Motivations for active commuting: a qualitative investigation of the period of home or work relocation.

BACKGROUND: Promoting walking or cycling to work (active commuting) could help to increase population physical activity levels. According to the habit discontinuity and residential self-selection hypotheses, moving home or workplace is a period when people (re)assess, and may be more likely to change, their travel behavior. Research in this area is dominated by the use of quantitative research methods, but qualitative approaches can provide in-depth insight into the experiences and processes of travel behavior change. This qualitative study aimed to explore experiences and motivations regarding travel behavior around the period of relocation, in an effort to understand how active commuting might be promoted more effectively. METHODS: Participants were recruited from the Commuting and Health in Cambridge study cohort in the UK. Commuters who had moved home, workplace or both between 2009 and 2010 were identified, and a purposive sample was invited to participate in semi-structured interviews regarding their experiences of, and travel behavior before and after, relocating. A grounded theory approach was taken to analysis. RESULTS: Twenty-six commuters participated. Participants were motivated by convenience, speed, cost and reliability when selecting modes of travel for commuting. Physical activity was not a primary motivation, but incidental increases in physical activity were described and valued in association with active commuting, the use of public transport and the use of park-and-ride facilities. CONCLUSIONS: Emphasizing and improving the relative convenience, cost, speed and reliability of active commuting may be a more promising approach to promoting its uptake than emphasizing the health benefits, at least around the time of relocation. Providing good quality public transport and free car parking within walking or cycling distance of major employment sites may encourage the inclusion of active travel in the journey to work, particularly for people who live too far from work to walk or cycle the entire journey. Contrary to a straightforward interpretation of the self-selection hypothesis, people do not necessarily decide how they prefer to travel, relocate, and then travel in their expected way; rather, there is constant negotiation, reassessment and adjustment of travel behavior following relocation which may offer an extended window of opportunity for travel behavior change.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Increasing the amylose content of durum wheat through silencing of the SBEIIa genes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>High amylose starch has attracted particular interest because of its correlation with the amount of Resistant Starch (RS) in food. RS plays a role similar to fibre with beneficial effects for human health, providing protection from several diseases such as colon cancer, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and cardiovascular diseases. Amylose content can be modified by a targeted manipulation of the starch biosynthetic pathway. In particular, the inactivation of the enzymes involved in amylopectin synthesis can lead to the increase of amylose content. In this work, genes encoding starch branching enzymes of class II (SBEIIa) were silenced using the RNA interference (RNAi) technique in two cultivars of durum wheat, using two different methods of transformation (biolistic and Agrobacterium). Expression of RNAi transcripts was targeted to the seed endosperm using a tissue-specific promoter.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Amylose content was markedly increased in the durum wheat transgenic lines exhibiting <it>SBEIIa </it>gene silencing. Moreover the starch granules in these lines were deformed, possessing an irregular and deflated shape and being smaller than those present in the untransformed controls. Two novel granule bound proteins, identified by SDS-PAGE in SBEIIa RNAi lines, were investigated by mass spectrometry and shown to have strong homologies to the waxy proteins. RVA analysis showed new pasting properties associated with high amylose lines in comparison with untransformed controls. Finally, pleiotropic effects on other starch genes were found by semi-quantitative and Real-Time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have found that the silencing of <it>SBEIIa </it>genes in durum wheat causes obvious alterations in granule morphology and starch composition, leading to high amylose wheat. Results obtained with two different methods of transformation and in two durum wheat cultivars were comparable.</p

Interoceptive training to target anxiety in autistic adults (ADIE): A single-center, superiority randomized controlled trial

Background: This trial tested if a novel therapy, Aligning Dimensions of Interoceptive Experience (ADIE), reduces anxiety in autistic adults. ADIE targets the association of anxiety with mismatch between subjective and behavioral measures of an individual's interoceptive sensitivity to bodily signals, including heartbeats. // Methods: In this superiority randomized controlled trial, autistic adults (18–65 years) from clinical and community settings in Southern England were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive six sessions of ADIE or an active ‘exteroceptive’ control therapy (emotional prosody identification). Researchers conducting outcome assessments were blind to allocation. ADIE combines two modified heartbeat detection tasks with performance feedback and physical activity manipulation that transiently increases cardiac arousal. Participants were followed-up one-week (T1) and 3-months post-intervention (T2). The primary outcome was Spielberger Trait Anxiety Score (STAI-T) at T2. Outcomes were assessed on an intention-to-treat basis using multiple imputation for dealing with missing values. This trial was registered at International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Registry, ISRCTN14848787. // Findings: Between July 01, 2017, and December 31, 2019, 121 participants were randomly allocated to ADIE (n = 61) or prosody (n = 60) intervention groups. Data at T1 was provided by 85 (70%) participants (46 [75%] ADIE; 39 [65%] prosody). Data at T2 was provided by 61 (50%) participants (36 [59%] ADIE; 25 [42%] prosody). One adverse event (cardiac anxiety following ADIE) was recorded. A statistically significant group effect of ADIE on trait anxiety continued at T2 (estimated mean difference 3•23 [95% CI 1•13 to 5•29]; d = 0•30 [95% CI 0•09 to 0•51]; p = 0•005) with 31% of ADIE group participants meeting trial criteria for recovery (compared to 16% in the control group). // Interpretation: ADIE can reduce anxiety in autistic adults, putatively improving regulatory control over internal stimuli. With little reliance on language and emotional insight, ADIE may constitute an inclusive intervention

