Effects of living near a new urban motorway on the travel behaviour of local residents in deprived areas: Evidence from a natural experimental study

We evaluated the effects of a new motorway built through deprived neighbourhoods on travel behaviour in residents. This natural experiment comprised a longitudinal cohort (n=365) and two cross-sectional samples (baseline n=980; follow-up n=978) recruited in 2005 and 2013. Adults from one of three study areas - surrounding the new motorway (South), an existing motorway (East), or no motorway (North) - completed a previous day travel record. Adjusted two-part regression models examined associations between exposure and outcome. Compared to the North, cohort participants in the South were more likely to undertake travel by any mode (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.0–4.2) at follow-up. Within the South study area, cohort participants living closer to a motorway junction were more likely to travel by any mode at follow-up (OR 4.7, 95% CI 1.1–19.7), and cross-sectional participants living closer were more likely to use a car at follow-up (OR 3.4, 95% CI 1.1–10.7), compared to those living further away. Overall, the new motorway appeared to promote travel and car use in those living nearby, but did not influence active travel. This may propagate socioeconomic inequalities in non-car owners

Modelling the activity of seawater and implications for desalination exergy analyses

Exergy analysis has been applied to desalination membrane processes in an effort to characterise energy consumption and to optimise energy efficiency. Several models have been used to this end in the literature. One assumption that is common in these analyses is that of ideal solution behavior. However, seawater and other aqueous solutions of interest do not behave ideally. Indeed, even when ideal behavior is not assumed, there are several approaches to calculate these activity values, which are typically a function of the molality and ionic strength of the electrolytic solution. What is not clear from the published literature is the impact that the choice of activity calculation model has on the exergy analysis results. The objective of this research was to undertake the exergy analysis of a seawater membrane desalination plant using the Szargut chemical exergy approach and to compare the activity calculation approaches. The chemical exergy of the seawater was calculated using several activity coefficient modelling approaches including, (a) ideal mixture model, (b) the Debye-Huckel limiting law, (c) the Davies model, and finally, (d) the Pitzer model, which is more appropriate for higher ionic strength solutions such as seawater. The results showed considerable differences in the chemical exergy rates and the magnitude of chemical exergy destruction rates calculated using the various models. For example, there were percentage differences of 61.8% and 44.7% between the magnitude of chemical exergy destruction rates calculated using the Pitzer model when compared with the Debye-Huckel limiting law for the nanofiltration and reverse osmosis processes respectively

Benchmarking typically developing children’s prosodic performance on the Irish version of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C)

Objective: To identify the normal prosodic performance for typically developing children aged 5-11 years on the Irish version of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech Communication (PEPS-C) assessment and identify significant age related changes between different age groups. Method: Thirty typically developing children between the ages of 5;9 and 11;1 years completed the PEPS-C assessment which involved both receptive and expressive tasks. Results: Significant differences were found between the youngest group’s prosodic performance and the two older groups. The 5/6 year old age group performed less well than the 10/11 year age group (p<0.05). The 10/11 year age group performed above chance level on all prosodic tasks. Conclusion: While 5/6 year old children have acquired some functional prosodic skills, there are further developments between the ages of 5;9 and 9;5, with some aspects of prosody continuing to develop up to 11 years

Psychological interventions for people with Parkinson’s disease in the early 2020s:Where do we stand?

Purpose To explore the heterogeneity of the literature on psychological interventions for psychological difficulties in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Methods A scoping review was performed across five major databases (MEDLINE Complete, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Academic Search Ultimate, and Cochrane Library) up to June 2020. Results From an initial return of 4911 citations, 56 studies were included, of which 21 were RCTs. A relatively wide range of therapeutic models have been adopted with people with PD, from common therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and mindfulness, to less frequent approaches, for example, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and psychodrama. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed, and suggestions are provided for future research on intervention studies and key psychological outcomes. Conclusions CBT appears to be effective in treating depression and sleep disorders in people with PD, while psychoeducation programmes alone should be avoided. The use of CBT to improve anxiety, quality of life, and impulse control, as well mindfulness‐based interventions, should be undertaken with some caution because of insufficient research and inconsistent results. As we enter the new decade, more high‐quality evidence is required for psychological interventions in people with PD in general and to corroborate preliminary positive findings on the adoption of less frequent approaches such as ACT. Practitioner points - Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative condition associated with several psychological difficulties which be targeted by psychological interventions. - Currently, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be recommended to treat depression and sleep disorders in people with Parkinson’s, while psychoeducation alone should be avoided. - Caution is advised regarding the use of CBT and mindfulness‐based interventions to improve anxiety, quality of life, and impulse control. - Further evidence is required for less common approaches, such as acceptance and commitment therapy, psychodrama, and EMDR

