Eat4Thought: A Design of Food Journaling

Food journaling is an effective method to help people identify their eating patterns and encourage healthy eating habits as it requires self-reflection on eating behaviors. Current tools have predominately focused on tracking food intake, such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and calories. Other factors, such as contextual information and momentary thoughts and feelings that are internal to an individual, are also essential to help people reflect upon and change attitudes about eating behaviors. However, current dietary tracking tools rarely support capturing these elements as a way to foster deep reflection. In this work, we present Eat4Thought -- a food journaling application that allows users to track their emotional, sensory, and spatio-temporal elements of meals as a means of supporting self-reflection. The application enables vivid documentation of experiences and self-reflection on the past through video recording. We describe our design process and an initial evaluation of the application. We also provide design recommendations for future work on food journaling.Comment: 8 page

Spectroscopic Signatures of Extra-Tidal Stars Around the Globular Clusters NGC 6656 (M22), NGC 3201 and NGC 1851 from RAVE

Stellar population studies of globular clusters have suggested that the brightest clusters in the Galaxy might actually be the remnant nuclei of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. If the present Galactic globular clusters formed within larger stellar systems, they are likely surrounded by extra-tidal halos and/or tails made up of stars that were tidally stripped from their parent systems. The stellar surroundings around globular clusters are therefore one of the best places to look for the remnants of an ancient dwarf galaxy. Here an attempt is made to search for tidal debris around the supernovae enriched globular clusters M22 and NGC 1851 as well as the kinematically unique cluster NGC 3201. The stellar parameters from the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) are used to identify stars with RAVE metallicities, radial velocities and elemental-abundances consistent with the abundance patterns and properties of the stars in M22, NGC 1851 and NGC 3201. The discovery of RAVE stars that may be associated with M22 and NGC 1851 are reported, some of which are at projected distances of ~10 degrees away from the core of these clusters. Numerous RAVE stars associated with NGC 3201 suggest that either the tidal radius of this cluster is underestimated, or that there are some unbound stars extending a few arc minutes from the edge of the cluster's radius. No further extra-tidal stars associated with NGC 3201 could be identified. The bright magnitudes of the RAVE stars make them easy targets for high resolution follow-up observations, allowing an eventual further chemical tagging to solidify (or exclude) stars outside the tidal radius of the cluster as tidal debris. In both our radial velocity histograms of the regions surrounding NGC 1851 and NGC 3201, a peak of stars at 230 km/s is seen, consistent with extended tidal debris from omega Centauri.Comment: accepted to A&

Catalytic mechanism and role of hydroxyl residues in the active site of theta class Glutathione-S-Transferases: Investigation of Ser-9 and Tyr-113 in a Glutathione S-Transferase from the australian sheep blowfly Lucilia cuprina

Abstract Spectroscopic and kinetic studies have been performed on the Australian sheep blowfly Lucilia cuprina glutathione S-transferase (Lucilia GST; EC 2.5.1.18) to clarify its catalytic mechanism. Steady state kinetics of Lucilia GST are non-Michaelian, but the quite hyperbolic isothermic binding of GSH suggests that a steady state random sequential Bi Bi mechanism is consistent with the anomalous kinetics observed. The rate-limiting step of the reaction is a viscosity-dependent physical event, and stopped-flow experiments indicate that product release is rate-limiting. Spectroscopic and kinetic data demonstrate thatLucilia GST is able to lower the pK a of the bound GSH from 9.0 to about 6.5. Based on crystallographic suggestions, the role of two hydroxyl residues, Ser-9 and Tyr-113, has been investigated. Removal of the hydroxyl group of Ser-9 by site-directed mutagenesis raises the pK a of bound GSH to about 7.6, and a very low turnover number (about 0.5% of that of wild type) is observed. This inactivation may be explained by a strong contribution of the Ser-9 hydroxyl group to the productive binding of GSH and by an involvement in the stabilization of the ionized GSH. This serine residue is highly conserved in the Theta class GSTs, so the present findings may be applicable to all of the family members. Tyr-113 appears not to be essential for the GSH activation. Stopped-flow data indicate that removal of the hydroxyl group of Tyr-113 does not change the rate-limiting step of reaction but causes an increase of the rate constants of both the formation and release of the GSH conjugate. Tyr-113 resides on α-helix 4, and its hydroxyl group hydrogen bonds directly to the hydroxyl of Tyr-105. This would reduce the flexibility of a protein region that contributes to the electrophilic substrate binding site; segmental motion of α-helix 4 possibly modulates different aspects of the catalytic mechanism of theLucilia GST