EQUIPT: protocol of a comparative effectiveness research study evaluating cross-context transferability of economic evidence on tobacco control

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Tobacco smoking claims 700 000 lives every year in Europe and the cost of tobacco smoking in the EU is estimated between €98 and €130 billion annually; direct medical care costs and indirect costs such as workday losses each represent half of this amount. Policymakers all across Europe are in need of bespoke information on the economic and wider returns of investing in evidence-based tobacco control, including smoking cessation agendas. EQUIPT is designed to test the transferability of one such economic evidence base-the English Tobacco Return on Investment (ROI) tool-to other EU member states

Hand gesture classification using 24 GHz FMCW dual polarised radar

All rights reserved. This paper evaluates the classification performance of a dual polarised on receive, 24 GHz Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar system to autonomously identify micro-Doppler signatures of unique hand gestures. We employ an Eigen subspace feature selection technique on the calculated signal subspace in order to classify each gesture. Measurements using the dual polarised radar, permitting simultaneous recording of both the co-pol and cross-pol returns, are evaluated with this processing technique and results are reported herein. Our analysis displays the challenges presented by the high variance in individuals gestures and the limited additional information the cross polarised returns have provided to the classifier. Classification performance comparisons are presented when co, cross and dual polarised data are provided to the classifier. With this technique we achieve autonomous classification performance of up to 84.6% when Eigenvalue derived features are used for classification

Under pressure: Response urgency modulates striatal and insula activity during decision-making under risk

When deciding whether to bet in situations that involve potential monetary loss or gain (mixed gambles), a subjective sense of pressure can influence the evaluation of the expected utility associated with each choice option. Here, we explored how gambling decisions, their psychophysiological and neural counterparts are modulated by an induced sense of urgency to respond. Urgency influenced decision times and evoked heart rate responses, interacting with the expected value of each gamble. Using functional MRI, we observed that this interaction was associated with changes in the activity of the striatum, a critical region for both reward and choice selection, and within the insula, a region implicated as the substrate of affective feelings arising from interoceptive signals which influence motivational behavior. Our findings bridge current psychophysiological and neurobiological models of value representation and action-programming, identifying the striatum and insular cortex as the key substrates of decision-making under risk and urgency

A genetic association study of glutamine-encoding DNA sequence structures, somatic CAG expansion, and DNA repair gene variants, with Huntington disease clinical outcomes

BACKGROUND: Huntington disease (HD) is caused by an unstable CAG/CAA repeat expansion encoding a toxic polyglutamine tract. Here, we tested the hypotheses that HD outcomes are impacted by somatic expansion of, and polymorphisms within, the HTT CAG/CAA glutamine-encoding repeat, and DNA repair genes. METHODS: The sequence of the glutamine-encoding repeat and the proportion of somatic CAG expansions in blood DNA from participants inheriting 40 to 50 CAG repeats within the TRACK-HD and Enroll-HD cohorts were determined using high-throughput ultra-deep-sequencing. Candidate gene polymorphisms were genotyped using kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP). Genotypic associations were assessed using time-to-event and regression analyses. FINDINGS: Using data from 203 TRACK-HD and 531 Enroll-HD participants, we show that individuals with higher blood DNA somatic CAG repeat expansion scores have worse HD outcomes: a one-unit increase in somatic expansion score was associated with a Cox hazard ratio for motor onset of 3·05 (95% CI = 1·94 to 4·80, p = 1·3 × 10-6). We also show that individual-specific somatic expansion scores are associated with variants in FAN1 (pFDR = 4·8 × 10-6), MLH3 (pFDR = 8·0 × 10-4), MLH1 (pFDR = 0·004) and MSH3 (pFDR = 0·009). We also show that HD outcomes are best predicted by the number of pure CAGs rather than total encoded-glutamines. INTERPRETATION: These data establish pure CAG length, rather than encoded-glutamine, as the key inherited determinant of downstream pathophysiology. These findings have implications for HD diagnostics, and support somatic expansion as a mechanistic link for genetic modifiers of clinical outcomes, a driver of disease, and potential therapeutic target in HD and related repeat expansion disorders. FUNDING: CHDI Foundation