Mass community cycling events: Who participates and is their behaviour influenced by participation?

BACKGROUND: Participation in mass physical activity events may be a novel approach for encouraging inactive or low active adults to trial an active behaviour. The public health applicability of this strategy has not been investigated thoroughly. The purpose of this study to was describe participants in a mass cycling event and examine the subsequent effect on cycling behaviour. METHODS: A sample of men and women aged 16 years and older (n = 918) who registered online for a mass cycling event reported cycling ability and number of times they rode a bicycle during the month before the event. One month after the event participants completed an online follow-up questionnaire and reported cycling ability, lifestyle physical activity, and number of times they rode a bicycle during the month after the event. McNemar's test was used to examine changes in self-rated cycling ability, and repeated measures mixed linear modeling was used to determine whether average number of monthly bicycle rides changed between pre-event and post-event assessment. RESULTS: Participants in the cycling event were predominantly male (72%), 83% rated themselves as competent or regular cyclists, and 68% rated themselves as more active than others of the same sex and age. Half of the survey respondents that rated their cycling ability as low before the event subsequently rated themselves as high one month after the event. Respondents with low pre-event self-rated cycling ability reported an average 4 sessions of bicycle riding the month before the event and an average 6.8 sessions of bicycle riding a month after the event. This increase in average sessions of bicycle riding was significant (p < .0001). Similarly, first-time participants in this particular cycling event significantly increased average sessions of cycling from 7.2 pre-event to 8.9 sessions one month after the event. CONCLUSION: Participants who were novice riders or first time participants significantly increased their number of bicycle rides in the month after the event. Further knowledge about the public health applicability of mass events is needed, and methods for attracting less active and novice individuals to participate remain to be developed

Walking behaviours from the 1965–2003 American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The American Heritage Time Use Study (AHTUS) represents a harmonised historical data file of time use by adults, amalgamating surveys collected in 1965–66, 1975–76, 1985, 1992–94, and 2003. The objectives of time-use studies have ranged from evaluating household and other unpaid production of goods and services, to monitoring of media use, to comparing lifestyles of more and less privileged social groups, or to tracking broad shifts in social behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process and utility of identifying and compiling data from the AHTUS to describe a range of walking behaviours collected using time-use survey methods over almost 40 years in the USA.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This is a secondary data analysis of an existing amalgamated data set. Noting source survey-specific limitations in comparability of design, we determined age-standardized participation (and associated durations) in any walking, walking for exercise, walking for transport, walking the dog, sports/exercise (excluding walking), and all physical activity for those survey years for which sufficient relevant data details were available.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Data processing revealed inconsistencies in instrument administration, coding various types of walking and in prompting other sport/exercise across surveys. Thus for the entire period, application of inferential statistics to determine trend for a range of walking behaviours could not be done with confidence. Focusing on the two most comparable survey years, 1985 and 2003, it appears that walking for exercise in America has increased in popularity on any given day (from 2.9 to 5.4% of adults) and accumulated duration amongst those who walk for exercise (from 30 to 45 mins/day). Dog walking has decreased in popularity over the same time period (from 9.4 to 2.6%). Associated duration amongst dog walkers was stable at 30 mins/day.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The noted and sometimes substantial differences in methods between the various survey administrations preclude stringent interpretation of these trends in walking behaviours and the use of conventional application of inferential statistics to evaluate significance of time trends. Although the AHTUS offers the most comprehensive attempt at harmonization yet undertaken with these individual time-use surveys, we found that any noted cross-time changes in walking and physical activity behaviour are not easily interpreted in terms of conventional epidemiological approaches and could be true changes, artefact related to instrument and method changes, or both. Public health utilization of the AHTUS, could be enhanced with greater attention to methodological issues known to influence estimation of physical activity behaviour in population. This could be achieved with cross-disciplinary collaboration between groups of experts in the various stages of these surveys.</p

The International Prevalence Study on Physical Activity: results from 20 countries

