Guidelines for physical activity have been developed to promote health benefits from physical activity in the general population by the World Health Organization (WHO)1 and the US Department of ...Health and Human Services (HHS),2 and by the EULAR for people with inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis.3 WHO, HHS and EULAR physical activity guidelines are consistent in recommending that adults should (1) move more and sit less throughout the day; (2) aim for at least 150–300 min a week of moderate-intensity or 75–150 min a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity; (3) engage in whole body muscle-strengthening activities on 2 or more days a week. Patients with rheumatic diseases have much to gain by following these guidelines, especially in light of data indicating that they are less active compared with healthy controls.3 4 The physiological and health benefits of regular physical activity are numerous and have well-documented effects on aerobic capacity, strength and function, mental health, the ageing process, obesity, metabolic syndrome, risk for chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus, cancer and cardiovascular disease, arthritis and bone and joint health.2 5 6 A recent focus has been to ‘move more and sit less’ due to the increasing awareness that the avoidance of sedentary behaviour is critical for long term health.2 7 8 Federal exercise guidelines now emphasise that exercise does not have to be prolonged to be beneficial but that frequent small doses work just as well.2 This shift from the former rigid exercise prescription to the current lifestyle approach is expected to broaden compliance in the general population. During moderate-to-vigorous exercise, the muscle myokine IL-6 is produced and released and in distinction to its classical role as a driver of the inflammatory response appears to support numerous beneficial metabolic and immunoregulatory roles.10 11 Within the bone marrow, mechanical stimulation induced by exercise augments the supply of lymphoid progenitors for specific types of immune cells including dendrites and T, B and NK lymphocytes.17 This exercise-generated effect may help counter the typical age-related decrease in lymphoid progenitors as demonstrated in clinical studies.15 Taken together, emerging data suggests that physical activity can have beneficial effects on the integrated immune response and provides a physiological basis for the role of exercise training to augment host defences against infections. Other data support reductions in incidence and mortality rates for influenza and pneumonia.20 21 Long-term exercise training has also been shown in multiple studies to improve the immune response to influenza vaccination.10 19 Ongoing research will determine if physical activity augments the antibody and T cell response to COVID-19 vaccines, especially among the obese, elderly and subgroups if patients with arthritis who experience reduced vaccine efficacy.10 18 19 These findings may be of particular clinical value for individuals with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases (AIIRD) who by virtue of complex dysfunctional immune changes from their underlying diseases compounded by immunosuppressive therapies and a high prevalence of comorbidities appear to be at increased risk of infectious complications including acute respiratory viral infections and severe outcomes in COVID-19.24 25 Importantly, the role of relative physical inactivity as a risk factor potentially contributing to these risks remains unexplored.
In light of the foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, the present research asks the question of whether the digital media has become the stealth media for anonymous political campaigns. By ...utilizing a user-based, real-time, digital ad tracking tool, the present research reverse engineers and tracks the groups (Study 1) and the targets (Study 2) of divisive issue campaigns based on 5 million paid ads on Facebook exposed to 9,519 individuals between September 28, 2016, and November 8, 2016. The findings reveal groups that did not file reports to the Federal Election Commission (FEC)-nonprofits, astroturf/movement groups, and unidentifiable "suspicious" groups, including foreign entities-ran most of the divisive issue campaigns. One out of six suspicious groups later turned out to be Russian groups. The volume of ads sponsored by non-FEC groups was 4 times larger than that of FEC groups. Divisive issue campaigns clearly targeted battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where traditional Democratic strongholds supported Donald Trump by a razor-thin margin. The present research asserts that media ecology, the technological features and capacity of digital media, as well as regulatory loopholes created by Citizens United v. FEC and the FEC's disclaimer exemption for digital platforms contribute to the prevalence of anonymous groups' divisive issue campaigns on digital media. The present research offers insight relevant for regulatory policy discussion and discusses the normative implications of the findings for the functioning of democracy.
We report here plasma-induced formation of Ag nanostructures for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications. An array of uniform Ag patterned structures of 150 nm diameter was first ...fabricated on a silicon substrate with imprint lithography; then the substrate was further treated with an oxygen plasma to fracture the patterned structures into clusters of smaller, interconnected, closely packed Ag nanoparticles (20−60 nm) and redeposited Ag nanodots (∼10 nm) between the clusters. The substrate thus formed had a uniform ultrahigh SERS enhancement factor (1010) over the entire substrate for 4-mercaptophenol molecules. By comparison, Au patterned structures fabricated with the same method did not undergo such a morphological change after the plasma treatment and showed no enhancement of Raman scattering.
Tournaments are orientations of the complete graph. The directed Ramsey number
R
(
k
) is the minimum number of vertices a tournament must have to be guaranteed to contain a transitive subtournament ...of size
k
, which we denote by
T
T
k
. We include a computer-assisted proof of a conjecture by Sanchez-Flores in Graphs Combinatorics
14
(2), 181–200 (1998), that all
T
T
6
-free tournaments on 24 and 25 vertices are subtournaments of
S
T
27
, the unique largest
T
T
6
-free tournament. We also classify all
T
T
6
-free tournaments on 23 vertices. We use these results, combined with assistance from a SAT solver, to obtain the following improved bounds on
R
(7):
34
≤
R
(
7
)
≤
47
.
Abstract only
Quercetin (QUER) and curcumin (CUR) have potent anti‐inflammatory effects; however, it is unclear whether these two plant‐derived phenolics can act synergistically to reduce ...inflammation in human cells. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a patented blend of QUER, vitamin C, and vitamin B
3
(ratio 50:50:2) (QCB3), with or without CUR, could decrease the
in vitro
release of TNF‐α from lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐stimulated human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from four donors. To test this, isolated PBMCs were incubated in cRPMI media containing 25 μM QUER (in QCB
3
) and/or 15 μM CUR. After 1 h, PBMCs were stimulated with 0.1 μg/ml LPS for 23 h, and then the media was collected for TNF‐α determination by ELISA. The concentration of TNF‐α adjusted on a per cell basis was lower when compared to control wells for QCB3 (20.1±2.9%,
P
<0.0001), CUR (46.7±11.4%,
P
=0.0004), and QCB3+CUR (19.8±5.1%,
P
<0.0001) treated wells. In addition, the concentration of TNF‐α/cell was lower in QCB3+CUR treated wells than in wells treated with CUR alone (19.8±5.1% v. 46.7±11.4%,
P
=0.0494). These findings indicate that treatment with QCB3 and CUR decreases LPS‐stimulated TNF‐α production from PBMCs, but that the addition of 15 μM CUR to 25 μM QUER in QCB3 does not enhance the anti‐inflammatory effect of QUER.
Supported by Quercegen Pharma.
The difficulty associated with the coordinated locomotion of legged robots grows quickly as the number of joints increases. Although prior approaches have addressed this problem through ...sampling-based planners, learning-based techniques have recently been explored as a means to handle such complexity. Among these recent approaches are systems that utilize probabilistic graphical models in order to infer parameters for central pattern generators (CPGs) which enable the path-following locomotion of highly-articulated legged robots through unstructured terrain. This paper presents a novel formulation of a CPG parameter inference-based path-following controller. The new inference process and accompanying CPG formulation enforce oscillator convergence to the limit-cycle specified by the inferred parameters in addition to biasing towards parameters that quickly reach stable-state. This formulation is shown to improve the performance of CPG parameter inference-based path-following control for legged robots across a number of simulated and physical experiments.
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