Gulf of Maine Intermediate Water

The thermohaline dynamics of the Gulf of Maine are analyzed from the two year, eight cruise, data set of Colton, Marak, Nickerson, and Stoddard (1968). Six water masses are described : the M aine Surface Water, Maine Intermediate Water, and the Maine Bottom Water as interior water masses; and the Scotian Shelf Water, the Slope Water, and the Georges Bank Water as exterior water masses. P articular attention is given to the formation and disposition of the Maine Intermediate Water...

Physical origins of Georges Bank Water

The seasonal behavior of the Georges Bank Water mass is described from the context of the historic National Oceanographic Data Center file (1910-1978). The Georges Bank Water is defined as the water type most commonly found in the top 40 m of water within the 65 m isobath. Plots of its distribution show it unique within the Georges Bank/Gulf of Maine region...

Is your EPL attractive? Classification of publications through download statistics

Here we consider the download statistics of EPL publications. We find that papers in the journal are characterised by fast accumulations of downloads during the first couple of months after publication, followed by slower rates thereafter, behaviour which can be represented by a model with predictive power. We also find that individual papers can be classified in various ways, allowing us to compare categories for open-access and non-open-access papers. For example, for the latter publications, which comprise the bulk of EPL papers, a small proportion (2%) display intense bursts of download activity, possibly following an extended period of less remarkable behaviour. About 18% have an especially high degree of attractiveness over and above what is typical for the journal. One can also classify the ageing of attractiveness by examining download half-lives. Approximately 18% have strong interest initially, waning in time. A further 20% exhibit "delayed recognition" with relatively late spurs in download activity. Although open-access papers enjoy more downloads on average, the proportions falling into each category are similar.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in EP

Association between sleep quality and type 2 diabetes at 20-year follow-up in the Southall and Brent REvisited (SABRE) cohort: a triethnic analysis.

BACKGROUND: The risk of developing type 2 diabetes associated with poor sleep quality is comparable to other lifestyle factors (eg, overweight, physical inactivity). In the UK, these risk factors could not explain the two to three-fold excess risks in South-Asian and African-Caribbean men compared with Europeans. This study investigates (1) the association between mid-life sleep quality and later-life type 2 diabetes risk and (2) the potential modifying effect of ethnicity. METHODS: The Southall and Brent REvisited cohort is composed of Europeans, South-Asians and African-Caribbeans (median follow-up 19 years). Complete-case analysis was performed on 2189 participants without diabetes at baseline (age=51.7±7 SD). Competing risks regressions were used to estimate the HRs of developing diabetes associated with self-reported baseline sleep (difficulty falling asleep, early morning waking, waking up tired, snoring and a composite sleep score), adjusting for confounders. Modifying effects of ethnicity were analysed by conducting interaction tests and ethnicity-stratified analyses. RESULTS: There were 484 occurrences of incident type 2 diabetes (22%). Overall, there were no associations between sleep exposures and diabetes risk. Interaction tests suggested a possible modifying effect for South-Asians compared with Europeans for snoring only (p=0.056). The ethnicity-stratified analysis found an association with snoring among South-Asians (HR 1.41, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.85), comparing those who snored often/always versus occasionally/never. There were no elevated risks for the other sleep exposures. CONCLUSION: The association between snoring and type 2 diabetes appeared to be modified by ethnicity, and was strongest in South-Asians

Citation analysis of the scientific publications of Britton Chance in ISI citation indexes

Britton Chance was a pioneer in many scientific fields such as enzymatic reaction kinetics, bioenergetics, metabolism, in vivo NMR, and biophotonics. As an engineer, physical chemist, physicist, physiologist, biophysicist, biochemist, innovator and educator, he had worked in diversified fields over extended periods between 1926 until his death in 2010, at the age of 97. In order to illustrate his scientific career and great impact on research from a new perspective, we employ scientometric analysis tools to analyze the publications of Britton Chance with data downloaded from the ISI Citation Indexes in April 2013. We included articles, reviews and proceeding papers but excluded meeting abstracts. In total, we obtained 1023 publication records with 1236 authors in 266 journals with 17,114 citations from 1945 to 2013. We show the annual publications and citations that Britton Chance received from 1945 to 2013, and generate HistCite maps on the basis of the global citations (GCS) and local (self) citations (LCS) to show the citation relationships among the top-30 publications of Britton Chance. Metabolism and the development of physical methods to probe it appear to be the connecting thread of the lifelong research of Britton Chance. Furthermore, we generate the journal map and co-authorship map to show the broad scope of research topics and collaborators and the high impacts of the scientific oeuvre of Britton Chance ranging from physics, engineering, chemistry and biology to medicine

