Increasing physical activity in postpartum multiethnic women in Hawaii: results from a pilot study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mothers of an infant are much less likely to exercise regularly compared to other women. This study tested the efficacy of a brief tailored intervention to increase physical activity (PA) in women 3–12 months after childbirth. The study used a pretest-posttest design. Sedentary women (n = 20) were recruited from a parenting organization. Half the participants were ethnic minorities, mean age was 33 ± 3.8, infants' mean age was 6.9 ± 2.4 months, 50% were primiparas, and mean body mass index was 23.6 ± 4.2.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The two-month intervention included telephone counseling, pedometers, referral to community PA resources, social support, email advice on PA/pedometer goals, and newsletters.</p> <p>The primary outcome of the study was minutes per week of moderate and vigorous leisure-time physical activity measured by the Godin physical activity instrument.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All women (100%) returned for post-test measures; thus, paired t-tests were used for pre-post increase in minutes of moderate and vigorous leisure-time physical activity and comparisons of moderate and vigorous leisure-time physical activity increases among ethnic groups. At baseline participants' reported a mean of 3 ± 13.4 minutes per week moderate and vigorous leisure-time physical activity. At post-test this significantly increased to 85.5 ± 76.4 minutes per week of moderate and vigorous leisure-time physical activity (p < .001, Cohen's d = 2.2; effect size r = 0.7). There were no differences in pre to post increases in minutes of moderate and vigorous leisure-time physical activity among races.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A telephone/email intervention tailored to meet the needs of postpartum women was effective in increasing physical activity levels. However, randomized trials comparing tailored telephone and email interventions to standard care and including long-term follow-up to determine maintenance of physical activity are warranted.</p

Development and validation of an improved algorithm for overlaying flexible molecules

A program for overlaying multiple flexible molecules has been developed. Candidate overlays are generated by a novel fingerprint algorithm, scored on three objective functions (union volume, hydrogen-bond match, and hydrophobic match), and ranked by constrained Pareto ranking. A diverse subset of the best ranked solutions is chosen using an overlay-dissimilarity metric. If necessary, the solutions can be optimised. A multi-objective genetic algorithm can be used to find additional overlays with a given mapping of chemical features but different ligand conformations. The fingerprint algorithm may also be used to produce constrained overlays, in which user-specified chemical groups are forced to be superimposed. The program has been tested on several sets of ligands, for each of which the true overlay is known from protein–ligand crystal structures. Both objective and subjective success criteria indicate that good results are obtained on the majority of these sets

Evidence for Positive Selection in Putative Virulence Factors within the Paracoccidioides brasiliensis Species Complex

Paracoccidioides brasiliensis is a dimorphic fungus that is the causative agent of paracoccidioidomycosis, the most important prevalent systemic mycosis in Latin America. Recently, the existence of three genetically isolated groups in P. brasiliensis was demonstrated, enabling comparative studies of molecular evolution among P. brasiliensis lineages. Thirty-two gene sequences coding for putative virulence factors were analyzed to determine whether they were under positive selection. Our maximum likelihood–based approach yielded evidence for selection in 12 genes that are involved in different cellular processes. An in-depth analysis of four of these genes showed them to be either antigenic or involved in pathogenesis. Here, we present evidence indicating that several replacement mutations in gp43 are under positive balancing selection. The other three genes (fks, cdc42 and p27) show very little variation among the P. brasiliensis lineages and appear to be under positive directional selection. Our results are consistent with the more general observations that selective constraints are variable across the genome, and that even in the genes under positive selection, only a few sites are altered. We present our results within an evolutionary framework that may be applicable for studying adaptation and pathogenesis in P. brasiliensis and other pathogenic fungi

The genome of the emerging barley pathogen Ramularia collo-cygni

Background Ramularia collo-cygni is a newly important, foliar fungal pathogen of barley that causes the disease Ramularia leaf spot. The fungus exhibits a prolonged endophytic growth stage before switching life habit to become an aggressive, necrotrophic pathogen that causes significant losses to green leaf area and hence grain yield and quality. Results The R. collo-cygni genome was sequenced using a combination of Illumina and Roche 454 technologies. The draft assembly of 30.3 Mb contained 11,617 predicted gene models. Our phylogenomic analysis confirmed the classification of this ascomycete fungus within the family Mycosphaerellaceae, order Capnodiales of the class Dothideomycetes. A predicted secretome comprising 1053 proteins included redox-related enzymes and carbohydrate-modifying enzymes and proteases. The relative paucity of plant cell wall degrading enzyme genes may be associated with the stealth pathogenesis characteristic of plant pathogens from the Mycosphaerellaceae. A large number of genes associated with secondary metabolite production, including homologs of toxin biosynthesis genes found in other Dothideomycete plant pathogens, were identified. Conclusions The genome sequence of R. collo-cygni provides a framework for understanding the genetic basis of pathogenesis in this important emerging pathogen. The reduced complement of carbohydrate-degrading enzyme genes is likely to reflect a strategy to avoid detection by host defences during its prolonged asymptomatic growth. Of particular interest will be the analysis of R. collo-cygni gene expression during interactions with the host barley, to understand what triggers this fungus to switch from being a benign endophyte to an aggressive necrotroph

