Epigenomics: Deciphering non-coding variation with 3D epigenomics

The majority of disease-associated genetic variants identified by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are in non-coding regions of the genome. This indicates a pathological regulatory role for these variants, but identifying mechanisms of action and their corresponding target genes is often challenging. As part of the

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The impact of luminance on tonic and phasic pupillary responses to sustained cognitive load

Publication date: Available online 12 December 2016
Source:International Journal of Psychophysiology
Author(s): Vsevolod Peysakhovich, François Vachon, Frédéric Dehais
Pupillary reactions independent of light conditions have been linked to cognition for a long time. However, the light conditions can impact the cognitive pupillary reaction. Previous studies underlined the impact of luminance on pupillary reaction, but it is still unclear how luminance modulates the sustained and transient components of pupillary reaction – tonic pupil diameter and phasic pupil response. In the present study, we investigated the impact of the luminance on these two components under sustained cognitive load. Fourteen participants performed a novel working memory task combining mathematical computations with a classic n-back task. We studied both tonic pupil diameter and phasic pupil response under low (1-back) and high (2-back) working memory load and two luminance levels (gray and white). We found that the impact of working memory load on the tonic pupil diameter was modulated by the level of luminance, the increase in tonic pupil diameter with the load being larger under lower luminance. In contrast, the smaller phasic pupil response found under high load remained unaffected by luminance. These results showed that luminance impacts the cognitive pupillary reaction – tonic pupil diameter (phasic pupil response) being modulated under sustained (respectively, transient) cognitive load. These findings also support the relationship between the locus-coeruleus system, presumably functioning in two firing modes – tonic and phasic – and the pupil diameter. We suggest that the tonic pupil diameter tracks the tonic activity of the locus-coeruleus while phasic pupil response reflects its phasic activity. Besides, the designed novel cognitive paradigm allows the simultaneous manipulation of sustained and transient components of the cognitive load and is useful for dissociating the effects on the tonic pupil diameter and phasic pupil response.



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Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and PAH-related DNA adducts

Abstract

Investigations on the impact of chemicals on the environment and human health have led to the development of an exposome concept. The exposome refers to the totality of exposures received by a person during life, including exposures to life-style factors, from the prenatal period to death. The exposure to genotoxic chemicals and their reactive metabolites can induce chemical modifications of DNA, such as, for example, DNA adducts, which have been extensively studied and which play a key role in chemically induced carcinogenesis. Development of different methods for the identification of DNA adducts has led to adopting DNA adductomic approaches. The ability to simultaneously detect multiple PAH-derived DNA adducts may allow for the improved assessment of exposure, and offer a mechanistic insight into the carcinogenic process following exposure to PAH mixtures. The major advantage of measuring chemical-specific DNA adducts is the assessment of a biologically effective dose. This review provides information about the occurrence of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their influence on human exposure and biological effects, including PAH-derived DNA adduct formation and repair processes. Selected methods used for determination of DNA adducts have been presented.

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7 things you should know about bed bugs

In this video, the worsening problem of bed bugs and how to avoid and terminate them are explained.

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Community Integration Questionnaire II

Link to instrument: Community Integration Questionnaire II

Acronym:

CIQ-II

Purpose:

Like the original CIQ, the CIQ-2 is designed to assess Activities of Daily Living (ADL) across several domains.

Description:

CIQ-2 items address "aspects of everyday life". Items assess "the facts - about how things actually are". Responses describe frequency, level, or type of community activity and/or status/role.

 

Each CIQ-2 question is supplemented with 3 additional questions that include:

• How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with an activity?
• Would like this to change?
• How important would this change be to you?

Area of Assessment: Activities of Daily Living, Life Participation

Body Part: Not Applicable

ICF Domain: Activity, Participation

Domain: ADL, Motor

Assessment Type: Patient Reported Outcomes

Length of Test: 06 to 30 Minutes

Time to Administer:

20 to 30 minutes

Number of Items: 48

Equipment Required:

None

Training Required:

None

Type of training required: Reading an Article/Manual

Cost: Free

Actual Cost:

Free

Age Range: Adult: 18-64 years, Elderly adult: 65+

Administration Mode: Paper/Pencil

Diagnosis: Acquired Brain Injury, Arthritis, Cardiac Conditions, Cerebral Palsy, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Concussion, Fibromyalgia, Geriatrics, Hip fracture, Hip Fracture, Knee Dysfunction, Lower Limb Amputation, Movement Disorders, Multiple Sclerosis, Neck Injury, Pain, Parkinson's Disease, Peripheral Neuropathy, Pulmonary Disease, Spinal Cord Injury, Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury, Vestibular Disorders

Populations Tested:

