Background: The COVID-19 pandemic initiated a mass switch to psychological therapy being delivered remotely, including at Anxiety UK, a national mental health charity. Understanding the impact of this forced switch could raise implications for the provision of psychological therapies going forwards.
Aims: To understand whether the forced switch to remote therapy had any impact on outcomes, and if certain groups should continue to be routinely offered certain delivery modalities in future.
Front Hum Neurosci
September 2024
Mind wandering (MW) is intricately linked to sleep and affect, bearing clinical relevance for various psychiatric conditions, notably attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders. Most reviews concur that the relationship between disturbed sleep and negative affect is bidirectional. The directional relationships between MW propensity and disturbed sleep, as well as MW propensity and negative affect, are less clear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpinal cord epidural stimulation (scES) is a therapeutic option that promotes functional improvements in sensory, motor, and autonomic functions following spinal cord injury (SCI). Previous scES mapping studies targeting the lower urinary tract (LUT) in rats demonstrated functional response variability based upon lumbosacral level, parameters used, extent of injury (spinally intact vs. chronic anatomically complete spinal transections), and sex.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMutant BRAF is one of the most common oncogenic drivers in metastatic melanoma. While first generation BRAF inhibitors are capable of controlling tumors systemically, they are unable to adequately treat tumors that have metastasized to the brain due to insufficient penetration across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Through a combination of structure-based drug design (SBDD) and the optimization of physiochemical properties to enhance BBB penetration, we herein report the discovery of the brain-penetrant BRAF inhibitor () In mice studies, proved to be highly brain-penetrant and was able to drive regressions of A375 BRAF tumors implanted both subcutaneously and intracranially.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlcohol-impaired driving is a formidable public health problem in the United States, claiming the lives of 37 individuals daily in alcohol-related crashes. Alcohol-impaired driving is affected by a multitude of interconnected factors, coupled with long delays between stakeholders' actions and their impacts, which not only complicate policy-making but also increase the likelihood of unintended consequences. We developed a system dynamics simulation model of drinking and driving behaviors among adolescents and young adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExcessive mind wandering (MW) contributes to the development and maintenance of psychiatric disorders. Previous studies have suggested that auditory beat stimulation may represent a method enabling a reduction of MW. However, little is known about how different auditory stimulation conditions are subjectively perceived and whether this perception is in turn related to changes in subjective states, behavioral measures of attention and MW.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNovel species of fungi described in this study include those from various countries as follows: , on whitefly, on bark of , from soil under , on leaf spot of , and on leaf spot of . , on fully submersed siliceous schist in high-mountain streams, and on the lower part and apothecial discs of on a twig. , on decaying wood, from moist soil with leaf litter, on a trunk of a living unknown hardwood tree species, and on dead twigs of unidentified plant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSignificant bowel-related issues after spinal cord injury (SCI) that affect morbidity and quality of life (QOL) include diminished bowel motility, loss of sphincter control, gastric ulcers, autonomic dysreflexia, pain, diarrhea, constipation, and fecal incontinence. Clinical diagnoses and research in humans have largely relied on anorectal manometry (ARM) procedures to increase understanding of the functional effects of SCI on colorectal motility and defecation physiology. Recent pre-clinical rodent studies have also used ARM to further our understanding of bowel-related dysfunctions post-SCI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSHP2 has emerged as an important target for oncology small-molecule drug discovery. As a nonreceptor tyrosine phosphatase within the MAPK pathway, it has been shown to control cell growth, differentiation, and oncogenic transformation. We used structure-based design to find a novel class of potent and orally bioavailable SHP2 inhibitors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVision Zero involves the use of a systems approach to eliminate fatal and serious injuries from motor vehicle crashes by accommodating basic human limitations that lead to crashes through fundamental behavioral expectations, together with sound vehicle and road design. Alcohol-related crashes account for a significant proportion of motor vehicle crash death and injury and can be addressed in a safe road transport system. We look at near-term policy and program interventions that are known to motivate drivers to make safe drinking and driving decisions, and possibilities for using technology over the longer term to address risks resulting from driver impairment that is either inadvertent or willful high-risk behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany investigations have targeted the subject of worry in anxiety disorders. Worry can be regarded as a subtype of mind wandering (MW), which is undeliberate, perseverative, negatively-valenced, and mainly future-oriented. Nevertheless, until now only a few studies have explored the role of overall MW in the origin and course of anxiety disorders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOur minds tend to wander, sometimes with little control. Despite this phenomenon, that can affect our ability to perform everyday tasks gaining much interest, relatively little is understood about the actual time course of MW across an experimental task. With this in mind, we collated data from two previously reported studies investigating the effect of auditory beat stimulation on MW.