Validation of persuasive messages for the promotion of physical activity among people with coronary heart disease

OBJECTIVE: to validate the content of persuasive messages for promoting walking among patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). The messages were constructed to strengthen or change patients' attitudes to walking. METHOD: the selection of persuasive arguments was based on behavioral beliefs (determinants of attitude) related to walking. The messages were constructed based in the Elaboration Likelihood Model and were submitted to content validation. RESULTS: the data was analyzed with the content validity index and by the importance which the patients attributed to the messages' persuasive arguments. Positive behavioral beliefs (i.e. positive and negative reinforcement) and self-efficacy were the appeals which the patients considered important. The messages with validation evidence will be tested in an intervention study for the promotion of the practice of physical activity among patients with CHD.OBJETIVO: validar el contenido de mensajes persuasivos para promover la caminata entre pacientes con enfermedad arterial coronaria (DAC). Los mensajes fueron construidos objetivando al fortalecimiento/cambio de la actitud del paciente con relación a la caminata. MÉTODO: la selección de los argumentos persuasivos fue basada en las creencias comportamentales (determinantes de la actitud) relacionadas a la caminata. Los mensajes fueron construidos con base en el Modelo de Probabilidad de Elaboración y sometidos a la validez de contenido. RESULTADOS: los datos fueron analizados por medio del índice de validez de contenido y por la importancia atribuida por los pacientes a los argumentos persuasivos de los mensajes. Las creencias comportamentales positivas (ejemplo: refuerzo positivo y negativo) y la autoeficacia fueron los reclamos considerados importantes por los pacientes. Los mensajes con evidencias de validación serán testadas en estudio de intervención para promoción de la práctica de actividad física entre pacientes con DAC.OBJETIVO: validar o conteúdo de mensagens persuasivas para promover a caminhada entre pacientes com doença arterial coronária (DAC). As mensagens foram construídas com vistas ao fortalecimento/mudança da atitude do paciente em relação à caminhada. MÉTODO: a seleção dos argumentos persuasivos foi baseada nas crenças comportamentais (determinantes da atitude), relacionadas à caminhada. As mensagens foram construídas com base no Modelo de Probabilidade de Elaboração e submetidas à validade de conteúdo. RESULTADOS: os dados foram analisados por meio do índice de validade de conteúdo e pela importância atribuída pelos pacientes aos argumentos persuasivos das mensagens. As crenças comportamentais positivas (i.e. reforço positivo e negativo) e a autoeficácia foram os apelos considerados importantes pelos pacientes. As mensagens com evidências de validação serão testadas em estudo de intervenção para promoção da prática de atividade física entre pacientes com DAC

Recent Salmon Declines: A Result of Lost Feeding Opportunities Due to Bad Timing?

As the timing of spring productivity blooms in near-shore areas advances due to warming trends in global climate, the selection pressures on out-migrating salmon smolts are shifting. Species and stocks that leave natal streams earlier may be favoured over later-migrating fish. The low post-release survival of hatchery fish during recent years may be in part due to static release times that do not take the timing of plankton blooms into account. This study examined the effects of release time on the migratory behaviour and survival of wild and hatchery-reared coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) using acoustic and coded-wire telemetry. Plankton monitoring and near-shore seining were also conducted to determine which habitat and food sources were favoured. Acoustic tags (n = 140) and coded-wire tags (n = 266,692) were implanted into coho salmon smolts at the Seymour and Quinsam Rivers, in British Columbia, Canada. Differences between wild and hatchery fish, and early and late releases were examined during the entire lifecycle. Physiological sampling was also carried out on 30 fish from each release group. The smolt-to-adult survival of coho salmon released during periods of high marine productivity was 1.5- to 3-fold greater than those released both before and after, and the fish's degree of smoltification affected their downstream migration time and duration of stay in the estuary. Therefore, hatchery managers should consider having smolts fully developed and ready for release during the peak of the near-shore plankton blooms. Monitoring chlorophyll a levels and water temperature early in the spring could provide a forecast of the timing of these blooms, giving hatcheries time to adjust their release schedule

