Nutrition interventions in the workplace: Evidence of best practice

Aim: The aim of this desktop study was to review all workplace interventions having a nutrition component, published in peer-reviewed literature between 1995 and 2006 by WHO, and to document activities that were successful, as well as possible barriers to their success.Methodology: A systematic review of workplace studies revealed 41 interventions, of which 30 complied with the predetermined search criteria. The following outcome measures were considered in the evaluation of the interventions: (i) changes in nutritional knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, intentions and stage of change; (ii) changes in dietary behaviours; (iii) changes in clinical/physical markers, such as: body weight or body-mass index (BMI), blood pressure (BP) or serum cholesterol concentrations; and (iv) process and/or policy outcomes.Results: A large number of diverse workplace interventions were successful in changing outcomes positively in the interventions evaluated. The following were key success factors: i) there was a nutrition and physical activity component; ii) dietitians were involved in nutrition education; iii) changes occurred in the cafeteria/canteen, which increased the availability of healthy food options and advertised them accordingly; iv) tailored feedback on diet (and clinical values) was given to subjects; v) employees were involved in planning and managing programmes; vi) the reduced prices (of healthy food items) in vending machines encouraged employees to buy healthier options; and vii) the stages of change theory was most commonly associated with best practice outcomes.Conclusions: Numerous workplace interventions have shown significant improvements in employees’ health and behaviours. However, it is necessary to plan intervention programmes based on the existing evidence of best practice

A review of school nutrition interventions globally as an evidence base for the development of the HealthKick programme in the Western Cape, South Africa

Aim: The aim of this study was to review all school interventions having a nutrition component, published in peer-reviewed literature between 1995 and 2006, and to document activities that were successful as well as those that were possible barriers in order to develop a best practice school intervention for the Western Cape Province, South Africa.Methodology: A systematic review of school studies revealed 85 interventions that complied with the predetermined search criteria. The following outcome measures were considered in the evaluation of the interventions: (i) changes in nutritional knowledge, attitudes and  selfefficacy and stage of change; (ii) changes in dietary behaviours; (iii) changes in clinical/physical markers such as body weight or body mass index, blood pressure or serum cholesterol concentrations; and (iv) process and/or policy outcomes.Results: Key success factors of school-based interventions appeared to be the following: A nutrition-based curriculum offered at school by trained teachers generally improved behavioural outcomes. A physical activity programme and parental component were associated with most of the best practice clinical and behavioural outcomes. Furthermore, all best practice studies were grounded on a firm theory of behaviour, such as social cognitive, social marketing or stages of change. Most of the interventions that included a food service component had best practice behavioural outcomes.Conclusions: Numerous school-based nutrition interventions have shown significant improvements in children’s nutritional behaviours. Consequently, it is necessary to plan programmes based on existing evidence of best practice. The lessons learnt from this review have beenapplied in the development of the HealthKick programme initiated in  schools in the Western Cape in 2007

Changing indications and socio-demographic determinants of (adeno)tonsillectomy among children in England--are they linked? A retrospective analysis of hospital data.

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether increased awareness and diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) and national guidance on tonsillectomy for recurrent tonsillitis have influenced the socio-demographic profile of children who underwent tonsillectomy over the last decade. METHOD: Retrospective time-trends study of Hospital Episodes Statistics data. We examined the age, sex and deprivation level, alongside OSAS diagnoses, among children aged <16 years who underwent (adeno)tonsillectomy in England between 2001/2 and 2011/12. RESULTS: Among children aged <16 years, there were 29,697 and 27,732 (adeno)tonsillectomies performed in 2001/2 and 2011/12, respectively. The median age at (adeno)tonsillectomy decreased from 7 (IQR: 5-11) to 5 (IQR: 4-9) years over the decade. (Adeno)tonsillectomy rates among children aged 4-15 years decreased by 14% from 350 (95%CI: 346-354) in 2001/2 to 300 (95%CI: 296-303) per 100,000 children in 2011/12. However, (adeno)tonsillectomy rates among children aged <4 years increased by 58% from 135 (95%CI: 131-140) to 213 (95%CI 208-219) per 100,000 children in 2001/2 and 2011/2, respectively. OSAS diagnoses among children aged <4 years who underwent surgery increased from 18% to 39% between these study years and the proportion of children aged <4 years with OSAS from the most deprived areas increased from 5% to 12%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: (Adeno)tonsillectomy rates declined among children aged 4-15 years, which reflects national guidelines recommending the restriction of the operation to children with more severe recurrent throat infections. However, (adeno)tonsillectomy rates among pre-school children substantially increased over the past decade and one in five children undergoing the operation was aged <4 years in 2011/12.The increase in surgery rates in younger children is likely to have been driven by increased awareness and detection of OSAS, particularly among children from the most deprived areas

Future Fitness of Female Insect Pests in Temporally Stable and Unstable Habitats and Its Impact on Habitat Utility as Refuges for Insect Resistance Management

The long-term fitness of individuals is examined in complex and temporally dynamic ecosystems. We call this multigeneration fitness measure “future fitness”. Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a polyphagous insect that feeds on many wild and cultivated hosts. While four generations of H. zea occur during the cropping season in the U.S. Mid Southern agroecosysem, the latter two generations were of most interest, as corn (which has been largely nontransgenic in the Mid-South) dominates the first two generations in the cropping system. In simulations of the evolution of resistance to Bt-transgenic crops, cotton refuge areas were found to be significantly more effective than similar soybean acreages at delaying the evolution of resistance. Cotton is a suitable host for H. zea during two late summer generations, while a soybean field is suitable for only one of these generations, therefore soybean fields of other maturity groups were simulated as being attractive during the alternative generation. A hypothetical soybean variety was tested in which a single field would be attractive over both generations and it was found to be significantly more effective at delaying resistance than simulated conventional soybean varieties. Finally, the placement of individuals emerging at the start of the 3rd (first without corn) generation was simulated in either refuge cotton, conventional soybean and the hypothetical long attractive soybean and the mean number of offspring produced was measured at the end of the season. Although females in conventional and long soybean crops had the same expected fecundity, because of differences in temporal stability of the two crops, the long soybean simulations had significantly more H. zea individuals at the end of the season than the conventional soybean simulations. These simulations demonstrate that the long-term fecundity associated with an individual is dependent not only on the fecundity of that individual in its current habitat, but also the temporal stability of habitats, the ecosystem at large and the likelihood that the individual's offspring will move into different habitats

