Practical Cooling Strategies During Continuous Exercise in Hot Environments: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Performing exercise in thermally stressful environments impairs exercise capacity and performance. Cooling during exercise has the potential to attenuate detrimental increases in body temperature and improve exercise capacity and performance. Objective The objective of this review was to assess the effectiveness of practical cooling strategies applied during continuous exercise in hot environments on body temperature, heart rate, whole body sweat production, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), thermal perception and exercise performance. Methods Electronic database searches of MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, Scopus and Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) were conducted using medical subject headings, indexing terms and keywords. Studies were eligible if participants were defined as ‘healthy’, the exercise task was conducted in an environment ≥25 °C, it used a cooling strategy that would be practical for athletes to use during competition, cooling was applied during a self-paced or fixed-intensity trial, participants exercised continuously, and the study was a randomised controlled trial with the comparator either a thermoneutral equivalent or no cooling. Data for experimental and comparator groups were meta-analysed and expressed as a standardised mean difference and 95 % confidence interval. Results Fourteen studies including 135 participants met the eligibility criteria. Confidence intervals for meta-analysed data included beneficial and detrimental effects for cooling during exercise on core temperature, mean skin temperature, heart rate and sweat production during fixed-intensity exercise. Cooling benefited RPE and thermal perception during fixed-intensity exercise and improved self-paced exercise performance. Conclusion Cooling during fixed-intensity exercise, particularly before a self-paced exercise trial, improves endurance performance in hot environments by benefiting RPE and thermal perception, but does not appear to attenuate increases in body temperature

Vitamin D with Calcium reduces mortality: patient level pooled analysis of 70,528 patients from eight major vitamin D trials

Introduction: Vitamin D may affect multiple health outcomes. If so, an effect on mortality is to be expected. Using pooled data from randomized controlled trials, we performed individual patient data (IPD) and trial level meta-analyses to assess mortality among participants randomized to either vitamin D alone or vitamin D with calcium. Subjects and Methods: Through a systematic literature search, we identified 24 randomized controlled trials reporting data on mortality in which vitamin D was given either alone or with calcium. From a total of 13 trials with more than 1000 participants each, eight trials were included in our IPD analysis. Using a stratified Cox regression model, we calculated risk of death during 3 yr of treatment in an intention-to-treat analysis. Also, we performed a trial level meta-analysis including data from all studies. Results: The IPD analysis yielded data on 70,528 randomized participants (86.8% females) with a median age of 70 (interquartile range, 62–77) yr. Vitamin D with or without calcium reduced mortality by 7% [hazard ratio, 0.93; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.88–0.99]. However, vitamin D alone did not affect mortality, but risk of death was reduced if vitamin D was given with calcium (hazard ratio, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.84–0.98). The number needed to treat with vitamin D plus calcium for 3 yr to prevent one death was 151. Trial level meta-analysis (24 trials with 88,097 participants) showed similar results, i.e. mortality was reduced with vitamin D plus calcium (odds ratio, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.88–0.99), but not with vitamin D alone (odds ratio, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.91–1.06). Conclusion: Vitamin D with calcium reduces mortality in the elderly, whereas available data do not support an effect of vitamin D alone

Gaining user insights into the research-to-operational elements of Impact-based Forecasting (IbF) from within the SHEAR programme : summary of findings