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNano-computed tomography (nano-CT) based on scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is utilized for multimodal material characterization in one instrument. Since SEM-based CT uses geometrical magnification, X-ray targets can be adapted without any further changes to the system. This allows for designing targets with varying geometry and chemical composition to influence the X-ray focal spot, intensity and energy distribution with the aim to enhance the image quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent pre-clinical and clinical spinal cord epidural stimulation (scES) experiments specifically targeting the thoracolumbar and lumbosacral circuitries mediating lower urinary tract (LUT) function have shown improvements in storage, detrusor pressure, and emptying. With the existence of a lumbar spinal coordinating center in rats that is involved with external urethral sphincter (EUS) functionality during micturition, the mid-lumbar spinal cord (specifically L3) was targeted in the current study with scES to determine if the EUS and thus the void pattern could be modulated, using both intact and chronic complete spinal cord injured female rats under urethane anesthesia. L3 scES at select frequencies and intensities of stimulation produced a reduction in void volumes and EUS burst duration in intact rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCorrelative microscopy approaches are attracting considerable interest in several research fields such as materials and battery research. Recent developments regarding X-ray computer tomography have made this technique available in a compact module for scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). Nano-computed tomography (nanoCT) allows morphological analysis of samples in a nondestructive way and to generate 2D and 3D overviews.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigated whether heat acclimation (HA) could improve rowing performance in temperate conditions in national-level rowers. Using a parallel-group design, eleven rowers (3 female, 8 male, age: 21±3 years, height: 182.3±6.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Since 2012, 19 states and the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana for adults ages 21 and older. Marijuana use at any level can impair driving performance. Prior research on enforcement of the minimum legal marijuana use age of 21 (MLMU-21) laws is limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe investigation of so-called mind blanking has been recently established in the context of mind wandering research. Unfortunately, the description of the term 'mind blanking' and its experimental assessment are often ambiguous. More specifically, two distinct phenomena have been conceptually blended and both characterized using the term 'mind blanking' in experimental studies: the absence of task-focus and thought, versus complete lack of conscious experiences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMind wandering (MW) refers to a state when attention shifts from the task at hand or current situation toward thoughts, feelings, and imaginations. This state is often accompanied by a decline in mood, and patients suffering from major depression exhibit more perseverative MW. Hence, although the directionality of the relationship between mood and MW is still under investigation, it may be useful to explore possible avenues to reduce MW.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMovement variability is defined as the normal variations in motor performance across multiple repetitions of a task. However, the term "movement variability" can mean different things depending on context, and when used by itself does not capture the specifics of what has been investigated. Within sport, complex movements are performed repeatedly under a variety of different constraints (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMind wandering (MW) and mindfulness have both been reported to be vital moderators of psychological wellbeing. Here, we aim to examine how closely associated these phenomena are and evaluate the psychometrics of measures often used to quantify them. We investigated two samples, one consisting of German-speaking unpaid participants (GUP, n [Formula: see text] 313) and one of English-speaking paid participants (EPP, n [Formula: see text] 228) recruited through MTurk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiotechnol Biofuels Bioprod
May 2022
Background: Klebsiella pneumoniae contains an endogenous isobutanol synthesis pathway. The ipdC gene annotated as an indole-3-pyruvate decarboxylase (Kp-IpdC), was identified to catalyze the formation of isobutyraldehyde from 2-ketoisovalerate.
Results: Compared with 2-ketoisovalerate decarboxylase from Lactococcus lactis (KivD), a decarboxylase commonly used in artificial isobutanol synthesis pathways, Kp-IpdC has an 2.
This report is the first investigation of yeast biodiversity from the oligotrophic hypersaline coastal waters of the Arabian Gulf surrounding Qatar. Yeasts and yeast-like fungi, were cultured from seawater sampled at 13 coastal areas surrounding Qatar over a period of 2 years (December 2013-September 2015). Eight hundred and forty-two isolates belonging to 82 species representing two phyla viz.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF