Assessing Maternal Dietary Iodine Intake During Pregnancy and its Effect on Infant Birth Growth Outcomes

Iodine is an essential micronutrient that must be obtained through dietary sources such as dairy products, fish, and iodized salt. Iodine plays an important role in the function of the thyroid and its ability to produce triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4). The thyroid is involved in fetal neurocognitive development and metabolism. The objective of this study was to assess whether maternal dietary iodine intake during pregnancy affects birth anthropometrics and gestation length in infants. This study enrolled 46 mother-infant pairs at the time of delivery for sample collection and completion of a dietary intake assessment. Only one mother was found to be adequate for dietary iodine intake. The results showed a significant correlation between birth length percentile and iodine intake. Severe maternal iodine deficiency can lead to congenital hypothyroidism and goiter in neonates, reflecting the importance of sufficient iodine intake during pregnancy. Future directions include enrolling a larger sample size and considering use of a different nutritional assessment tool. Understanding the impact of iodine deficiency during pregnancy may be crucial to improving patient outcomes in this vulnerable population.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2021/1004/thumbnail.jp

Galaxy Cluster Scaling Relations with APEX-SZ

Galaxy clusters are a unique laboratory that trace the formation and evolution of structure on the largest scales in the universe. In addition, clusters host an array of complex internal physical processes from star-formation and active galactic nuclei to turbulent gas motions. The ability to accurately estimate total cluster mass based on observable signals is a challenging but essential ingredient to use the full potential of clusters for precise cosmological constraints or studies of cluster astrophysics. In this dissertation, I present 152 GHz observations of galaxy clusters taken with the APEX- SZ imaging bolometer array. APEX-SZ is designed to image the small distortion in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) due to the scattering of CMB photons off hot cluster electrons, known as the Sunyaev-Zel\u27dovich effect (SZE). A primary goal of APEX-SZ is to constrain power law scaling relations between the integrated SZE flux and cluster mass. I detail the extensive efforts taken to carefully clean and calibrate raw APEX-SZ data before parametrically modeling the sky signal, removing the effects of the instrumental response function in the final measurements. I explore and attempt to reduce the impact of potential systematic effects for each step in the data analysis process. I present scaling relations between SZE flux and X-ray temperature, a proxy for total mass, along with the maximum likelihood regression parameters for the full data set and several interesting subsets. I compare to expectations from theory and numerical simulations and find that the APEX- SZ scaling relations are consistent with the gravitationally-dominated self-similar model of cluster evolution. Additionally, I find that the SZE scaling relation is insensitive to the dynamical state of the cluster, although the associated intrinsic astrophysical scatter does increase between relaxed and disturbed clusters

Implementing a 4 Week Balance Protocol to Impact Quality of Life in Cancer Patients

International Journal of Exercise Science 8(2): 145-153, 2015. As a result of various cancer treatments, balance, fall risk, and quality of life (QOL) of cancer survivors are often negatively compromised. There has been no prior research conducted examining balance ability and its association with QOL in cancer patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether improved balance will positively influence QOL. Eight female cancer patients (age 55.8 ± 11.8 yrs.) volunteered for an experimental group, and five sex-matched cancer patients (age 64.5 ± 4.6 yrs.) volunteered for a control group. A 4-week balance program, employed twice per week and consisting of 5 different exercises, was utilized with the experimental group participants. Measures of balance and fall risk were obtained using a balance system (Biodex SD 950-440). QOL was assessed by employing the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G) survey. Alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical analyses. There was no significant relationship between QOL and fall risk (r=.08, p=.790). A two-way ANOVA demonstrated significant group difference in QOL, but not time. More specifically, control group had higher QOL score than did experimental group. A second two-way ANOVA shows no significant difference in fall risk between groups nor time. Due to a lack of improvement in balance from pre- to post-tests, we did not examine an improvement in QOL scores among cancer patients. Further research needs to be completed to more appropriately measure improvements in balance and a longer-term intervention

How does the type of payment you receive impact your health?

Economic and Social Research Council (Grant number ES/R01163X/1)Non peer reviewedPublisher PDFPublisher PD

Salivary cortisol in university students after the COVID-19 pandemic

Acknowledgements: Funding from the ESRC is gratefully acknowledged (Grant ES/R01163X/1). We also wish to thank participants at the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Performance-Related Pay and Incentives in Work conference who provided thoughtful comments on this manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effectiveness of chlamydia screening: systematic review

Background Screening programmes are promoted to control transmission of and prevent female reproductive tract morbidity caused by genital chlamydia. The objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of register-based and opportunistic chlamydia screening interventions. Methods We searched seven electronic databases (Cinahl, Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, DARE, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO and SIGLE) without language restrictions from January 1990 to October 2007 and reference lists of retrieved articles to identify studies published before 1990. We included studies examining primary outcomes (pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, infertility, adverse pregnancy outcomes, neonatal infection, chlamydia prevalence) and harms of chlamydia screening in men and non-pregnant and pregnant women. We extracted data in duplicate and synthesized the data narratively or used random effects meta-analysis, where appropriate. Results We included six systematic reviews, five randomized trials, one non-randomized comparative study and one time trend study. Five reviews recommended screening of women at high risk of chlamydia. Two randomized trials found that register-based screening of women at high risk of chlamydia and of female and male high school students reduced the incidence of pelvic inflammatory disease in women at 1 year. Methodological inadequacies could have overestimated the observed benefits. One randomized trial showed that opportunistic screening in women undergoing surgical termination of pregnancy reduced post-abortal rates of pelvic inflammatory disease compared with no screening. We found no randomized trials showing a benefit of opportunistic screening in other populations, no trial examining the effects of more than one screening round and no trials examining the harms of chlamydia screening. Conclusion There is an absence of evidence supporting opportunistic chlamydia screening in the general population younger than 25 years, the most commonly recommended approach. Equipoise remains, so high-quality randomized trials of multiple rounds of screening with biological outcome measures are still needed to determine the balance of benefits and harms of chlamydia screenin

