139 research outputs found
Shorter sleep durations in adolescents reduce power density in a wide range of waking electroencephalogram frequencies.
Despite sleep's recognized biological importance, it has been remarkably difficult to demonstrate changes in brain physiology with reduced sleep durations. In a study of adolescents, we varied sleep durations by restricting time in bed for four nights of either 10, 8.5 or 7 h. Shorter sleep durations significantly decreased waking electroencephalogram (EEG) power in a wide range of frequencies with both eyes closed and eyes open in central and occipital leads. These findings suggest new research directions and raise the possibility that waking EEG power density could provide a non-invasive test for biologically sufficient sleep
BRIDGE study warrants critique
David M. Allen, Peter I. Parry, Robert Purssey, Glen I. Spielmans, Jon Jureidini, Nicholas Z. Rosenlicht, David Healy, Irwin Feinber
Political Theory, Political Science, And The End Of Civic Engagement
Within a span of fifteen years civic engagement has become a cottage industry in political science and political theory, but the term has now outlived its usefulness and exemplifies Giovanni Sartori\u27s worry about conceptual stretching. This article traces civic engagement\u27s ascension as a catch-all term for almost anything that citizens might happen to do together or alone, and illustrates the confusion that its popularity has occasioned. It proposes that civic engagement meet a well-deserved end, to be replaced with a more nuanced and descriptive set of engagements: political, social, and moral. It also examines the appeal of engagement itself, a term that entails both attention and energy. Attention and energy are the mainsprings of politics and most other challenging human endeavors. But they can be invested politically, or in associative pursuits, or in moral reasoning and follow-through, and those types of engagement can, but need not, coincide. We should be asking which kinds of engagement-which kinds of attention and energetic activity-make democracy work, and how they might be measured and promoted
Interventions that enhance health services for parents and infants to improve child development and social and emotional well-being in high-income countries: a systematic review
Background Experiences in the first 1000 days of life have a critical influence on child development and health. Health services that provide support for families need evidence about how best to improve their provision.
Methods We systematically reviewed the evidence for interventions in high-income countries to improve child development by enhancing health service contact with parents from the antenatal period to 24 months postpartum. We searched 15 databases and trial registers for studies published in any language between 01 January 1996 and 01 April 2016. We also searched 58 programme or organisation websites and the electronic table of contents of eight journals.
Results Primary outcomes were motor, cognitive and language development, and social-emotional well-being measured to 39 months of age (to allow the interventions time to produce demonstrable effects). Results were reported using narrative synthesis due to the variation in study populations, intervention design and outcome measurement. 22 of the 12 986 studies identified met eligibility criteria. Using Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) working group criteria, the quality of evidence overall was moderate to low. There was limited evidence for intervention effectiveness: positive effects were seen in 1/6 studies for motor development, 4/11 for language development, 4/8 for cognitive development and 3/19 for social-emotional well-being. However, most studies showing positive effects were at high/unclear risk of bias, within-study effects were inconsistent and negative effects were also seen. Intervention content and intensity varied greatly, but this was not associated with effectiveness.
Conclusions There is insufficient evidence that interventions currently available to enhance health service contacts up to 24 months postpartum are effective for improving child development. There is an urgent need for robust evaluation of existing interventions and to develop and evaluate novel interventions to enhance the offer to all families
Cell-Specific “Competition for Calories� Drives Asymmetric Nutrient-Energy Partitioning, Obesity, and Metabolic Diseases in Human and Non-human Animals
The mammalian body is a complex physiologic “ecosystem� in which cells compete
for calories (i.e., nutrient-energy). Axiomatically, cell-types with competitive advantages
acquire a greater number of consumed calories, and when possible, increase in
size and/or number. Thus, it is logical and parsimonious to posit that obesity is the
competitive advantages of fat-cells (adipocytes) driving a disproportionate acquisition
and storage of nutrient-energy. Accordingly, we introduce two conceptual frameworks.
Asymmetric Nutrient-Energy Partitioning describes the context-dependent, cell-specific
competition for calories that determines the partitioning of nutrient-energy to oxidation,
anabolism, and/or storage; and Effective Caloric Intake which describes the number
of calories available to constrain energy-intake via the inhibition of the sensorimotor
appetitive cells in the liver and brain that govern ingestive behaviors. Inherent in
these frameworks is the independence and dissociation of the energetic demands
of metabolism and the neuro-muscular pathways that initiate ingestive behaviors and
energy intake. As we demonstrate, if the sensorimotor cells suffer relative caloric
deprivation via asymmetric competition from other cell-types (e.g., skeletal muscle- or
fat-cells), energy-intake is increased to compensate for both real and merely apparent
deficits in energy-homeostasis (i.e., true and false signals, respectively). Thus, we
posit that the chronic positive energy balance (i.e., over-nutrition) that leads to obesity
and metabolic diseases is engendered by apparent deficits (i.e., false signals) driven
by the asymmetric inter-cellular competition for calories and concomitant differential
partitioning of nutrient-energy to storage. These frameworks, in concert with our
previous theoretic work, the Maternal Resources Hypothesis, provide a parsimonious
and rigorous explanation for the rapid rise in the global prevalence of increased body
and fat mass, and associated metabolic dysfunctions in humans and other mammals
inclusive of companion, domesticated, laboratory, and feral animals
Shorter sleep durations in adolescents reduce power density in a wide range of waking electroencephalogram frequencies
- …