Food Consumption Patterns and Use of Country Foods by Native Canadians Near Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada

This study examined food consumption patterns of native (Indian and Metis) Canadians living in a boreal forest area with good access to both store-bought and country foods (traditional foods from the land, such as wild animals, birds, fish and berries). Frequency of use by season of 48 country foods by 120 households was examined by interview with the female household head. Twenty-four-hour recalls of individual food consumption on four separate days over two seasons were obtained by interview with 178 persons (71 males, 107 females) age 13-86 years, and the mean values per person were used to represent their usual intakes. The mean reported household frequency of use (number of occasions per year) was as follows: all country foods 319, including large mammals 128, berries 63, fish 62, birds 32, and small mammals 27. The upper quintile of households used country food two and one-half times more often than the sample as a whole. Recalls of individual food consumption showed that country food was consumed on average 4.2 times per week and averaged 0.5 kg per week. Country meat, birds and fish accounted for one-third of the total consumption of meat, birds and fish. Young people consumed less country food than did their elders. Thus, country food constitutes an important part of the food supply, especially of meat and fish of many native people of this region.Key words: country food, food consumption patterns, Indians, Metis, native CanadiansMots clés: aliments provenant directement de la nature, schémas de consommation alimentaire, Indiens, Métis, autochtones canadien

Comparability of Microarray Data between Amplified and Non Amplified RNA in Colorectal Carcinoma

Microarray analysis reaches increasing popularity during the investigation of prognostic gene clusters in oncology. The standardisation of technical procedures will be essential to compare various datasets produced by different research groups. In several projects the amount of available tissue is limited. In such cases the preamplification of RNA might be necessary prior to microarray hybridisation. To evaluate the comparability of microarray results generated either by amplified or non amplified RNA we isolated RNA from colorectal cancer samples (stage UICC IV) following tumour tissue enrichment by macroscopic manual dissection (CMD). One part of the RNA was directly labelled and hybridised to GeneChips (HG-U133A, Affymetrix), the other part of the RNA was amplified according to the ?Eberwine? protocol and was then hybridised to the microarrays. During unsupervised hierarchical clustering the samples were divided in groups regarding the RNA pre-treatment and 5.726 differentially expressed genes were identified. Using independent microarray data of 31 amplified vs. 24 non amplified RNA samples from colon carcinomas (stage UICC III) in a set of 50 predictive genes we validated the amplification bias. In conclusion microarray data resulting from different pre-processing regarding RNA pre-amplification can not be compared within one analysis

Anticholinergic Drug Exposure and the Risk of Dementia: A Nested Case-Control Study

IMPORTANCE Anticholinergic medicines have short-term cognitive adverse effects, but itis uncertain whether long-term use of these drugs is associated with an increased risk of dementia.OBJECTIVE To assess associations between anticholinergic drug treatments and risk of dementia in persons 55 years or older.DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This nested case-control study took place in general practices in England that contributed to the QResearch primary care database. The study evaluated whether exposure to anticholinergic drugs was associated with dementia risk in 58 769 patients with a diagnosis of dementia and 225 574 controls 55 years or older matched by age, sex, general practice, and calendar time. Information on prescriptions for 56 drugs with strong anticholinergic properties was used to calculate measures of cumulative anticholinergic drug exposure. Data were analyzed from May 2016 to June 2018.EXPOSURES The primary exposure was the total standardized daily doses (TSDDs) of anticholinergic drugs prescribed in the 1 to 11 years prior to the date of diagnosis of dementia or equivalent date in matched controls (index date).MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Odds ratios (ORs) for dementia associated with cumulative exposure to anticholinergic drugs, adjusted for confounding variables.RESULTS Of the entire study population (284 343 case patients and matched controls), 179 365 (63.1%) were women, and the mean (SD) age of the entire population was 82.2 (6.8) years. The adjusted OR for dementia increased from 1.06 (95%CI, 1.03-1.09) in the lowest overall anticholinergic exposure category (total exposure of 1-90 TSDDs) to 1.49 (95%CI, 1.44-1.54) in the highest category (>1095 TSDDs), compared with no anticholinergic drug prescriptions in the 1 to 11 years before the index date. There were significant increases in dementia risk for the anticholinergic antidepressants (adjusted OR [AOR], 1.29; 95%CI, 1.24-1.34), antiparkinson drugs (AOR, 1.52; 95%CI, 1.16-2.00), antipsychotics (AOR, 1.70; 95% CI, 1.53-1.90), bladder antimuscarinic drugs (AOR, 1.65; 95%CI, 1.56-1.75), and antiepileptic drugs (AOR, 1.39; 95%CI, 1.22-1.57) all for more than 1095 TSDDs. Results were similar when exposures were restricted to exposure windows of 3 to 13 years (AOR, 1.46; 95%CI, 1.41-1.52) and 5 to 20 years (AOR, 1.44; 95%CI, 1.32-1.57) before the index date for more than 1095 TSDDs. Associations were stronger in cases diagnosed before the age of 80 years. The population-attributable fraction associated with total anticholinergic drug exposure during the 1 to 11 years before diagnosis was 10.3%.CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Exposure to several types of strong anticholinergic drugs is associated with an increased risk of dementia. These findings highlight the importance of reducing exposure to anticholinergic drugs in middle-aged and older people