Impact based Forecasting (IbF) is an expanding and evolving area of research within National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and the humanitarian sector, with a broad aim to enhance communication and timely action to reduce losses associated with natural hazards. Although the principles of IbF may seem new to some disciplines, they leverage knowledge built over several years within the risk and emergency management communities (Smith, 2013) and therefore although its application may be newer to some disciplines, many of the principles and practices are based on existing risk theory concepts. However, a key advance of IbF is the pull-through of these concepts into implementable prototypes, tools and services and in order to do this, a growth in interdisciplinary working. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), as well as global Non-Governmental Organisations (e.g. Red Cross Red Crescent) strongly advocate for a shift towards IbF and have developed supporting guidelines (WMO, 2015a; Red Cross Climate Centre, 2020; WMO, 2021) to enhance implementation of such techniques across the globe. In doing this the WMO have distinguished two main types of IbF, subjective and objective. A subjective IbF relies on expert interpretation to provide the impact-based elements to a forecast or warning, whilst an objective IbF utilises vulnerability and exposure datasets, together with hazard information to calculate the risk and/or impacts. It is noted however, that risk assessments almost always utilise a combination of both subjective and objective methods. There are a wide range of dependencies on how an IbF system might evolve, and it is these dependencies which have introduced variety into the approaches and methods used to generate impact-based forecasts and warnings. This variability is also driven by different interpretations of what IbF should provide. Some stakeholders desire to have information on the number of assets or people that might be affected; however, most IbF warnings systems currently provide categorical risk forecasts (i.e. very low, low, medium and high) with supporting generalised impact information. Although the difference between these styles of output may appear subtle it can have significant implications for the development of forecasting and warning applications and the upstream modelling requirements. IbF has rapidly become an umbrella term under which a plethora of methods are being tried and different disciplines engaged. This broad scope is beneficial for research as it enables blue-sky thinking, transdisciplinary research opportunities and ideally, sustained cooperation and collaboration between a wide range of groups (e.g. stakeholders, researchers, technologists, practitioners, decision-makers). However, these same benefits can pose challenges when moving towards operational implementation, particularly for NMHSs with reduced institutional capacities. It should also be noted that the term IbF is linked to a range of other activities and terminologies, including forecast-based action and forecast-based financing (FbF). The lens through which IbF is viewed therefore influences its role and the value it might provide in meeting the objective ‘to enhance usability by making forecasts and warnings more actionable’. Given the growing scope of IbF and the potential challenges this may have for implementation, this research aims to answer the following questions: (1) Is there a shared understanding of what IbF is across individuals involved in its development? (2) Is there a shared perception of the challenges, barriers and opportunities associated with implementing IbF operationally? To accomplish this aim, practitioners, forecasters and researchers, working within the NERC Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR) Programme, were invited to provide their perspectives on a range of IbF related topics through a set of semi-structured interviews. This report provides a synthesis of the interviewee transcripts from key informant interviews. In section 2 the methodology is described, while section 3 provides a review of the key findings from the complete set of interviews. The final section (section 4) provides recommendations and concluding remarks

Sparse testing using genomic prediction improves selection for breeding targets in elite spring wheat

Key message: Sparse testing using genomic prediction can be efficiently used to increase the number of testing environments while maintaining selection intensity in the early yield testing stage without increasing the breeding budget. Abstract: Sparse testing using genomic prediction enables expanded use of selection environments in early-stage yield testing without increasing phenotyping cost. We evaluated different sparse testing strategies in the yield testing stage of a CIMMYT spring wheat breeding pipeline characterized by multiple populations each with small family sizes of 1–9 individuals. Our results indicated that a substantial overlap between lines across environments should be used to achieve optimal prediction accuracy. As sparse testing leverages information generated within and across environments, the genetic correlations between environments and genomic relationships of lines across environments were the main drivers of prediction accuracy in multi-environment yield trials. Including information from previous evaluation years did not consistently improve the prediction performance. Genomic best linear unbiased prediction was found to be the best predictor of true breeding value, and therefore, we propose that it should be used as a selection decision metric in the early yield testing stages. We also propose it as a proxy for assessing prediction performance to mirror breeder’s advancement decisions in a breeding program so that it can be readily applied for advancement decisions by breeding programs

Negotiating the horizon - living Christianity in Melanesia

[W]here is the horizon that separates the foreign and the indigenous, and who can successfully claim to make foreign powers indigenous or to ‘make the global local’? The boundaries of the foreign and the indigenous are fluid and contested—especially between genders and generations. Moreover, such contests are configured in part by the differences between localities (Jolly 2005, p. 138).Alison Dundo

A Single Cell Transcriptomics Map of Paracrine Networks in the Intrinsic Cardiac Nervous System

