Validation of Self-Reported Anthropometrics in Female College Freshmen

International Journal of Exercise Science 9(1): 47-55, 2016. Most investigations concerning the validity of self-reported anthropometrics focus on weight, height, and body mass index. This study extends those investigations by exploring the impact of self-reporting bias on the disease risk indicators of waist circumference and body fat percentage. Female college freshmen (n=128) self-reported weight and height, then underwent measurements for weight, height, waist circumference, and body fat percentage. Self-reporting bias was defined as self-reported minus directly-assessed anthropometric value. Despite no differences in self-reported versus directly-assessed weight or height for the total group, students with high waist circumference and excess fat under-reported their weight by 2.3±4.4 lb (p\u3c0.05). Self-reporting bias was negatively correlated with waist circumference (r=-0.362; p\u3c0.001) and body fat percentage (r=-0.317; p\u3c0.001). Although many female college freshmen accurately represent their weight, those with excess fat and waist circumference under-reported their weight. This may lead to missed opportunities for risk identification, prevention, and intervention

Assessing Physical Activity Determinants in Urban Settings: Comparison of Perceptions and Environmental Audit Findings

Sedentary lifestyles are a contributor to obesity and urban adolescents are less physically active than rural adolescents. Supportive physical activity environments, understood as the geography, observations, and perceptions of features such as recreational facilities, sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic patterns, etc., have been positively associated with adolescent physical activity behaviors within urban settings. As part of a Socio-Ecological intervention to improve physical activity behavior, the Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA), the Active Neighborhood Checklist (ANC), and focus groups were used to assess the physical activity influences within an urban middle school and surrounding community. The assessments suggested that lack of parks, lack of walkability in the streets, perceptions of crime, lack of school programs, parental and peer influences were barriers to physical activity opportunities. The ANC, PARA, and focus groups each added valuable information for program planning to improve adolescent physical activity behavior

Weight Gain and Decreased Sleep Duration in First-Year College Students: A Longitudinal Study

Poster from the 2017 Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo. Poster Session: Professional Skills; Nutrition Assessment & Diagnosis; Medical Nutrition Therapy

Moral Enhancement Using Non-invasive Brain Stimulation

Biomedical enhancement refers to the use of biomedical interventions to improve capacities beyond normal, rather than to treat deficiencies due to diseases. Enhancement can target physical or cognitive capacities, but also complex human behaviors such as morality. However, the complexity of normal moral behavior makes it unlikely that morality is a single capacity that can be deficient or enhanced. Instead, our central hypothesis will be that moral behavior results from multiple, interacting cognitive-affective networks in the brain. First, we will test this hypothesis by reviewing evidence for modulation of moral behavior using non-invasive brain stimulation. Next, we will discuss how this evidence affects ethical issues related to the use of moral enhancement. We end with the conclusion that while brain stimulation has the potential to alter moral behavior, such alteration is unlikely to improve moral behavior in all situations, and may even lead to less morally desirable behavior in some instances

Continuous Theta-Burst Stimulation in Children With High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typically Developing Children

Objectives : A neurophysiologic biomarker for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is highly desirable and can improve diagnosis, monitoring, and assessment of therapeutic response among children with ASD. We investigated the utility of continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) applied to the motor cortex (M1) as a biomarker for children and adolescents with high-functioning (HF) ASD compared to their age- and gender-matched typically developing (TD) controls. We also compared the developmental trajectory of long-term depression- (LTD-) like plasticity in the two groups. Finally, we explored the influence of a common brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) polymorphism on cTBS aftereffects in a subset of the ASD group. Methods : Twenty-nine children and adolescents (age range 10-16) in ASD (n = 11) and TD (n = 18) groups underwent M1 cTBS. Changes in MEP amplitude at 5-60 min post-cTBS and their cumulative measures in each group were calculated. We also assessed the relationship between age and maximum cTBS-induced MEP suppression (ΔMEP) in each group. Finally, we compared cTBS aftereffects in BDNF Val/Val (n = 4) and Val/Met (n = 4) ASD participants. Results : Cumulative cTBS aftereffects were significantly more facilitatory in the ASD group than in the TD group (P 's 0.18). Conclusions : The results support the utility of cTBS measures of cortical plasticity as a biomarker for children and adolescents with HF-ASD and an aberrant developmental trajectory of LTD-like plasticity in ASD

FusorSV: an algorithm for optimally combining data from multiple structural variation detection methods.

