Comparison of Astrand VO2 Max Prediction to a Graded Leg Ergometry VO2 Max Test in Endurance Athletes

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Campus smoking policies and smoking-related Twitter posts originating from California public universities: Retrospective study

BACKGROUND: The number of colleges and universities with smoke- or tobacco-free campus policies has been increasing. The effects of campus smoking policies on overall sentiment, particularly among young adult populations, are more difficult to assess owing to the changing tobacco and e-cigarette product landscape and differential attitudes toward policy implementation and enforcement. OBJECTIVE: The goal of the study was to retrospectively assess the campus climate toward tobacco use by comparing tweets from California universities with and those without smoke- or tobacco-free campus policies. METHODS: Geolocated Twitter posts from 2015 were collected using the Twitter public application programming interface in combination with cloud computing services on Amazon Web Services. Posts were filtered for tobacco products and behavior-related keywords. A total of 42,877,339 posts were collected from 2015, with 2837 originating from a University of California or California State University system campus, and 758 of these manually verified as being about smoking. Chi-square tests were conducted to determine if there were significant differences in tweet user sentiments between campuses that were smoke- or tobacco-free (all University of California campuses and California State University, Fullerton) compared to those that were not. A separate content analysis of tweets included in chi-square tests was conducted to identify major themes by campus smoking policy status. RESULTS: The percentage of positive sentiment tweets toward tobacco use was higher on campuses without a smoke- or tobacco-free campus policy than on campuses with a smoke- or tobacco-free campus policy (76.7% vs 66.4%, P=.03). Higher positive sentiment on campuses without a smoke- or tobacco-free campus policy may have been driven by general comments about one’s own smoking behavior and comments about smoking as a general behavior. Positive sentiment tweets originating from campuses without a smoke- or tobacco-free policy had greater variation in tweet type, which may have also contributed to differences in sentiment among universities. CONCLUSIONS: Our study introduces preliminary data suggesting that campus smoke- and tobacco-free policies are associated with a reduction in positive sentiment toward smoking. However, continued expressions and intentions to smoke and reports of one’s own smoking among Twitter users suggest a need for more research to better understand the dynamics between implementation of smoke- and tobacco-free policies and resulting tobacco behavioral sentiment

Lahar risk assessment from source identification to potential impact analysis: the case of Vulcano Island, Italy

Lahars are rapid flows composed of water and volcaniclastic sediments, which have the potential to impact residential buildings and critical infrastructure as well as to disrupt critical services, especially in the absence of hazard-based land-use planning. Their destructive power is mostly associated with their velocity (related to internal flow properties and topographic interactions) and to their ability to bury buildings and structures (due to deposit thickness). The distance reached by lahars depends on their volume, on sediments/water ratio, as well as on the geometrical properties of the topography where they propagate. Here we present the assessment of risk associated with lahar using Vulcano island (Italy) as a case study. First, we estimated an initial lahar source volume considering the remobilisation by intense rain events of the tephra fallout on the slopes of the La Fossa cone (the active system on the island), where the tephra fallout is associated with the most likely scenario (e.g. long-lasting Vulcanian cycle). Second, we modelled and identified the potential syn-eruptive lahar impact areas on the northern sector of Vulcano, where residential and touristic facilities are located. We tested a range of parameters (e.g., entrainment capability, consolidation of tephra fallout deposit, friction angle) that can influence lahar propagation output both in terms of intensity of the event and extent of the inundation area. Finally, exposure and vulnerability surveys were carried out in order to compile exposure and risk maps for lahar-flow front velocity (semi-quantitative indicator-based risk assessment) and final lahar-deposit thickness (qualitative exposure-based risk assessment). Main outcomes show that the syn-eruptive lahar scenario with medium entrainment capability produces the highest impact associated with building burial by the final lahar deposit. Nonetheless, the syn-eruptive lahar scenario with low entrainment capacity is associated with higher runout and results in the highest impact associated with lahar-flow velocities. Based on our simulations, two critical infrastructures (telecommunication and power plant), as well as the main road crossing the island are exposed to potential lahar impacts (either due to lahar-flow velocity or lahar-deposit thickness or both). These results show that a risk-based spatial planning of the island could represent a valuable strategy to reduce the volcanic risk in the long term

The invasive cell coat at the microsporidian Trachipleistophora hominis-host cell interface contains secreted hexokinases

Funding: Wellcome Trust (Grant Number: 089803/D/09/Z), 600th anniversary studentship from the University of St Andrews.Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasites causing significant disease in humans and economically important animals. In parallel to their extreme genetic reduction, Microsporidia have evolved novel mechanisms for exploiting host metabolism. A number of microsporidians confer secretion of otherwise cytosolic proteins by coding for signal peptides that direct entry into the endoplasmic reticulum. The human pathogen Trachipleistophora hominis encodes for four hexokinases, three of which have signal peptides at the N‐terminus. Here, we localized hexokinase 2 and hexokinase 3 through developmental stages of T. hominis using light and electron microscopy. Both proteins were concentrated in an extracellular coat previously termed the plaque matrix (PQM). The PQM (containing hexokinases) was morphologically dynamic, infiltrating the host cytoplasm predominantly during replicative stages. Throughout development the PQM interacted closely with endoplasmic reticulum that was demonstrated to be active in membrane protein biosynthesis and export. The impact of hexokinase on the host metabolism was probed using the fluorescent analog of glucose, 2‐NBDG, which displayed spatially restricted increases in signal intensity at the parasite/vacuole surface, coincident with hexokinase/PQM distribution. Gross metabolic aberrations, measured using metabolic profiling with the Seahorse XF Analyzer, were not detectable in mixed stage cocultures. Overall, these results highlight a role for the extended cell coat of T. hominis in host–parasite interactions, within which secreted hexokinases may work as part of a metabolic machine to increase glycolytic capacity or ATP generation close to the parasite surface.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A slow lopsided bar in the interacting dwarf galaxy IC 3167

