Effect Of Exercise Vs. Attention-Control On Depression Symptomatology In Ovarian Cancer Survivors: The Women’s Activity And Lifestyle Study In Connecticut (walc)

Background: With no effective screening tool, ovarian cancer survivors often suffer from unpleasant treatment-related side effects that influence quality of life. Increased physical activity has been associated with lower depression scores in ovarian cancer survivors. However, to date, no randomized controlled trial assessing the effect of exercise on depression has been conducted in this population. The Women’s Activity and Lifestyle Study in Connecticut (WALC) was a randomized trial examining the impact of exercise vs. attention-control on quality of life, body composition, and cancer biomarkers in ovarian cancer survivors. This analysis examined the effect of exercise on depression scores. Methods: We enrolled 144 physically inactive (\u3c 90 minutes per week of exercise) ovarian cancer survivors who had been diagnosed within the past 4 years and completed initial chemotherapy into a six-month randomized controlled trial. Women randomized to the exercise intervention arm (n = 74) received 25 weekly phone calls from a certified cancer exercise trainer and were counseled on increasing their physical activity to 150 minutes per week of home-based aerobic exercise. Women randomized to the attention-control arm (n = 70) also received 25 weekly phone calls to discuss relevant health topics. Depression symptomatology was measured via the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) at baseline and six-months. Student’s t-test and generalized linear models were used to compare changes in depression from baseline to six-months between the two arms. Results: All baseline characteristics were similar between the two arms. Adherence to both the exercise intervention and attendance to the weekly calls was outstanding with women on the exercise intervention arm exercising an average of 166 minutes per week and \u3e70% of women on both arms attending \u3e 20 calls. At baseline 39 women (27%) had a CES-D score greater than 16, indicating depressive symptomatology. CES-D scores decreased in women on the exercise intervention arm by an average of 2.2 ± 7.0 points (17% decrease) compared to an increase of 0.4 ± 5.6 points (4% increase) in women randomized to the attention-control arm (p = 0.02). A dose-response inverse relation of exercise with CES-D score was also observed (p \u3c 0.01). Conclusions: Ovarian cancer survivors are interested in and able to exercise at recommended levels, with exercise decreasing CES-D scores. Exercise above and beyond the attention participants received helped improve depression symptomatology. Exercise programs for ovarian cancer survivors should be implemented in an effort to improve depressive symptoms

The Effect of Acute and Chronic Exercise on Mitochondrial Respiratory Sensitivity to ADP in Human Skeletal Muscle

ADP/ATP is believed to either diffuse slowly between mitochondria and the cytosol or be substituted with fast diffusing creatine (Cr) and phosphocreatine (PCr) ‘phosphate shuttling’ catalyzed by mitochondrial creatine kinase. Previous studies assessing Cr-dependent and independent ADP-stimulated respiratory kinetics showed acute exercise had no effect or impairment on ADP/ATP diffusion but promoted phosphate shuttling. Conversely, chronic exercise impaired both models of energy exchange. In an attempt to reconcile these seemingly diverse findings, we employed a longitudinal study design to assess the acute and chronic effects of exercise on energy exchange in human skeletal muscle when modeling in vivo PCr/Cr conditions in vitro. Our findings demonstrate an impairment in energy exchange when modeling in vivo concentrations of PCr/Cr found during high intensity exercise, despite an increase in mitochondrial content. These results contradict classical models of endurance exercise adaptations which hypothesize that greater oxidative capacity coincides with improved energy exchange

