46 research outputs found

    Personal Health and Community Safety Perceptions and their Association with Meeting Physical Activity Guidelines

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    Objective: To examine whether Vermonters’ perceptions of physical health, mental health, and community safety are associated with meeting Healthy Vermonters’ (HV) 2020 goals.1,2,3 Data was collected in 2017 and utilized for the present study, completed May 2020. Methods: Predictor variables for logistic regression analysis were the 4,393 respondents’ selfreported 1) physical health, 2) mental health, and 3) community safety for walking. Outcome variables were achievement of the HV 2020 goals for 1) aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity and 2) engagement in leisure-time physical activity (LTPA). Results: The odds of meeting the HV 2020 guidelines for aerobic and muscle strengthening activity for those who ranked their community as “Extremely safe” for walking were higher than for those who ranked their community as “Not at all safe” (OR = 2.48; p = .012). Similarly, the odds of engaging in LTPA were higher for those who ranked their community “Extremely safe” than for those who ranked their community “Not at all safe”. (OR = 1.7; p = .046). Conclusion: Perception of neighborhood safety appears to be significantly related to meeting physical activity goals

    The Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) instrument: Evaluating features, amenities and incivilities of physical activity resources in urban neighborhoods

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    Background: Neighborhood environment factors may influence physical activity (PA). The purpose of this study was to develop and test a brief instrument to systematically document and describe the type, features, amenities, quality and incivilities of a variety of PA resources. Method: The one-page Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) instrument was developed to assess all publicly available PA resources in thirteen urban lower income, high ethnic minority concentration neighborhoods that surrounded public housing developments (HDs) and four higher income, low ethnic minority concentration comparison neighborhoods. Neighborhoods had similar population density and connectivity. Trained field coders rated 97 PA resources (including parks, churches, schools, sports facilities, fitness centers, community centers, and trails) on location, type, cost, features, amenities, quality and incivilities. Assessments typically took about 10 minutes to complete. Results: HD neighborhoods had a mean of 4.9 PA resources (n = 73) with considerable variability in the type of resources available for each neighborhood. Comparison neighborhoods had a mean of 6 resources (n = 24). Most resources were accessible at no cost (82%). Resources in both types of neighborhoods typically had about 2 to 3 PA features and amenities, and the quality was usually mediocre to good in both types of neighborhoods. Incivilities at PA resources in HD neighborhoods were significantly more common than in comparison neighborhoods. Conclusion: Although PA resources were similar in number, features and amenities, the overall appearance of the resources in HD neighborhoods was much worse as indicated by substantially worse incivilities ratings in HD neighborhoods. The more comprehensive assessment, including features, amenities and incivilities, provided by the PARA may be important to distinguish between PA resources in lower and higher deprivation areas

    The Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) instrument: Evaluating features, amenities and incivilities of physical activity resources in urban neighborhoods

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    BACKGROUND: Neighborhood environment factors may influence physical activity (PA). The purpose of this study was to develop and test a brief instrument to systematically document and describe the type, features, amenities, quality and incivilities of a variety of PA resources. METHOD: The one-page Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) instrument was developed to assess all publicly available PA resources in thirteen urban lower income, high ethnic minority concentration neighborhoods that surrounded public housing developments (HDs) and four higher income, low ethnic minority concentration comparison neighborhoods. Neighborhoods had similar population density and connectivity. Trained field coders rated 97 PA resources (including parks, churches, schools, sports facilities, fitness centers, community centers, and trails) on location, type, cost, features, amenities, quality and incivilities. Assessments typically took about 10 minutes to complete. RESULTS: HD neighborhoods had a mean of 4.9 PA resources (n = 73) with considerable variability in the type of resources available for each neighborhood. Comparison neighborhoods had a mean of 6 resources (n = 24). Most resources were accessible at no cost (82%). Resources in both types of neighborhoods typically had about 2 to 3 PA features and amenities, and the quality was usually mediocre to good in both types of neighborhoods. Incivilities at PA resources in HD neighborhoods were significantly more common than in comparison neighborhoods. CONCLUSION: Although PA resources were similar in number, features and amenities, the overall appearance of the resources in HD neighborhoods was much worse as indicated by substantially worse incivilities ratings in HD neighborhoods. The more comprehensive assessment, including features, amenities and incivilities, provided by the PARA may be important to distinguish between PA resources in lower and higher deprivation areas

    The Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) instrument: Evaluating features, amenities and incivilities of physical activity resources in urban neighborhoods

