The Impact of a School-Based Weight Management Program Involving Parents via mHealth for Overweight and Obese Children and Adolescents with Intellectual Disability: A Randomized Controlled Trial

There is a scarcity of resources and studies that utilize targeted weight management interventions to engage parents via mHealth tools targeting obese children and adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities (MIDs) extended from school to a home setting. To test the feasibility and acceptability of a school-based weight program (SBWMP) involving parents via mHealth tools designed to reduce weight, enhance knowledge and adopt healthy lifestyles, and thereby achieve better psychosocial well-being among children and adolescents with MIDs. Four special schools were randomly assigned as intervention or control schools. Students from the intervention group (n = 63) were compared to those in the control group (n = 52), which comprised those with usual school planned activities and no parental involvement. Demographics were considered as covariates in a general linear model, an ordinal regression model and a binary logistic regression model analyzing the relationships between the SBWMP and the outcome variables at baseline (T0) and six months later (T1). Body weight, body mass index, and triceps and subscapular skinfold thickness were lower in the intervention group compared to the control group, although the differences were not statistically significant. There was a positive and direct impact of the SBWMP on students’ health knowledge and psychological impacts in the intervention group. The SBWMP extended to the home involving parents via mHealth tools is a feasible and acceptable program for this group with MIDs and their parents

Evolution of the Chalcone Isomerase Fold from Fatty Acid-Binding to Stereospecific Enzyme

Specialized metabolic enzymes biosynthesize chemicals of ecological importance, often sharing a pedigree with primary metabolic enzymes1. However, the lineage of the enzyme chalcone isomerase (CHI) remained a quandary. In vascular plants, CHI-catalyzed conversion of chalcones to chiral (S)-flavanones is a committed step in the production of plant flavonoids, compounds that contribute to attraction, defense2, and development3. CHI operates near the diffusion limit with stereospecific control4,5. While associated primarily with plants, the CHI-fold occurs in several other eukaryotic lineages and in some bacteria. Here we report crystal structures, ligand-binding properties, and in vivo functional characterization of a non-catalytic CHI-fold family from plants. A. thaliana contains five actively transcribed CHI-fold genes, three of which additionally encode amino-terminal chloroplast-transit sequences (cTP). These three CHI-fold proteins localize to plastids, the site of de novo fatty acid (FA) biosynthesis in plant cells. Furthermore, their expression profiles correlate with those of core FA biosynthetic enzymes, with maximal expression occurring in seeds and coinciding with increased FA storage in the developing embryo. In vitro, these proteins are Fatty Acid-binding Proteins (FAP). FAP knockout A. thaliana plants exhibit elevated alpha-linolenic acid levels and marked reproductive defects, including aberrant seed formation. Notably, the FAP discovery defines the adaptive evolution of a stereospecific and catalytically ‘perfected’ enzyme6 from a non-enzymatic ancestor over a defined period of plant evolution

A taste of the unfamiliar: understanding the meanings attached to food by international postgraduate students in England

Using findings from semi-structured interviews with international postgraduate students in England, this paper explores the meanings attached to the food they eat in a new culture. Our study, using interviews, aimed to uncover student responses to both the food they eat whilst abroad and to the food they have left behind. Many students criticised local English food as bland, fattening, and unhealthy; nevertheless, most showed an openness to new foods, trying not only local food but also dishes prepared by their international friends, but this sat alongside a strong attachment to their home country dishes. Eating together was a popular leisure activity, and food of the origin country or region was the most popular cuisine. Eating home country food offered emotional and physical sustenance; students felt comforted by familiar taste, and that their physical health was stabilised by the consumption of healthier food than was available locally. Despite acknowledgement of the importance of food to cultural identity and overall quality of life in the anthropology and nutrition literatures, there is a dearth of research into this aspect of the international student experience; this study, therefore, marks an important beginning

Biosynthesis of coral settlement cue tetrabromopyrrole in marine bacteria by a uniquely adapted brominase-thioesterase enzyme pair

