Targeting parents for childhood weight management: development of a theory-driven and user-centered healthy eating app

Background: The proliferation of health promotion apps along with mobile phones' array of features supporting health behavior change offers a new and innovative approach to childhood weight management. However, despite the critical role parents play in children's weight related behaviors, few industry-led apps aimed at childhood weight management target parents. Furthermore, industry-led apps have been shown to lack a basis in behavior change theory and evidence. Equally important remains the issue of how to maximize users' engagement with mobile health (mHealth) interventions where there is growing consensus that inputs from the commercial app industry and the target population should be an integral part of the development process. Objective: The aim of this study is to systematically design and develop a theory and evidence-driven, user-centered healthy eating app targeting parents for childhood weight management, and clearly document this for the research and app development community. Methods: The Behavior Change Wheel (BCW) framework, a theoretically-based approach for intervention development, along with a user-centered design (UCD) philosophy and collaboration with the commercial app industry, guided the development process. Current evidence, along with a series of 9 focus groups (total of 46 participants) comprised of family weight management case workers, parents with overweight and healthy weight children aged 5-11 years, and consultation with experts, provided data to inform the app development. Thematic analysis of focus groups helped to extract information related to relevant theoretical, user-centered, and technological components to underpin the design and development of the app. Results: Inputs from parents and experts working in the area of childhood weight management helped to identify the main target behavior: to help parents provide appropriate food portion sizes for their children. To achieve this target behavior, the behavioral diagnosis revealed the need for eliciting change in parents' capability, motivation, and opportunity in 10-associated Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) domains. Of the 9 possible intervention functions, 6 were selected to bring about this change which guided the selection of 21 behavior change techniques. Parents' preferences for healthy eating app features revolved around four main themes (app features, time saving and convenience, aesthetics, and gamification) whereupon a criterion was applied to guide the selection on which preferences should be integrated into the design of the app. Collaboration with the app company helped to build on users' preferences for elements of gamification such as points, quizzes, and levels to optimize user engagement. Feedback from parents on interactive mock-ups helped to inform the final development of the prototype app. Conclusions: Here, we fully explicate a systematic approach applied in the development of a family-oriented, healthy eating health promotion app grounded in theory and evidence, and balanced with users' preferences to help maximize its engagement with the target population

Stop-app: Using the Behaviour Change Wheel to develop an app to increase uptake and attendance at NHS Stop Smoking Services.

Smokers who attend NHS Stop Smoking Services (SSS) are four times more likely to stop smoking; however, uptake has been in decline. We report the development of an intervention designed to increase uptake of SSS, from a more motivated self-selected sample of smokers. In Phase 1 we collected data to explore the barriers and facilitators to people using SSS. In Phase 2, data from extant literature and Phase 1 were subject to behavioural analysis, as outlined by the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) framework. Relevant Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) were identified in order to address these, informing the content of the StopApp intervention. In Phase 3 we assessed the acceptability of the StopApp. Smokers and ex-smokers identified a number of barriers to attending SSS, including a lack of knowledge about what happens at SSS (Capability); the belief that SSS is not easy to access (Opportunity); that there would be ’scare tactics’ or ‘nagging’; and not knowing anyone who had been and successfully quit (Motivation). The ‘StopApp’ is in development and will link in with the commissioned SSS booking system. Examples of the content and functionality of the app are outlined. The next phase will involve a full trial to test effectiveness

You’ve Graduated. So Now What?

After graduating, many new college graduates often face the question: where do I go from here? While some people opt to obtain a postgraduate degree, other options exist for those who are unsure of what career they want to pursue or those who simply want to take a gap year. In this article, we will explore three unique opportunities for new graduates to consider: The Fulbright Program, Boren Scholarship, and Service Programs such as PeaceCorp and AmeriCorp

Hippocampus and retrosplenial cortex combine path integration signals for successful navigation

