Bivariate genetic modelling of the response to an oral glucose tolerance challenge: A gene x environment interaction approach

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Twin and family studies have shown the importance of genetic factors influencing fasting and 2 h glucose and insulin levels. However, the genetics of the physiological response to a glucose load has not been thoroughly investigated. METHODS: We studied 580 monozygotic and 1,937 dizygotic British female twins from the Twins UK Registry. The effects of genetic and environmental factors on fasting and 2 h glucose and insulin levels were estimated using univariate genetic modelling. Bivariate model fitting was used to investigate the glucose and insulin responses to a glucose load, i.e. an OGTT. RESULTS: The genetic effect on fasting and 2 h glucose and insulin levels ranged between 40% and 56% after adjustment for age and BMI. Exposure to a glucose load resulted in the emergence of novel genetic effects on 2 h glucose independent of the fasting level, accounting for about 55% of its heritability. For 2 h insulin, the effect of the same genes that already influenced fasting insulin was amplified by about 30%. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: Exposure to a glucose challenge uncovers new genetic variance for glucose and amplifies the effects of genes that already influence the fasting insulin level. Finding the genes acting on 2 h glucose independently of fasting glucose may offer new aetiological insight into the risk of cardiovascular events and death from all causes

Moving from evidence-based medicine to evidence-based health.

While evidence-based medicine (EBM) has advanced medical practice, the health care system has been inconsistent in translating EBM into improvements in health. Disparities in health and health care play out through patients' limited ability to incorporate the advances of EBM into their daily lives. Assisting patients to self-manage their chronic conditions and paying attention to unhealthy community factors could be added to EBM to create a broader paradigm of evidence-based health. A perspective of evidence-based health may encourage physicians to consider their role in upstream efforts to combat socially patterned chronic disease

Expressing one’s feelings and listening to others increases emotional intelligence: a pilot study of Asian medical students

<p>Background: There has been considerable interest in Emotional Intelligence (EI) in undergraduate medical education, with respect to student selection and admissions, health and well-being and academic performance. EI is a significant component of the physician-patient relationship. The emotional well-being of the physician is, therefore, a significant component in patient care. The aim is to examine the measurement of TEIQue-SF in Asian medical students and to explore how the practice of listening to the feelings of others and expressing one’s own feelings influences an individual’s EI, set in the context of the emotional well-being of a medical practitioner.</p> <p>Methods: A group of 183 international undergraduate medical students attended a half-day workshop (WS) about mental-health and well-being. They completed a self-reported measure of EI on three occasions, pre- and post-workshop, and a 1-year follow-up.</p> <p>Result: The reliability of TEIQue-SF was high and the reliabilities of its four factors were acceptable. There were strong correlations between the TEIQue-SF and personality traits. A paired t-test indicated significant positive changes after the WS for all students (n=181, p= .014), male students (n=78, p= .015) and non-Japanese students (n=112, p= .007), but a repeated measures analysis showed that one year post-workshop there were significant positive changes for all students (n=55, p= .034), female students (n=31, p= .007), especially Japanese female students (n=13, p= .023). Moreover, 80% of the students reported that they were more attentive listeners, and 60% agreed that they were more confident in dealing with emotional issues, both within themselves and in others, as a result of the workshop.</p> <p>Conclusion: This study found the measurement of TEIQue-SF is appropriate and reliable to use for Asian medical students. The mental health workshop was helpful to develop medical students’ EI but showed different results for gender and nationality. The immediate impact on the emotional awareness of individuals was particularly significant for male students and the non-Japanese group. The impact over the long term was notable for the significant increase in EI for females and Japanese. Japanese female students were more conscious about emotionality. Emotion-driven communication exercises might strongly influence the development of students’ EI over a year.</p&gt

Development of a multiplex microsatellite marker set for the study of the solitary red mason bee, Osmia bicornis (Megachilidae)

Background Solitary bees, such as the red mason bee (Osmia bicornis), provide important ecosystem services including pollination. In the face of global declines of pollinator abundance, such haplodiploid Hymenopterans have a compounded extinction risk due to the potential for limited genetic diversity. In order to assess the genetic diversity of Osmia bicornis populations, we developed microsatellite markers and characterised them in two populations. Methods and results Microsatellite sequences were mined from the recently published Osmia bicornis genome, which was assembled from DNA extracted from a single male bee originating from the United Kingdom. Sequences were identified that contained dinucleotide, trinucleotide, and tetranucleotide repeat regions. Seventeen polymorphic microsatellite markers were designed and tested, sixteen of which were developed into four multiplex PCR sets to facilitate cheap, fast and efficient genotyping and were characterised in unrelated females from Germany (n = 19) and England (n = 14). Conclusions The microsatellite markers are highly informative, with a combined exclusion probability of 0.997 (first parent), which will enable studies of genetic structure and diversity to inform conservation efforts in this bee

Transferring Learning from External to Internal Weights in Echo-State Networks with Sparse Connectivity

Modifying weights within a recurrent network to improve performance on a task has proven to be difficult. Echo-state networks in which modification is restricted to the weights of connections onto network outputs provide an easier alternative, but at the expense of modifying the typically sparse architecture of the network by including feedback from the output back into the network. We derive methods for using the values of the output weights from a trained echo-state network to set recurrent weights within the network. The result of this “transfer of learning” is a recurrent network that performs the task without requiring the output feedback present in the original network. We also discuss a hybrid version in which online learning is applied to both output and recurrent weights. Both approaches provide efficient ways of training recurrent networks to perform complex tasks. Through an analysis of the conditions required to make transfer of learning work, we define the concept of a “self-sensing” network state, and we compare and contrast this with compressed sensing