Stress in performance-related pay : the effect of payment contracts and social-evaluative threat

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council under Grant [ES/R01163X/1].Peer reviewedPostprintPublisher PD

Simulating the Multi-Epoch Direct Detection Technique to Isolate the Thermal Emission of the Non-Transiting Hot Jupiter HD187123B

We report the 6.5$\sigma$ detection of water from the hot Jupiter HD187123b with a Keplerian orbital velocity $K_p$ of 53 $\pm$ 13 km/s. This high confidence detection is made using a multi-epoch, high resolution, cross correlation technique, and corresponds to a planetary mass of 1.4$^{+0.5}_{-0.3}$ $M_J$ and an orbital inclination of 21 $\pm$ 5$^{\circ}$. The technique works by treating the planet/star system as a spectroscopic binary and obtaining high signal-to-noise, high resolution observations at multiple points across the planet's orbit to constrain the system's binary dynamical motion. All together, seven epochs of Keck/NIRSPEC $L$-band observations were obtained, with five before the instrument upgrade and two after. Using high resolution SCARLET planetary and PHOENIX stellar spectral models, along with a line-by-line telluric absorption model, we were able to drastically increase the confidence of the detection by running simulations that could reproduce, and thus remove, the non-random structured noise in the final likelihood space well. The ability to predict multi-epoch results will be extremely useful for furthering the technique. Here, we use these simulations to compare three different approaches to combining the cross correlations of high resolution spectra and find that the Zucker 2003 log(L) approach is least affected by unwanted planet/star correlation for our HD187123 data set. Furthermore, we find that the same total S/N spread across an orbit in many, lower S/N epochs rather than fewer, higher S/N epochs could provide a more efficient detection. This work provides a necessary validation of multi-epoch simulations which can be used to guide future observations and will be key to studying the atmospheres of further separated, non-transiting exoplanets.Comment: Accepted to AJ, 14 pages, 10 figure

Drawings or 3D models: Do illustration methods matter when assessing perceived body size and body dissatisfaction?

Research has reported that both men and women experience body dissatisfaction. Among other instruments, a widely used method to assess perceived body size and body dissatisfaction are figure rating scales. Although a variety of illustration methods (e.g., three-dimensional, or 3D, models and line-drawing models) have been used to create these figure rating scales, to date, they have not been directly compared to one another. Thus, in the first study, which includes 511 participants at a mean age of 46 years old (range: 20–70), the present research work aims to assess how the line-drawing and 3D model scales, representing different body illustration methods, relate to each other. Furthermore, the first study assesses the validity of the indication of body dissatisfaction measured using these figure rating scales by comparing them to body checking or scrutinizing behavior and body appreciation levels. The project’s second study examines the two figure rating scales using objectively measured anthropometric data. In total, 239 participants at a mean age of 54 years (range: 18–94) were included. The results show that figure rating scales can be considered tools that measure perceptual body image due to their positive correlations with body checking behavior (for women) and their negative correlations with body appreciation. The 3D model and line-drawing scales show good to excellent inter-scale reliability, and both scales agree equally well with body mass index (BMI) measurements. Thus, the 3D model and line-drawing scales both seem well suited for assessing perceived body size and perceptual body dissatisfaction, suggesting that neither illustration method is superior to the other

Associations between 3D surface scanner derived anthropometric measurements and body composition in a cross-sectional study

Background 3D laser-based photonic scanners are increasingly used in health studies to estimate body composition. However, too little is known about whether various 3D body scan measures estimate body composition better than single standard anthropometric measures, and which body scans best estimate it. Furthermore, little is known about differences by sex and age. Methods 105 men and 96 women aged between 18 and 90 years were analysed. Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis was used to estimate whole relative fat mass (RFM), visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and skeletal muscle mass index (SMI). An Anthroscan VITUSbodyscan was used to obtain 3D body scans (e.g. volumes, circumferences, lengths). To reduce the number of possible predictors that could predict RFM, VAT and SMI backward elimination was performed. With these selected predictors linear regression on the respective body compositions was performed and the explained variations were compared with models using standard anthropometric measurements (Body Mass Index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-height-ratio (WHtR)). Results Among the models based on standard anthropometric measures, WC performed better than BMI and WHtR in estimating body composition in men and women. The explained variations in models including body scan variables are consistently higher than those from standard anthropometrics models, with an increase in explained variations between 5% (RFM for men) and 10% (SMI for men). Furthermore, the explained variation of body composition was additionally increased when age and lifestyle variables were added. For each of the body composition variables, the number of predictors differed between men and women, but included mostly volumes and circumferences in the central waist/chest/hip area and the thighs. Conclusions 3D scan models performed better than standard anthropometric measures models to predict body composition. Therefore, it is an advantage for larger health studies to look at body composition more holistically using 3D full body surface scans