Smoking and intention to quit in deprived areas of Glasgow: is it related to housing improvements and neighbourhood regeneration because of improved mental health?

Background: People living in areas of multiple deprivation are more likely to smoke and less likely to quit smoking. This study examines the effect on smoking and intention to quit smoking for those who have experienced housing improvements (HI) in deprived areas of Glasgow, UK, and investigates whether such effects can be explained by improved mental health. Methods: Quasi-experimental, 2-year longitudinal study, comparing residents’ smoking and intention to quit smoking for HI group (n=545) with non-HI group (n=517), adjusting for baseline (2006) sociodemographic factors and smoking status. SF-12 mental health scores were used to assess mental health, along with self-reported experience of, and General Practitioner (GP) consultations for, anxiety and depression in the last 12 months. Results: There was no relationship between smoking and HI, adjusting for baseline rates (OR=0.97, 95% CI 0.57 to 1.67, p=0.918). We found an association between intention to quit and HI, which remained significant after adjusting for sociodemographics and previous intention to quit (OR 2.16, 95% CI 1.12 to 4.16, p=0.022). We found no consistent evidence that this association was attenuated by improvement in our three mental health measures. Conclusions: Providing residents in disadvantaged areas with better housing may prompt them to consider quitting smoking. However, few people actually quit, indicating that residential improvements or changes to the physical environment may not be sufficient drivers of personal behavioural change. It would make sense to link health services to housing regeneration projects to support changes in health behaviours at a time when environmental change appears to make behavioural change more likely

Loneliness, social relations and health and wellbeing in deprived communities

There is growing policy concern about the extent of loneliness in advanced societies, and its prevalence among various social groups. This study looks at loneliness among people living in deprived communities, where there may be additional barriers to social engagement including low incomes, fear of crime, poor services and transient populations. The aim was to examine the prevalence of loneliness, and also its associations with different types of social contacts and forms of social support, and its links to self-reported health and wellbeing in the population group. The method involved a cross-sectional survey of 4,302 adults across 15 communities, with the data analysed using multinomial logistic regression controlling for sociodemographics, then for all other predictors within each domain of interest. Frequent feelings of loneliness were more common among those who: had contact with family monthly or less; had contact with neighbours weekly or less; rarely talked to people in the neighbourhood; and who had no available sources of practical or emotional support. Feelings of loneliness were most strongly associated with poor mental health, but were also associated with long-term problems of stress, anxiety and depression, and with low mental wellbeing, though to a lesser degree. The findings are consistent with a view that situational loneliness may be the product of residential structures and resources in deprived areas. The findings also show that neighbourly behaviours of different kinds are important for protecting against loneliness in deprived communities. Familiarity within the neighbourhood, as active acquaintance rather than merely recognition, is also important. The findings are indicative of several mechanisms that may link loneliness to health and wellbeing in our study group: loneliness itself as a stressor; lonely people not responding well to the many other stressors in deprived areas; and loneliness as the product of weak social buffering to protect against stressors

Petascale Simulation Initiative Tech Base: FY2007 Final Report

The Petascale Simulation Initiative began as an LDRD project in the middle of Fiscal Year 2004. The goal of the project was to develop techniques to allow large-scale scientific simulation applications to better exploit the massive parallelism that will come with computers running at petaflops per second. One of the major products of this work was the design and prototype implementation of a programming model and a runtime system that lets applications extend data-parallel applications to use task parallelism. By adopting task parallelism, applications can use processing resources more flexibly, exploit multiple forms of parallelism, and support more sophisticated multiscale and multiphysics models. Our programming model was originally called the Symponents Architecture but is now known as Cooperative Parallelism, and the runtime software that supports it is called Coop. (However, we sometimes refer to the programming model as Coop for brevity.) We have documented the programming model and runtime system in a submitted conference paper [1]. This report focuses on the specific accomplishments of the Cooperative Parallelism project (as we now call it) under Tech Base funding in FY2007. Development and implementation of the model under LDRD funding alone proceeded to the point of demonstrating a large-scale materials modeling application using Coop on more than 1300 processors by the end of FY2006. Beginning in FY2007, the project received funding from both LDRD and the Computation Directorate Tech Base program. Later in the year, after the three-year term of the LDRD funding ended, the ASC program supported the project with additional funds. The goal of the Tech Base effort was to bring Coop from a prototype to a production-ready system that a variety of LLNL users could work with. Specifically, the major tasks that we planned for the project were: (1) Port SARS [former name of the Coop runtime system] to another LLNL platform, probably Thunder or Peloton (depending on when Peloton becomes available); (2) Improve SARS's robustness and ease-of-use, and develop user documentation; and (3) Work with LLNL code teams to help them determine how Symponents could benefit their applications. The original funding request was $296,000 for the year, and we eventually received$252,000. The remainder of this report describes our efforts and accomplishments for each of the goals listed above

