A Design Thinking Approach to the Design of a Digital Tool to Support People on a Weight Management Journey

The application of digital tools in support of people making a positive behaviour change is well established. However, it has been observed that the impact is not as significant as predicted. The aim of this project was to investigate whether a Design Thinking approach could generate new insights that could be used to drive the development of an innovative application to help people on their weight management journey. Findings show that although no radically new user needs were identified, careful planning emerged as the most significant challenge; which contrasts with the heavy focus of commercially available apps on calorie and activity tracking

Seeking New Insights: A Design Thinking Approach to Persuasive Technology Aimed at Supporting Clients of a Weight Management Program

The application of persuasive technology has been shown to be effective in a weight management context. However, it has been observed that the impact is not as significant as predicted. The aim of this project was to investigate whether a Design Thinking approach could generate new insights that could be used to drive the development of an innovative application to help people on their weight management journey. Findings show that although no radically new user needs were identified, the needs that users did express most pertinently are not effectively met by currently available technology. Further, we examined the Design Thinking approach itself and sought to identify criteria for the design of successful insight gathering activities, through end-user engagement. We summarize these at the end of this paper

The triple oxygen isotope tracer of primary productivity in a dynamic ocean model

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Global Biogeochemical Cycle 28 (2014): 538–552, doi:10.1002/2013GB004704.The triple oxygen isotopic composition of dissolved oxygen (17Δdis) was added to the ocean ecosystem and biogeochemistry component of the Community Earth System Model, version 1.1.1. Model simulations were used to investigate the biological and physical dynamics of 17Δdis and assess its application as a tracer of gross photosynthetic production (gross oxygen production (GOP)) of O2 in the ocean mixed layer. The model reproduced large-scale patterns of 17Δdis found in observational data across diverse biogeographical provinces. Mixed layer model performance was best in the Pacific and had a negative bias in the North Atlantic and a positive bias in the Southern Ocean. Based on model results, the steady state equation commonly used to calculate GOP from tracer values overestimated the globally averaged model GOP by 29%. Vertical entrainment/mixing and the time rate of change of 17Δdis were the two largest sources of bias when applying the steady state method to calculate GOP. Entrainment/mixing resulted in the largest overestimation in midlatitudes and during summer and fall and almost never caused an underestimation of GOP. The tracer time rate of change bias resulted both in underestimation of GOP (e.g., during spring blooms at high latitudes) and overestimation (e.g., during the summer following a bloom). Seasonally, bias was highest in the fall (September-October-November in the Northern Hemisphere, March-April-May in the Southern), overestimating GOP by 62%, globally averaged. Overall, the steady state method was most accurate in equatorial and low-latitude regions where it estimated GOP to within ±10%. Field applicable correction terms are derived for entrainment and mixing that capture 86% of model vertical bias and require only mixed layer depth history and triple oxygen isotope measurements from two depths.We acknowledge support from Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education (CMORE) (NSF EF-0424599) and NOAA Climate Program Office (NA 100AR4310093).2014-11-2

A phytoplankton model for the allocation of gross photosynthetic energy including the trade‐offs of diazotrophy

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 123 (2018): 1796-1816, doi:10.1029/2017JG004263.Gross photosynthetic activity by phytoplankton is directed to linear and alternative electron pathways that generate ATP, reductant, and fix carbon. Ultimately less than half is directed to net growth. Here we present a phytoplankton cell allocation model that explicitly represents a number of cell metabolic processes and functional pools with the goal of evaluating ATP and reductant demands as a function of light, nitrate, iron, oxygen, and temperature for diazotrophic versus nondiazotrophic growth. We employ model analogues of Synechoccocus and Crocosphaera watsonii, to explore the trade‐offs of diazotrophy over a range of environmental conditions. Model analogues are identical in construction, except for an iron quota associated with nitrogenase, an additional respiratory demand to remove oxygen in order to protect nitrogenase and an additional ATP demand to split dinitrogen. We find that these changes explain observed differences in growth rate and iron limitation between diazotrophs and nondiazotrophs. Oxygen removal imparted a significantly larger metabolic cost to diazotrophs than ATP demand for fixing nitrogen. Results suggest that diazotrophs devote a much smaller fraction of gross photosynthetic energy to growth than nondiazotrophs. The phytoplankton cell allocation model model provides a predictive framework for how photosynthate allocation varies with environmental conditions in order to balance cellular demands for ATP and reductant across phytoplankton functional groups.DOC | NOAA | Climate Program Office (CPO) Grant Number: NA100AR4310093; National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant Number: EF‐0424599; Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education (CMORE) Grant Number: NSF EF‐0424599; NOAA Global Carbon Program Grant Number: NA100AR43100932018-11-0