Mechanisms of Life Span Extension by Rapamycin in the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster

The target of rapamycin (TOR) pathway is a major nutrient-sensing pathway that, when genetically downregulated, increases life span in evolutionarily diverse organisms including mammals. The central component of this pathway, TOR kinase, is the target of the inhibitory drug rapamycin, a highly specific and well-described drug approved for human use. We show here that feeding rapamycin to adult Drosophila produces the life span extension seen in some TOR mutants. Increase in life span by rapamycin was associated with increased resistance to both starvation and paraquat. Analysis of the underlying mechanisms revealed that rapamycin increased longevity specifically through the TORC1 branch of the TOR pathway, through alterations to both autophagy and translation. Rapamycin could increase life span of weak insulin/Igf signaling (IIS) pathway mutants and of flies with life span maximized by dietary restriction, indicating additional mechanisms

Experiences of connectivity and severance in the wake of a new motorway: Implications for health and well-being.

The construction of new urban roads may cause severance, or the separation of residents from local amenities or social networks. Using qualitative data from a natural experimental study, we examined severance related to a new section of urban motorway constructed through largely deprived residential neighbourhoods in Glasgow, Scotland. Semi-structured and photo-elicitation interviews were used to better understand severance and connectivity related to the new motorway, and specifically implications for individual and community-level health and well-being through active travel and social connections. Rather than a clear severance impact attributable to the motorway, a complex system of connection and severance was spoken about by participants, with the motorway being described by turns as a force for both connection and severance. We conclude that new transport infrastructure is complex, embedded, and plausibly causally related to connectedness and health. Our findings suggest the potential for a novel mechanism through which severance is enacted: the disruptive impacts that a new road may have on third places of social connection locally, even when it does not physically sever them. This supports social theories that urge a move away from conceptualising social connectedness in terms of the local neighbourhood only, towards an understanding of how we live and engage dynamically with services and people in a much wider geographical area, and may have implications for local active travel and health through changes in social connectedness

Promoting Personal Recovery in People with Persisting Psychotic Disorders: Development and Pilot Study of a Novel Digital Intervention

BACKGROUND For people with persisting psychotic disorders, personal recovery has become an important target of mental health services worldwide. Strongly influenced by mental health service consumer perspectives, personal recovery refers to being able to live a satisfying and contributing life irrespective of ongoing symptoms and disability. Contact with peers with shared lived experience is often cited as facilitative of recovery. We aimed to develop and pilot a novel recovery-based digitally supported intervention for people with a psychotic illness. METHODS We developed a website to be used on a tablet computer by mental health workers to structure therapeutic discussions about personal recovery. Central to the site was a series of video interviews of people with lived experience of psychosis discussing how they had navigated issues within their own recovery based on the Connectedness-Hope-Identity-Meaning-Empowerment model of recovery. We examined the feasibility and acceptability of an 8-session low intensity intervention using this site in 10 participants with persisting psychotic disorders and conducted a proof-of-concept analysis of outcomes. RESULTS All 10 participants completed the full course of sessions, and it was possible to integrate use of the website into nearly all sessions. Participant feedback confirmed that use of the website was a feasible and acceptable way of working. All participants stated that they would recommend the intervention to others. Post-intervention, personal recovery measured by the Questionnaire for the Process of Recovery had improved by an average standardized effect of d = 0.46, 95% CI [0.07, 0.84], and 8 of the 10 participants reported that their mental health had improved since taking part in the intervention. CONCLUSION In-session use of digital resources featuring peer accounts of recovery is feasible and acceptable and shows promising outcomes. A randomized controlled trial is the next step in evaluating the efficacy of this low intensity intervention when delivered in conjunction with routine mental health care.This study was funded by the State Government of Victoria Department of Health Mental Illness Research Fund (MIRF33). The funder had no role in the design of the study or reporting of results

Connecting the progenitors, pre-explosion variability and giant outbursts of luminous blue variables with Gaia16cfr

We present multi-epoch, multicolour pre-outburst photometry and post-outburst light curves and spectra of the luminous blue variable (LBV) outburst Gaia16cfr discovered by the Gaia satellite on 2016 December 1 UT. We detect Gaia16cfr in 13 epochs of Hubble Space Telescope imaging spanning phases of 10 yr to 8 months before the outburst and in Spitzer Space Telescope imaging 13 yr before outburst. Pre-outburst optical photometry is consistent with an 18 M⊙ F8 I star, although the star was likely reddened and closer to 30 M⊙. The pre-outburst source exhibited a significant near-infrared excess consistent with a 120 au shell with 4 × 10−6 M⊙ of dust. We infer that the source was enshrouded by an optically thick and compact shell of circumstellar material from an LBV wind, which formed a pseudo-photosphere consistent with S Dor-like variables in their ‘maximum’ phase. Within a year of outburst, the source was highly variable on 10–30  d time-scales. The outburst light curve closely matches that of the 2012 outburst of SN 2009ip, although the observed velocities are significantly slower than in that event. In H α, the outburst had an excess of blueshifted emission at late times centred around −1500 km s−1, similar to that of double-peaked Type IIn supernovae and the LBV outburst SN 2015bh. From the pre-outburst and post-outburst photometry, we infer that the outburst ejecta are evolving into a dense, highly structured circumstellar environment from precursor outbursts within years of the 2016 December event.The work of AVF was conducted in part at the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by NSF grant PHY-1607611; the author thanks the Center for its hospitality during the neutron stars workshop in 2017 June and July. AVF is grateful for financial assistance from the TABASGO Foundation, the Christopher R. Redlich Fund, the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science (U.C. Berkeley) and HST grants GO-13646 and AR-14295 from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by AURA under NASA contract NAS 5-26555

Genetically Predicted Glucose-Dependent Insulinotropic Polypeptide (GIP) Levels and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Are Driven by Distinct Causal Variants in the GIPR Region.

There is considerable interest in GIPR agonism to enhance the insulinotropic and extrapancreatic effects of GIP, thereby improving glycemic and weight control in type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity. Recent genetic epidemiological evidence has implicated higher GIPR-mediated GIP levels in raising coronary artery disease (CAD) risk, a potential safety concern for GIPR agonism. We therefore aimed to quantitatively assess whether the association between higher GIPR-mediated fasting GIP levels and CAD risk is mediated via GIPR or is instead the result of linkage disequilibrium (LD) confounding between variants at the GIPR locus. Using Bayesian multitrait colocalization, we identified a GIPR missense variant, rs1800437 (G allele; E354), as the putatively causal variant shared among fasting GIP levels, glycemic traits, and adiposity-related traits (posterior probability for colocalization [PPcoloc] > 0.97; PP explained by the candidate variant [PPexplained] = 1) that was independent from a cluster of CAD and lipid traits driven by a known missense variant in APOE (rs7412; distance to E354 ∼770 Kb; R 2 with E354 = 0.004; PPcoloc > 0.99; PPexplained = 1). Further, conditioning the association between E354 and CAD on the residual LD with rs7412, we observed slight attenuation in association, but it remained significant (odds ratio [OR] per copy of E354 after adjustment 1.03; 95% CI 1.02, 1.04; P = 0.003). Instead, E354's association with CAD was completely attenuated when conditioning on an additional established CAD signal, rs1964272 (R 2 with E354 = 0.27), an intronic variant in SNRPD2 (OR for E354 after adjustment for rs1964272: 1.01; 95% CI 0.99, 1.03; P = 0.06). We demonstrate that associations with GIP and anthropometric and glycemic traits are driven by genetic signals distinct from those driving CAD and lipid traits in the GIPR region and that higher E354-mediated fasting GIP levels are not associated with CAD risk. These findings provide evidence that the inclusion of GIPR agonism in dual GIPR/GLP1R agonists could potentiate the protective effect of GLP-1 agonists on diabetes without undue CAD risk, an aspect that has yet to be assessed in clinical trials