Diet quality in persons with and without depressive and anxiety disorders

Objective: This study examines the association of depressive and anxiety disorders and their clinical characteristics (disorder type, severity, chronicity and clinical subtypes) with diet quality. Method: Data from 1634 adults (controls = 336, current disorder = 414, remitted = 886) were sourced from the 9-year follow-up of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety. Depressive and anxiety disorders were established with Composite International Diagnostic Interviews. Severity was measured with the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (IDS), Fear Questionnaire and the Beck Anxiety Inventory. Chronicity was measured with life-chart interviews expressed as percentage time with a disorder(s). Diet quality was evaluated using the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS) and the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI). Results: Diet quality was significantly worse among subjects with a current disorder than among healthy controls. Subdividing subjects showed that those with concurrent depressive and anxiety disorders had the lowest diet quality score (MDS: β = −0.41 per SD, 95% Confidence interval (95%CI) = -0.60, −0.21; AHEI β = −0.22 per SD 95% CI = −0.42,-0.03). More chronic depression or anxiety disorders and increased severity in all participants showed a dose-response association with poorer diet quality. There was no distinct pattern between IDS items related to depression subtypes and diet quality. Conclusion: Diet quality is poorer in persons with depressive and anxiety disorders; in particular in those with comorbidity. The more severe and chronic the symptoms, the poorer the diet quality. Prospective studies are needed to confirm the direction of the relationship of depressive and anxiety disorders with diet quality and to examine whether improving diet quality could improve mental health

“Some they need male, some they need female”: a gendered approach for breast cancer detection in Uganda

Introduction: There are several challenges associated with breast cancer detection in Uganda and other low-and-middle-income countries. One of the identified challenges is attributed to the health workers' gender, which facilitates gender disparities in access to breast cancer detection services. Although this challenge is well acknowledged in existing literature, there are hardly any studies on how it can be addressed. Therefore, drawing on an intersectionality lens, our study examined how to address gender disparities facilitated by health workers' gender in accessing breast cancer detection services in Uganda. Materials and Methods: We collected qualitative data through semi-structured interviews with twenty participants comprising community health workers, primary health care practitioners, non-governmental organizations, district health team, and the Ministry of Health. For the data analysis, thematic analysis was conducted on NVivo using Braun and Clarke's non-linear 6-step process to identify the themes presented in the results section. Results: Four themes emerged from the data analysis: understanding a woman's gender constructions; health workers' approachability; focus on professionalism, not sex; and change in organizational culture. These themes revealed participants' perceptions regarding how to address gender disparities relating to the role health workers' gender play in breast cancer detection. Through the intersectionality lens, our findings showed how gender intersects with other social stratifiers such as religious beliefs, familial control, health worker's approachability, and professionalism within the health workforce. Conclusion: Our findings show that the solutions to address gender disparities in breast cancer detection are individually and socially constructed. As such, we recommend a gendered approach to understand and redress the underlying power relations perpetuating such constructions. We conclude that taking a gendered approach will ensure that breast cancer detection programs are context-appropriate, cognizant of the prevailing cultural norms, and do not restrict women's access to breast cancer detection services

On-farm corn stover and cover crop residue recycling with biostimulant Re-Gen increases corn yields and resultant milk yields in multi-year dairy cattle farm trials

IntroductionThere is a need to rebuild soil health by implementing regenerative agricultural practices across cropping systems dependent on agrochemicals, such as in United States corn production. One increasingly utilized regenerative practice is the application of biostimulants, or microbial inoculants that can rebuild soil health and productivity. In this study, we describe results from a multi-year corn trial conducted to quantify the impact of Re-Gen, a biostimulant invented to recycle plant biomass and increase nutrient bioavailability in the soil.MethodsRe-Gen was applied across four fields (VA01, BH01, VA04, and LA05) at a dairy cattle farm in Ferrisburgh, VT.ResultsOver the two consecutive years (2022-2023) of the trial, Re-Gen application on corn stover and cover crop residues increased ear corn yield by 24% and corn silage yield by 12.5-30%, depending on the field. Analysis of soil nutrients and plant tissues showed increased nutrients, particularly in field LA-05. Multi-year Re-Gen application increased yield and generated additional economic value, indicating that the effects of Re-Gen do not diminish with multiple applications. The increased corn silage yield correlated to increased potential milk yield from cows fed silage grown in Re-Gen-treated fields. Further investigation into the mechanism suggests that increased phosphatase production Re-Gen could contribute to increased phosphorus bioavailability in the soil and uptake in the tissue, potentially increasing yields.DiscussionThese results highlight the potential for Re-Gen to foster regenerative agriculture processes on cropland and livestock farms while also increasing corn and milk yield and, therefore, revenue for corn farmers in the United States and for similar cropping systems worldwide

Feeding the Worlth Healthily: the Challenge of Measuring the effects of Agriculture on Health