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of National Academy of Sciences for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America 113 (2016): 3797-3802, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1519695113.Halogenated pyrroles (halopyrroles) are common chemical moieties found in bioactive bacterial natural products. The halopyrrole moieties of mono- and di- halopyrrole-containing compounds arise from a conserved mechanism in which a proline-derived pyrrolyl group bound to a carrier protein is first halogenated then elaborated by peptidic or polyketide extensions. This paradigm is broken during the marine pseudoalteromonad bacterial biosynthesis of the coral larval settlement cue tetrabromopyrrole (1), which arises from the substitution of the proline-derived carboxylate by a bromine atom. To understand the molecular basis for decarboxylative bromination in the biosynthesis of 1, we sequenced two Pseudoalteromonas genomes and identified a conserved four-gene locus encoding the enzymes involved its complete biosynthesis. Through total in vitro reconstitution of the biosynthesis of 1 using purified enzymes and biochemical interrogation of individual biochemical steps, we show that all four bromine atoms in 1 are installed by the action of a single flavin-dependent halogenase- Bmp2. Tetrabromination of the pyrrole induces a thioesterase-mediated offloading reaction from the carrier protein and activates the biosynthetic intermediate for decarboxylation. Insights into the tetrabrominating activity of Bmp2 were obtained from the high-resolution crystal structure of the halogenase contrasted against structurally homologous halogenase Mpy16 that forms only a dihalogenated pyrrole in marinopyrrole biosynthesis. Structure-guided mutagenesis of the proposed substrate-binding pocket of Bmp2 led to a reduction in the degree of halogenation catalyzed. Our study provides a biogenetic basis for the biosynthesis of 1, and sets a firm foundation for querying the biosynthetic potential for the production of 1 in marine (meta)genomes.This work was jointly supported by the US National Science Foundation (OCE-1313747) and the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (P01-ES021921) through the Ocean and Human Health Program to B.S.M., and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease R01-AI47818 to B.S.M. and R21- AI119311 to K.E.W. and T.J.M., the Mote Protect Our Reef Grant Program (POR-2012-3), the Dart Foundation, the Smithsonian Competitive Grants Program for Science to V.J.P., the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to J.P.N., the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Marine Biotechnology Training Grant predoctoral fellowship to A.E. (T32-GM067550), the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation postdoctoral fellowship to V.A., and a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) postdoctoral Fellowship to S.D.2016-09-2

Use of the Generalized Gradient Approximation in Pseudopotential Calculations of Solids

We present a study of the equilibrium properties of $sp$-bonded solids within the pseudopotential approach, employing recently proposed generalized gradient approximation (GGA) exchange correlation functionals. We analyze the effects of the gradient corrections on the behavior of the pseudopotentials and discuss possible approaches for constructing pseudopotentials self-consistently in the context of gradient corrected functionals. The calculated equilibrium properties of solids using the GGA functionals are compared to the ones obtained through the local density approximation (LDA) and to experimental data. A significant improvement over the LDA results is achieved with the use of the GGA functionals for cohesive energies. For the lattice constant, the same accuracy as in LDA can be obtained when the nonlinear coupling between core and valence electrons introduced by the exchange correlation functionals is properly taken into account. However, GGA functionals give bulk moduli that are too small compared to experiment.Comment: 15 pages, latex, no figure

Gate-Controlled Ionization and Screening of Cobalt Adatoms on a Graphene Surface

We describe scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) measurements performed on individual cobalt (Co) atoms deposited onto backgated graphene devices. We find that Co adatoms on graphene can be ionized by either the application of a global backgate voltage or by the application of a local electric field from a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip. Large screening clouds are observed to form around Co adatoms ionized in this way, and we observe that some intrinsic graphene defects display a similar behavior. Our results provide new insight into charged impurity scattering in graphene, as well as the possibility of using graphene devices as chemical sensors.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Relativistic separable dual-space Gaussian Pseudopotentials from H to Rn

We generalize the concept of separable dual-space Gaussian pseudopotentials to the relativistic case. This allows us to construct this type of pseudopotential for the whole periodic table and we present a complete table of pseudopotential parameters for all the elements from H to Rn. The relativistic version of this pseudopotential retains all the advantages of its nonrelativistic version. It is separable by construction, it is optimal for integration on a real space grid, it is highly accurate and due to its analytic form it can be specified by a very small number of parameters. The accuracy of the pseudopotential is illustrated by an extensive series of molecular calculations

Performance of the QuickVue Influenza A+B Rapid Test for Pandemic H1N1 (2009) Virus Infection in Adults

To investigate the diagnostic accuracy of the QuickVue® Influenza A+B rapid test we conducted a prospective observational study in which this rapid test was compared with a real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for pandemic influenza A H1N1 (2009) infection in Austrian adults. The sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of the QuickVue test compared with the RT-PCR were 26% (95% CI 18–35), 98% (95% CI 92–100), 94% (95% CI 80–99) and 50% (95% CI 42–58), respectively. The prevalence of pandemic H1N1 (2009) virus infection among the 209 patients included in the study was 57%. Our data suggest that a positive QuickVue test provides considerable information for the diagnosis of pandemic influenza A H1N1 (2009) virus infection in young adults but that a negative QuickVue test result should, if relevant for patient management or public health measures, be verified using PCR