Die von den HI-LO- und Aerobic-Tanz-Programmen bewirkten Veränderungen in motorischen Fähigkeiten und morphologischen Eigenschaften bei jungen Frauen

In previous studies a number of authors have already demonstrated the positive changes in certain dimensions of the anthropological status of female aerobic dancers induced by various treatments of modern aerobic dance programmes. Changes in motor space have been, however, rarely investigated. The authors have attempted in the present paper to define the potential differential training effects of the step (N = 24) and hi-lo (N = 23) aerobic dance programmes and to analyse the changes in the morphological (variables assessing voluminosity of the body and skinfold thickness) and motor (coordination, flexibility, movement frequency) measures of college-aged female participants. The entire programme consisted of a total of 25 separate aerobics training sessions (three times a week; each session of 60 min). Each session encompassed cardio-section routines, which consisted of the experimental aerobic dance programmes (35 min), strength- developing exercises (15 min) and stretching exercises (10 min). The results, obtained by means of ANOVA and discriminant analysis, suggest both programmes resulted in reduced skinfold measures and in improved measures of flexibility, coordination in rhythm and, to a lesser extent, measures of movement frequency. No differential influence of the two programmes of aerobic dance was confirmed.Uvod Programi suvremene aerobike danas su jedan od najpopularnijih oblika rekreativnog tjelesnog vježbanja. U dosadašnjim istraživanjima autori su ukazali na pozitivne promjene pojedinih dimenzija antropološkog statusa vježbaČica pod utjecajem tretmana suvremene aerobike (primjerice, Kravitz i sur., 1993). Međutim, promjene u motoričkim sposobnostima rijetko su se istraživale. Ovaj rad pokušao je ukazati na potencijalne diferencijalne učinke programa step (N = 24) i hi-lo aerobike (N = 23), ali i analizirati promjene u morfološkim (varijable za procjenu voluminoznosti i debljine kožnih nabora) i motoričkim mjerama (koordinacija, fleksibilnost, frekvencija pokreta) u sudionica programa. Metode Ukupan tretman sastojao se od 25 pojedinačnih treninga aerobike (3 puta tjedno). Svaki pojedini trening uključivao je: cardio sekciju koja je sadržavala eksperimentalne programe aerobike (35 minuta), vježbe snage (15 minuta) i vježbe istezanja (10 minuta). Za obradu rezultata korištena je diskriminacijska analiza, kojom je utvrđena značajnost razlika između skupina u motoričkom i morfološkom prostoru u inicijalnom i finalnom mjerenju. Analizom varijance utvrđene su razlike između inicijalnog i finalnog mjerenja za svaku pojedinu skupinu. Rezultati, rasprava i zaključak Diskriminacijskom nalizom nije utvrđena značajnost razlika u motoričkom prostoru u inicijalnom mjerenju (Wilks lambda = 0.45; p > 0.05) ni u finalnom mjerenju (Wilks lambda = 0.42; p > 0.05). Razlike među skupinama nisu uočene ni u morfološkom prostoru, ni u inicijalnom (Wilks lambda = 0.64; p > 0.05) ni u finalnom mjerenju (Wilks lambda = 0.76; p > 0.05). Analiza varijance ukazala je na značajne promjene u morfološkim varfijablama i to u pogledu smanjenja kožnih nabora, ali su izostale značajne promjene u mjerama opsega tjelesnih regija. Iste su promjene uočene i u eksperimentalnoj skupini koja je provodila program step aerobike, kao i u eksperimentalnoj skupini koja je provodila program hi-lo aerobike. U motoričkim su varijablama značajna poboljšanja rezultata uočena u mjerama fleksibilnosti donjih ekstremiteta (u obje grupe), ali ne i u mjerama fleksibilnosti ramenog pojasa. Te se promjene mogu pripisati učincima vježba istezanja koje su se izvodile na kraju svake trenažne jedinice. Nadalje, u mjerama frekvencije pokreta također je došlo do značajnih poboljšanje rezultata, što se vjerojatno može pripisati utjecaju smanjenja potkožnog masnog tkiva na motoričke manifestacije koje se izvode u testiranju frekvencije pokreta. U mjerama koordinacije, a naročito u mjerama koordinacije u ritmu također su uočena značajna poboljšanja rezultata koja su, prema mišljenju autora, nastala zbog interakcijskog djelovanja slijedećih faktora: ● utjecaja promjena morfološke strukture ispitanica na promjene u motorickim manifestacijama koordinacije u ritmu; ● stvarnog napretka u koordinaciji u ritmu. Naime, vrlo je vjerojatno da su promjene u navedenim motoričkim sposobnostima dijelom uvjetovane prvim, a dijelom drugim faktorom. U ovom trenutku ne može se utvrditi koliko je koji faktor doprinio utvrđenim razlikama između inicijalnog i finalnog mjerenja, tim više što je diferencijalnost utjecaja i u ovom pogledu izostala. Odgovore na ova pitanja mogla bi dati daljnja istraživanja koja bi se provela na manje selekcioniranim uzorcima ispitanica. U tom slučaju moguće je da bi veći inicijalni varijabilitet rezultata u pojedinim mjerama omogucio definiranje određenog diferencijalnog utjecaja. U tom bi slučaju bilo moguće, u određenoj mjeri, eliminirati utjecaj morfoloških promjena na promjene motoričkih sposobnosti i time objektivnije definirati promjene u motoričkom prostoru, nastale pod utjecajem različitih programa aerobike.In vielen bisherigen Forschungen wiesen die Autoren auf positive im modernen Aerobic-Training entstandenen Veränderungen einzelner Abmessungen im anthropologischen Status der Aerobic-Tänzerinnen hin, wobei die Veränderungen in motorischen Eigenschaften dagegen selten untersucht wurden. In dieser Arbeit ist man bemüht, die potentiell unterschiedlichen Auswirkungen von Step- (N=4) und HI-LO-Aerobicprogrammen (N=23) festzustellen, aber auch die Veränderungen in morphologischen Eigenschaften (Variablen zur Feststellung von Hörperumfängen und von Dicke der Hautfalten) und motorischen Fähigkeiten (Hoordination, Gelenkigkeit, Bewegungsfrequenz) bei den Programmteilnehmerinnen, die 18 – 21 Jahren alt waren, zu untersuchen. Das Gesamtprogramm bestand aus 25 Trainingseinheiten (3mal wöchentlich je 60 Minuten die Dauer). Jede Trainingseinheit schloss das Cardio-Training ein, das aus experimentalen Aerobic- Tanz-Programmen (35 Minuten), Hraftübungen (15 Minuten) und Dehnungsübungen (10 Minuten) bestand. Die mittels der Varianz- und Diskriminanzanalyse erhaltenen Resultate weisen darauf hin, dass beide Programme sowohl zur Abnahme von Maßzahlen der Hautfalten als auch zur Verbesserung in der Gelenkigkeit und Rhythmus-Hoordination führen aber die Bewegungsfrequenzen nur gering beeinflussen. Heine differenzier- baren Einflüsse zwischen den beiden Aerobic-Tanz-Programmen wurden festgestellt