    Get PDF
    Abstract Background Neighborhood environment factors may influence physical activity (PA). The purpose of this study was to develop and test a brief instrument to systematically document and describe the type, features, amenities, quality and incivilities of a variety of PA resources. Method The one-page Physical Activity Resource Assessment (PARA) instrument was developed to assess all publicly available PA resources in thirteen urban lower income, high ethnic minority concentration neighborhoods that surrounded public housing developments (HDs) and four higher income, low ethnic minority concentration comparison neighborhoods. Neighborhoods had similar population density and connectivity. Trained field coders rated 97 PA resources (including parks, churches, schools, sports facilities, fitness centers, community centers, and trails) on location, type, cost, features, amenities, quality and incivilities. Assessments typically took about 10 minutes to complete. Results HD neighborhoods had a mean of 4.9 PA resources (n = 73) with considerable variability in the type of resources available for each neighborhood. Comparison neighborhoods had a mean of 6 resources (n = 24). Most resources were accessible at no cost (82%). Resources in both types of neighborhoods typically had about 2 to 3 PA features and amenities, and the quality was usually mediocre to good in both types of neighborhoods. Incivilities at PA resources in HD neighborhoods were significantly more common than in comparison neighborhoods. Conclusion Although PA resources were similar in number, features and amenities, the overall appearance of the resources in HD neighborhoods was much worse as indicated by substantially worse incivilities ratings in HD neighborhoods. The more comprehensive assessment, including features, amenities and incivilities, provided by the PARA may be important to distinguish between PA resources in lower and higher deprivation areas.Peer Reviewe

    Associations between the built environment and physical activity in public housing residents

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    Background: Environmental factors may influence the particularly low rates of physical activity in African American and low-income adults. This cross-sectional study investigated how measured environmental factors were related to self-reported walking and vigorous physical activity for residents of low-income public housing developments. Methods: Physical activity data from 452 adult residents residing in 12 low-income housing developments were combined with measured environmental data that examined the neighborhood (800 m radius buffer) around each housing development. Aggregated ecological and multilevel regression models were used for analysis. Results: Participants were predominately female (72.8%), African American (79.6%) and had a high school education or more (59.0%). Overall, physical activity rates were low, with only 21% of participants meeting moderate physical activity guidelines. Ecological models showed that fewer incivilities and greater street connectivity predicted 83% of the variance in days walked per week, p < 0.001, with both gender and connectivity predicting days walked per week in the multi-level analysis, p < 0.05. Greater connectivity and fewer physical activity resources predicted 90% of the variance in meeting moderate physical activity guidelines, p < 0.001, and gender and connectivity were the multi-level predictors, p < 0.05 and 0.01, respectively. Greater resource accessibility predicted 34% of the variance in days per week of vigorous physical activity in the ecological model, p < 0.05, but the multi-level analysis found no significant predictors. Conclusion: These results indicate that the physical activity of low-income residents of public housing is related to modifiable aspects of the built environment. Individuals with greater access to more physical activity resources with few incivilities, as well as, greater street connectivity, are more likely to be physically active

    ISAMBARD:An open-source computational environment for biomolecular analysis, modelling and design

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    Motivation: The rational design of biomolecules is becoming a reality. However, further computational tools are needed to facilitate and accelerate this, and to make it accessible to more users. Results: Here we introduce ISAMBARD, a tool for structural analysis, model building and rational design of biomolecules. ISAMBARD is open-source, modular, computationally scalable and intuitive to use. These features allow non-experts to explore biomolecular design in silico. ISAMBARD addresses a standing issue in protein design, namely, how to introduce backbone variability in a controlled manner. This is achieved through the generalization of tools for parametric modelling, describing the overall shape of proteins geometrically, and without input from experimentally determined structures. This will allow backbone conformations for entire folds and assemblies not observed in nature to be generated de novo, that is, to access the ‘dark matter of protein-fold space’. We anticipate that ISAMBARD will find broad applications in biomolecular design, biotechnology and synthetic biology. Availability and implementation: A current stable build can be downloaded from the python package index (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/isambard/) with development builds available on GitHub (https://github.com/woolfson-group/) along with documentation, tutorial material and all the scripts used to generate the data described in this paper. Contact:[email protected] or [email protected] Supplementary information:Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

    Oral abstracts 3: RA Treatment and outcomesO13. Validation of jadas in all subtypes of juvenile idiopathic arthritis in a clinical setting