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Physical activity (PA) is one of the most important factors for improving population health, but no standardised systems exist for international surveillance. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) was developed for international surveillance. The purpose of this study was a comparative international study of population physical activity prevalence across 20 countries.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Between 2002–2004, a standardised protocol using IPAQ was used to assess PA participation in 20 countries [total N = 52,746, aged 18–65 years]. The median survey response rate was 61%. Physical activity levels were categorised as "low", "moderate" and "high". Age-adjusted prevalence estimates are presented by sex.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The prevalence of "high PA" varied from 21–63%; in eight countries high PA was reported for over half of the adult population. The prevalence of "low PA" varied from 9% to 43%. Males more frequently reported high PA than females in 17 of 20 countries. The prevalence of low PA ranged from 7–41% among males, and 6–49% among females. Gender differences were noted, especially for younger adults, with males more active than females in most countries. Markedly lower physical activity prevalence (10% difference) with increasing age was noted in 11 of 19 countries for males, but only in three countries for women. The ways populations accumulated PA differed, with some reporting mostly vigorous intensity activities and others mostly walking.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study demonstrated the feasibility of international PA surveillance, and showed that IPAQ is an acceptable surveillance instrument, at least within countries. If assessment methods are used consistently over time, trend data will inform countries about the success of their efforts to promote physical activity.</p

RetroSnake: A modular pipeline to detect human endogenous retroviruses in genome sequencing data

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) integrated into the human genome as a result of ancient exogenous infections and currently comprise ∼8% of our genome. The members of the most recently acquired HERV family, HERV-Ks, still retain the potential to produce viral molecules and have been linked to a wide range of diseases including cancer and neurodegeneration. Although a range of tools for HERV detection in NGS data exist, most of them lack wet lab validation and they do not cover all steps of the analysis. Here, we describe RetroSnake, an end-to-end, modular, computationally efficient, and customizable pipeline for the discovery of HERVs in short-read NGS data. RetroSnake is based on an extensively wet-lab validated protocol, it covers all steps of the analysis from raw data to the generation of annotated results presented as an interactive html file, and it is easy to use by life scientists without substantial computational training. Availability and implementation: The Pipeline and an extensive documentation are available on GitHub

Patterns of neighborhood environment attributes related to physical activity across 11 countries: A latent class analysis

published_or_final_versio

Perceived neighborhood environment and physical activity in 11 countries: Do associations differ by country?

Background: Increasing empirical evidence supports associations between neighborhood environments and physical activity. However, since most studies were conducted in a single country, particularly western countries, the generalizability of associations in an international setting is not well understood. The current study examined whether associations between perceived attributes of neighborhood environments and physical activity differed by country. Methods: Population representative samples from 11 countries on five continents were surveyed using comparable methodologies and measurement instruments. Neighborhood environment × country interactions were tested in logistic regression models with meeting physical activity recommendations as the outcome, adjusted for demographic characteristics. Country-specific associations were reported. Results: Significant neighborhood environment attribute × country interactions implied some differences across countries in the association of each neighborhood attribute with meeting physical activity recommendations. Across the 11 countries, land-use mix and sidewalks had the most consistent associations with physical activity. Access to public transit, bicycle facilities, and low-cost recreation facilities had some associations with physical activity, but with less consistency across countries. There was little evidence supporting the associations of residential density and crime-related safety with physical activity in most countries. Conclusion: There is evidence of generalizability for the associations of land use mix, and presence of sidewalks with physical activity. Associations of other neighborhood characteristics with physical activity tended to differ by country. Future studies should include objective measures of neighborhood environments, compare psychometric properties of reports across countries, and use better specified models to further understand the similarities and differences in associations across countries

The meaning of negation in the second language classroom: evidence from 'any'

This article brings together an experimental study involving L2 knowledge of negation in English and an analysis of how English language textbooks treat negation, in order to consider whether textbook explanations of negation could better exploit linguistic insights into negation. We focus on the English negative polarity item any, whose distribution is contingent on negation, whether through the explicit negator not or through lexical semantic negators (e.g. hardly). Our experiment compares Chinese-speaking learners with existing data from Arabic-speaking learners, finding lower accuracy on any with lexical semantic negators in both groups. Our textbook analysis reveals an approach to negation that is limited to form, focusing on the explicit negator not without explicit treatment of other types of negation. We propose that emphasizing the meaning of negation, with explicit treatment of the full range of negative forms could facilitate more complete acquisition across a range of grammatical properties where negation plays a role

International genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new primary biliary cirrhosis risk loci and targetable pathogenic pathways.

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a classical autoimmune liver disease for which effective immunomodulatory therapy is lacking. Here we perform meta-analyses of discovery data sets from genome-wide association studies of European subjects (n=2,764 cases and 10,475 controls) followed by validation genotyping in an independent cohort (n=3,716 cases and 4,261 controls). We discover and validate six previously unknown risk loci for PBC (Pcombined<5 × 10(-8)) and used pathway analysis to identify JAK-STAT/IL12/IL27 signalling and cytokine-cytokine pathways, for which relevant therapies exist