Foodborne doping and supervision in sports

Cases of foodborne doping are frequently reported in sports events and can cause severe consequences for athletes. The foodborne doping can be divided into natural endogenous and artificially added foods according to the sources, including anabolic agents, stimulants, diuretics, β-blockers, β2 agonists and others. In order to control foodborne doping, chromatographic technique, immunoassay, nuclear magnetic resonance, biosensor technology, pyrolytic spectroscopy, comprehensive analysis and electrochemical analysis have usually used as analytical and inspection strategies. Meanwhile, the legislation of anti-doping, the improvement of testing standard and technology, and the prevention and control of food safety, as well as the improvement of risk perception of athletes are highly necessary for achieving the effective risk control and supervision of foodborne doping, which will be beneficial for athletes, doctors and administrators to avoid the risks of foodborne doping test and reduce foodborne doping risks for the health of athletes

Opposing roles and potential antagonistic mechanism between TGF-β and BMP pathways: Implications for cancer progression

The transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) superfamily participates in tumour proliferation, apoptosis, differentiation, migration, invasion, immune evasion and extracellular matrix remodelling. Genetic deficiency in distinct components of TGF-β and BMP-induced signalling pathways or their excessive activation has been reported to regulate the development and progression of some cancers. As more in-depth studies about this superfamily have been conducted, more evidence suggests that the TGF-β and BMP pathways play an opposing role. The cross-talk of these 2 pathways has been widely studied in kidney disease and bone formation, and the opposing effects have also been observed in some cancers. However, the antagonistic mechanisms are still insufficiently investigated in cancer. In this review, we aim to display more evidences and possible mechanisms accounting for the antagonism between these 2 pathways, which might provide some clues for further study in cancer. Keywords: TGF-β BMP cancer antagonistic potential mechanis

Effect of Long Working Hours on Depression and Mental Well-Being among Employees in Shanghai: The Role of Having Leisure Hobbies

Our aim is to examine the associations between long working hours and depression and mental well-being among the working population in Shanghai, as well as to identify the impact of having hobbies on these relationships. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Shanghai, with depression assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) scale and mental well-being assessed by the World Health Organization five-item Well-Being Index (WHO-5) scale. The phenomenon of long working hours (69.3%) was quite common among employees in Shanghai, and the rate of working over 60 h was 19.3%. Those who worked over 60 h had the highest prevalence of poorer mental health compared with individuals working ≤40 h per week. After adjustment in the logistic regression model, those who reported weekly working time over 60 h were 1.40 (95%CI: 1.03–1.90) and 1.66 (95%CI: 1.26–2.18) times more likely to have depression and poor mental well-being (PMWB), respectively. Adjusted ORs for having hobbies were 0.78 (95%CI: 0.62–0.97) and 0.62 (95%CI: 0.51–0.75), respectively. Meanwhile, having hobbies could significantly lower the mean score on the PHQ-9 and elevate the mean score on the WHO-5 in each working time group, with no interaction effect. Long working hours could have a significantly negative impact on workers’ psychological health. Importantly, having hobbies in their daily lives might help to mitigate the adverse effects of long working hours on workers’ depression and mental well-being

A quaternion-based Attitude Estimate System Based on a Low Power Consumption Inertial Measurement Unit

Accurate and real-time tracking of the orientation or attitude of rigid bodies has traditional applications in robotics, aerospace, underwater vehicles, human body motion capture, etc. Towards human body motion capture, especially wearable devices, the use of a longer time has always been a challenge for several weeks or several months continuously, so a low-cost chip and a low computational cost algorithm are necessary .The paper presented a quaternion-based algorithm that integrated the sensor output with the Kalman filtering algorithm, and a low power consumption Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for the attitude estimation. The low power consumption IMU with an inner Digital Motion Processor(DMP) from InvenSense Inc. called MPU9150, which contains triaxial accelerometers, triaxial gyroscopes, triaxial magnetometers and inner DMP. Firstly, we got attitude quaternion from DMP, and used the factored quaternion algorithm (FQA) to calculate course angle quaternion component. Then the Kalman Filtering algorithm was used to mix them together to acquire the accurate and good real-time performance attitude .The experimental results showed that Kalman filtering algorithm to mix DMP output and magnetometers data have better performance than gradient descent algorithm and complementary filter algorithm even in static performance and dynamic performance and power consumption

Differential retention and expansion of the ancestral genes associated with the paleopolyploidies in modern rosid plants, as revealed by analysis of the extensins super-gene family

BACKGROUND: All modern rosids originated from a common hexapolyploid ancestor, and the genomes of some rosids have undergone one or more cycles of paleopolyploidy. After the duplication of the ancient genome, wholesale gene loss and gene subfunctionalization has occurred. Using the extensin super-gene family as an example, we tracked the differential retention and expansion of ancestral extensin genes in four modern rosids, Arabidopsis, Populus, Vitis and Carica, using several analytical methods. RESULTS: The majority of extensin genes in each of the modern rosids were found to originate from different ancestral genes. In Arabidopsis and Populus, almost half of the extensins were paralogous duplicates within the genome of each species. By contrast, no paralogous extensins were detected in Vitis and Carica, which have only undergone the common γ-triplication event. It was noteworthy that a group of extensins containing the IPR006706 domain had actively duplicated in Arabidopsis, giving rise to a neo-extensin around every 3 million years. However, such extensins were absent from, or rare in, the other three rosids. A detailed examination revealed that this group of extensins had proliferated significantly in the genomes of a number of species in the Brassicaceae. We propose that this group of extensins might play important roles in the biology and in the evolution of the Brassicaceae. Our analyses also revealed that nearly all of the paralogous and orthologous extensin-pairs have been under strong purifying selection, leading to the strong conservation of the function of extensins duplicated from the same ancestral gene. CONCLUSIONS: Our analyses show that extensins originating from a common ancestor have been differentially retained and expanded among four modern rosids. Our findings suggest that, if Arabidopsis is used as the model plant, we can only learn a limited amount about the functions of a particular gene family. These results also provide an example of how it is essential to learn the origination of a gene when analyzing its function across different plant species. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-612) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Feature Selection and Predictors of Falls with Foot Force Sensors Using KNN-Based Algorithms

The aging process may lead to the degradation of lower extremity function in the elderly population, which can restrict their daily quality of life and gradually increase the fall risk. We aimed to determine whether objective measures of physical function could predict subsequent falls. Ground reaction force (GRF) data, which was quantified by sample entropy, was collected by foot force sensors. Thirty eight subjects (23 fallers and 15 non-fallers) participated in functional movement tests, including walking and sit-to-stand (STS). A feature selection algorithm was used to select relevant features to classify the elderly into two groups: at risk and not at risk of falling down, for three KNN-based classifiers: local mean-based k-nearest neighbor (LMKNN), pseudo nearest neighbor (PNN), local mean pseudo nearest neighbor (LMPNN) classification. We compared classification performances, and achieved the best results with LMPNN, with sensitivity, specificity and accuracy all 100%. Moreover, a subset of GRFs was significantly different between the two groups via Wilcoxon rank sum test, which is compatible with the classification results. This method could potentially be used by non-experts to monitor balance and the risk of falling down in the elderly population