Efficacy of technology-based and in-person health education for behavior change in college-aged women

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether an in-person or technology based bone health intervention improved bone health knowledge and behaviors in college-aged women. Methods: 30 college-aged women were randomly divided into three groups: personal intervention (n = 10), technological intervention (n = 10), and control (n = 10). Both intervention groups received identical information regarding the importance of bone health and the appropriate behaviors for maintaining strong bones including weight-bearing exercise, calcium consumption, and vitamin D consumption. The technology group received the information via an online video, and the personal group via a one-on-one health intervention. Changes in bone health knowledge and behavior were measured via questionnaires designed to address specific topics from the intervention. Knowledge was measured immediately before and after the intervention. Behaviors were measured before the intervention and one-month post-intervention. Bone health behaviors were categorized into changes in exercise frequency, exercise duration, food frequency, and food quantity. Results: A significant interaction was found between time and group for knowledge (F (2,27) = 13.5; p p =0.022). The change in knowledge between the technology and personal group was not significantly different (p =0.19). There was no significant difference between groups for change in food frequency behavior (F (2, 27) = 2.10; p =0.14), food quantity behavior (F (2, 27) = 1.52; p =0.24), exercise duration behavior (F (2, 27) = 3.16; p =0.059), or exercise frequency behavior (F (2, 27) = 2.51; p =0.1). Conclusions: The personal intervention experienced greater gains in knowledge than the control group, yet neither the in-person nor the technology intervention was effective at encouraging positive behavior changes. Any potential gain in knowledge from the intervention did not lead to a corresponding significant change in behavior

Practical methods of health behavior change: A discussion of two interventional studies

Programs designed to improve health outcomes do not always result in meaningful positive behavior change. Their efficacy may be limited by clinical resources and variation in motivation and learning style between patients. This presentation compares two studies: one aimed at improving the average daily step count of faculty and staff at the College of Saint Benedict through text message or social media encouragement, and one aimed at improving the bone health of female students through an online video or one-on-one provider-patient intervention. Both studies provide interesting comparisons of health interventions across different age groups, and between education versus motivation based behavior change. Both studies address the importance of applying research to the clinical setting. In the faculty/staff population, despite the absence of significant behavior change, 70.4 percent of participants who completed the post intervention survey reported text message and social media encouragement helped them be more active. Participants identified accountability as the main motivator for behavior change. Technology based health interventions may be important in making desirable health outcomes more accessible to patients and reduce the burden on health professionals. No gains in student learning in the education based intervention led to corresponding changes in behaviors. This provides some insights into the discordance between knowledge and behavior in college students, indicating a motivation instead of education based intervention may be more effective in this population. When considered together, the results of these two studies provide important insights for future research towards accessible behavior change

An integrated approach to epitope analysis I: Dimensional reduction, visualization and prediction of MHC binding using amino acid principal components and regression approaches

BACKGROUND: Operation of the immune system is multivariate. Reduction of the dimensionality is essential to facilitate understanding of this complex biological system. One multi-dimensional facet of the immune system is the binding of epitopes to the MHC-I and MHC-II molecules by diverse populations of individuals. Prediction of such epitope binding is critical and several immunoinformatic strategies utilizing amino acid substitution matrices have been designed to develop predictive algorithms. Contemporaneously, computational and statistical tools have evolved to handle multivariate and megavariate analysis, but these have not been systematically deployed in prediction of MHC binding. Partial least squares analysis, principal component analysis, and associated regression techniques have become the norm in handling complex datasets in many fields. Over two decades ago Wold and colleagues showed that principal components of amino acids could be used to predict peptide binding to cellular receptors. We have applied this observation to the analysis of MHC binding, and to derivation of predictive methods applicable on a whole proteome scale. RESULTS: We show that amino acid principal components and partial least squares approaches can be utilized to visualize the underlying physicochemical properties of the MHC binding domain by using commercially available software. We further show the application of amino acid principal components to develop both linear partial least squares and non-linear neural network regression prediction algorithms for MHC-I and MHC-II molecules. Several visualization options for the output aid in understanding the underlying physicochemical properties, enable confirmation of earlier work on the relative importance of certain peptide residues to MHC binding, and also provide new insights into differences among MHC molecules. We compared both the linear and non-linear MHC binding prediction tools to several predictive tools currently available on the Internet. CONCLUSIONS: As opposed to the highly constrained user-interaction paradigms of web-server approaches, local computational approaches enable interactive analysis and visualization of complex multidimensional data using robust mathematical tools. Our work shows that prediction tools such as these can be constructed on the widely available JMP(® )platform, can operate in a spreadsheet environment on a desktop computer, and are capable of handling proteome-scale analysis with high throughput

Patterns of Predicted T-Cell Epitopes Associated with Antigenic Drift in Influenza H3N2 Hemagglutinin

