites residing in unexplored chemical space, we have developed an integrated discovery approach that combines bacterial growth perturbation, accurate mass spectrometry, comparative mass spectra data analysis, and fragmentation spectra clustering for the identification of low-abundant, novel compounds from complex biological matrices.

Identifying orthogonal and similar reversed phase liquid chromatography stationary phases using the system selectivity cube and the hydrophobic subtraction model.

We have compared over 500 RPLC columns characterized by the hydrophobic subtraction model using the system selectivity cube (SSC). We have shown numerous differences in column selectivity even among columns in the same class (e.g.