Distinct Mechanisms for Induction and Tolerance Regulate the Immediate Early Genes Encoding Interleukin 1β and Tumor Necrosis Factor α

Interleukin-1β and Tumor Necrosis Factor α play related, but distinct, roles in immunity and disease. Our study revealed major mechanistic distinctions in the Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling-dependent induction for the rapidly expressed genes (IL1B and TNF) coding for these two cytokines. Prior to induction, TNF exhibited pre-bound TATA Binding Protein (TBP) and paused RNA Polymerase II (Pol II), hallmarks of poised immediate-early (IE) genes. In contrast, unstimulated IL1B displayed very low levels of both TBP and paused Pol II, requiring the lineage-specific Spi-1/PU.1 (Spi1) transcription factor as an anchor for induction-dependent interaction with two TLR-activated transcription factors, C/EBPβ and NF-κB. Activation and DNA binding of these two pre-expressed factors resulted in de novo recruitment of TBP and Pol II to IL1B in concert with a permissive state for elongation mediated by the recruitment of elongation factor P-TEFb. This Spi1-dependent mechanism for IL1B transcription, which is unique for a rapidly-induced/poised IE gene, was more dependent upon P-TEFb than was the case for the TNF gene. Furthermore, the dependence on phosphoinositide 3-kinase for P-TEFb recruitment to IL1B paralleled a greater sensitivity to the metabolic state of the cell and a lower sensitivity to the phenomenon of endotoxin tolerance than was evident for TNF. Such differences in induction mechanisms argue against the prevailing paradigm that all IE genes possess paused Pol II and may further delineate the specific roles played by each of these rapidly expressed immune modulators. © 2013 Adamik et al

Efficacy and dermal tolerance of a novel alcohol-based skin antiseptic in horses

Objective: To determine the efficacy and dermal tolerance of a novel alcohol‐based skin antiseptic (ABSA) in horses. Study Design: Experimental study. Animal Population Systemically healthy horses (n = 25) with no history or clinical signs of skin disease. Methods: Four clipped sites on the abdomen were randomly assigned to a skin preparation protocol: saline (negative control; NC), chlorhexidine gluconate followed by isopropyl alcohol (positive control; PC), saline followed by the ABSA (ABSA A), or a commercially available horse shampoo followed by the ABSA (ABSA B). Microbiological swabs were obtained from each site and cultured on MacConkey and mannitol salt agar plates. Colony‐forming units were counted 18‐24 hours later. All sites were scored for signs of skin reaction before, immediately after, 1 hour after, and 24 hours after skin preparation. Results: The PC, ABSA A, and ABSA B methods reduced skin microbial burden compared with the NC method (P < .001), but no difference was detected between antiseptic products. Preparation time did not differ between ABSA A and ABSA B methods (P = 0.108); both were faster than the PC method (P < 0.001 for both). Skin reactions were most abundant 24 hours after skin preparation (30.5%), but there was no significant association with antiseptic used, and no horses required veterinary treatment. Conclusion: The ABSA preparations tested in this study were as effective and well tolerated as a chlorhexidine gluconate‐based method, but required less time in healthy horses

