The Prevalence of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviours Relative to Obesity among Adolescents from Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia: Rural versus Urban Variations

Purpose. The aims of this study were to explore the lifestyle of young people living in Al-Ahsa Governorate; to investigate differences due to gender, age, school type, and geographical location. Methods. 1270 volunteered youth (15–19 years) completed a self-report questionnaire that contained 47 items relating to patterns of physical activity (PA), sedentary activity, and eating habits. The questionnaire allows the calculation of total energy expenditure in metabolic equivalent (MET-min) values per week. Results. Significant differences in the PA levels of youth were evident with regard to gender, geographical areas, and type of school. Also, normal weight males reported the highest levels of PA compared to overweight and obese. Conclusions. Youth living in rural desert were less physically active than those living in urban or rural farm environments. Youth of “normal” weight were more active than obese. Males were more active than females and PA levels appeared to decline with age

Following the Sand Grains

When longshore transport systems encounter tidal inlets, complex mechanisms are involved in bypassing sand to downdrift barriers. Here, this process is examined at Plum Island Sound and Essex Inlets, Massachusetts, USA. One major finding from this study is that sand is transferred along the coast—especially at tidal inlets—by parcels, in discrete steps, and over decadal-scale periods. The southerly orientation of the main-ebb channel at Plum Island Sound, coupled with the landward migration of bars from the ebb delta to the central portion of the downdrift Castle Neck barrier island, have formed a beach protuberance. During the constructional phase, sand is sequestered at the protuberance and the spit-end of the barrier becomes sediment starved, leading to shoreline retreat and a broadening of the spit platform at the mouth to Essex Bay (downdrift side of Castle Neck). Storm-induced sand transport from erosion of the spit and across the spit platform is washed into Essex Bay, filling channels and enlarging flood deltas. This study illustrates the pathways and processes of sand transfer along the shoreline of a barrier-island/tidal-inlet system and provides an important example of the processes that future hydrodynamic and sediment-transport modeling should strive to replicate

A presentation for the subgroup of compressed conjugating automorphisms of a partially commutative group

‎Let $G_{Gamma}$ be a partially commutative group‎. ‎We find a finite presentation for the subgroup $Conjv(G_{Gamma})$ of compressed‎ ‎vertex conjugating automorphisms of the automorphism group‎ ‎$Aut(G_{Gamma})$ of $G_{G}$‎. ‎We have written GAP packages which compute presentations for $Aut(G_{Gamma})$ and its subgroups‎ ‎$Conj(G_{Gamma})$ and $Conjv(G_{Gamma})$‎

Investigating rare pathogenic/likely pathogenic exonic variation in bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a serious mental illness with substantial common variant heritability. However, the role of rare coding variation in BD is not well established. We examined the protein-coding (exonic) sequences of 3,987 unrelated individuals with BD and 5,322 controls of predominantly European ancestry across four cohorts from the Bipolar Sequencing Consortium (BSC). We assessed the burden of rare, protein-altering, single nucleotide variants classified as pathogenic or likely pathogenic (P-LP) both exome-wide and within several groups of genes with phenotypic or biologic plausibility in BD. While we observed an increased burden of rare coding P-LP variants within 165 genes identified as BD GWAS regions in 3,987 BD cases (meta-analysis OR = 1.9, 95% CI = 1.3-2.8, one-sided p = 6.0 × 1

KDD 1999 generation faults : a review and analysis

DARPA 1998 was one of the first Intrusion Detection datasets that was made publicly available. The KDD 1999 dataset was derived from DARPA 1998 to be used by researchers in developing machine learning (ML), classification and clustering algorithms with a security focus. DARPA 1998 has been criticised in literature due to raised concerns of problems in the dataset. Many researchers have accused KDD 1999 of having similar concerns but insufficient published evidence has been found. In this paper, we review the KDD 1999 generation process and present new proofs of existing inconsistencies in KDD 1999. We then present the process used to link some of the KDD 1999 (TELNET) records back to their origins in DARPA 1998 and discuss the interesting results and findings of this experiment.PostprintPeer reviewe