The repeatability of the abbreviated (4-h) Oral Fat Tolerance Test and influence of prior acute aerobic exercise

© 2016 The Author(s) Purpose: The Oral Fat Tolerance Test (OFTT) is regarded as a repeatable measure used to assess postprandial triglyceride (TAG) levels, with higher levels observed in cardio-metabolic disorders. Acute aerobic exercise intervention before OFTT reduces the TAG response, but the repeatability of this effect is unknown. The aim of this study was to determine the repeatability of the abbreviated 4-h OFTT with and without immediate prior aerobic exercise. Methods: On four separate days, healthy adult male participants underwent two 4-h OFTT (n = 10) and another two 4-h OFTT with 1-h of standardised moderate intensity aerobic exercise performed immediately before meal ingestion (n = 11). The OFTT meal composition included 75.4 g total fat, 21.7 g carbohydrate and 13.7 g protein. Venous blood was sampled at baseline and hourly up to 4 h after the OFTT meal ingestion, and TAG area under the curve (AUC) was calculated. Results: Nonparametric Bland–Altman analysis of 4-h TAG AUC revealed that 9 of 10 repeat measurements fell within ±15 % of the median TAG AUC for the OFTT. By contrast, two of 11 repeat measurements fell within ±15 % of the median TAG AUC for the OFTT undertaken with 1-h prior aerobic exercise. Conclusions: The 4-h OFTT is a repeatable test of postprandial TAG responses in healthy men. However, aerobic exercise performed immediately before OFTT considerably increases the variability of TAG AUC. These findings have implications for interpretation of research studies investigating exercise intervention performed immediately before OFTT. Future studies should also investigate the repeatability of exercise performed 8–24 h before OFTT

Military Veteran Career Transition Coaching Experiences: Navigating the Shift from Military Service to Civilian Employment

Shifting from a structured military culture is regarded as a critical juncture in the lives of military veterans. Veterans face career adaptation, identity conflict, and social integration challenges separating from the military, yet current military transition programs fail to address these challenges. Research on veterans’ transition has overlooked how career transition coaching benefits veterans’ reintegration into civilian careers, leaving a gap in understanding veterans’ challenges and successes with career transition coaching. Addressing veterans’ transition challenges is crucial for developing programs that facilitate their successful integration into civilian careers. This multiple-case qualitative study employed interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to address this gap by investigating the experiences of 11 U.S. veterans who participated in career transition coaching programs during their separation. The research questions explored the influence of aligning career goals with personal values on the effectiveness of career transition coaching for veterans, framed within role and social identity theories. Through semi-structured interviews, four experiential themes emerged: identity conflict, redefining purpose, understanding and articulating military skills, and social and community integration. The findings emphasize the need for personalized career transition coaching that supports personal growth, professional development, and social adaptation. This study calls for research and practice into strategies to improve post-military career outcomes and underscores the role of psychologists, career consultants, VA and DoD programs, and community organizations in supporting improved transition outcomes

Implicit Sentiment Identification using Aspect based Opinion Mining

Opinion mining or sentiment analysis is the computational study of opinions or emotions towards aspects or things. The aspects are nothing but attributes or components of the individuals, events, topics, products and organizations. Opinion mining has been an active research area in Web mining and Natural Language Processing (NLP) in recent years. With the explosive growth of E-commerce, there are millions of product options available and people tend to review the viewpoint of others before buying a product. An aspect-based opinion mining approach helps in analyzing opinions about product features and attributes. This project is based on extracting aspects and related customer sentiments on tourism domain. This offers an approach to discover consumer preferences about tourism products and services using statistical opinion mining. The proposed system tries to extract both explicit aspects as well as implicit aspects from customer reviews. It thus increases the sentiment orientation of opinion. Most of the researches were based on explicit opinions of customers. This system tries to retrieve implicit sentiments. Due to the growing availability of unstructured reviews, the proposed system gives a summarized form of the information that is obtained from the reviews in order to furnish customers with pin point or crisp results. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.16049

The window of desiccation tolerance shown by early-stage germinating seedlings remains open in the resurrection plant, Xerophyta viscosa

