Outcomes of a specialist weight management programme in the UK national health service: prospective study of 1838 patients

Objectives There is limited evidence on the effectiveness of weight management programmes provided within routine healthcare and inconsistent use of outcome measures. Our aim was to evaluate a large National Health Service (NHS) weight management service and report absolute and proportional weight losses over 12 months.<p></p> Design Prospective observational study.<p></p> Setting Glasgow and Clyde Weight Management Service (GCWMS), which provides care for residents of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde area (population 1.2 million).<p></p> Participants All patients who began GCWMS between 1 October 2008 and 30 September 2009.<p></p> Interventions Structured educational lifestyle programme employing cognitive behavioural therapy, 600 kcal deficit diet, physical activity advice, lower calorie diet and pharmacotherapy.<p></p> Primary and secondary outcomes measures Baseline observation carried forward (BOCF), last observation carried forward (LOCF) and changes in programme completers reported using outcomes of absolute 5 kg and 5% weight losses and mean weight changes at a variety of time points.<p></p> Results 6505 referrals were made to GCWMS, 5637 were eligible, 3460 opted in and 1916 (34%) attended a first session. 78 patients were excluded from our analysis on 1838 patients. 72.9% of patients were women, mean age of all patients at baseline was 49.1 years, 43.3% lived in highly socioeconomically deprived areas and mean weights and body mass indices at baseline were 118.1 kg and 43.3 kg/m2, respectively. 26% lost ≥5 kg by the end of phase 1, 30% by the end of phase 2 and 28% by the end of phase 3 (all LOCF). Weight loss was more successful among men, particularly those ≤29 years old.<p></p> Conclusions Routine NHS weight management services may achieve moderate weight losses through a comprehensive evidence-based dietary, activity and behavioural approach including psychological care. Weight losses should be reported using a range of outcome measures so that the effectiveness of different services can be compared

Twistor-Inspired Construction of Electroweak Vector Boson Currents

We present an extension of the twistor-motivated MHV vertices and accompanying rules presented by Cachazo, Svrvcek and Witten to the construction of vector-boson currents coupling to an arbitrary source. In particular, we give rules for constructing off-shell vector-boson currents with one fermion pair and n gluons of arbitrary helicity. These currents may be employed directly in the computation of electroweak amplitudes. The rules yield expressions in agreement with previously-obtained results for Z,W,\gamma^* --> qbar q + n gluons (analytically up to n=3, beyond via the Berends--Giele recursion relations). We also confirm that the contribution to a seven-point amplitude containing the non-abelian triple vector-boson coupling obtained using the next-to-MHV currents matches the previous result in the literature.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, v2 minor corrections and added commentary on multiple vector boson

An Evaluation of The Migrant Access Project Plus Final Report

The Migrant Access Project operated within West and South Leeds, 2018 until March 2020. It aimed to provide support to new and existing migrant communities to better help them integrate, and thus reduce pressure on existing services, minimising low level tensions and thereby concerns from settled communities within Leeds. Our 2018 interim report focused upon the Migrant Access Plus Project (MAPP) that was running in the Armley and Holbeck areas of the city. Our 2019 report explored the extension of the project into three additional areas as part of the second year of delivery: Beeston Hill, Little London/Hyde Park/Woodhouse and New Wortley. This final report draws together all findings and overall learning from the delivery of MAPP, following a third year of extension funding

The harnessing of peptide-monolith constructs for single step plasmid DNA purification

The availability of synthetic peptides has paved the way for their use in tailor-made interactions with biomolecules. In this study, a 16mer LacI-based peptide was used as an affinity ligand to examine the scale up feasibility for plasmid DNA purification. First, the peptide was designed and characterized for the affinity purification of lacO containing plasmid DNA, to be employed as a high affinity ligand for the potential capturing of plasmid DNA in a single unit operation. It was found there were no discernible interactions with a control plasmid that did not encode the lacO nucleotide sequence. The dissociation equilibrium constant of the binding between the 16mer peptide and target pUC19 was 5.0 ± 0.5 × 10-8 M as assessed by surface plasmon resonance. This selectivity and moderated affinity indicate that the 16mer is suitable for the adsorption and chromatographic purification of plasmid DNA. The suitability of this peptide was then evaluated using a chromatography system with the 16mer peptide immobilized to a customized monolith to purify plasmid DNA, obtaining preferential purification of supercoiled pUC19. The results demonstrate the applicability of peptide-monolith supports to scale up the purification process for plasmid DNA using designed ligands via a biomimetic approach

Compliance with international children's rights in the youth justice system

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the policy position of HM Inspectorate of Probation.© Crown copyright 2022. You may re-use this information (excluding logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. This report was kindly produced by Dr Louise Forde, examining international children’s rights and how they can be adequately realised for children who come into contact with the youth justice system. While there is no ‘silver bullet’ to developing a rights-compliant system, five key criteria are set out, encompassing children’s reintegration, dignity and wellbeing, a prioritisation of diversion, the incorporation of legal safeguards, and a focus upon implementation and operation. A polarisation of considerations relating to welfare or justice is seen as unhelpful; to secure and uphold children’s rights, there needs to be protection for both (i) children’s legal and procedural rights and (ii) their wellbeing and developmental needs. More generally, explicit commitment to realising children’s rights is required. Within the inspectorate, we will continue to review the alignment of our inspection frameworks to international standards and the latest evidence underpinning high-quality services. Dr Robin Moore Head of Research10.13039/501100002081 Irish Research Council, “Welfare” and “justice” in Irish youth justice: Punishing children or meeting their needs