BOSC 2019, the 20th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference.

The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference is a volunteer-organized meeting that covers open source software development and open science in bioinformatics. Launched in 2000, BOSC has been held every year since. BOSC 2019, the 20th annual BOSC, took place as one of the Communities of Special Interest (COSIs) at the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology meeting (ISMB/ECCB 2019). The two-day meeting included a total of 46 talks and 55 posters, as well as eight Birds of a Feather interest groups. The keynote speaker was University of Cape Town professor Dr. Nicola Mulder, who spoke on "Building infrastructure for responsible open science in Africa". Immediately after BOSC 2019, about 50 people participated in the two-day CollaborationFest (CoFest for short), an open and free community-driven event at which participants work together to contribute to bioinformatics software, documentation, training materials, and use cases

The khmer software package: enabling efficient nucleotide sequence analysis

The khmer package is a freely available software library for working efficiently with fixed length DNA words, or k-mers. khmer provides implementations of a probabilistic k-mer counting data structure, a compressible De Bruijn graph representation, De Bruijn graph partitioning, and digital normalization. khmer is implemented in C++ and Python, and is freely available under the BSD license at https://github.com/dib-lab/khmer/

The khmer software package: enabling efficient nucleotide sequence analysis [version 1; referees: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

The khmer package is a freely available software library for working efficiently with fixed length DNA words, or k-mers. khmer provides implementations of a probabilistic k-mer counting data structure, a compressible De Bruijn graph representation, De Bruijn graph partitioning, and digital normalization. khmer is implemented in C++ and Python, and is freely available under the BSD license at https://github.com/dib-lab/khmer/

Adrenergic Receptors: Model Systems for Investigation of GPCR Structure and Function

Membrane proteins mediate intercellular communication, resulting in changes in the membrane and within the cell itself. One superfamily of integral membrane proteins, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), are responsible for a vast diversity of processes. Their conformational flexibility and membrane environment pose challenges for direct structural characterization, and to date only five of the more than 1,000 known GPCRs have been characterized by high-resolution crystallography. The nine adrenergic GPCRs mediate the stress response throughout the body, and are implicated in diseases including hypertension and asthma. While they are among the best studied families of GPCRs, much remains to be learned about selectivity and activation. The first section of this work describes the ab initio structure prediction of the turkey beta-1 receptor and validation using a series of stabilizing mutations. This work preceded the currently available turkey beta-1 structure but shows good agreement, especially in the binding site. It validates the latest methods developed for GPCR structure prediction, emphasizes the role of a neutral charge scheme in energy determination, and explores a structure validation strategy based on stabilizing mutations rather than ligand docking. The next section uses the experimental beta-1 crystal structure as a starting point for nanosecond timescale molecular dynamics, exploring the roles of ligand binding in helix movement that contribute to the transition to an active state. These simulations reveal the early steps in receptor activation, beginning with tilting motions of transmembrane helices 5 and 6 and movement of transmembrane helix 1 closer into the protein core. The last section presents homology models of the human adrenergic receptors for which there are not yet crystal structures. The receptors most closely related to the target structures show the best results, while the less related ones will require further refinement. The best structures provide insight into the binding site of subtype selective antagonists, and can serve as the foundation for future studies. Over the course of these explorations, new subtleties in adrenergic structure have been illuminated, and may drive further exploration into selective binding and the activation mechanism of these and other receptors.</p