Resurrection plants are renowned for their vegetative desiccation tolerance (DT). While DT in vegetative tissues is rare in angiosperms, it is ubiquitous in mature orthodox seeds. During germination, seedlings gradually lose DT until they pass a point of no return, after which they can no longer survive dehydration. Here we investigate whether seedlings of the resurrection plant Xerophyta viscosa ever lose the capacity to establish DT. Seedlings from different stages of germination were dehydrated for 48 hours and assessed for their ability to recover upon rehydration. While a transient decline in the ability of X. viscosa seedlings to survive dehydration was observed, at no point during germination was the ability to re-establish DT completely lost in all seedlings. Pre-treatment of seedlings with PEG or sucrose reduced this transient decline, and improved the survival rate at all stages of germination. Additionally, we observed that the trait of poikilochlorophylly (or loss of chlorophyll) observed in adult X. viscosa leaves can be induced throughout seedling development. These results suggest that the window of DT seen in germinating orthodox seeds remains open in X. viscosa seedlings and that vegetative DT in Xerophyta species may have evolved from the ability to retain this program through to adulthood

Testosterone Trajectories and Reference Ranges in a Large Longitudinal Sample of Male Adolescents

Pubertal dynamics plays an important role in physical and psychological development of children and adolescents. We aim to provide reference ranges of plasma testosterone in a large longitudinal sample. Furthermore, we describe a measure of testosterone trajectories during adolescence that can be used in future investigations of development.We carried out longitudinal measurements of plasma testosterone in 2,216 samples obtained from 513 males (9 to 17 years of age) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. We used integration of a model fitted to each participant's testosterone trajectory to calculate a measure of average exposure to testosterone over adolescence. We pooled these data with corresponding values reported in the literature to provide a reference range of testosterone levels in males between the ages of 6 and 19 years.The average values of total testosterone in the ALSPAC sample range from 0.82 nmol/L (Standard Deviation [SD]: 0.09) at 9 years of age to 16.5 (SD: 2.65) nmol/L at 17 years of age; these values are congruent with other reports in the literature. The average exposure to testosterone is associated with different features of testosterone trajectories such as Peak Testosterone Change, Age at Peak Testosterone Change, and Testosterone at 17 years of age as well as the timing of the growth spurt during puberty.The average exposure to testosterone is a useful measure for future investigations using testosterone trajectories to examine pubertal dynamics

Bio-analytical method validation and its importance in pharma research - A review article

Bioanalytical method based on a variety of physico-chemical and biological techniques such as chromatography, immunoassay and mass spectrometry, must be validated prior to and during use to give confidence in the results generated. It is the process used to establish that a quantitative analytical method is suitable for biomedical applications. Bioanalytical method validation includes all of the procedures that demonstrate that a particular method used for quantitative measurement of analytes in a given biological matrix, such as blood, plasma, serum, or urine is reliable and reproducible for the intended use. The present manuscript focuses on the consistent evaluation of the key bioanalytical validation parameters is discussed: accuracy, precision, sensitivity, selectivity, standard curve, limits of quantification, range, recovery and stability. These validation parameters are described, together with an example of validation methodology applied in the case of chromatographic methods used in bioanalysis, taking in account to the recent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines and EMA guid

The relation between repeated 6-minute walk test performance and outcome in patients with chronic heart failure

Objective: To assess the prognostic implications of the 6-minute walk test (6-MWT) distance measured twice, one year apart, in a large sample of patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) followed for an extended period ( > . 8. years from baseline). Material and methods: Patients undertook a 6-MWT at baseline and at one year, and were followed up for 8. years from baseline. Results: Six hundred patients (median [inter-quartile range, IQR]) (age 78 [72-84] years; 75% males; body mass index 27 [25-31] kg·m -2 ; left ventricular ejection fraction 34 [26-38] %) were included. At baseline, median 6-MWT distance was 232 (60-386) m. There was no significant change in 6-MWT distance at one year (change -12m; P=0.533). During a median follow-up of 8.0years in survivors, 396patients had died (66%). Four variables were independent predictors of all-cause mortality in a multivariable Cox model (adjusted for body mass index, age, QRS duration, left ventricular ejection fraction); increasing NT pro-BNP, decreasing 6-MWT distance at 1year, decreasing haemoglobin, and increasing urea. Conclusions: Distance walked during the 6-MWT is an independent predictor of all-cause mortality in patients with CHF. In survivors, the 6-MWT distance is stable at 1 year. The 6-MWT distance at 1 year carries similar prognostic information. © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS