Evaluation of a standard provision versus an autonomy promotive exercise referral programme: rationale and study design

Background The National Institute of Clinical Excellence in the UK has recommended that the effectiveness of ongoing exercise referral schemes to promote physical activity should be examined in research trials. Recent empirical evidence in health care and physical activity promotion contexts provides a foundation for testing the utility of a Self Determination Theory (SDT) -based exercise referral consultation. Methods/Design Design: An exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial comparing standard provision exercise on prescription with a Self Determination Theory-based (SDT) exercise on prescription intervention. Participants: 347 people referred to the Birmingham Exercise on Prescription scheme between November 2007 and July 2008. The 13 exercise on prescription sites in Birmingham were randomised to current practice (n=7) or to the SDT-based intervention (n=6). Outcomes measured at 3 and 6-months: Minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity per week assessed using the 7-day Physical Activity Recall; physical health: blood pressure and weight; health status measured using the Dartmouth CO-OP charts; anxiety and depression measured by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and vitality measured by the subjective vitality score; motivation and processes of change: perceptions of autonomy support from the advisor, satisfaction of the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness via physical activity, and motivational regulations for exercise. Discussion This trial will determine whether an exercise referral programme based on Self Determination Theory increases physical activity and other health outcomes compared to a standard programme and will test the underlying SDT-based process model (perceived autonomy support, need satisfaction, motivation regulations, outcomes) via structural equation modelling. Trial registration The trial is registered as Current Controlled trials ISRCTN07682833

Collective emotions online and their influence on community life

E-communities, social groups interacting online, have recently become an object of interdisciplinary research. As with face-to-face meetings, Internet exchanges may not only include factual information but also emotional information - how participants feel about the subject discussed or other group members. Emotions are known to be important in affecting interaction partners in offline communication in many ways. Could emotions in Internet exchanges affect others and systematically influence quantitative and qualitative aspects of the trajectory of e-communities? The development of automatic sentiment analysis has made large scale emotion detection and analysis possible using text messages collected from the web. It is not clear if emotions in e-communities primarily derive from individual group members' personalities or if they result from intra-group interactions, and whether they influence group activities. We show the collective character of affective phenomena on a large scale as observed in 4 million posts downloaded from Blogs, Digg and BBC forums. To test whether the emotions of a community member may influence the emotions of others, posts were grouped into clusters of messages with similar emotional valences. The frequency of long clusters was much higher than it would be if emotions occurred at random. Distributions for cluster lengths can be explained by preferential processes because conditional probabilities for consecutive messages grow as a power law with cluster length. For BBC forum threads, average discussion lengths were higher for larger values of absolute average emotional valence in the first ten comments and the average amount of emotion in messages fell during discussions. Our results prove that collective emotional states can be created and modulated via Internet communication and that emotional expressiveness is the fuel that sustains some e-communities.Comment: 23 pages including Supporting Information, accepted to PLoS ON

Microtubule dynamics in cell division : exploring living cells with polarized light microscopy

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Annual Reviews for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 24 (2008): 1-28, doi:10.1146/annurev.cellbio.24.110707.175323.This Perspective is an account of my early experience while I studied the dynamic organization and behavior of the mitotic spindle and its submicroscopic filaments using polarized light microscopy. The birefringence of spindle filaments in normally dividing plant and animal cells, and those treated by various agents, revealed: A) the reality of spindle fibers and fibrils in healthy living cells; B) the labile, dynamic nature of the molecular filaments making up the spindle fibers; C) the mode of fibrogenesis and action of orienting centers; and D) force-generating properties based on the disassembly and assembly of the fibrils. These studies, which were carried out directly on living cells using improved polarizing microscopes, in fact, predicted the reversible assembly properties of isolated microtubules

Neurospora from natural populations: Population genomics insights into the Life history of a model microbial Eukaryote