The current study used fMRI in humans to examine goal-directed navigation in an open field environment. We designed a task that required participants to encode survey-level spatial information and subsequently navigate to a goal location in either first person, third person, or survey perspectives. Critically, no distinguishing landmarks or goal location markers were present in the environment, thereby requiring participants to rely on path integration mechanisms for successful navigation. We focused our analysis on mechanisms related to navigation and mechanisms tracking linear distance to the goal location. Successful navigation required translation of encoded survey-level map information for orientation and implementation of a planned route to the goal. Our results demonstrate that successful first and third person navigation trials recruited the anterior hippocampus more than trials when the goal location was not successfully reached. When examining only successful trials, the retrosplenial and posterior parietal cortices were recruited for goal-directed navigation in both first person and third person perspectives. Unique to first person perspective navigation, the hippocampus was recruited to path integrate self-motion cues with location computations toward the goal location. Last, our results demonstrate that the hippocampus supports goal-directed navigation by actively tracking proximity to the goal throughout navigation. When using path integration mechanisms in first person and third person perspective navigation, the posterior hippocampus was more strongly recruited as participants approach the goal. These findings provide critical insight into the neural mechanisms by which we are able to use map-level representations of our environment to reach our navigational goals

DNA vaccines: improving expression of antigens

Copyright © 2003 Garmory et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL.DNA vaccination is a relatively recent development in vaccine methodology. It is now possible to undertake a rational step-by-step approach to DNA vaccine design. Strategies may include the incorporation of immunostimulatory sequences in the backbone of the plasmid, co-expression of stimulatory molecules, utilisation of localisation/secretory signals, and utilisation of the appropriate delivery system, for example. However, another important consideration is the utilisation of methods designed to optimise transgene expression. In this review we discuss the importance of regulatory elements, kozak sequences and codon optimisation in transgene expression

Engineering the indigoidine-synthesising enzyme BpsA for diverse applications in biotechnology

Blue pigment synthase A (BpsA) is a single module non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) originally isolated from the bacterium Streptomyces lavendulae. It synthesises an easily detectible blue pigment called indigoidine from two molecules of L-glutamine in an ATP powered reaction. BpsA is readily purified and amenable to in vitro assays that have a variety of useful applications. By spectrophotometrically quantifying indigoidine levels it is possible to accurately measure the amount of L-glutamine in complex biological fluids including urine, blood plasma and cell culture media. This method has several advantages over existing methods for glutamine measurement, including that it directly reports on glutamine levels. Existing commercially available enzymatic kits first convert glutamine into glutamate and then measure the level of glutamate, which requires additional sample processing and introduces complexity if glutamate may also be present in the target sample. Additionally, we have shown that BpsA can also be used to measure ATP concentrations in a similar manner. We have further developed a BpsA based assay to detect inhibitors of 4’-phosphopantetheinyl transferases (PPTases). PPTases are enzymes that attach a phosphopantetheine arm to fatty acid synthases, NRPSs and polyketide synthases, thereby switching them from an inactive apo form to an active holo form. PPTases have been validated as promising drug targets in several pathogenic bacteria including P. aeruginosa and M. tuberculosis. In order to detect PPTase inhibition, we have shown that BpsA can be purified in its inactive apo form and mixed with the target PPTase as well as a candidate inhibitor in vitro. The level of PPTase inhibition can then be calculated by measuring the rate of indigoidine production. The assay has been optimised for high throughput screening and used to identify several compounds from chemical libraries that inhibit essential PPTases of P. aeruginosa and M. tuberculosis

Ancilla-based quantum simulation

We consider simulating the BCS Hamiltonian, a model of low temperature superconductivity, on a quantum computer. In particular we consider conducting the simulation on the qubus quantum computer, which uses a continuous variable ancilla to generate interactions between qubits. We demonstrate an O(N^3) improvement over previous work conducted on an NMR computer [PRL 89 057904 (2002) & PRL 97 050504 (2006)] for the nearest neighbour and completely general cases. We then go on to show methods to minimise the number of operations needed per time step using the qubus in three cases; a completely general case, a case of exponentially decaying interactions and the case of fixed range interactions. We make these results controlled on an ancilla qubit so that we can apply the phase estimation algorithm, and hence show that when N \geq 5, our qubus simulation requires significantly less operations that a similar simulation conducted on an NMR computer.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures: V2 added section on phase estimation and performing controlled unitaries, V3 corrected minor typo