Applicable to any diagnosis that affects daily living

Standard Error of Measurement (SEM):

Not Established

Minimal Detectable Change (MDC):

Not Established

Minimally Clinically Important Difference (MCID):

Not Established

Cut-Off Scores:

Not Established

Normative Data:

Acute TBI: (Johnston et al, 2005; n = 162; moderate to severe TBI; 90% assessed 1 month after discharge from rehab; mean age = 44.8 (17.6) years)

• Functional/instrumental activities (24 items; mean across items)
  • 1 Month: Satisfaction = 2.0, Desire to change = 18.6%
  • 12 Month Satisfaction 2.5, Desire to change = 9.9%
• Social/recreational items (24 items; mean outcome measurements)
  • 1 Month: Satisfaction = 2.1, Desire to change = 20.9%
  • 12 Month Satisfaction 2.5, Desire to change = 12.9%

Test-retest Reliability:

Not Established

Interrater/Intrarater Reliability:

Not Established

Internal Consistency:

Not Established

Criterion Validity (Predictive/Concurrent):

Acute TBI: (Johnston et al, 2005) Correlations between community activities and satisfaction with those activities:

• Functional/instrumental activities
  • 1 month median correlation = 0.17 (Correlations are Kendall's tau)
  • 12 month median correlation = 0.21 (Correlations are Kendall's tau)
• Social/recreational items
  • 1 month median correlation = 0.18 (Correlations are Kendall's tau)
  • 12 month median correlation = 0.21 (Correlations are Kendall's tau)

• Some CIQ-2 activities have low or little relation to satisfaction of individuals with TBI

Construct Validity (Convergent/Discriminant):

Not Established

Content Validity:

Acute TBI: (Whiteneck et al, 2011; n = 400;mean age = 36.6 (17.0) years; assessed 1 to 15 years post injury) Participation Assessment with Recombined Tools–Objective = (PART-O)

• Excellent relationship between the PART-O and CIQ-2 total score (r = 0.83)
• Excellent relationship between the PART-O and the CIQ-2 Social Integration subscale  r = 0.79
• Excellent relationship between the PART-O and the CIQ-2 Productivity subscale r = 0.62
• Adequate relationship between the PART-O and the CIQ-2 Home Integration r = 0.52

Face Validity:

Not Statistically Assessed

Floor/Ceiling Effects:

Not Established

Responsiveness:

Not Established

Considerations:

Not Established

Do you see an error or have a suggestion for this instrument summary? Please e-mail us!

Bibliography:

Johnston, M. V., Goverover, Y., et al. (2005). "Community activities and individuals' satisfaction with them: quality of life in the first year after traumatic brain injury." Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation 86(4): 735-745. Find it on PubMed

Whiteneck, G. G., Dijkers, M. P., et al. (2011). "Development of the Participation Assessment With Recombined Tools-Objective for Use After Traumatic Brain Injury." Arch Phys Med Rehabil. Find it on PubMed

Year published: 1999

Instrument in PDF Format: Yes

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Veteran Minn. dispatcher reflects on career

By Julie Buntjer
The Daily Globe

LUVERNE, Minn. — For more than 33 years, Terri Ebert's voice was the one people in Rock County heard when they called 911 in a panic. She was the voice of calm in their storm, sending out help for everything from fires and crashes to domestic situations and life or death circumstances.

"If I'd kept better journals, I could have written a book — people would not believe some of the things that go on," Ebert says now as she nears the end of her career with the Rock County Sheriff's Office. Her last day on the job is Dec. 30.

Ebert spent much of her career working as a dispatch supervisor and handling records as an administrative assistant. Her role, like that of fellow dispatchers, is to protect the public and answer 911 calls.

"The dispatcher's job can be hours of boredom and moments of terror," Ebert said. "You can sit there all night and then, all of a sudden, you can get calls at the end of the night that are life-and-death types of calls. You don't sleep when you get home because you're thinking about them."

During her tenure in Rock County, Ebert worked with five sheriffs, including Ole Hommen, Ed Elbers, Ron McClure, Mike Winkels and current sheriff Evan Verbrugge.

Just as the role of sheriff changed over the years, so too did the face of criminals and victims.

"Things were easier and harder back when I started," Ebert shared. "You didn't have as many reported domestics. Back in the day, you didn't get a DWI if you drove home from the bar unless you did some flagrant violation. These days, you get charged with a lot more. It's a lot more paperwork.

"It's not fun — it never was real fun. It was always a very interesting job," she added. "It's just gotten harder. The older I get (the harder it is) to take some of those 911 calls and to deal with some of the people that we deal with, because it's a lot of the same people."

While she may not have written down many of the experiences she has had on the job, there are a few memorable stories Ebert shared about working in dispatch.