The association between plasma metabolites and sleep quality in the Southall and Brent Revisited Study (SABRE): A cross-sectional analysis

Background: Disordered metabolic processes have been associated with abnormal sleep patterns. However, the biological triggers and pathways are yet to be elucidated. / Methods: Participants were from the Southall and Brent REvisited (SABRE) cohort. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy provided 146 circulating plasma metabolites. Sleep questionnaires identified the presence or absence of: difficulty falling asleep (DFA), early morning waking (EMW), waking up tired (WUT) and snoring. Metabolites were compared between the sleep quality categories using the t-test, then filtered using a false discovery rate of 0.05. Generalized linear models with logit-link assessed the associations between filtered metabolites and sleep phenotypes. Adjustment was made for important demographic and health-related covariates. / Results: 2718 SABRE participants were included. After correcting for multiple testing, 3 metabolites remained for DFA, 59 for snoring and none for EMW and WUT. In fully-adjusted models, 1 standard deviation increase in serum histidine, leucine and valine associated with lower odds of DFA by 0.84-0.89 (95% confidence intervals [CIs]: 0.75-0.99). Branched chain amino acids (ORs 1.11-1.15, 95%CIs 1.01-1.26) were positively associated with snoring. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.82-0.96) and total cholesterol in low-density lipoprotein (LDL) (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.82-0.96) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) (ORs 0.90, 95% CIs 0.83-0.99) associated with lower odds of snoring. / Conclusion: Histidine, leucine and valine associated with lower odds of difficulty falling asleep, while docosahexaenoic acid and cholesterol LDL and HDL subfractions associated with lower odds of snoring. Identified metabolites could provide guidance on the metabolic pathways behind the adverse sleep quality

The relationship between sleep quality and all-cause, CVD and cancer mortality: the Southall and Brent REvisited study (SABRE)

Background: Both long and short sleep duration increase risk of mortality. Most previous studies have been performed in Europeans and have focused on sleep duration. Thus, we aimed to investigate the association between sleep quality and mortality across three different ethnic groups. / Methods: We used data from the Southall and Brent REvisited Study (SABRE) cohort, which comprises first generation migrant South Asian and African Caribbean men and women, aged 40–69 years, recruited between 1988 and 1991. In sum, 4399 participants provided complete data at baseline and follow-up. Of those, 1656 died by December 2017. Our exposures (eg, difficulty falling asleep, early morning waking and waking up tired in the morning) were self-reported and our primary outcome was mortality. We used Cox proportional hazards models to analyse our data, adjusting for baseline-measured confounders. / Results: None of the sleep measures were strongly associated with all-cause mortality in Europeans or African Caribbeans, whilst in South Asians difficulty falling asleep was related to an increased risk of all-cause mortality (HR = 1.28, 95%CI = 1.01; 1.61). In Europeans, early morning waking was associated with a moderately increased risk of cardiovascular death (HR = 1.31, 95%CI = 1.05; 1.63); alternately, this association was not as strong in the other groups. / Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the relationship between sleep quality and mortality may differ by ethnic group, but formal heterogeneity tests indicated that the strongest difference in HRs was observed for early morning waking and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality across the three groups (Cochran's Q test p = 0.036). As such, these results are novel and provide support for ethnic differences in sleep quality and mortality, and may have implications for precision medicine

miR-322-5p targets IGF-1 and is suppressed in the heart of rats with pulmonary hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is characterised by remodelling of the pulmonary vasculature leading to right ventricular hypertrophy. Here we show that miR-322-5p (the rodent orthologue of miR-424-5p) expression is decreased in the right ventricle of monocrotaline-treated rats, a model of PAH, whereas a putative target insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) is increased. IGF-1 mRNA was enriched 16-fold in RNA immunoprecipitated with Ago2, indicating binding to miR-322-5p. In cell transfection experiments, miR-322-5p suppressed the activity of a luciferase reporter containing a section of the IGF-1 3′ untranslated region (UTR) as well as IGF-1 mRNA and protein levels. Taken together, these data suggest that miR-322 targets IGF-1, a process downregulated in PAH-related RV hypertrophy