Using the affective priming paradigm to explore the attitudes underlying walking behaviour

Objectives. Walking is poorly represented in memory, making it difficult to measure using self-report and even harder to predict. To circumvent this, we used the affective priming paradigm (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986) to assess implicit attitudes towards walking. Methods. Royal Air Force trainee aircraftsmen (N ¼ 188) wore pedometers for 1 week prior to completing the affective priming paradigm, questionnaire and interview. The affective priming paradigm involved a computer-based response latency task containing physical activity words as primes followed by adjectives as targets to be evaluated. Targets were drawn from two bipolar dichotomies, good–bad (the original Fazio et al. items) and happy–sad (mood). Results. Priming for mood items was related to levels of physical activity with high frequency participants priming for the positive (happy) pole and low frequency participants priming for the negative (sad). Both groups primed for the negative element of the Fazio (good–bad) dichotomy. Regarding walking and running, there was no differentiation on the basis of participation level. Instead, facilitated responses to happy targets contrasted with inhibited responses to sad targets for both types of locomotion. There was weak evidence that intentions to run were associated with priming of positive target items, irrespective of category. Conclusions. The relationship between implicit attitudes and behaviour is complex. Whereas implicit attitudes were related to overall exercise participation, they were not related to the specific activity of walking, despite the behaviour being mainly under automatic control.</p

Androgen receptor phosphorylation at serine 515 by Cdk1 predicts biochemical relapse in prostate cancer patients

&lt;br&gt;Background:Prostate cancer cell growth is dependent upon androgen receptor (AR) activation, which is regulated by specific kinases. The aim of the current study is to establish if AR phosphorylation by Cdk1 or ERK1/2 is of prognostic significance.&lt;/br&gt; &lt;br&gt;Methods: Scansite 2.0 was utilised to predict which AR sites are phosphorylated by Cdk1 and ERK1/2. Immunohistochemistry for these sites was then performed on 90 hormone-naive prostate cancer specimens. The interaction between Cdk1/ERK1/2 and AR phosphorylation was investigated in vitro using LNCaP cells.&lt;/br&gt;&lt;br&gt;Results:Phosphorylation of AR at serine 515 (pAR(S515)) and PSA at diagnosis were independently associated with decreased time to biochemical relapse. Cdk1 and pCdk1(161), but not ERK1/2, correlated with pAR(S515). High expression of pAR(S515) in patients with a PSA at diagnosis of &#8804;20 ng ml(-1) was associated with shorter time to biochemical relapse (P=0.019). This translated into a reduction in disease-specific survival (10-year survival, 38.1% vs 100%, P&#60;0.001). In vitro studies demonstrated that treatment with Roscovitine (a Cdk inhibitor) caused a reduction in pCdk1(161) expression, pAR(S515)expression and cellular proliferation.&lt;/br&gt; &lt;br&gt;Conclusion: In prostate cancer patients with PSA at diagnosis of &#8804;20 ng ml(-1), phosphorylation of AR at serine 515 by Cdk1 may be an independent prognostic marker.&lt;/br&gt

Service Oriented Big Data Management for Transport

International audienceThe increasing power of computer hardware and the sophistication of computer software have brought many new possibilities to information world. On one side the possibility to analyse massive data sets has brought new insight, knowledge and information. On the other, it has enabled to massively distribute computing and has opened to a new programming paradigm called Service Oriented Computing particularly well adapted to cloud computing. Applying these new technologies to the transport industry can bring new understanding to town transport infrastructures. The objective of our work is to manage and aggregate cloud services for managing big data and assist decision making for transport systems. Thus this paper presents our approach to propose a service oriented architecture for big data analytics for transport systems based on the cloud. Proposing big data management strategies for data produced by transport infra‐ structures, whilst maintaining cost effective systems deployed on the cloud, is a promising approach. We present the advancement for developing the Data acquisition service and Information extraction and cleaning service as well as the analysis for choosing a sharding strategy