The first, a call that came in long before the advent of 911, was when someone called in and said, "My house is on fire!" before hanging up the call. She and another dispatcher got up from their stations and looked out the window for any signs of smoke.

When the caller realized he didn't give the address, he called again.

"You get so you recognize people's voices," Ebert said. "We got one call from a mother who was so panicked because her son had been blowing up a balloon and when it sucked back in his throat it got caught.

"She was so rattled she didn't know her address. We recognized her voice and I believe she told us her name. We just happened to have two officers within a couple blocks. They went and one did the Heimlich maneuver and the other pulled the balloon out," Ebert recalled. The 4-year-old boy survived, and it taught Ebert a valuable lesson with her own children — balloons are not to be played with.

Ebert and her husband, Chuck, had three young daughters when she applied for the job in dispatch and began her career in 1983. Chuck, along with her in-laws, Vance and Doris Ebert, helped with the girls when she worked overnight shifts or received a late-night call to come in.

For the first 23 years of her career, Ebert worked inside the old law enforcement center, which was later renovated and now serves as home to the Brandenburg Gallery, Herreid Military Museum and Luverne Area Chamber of Commerce office.

The move to their new facility on Blue Mound Avenue in January 2007 brought with it new technology and enhanced security.

"I was the first person to work in this building during the changeover," Ebert said, noting her fellow dispatcher, Gordy Bremer, was the last dispatcher to work a shift in the old setting. Incidentally, Bremer retired with the longest tenure as a Rock County dispatcher after 36 years. Ebert said her 33-plus years in Rock County dispatch is likely the second longest.

"When we were in the old jail, we were like a family," she said, noting that at the time, Luverne also had a police department and they all worked together. "When we came here, we had more room and got better equipment, but things are different. Now they have different shifts … they have a regular night shift and day shift."

At one point during her career, Ebert said the department had gone 22 years without a change in dispatch staff.

"We just had real good dispatchers and everyone wanted to stick around," she said. "In recent years, we've had a lot of changeover — young people who have gotten married and moved on or have gone on to other things.

"We have a real good batch right now of dispatchers," she added. "They're wonderful — I know that they're going to make a career of it. It takes a special person to be able to handle all this — the hours and the stress."

For all the hours that were stressful, Ebert said there were moments where she felt like she was making an impact.

"I think one of the most satisfying things that ever happened to me was we had a young girl who was about 13 that was a habitual runaway and in trouble all the time," Ebert shared. "She had her hair about four different colors and shaved on one side. She came into our office several times, and I had to sit with her a few times. I told her if she lived at my house, she would not be allowed to do that. She would have a curfew, she would have to be home for meals. She said, 'I wish I had something like that.'

"Several years later, she came back and she asked to see me and I did not recognize this person. She was beautiful," Ebert added. She learned the girl had been taken away from her mother, raised by relatives and went through college with a B-plus average.

"She said, 'I made something of myself … I have never forgotten that conversation we had,' and I thought, 'Wow.'"

Said Ebert, "Most of the time you try and help people — if they want to be helped."

Throughout her career, Ebert found a way to deal with the stresses at work by being involved in her community. She serves on the Green Earth Players community theater board and has played numerous roles in GEP productions since 1985. She also rings bells in church and helps plan the live nativity, is a member of a pinochle group, joined Bookin' Buddies — a program with second-graders at Luverne Elementary — and also enjoys reading and is "on the go all the time."

"I've got to learn how to say no — I haven't learned to do that yet," she said. "I intend to stay busy in retirement."

Staying busy includes spending more time with her family, which includes her three daughters, their husbands and four grandchildren. Her husband died in 2002. She also has a list of things she wants to get done, and plans to be more involved with Green Earth Players. Perhaps there will be time to take some shorter trips along the way.

On Ebert's last day of work, coffee and cake will be served from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Rock County Law Enforcement Center. The public is invited to attend.

Copyright 2016 The Daily Globe

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Retirement of longtime dispatcher 'huge loss' to Conn. town

By Lindsay Boyle
The Day

New London, Conn. — Robin Schwarze fell into her career of more than 25 years by chance.

A clerk at Electric Boat back in 1990, she learned she was the next in line to get laid off.

Worried, Schwarze applied to a flurry of similar positions, including one at the New London Police Department. She became a records clerk there in January 1991.

She didn't know then that the move would lead her to dispatching.

"I hadn't really thought about it," said Schwarze, whose background in public safety was minimal, at best.

But when a dispatcher told the single mother of three about the position's higher pay and additional hours, she couldn't say no.

On a day in May 1992, she signed on for the first time.

On Nov. 29, at 55, she signed off for the last.

Speaking by phone Wednesday evening, Schwarze recalled some of the most striking moments in her nearly 26-year career.

