Serving the Fast Food Nation: Analyzing and Understanding Food Choice, BMI and Self-Perceived Weight in the Food Service Worker Population

Policymakers, politicians, and media outlets have declared an obesity epidemic. In doing so, they have named a variety of villains, including fast food. Despite the framing of fast food as being a leading contributor to weight gain and obesity, we have yet to understand the impact that fast food has on those who work with it every day. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the food choices, BMIs, and self perceived weights of the food service worker population. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field, I investigate the role of the workplace and external cultural influences, such as the family, in navigating an obseogenic workplace environment that is centered on selling highly caloric food to the Canadian public in a quick and cost effective manner. The first stage of this research addresses the question: Are food service workers more likely to be overweight or obese and perceive themselves as being overweight compared to the general population? In order to do this, I analyzed secondary survey data from the Canadian Community Health Survey cycle 5.1 (2009-2010). I used logistic regression techniques to construct models that analyze the likelihood of having high BMIs and high self perceived weights in both the food service worker and general Canadian populations. In addition to this, I sought to understand the food choices that contribute to weight gain in fast food workers. To do this, I conducted forty semi-structured qualitative interviews with workers from a variety of fast food chains. The results of my research disprove my original hypothesis that food service workers are more likely to be overweight or obese because of their frequent exposure to fast food. Instead, I found that they are less likely to be overweight or obese than the general Canadian population. Additionally, they are also less likely to perceive themselves as being overweight or obese. Through the qualitative interviews, I found that these individuals participate in a process of regulation where they monitor their food intake at work. Additionally, I found that their consumption patterns stemmed from habitus generated through cultural exposures in other areas of their lives. Pierre Bourdieu (1984) argues that we develop habitus through meaningful cultural exposure. We use our habitus, or engrained dispositions, to navigate hierarchical spaces or fields. Through this research, I found that workers viewed their jobs as being temporary and their cultural consumption patterns did not seem to change from their exposures to their workplaces. The majority were part time students, working in this industry to pay for living expenses and tuition. For the most part, they were raised in middle class homes where their mothers prepared food for their families from scratch on a daily basis. Fast food was viewed as a special treat and not an item to consume on a regular basis. I conclude that the meaningful exposures we have to food and cultural norms throughout life are more important in determining our food choices than our exposure to fast food restaurants

SPECT-CT localization of axillary sentinel lymph nodes for radiotherapy of early breast cancer

PurposeTo evaluate the opportunities of single photon emission tomography/computerized tomography (SPECT-CT) for localization of axillary sentinel lymph nodes (ASLNs) and subsequent radiotherapy planning in women with early breast cancer.Material and methodsIndividual topography of ASLN was determined in 151 women with clinical T1-2N0M0 breast cancer. SPECT-CT visualization of ASLNs was initiated 120min after intra-peritumoral injection of 99mTc-radiocolloids. Doses absorbed by virtual ASLNs after the whole breast irradiation with standard and extended tangential fields were calculated on a treatment planning station.ResultsSPECT-CT demonstrated a large variability of ASLN localization. They were detected in the central subgroup in 94 (61%) patients, in pectoral – in 77 (51%), and in interpectoral – in 4 (3%) patients. Sentinel lymph nodes “lying on the chest” were revealed in 35 (23%) cases.We found that with standard tangential fields coverage of ASLNs was obtained only in 20% of evaluated women. Extended tangential fields can effectively irradiate ASLNs localized in all axillary sub-regions with the exception of ASLNs “lying on the chest”.ConclusionSPECT-CT mapping of ASLNs in women with cT1-2N0M0 breast cancer reveals their variable localization. This information can be important for planning of radiation treatment in women that underwent breast conserving surgery without an axillary surgery

Global chemical effects of the microbiome include new bile-acid conjugations

A mosaic of cross-phylum chemical interactions occurs between all metazoans and their microbiomes. A number of molecular families that are known to be produced by the microbiome have a marked effect on the balance between health and disease. Considering the diversity of the human microbiome (which numbers over 40,000 operational taxonomic units), the effect of the microbiome on the chemistry of an entire animal remains underexplored. Here we use mass spectrometry informatics and data visualization approaches to provide an assessment of the effects of the microbiome on the chemistry of an entire mammal by comparing metabolomics data from germ-free and specific-pathogen-free mice. We found that the microbiota affects the chemistry of all organs. This included the amino acid conjugations of host bile acids that were used to produce phenylalanocholic acid, tyrosocholic acid and leucocholic acid, which have not previously been characterized despite extensive research on bile-acid chemistry. These bile-acid conjugates were also found in humans, and were enriched in patients with inflammatory bowel disease or cystic fibrosis. These compounds agonized the farnesoid X receptor in vitro, and mice gavaged with the compounds showed reduced expression of bile-acid synthesis genes in vivo. Further studies are required to confirm whether these compounds have a physiological role in the host, and whether they contribute to gut diseases that are associated with microbiome dysbiosis