We present surface photometry and stellar kinematics of IC 3167, a dwarf galaxy hosting a lopsided weak bar and infalling into the Virgo cluster. We measured the bar radius and strength from broad-band imaging and bar pattern speed by applying the Tremaine-Weinberg method to stellar-absorption integral-field spectroscopy. We derived the ratio of the corotation radius to bar radius (R = 1.7 + 0.5 - 0.3) from stellar kinematics and bar pattern speed. The probability that the bar is rotating slowly is more than twice as likely as that the bar is fast. This allows us to infer that the formation of this bar was triggered by the ongoing interaction rather than to internal processes.Comment: Accepted for pubblication in MNRAS Letter

Cyclin D mediates tolerance of genome-doubling in cancers with functional p53

BACKGROUND: Aneuploidy and chromosomal instability (CIN) are common features of human malignancy that fuel genetic heterogeneity. Although tolerance to tetraploidization, an intermediate state that further exacerbates CIN, is frequently mediated by TP53 dysfunction, we find that some genome-doubled tumours retain wild-type TP53. We sought to understand how tetraploid cells with a functional p53/p21-axis tolerate genome-doubling events. METHOD: We performed quantitative proteomics in a diploid/tetraploid pair within a system of multiple independently derived TP53 wild-type tetraploid clones arising spontaneously from a diploid progenitor. We characterized adapted and acute tetraploidization in a variety of flow cytometry and biochemical assays and tested our findings against human tumours through bioinformatics analysis of the TCGA dataset. RESULTS: Cyclin D1 was found to be specifically overexpressed in early but not late passage tetraploid clones, and this overexpression was sufficient to promote tolerance to spontaneous and pharmacologically induced tetraploidy. We provide evidence that this role extends to D-type cyclins and their overexpression confers specific proliferative advantage to tetraploid cells. We demonstrate that tetraploid clones exhibit elevated levels of functional p53 and p21 but override the p53/p21 checkpoint by elevated expression of cyclin D1, via a stoichiometry-dependent and CDK activity-independent mechanism. Tetraploid cells do not exhibit increased sensitivity to abemaciclib, suggesting that cyclin D-overexpressing tumours might not be specifically amenable to treatment with CDK4/6 inhibitors. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that D-type cyclin overexpression is an acute event, permissive for rapid adaptation to a genome-doubled state in TP53 wild-type tumours and that its overexpression is dispensable in later stages of tumour progression

Threats posed by the fungal kingdom to humans, wildlife, and agriculture

The fungal kingdom includes at least 6 million eukaryotic species and is remarkable with respect to its profound impact on global health, biodiversity, ecology, agriculture, manufacturing, and biomedical research. Approximately 625 fungal species have been reported to infect vertebrates, 200 of which can be human associated, either as commensals and members of our microbiome or as pathogens that cause infectious diseases. These organisms pose a growing threat to human health with the global increase in the incidence of invasive fungal infections, prevalence of fungal allergy, and the evolution of fungal pathogens resistant to some or all current classes of antifungals. More broadly, there has been an unprecedented and worldwide emergence of fungal pathogens affecting animal and plant biodiversity. Approximately 8,000 species of fungi and Oomycetes are associated with plant disease. Indeed, across agriculture, such fungal diseases of plants include new devastating epidemics of trees and jeopardize food security worldwide by causing epidemics in staple and commodity crops that feed billions. Further, ingestion of mycotoxins contributes to ill health and causes cancer. Coordinated international research efforts, enhanced technology translation, and greater policy outreach by scientists are needed to more fully understand the biology and drivers that underlie the emergence of fungal diseases and to mitigate against their impacts. Here, we focus on poignant examples of emerging fungal threats in each of three areas: human health, wildlife biodiversity, and food security

Spatiotemporal communication with synchronized optical chaos

We propose a model system that allows communication of spatiotemporal information using an optical chaotic carrier waveform. The system is based on broad-area nonlinear optical ring cavities, which exhibit spatiotemporal chaos in a wide parameter range. Message recovery is possible through chaotic synchronization between transmitter and receiver. Numerical simulations demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme, and the benefit of the parallelism of information transfer with optical wavefronts.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Analytical results for coupled map lattices with long-range interactions

We obtain exact analytical results for lattices of maps with couplings that decay with distance as $r^{-\alpha}$. We analyze the effect of the coupling range on the system dynamics through the Lyapunov spectrum. For lattices whose elements are piecewise linear maps, we get an algebraic expression for the Lyapunov spectrum. When the local dynamics is given by a nonlinear map, the Lyapunov spectrum for a completely synchronized state is analytically obtained. The critical lines characterizing the synchronization transition are determined from the expression for the largest transversal Lyapunov exponent. In particular, it is shown that in the thermodynamical limit, such transition is only possible for sufficiently long-range interactions, namely, for $\alpha\le alpha_c<d$, where $d$ is the lattice dimension.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, corrections included. Phys. Rev. E 68, 045202(R) (2003); correction in pres

Future-Proofing Your Microbiology Resource Announcements Genome Assembly for Reproducibility and Clarity.

Descriptions of resources, like the genome assemblies reported in Microbiology Resource Announcements, are often frozen at their time of publication, yet they will need to be interpreted in the midst of continually evolving technologies. It is therefore important to ensure that researchers accessing published resources have access to all of the information required to repeat, interpret, and extend these original analyses. Here, we provide a set of suggestions to help make certain that published resources remain useful and repeatable for the foreseeable future