Association of change in daily step count over five years with insulin sensitivity and adiposity: population based cohort study

Objectives: To investigate the association between change in daily step count and both adiposity and insulin sensitivity and the extent to which the association between change in daily step count and insulin sensitivity may be mediated by adiposity. Design: Population based cohort study. Setting: Tasmania, Australia. Participants: 592 adults (men (n=267), mean age 51.4 (SD 12.2) years; women (n=325), mean age 50.3 (12.3) years) who participated in the Tasmanian component of the national AusDiab Study in 2000 and 2005. Main outcome measures: Body mass index, waist to hip ratio, and HOMA insulin sensitivity at follow-up in 2005. Results: Over the five year period, the daily step count decreased for 65% (n=382) of participants. Having a higher daily step count in 2005 than in 2000 was independently associated with lower body mass index (0.08 (95% confidence interval 0.04 to 0.12) lower per 1000 steps), lower waist to hip ratio (0.15 (0.07 to 0.23) lower), and greater insulin sensitivity (1.38 (0.14 to 2.63) HOMA units higher) in 2005. The mean increase in HOMA units fell to 0.34 (-0.79 to 1.47) after adjustment for body mass index in 2005. Conclusions: Among community dwelling, middle aged adults, a higher daily step count at five year follow-up than at baseline was associated with better insulin sensitivity. This effect seems to be largely mediated through lower adiposity

Experimental Evidence of Giant Electron - Gamma Bursts Generated by Extensive Atmospheric Showers in Thunderclouds

The existence of a new phenomena - giant electron-gamma bursts is established. The bursts are generated in thunderclouds as a result of the combined action of runaway breakdown and extensive atmosphere showers (RB-EAS). The experiments were fulfilled at the Tien Shan Mountain Scientific Station using EAS-Radio installation. This specially constructed installation consists of a wide spread EAS trigger array and a high time resolution radiointerferometer.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figure

Relative amounts of antagonistic splicing factors, hnRNP A1 and ASF/SF2, change during neoplastic lung growth: implications for pre-mRNA processing

Pre-mRNA processing is an important mechanism for globally modifying cellular protein composition during tumorigenesis. To understand this process during lung cancer, expression of two key pre-mRNA alternative splicing factors was compared in a mouse model of early lung carcinogenesis and during regenerative growth following reversible lung injury. Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP) A1 and alternative splicing factor/splicing factor 2 (ASF/SF2) act antagonistically to modulate splice site selection. Both hnRNP A1 and ASF/SF2 contents rose in adenomas and during injury-induced hyperplasia compared to control lungs, as measured by immunoblotting. While both proteins increased similarly during compensatory hyperplasia, hnRNP A1 increased to a much greater extent than ASF/SF2 in tumors, resulting in a 6-fold increase of the hnRNP A1 to ASF/SF2 ratio. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that hnRNP A1 localized exclusively within tumor nuclei, while ASF/SF2 appeared in cytoplasm and/or nuclei, depending on the growth pattern of the tumor cells. We also demonstrated cancer-associated changes in the pre-mRNA alternative splicing of CD44, a membrane glycoprotein involved in cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions. hnRNP A1 and ASF/SF2 expression is thus differentially altered in neoplastic lung cells by mechanisms that do not strictly arise from increased cell division. These changes are influenced by tumor histology and may be associated with production of variant CD44 mRNA isoforms

Isolation predicts compositional change after discrete disturbances in a global meta-study

Globally, anthropogenic disturbances are occurring at unprecedented rates and over extensive spatial and temporal scales. Human activities also affect natural disturbances, prompting shifts in their timing and intensities. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand and predict the response of ecosystems to disturbance. In this study, we investigated whether there are general determinants of community response to disturbance across different community types, locations, and disturbance events. We compiled 14 case studies of community response to disturbance from four continents, twelve aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem types, and eight different types of disturbance. We used community compositional differences and species richness to indicate community response. We used mixed-effects modeling to test the relationship between each of these response metrics and four potential explanatory factors: regional species pool size, isolation, number of generations passed, and relative disturbance intensity. We found that compositional similarity was higher between pre- and post-disturbance communities when the disturbed community was connected to adjacent undisturbed habitat. The number of generations that had passed since the disturbance event was a significant, but weak, predictor of community compositional change; two communities were responsible for the observed relationship. We found no significant relationships between the factors we tested and changes in species richness. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to search for general drivers of community resilience from a diverse set of case studies. The strength of the relationship between compositional change and isolation suggests that it may be informative in resilience research and biodiversity management

Narrowband Searches for Continuous and Long-duration Transient Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars in the LIGO-Virgo Third Observing Run

Isolated neutron stars that are asymmetric with respect to their spin axis are possible sources of detectable continuous gravitational waves. This paper presents a fully coherent search for such signals from eighteen pulsars in data from LIGO and Virgo's third observing run (O3). For known pulsars, efficient and sensitive matched-filter searches can be carried out if one assumes the gravitational radiation is phase-locked to the electromagnetic emission. In the search presented here, we relax this assumption and allow both the frequency and the time derivative of the frequency of the gravitational waves to vary in a small range around those inferred from electromagnetic observations. We find no evidence for continuous gravitational waves, and set upper limits on the strain amplitude for each target. These limits are more constraining for seven of the targets than the spin-down limit defined by ascribing all rotational energy loss to gravitational radiation. In an additional search, we look in O3 data for long-duration (hours-months) transient gravitational waves in the aftermath of pulsar glitches for six targets with a total of nine glitches. We report two marginal outliers from this search, but find no clear evidence for such emission either. The resulting duration-dependent strain upper limits do not surpass indirect energy constraints for any of these targets. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society

Search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 in the second Advanced LIGO observing run with an improved hidden Markov model

We present results from a semicoherent search for continuous gravitational waves from the low-mass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1, using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to track spin wandering. This search improves on previous HMM-based searches of LIGO data by using an improved frequency domain matched filter, the J-statistic, and by analyzing data from Advanced LIGO's second observing run. In the frequency range searched, from 60 to 650 Hz, we find no evidence of gravitational radiation. At 194.6 Hz, the most sensitive search frequency, we report an upper limit on gravitational wave strain (at 95% confidence) of h095%=3.47×10-25 when marginalizing over source inclination angle. This is the most sensitive search for Scorpius X-1, to date, that is specifically designed to be robust in the presence of spin wandering. © 2019 American Physical Society