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    Background: Juvenile Arthritis Disease Activity Score (JADAS) is a 4 variable composite disease activity (DA) score for JIA (including active 10, 27 or 71 joint count (AJC), physician global (PGA), parent/child global (PGE) and ESR). The validity of JADAS for all ILAR subtypes in the routine clinical setting is unknown. We investigated the construct validity of JADAS in the clinical setting in all subtypes of JIA through application to a prospective inception cohort of UK children presenting with new onset inflammatory arthritis. Methods: JADAS 10, 27 and 71 were determined for all children in the Childhood Arthritis Prospective Study (CAPS) with complete data available at baseline. Correlation of JADAS 10, 27 and 71 with single DA markers was determined for all subtypes. All correlations were calculated using Spearman's rank statistic. Results: 262/1238 visits had sufficient data for calculation of JADAS (1028 (83%) AJC, 744 (60%) PGA, 843 (68%) PGE and 459 (37%) ESR). Median age at disease onset was 6.0 years (IQR 2.6-10.4) and 64% were female. Correlation between JADAS 10, 27 and 71 approached 1 for all subtypes. Median JADAS 71 was 5.3 (IQR 2.2-10.1) with a significant difference between median JADAS scores between subtypes (p < 0.01). Correlation of JADAS 71 with each single marker of DA was moderate to high in the total cohort (see Table 1). Overall, correlation with AJC, PGA and PGE was moderate to high and correlation with ESR, limited JC, parental pain and CHAQ was low to moderate in the individual subtypes. Correlation coefficients in the extended oligoarticular, rheumatoid factor negative and enthesitis related subtypes were interpreted with caution in view of low numbers. Conclusions: This study adds to the body of evidence supporting the construct validity of JADAS. JADAS correlates with other measures of DA in all ILAR subtypes in the routine clinical setting. Given the high frequency of missing ESR data, it would be useful to assess the validity of JADAS without inclusion of the ESR. Disclosure statement: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest. Table 1Spearman's correlation between JADAS 71 and single markers DA by ILAR subtype ILAR Subtype Systemic onset JIA Persistent oligo JIA Extended oligo JIA Rheumatoid factor neg JIA Rheumatoid factor pos JIA Enthesitis related JIA Psoriatic JIA Undifferentiated JIA Unknown subtype Total cohort Number of children 23 111 12 57 7 9 19 7 17 262 AJC 0.54 0.67 0.53 0.75 0.53 0.34 0.59 0.81 0.37 0.59 PGA 0.63 0.69 0.25 0.73 0.14 0.05 0.50 0.83 0.56 0.64 PGE 0.51 0.68 0.83 0.61 0.41 0.69 0.71 0.9 0.48 0.61 ESR 0.28 0.31 0.35 0.4 0.6 0.85 0.43 0.7 0.5 0.53 Limited 71 JC 0.29 0.51 0.23 0.37 0.14 -0.12 0.4 0.81 0.45 0.41 Parental pain 0.23 0.62 0.03 0.57 0.41 0.69 0.7 0.79 0.42 0.53 Childhood health assessment questionnaire 0.25 0.57 -0.07 0.36 -0.47 0.84 0.37 0.8 0.66 0.4

    Basic science232. Certolizumab pegol prevents pro-inflammatory alterations in endothelial cell function

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    Background: Cardiovascular disease is a major comorbidity of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and a leading cause of death. Chronic systemic inflammation involving tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF) could contribute to endothelial activation and atherogenesis. A number of anti-TNF therapies are in current use for the treatment of RA, including certolizumab pegol (CZP), (Cimzia Âź; UCB, Belgium). Anti-TNF therapy has been associated with reduced clinical cardiovascular disease risk and ameliorated vascular function in RA patients. However, the specific effects of TNF inhibitors on endothelial cell function are largely unknown. Our aim was to investigate the mechanisms underpinning CZP effects on TNF-activated human endothelial cells. Methods: Human aortic endothelial cells (HAoECs) were cultured in vitro and exposed to a) TNF alone, b) TNF plus CZP, or c) neither agent. Microarray analysis was used to examine the transcriptional profile of cells treated for 6 hrs and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analysed gene expression at 1, 3, 6 and 24 hrs. NF-ÎșB localization and IÎșB degradation were investigated using immunocytochemistry, high content analysis and western blotting. Flow cytometry was conducted to detect microparticle release from HAoECs. Results: Transcriptional profiling revealed that while TNF alone had strong effects on endothelial gene expression, TNF and CZP in combination produced a global gene expression pattern similar to untreated control. The two most highly up-regulated genes in response to TNF treatment were adhesion molecules E-selectin and VCAM-1 (q 0.2 compared to control; p > 0.05 compared to TNF alone). The NF-ÎșB pathway was confirmed as a downstream target of TNF-induced HAoEC activation, via nuclear translocation of NF-ÎșB and degradation of IÎșB, effects which were abolished by treatment with CZP. In addition, flow cytometry detected an increased production of endothelial microparticles in TNF-activated HAoECs, which was prevented by treatment with CZP. Conclusions: We have found at a cellular level that a clinically available TNF inhibitor, CZP reduces the expression of adhesion molecule expression, and prevents TNF-induced activation of the NF-ÎșB pathway. Furthermore, CZP prevents the production of microparticles by activated endothelial cells. This could be central to the prevention of inflammatory environments underlying these conditions and measurement of microparticles has potential as a novel prognostic marker for future cardiovascular events in this patient group. Disclosure statement: Y.A. received a research grant from UCB. I.B. received a research grant from UCB. S.H. received a research grant from UCB. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interes

    Die Stoffwechselwirkungen der SchilddrĂŒsenhormone

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    The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

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    Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least 4m4m. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the 6.5m6.5m James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure
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