Evaluating people's perceptions of trust in a robot in a repeated interactions study

Funding Information: Acknowledgment. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 642667 (Safety Enables Cooperation in Uncertain Robotic Environments - SECURE). KD acknowledges funding from the Canada 150 Research Chairs Program. Publisher Copyright: © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published of 'Rossi A., Dautenhahn K., Koay K.L., Walters M.L., Holthaus P. (2020) Evaluating People’s Perceptions of Trust in a Robot in a Repeated Interactions Study. In: Wagner A.R. et al. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12483. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62056-1_38'Trust has been established to be a key factor in fostering human-robot interactions. However, trust can change overtime according to different factors, including a breach of trust due to a robot’s error. In this exploratory study, we observed people’s interactions with a companion robot in a real house, adapted for human-robot interaction experimentation, over three weeks. The interactions happened in six scenarios in which a robot performed different tasks under two different conditions. Each condition included fourteen tasks performed by the robot, either correctly, or with errors with severe consequences on the first or last day of interaction. At the end of each experimental condition, participants were presented with an emergency scenario to evaluate their trust in the robot. We evaluated participants’ trust in the robot by observing their decision to trust the robot during the emergency scenario, and by collecting their views through questionnaires. We concluded that there is a correlation between the timing of an error with severe consequences performed by the robot and the corresponding loss of trust of the human in the robot. In particular, people’s trust is subjected to the initial mental formation

Transit Timing and Duration Variations for the Discovery and Characterization of Exoplanets

Transiting exoplanets in multi-planet systems have non-Keplerian orbits which can cause the times and durations of transits to vary. The theory and observations of transit timing variations (TTV) and transit duration variations (TDV) are reviewed. Since the last review, the Kepler spacecraft has detected several hundred perturbed planets. In a few cases, these data have been used to discover additional planets, similar to the historical discovery of Neptune in our own Solar System. However, the more impactful aspect of TTV and TDV studies has been characterization of planetary systems in which multiple planets transit. After addressing the equations of motion and parameter scalings, the main dynamical mechanisms for TTV and TDV are described, with citations to the observational literature for real examples. We describe parameter constraints, particularly the origin of the mass/eccentricity degeneracy and how it is overcome by the high-frequency component of the signal. On the observational side, derivation of timing precision and introduction to the timing diagram are given. Science results are reviewed, with an emphasis on mass measurements of transiting sub-Neptunes and super-Earths, from which bulk compositions may be inferred.Comment: Revised version. Invited review submitted to 'Handbook of Exoplanets,' Exoplanet Discovery Methods section, Springer Reference Works, Juan Antonio Belmonte and Hans Deeg, Eds. TeX and figures may be found at https://github.com/ericagol/TTV_revie

Incidence of insulin-requiring diabetes in the US military

The aim of the study was to determine age- and race-related, and overall incidence rates of insulin-requiring diabetes in adults in the US military. Electronic records for admissions to US military and Tricare hospitals during 1990–2005 and visits to military clinics during 2000–2005 were identified using the Career History Archival Medical and Personnel System at the Naval Health Research Center, San Diego, CA, USA. Population data were obtained from the Defense Manpower Data Center and Defense Medical Epidemiology Database. In men there were 2,918 new cases of insulin-requiring diabetes in 20,427,038 person-years at ages 18–44 years (median age 28 years) for a total age-adjusted incidence rate of 17.5 per 100,000 person-years (95% CI 16.4–18.6). Incidence rates were twice as high in black men as in white men (31.5 vs 14.5 per 100,000, p < 0.001). In women there were 414 new cases in 3,285,000 person-years at ages 18–44 years (median age 27 years), for a total age-adjusted incidence rate of 13.6 per 100,000 (95% CI 12.4–14.9). Incidence rates were twice as high in black women as in white women (21.8 vs 9.7 per 100,000, p < 0.001). In a regression model, incidence of insulin-requiring diabetes peaked annually in the winter–spring season (OR 1.46, p < 0.01). Race and seasonal differences persisted in the multivariate analysis. Differences in incidence rates by race and season suggest a need for further research into possible reasons, including the possibility of a contribution from vitamin D deficiency. Cohort studies using prediagnostic serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D should be conducted to further evaluate this relationship

CD133+ adult human retinal cells remain undifferentiated in Leukaemia Inhibitory Factor (LIF)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>CD133 is a cell surface marker of haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. Leukaemia inhibitory factor (LIF), sustains proliferation and not differentiation of embryonic stem cells. We used CD133 to purify adult human retinal cells and aimed to determine what effect LIF had on these cultures and whether they still had the ability to generate neurospheres.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Retinal cell suspensions were derived from adult human post-mortem tissue with ethical approval. With magnetic automated cell sorting (MACS) CD133⁺retinal cells were enriched from post mortem adult human retina. CD133⁺retinal cell phenotype was analysed by flow cytometry and cultured cells were observed for proliferative capacity, neuropshere generation and differentiation with or without LIF supplementation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We demonstrated purification (to 95%) of CD133⁺cells from adult human postmortem retina. Proliferating cells were identified through BrdU incorporation and expression of the proliferation markers Ki67 and Cyclin D1. CD133⁺retinal cells differentiated whilst forming neurospheres containing appropriate lineage markers including glia, neurons and photoreceptors. LIF maintained CD133⁺retinal cells in a proliferative and relatively undifferentiated state (Ki67, Cyclin D1 expression) without significant neurosphere generation. Differentiation whilst forming neurospheres was re-established on LIF withdrawal.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data support the evidence that CD133 expression characterises a population of cells within the resident adult human retina which have progenitor cell properties and that their turnover and differentiation is influenced by LIF. This may explain differences in retinal responses observed following disease or injury.</p