We developed a spatially-tracked single neuron transcriptomics map of an intrinsic cardiac ganglion, the right atrial ganglionic plexus (RAGP) that is a critical mediator of sinoatrial node (SAN) activity. This 3D representation of RAGP used neuronal tracing to extensively map the spatial distribution of the subset of neurons that project to the SAN. RNA-seq of laser capture microdissected neurons revealed a distinct composition of RAGP neurons compared to the central nervous system and a surprising finding that cholinergic and catecholaminergic markers are coexpressed, suggesting multipotential phenotypes that can drive neuroplasticity within RAGP. High-throughput qPCR of hundreds of laser capture microdissected single neurons confirmed these findings and revealed a high dimensionality of neuromodulatory factors that contribute to dynamic control of the heart. Neuropeptide-receptor coexpression analysis revealed a combinatorial paracrine neuromodulatory network within RAGP informing follow-on studies on the vagal control of RAGP to regulate cardiac function in health and disease

HIV-1 Infection of T cells and macrophages are differentially modulated by virion-associated Hck: a nef-dependent phenomenon

The proline repeat motif (PxxP) of Nef is required for interaction with the SH3 domains of macrophage-specific Src kinase Hck. However, the implication of this interaction for viral replication and infectivity in macrophages and T lymphocytes remains unclear. Experiments in HIV-1 infected macrophages confirmed the presence of a Nef:Hck complex which was dependent on the Nef proline repeat motif. The proline repeat motif of Nef also enhanced both HIV-1 infection and replication in macrophages, and was required for incorporation of Hck into viral particles. Unexpectedly, wild-type Hck inhibited infection of macrophages, but Hck was shown to enhance infection of primary T lymphocytes. These results indicate that the interaction between Nef and Hck is important for Nef-dependent modulation of viral infectivity. Hck-dependent enhancement of HIV-1 infection of T cells suggests that Nef-Hck interaction may contribute to the spread of HIV-1 infection from macrophages to T cells by modulating events in the producer cell, virion and target cell

Weaned age variation in the Virunga mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei)

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00265-016-2066-6Weaning marks an important milestone during life history in mammals indicating nutritional independence from the mother. Age at weaning is a key measure of maternal investment and care, affecting female reproductive rates, offspring survival and ultimately the viability of a population. Factors explaining weaned age variation in the endangered mountain gorilla are not yet well understood. This study investigated the impact of group size, group type (one-male versus multi-male), offspring sex, as well as maternal age, rank, and parity on weaned age variation in the Virunga mountain gorilla population. The status of nutritional independence was established in 69 offspring using long-term suckling observations. A Cox-regression with mixed effects was applied to model weaned age and its relationship with covariates. Findings indicate that offspring in one-male groups are more likely to be weaned earlier than offspring in multi-male groups, which may reflect a female reproductive strategy to reduce higher risk of infanticide in one-male groups. Inferior milk production capacity and conflicting resource allocation between their own and offspring growth may explain later weaning in primiparous mothers compared to multiparous mothers. Sex-biased weaned age related to maternal condition defined by parity, rank, and maternal age will be discussed in the light of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. Long-term demographic records revealed no disadvantage of early weaning for mother or offspring. Population growth and two peaks in weaned age within the Virunga population encourage future studies on the potential impact of bamboo shoots as a weaning food and other environmental factors on weaning

Cost-Effectiveness of Early Versus Standard Antiretroviral Therapy in HIV-Infected Adults in Haiti

This cost-effectiveness study comparing early versus standard antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV, based on randomized clinical trial data from Haiti, reveals that the new WHO guidelines for early ART initiation can be cost-effective in resource-poor settings

Effects of a peer-led Walking In ScHools intervention (the WISH study) on physical activity levels of adolescent girls: a cluster randomised pilot study.

School-based interventions may be effective at increasing levels of physical activity (PA) among adolescents; however, there is a paucity of evidence on whether walking can be successfully promoted to increase PA in this age group. This pilot study aimed to assess the effects of a 12-week school-based peer-led brisk walking programme on levels of school-time PA post intervention