Agricultural production, food systems and population health are intimately linked. While there is a strong evidence base to inform our knowledge of what constitutes a healthy human diet, we know little about actual food production or consumption in many populations and how developments in the food and agricultural system will affect dietary intake patterns and health. The paucity of information on food production and consumption is arguably most acute in low- and middle-income countries, where it is most urgently needed to monitor levels of under-nutrition, the health impacts of rapid dietary transition and the increasing ‘double burden’ of nutrition-related disease. Food availability statistics based on food commodity production data are currently widely used as a proxy measure of national-level food consumption, but using data from the UK and Mexico we highlight the potential pitfalls of this approach. Despite limited resources for data collection, better systems of measurement are possible. Important drivers to improve collection systems may include efforts to meet international development goals and partnership with the private sector. A clearer understanding of the links between the agriculture and food system and population health will ensure that health becomes a critical driver of agricultural change

word~river literary review (2009)

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction of adjuncts and part-time instructors teaching in our universities, colleges, and community colleges. Our premier issue was published in Spring 2009. We are always looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published. We define adjunct instructors as anyone teaching part-time or full-time under a semester or yearly contract, nationwide and in any discipline. Graduate students teaching under part-time contracts during the summer or who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program also are eligible.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/word_river/1002/thumbnail.jp

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Candida albicans-produced farnesol stimulates Pseudomonas quinolone signal production in LasR-defective Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains

Candida albicans has been previously shown to stimulate the production of Pseudomonas aeruginosa phenazine toxins in dual-species colony biofilms. Here, we report that P. aeruginosa lasR mutants, which lack the master quorum sensing system regulator, regain the ability to produce quorum-sensing-regulated phenazines when cultured with C. albicans. Farnesol, a signalling molecule produced by C. albicans, was sufficient to stimulate phenazine production in LasR− laboratory strains and clinical isolates. P. aeruginosa ΔlasR mutants are defective in production of the Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS) due to their inability to properly induce pqsH, which encodes the enzyme necessary for the last step in PQS biosynthesis. We show that expression of pqsH in a ΔlasR strain was sufficient to restore PQS production, and that farnesol restored pqsH expression in ΔlasR mutants. The farnesol-mediated increase in pqsH required RhlR, a transcriptional regulator downstream of LasR, and farnesol led to higher levels of N-butyryl-homoserine lactone, the small molecule activator of RhlR. Farnesol promotes the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in a variety of species. Because the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine suppressed farnesol-induced RhlR activity in LasR− strains, and hydrogen peroxide was sufficient to restore PQS production in las mutants, we propose that ROS are responsible for the activation of downstream portions of this quorum sensing pathway. LasR mutants frequently arise in the lungs of patients chronically infected with P. aeruginosa. The finding that C. albicans, farnesol or ROS stimulate virulence factor production in lasR strains provides new insight into the virulence potential of these strains

Autologous chondrocyte implantation-derived synovial fluids display distinct responder and non-responder proteomic profiles

Hulme, Charlotte H. & Wilson, Emma L. - Equal contributorsBackground Autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) can be used in the treatment of focal cartilage injuries to prevent the onset of osteoarthritis (OA). However, we are yet to understand fully why some individuals do not respond well to this intervention. Identification of a reliable and accurate biomarker panel that can predict which patients are likely to respond well to ACI is needed in order to assign the patient to the most appropriate therapy. This study aimed to compare the baseline and mid-treatment proteomic profiles of synovial fluids (SFs) obtained from responders and non-responders to ACI. Methods SFs were derived from 14 ACI responders (mean Lysholm improvement of 33 (17–54)) and 13 non-responders (mean Lysholm decrease of 14 (4–46)) at the two stages of surgery (cartilage harvest and chondrocyte implantation). Label-free proteome profiling of dynamically compressed SFs was used to identify predictive markers of ACI success or failure and to investigate the biological pathways involved in the clinical response to ACI. Results Only 1 protein displayed a ≥2.0-fold differential abundance in the preclinical SF of ACI responders versus non-responders. However, there is a marked difference between these two groups with regard to their proteome shift in response to cartilage harvest, with 24 and 92 proteins showing ≥2.0-fold differential abundance between Stages I and II in responders and non-responders, respectively. Proteomic data has been uploaded to ProteomeXchange (identifier: PXD005220). We have validated two biologically relevant protein changes associated with this response, demonstrating that matrix metalloproteinase 1 was prominently elevated and S100 calcium binding protein A13 was reduced in response to cartilage harvest in non-responders. Conclusions The differential proteomic response to cartilage harvest noted in responders versus non-responders is completely novel. Our analyses suggest several pathways which appear to be altered in non-responders that are worthy of further investigation to elucidate the mechanisms of ACI failure. These protein changes highlight many putative biomarkers that may have potential for prediction of ACI treatment success

Low-coordinate first-row transition metal complexes in catalysis and small molecule activation

Enforcing unusually low coordination numbers on transition metals with sterically demanding ligands has long been an area of interest for chemists. Historically, the synthesis of these challenging molecules has helped to elucidate fundamental principles of bonding and reactivity. More recently, there has been a move towards exploiting these highly reactive complexes to achieve a range of transformations using cheap, earth-abundant metals. In this Perspective, we will highlight selected examples of transition metal complexes with low coordination numbers that have been used in catalysis and the activation of small molecules featuring strong bonds (N2, CO2, and CO)