Evaluating Southern Ocean biological production in two ocean biogeochemical models on daily to seasonal timescales using satellite chlorophyll and O2 / Ar observations

© The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Biogeosciences 12 (2015): 681-695, doi:10.5194/bg-12-681-2015.We assess the ability of ocean biogeochemical models to represent seasonal structures in biomass and net community production (NCP) in the Southern Ocean. Two models are compared to observations on daily to seasonal timescales in four different sections of the region. We use daily satellite fields of chlorophyll (Chl) as a proxy for biomass and in situ observations of O2 and Ar supersaturation (ΔO2 / Ar) to estimate NCP. ΔO2 / Ar is converted to the flux of biologically generated O2 from sea to air (O2 bioflux). All data are aggregated to a climatological year with a daily resolution. To account for potential regional differences within the Southern Ocean, we conduct separate analyses of sections south of South Africa, around the Drake Passage, south of Australia, and south of New Zealand. We find that the models simulate the upper range of Chl concentrations well, underestimate spring levels significantly, and show differences in skill between early and late parts of the growing season. While there is a great deal of scatter in the bioflux observations in general, the four sectors each have distinct patterns that the models pick up. Neither model exhibits a significant distinction between the Australian and New Zealand sectors and between the Drake Passage and African sectors. South of 60° S, the models fail to predict the observed extent of biological O2 undersaturation. We suggest that this shortcoming may be due either to problems with the ecosystem dynamics or problems with the vertical transport of oxygen.This work was supported in part by funding from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA NNX08AF12G) and the National Science Foundation (NSF OPP-0823101)

Evaluation of the Southern Ocean O2/Ar-based NCP estimates in a model framework

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 118 (2013): 385–399, doi:10.1002/jgrg.20032.The sea-air biological O2 flux assessed from measurements of surface O2 supersaturation in excess of Ar supersaturation (“O2 bioflux”) is increasingly being used to constrain net community production (NCP) in the upper ocean mixed layer. In making these calculations, one generally assumes that NCP is at steady state, mixed layer depth is constant, and there is no O2 exchange across the base of the mixed layer. The object of this paper is to evaluate the magnitude of errors introduced by violations of these assumptions. Therefore, we examine the differences between the sea-air biological O2 flux and NCP in the Southern Ocean mixed layer as calculated using two ocean biogeochemistry general circulation models. In this approach, NCP is considered a known entity in the prognostic model, whereas O2 bioflux is estimated using the model-predicted O2/Ar ratio to compute the mixed layer biological O2 saturation and the gas transfer velocity to calculate flux. We find that the simulated biological O2 flux gives an accurate picture of the regional-scale patterns and trends in model NCP. However, on local scales, violations of the assumptions behind the O2/Ar method lead to significant, non-uniform differences between model NCP and biological O2 flux. These errors arise from two main sources. First, venting of biological O2 to the atmosphere can be misaligned from NCP in both time and space. Second, vertical fluxes of oxygen across the base of the mixed layer complicate the relationship between NCP and the biological O2 flux. Our calculations show that low values of O2 bioflux correctly register that NCP is also low (<10 mmol m−2 day−1), but fractional errors are large when rates are this low. Values between 10 and 40 mmol m−2 day−1 in areas with intermediate mixed layer depths of 30 to 50 m have the smallest absolute and relative errors. Areas with O2 bioflux higher than 30 mmol m−2 day−1 and mixed layers deeper than 40 m tend to underestimate NCP by up to 20 mmol m−2 day−1. Excluding time periods when mixed layer biological O2 is undersaturated, O2 bioflux underestimates time-averaged NCP by 5%–15%. If these time periods are included, O2 bioflux underestimates mixed layer NCP by 20%–35% in the Southern Ocean. The higher error estimate is relevant if one wants to estimate seasonal NCP since a significant amount of biological production takes place when mixed layer biological O2 is undersaturated.This work was supported in part by funding from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA NNX08AF12G) and National Science Foundation (NSF OPP-0823101)

Quantifying subtropical North Pacific gyre mixed layer primary productivity from Seaglider observations of diel oxygen cycles

