Elliptical-core two mode fiber sensors and devices incorporating photoinduced refractive index gratings

Results of experiments performed using germanium-doped, elliptical core, two-mode optical fibers whose sensitivity to strain was spatially varied through the use of chirped, refractive-index gratings permanently induced into the core using Argon-ion laser light are presented. This type of distributed sensor falls into the class of eighted-fiber sensors which, through a variety of means, weight the strain sensitivity of a fiber according to a specified spatial profile. We describe results of a weighted-fiber vibration mode filter which successfully enhances the particular vibration mode whose spatial profile corresponds to the profile of the grating chirp. We report on the high temperature survivability of such grating-based sensors and discuss the possibility of multiplexing more than one sensor within a single fiber

Nutritional Quality of Leaves and Unripe Fruit Consumed as Famine Foods by the Flying Foxes of Samoa

Many tropical herbivores alter their diets throughout the year in response to different levels of food availability. Fruit bats, including Pteropus samoensis Peale and Pteropus tonganus Quoy & Gaimard, are phytophagous species that may increase their consumption of foods such as unripe fruit and leaves in periods of low fruit diversity and volume. These periods include the tropical dry season or following the frequent hurricanes that batter the Samoan Archipelago. We examined the nutritional composition of leaves and immature fruits and compared the levels of organic and mineral nutrients with those of ripe fruit. We used principal components analysis (PCA) to examine patterns of variation in nutrient components of leaves, unripe fruit, and ripe fruit, as well as to compare the mean levels of nutrients. Overall, unripe fruit provided levels of nutrients comparable with those of ripe fruit of the same species for many organic and mineral components. Unripe fruit were only half as rich in iron as ripe fruit, but unripe fruit had high levels of calcium compared with ripe fruit of the same species. Leaves are often cited as a rich source of protein for fruit bats, and our results were consistent with this suggestion. Leaves were also found to be rich in zinc, manganese, and calcium. Therefore, flying foxes and other herbivores probably do not avoid unripe fruits and leaves because of their low nutrient levels. It may be that these famine foods are not normally consumed because of the presence of secondary compounds, low concentrations of palatable sugars, or a distasteful and hard pericarp on unripe fruits

Voices for food: Methodologies for Implementing a Multi-state Community-based Intervention in Rural, High Poverty communities.

BACKGROUND: Rural communities experience unique barriers to food access when compared to urban areas and food security is a public health issue in rural, high poverty communities. A multi-leveled socio-ecological intervention to develop food policy councils (FPCs), and improve food security in rural communities was created. Methods to carry out such an intervention were developed and are described.METHODS: A longitudinal, matched treatment and comparison study was conducted in 24 rural, high poverty counties in South Dakota, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Nebraska and Ohio. Counties were assigned to a treatment (n = 12) or comparison (n = 12) group. Intervention activities focus on three key components that impact food security: 1) community coaching by Extension Educators/field staff, 2) FPC development, and 3) development of a MyChoice food pantry. Community coaching was only provided to intervention counties. Evaluation components focus on three levels of the intervention: 1) Community (FPCs), 2) Food Pantry Organization, and 3) Pantry Client & Families. Participants in this study were community stakeholders, food pantry directors, staff/volunteers and food pantry clients. Pantry food access/availability including pantry food quality and quantity, household food security and pantry client dietary intake are dependent variables.DISCUSSION: The results of this study will provide a framework for utilizing a multi-leveled socio-ecological intervention with the purpose of improving food security in rural, high poverty communities. Additionally, the results of this study will yield evidence-based best practices and tools for both FPC development and the transition to a guided-client choice model of distribution in food pantries. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov; NCT03566095 . Retrospectively registered on June, 21, 2018

Emotion recognition in frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease: A new film-based assessment.

Deficits in recognizing others' emotions are reported in many psychiatric and neurological disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Most previous emotion recognition studies have required participants to identify emotional expressions in photographs. This type of assessment differs from real-world emotion recognition in important ways: Images are static rather than dynamic, include only 1 modality of emotional information (i.e., visual information), and are presented absent a social context. Additionally, existing emotion recognition batteries typically include multiple negative emotions, but only 1 positive emotion (i.e., happiness) and no self-conscious emotions (e.g., embarrassment). We present initial results using a new task for assessing emotion recognition that was developed to address these limitations. In this task, respondents view a series of short film clips and are asked to identify the main characters' emotions. The task assesses multiple negative, positive, and self-conscious emotions based on information that is multimodal, dynamic, and socially embedded. We evaluate this approach in a sample of patients with bvFTD, AD, and normal controls. Results indicate that patients with bvFTD have emotion recognition deficits in all 3 categories of emotion compared to the other groups. These deficits were especially pronounced for negative and self-conscious emotions. Emotion recognition in this sample of patients with AD was indistinguishable from controls. These findings underscore the utility of this approach to assessing emotion recognition and suggest that previous findings that recognition of positive emotion was preserved in dementia patients may have resulted from the limited sampling of positive emotion in traditional tests

State and trait characteristics of anterior insula time-varying functional connectivity.