A model of top-down gain control in the auditory system

To evaluate a model of top-down gain control in the auditory system, 6 participants were asked to identify 1-kHz pure tones differing only in intensity. There were three 20-session conditions: (1) four soft tones (25, 30, 35, and 40 dB SPL) in the set; (2) those four soft tones plus a 50-dB SPL tone; and (3) the four soft tones plus an 80-dB SPL tone. The results were well described by a top-down, nonlinear gain-control system in which the amplifier’s gain depended on the highest intensity in the stimulus set. Individual participants’ identification judgments were generally compatible with an equal-variance signal-detection model in which the mean locations of the distribution of effects along the decision axis were determined by the operation of this nonlinear amplification system

Critical change in the Fermi surface of iron arsenic superconductors at the onset of superconductivity

The phase diagram of a correlated material is the result of a complex interplay between several degrees of freedom, providing a map of the material's behavior. One can understand (and ultimately control) the material's ground state by associating features and regions of the phase diagram, with specific physical events or underlying quantum mechanical properties. The phase diagram of the newly discovered iron arsenic high temperature superconductors is particularly rich and interesting. In the AE(Fe1-xTx)2As2 class (AE being Ca, Sr, Ba, T being transition metals), the simultaneous structural/magnetic phase transition that occurs at elevated temperature in the undoped material, splits and is suppressed by carrier doping, the suppression being complete around optimal doping. A dome of superconductivity exists with apparent equal ease in the orthorhombic / antiferromagnetic (AFM) state as well as in the tetragonal state with no long range magnetic order. The question then is what determines the critical doping at which superconductivity emerges, if the AFM order is fully suppressed only at higher doping values. Here we report evidence from angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) that critical changes in the Fermi surface (FS) occur at the doping level that marks the onset of superconductivity. The presence of the AFM order leads to a reconstruction of the electronic structure, most significantly the appearance of the small hole pockets at the Fermi level. These hole pockets vanish, i. e. undergo a Lifshitz transition, at the onset of superconductivity. Superconductivity and magnetism are competing states in the iron arsenic superconductors. In the presence of the hole pockets superconductivity is fully suppressed, while in their absence the two states can coexist.Comment: Updated version accepted in Nature Physic

BCR-ABL1 mutation development during first-line treatment with dasatinib or imatinib for chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase

BCR-ABL1 mutations are a common, well-characterized mechanism of resistance to imatinib as first-line treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase (CML-CP). Less is known about mutation development during first-line treatment with dasatinib and nilotinib, despite increased use because of higher response rates compared with imatinib. Retrospective analyses were conducted to characterize mutation development in patients with newly diagnosed CML-CP treated with dasatinib (n=259) or imatinib (n=260) in DASISION (Dasatinib versus Imatinib Study in Treatment-Naive CML-CP), with 3-year minimum follow-up. Mutation screening, including patients who discontinued treatment and patients who had a clinically relevant on-treatment event (no confirmed complete cytogenetic response (cCCyR) and no major molecular response (MMR) within 12 months; fivefold increase in BCR-ABL1 with loss of MMR; loss of CCyR), yielded a small number of patients with mutations (dasatinib, n=17; imatinib, n=18). Dasatinib patients had a narrower spectrum of mutations (4 vs 12 sites for dasatinib vs imatinib), fewer phosphate-binding loop mutations (1 vs 9 mutations), fewer multiple mutations (1 vs 6 patients) and greater occurrence of T315I (11 vs 0 patients). This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT00481247.T P Hughes, G Saglio, A Quintás-Cardama, M J Mauro, D-W Kim, J H Lipton6, M B Bradley-Garelik, J Ukropec and A Hochhau

Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

Computational analysis of gene expression space associated with metastatic cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prostate carcinoma is among the most common types of cancer affecting hundreds of thousands people every year. Once the metastatic form of prostate carcinoma is documented, the majority of patients die from their tumors as opposed to other causes. The key to successful treatment is in the earliest possible diagnosis, as well as understanding the molecular mechanisms of metastatic progression. A number of recent studies have identified multiple biomarkers for metastatic progression. However, most of the studies consider only direct comparison between metastatic and non-metastatic classes of samples.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose an alternative concept of analysis that considers the entire multidimensional space of gene expression and identifies the partition of this space in which metastatic development is possible. To apply this concept in cancer gene expression studies we utilize a modification of high-dimension natural taxonomy algorithm FOREL. Our analysis of microarray data containing primary and metastatic cancer samples has revealed not only differentially expressed genes, but also relations between different groups of primary and metastatic cancer. Metastatic samples tend to occupy a distinct partition of gene expression space. Further pathway analysis suggests that this partition is delineated by a specific pattern of gene expression in cytoskeleton remodeling, cell adhesion and apoptosis/cell survival pathways. We compare our findings with both report of original analysis and recent studies in molecular mechanism of metastasis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our analysis indicates a single molecular mechanism of metastasis. The new approach does not contradict previously reported findings, but reveals important details unattainable with traditional methodology.</p