Summary
The palatable, energy‐dense foods that characterize modern environments can promote unhealthy eating habits, along with humans' predispositions to accept sweet tastes and reject those that ...are sour or bitter. Yet food preferences are malleable, and examining food preference learning during early life can highlight ways to promote acceptance of healthier foods. This narrative review describes research from the past 10 years focused on food preference learning from the prenatal period through early childhood (ages 2–5 years).
Exposure to a variety of healthy foods from the start, including during the prenatal period, early milk‐feeding and the introduction to complementary foods and beverages, can support subsequent acceptance of those foods. Yet development is plastic, and healthier food preferences can still be promoted after infancy. In early childhood, research supports starting with the simplest strategies, such as repeated exposure and modelling, reserving other strategies for use when needed to motivate the initial tasting necessary for repeated exposure effects to begin.
This review can help caregivers and practitioners to promote the development of healthy food preferences early in life. Specific implementation recommendations, the role of individual differences and next steps for research in this area are also discussed.
Superradiance can trigger the formation of an ultralight boson cloud around a spinning black hole. Once formed, the boson cloud is expected to emit a nearly periodic, long-duration, ...gravitational-wave signal. For boson masses in the range (10−13–10−11) eV, and stellar mass black holes, such signals are potentially detectable by gravitational-wave detectors, like Advanced LIGO and Virgo. In this Letter, we present full band upper limits for a generic all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in LIGO O2 data, and use them to derive-for the first time-direct constraints on the ultralight scalar boson field mass.
As a consequence of superradiant instability induced in Kerr black holes, ultralight boson clouds can be a source of persistent gravitational waves, potentially detectable by current and future ...gravitational-wave detectors. These signals have been predicted to be nearly monochromatic, with a small steady frequency increase (spin-up), but given the several assumptions and simplifications done at theoretical level, it is wise to consider, from the data analysis point of view, a broader class of gravitational signals in which the phase (or the frequency) slightly wander in time. Also other types of sources, e.g., neutron stars in which a torque balance equilibrium exists between matter accretion and emission of persistent gravitational waves, would fit in this category. In this paper we present a robust and computationally cheap analysis pipeline devoted to the search of such kind of signals. We provide a full characterization of the method, through both a theoretical sensitivity estimation and through the analysis of synthetic data in which simulated signals have been injected. The search setup for both all-sky searches and higher sensitivity directed searches is discussed.
Summary
Background
Breakfast consumption has been associated with reduced risk of overweight and obesity among children, but previous evidence reviews fail to confirm a causal relationship.
...Objectives
To review recent literature on breakfast consumption and adiposity among children and discuss potential underlying mechanisms.
Methods
A comprehensive literature search of studies published since the 2010 US National Evidence Library review (January 2010–January 2015) was conducted.
Results
Twelve studies met inclusion criteria. All were conducted in industrialized countries: six in Europe, four in the USA, one in China and one in Australia. Ten of the studies used observational longitudinal designs, with follow‐up periods ranging from 1 to 27 years (median: 3, mean: 7.4); of these, eight reported inverse associations between breakfast consumption and excess adiposity, while two found no association. The other studies (1 case‐control, 1 experimental) each reported a protective effect of breakfast consumption on overweight and obesity among children.
Conclusions
Findings corroborate results from previous reviews, adding support for a possible, protective role for breakfast consumption in preventing excess adiposity during childhood and adolescence. However, drawing a causal conclusion from the collective evidence is curtailed by methodological limitations and inconsistencies, including study design, follow‐up duration and frequency, exposure and outcome assessment, as well as limited consideration of confounding, mediating and effect‐modifying variables. More rigorous study designs employing valid and standardized measurement of relevant variables are needed.
In this work we present the results of a search for continuous gravitational waves from the Galactic Center using LIGO O2 data. The search uses the band-sampled-data directed search pipeline, which ...performs a semicoherent wide-parameter-space search, exploiting the robustness of the FrequencyHough transform algorithm. The search targets signals emitted by isolated asymmetric spinning neutron stars, located within 25–150 parsecs from the Galactic Center. The frequencies covered in this search range between 10 and 710 Hz with a spin-down range from −1.8×10−9 to 3.7×10−11 Hz/s. No continuous wave signal has been detected and upper limits on the gravitational wave amplitude are presented. The most stringent upper limit at 95% confidence level, for the Livingston detector, is ∼1.4×10−25 at frequencies near 160 Hz. To date, this is the most sensitive directed search for continuous gravitational-wave signals from the Galactic Center and the first search of this kind using the LIGO second observing run.
Continuous gravitational wave signals, like those expected by asymmetric spinning neutron stars, are among the most promising targets for LIGO and Virgo detectors. The development of fast and robust ...data analysis methods is crucial to increase the chances of a detection. We have developed a new and flexible general data analysis framework for the search of this kind of signals, which allows to reduce the computational cost of the analysis by about two orders of magnitude with respect to current procedures. This can correspond, at fixed computing cost, to a sensitivity gain of up to 10%-20%, depending on the search parameter space. Some possible applications are discussed, with a particular focus on a directed search for sources in the Galactic center. Validation through the injection of artificial signals in the data of Advanced LIGO first observational science run is also shown.