The ascomycete filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa played a historic role in experimental biology and became a model system for genetic research. Stimulated by a systematic effort to collect wild strains initiated by Stanford geneticist David Perkins, the genus Neurospora has also become a basic model for the study of evolutionary processes, speciation, and population biology. In this chapter, we will first trace the history that brought Neurospora into the era of population genomics. We will then cover the major contributions of population genomic investigations using Neurospora to our understanding of microbial biogeography and speciation, and review recent work using population genomics and genome-wide association mapping that illustrates the unique potential of Neurospora as a model for identifying the genetic basis of (potentially adaptive) phenotypes in filamentous fungi. The advent of population genomics has contributed to firmly establish Neurospora as a complete model system and we hope our review will entice biologists to include Neurospora in their research

Dcc Regulates Asymmetric Outgrowth of Forebrain Neurons in Zebrafish

The guidance receptor DCC (deleted in colorectal cancer) ortholog UNC-40 regulates neuronal asymmetry development in Caenorhabditis elegans, but it is not known whether DCC plays a role in the specification of neuronal polarity in vertebrates. To examine the roles of DCC in neuronal asymmetry regulation in vertebrates, we studied zebrafish anterior dorsal telencephalon (ADt) neuronal axons. We generated transgenic zebrafish animals expressing the photo-convertible fluorescent protein Kaede in ADt neurons and then photo-converted Kaede to label specifically the ADt neuron axons. We found that ADt axons normally project ventrally. Knock down of Dcc function by injecting antisense morpholino oligonucleotides caused the ADt neurons to project axons dorsally. To examine the axon projection pattern of individual ADt neurons, we labeled single ADt neurons using a forebrain-specific promoter to drive fluorescent protein expression. We found that individual ADt neurons projected axons dorsally or formed multiple processes after morpholino knock down of Dcc function. We further found that knock down of the Dcc ligand, Netrin1, also caused ADt neurons to project axons dorsally. Knockdown of Neogenin1, a guidance receptor closely related to Dcc, enhanced the formation of aberrant dorsal axons in embryos injected with Dcc morpholino. These experiments provide the first evidence that Dcc regulates polarized axon initiation and asymmetric outgrowth of forebrain neurons in vertebrates

Association of metabolic equivalent of task (MET) score in length of stay in hospital following radical cystectomy with urinary diversion:a multi-institutional study

PURPOSE: The Metabolic equivalent of task (MET) score is used in patients’ preoperative functional capacity assessment. It is commonly thought that patients with a higher MET score will have better postoperative outcomes than patients with a lower MET score. However, such a link remains the subject of debate and is yet unvalidated in major urological surgery. This study aimed to explore the association of patients’ MET score with their postoperative outcomes following radical cystectomy. METHODS: We used records-linkage methodology with unique identifiers (Community Health Index/hospital number) and electronic databases to assess postoperative outcomes of patients who had underwent radical cystectomies between 2015 and 2020. The outcome measure was patients’ length of hospital stay. This was compared with multiple basic characteristics such as age, sex, MET score and comorbid conditions. A MET score of less than four (< 4) is taken as the threshold for a poor functional capacity. We conducted unadjusted and adjusted Cox regression analyses for time to discharge against MET score. RESULTS: A total of 126 patients were included in the analysis. Mean age on date of operation was 66.2 (SD 12.2) years and 49 (38.9%) were female. A lower MET score was associated with a statistically significant lower time-dependent risk of hospital discharge (i.e. longer hospital stay) when adjusted for covariates (HR 0.224; 95% CI 0.077–0.652; p = 0.006). Older age (adjusted HR 0.531; 95% CI 0.332–0.848; p = 0.008) and postoperative complications (adjusted HR 0.503; 95% CI 0.323–0.848; p = 0.002) were also found to be associated with longer hospital stay. Other comorbid conditions, BMI, disease staging and 30-day all-cause mortality were statistically insignificant. CONCLUSION: A lower MET score in this cohort of patients was associated with a longer hospital stay length following radical cystectomy with urinary diversion. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11255-021-02813-x