Truss geometry and topology optimization with global stability constraints

In this paper, we introduce geometry optimization into an existing topology optimization workflow for truss structures with global stability constraints, assuming a linear buckling analysis. The design variables are the cross-sectional areas of the bars and the coordinates of the joints. This makes the optimization problem formulations highly nonlinear and yields nonconvex semidefinite programming problems, for which there are limited available numerical solvers compared with other classes of optimization problems. We present problem instances of truss geometry and topology optimization with global stability constraints solved using a standard primal-dual interior point implementation. During the solution process, both the cross-sectional areas of the bars and the coordinates of the joints are concurrently optimized. Additionally, we apply adaptive optimization techniques to allow the joints to navigate larger move limits and to improve the quality of the optimal designs

Direct characterization of young giant exoplanets at high spectral resolution by coupling SPHERE and CRIRES+

This is the final version. Available on open access from EDP Sciences via the DOI in this recordStudies of atmospheres of directly imaged extrasolar planets with high-resolution spectrographs have shown that their characterization is predominantly limited by noise on the stellar halo at the location of the studied exoplanet. An instrumental combination of highcontrast imaging and high spectral resolution that suppresses this noise and resolves the spectral lines can therefore yield higher quality spectra. We study the performance of the proposed HiRISE fiber coupling between the direct imager SPHERE and the spectrograph CRIRES+ at the Very Large Telescope for spectral characterization of directly imaged planets. Using end-to-end simulations of HiRISE we determine the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of the detection of molecular species for known extrasolar planets in H and K bands, and compare them to CRIRES+. We investigate the ultimate detection limits of HiRISE as a function of stellar magnitude, and we quantify the impact of different coronagraphs and of the system transmission. We find that HiRISE largely outperforms CRIRES+ for companions around bright hosts like β Pictoris or 51 Eridani. For an H = 3.5 host, we observe a gain of a factor of up to 36 in observing time with HiRISE to reach the same S/N on a companion at 200 mas. More generally, HiRISE provides better performance than CRIRES+ in two-hour integration times between 50–400 mas for hosts with H < 8.5 and between 50–800 mas for H < 7. For fainter hosts like PDS 70 and HIP 65426, no significant improvements are observed. We find that using no coronagraph yields the best S/N when characterizing known exoplanets due to higher transmission and fiber-based starlight suppression. We demonstrate that the overall transmission of the system is in fact the main driver of performance. Finally, we show that HiRISE outperforms the best detection limits of SPHERE for bright stars, opening major possibilities for the characterization of future planetary companions detected by other techniquesEuropean Union Horizon 202

MicroRNA Involvement in Immune Activation During Heart Failure

Heart failure is one of the common end stages of cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of death in developed countries. Molecular mechanisms underlying the development of heart failure remain elusive but there is a consistent observation of chronic immune activation and aberrant microRNA (miRNA) expression that is present in failing hearts. This review will focus on the interplay between the immune system and miRNAs as factors that play a role during the development of heart failure. Several studies have shown that heart failure patients can be characterized by a sustained innate immune activation. The role of inflammatory signaling is discussed and TLR4 signaling, IL-1β, TNFα and IL-6 expression appears to coincide with the development of heart failure. Furthermore, we describe the implication of the renin angiotensin aldosteron system in immunity and heart failure. In the past decade microRNAs (miRNAs), small non-coding RNAs that translationally repress protein synthesis by binding to partially complementary sequences of mRNA, have come to light as important regulators of several kinds of cardiovascular diseases including cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. The involvement of differentially expressed miRNAs in the inflammation that occurs during the development of heart failure is still subject of investigation. Here, we summarize and comment on the first studies in this field and hypothesize on the putative involvement of certain miRNAs in heart failure. MicroRNAs have been shown to be critical regulators of cardiac function and inflammation. Future research will have to point out if dampening the immune response, and the miRNAs associated with it, during the development of heart failure is a therapeutically plausible route to follow