The most memorable, she said, was working on 9/11, when one lieutenant was trying to track down his daughter while other supervisors were realizing New London could be a target.

"We had no idea what was going on," she said. "That was a really long day."

Then there was the devastating murder of Donna Millette-Fridge, a social worker with mental health care provider First Step who died at the hands of one of her clients in September 1998.

"The first call I took that day was her supervisor calling from the office upstairs," Schwarze said.

The man, 28-year-old Adrian Isom, had attacked Millette-Fridge as she was walking to her workplace.

"This poor woman is screaming, watching this guy stab her coworker to death, and I'm just constantly trying to talk to her," Schwarze said. "I need to know what he looks like, what his name is — if she knows. I need her to stay on the phone, so if he runs, she can tell me which way."

An officer eventually shot and killed Isom. Schwarze heard the gunfire on her end of the phone.

Toward the beginning of her career, she said, someone called to say a dog had been run over near the end of Ashcraft Road that butts up against Bates Woods.

"I didn't think anything of it," she said. "Then — I don't know how long it was — I hear (the officer) on the radio, saying, 'I need help. I need help.' You could just hear in his voice that something was desperately wrong."

There was no dog. Someone, hidden in the bushes, had jumped the officer when he arrived and was trying to take his gun.

"You just want to run out the building and go find him," Schwarze said. "But that's not your job. Your job is to stay there and rally resources and keep track of everything."

Delivery of babies and socks
Several people, including Chief Margaret Ackley, commended Schwarze for her ability to keep cool in such situations.

"Robin's professionalism and ability to take control in an emergency situation has made her second to none," Ackley wrote in an email. "Robin's well-deserved retirement is a huge loss to all of New London."

There were good calls, too.

Once, Schwarze talked a man through delivering his wife's baby in the backseat of their car.

Another time, an elderly, disabled man called with an odd request.

"He kept falling because he was walking around in socks," she recalled. "He wanted somebody to go to the hospital and get a pair of the socks with grippers."

She sent a cop over to get them.

"He was so grateful," Schwarze said.

Then there were the absurd calls, like when an officer trying to rescue a deer ended up impaled on the fence surrounding Cedar Grove Cemetery, and when a woman called 911 with a complaint for an officer: She'd given $20 to a man who said he would buy her crack, she said, but he never came back.

"It's not an easy job," said Battalion Chief Roger Tompkins, a 32-year employee of the city who spent some time dispatching many years ago.

"Everybody remembers the firemen at the fire or the police at the accident, but they forget about the dispatcher who's trying to coordinate everything," he said.

Moving on to Backus
Schwarze said she never stopped enjoying the work — she gave as much effort on her last day as she did on her first.

"You wouldn't want to look somebody in the face and think, something I did is part of the reason this ended badly," Schwarze said. "It's one of those jobs where you really have to want to do it. If your heart's not in it 100 percent, it's not a good idea to be there."

But when the harsh, rotating shifts started making her feel her age, she decided it was time to retire.

Soon, she'll sign on as a dispatcher for The William W. Backus Hospital's security unit.

While she's looking forward to the switch, she knows she'll miss the people she grew close to over the years.

"I feel like most people don't understand that in vocations like that — firefighters, police, dispatchers, EMTs — where you're working in an environment where really, seriously bad things happen," Schwarze said, "you see a lot of stuff normal people don't see. You become closer with your workmates than you would normally."

Dispatcher Kerry Hibbs, who was Schwarze's partner, agreed.

Hibbs came to the department as a secretary eight years ago. Schwarze inspired her to transition to a full-time dispatching gig.

"When I started to train as a part-time dispatcher, several of the guys said to me, 'Make sure you learn from Robin. She's the best,'" Hibbs said.

Soon, she became Schwarze's partner. Isolated in the dispatch center, Hibbs spent more time with Schwarze than with her own family, sometimes working 16-hour days and always working through paid lunch breaks. They developed an unspoken language. Hibbs kept learning.

"In our job, it's not always routine," Hibbs said. "Sometimes things happen that throw you for a loop. If I said, 'What do we here?' she always had the answer."

Hibbs said the woman with an "endless well of knowledge" became like a surrogate mother to her.

"She's only been gone a week and a half and I miss her already," Hibbs said.

Police Union President Todd Lynch said he knows the others — including his sister, Hibbs, and Schwarze's daughter Tiffany — will step up, but it will be different without Schwarze there.

"The funny thing about Robin is she would give you the address … and would tell you who lives there, what has happened there before on other calls, whether there are weapons in the home — not from looking at a computer, but from her experience," Lynch said.

"That's what you're going to miss," he continued. "You can't replace experience."

Copyright 2016 The Day

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