Exploration of the Mitochondria as a Potential Therapeutic Target in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive muscle wasting disease resulting from a mutation in the X-linked gene encoding the protein dystrophin. DMD is characterized by profound muscle weakness as degenerating muscle is replaced by fat and connective tissue. Early loss of ambulation followed by premature death due to cardiac and/or respiratory failure characterize the most debilitating aspects of DMD, a disease for which there is currently no cure. Limited success has been reported when treating DMD with gene based therapies. Current standard of care involves glucocorticoids, which target a secondary cellular myopathy; inflammation. While this line of treatment has provided promising benefits, these drugs present a variety of negative side effects for patients. As such, extensive research has been focused on identifying both therapeutic targets and corresponding novel therapies for the treatment of the DMD myopathy. The focus of this dissertation was to first determine the degree and precise mechanism of mitochondrial dysfunction in DMD followed by the evaluation of SBT-20, a mitochondrial-targeted peptide, as a therapeutic candidate for the treatment and prevention of DMD pathophysiology. In order to address these questions, we first comprehensively evaluated mitochondrial bioenergetics across a spectrum of oxidative and glycolytic muscles in the D2.B10-DMDmdx/2J mouse (D2.mdx) in early and late stages of disease progression. We then tested the efficacy of SBT-20 in improving both DMD myopathy in respiratory and skeletal muscles, as well as the underlying mechanism of mitochondrial dysfunction in dystrophic muscle. Our findings reveal that the mitochondrial H2O2 emission is elevated during impaired oxidative phosphorylation in cardiac, respiratory, oxidative and glycolytic muscle in young (4-week) and aged (52-week) D2.mdx mice and furthermore, that there is a specific defect in mtCK functionality in oxidative muscle. SBT-20 was effective in improving mitochondrial bioenergetics following short (4 weeks) and long (12 weeks) term treatment. This was associated with improved pathophysiology following short-term treatment. Taken together, this thesis identifies impairments in mitochondrial bioenergetics as a contributing factor to the pathophysiology in dystrophic muscle and further highlights SBT-20 as a promising therapy for the improvement of myopathy in DMD

Motivational Interviewing: How Medical, Dental, OT, PA And Social Work Providers Can Work Interprofessionally To Create Holistic Treatment Teams For Patients Within Our Communities

Presentation describing following: Utilizing interprofessional skills to integrate social work, occupational therapy, dentistry, physician\u27s assistance, and osteopathic medicine. This poster represents the use of motivational interviewing and interdisciplinary teamwork strategies to create holistic and comprehensive care for patients within the community.https://dune.une.edu/cecespring2021/1015/thumbnail.jp

Hybrid Model for A Priori Performance Prediction of Multi-Job Type Swarm Search and Service Missions

In Swarm Search and Service (SSS) applications, swarm vehicles are responsible for concurrently searching an area while immediately servicing jobs discovered while searching. Multiple job types may be present in the environment. As vehicles move in and out of the swarm to service jobs, the coverage rate (i.e., area searched by the swarm per time step) changes dynamically to reflect the number of vehicles currently engaged in search. As a result, the arrival rates of jobs also changes dynamically. When planning SSS missions, the resource requirements, such as the swarm size needed to achieve a desired system performance, must be determined. The dynamically changing arrival rates make traditional queuing methods ill-suited to predict the performance of the swarm. This paper presents a hybrid method - Hybrid Model - for predicting the performance of the swarm a priori. It utilizes a Markov model, whose state representation captures the proportion of agents searching or servicing jobs. State-dependent queuing models are used to calculate the state transition function of the Markov states. The model has been developed as a prediction tool to assist mission planners in balancing complex trade-offs, but also provides a basis for optimizing swarm size where cost functions are known. The Hybrid Model is tested in previously considered constant coverage rate scenarios and the results are compared to a previously developed Queuing Model. Additional SSS missions are then simulated and their resulting performance is used to further evaluate the effectiveness of using the Hybrid Model as a prediction tool for swarm performance in more general scenarios with dynamically changing coverage rates

EngenuitySC Commercialization and Entrepreneurial Training Project

A team led by EngenuitySC has performed education and outreach on development of advanced energy markets that will enable wider use of clean energy technologies. This report details the efforts that have made significant advances to improve the market place through education, outreach, and increased communications between industry members. The project resulted in two self-funded industry clusters known as the Fuel Cell Collaborative and NuHub. This project has focused on building and strengthening the leading clean energy clusters in South Carolina: nuclear energy and fuel cell technologies. For the nuclear industry, a new cluster was developed that is now known as NuHub. This cluster has already engaged over 25 nuclear industry leaders or suppliers, four public sector partners, six community economic development foundations, and nearly ten academic partners in a 175 mile radius between Augusta, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina. Our outreach has touched over 2,000 stakeholders through the website alone, not including the public audiences and members of the business community reached through news stories and releases that were distributed to over 620 print and online publications. NuHub has established a formal leadership structure, developed subcommittees to focus on industry issues, instituted educational programs for the workforce, and created an industry funding structure that will sustain the industry cluster and mission. NuHub has participated in a wide-variety of community building and outreach activities since its formation under this grant. In the two years since its creation in 2010, we have initiated efforts focused in four main areas that correlate with the four NuHub subcommittees including: innovation, workforce development, industry engagement, and marketing and communications. NuHub successfully raised over $160,000 in both public and private funding, which has supported work to grow the cluster and engage partners including NuScale, Fluor, and Holtec International for research about deployment of advanced small modular reactor (SMR) technologies. The workforce training efforts from NuHub have focused on assisting existing industry to fill positions needed to construct and operate new nuclear plants being built at the VC Summer plant in Jenkinsville, SC and at Plant Votgle in Augusta, Georgia âÃÂàboth of whom are constructing the first nuclear reactors (Westinghouse AP 1000 units), to be built in over 30 years. This includes a partnership with Midlands Technical College to train reactor operators and the development of training facilities to support workforce development activities. It is anticipated that approximately 70 students a year will be trained through these programs in the next five years, and it will be expanded to meet new industry needs