Development and application of a prophage integrase typing scheme for group B Streptococcus

Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is a gram-positive pathogen mainly affecting humans, cattle, and fishes. Mobile genetic elements play an important role in the evolution of GBS, its adaptation to host species and niches, and its pathogenicity. In particular, lysogenic prophages have been associated with a high virulence of certain strains and with their ability to cause invasive infections in humans. It is therefore important to be able to accurately detect and classify prophages in GBS genomes. Several bioinformatic tools for the identification of prophages in bacterial genomes are available on-line. However, genome searches for most of these programs are affected by the composition of their reference database. Lack of databases specific to GBS results in failure to recognize all prophages in the species. Additionally, performance of these programs is affected by genome fragmentation in the case of draft genomes, leading to underestimation of the number of phages. They also prove impractical when dealing with large genome datasets and they do not offer a quick way of classifying bacteriophages. We developed a GBS-specific method to screen genome assemblies for the presence of prophages and to classify them based on a reproducible typing scheme. This was achieved through an extensive search of a vast number of high-quality GBS sequences (n = 572) originating from different host species and countries in order to build a database of phage integrase types, on which the scheme is based. The proposed typing scheme comprises 12 integration sites and sixteen prophage integrase types, including multiple subtypes per integration site and integrase genes that were not site-specific. Two putative phage-inducible chromosomal islands (PICI) and their insertion sites were also identified during the course of these analyses. Phages were common and diverse in all major clonal complexes associated with human disease and detected in isolates from every animal species and continent included in the study. This database will facilitate further work on the prevalence and role of prophages in GBS evolution, and identifies the roles of PICIs in GBS and of prophage in hypervirulent ST283 as areas for further research

Realising the Right of the Child to Participate in the Criminal Process

Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship

Rainbows: A primary health care initiative for primary schools

Within the current Australian health system is the understanding of a need to change from the predominate biomedical model to incorporate a comprehensive primary health care centred approach, embracing the social contexts of health and wellbeing. Recent research investigated the benefits of the primary health care philosophy and strategies in relation to the Rainbows programme which addresses grief and loss in primary school aged students in Western Australia. A multidisciplinary collaboration between the Western Australian Departments of Health and Education enabled community school health nurse coordinators to train teacher facilitators in the implementation of Rainbows, enabling support for students and their parents. The results of this qualitative study indicate that all participants regard Rainbows as effective, with many perceived benefits to students and their families

Evolutionary History, Immigration History, and the Extent of Diversification in Community Assembly

During community assembly, species may accumulate not only by immigration, but also by in situ diversification. Diversification has intrigued biologists because its extent varies even among closely related lineages under similar ecological conditions. Recent research has suggested that some of this puzzling variation may be caused by stochastic differences in the history of immigration (relative timing and order of immigration by founding populations), indicating that immigration and diversification may affect community assembly interactively. However, the conditions under which immigration history affects diversification remain unclear. Here we propose the hypothesis that whether or not immigration history influences the extent of diversification depends on the founding populations’ prior evolutionary history, using evidence from a bacterial experiment. To create genotypes with different evolutionary histories, replicate populations of Pseudomonas fluorescens were allowed to adapt to a novel environment for a short or long period of time (approximately 10 or 100 bacterial generations) with or without exploiters (viral parasites). Each evolved genotype was then introduced to a new habitat either before or after a standard competitor genotype. Most genotypes diversified to a greater extent when introduced before, rather than after, the competitor. However, introduction order did not affect the extent of diversification when the evolved genotype had previously adapted to the environment for a long period of time without exploiters. Diversification of these populations was low regardless of introduction order. These results suggest that the importance of immigration history in diversification can be predicted by the immigrants’ evolutionary past. The hypothesis proposed here may be generally applicable in both micro- and macro-organisms

Bacterial genomics reveal the complex epidemiology of an emerging pathogen in Arctic and boreal ungulates

Northern ecosystems are currently experiencing unprecedented ecological change, largely driven by a rapidly changing climate. Pathogen range expansion, and emergence and altered patterns of infectious disease, are increasingly reported in wildlife at high latitudes. Understanding the causes and consequences of shifting pathogen diversity and host-pathogen interactions in these ecosystems is important for wildlife conservation, and for indigenous populations that depend on wildlife. Among the key questions are whether disease events are associated with endemic or recently introduced pathogens, and whether emerging strains are spreading throughout the region. In this study, we used a phylogenomic approach to address these questions of pathogen endemicity and spread for Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae, an opportunistic multi-host bacterial pathogen associated with recent mortalities in arctic and boreal ungulate populations in North America. We isolated E. rhusiopathiae from carcasses associated with large-scale die-offs of muskoxen in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and from contemporaneous mortality events and/or population declines among muskoxen in northwestern Alaska and caribou and moose in western Canada. Bacterial genomic diversity differed markedly among these locations; minimal divergence was present among isolates from muskoxen in the Canadian Arctic, while in caribou and moose populations, strains from highly divergent clades were isolated from the same location, or even from within a single carcass. These results indicate that mortalities among northern ungulates are not associated with a single emerging strain of E. rhusiopathiae, and that alternate hypotheses need to be explored. Our study illustrates the value and limitations of bacterial genomic data for discriminating between ecological hypotheses of disease emergence, and highlights the importance of studying emerging pathogens within the broader context of environmental and host factors