The human anterior insula (aINS) is a topographically organized brain region, in which ventral portions contribute to socio-emotional function through limbic and autonomic connections, whereas the dorsal aINS contributes to cognitive processes through frontal and parietal connections. Open questions remain, however, regarding how aINS connectivity varies over time. We implemented a novel approach combining seed-to-whole-brain sliding-window functional connectivity MRI and k-means clustering to assess time-varying functional connectivity of aINS subregions. We studied three independent large samples of healthy participants and longitudinal datasets to assess inter- and intra-subject stability, and related aINS time-varying functional connectivity profiles to dispositional empathy. We identified four robust aINS time-varying functional connectivity modes that displayed both "state" and "trait" characteristics: while modes featuring connectivity to sensory regions were modulated by eye closure, modes featuring connectivity to higher cognitive and emotional processing regions were stable over time and related to empathy measures

The Monitor project: the search for transits in the open cluster NGC 2362

We present the results of a systematic search for transiting planets in a ~5 Myr open cluster, NGC 2362. We observed ~1200 candidate cluster members, of which ~475 are believed to be genuine cluster members, for a total of ~100 hours. We identify 15 light curves with reductions in flux that pass all our detection criteria, and 6 of the candidates have occultation depths compatible with a planetary companion. The variability in these six light curves would require very large planets to reproduce the observed transit depth. If we assume that none of our candidates are in fact planets then we can place upper limits on the fraction of stars with hot Jupiters (HJs) in NGC 2362. We obtain 99% confidence upper limits of 0.22 and 0.70 on the fraction of stars with HJs (f_p) for 1-3 and 3-10 day orbits, respectively, assuming all HJs have a planetary radius of 1.5R_Jup. These upper limits represent observational constraints on the number of stars with HJs at an age <~10 Myr, when the vast majority of stars are thought to have lost their protoplanetary discs. Finally, we extend our results to the entire Monitor Project, a survey searching young, open clusters for planetary transits, and find that the survey as currently designed should be capable of placing upper limits on f_p near the observed values of f_p in the solar neighbourhood.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, accepted to MNRA

An association study of DRD2 and COMT polymorphisms with novelty seeking and harm avoidance scores, in two independent samples of depressed patients

BACKGROUND: It was recently reported that an interaction of the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) and catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) influences the behavioural approach system – as measured using Carver and White's Behavioural Inhibition and Behavioural Approach System (BIS/BAS) scales – in a sample of healthy German subjects. The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), in particular the novelty seeking (NS) and harm avoidance (HA) scales, correlates moderately with the BIS/BAS measure. This study aimed to examine support for an association of DRD2 and COMT with behavioural activation, using the TCI within two independent samples of depressed outpatients (for both samples n = 146). METHODS: Two clinical samples of depressed patients were ascertained to assess the efficacy of two different pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy treatments. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyse NS and HA scale and subscale scores with respect to gene loci within each clinical sample. Analysis of covariance were undertaken to examine the association of age and gender with NS and HA scores. An association of age group or gender with gene loci were explored using chi-squared tests, in each sample. RESULTS: No significant effect of DRD2 or COMT, either independently or as an interaction, on NS or HA scores was observed, within either sample. Whilst age was significantly negatively associated with NS scores, including age in the two- and three-way interactions did not affect the significance of the association of personality with gene loci. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that the COMT-DRD2 Equilibrium Model of Positive Emotionality recently proposed by Reuter and his colleagues is not applicable amongst currently depressed individuals, whose behavioural approach and inhibition tendencies have been assessed using the TCI

Daily Dietary Intake Patterns Improve after Visiting a Food Pantry among Food-Insecure Rural Midwestern Adults.

Emergency food pantries provide food at no cost to low-resource populations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate single-day dietary intake patterns before and after visiting a food pantry among food-secure and food-insecure pantry clients. This observational cohort study comprised a paired, before-and-after design with a pantry visit as the intervention. Participants (n = 455) completed a demographic and food security assessment, and two 24-h dietary recalls. Adult food security was measured using the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module. Dietary intake patterns were assessed using Automated Self-Administered 24-h Recall data and classified by Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010) scores, dietary variety, number of eating occasions, and energy intake. Paired t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests compared outcomes before and after a pantry visit. Mean dietary variety increased after the pantry visit among both food-secure (p = 0.02) and food-insecure (p \u3c 0.0001) pantry clients. Mean energy intake (p = 0.0003), number of eating occasions (p = 0.004), and HEI-2010 component scores for total fruit (p \u3c 0.001) and whole fruit (p \u3c 0.0003) increased among food-insecure pantry clients only. A pantry visit may improve dietary intake patterns, especially among food-insecure pantry clients