American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research

McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, et al. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018;3(3):e00031-18

Open Access Repository-Scale Propagated Nearest Neighbor Suspect Spectral Library for Untargeted Metabolomics

Abstract Despite the increasing availability of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) community spectral libraries for untargeted metabolomics over the past decade, the majority of acquired MS/MS spectra remain uninterpreted. To further aid in interpreting unannotated spectra, we created a nearest neighbor suspect spectral library, consisting of 87,916 annotated MS/MS spectra derived from hundreds of millions of public MS/MS spectra. Annotations were propagated based on structural relationships to reference molecules using MS/MS-based spectrum alignment. We demonstrate the broad relevance of the nearest neighbor suspect spectral library through representative examples of propagation-based annotation of acylcarnitines, bacterial and plant natural products, and drug metabolism. Our results also highlight how the library can help to better understand an Alzheimer’s brain phenotype. The nearest neighbor suspect spectral library is openly available through the GNPS platform to help investigators hypothesize candidate structures for unknown MS/MS spectra in untargeted metabolomics data

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised

Sharing and community curation of mass spectrometry data with Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking

The potential of the diverse chemistries present in natural products (NP) for biotechnology and medicine remains untapped because NP databases are not searchable with raw data and the NP community has no way to share data other than in published papers. Although mass spectrometry techniques are well-suited to high-throughput characterization of natural products, there is a pressing need for an infrastructure to enable sharing and curation of data. We present Global Natural Products Social molecular networking (GNPS, http://gnps.ucsd.edu), an open-access knowledge base for community wide organization and sharing of raw, processed or identified tandem mass (MS/MS) spectrometry data. In GNPS crowdsourced curation of freely available community-wide reference MS libraries will underpin improved annotations. Data-driven social-networking should facilitate identification of spectra and foster collaborations. We also introduce the concept of ‘living data’ through continuous reanalysis of deposited data

POLIPARAMETRYCZNE KODOWANIE BLOKOWE

The principles of poly-parametric information coding have been considered. The methods for developing poly-parametric codes have been presented. It is shown that the protection of block codes from channel interference using check patterns can be developed by a mono- or poly-parametric method. A special type of block codes has been presented, the check patterns of which are formed on the basis of their neighbours, which are functionally related to the given code combination. Such codes have been called poly-parametric. Binary poly-parametric ring codes, the check patterns of which are designed to detect and correct channel errors, are developed using the properties of Galois fields and on the basis of the vector shift indicators of the codewords. To obtain digital poly-parametric block codes, the properties and features of the normalized natural sequence are used. It is shown that each codeword of a binary block code can be represented as a certain positive integer in the decimal number system, which is an element of the natural sequence. Its elements on an interval that equals the norm acquire a functional dependency.Rozważono zasady poliparametrycznego kodowania informacji. Przedstawiono metody tworzenia kodów poliparametrycznych. Wykazano, że ochrona kodów blokowych przed zakłóceniami kanałowymi za pomocą wzorców kontrolnych może być realizowana metodą mono- lub poliparametryczną. Przedstawiono specjalny typ kodów blokowych, których wzorce kontrolne są tworzone na podstawie ich sąsiadów funkcjonalnie związanych z daną kombinacją kodową. Takie kody zostały nazwane poliparametrycznymi. Z wykorzystaniem własności pól Galois oraz na podstawie wskaźników przesunięcia wektorowego słów kodowych, zostały opracowane binarne poliparametryczne kody pierścieniowe, których schematy kontrolne przeznaczone są do wykrywania i korekcji błędów kanałowych. Do otrzymania cyfrowych poliparametrycznych kodów blokowych wykorzystuje się właściwości i cechy znormalizowanego ciągu naturalnego. Pokazano, że każde słowo kodowe binarnego kodu blokowego może być reprezentowane jako pewną dodatnią dziesiątkową liczbę całkowitą, która jest elementem ciągu naturalnego. Jego elementy w przedziale równym normie uzyskują zależność funkcyjną

Perceptions of Mental Health and Wellbeing Following Residential Displacement and Damage from the 2018 St. John River Flood

Climate change has spurred an increase in the prevalence and severity of natural disasters. Damage from natural disasters can lead to residential instability, which negatively impacts mental health and wellbeing. However, research on the mental health of residents who are displaced after natural disasters is relatively novel and needs more study. This study investigates experiences of mental health in residents in New Brunswick, Canada, who experienced residential damage and/or displacement during the 2018 spring flood. Lived experiences were studied through focus groups with 20 residents and perceptions of community mental health and wellbeing were captured during key informant interviews with 10 local community leaders. Data collection and analysis employed grounded theory. Findings indicate that those who had residential displacement or damage due to the flooding experienced negative mental health impacts, both during and following the flood. While natural disasters have devastating impacts on mental health, the data also indicate that the communities were positively impacted by a collective and collaborative response to the flood. This paper argues for the utility of communal coping as a concept to describe the experiences of communities following residential damage and/or displacement following natural disasters