Investigating older adults' attitudes towards crisis informatics tools: Opportunities for enhancing

The world population is projected to rapidly age over the next 30 years. Given the increasing digital technology adoption amongst older adults, researchers have investigated how technology can support aging populations. However, little work has examined how technology can support older adults during crises, despite increasingly common natural disasters, public health emergencies, and other crisis scenarios in which older adults are especially vulnerable. Addressing this gap, we conducted focus groups with older adults residing in coastal locations to examine to what extent they felt technology could support them during emergencies. Our findings characterize participants' desire for tools that enhance community resilience-local knowledge, preparedness, community relationships, and communication, that help communities withstand disasters. Further, older adults' crisis technology preferences were linked to their sense of control, social relationships, and digital readiness. We discuss how a focus on community resilience can yield crisis technologies that more effectively support older adults

Counting the Acid Sites in a Commercial ZSM-5 Zeolite Catalyst

This work was funded by Johnson Matthey plc. through the provision of industrial CASE studentships in partnership with the EPSRC (AZ (EP/N509176/1), APH (EP/P510506/1)). Experiments at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source were made possible by beam time allocations from the Science and Technologies Facilities Council.45,46 Resources and support were provided by the UK Catalysis Hub via membership of the UK Catalysis Hub consortium and funded by EPSRC grants EP/R026815/1 and EP/R026939/1Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Mirroring everyday clinical practice in clinical trial design: a new concept to improve the external validity of randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials in the pharmacological treatment of major depression

Background: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials constitute the gold standard in clinical research when testing the efficacy of new psychopharmacological interventions in the treatment of major depression. However, the blinded use of placebo has been found to influence clinical trial outcomes and may bias patient selection. Discussion: To improve clinical trial design in major depression so as to reflect clinical practice more closely we propose to present patients with a balanced view of the benefits of study participation irrespective of their assignment to placebo or active treatment. In addition every participant should be given the option to finally receive the active medication. A research agenda is outlined to evaluate the impact of the proposed changes on the efficacy of the drug to be evaluated and on the demographic and clinical characteristics of the enrollment fraction with regard to its representativeness of the eligible population. Summary: We propose a list of measures to be taken to improve the external validity of double-blind, placebocontrolled trials in major depression. The recommended changes to clinical trial design may also be relevant for other psychiatric as well as medical disorders in which expectations regarding treatment outcome may affect the outcome itself

Fecal microbiota transfer between young and aged mice reverses hallmarks of the aging gut, eye, and brain

Background: Altered intestinal microbiota composition in later life is associated with inflammaging, declining tissue function, and increased susceptibility to age-associated chronic diseases, including neurodegenerative dementias. Here, we tested the hypothesis that manipulating the intestinal microbiota influences the development of major comorbidities associated with aging and, in particular, inflammation affecting the brain and retina. Methods: Using fecal microbiota transplantation, we exchanged the intestinal microbiota of young (3 months), old (18 months), and aged (24 months) mice. Whole metagenomic shotgun sequencing and metabolomics were used to develop a custom analysis workflow, to analyze the changes in gut microbiota composition and metabolic potential. Effects of age and microbiota transfer on the gut barrier, retina, and brain were assessed using protein assays, immunohistology, and behavioral testing. Results: We show that microbiota composition profiles and key species enriched in young or aged mice are successfully transferred by FMT between young and aged mice and that FMT modulates resulting metabolic pathway profiles. The transfer of aged donor microbiota into young mice accelerates age-associated central nervous system (CNS) inflammation, retinal inflammation, and cytokine signaling and promotes loss of key functional protein in the eye, effects which are coincident with increased intestinal barrier permeability. Conversely, these detrimental effects can be reversed by the transfer of young donor microbiota. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that the aging gut microbiota drives detrimental changes in the gut–brain and gut–retina axes suggesting that microbial modulation may be of therapeutic benefit in preventing inflammation-related tissue decline in later life. [MediaObject not available: see fulltext.] Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.