Physical activity surveillance in the European Union: reliability and validity of the European Health Interview Survey-PhysicalActivity Questionnaire (EHIS-PAQ)

Background: The current study examined the reliability and validity of the European Health Interview Survey-Physical Activity Questionnaire (EHIS-PAQ), a novel questionnaire for the surveillance of physical activity (PA) during work, transportation, leisure time, sports, health-enhancing and muscle-strengthening activities over a typical week. Methods: Reliability was assessed by administering the 8-item questionnaire twice to a population-based sample of 123 participants aged 15-79 years at a 30-day interval. Concurrent (inter-method) validity was examined in 140 participants by comparisons with self-report (International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Long Form (IPAQ-LF), 7-day Physical Activity Record (PAR), and objective criterion measures (GT3X+accelerometer, physical work capacity at 75 % (PWC75%) from submaximal cycle ergometer test, hand grip strength). Results: The EHIS-PAQ showed acceptable reliability, with a median intraclass correlation coefficient across PA domains of 0.55 (range 0.43-0.73). Compared to the GT3X+ (counts/minutes/day), the EHIS-PAQ underestimated moderate-to-vigorous PA (median difference - 11.7, p-value = 0.054). Spearman correlation coefficients (.) for validity were moderate-to-strong (rho's > 0.41) for work-related PA (IPAQ = 0.64, GT3X + = 0.43, grip strength = 0.48), transportation-related PA (IPAQ = 0.62, GT3X + = 0.43), walking (IPAQ = 0.58), and health-enhancing PA (IPAQ = 0. 58, PAR = 0.64, GT3X + = 0.44, PWC75% = 0.48), and fair-to-poor (rho's < 0.41) for moderate-to-vigorous aerobic recreational and muscle-strengthening PA. Conclusions: The EHIS-PAQ showed good evidence for reliability and validity for the measurement of PA levels at work, during transportation and health-enhancing PA

Educational differences in the prevalence of behavioural risk factors in Germany and the EU – Results from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) 2

This article examines educational differences in the prevalence of behavioural risk factors among adults and compares the results for Germany with the average from the European Union (EU). Data were derived from the second wave of the European Health Interview Survey, which took place between 2013 and 2015 (EHIS 2). Analyses were conducted using a regression-based calculation of relative and absolute educational differences in the prevalence of behavioural risk factors, based on self-reported data from women and men aged between 25 and 69 (n=217,215). Current smoking, obesity, physical activity lasting less than 150 minutes per week, heavy episodic drinking and non-daily fruit or vegetable intake are more prevalent among people with a low education level than those with a high education level. This applies to Germany as well as the EU average. Overall, the relative educational differences identified for these risk factors place Germany in the mid-range compared to the EU average. However, relative educational differences in current smoking and heavy episodic drinking are more manifest among women in Germany than the EU average, with the same applying to low physical activity among men. In contrast, relative educational differences in non-daily fruit or vegetable intake are less pronounced among women and men in Germany than the average across the EU. Increased efforts are needed in various policy fields to improve the structural conditions underlying health behaviour, particularly for socially disadvantaged groups, and increase health equity

Global maps of soil temperature

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km² resolution for 0–5 and 5–15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e., offset) between in-situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km² pixels (summarized from 8500 unique temperature sensors) across all the world’s major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (-0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in-situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications

Global maps of soil temperature

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km2 resolution for 0–5 and 5–15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world\u27s major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (−0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications

Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2016 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for death and disability, but its overall association with health remains complex given the possible protective effects of moderate alcohol consumption on some conditions. With our comprehensive approach to health accounting within the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we generated improved estimates of alcohol use and alcohol-attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 195 locations from 1990 to 2016, for both sexes and for 5-year age groups between the ages of 15 years and 95 years and older. Methods Using 694 data sources of individual and population-level alcohol consumption, along with 592 prospective and retrospective studies on the risk of alcohol use, we produced estimates of the prevalence of current drinking, abstention, the distribution of alcohol consumption among current drinkers in standard drinks daily (defined as 10 g of pure ethyl alcohol), and alcohol-attributable deaths and DALYs. We made several methodological improvements compared with previous estimates: first, we adjusted alcohol sales estimates to take into account tourist and unrecorded consumption; second, we did a new meta-analysis of relative risks for 23 health outcomes associated with alcohol use; and third, we developed a new method to quantify the level of alcohol consumption that minimises the overall risk to individual health. Findings Globally, alcohol use was the seventh leading risk factor for both deaths and DALYs in 2016, accounting for 2.2% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1.5-3.0) of age-standardised female deaths and 6.8% (5.8-8.0) of age-standardised male deaths. Among the population aged 15-49 years, alcohol use was the leading risk factor globally in 2016, with 3.8% (95% UI 3.2-4-3) of female deaths and 12.2% (10.8-13-6) of male deaths attributable to alcohol use. For the population aged 15-49 years, female attributable DALYs were 2.3% (95% UI 2.0-2.6) and male attributable DALYs were 8.9% (7.8-9.9). The three leading causes of attributable deaths in this age group were tuberculosis (1.4% [95% UI 1. 0-1. 7] of total deaths), road injuries (1.2% [0.7-1.9]), and self-harm (1.1% [0.6-1.5]). For populations aged 50 years and older, cancers accounted for a large proportion of total alcohol-attributable deaths in 2016, constituting 27.1% (95% UI 21.2-33.3) of total alcohol-attributable female deaths and 18.9% (15.3-22.6) of male deaths. The level of alcohol consumption that minimised harm across health outcomes was zero (95% UI 0.0-0.8) standard drinks per week. Interpretation Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.Peer reviewe