The spotted gar genome illuminates vertebrate evolution and facilitates human-teleost comparisons

To connect human biology to fish biomedical models, we sequenced the genome of spotted gar (Lepisosteus oculatus), whose lineage diverged from teleosts before teleost genome duplication (TGD). The slowly evolving gar genome has conserved in content and size many entire chromosomes from bony vertebrate ancestors. Gar bridges teleosts to tetrapods by illuminating the evolution of immunity, mineralization and development (mediated, for example, by Hox, ParaHox and microRNA genes). Numerous conserved noncoding elements (CNEs; often cis regulatory) undetectable in direct human-teleost comparisons become apparent using gar: functional studies uncovered conserved roles for such cryptic CNEs, facilitating annotation of sequences identified in human genome-wide association studies. Transcriptomic analyses showed that the sums of expression domains and expression levels for duplicated teleost genes often approximate the patterns and levels of expression for gar genes, consistent with subfunctionalization. The gar genome provides a resource for understanding evolution after genome duplication, the origin of vertebrate genomes and the function of human regulatory sequences

Imaging biomarker roadmap for cancer studies.

Imaging biomarkers (IBs) are integral to the routine management of patients with cancer. IBs used daily in oncology include clinical TNM stage, objective response and left ventricular ejection fraction. Other CT, MRI, PET and ultrasonography biomarkers are used extensively in cancer research and drug development. New IBs need to be established either as useful tools for testing research hypotheses in clinical trials and research studies, or as clinical decision-making tools for use in healthcare, by crossing 'translational gaps' through validation and qualification. Important differences exist between IBs and biospecimen-derived biomarkers and, therefore, the development of IBs requires a tailored 'roadmap'. Recognizing this need, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) assembled experts to review, debate and summarize the challenges of IB validation and qualification. This consensus group has produced 14 key recommendations for accelerating the clinical translation of IBs, which highlight the role of parallel (rather than sequential) tracks of technical (assay) validation, biological/clinical validation and assessment of cost-effectiveness; the need for IB standardization and accreditation systems; the need to continually revisit IB precision; an alternative framework for biological/clinical validation of IBs; and the essential requirements for multicentre studies to qualify IBs for clinical use.Development of this roadmap received support from Cancer Research UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant references A/15267, A/16463, A/16464, A/16465, A/16466 and A/18097), the EORTC Cancer Research Fund, and the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (grant agreement number 115151), resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) companies' in kind contribution

Competition and phylogeny determine community structure in Müllerian co-mimics

Until recently, the study of negative and antagonistic interactions (for example, competition and predation) has dominated our understanding of community structure, maintenance and assembly. Nevertheless, a recent theoretical model suggests that positive interactions (for example, mutualisms) may counterbalance competition, facilitating long-term coexistence even among ecologically undifferentiated species. Müllerian mimics are mutualists that share the costs of predator education and are therefore ideally suited for the investigation of positive and negative interactions in community dynamics. The sole empirical test of this model in a Müllerian mimetic community supports the prediction that positive interactions outweigh the negative effects of spatial overlap (without quantifying resource acquisition). Understanding the role of trophic niche partitioning in facilitating the evolution and stability of Müllerian mimetic communities is now of critical importance, but has yet to be formally investigated. Here we show that resource partitioning and phylogeny determine community structure and outweigh the positive effects of Müllerian mimicry in a species-rich group of neotropical catfishes. From multiple, independent reproductively isolated allopatric communities displaying convergently evolved colour patterns, 92% consist of species that do not compete for resources. Significant differences in phylogenetically conserved traits (snout morphology and body size) were consistently linked to trait-specific resource acquisition. Thus, we report the first evidence, to our knowledge, that competition for trophic resources and phylogeny are pivotal factors in the stable evolution of Müllerian mimicry rings. More generally, our work demonstrates that competition for resources is likely to have a dominant role in the structuring of communities that are simultaneously subject to the effects of both positive and negative interactions