Repeated training of homing pigeons reveals age dependent idiosyncrasy and visual landmark use.

Recent research into the navigational strategies of homing pigeons (Columba livia) inthe familiar area has highlighted the phenomenon of route fidelity – birds formingidiosyncratic flight paths to which they are loyal over multiple releases from the samesite, and even returning to this path when released from a near-by unfamiliar location.Such results highlight the potential importance of visual landmark cues in the homingprocess. However, not all birds have been shown to produce idiosyncratic routes orshow this route-joining behaviour. Here we use birds with and without flight experienceto study the formation of idiosyncratic routes when released repeatedly from a singlelocation, followed by two off-route releases with differing topography to see how flightexperience and local landmark features can influence navigational strategy in thefamiliar area. We found that, over the course of 20 sequential releases, birds withgreater flight experience tended to form idiosyncratic routes whereas less experiencedbirds did not show this tendency. When released from near-by sites (from which thebirds had not previously been released), a range of navigational strategies were seen,including flying parallel to the learned route (suggestive of a learned compassdirection), a direct flight path towards home (again indicative of compass use), re-joining the learned route, and following the coastline. These latter strategies aresuggestive of landmark usage. Analysis using time lag embedding was also used toassess the off-route releases, and the short-term correlation dimension valuesproduced (ranging from 1.5-2.5) were also indicative of strategies using one or twofactors (landmarks, compass, or a combination of these two). Individual birds oftenshowed different strategies at different sites, suggesting that the use of differentnavigational cues is highly flexible and situationally dependent

Enzymatically activated emulsions stabilised by interfacial nanofibre networks

We report on-demand formation of emulsions stabilised by interfacial nanoscale networks. These are formed through biocatalytic dephosphorylation and self-assembly of Fmoc(9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl)-dipeptide amphiphiles in aqueous/organic mixtures. This is achieved by using alkaline phosphatase which transforms surfactant-like phosphorylated precursors into self-assembling aromatic peptide amphiphiles (Fmoc-tyrosine-leucine, Fmoc-YL) that form nanofibrous networks. In biphasic organic/aqueous systems, these networks form preferentially at the interface thus providing a means of emulsion stabilisation. We demonstrate on-demand emulsification by enzyme addition, even after storage of the biphasic mixture for several weeks. Experimental (Fluorescence, FTIR spectroscopy, fluorescence microscopy, electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy) and computational techniques (atomistic molecular dynamics) are used to characterise the interfacial self-assembly process

Planning and Monitoring Multi-Job Type Swarm Search and Service Missions

To transition from control theory to real applications, it is important to study missions such as Swarm Search and Service (SSS) where vehicles are not only required to search an area, but also service all jobs that they find. In SSS missions, each type of job requires a group of vehicles to break off from the swarm for a given amount of time to service it. The required number of vehicles and the service rate are unique to each job type. Once a job has been completed, the vehicles are able to return to the swarm for use elsewhere. If not enough vehicles are present in the swarm at the time that the job is identified, that job is dropped without being serviced. In SSS missions that occur in open environments, the arrival rate of jobs varies dynamically as vehicles move in and out of the swarm to service jobs. Human operators are tasked with effectively planning and managing these complex missions. This paper presents a user study that seeks to test the efficacy and ease-of-use of a prediction model known as the Hybrid Model as an aid in planning and monitoring tasks. Results show that the novel computational model aid allows operators to more effectively choose the necessary swarm size to handle expected mission workload, as well as, maintain sufficient situation awareness to evaluate the performance of the swarm during missions