Registration of 3D Fetal Brain US and MRI

We propose a novel method for registration of 3D fetal brain ultrasound and a reconstructed magnetic resonance fetal brain volumes. The reconstructed MR volume is first segmented using a probabilistic atlas and an ultrasound-like image volume is simulated from the segmentation of the MR image. This ultrasound-like image volume is then affinely aligned with real ultrasound volumes of 27 fetal brains using a robust block-matching approach which can deal with intensity artefacts and missing features in ultrasound images. We show that this approach results in good overlap of four small structures. The average of the co-aligned US images shows good correlation with anatomy of the fetal brain as seen in the MR reconstruction

Solving the PCAC puzzle for nucleon axial and pseudoscalar form factors

It has been observed in multiple lattice determinations of isovector axial and pseudoscalar nucleon form factors, that, despite the fact that the partial conservation of the axialvector current is fulfilled on the level of correlation functions, the corresponding relation for form factors (sometimes called the generalized Goldberger-Treiman relation in the literature) is broken rather badly. In this work we trace this difference back to excited state contributions and propose a new projection method that resolves this problem. We demonstrate the efficacy of this method by computing the axial and pseudoscalar form factors as well as related quantities on ensembles with two flavors of improved Wilson fermions using pion masses down to 150 MeV. To this end, we perform the z-expansion with analytically enforced asymptotic behaviour and extrapolate to the physical point. (C) 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V

Empirical Bayesian Mixture Models for Medical Image Translation

Automatically generating one medical imaging modality from another is known as medical image translation, and has numerous interesting applications. This paper presents an interpretable generative modelling approach to medical image translation. By allowing a common model for group-wise normalisation and segmentation of brain scans to handle missing data, the model allows for predicting entirely missing modalities from one, or a few, MR contrasts. Furthermore, the model can be trained on a fairly small number of subjects. The proposed model is validated on three clinically relevant scenarios. Results appear promising and show that a principled, probabilistic model of the relationship between multi-channel signal intensities can be used to infer missing modalities -- both MR contrasts and CT images.Comment: Accepted to the Simulation and Synthesis in Medical Imaging (SASHIMI) workshop at MICCAI 201

The planarity of the stickface motion in the field hockey hit

The field hockey hit is an important but poorly understood stroke. This study investigated the planarity of the stickface motion during the downswing, in order to better characterise the kinematics and to assess the suitability of planar pendulum models for simulating the hit. Thirteen experienced female field hockey players were filmed executing hits with a single approach step, and the kinematics of the centre of the stickface were measured. A method was developed for identifying how far back from impact the stickface motion was planar. Orthogonal least-squares regression was used to determine best-fit planes for sections of the stickface path of varying length, each of which ended at impact, and these sections were considered planar if the mean residual between the stickface path and the fitted plane was less than 0.25% of the distance traveled by the stickface during that period. On average the stickface motion was planar for the last 83±12% of its downswing path, with the length of the planar section ranging from 1.85 m to 2.70 m. The suitability of a planar model for the stickface motion was supported, but further investigation of the stick and arm kinematics is warranted