Contextual Hub Analysis Tool (CHAT): A Cytoscape app for identifying contextually relevant hubs in biological networks [version 2; referees: 2 approved]

Highly connected nodes (hubs) in biological networks are topologically important to the structure of the network and have also been shown to be preferentially associated with a range of phenotypes of interest. The relative importance of a hub node, however, can change depending on the biological context. Here, we report a Cytoscape app, the Contextual Hub Analysis Tool (CHAT), which enables users to easily construct and visualize a network of interactions from a gene or protein list of interest, integrate contextual information, such as gene expression or mass spectrometry data, and identify hub nodes that are more highly connected to contextual nodes (e.g. genes or proteins that are differentially expressed) than expected by chance. In a case study, we use CHAT to construct a network of genes that are differentially expressed in Dengue fever, a viral infection. CHAT was used to identify and compare contextual and degree-based hubs in this network. The top 20 degree-based hubs were enriched in pathways related to the cell cycle and cancer, which is likely due to the fact that proteins involved in these processes tend to be highly connected in general. In comparison, the top 20 contextual hubs were enriched in pathways commonly observed in a viral infection including pathways related to the immune response to viral infection. This analysis shows that such contextual hubs are considerably more biologically relevant than degree-based hubs and that analyses which rely on the identification of hubs solely based on their connectivity may be biased towards nodes that are highly connected in general rather than in the specific context of interest.   Availability: CHAT is available for Cytoscape 3.0+ and can be installed via the Cytoscape App Store (http://apps.cytoscape.org/apps/chat)

The 2018 Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (GCCBOSC 2018).

In 2018, the annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference was held for the first time in conjunction with the Galaxy Community Conference, as an experiment to see if we could reach people in the bioinformatics community who arent part of the audience attracted by ISMB. Held in June 2018 at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, GCCBOSC (Galaxy Community Conference and Bioinformatics Open Source Conference) attracted over 300 participants from around the world. The meeting started with two days of training, followed by two days of talks and poster/demo sessions (with some joint and some parallel sessions). The joint sessions included well-received keynote talks by Tracy Teal, Fernando Pérez and Lucia Peixoto, as well as a panel discussion about documentation and training. After the main meeting, many attendees stayed for up to four additional collaboration days, an extended version of the Codefests that have been held in conjunction with previous BOSCs. GCCBOSC was a successful experiment. The organizers concluded that the best way to serve the broadest community of potential BOSC attendees will be to partner some years with the International Society for Computational Biology (ISMB) and others with GCC

The 2016 Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC).

Message from the ISCB: The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) is a yearly meeting organized by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), a non-profit group dedicated to promoting the practice and philosophy of Open Source software development and Open Science within the biological research community. BOSC has been run since 2000 as a two-day Special Interest Group (SIG) before the annual ISMB conference. The 17th annual BOSC ( http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2016) took place in Orlando, Florida in July 2016. As in previous years, the conference was preceded by a two-day collaborative coding event open to the bioinformatics community. The conference brought together nearly 100 bioinformatics researchers, developers and users of open source software to interact and share ideas about standards, bioinformatics software development, and open and reproducible science

Contextual Hub Analysis Tool (CHAT): A Cytoscape app for identifying contextually relevant hubs in biological networks

peer-reviewedHighly connected nodes (hubs) in biological networks are topologically important to the structure of the network and have also been shown to be preferentially associated with a range of phenotypes of interest. The relative importance of a hub node, however, can change depending on the biological context. Here, we report a Cytoscape app, the Contextual Hub Analysis Tool (CHAT), which enables users to easily construct and visualize a network of interactions from a gene or protein list of interest, integrate contextual information, such as gene expression or mass spectrometry data, and identify hub nodes that are more highly connected to contextual nodes (e.g. genes or proteins that are differentially expressed) than expected by chance. In a case study, we use CHAT to construct a network of genes that are differentially expressed in Dengue fever, a viral infection. CHAT was used to identify and compare contextual and degree-based hubs in this network. The top 20 degree-based hubs were enriched in pathways related to the cell cycle and cancer, which is likely due to the fact that proteins involved in these processes tend to be highly connected in general. In comparison, the top 20 contextual hubs were enriched in pathways commonly observed in a viral infection including pathways related to the immune response to viral infection. This analysis shows that such contextual hubs are considerably more biologically relevant than degree-based hubs and that analyses which rely on the identification of hubs solely based on their connectivity may be biased towards nodes that are highly connected in general rather than in the specific context of interest