Desmoglein 2 mutant mice develop cardiac fibrosis and dilation

Desmosomes are cell–cell adhesion sites and part of the intercalated discs, which couple adjacent cardiomyocytes. The connection is formed by the extracellular domains of desmosomal cadherins that are also linked to the cytoskeleton on the cytoplasmic side. To examine the contribution of the desmosomal cadherin desmoglein 2 to cardiomyocyte adhesion and cardiac function, mutant mice were prepared lacking a part of the extracellular adhesive domain of desmoglein 2. Most live born mutant mice presented normal overall cardiac morphology at 2 weeks. Some animals, however, displayed extensive fibrotic lesions. Later on, mutants developed ventricular dilation leading to cardiac insufficiency and eventually premature death. Upon histological examination, cardiomyocyte death by calcifying necrosis and replacement by fibrous tissue were observed. Fibrotic lesions were highly proliferative in 2-week-old mutants, whereas the fibrotic lesions of older mutants showed little proliferation indicating the completion of local muscle replacement by scar tissue. Disease progression correlated with increased mRNA expression of c-myc, ANF, BNF, CTGF and GDF15, which are markers for cardiac stress, remodeling and heart failure. Taken together, the desmoglein 2-mutant mice display features of dilative cardiomyopathy and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, an inherited human heart disease with pronounced fibrosis and ventricular arrhythmias that has been linked to mutations in desmosomal proteins including desmoglein 2

Excretion patterns of coccidian oocysts and nematode eggs during the reproductive season in Northern Bald Ibis (Geronticus eremita)

Individual reproductive success largely depends on the ability to optimize behaviour, immune function and the physiological stress response. We have investigated correlations between behaviour, faecal steroid metabolites, immune parameters, parasite excretion patterns and reproductive output in a critically endangered avian species, the Northern Bald Ibis (Geronticus eremita). In particular, we related haematocrit, heterophil/lymphocyte ratio, excreted immune-reactive corticosterone metabolites and social behaviour with parasite excretion and two individual fitness parameters, namely, number of eggs laid and number of fledglings. We found that the frequency of excretion of parasites’ oocysts and eggs tended to increase with ambient temperature. Paired individuals excreted significantly more samples containing nematode eggs than unpaired ones. The excretion of nematode eggs was also significantly more frequent in females than in males. Individuals with a high proportion of droppings containing coccidian oocysts were more often preened by their partners than individuals with lower excretion rates. We observed that the more eggs an individual incubated and the fewer offspring fledged, the higher the rates of excreted samples containing coccidian oocysts. Our results confirm that social behaviour, physiology and parasite burden are linked in a complex and context-dependent manner. They also contribute background information supporting future conservation programmes dealing with this critically endangered species

Systematic review with meta-analysis of the epidemiological evidence relating smoking to COPD, chronic bronchitis and emphysema

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Smoking is a known cause of the outcomes COPD, chronic bronchitis (CB) and emphysema, but no previous systematic review exists. We summarize evidence for various smoking indices.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Based on MEDLINE searches and other sources we obtained papers published to 2006 describing epidemiological studies relating incidence or prevalence of these outcomes to smoking. Studies in children or adolescents, or in populations at high respiratory disease risk or with co-existing diseases were excluded. Study-specific data were extracted on design, exposures and outcomes considered, and confounder adjustment. For each outcome RRs/ORs and 95% CIs were extracted for ever, current and ex smoking and various dose response indices, and meta-analyses and meta-regressions conducted to determine how relationships were modified by various study and RR characteristics.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 218 studies identified, 133 provide data for COPD, 101 for CB and 28 for emphysema. RR estimates are markedly heterogeneous. Based on random-effects meta-analyses of most-adjusted RR/ORs, estimates are elevated for ever smoking (COPD 2.89, CI 2.63-3.17, n = 129 RRs; CB 2.69, 2.50-2.90, n = 114; emphysema 4.51, 3.38-6.02, n = 28), current smoking (COPD 3.51, 3.08-3.99; CB 3.41, 3.13-3.72; emphysema 4.87, 2.83-8.41) and ex smoking (COPD 2.35, 2.11-2.63; CB 1.63, 1.50-1.78; emphysema 3.52, 2.51-4.94). For COPD, RRs are higher for males, for studies conducted in North America, for cigarette smoking rather than any product smoking, and where the unexposed base is never smoking any product, and are markedly lower when asthma is included in the COPD definition. Variations by sex, continent, smoking product and unexposed group are in the same direction for CB, but less clearly demonstrated. For all outcomes RRs are higher when based on mortality, and for COPD are markedly lower when based on lung function. For all outcomes, risk increases with amount smoked and pack-years. Limited data show risk decreases with increasing starting age for COPD and CB and with increasing quitting duration for COPD. No clear relationship is seen with duration of smoking.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results confirm and quantify the causal relationships with smoking.</p