Lake trout Salvelinus namaycush (Walbaum) raised for stocking experienced yearly (2011–13) winter epizootics of epitheliocystis. Affected fish were dispersed on the bottom of the tank, had decreased ...feed and fright response, and mortality often reached 40%. Peak mortality occurred within 3 weeks of the appearance of clinical signs, and outbreaks typically lasted 6 weeks. Affected fish had no gross lesions but histologically had branchial epithelial necrosis and lamellar hyperplasia, with small to large numbers of scattered epithelial cells containing 10‐ to 20‐μm inclusions. A longitudinal study was undertaken of one annual outbreak, and lamellar hyperplasia was most closely associated with mortality. The number of inclusions was statistically greater (P < 0.05) before and during peak mortality, but inclusions were present in low numbers before clinical signs occurred. Results of histochemical staining, immunohistochemistry and transmission electron microscopy supported the presence of a β‐proteobacteria rather than a Chlamydiales bacterium within inclusions. PCR primers to identify Chlamydiales did not give consistent results. However, the use of universal 16S rDNA bacterial primers in conjunction with laser capture microdissection of inclusions demonstrated that a β‐proteobacteria was consistently associated with affected gills and is more likely the cause of the disease in lake trout.
Rapidly rotating neutron stars are promising sources of continuous gravitational wave radiation for the LIGO and Virgo interferometers. The majority of neutron stars in our galaxy have not been ...identified with electromagnetic observations. All-sky searches for isolated neutron stars offer the potential to detect gravitational waves from these unidentified sources. The parameter space of these blind all-sky searches, which also cover a large range of frequencies and frequency derivatives, presents a significant computational challenge. Different methods have been designed to perform these searches within acceptable computational limits. Here we describe the first benchmark in a project to compare the search methods currently available for the detection of unknown isolated neutron stars. The five methods compared here are individually referred to as the PowerFlux, sky Hough, frequency Hough, Einstein@Home, and time domain F-statistic methods. We employ a mock data challenge to compare the ability of each search method to recover signals simulated assuming a standard signal model. We find similar performance among the four quick-look search methods, while the more computationally intensive search method, Einstein@Home, achieves up to a factor of two higher sensitivity. We find that the absence of a second derivative frequency in the search parameter space does not degrade search sensitivity for signals with physically plausible second derivative frequencies. We also report on the parameter estimation accuracy of each search method, and the stability of the sensitivity in frequency and frequency derivative and in the presence of detector noise.
Many lipoproteins are expressed on the surfaces of mycoplasmas, and some have been implicated as playing roles in pathogenesis. Family 2 lipoproteins of Mycoplasma pneumoniae have a conserved ..."mycoplasma lipoprotein X" central domain and a "mycoplasma lipoprotein 10" C-terminal domain and are differentially expressed in response to environmental conditions. Homologues of family 2 lipoproteins are Mycoplasma specific and include the lipoprotein of Mycoplasma gallisepticum, encoded by the MGA0674 gene. Comparative transcriptomic analysis of the M. gallisepticum live attenuated vaccine strain F and the virulent strain Rlow, reported in this study, indicated that MGA0674 is one of several differentially expressed genes. The MGA0674-encoded lipoprotein is a proteolytically processed, immunogenic, TX-114 detergent-phase protein which appears to have antigenic divergence between field strains Rlow and S6. We examined the virulence of an Rlow ΔMGA0674 mutant (P1H9) in vivo and observed reduced recovery and attenuated virulence in the tracheas of experimentally infected chickens. The virulence of two additional Rlow ΔMGA0674 mutants, 2162 and 2204, was assessed in a second in vivo virulence experiment. These mutants exhibited partial to complete attenuation in vivo, but recovery was observed more frequently. Since only Mycoplasma species harbor homologues of MGA0674, the gene product has been renamed "Mycoplasma-specific lipoprotein A" (MslA). Collectively, these data indicate that MslA is an immunogenic lipoprotein exhibiting reduced expression in an attenuated strain and plays a role in M. gallisepticum virulence.
Few children in the United States meet national fruit and vegetable intake recommendations, highlighting a need for interventions. Children's food preferences act as a barrier to fruit and vegetable ...consumption, but prior research has demonstrated that repeated taste exposures can increase children's acceptance of these foods. Prior research in this area has typically utilized controlled procedures in which children sample small tastes of target foods over repeated occasions. The primary aim of the present pilot study was to test whether children's preferences for target fruits and vegetables increased following repeated taste exposures to them through hands-on cooking in a community setting. Seventeen 6-to-8-year-old children participated in biweekly study sessions during six weeks of a summer camp serving lower-income families. Liking of (yummy, just OK, yucky) and rank-ordered preferences for nine fruits and vegetables were measured before and after exposure sessions (pre-test and post-test). Based on pre-test assessments, four relatively less liked foods (two fruits, two vegetables) were chosen to become target foods. Children were then exposed to target foods during nine hands-on cooking sessions; liking of target foods was also measured at a midpoint assessment. At each exposure session, children assisted with preparation of a different snack using a recipe involving target foods and then ate the prepared snack together. Preferences for target foods increased from pre-test (Median = 5.8) to post-test (Median = 5.5; p < 0.05). On average, the majority of children rated the prepared snacks favorably. Results from this pilot study demonstrate the potential of applying repeated exposure techniques via hands-on cooking in a community setting.