Comprehensive and accurate identification of structural variations (SVs) from next generation sequencing data remains a major challenge. We develop FusorSV, which uses a data mining approach to assess performance and merge callsets from an ensemble of SV-calling algorithms. It includes a fusion model built using analysis of 27 deep-coverage human genomes from the 1000 Genomes Project. We identify 843 novel SV calls that were not reported by the 1000 Genomes Project for these 27 samples. Experimental validation of a subset of these calls yields a validation rate of 86.7%. FusorSV is available at https://github.com/TheJacksonLaboratory/SVE . Genome Biol 2018 Mar 20; 19(1):38

Workers' intrinsic work motivation when job demands are high:The role of need for autonomy and perceived opportunity for blended working

Work overload or work pressure may undermine workers' intrinsic motivation. In the present research, we tested the conditions under which this may (not) occur, including the perceived opportunity to blend on-site and off-site working through the effective use of computers and modern information and communication technology. Our sample consisted of 657 workers (51% female) representing a variety of industries. As hypothesized, it is not high job demands per se, but high demands in combination with a high need for autonomy and a lack of perceived opportunities for blended working that undermines intrinsic work motivation. When workers high in need for autonomy perceived opportunities for blended working, their intrinsic work motivation was not negatively affected by increasing job demands. This main finding suggests that, particularly for workers high in need for autonomy, the perceived opportunity for blended working is an effective, contemporary resource to cope with the increasing job demands typically observed in today's workplace. Theoretically, these findings contribute to the refinement and extension of influential demands-resource models and Person-Job Fit theory. Practically, our findings may show managers how to effectively keep workers intrinsically motivated and productive in their jobs when job demands are high

Inclusive Search for Anomalous Production of High-pT Like-Sign Lepton Pairs in Proton-Antiproton Collisions at sqrt{s}=1.8 TeV

We report on a search for anomalous production of events with at least two charged, isolated, like-sign leptons with pT > 11 GeV/c using a 107 pb^-1 sample of 1.8 TeV ppbar collisions collected by the CDF detector. We define a signal region containing low background from Standard Model processes. To avoid bias, we fix the final cuts before examining the event yield in the signal region using control regions to test the Monte Carlo predictions. We observe no events in the signal region, consistent with an expectation of 0.63^(+0.84)_(-0.07) events. We present 95% confidence level limits on new physics processes in both a signature-based context as well as within a representative minimal supergravity (tanbeta = 3) model.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. Minor textual changes, cosmetic improvements to figures and updated and expanded reference

Synchronized cycles of bacterial lysis for in vivo delivery

The pervasive view of bacteria as strictly pathogenic has given way to an ppreciation of the widespread prevalence of beneficial microbes within the human body. Given this milieu, it is perhaps inevitable that some bacteria would evolve to preferentially grow in environments that harbor disease and thus provide a natural platform for the development of engineered therapies. Such therapies could benefit from bacteria that are programmed to limit bacterial growth while continually producing and releasing cytotoxic agents in situ. Here, we engineer a clinically relevant bacterium to lyse synchronously at a threshold population density and to release genetically encoded cargo. Following quorum lysis, a small number of surviving bacteria reseed the growing population, thus leading to pulsatile delivery cycles. We use microfluidic devices to characterize the engineered lysis strain and we demonstrate its potential as a drug deliver platform via co-culture with human cancer cells in vitro. As a proof of principle, we track the bacterial population dynamics in ectopic syngeneic colorectal tumors in mice. The lysis strain exhibits pulsatile population dynamics in vivo, with mean bacterial luminescence that remained two orders of magnitude lower than an unmodified strain. Finally, guided by previous findings that certain bacteria can enhance the efficacy of standard therapies, we orally administer the lysis strain, alone or in combination with a clinical chemotherapeutic, to a syngeneic transplantation model of hepatic colorectal metastases. We find that the combination of both circuit-engineered bacteria and chemotherapy leads to a notable reduction of tumor activity along with a marked survival benefit over either therapy alone. Our approach establishes a methodology for leveraging the tools of synthetic biology to exploit the natural propensity for certain bacteria to colonize disease sites.National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (GM069811)San Diego Center for Systems Biology (P50 GM085764)National Cancer Institute (U.S.). Swanson Biotechnology Center (Koch Institute Support Grant (P30-CA14051))National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Core Center Grant (P30- ES002109))National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH Pathway to Independence Award NIH (K99 CA197649-01))Misrock Postdoctoral fellowshipNational Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowshi

Search for Kaluza-Klein Graviton Emission in ppˉp\bar{p} Collisions at s=1.8\sqrt{s}=1.8 TeV using the Missing Energy Signature

We report on a search for direct Kaluza-Klein graviton production in a data sample of 84 ${pb}^{-1}$ of \ppb collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.8 TeV, recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. We investigate the final state of large missing transverse energy and one or two high energy jets. We compare the data with the predictions from a $3+1+n$-dimensional Kaluza-Klein scenario in which gravity becomes strong at the TeV scale. At 95% confidence level (C.L.) for $n$=2, 4, and 6 we exclude an effective Planck scale below 1.0, 0.77, and 0.71 TeV, respectively.Comment: Submitted to PRL, 7 pages 4 figures/Revision includes 5 figure