Antigenic drift allowing escape from neutralizing antibodies is an important feature of transmission and survival of influenza viruses in host populations. Antigenic drift has been studied in particular detail for influenza A H3N2 and well defined antigenic clusters of this virus documented. We examine how host immunogenetics contributes to determination of the antibody spectrum, and hence the immune pressure bringing about antigenic drift. Using uTOPE™ bioinformatics analysis of predicted MHC binding, based on amino acid physical property principal components, we examined the binding affinity of all 9-mer and 15-mer peptides within the hemagglutinin 1 (HA1) of 447 H3N2 virus isolates to 35 MHC-I and 14 MHC-II alleles. We provide a comprehensive map of predicted MHC-I and MHC-II binding affinity for a broad array of HLA alleles for the H3N2 influenza HA1 protein. Each HLA allele exhibited a characteristic predicted binding pattern. Cluster analysis for each HLA allele shows that patterns based on predicted MHC binding mirror those described based on antibody binding. A single amino acid mutation or position displacement can result in a marked difference in MHC binding and hence potential T-helper function. We assessed the impact of individual amino acid changes in HA1 sequences between 10 virus isolates from 1968–2002, representative of antigenic clusters, to understand the changes in MHC binding over time. Gain and loss of predicted high affinity MHC-II binding sites with cluster transitions were documented. Predicted high affinity MHC-II binding sites were adjacent to antibody binding sites. We conclude that host MHC diversity may have a major determinant role in the antigenic drift of influenza A H3N2

Comparison of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) and CMV promoter-driven reporter gene expression in BLV-infected and non-infected cells

BACKGROUND: Viral promoters are used in mammalian expression vectors because they generally have strong activity in a wide variety of cells of differing tissues and species. METHODS: The utility of the BLV LTR/promoter (BLVp) for use in mammalian expression vectors was investigated through direct comparison to the CMV promoter (CMVp). Promoter activity was measured using luciferase assays of cell lines from different tissues and species stably transduced with BLVp or CMVp driven luciferase vectors including D17, FLK, BL3.1 and primary bovine B cells. Cells were also modified through the addition of BLV Tax expression vectors and/or BLV infection as well as treatment with trichostatin A (TSA). RESULTS: Results indicate the BLV promoter, while having low basal activity compared to the CMV promoter, can be induced to high-levels of activity similar to the CMV promoter in all cells tested. Tax or BLV infection specifically enhanced BLVp activity with no effect on CMVp activity. In contrast, the non-specific activator, TSA, enhanced both BLVp and CMVp activity. CONCLUSION: Based on these data, we conclude the BLV promoter could be very useful for transgene expression in mammalian expression vectors

Evaluación del perfil sensorial y nutricional de un pan elaborado con sustitución parcial de harina de trigo (Triticum aestivum) por almidón de yuca (Manihot esculenta)

A nivel mundial, se hace necesario el desarrollo de alimentos saludables a un menor costo, por ello la harina de yuca se muestra como un potencial sustituyente parcial a la harina de trigo en la elaboración de productos alimenticios. El presente estudio tiene como objetivo evaluar el perfil sensorial y nutricional de un pan elaborado con sustitución parcial de harina de trigo por almidón de yuca. La investigación fue de tipo aplicada, con enfoque experimental, identificando que la composición proximal del almidón de yuca es de 2,31% de proteína, grasa 0.05%, fibra 0.0%, ceniza 0.44%, humedad 13.94% y energía 3219.15 kcal/kg. Se elaboraron los panes con sustituciones de 10% (T1), 20% (T2) y 30% (T3) de almidón de yuca, evaluando el perfil sensorial con 15 panelistas semientrenados, identificando que el mejor tratamiento fue el T2 con color poco claro (7.4), sabor agradable (7.87) y textura blanda (7.67). Se analizó el valor nutricional del T2 reportándose un aumento con respecto al T0 de energía en 16.34%, carbohidratos 27.22%, grasa 12.42% y proteínas 2.20%, pero disminuyendo la humedad en 32.20%, cenizas 39.31% y fibra cruda en 93.88%. Se concluyó que el almidón de yuca permite producir un pan con mejor perfil sensorial y nutricional que el elaborado con harina de trigo, pero no debe ser consumido en exceso.TesisInfraestructura, Tecnología y Medio Ambient

Revisiting Frank–Starling: regulatory light chain phosphorylation alters the rate of force redevelopment (ktr) in a length-dependent fashion

Force and power in cardiac muscle have a known dependence on phosphorylation of the myosin-associated regulatory light chain (RLC). We explore the effect of RLC phosphorylation on the ability of cardiac preparations to redevelop force (ktr ) in maximally activating [Ca2+ ]. Activation was achieved by rapidly increasing the temperature (temperature-jump of 0.5-20ºC) of permeabilized trabeculae over a physiological range of sarcomere lengths (1.85-1.94 μm). The trabeculae were subjected to shortening ramps over a range of velocities and the extent of RLC phosphorylation was varied. The latter was achieved using an RLC-exchange technique, which avoids changes in the phosphorylation level of other proteins. The results show that increasing RLC phosphorylation by 50% accelerates ktr by ∼50%, irrespective of the sarcomere length, whereas decreasing phosphorylation by 30% slows ktr by ∼50%, relative to the ktr obtained for in vivo phosphorylation. Clearly, phosphorylation affects the magnitude of ktr following step shortening or ramp shortening. Using a two-state model, we explore the effect of RLC phosphorylation on the kinetics of force development, which proposes that phosphorylation affects the kinetics of both attachment and detachment of cross-bridges. In summary, RLC phosphorylation affects the rate and extent of force redevelopment. These findings were obtained in maximally activated muscle at saturating [Ca2+ ] and are not explained by changes in the Ca2+ -sensitivity of acto-myosin interactions. The length-dependence of the rate of force redevelopment, together with the modulation by the state of RLC phosphorylation, suggests that these effects play a role in the Frank-Starling law of the heart.Published versio

Actions of Calcium on Smooth Muscle a

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72185/1/j.1749-6632.1988.tb33358.x.pd