© The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 42 (2015): 4032–4039, doi:10.1002/2015GL063065.Using autonomous underwater gliders, we quantified diurnal periodicity in dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, and temperature in the subtropical North Pacific near the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) Station ALOHA during summer 2012. Oxygen optodes provided sufficient stability and precision to quantify diel cycles of average amplitude of 0.6 µmol kg−1. A theoretical diel curve was fit to daily observations to infer an average mixed layer gross primary productivity (GPP) of 1.8 mmol O2 m−3 d−1. Cumulative net community production (NCP) over 110 days was 500 mmol O2 m−2 for the mixed layer, which averaged 57 m in depth. Both GPP and NCP estimates indicated a significant period of below-average productivity at Station ALOHA in 2012, an observation confirmed by 14C productivity incubations and O2/Ar ratios. Given our success in an oligotrophic gyre where biological signals are small, our diel GPP approach holds promise for remote characterization of productivity across the spectrum of marine environments.The authors acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through an NSF Science and Technology Center, the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education (C-MORE; NSF EF-0424599). D.N. also was supported by NSF (OCE-1129644) and an Independent Study Award from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). D.M.K. was also supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. WHOI Summer Student Fellow Cole Stites-Clayton, Stanford University, contributed to early stages of Seaglider data analysis and was supported by an NSF REU grant to WHOI (OCE-1156952)

Association of common variation in the PPARAgene with incident myocardial infarction in individuals with type 2 diabetes: A Go-DARTS study

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.Background Common variants of the PPARA gene have been found to associate with ischaemic heart disease in non diabetic men. The L162V variant was found to be protective while the C2528G variant increased risk. L162V has also been associated with altered lipid measures. We therefore sought to determine the effect of PPARA gene variation on susceptibility to myocardial infarction in patients with type 2 diabetes. 1810 subjects with type 2 diabetes from the prospective Go-DARTS study were genotyped for the L162V and C2528G variants in the PPARA gene and the association of the variants with incident non-fatal myocardial infarction was examined. Cox's proportional hazards was used to interrogate time to event from recruitment, and linear regression for analysing association of genotype with quantitative clinical traits. Results The V162 allele was associated with decreased risk of non-fatal myocardial infarction (HR = 0.31, 95%CI 0.10–0.93 p = 0.037) whereas the C2528 allele was associated with increased risk (HR = 2.77 95%CI 1.34–5.75 p = 0.006). Similarly V162 was associated with a later mean age of diagnosis with type 2 diabetes and C2582 an earlier age of diagnosis. C2528 was also associated with increased total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, which did not account for the observed increased risk. Haplotype analysis demonstrated that when both rare variants occurred on the same haplotype the effect of each was abrogated. Conclusion Genetic variation at the PPARA locus is important in determining cardiovascular risk in both male and female patients with diabetes. This genotype associated risk appears to be independent of the effect of these genotypes on lipid profiles and age of diagnosis with diabetes.Published versio

Cross-Basin Comparison of Phosphorus Stress and Nitrogen Fixation in Trichodesmium

We investigated the phosphorus (P) status and N2 fixation rates of Trichodesmium populations from the North Pacific, western South Pacific, and western North Atlantic. Colonies of Trichodesmium were collected and analyzed for endogenous alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity using enzyme-labeled fluorescence ( ELF) and for nitrogenase activity using acetylene reduction. AP hydrolyzes dissolved inorganic phosphate (DIP) from dissolved organic phosphorus and is active in Trichodesmium colonies experiencing P stress. Across multiple stations in the subtropical North and South Pacific, there was low to moderate ELF labeling in Trichodesmium, although labeling was present in other taxa. In contrast, Trichodesmium ELF labeling in the North Atlantic ranged from low to high. Low ELF labeling corresponded with high DIP concentrations while high ELF labeling occurred only at North Atlantic stations with DIP concentrations \u3c = 40 nmol L-1, indicating that Trichodesmium was not experiencing dramatic P stress in the Pacific Ocean while P stress was evident in the western North Atlantic. However, nitrogenase activity was significantly higher in the P-stressed western North Atlantic than in the Pacific Ocean (0.40-1.30 compared to 0.01-0.46 nmol C2H4 h-1 colony-1. These data underscore the differential basin-level importance of P availability to Trichodesmium and suggest that factors other than P are constraining their N2 fixation rates in the Pacific