Cross-sectional studies show that individuals who walk more tend to be thinner than those who walk less. This does not mean, however, that the association between higher step counts and lower weight ...is causal or that encouraging sedentary individuals to increase step counts helps them lose weight.
In this meta-analysis, we searched 6 electronic databases and contacted pedometer experts to identify pedometer-based walking studies without a dietary intervention that reported weight change as an outcome. We included randomized controlled trials and prospective cohort studies published after January 1, 1995, in either English or Japanese, with 5 or more adult participants and at least 1 cohort enrolled in a pedometer-based walking intervention lasting at least 4 weeks.
Nine studies met the study inclusion criteria. Cohort sample size ranged from 15 to 106, for a total of 307 participants, 73% of whom were women and 27% of whom were men. The duration of the intervention ranged from 4 weeks to 1 year, with a median duration of 16 weeks. The pooled estimate of mean weight change from baseline using a fixed-effects model and combining data from all 9 cohorts was -1.27 kg (95% confidence interval, -1.85 to -0.70 kg). Longer intervention duration was associated with greater weight change. On average, participants lost 0.05 kg per week during the interventions.
Pedometer-based walking programs result in a modest amount of weight loss. Longer programs lead to more weight loss than shorter programs.
Understanding conditions at the grounding‐line of marine‐based ice sheets is essential for understanding ice sheet evolution. Offshore northwest Greenland, knowledge of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ...ice sheet extent in Melville Bugt was previously based on sparse geological evidence. This study uses multibeam bathymetry, combined with 2‐D and 3‐D seismic reflection data, to present a detailed landform record from Melville Bugt. Seabed landforms include mega‐scale glacial lineations, grounding‐zone wedges, iceberg scours, and a lateral shear margin moraine, formed during the last glacial cycle. The geomorphology indicates that the LGM ice sheet reached the shelf edge before undergoing flow reorganization. After retreat of ~80 km across the outer shelf, the margin stabilized in a mid‐shelf position, possibly during the Younger Dryas (12.9–11.7 ka). The ice sheet then decoupled from the seafloor and retreated to a coast‐proximal position. This landform record provides an important constraint on deglaciation history offshore northwest Greenland.
Key Points
Extensive high‐resolution geophysical data have been used to analyze glacial landforms on the northwest Greenland continental shelf
Mega‐scale glacial lineations indicate changes in ice flow dynamics on the outer shelf
Large mid‐shelf grounding‐zone wedge suggests a period of intermittent ice margin stability at some stage during the last deglaciation
Plain Language Summary
Reconstructing the extent and dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the last ice age are important for helping us to predict how it may change in the future. This study uses the topography of the seafloor to investigate for evidence of landforms left behind by the Greenland Ice Sheet during the last ice age. These landforms indicate that the ice sheet extended to the continental shelf edge when it was at its largest extent. The ice sheet then retreated 80 km to the middle shelf, likely during a period of climate cooling called the Younger Dryas. The ice sheet margin remained stable here until it retreated a further 100 km toward the coastline during the final deglaciation. During this second stage of deglaciation the ice sheet appears to have retreated faster than during the first stage. This possible dramatic collapse has possible implications for our understanding of the future evolution of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
Synchronous, time-resolved DRIFTS/MS/XAS cycling studies of the vapor-phase selective aerobic oxidation of crotyl alcohol over nanoparticulate Pd have revealed surface oxide as the desired ...catalytically active phase, with dynamic, reaction-induced Pd redox processes controlling selective versus combustion pathways.
Toxicity prediction using quantitative structure–activity relationship has achieved significant progress in recent years. However, most existing machine learning methods in toxicity prediction ...utilize only one type of feature representation and one type of neural network, which essentially restricts their performance. Moreover, methods that use more than one type of feature representation struggle with the aggregation of information captured within the features since they use predetermined aggregation formulas. In this paper, we propose a deep learning framework for quantitative toxicity prediction using five individual base deep learning models and their own base feature representations. We then propose to adopt a meta ensemble approach using another separate deep learning model to perform aggregation of the outputs of the individual base deep learning models. We train our deep learning models in a weighted multitask fashion combining four quantitative toxicity data sets of LD50, IGC50, LC50, and LC50-DM and minimizing the root-mean-square errors. Compared to the current state-of-the-art toxicity prediction method TopTox on LD50, IGC50, and LC50-DM, that is, three out of four data sets, our method, respectively, obtains 5.46, 16.67, and 6.34% better root-mean-square errors, 6.41, 11.80, and 12.16% better mean absolute errors, and 5.21, 7.36, and 2.54% better coefficients of determination. We named our method QuantitativeTox, and our implementation is available from the GitHub repository https://github.com/Abdulk084/QuantitativeTox.
We report on a rapid method for reagentless identification and discrimination of single bacterial cells in aqueous solutions using a combination of laser tweezers and confocal Raman spectroscopy ...(LTRS). The optical trapping enables capturing of individual bacteria in aqueous solution in the focus of the laser beam and levitating the captured cell well off the cover plate, thus maximizing the excitation and collection of Raman scattering from the cell and minimizing the unwanted background from the cover plate and environment. Raman spectral patterns excited by a near-infrared laser beam provide intrinsic molecular information for reageatless analysis of the optically isolated bacterium. In our experiments, six species of bacteria were used to demonstrate the capability of the confocal LTRS in the identification and discrimination between the diverse bacterial species at various growth conditions. We show that synchronized bacterial cells can be well-discriminated among the six species using principal component analyses (PCA). Unsynchronized bacterial cells that are cultured at stationary phases can also be well-discriminated by the PCA, as well as by a hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) of their Raman spectra. We also show that unsynchronized bacteria selected from random growth phases can be classified with the help of a generalized discriminant analysis (GDA). These findings demonstrate that the LTRS may find valuable applications in rapid sensing of microbial cells in diverse aqueous media.
Melioidosis is endemic in many rural areas in Southeast Asia where facilities for culture and identification of
are often limited. We performed a prospective observational study in patients ...presenting with fever to Mahosot Hospital, the primary referral hospital in Laos, to establish whether the detection of abscesses on ultrasound could support a presumptive diagnosis of melioidosis. All patients underwent ultrasound examination to detect abscesses in the liver, spleen, prostate, or, if indicated, subcutaneous tissue. We enrolled 153 patients, including 18 patients with melioidosis. Of these, 11 (61%) had an abscess at one or more sites, including five (28%) with splenic and/or liver abscesses. Absence of abscesses cannot rule out melioidosis, but the positive predictive value of abscesses for melioidosis was high at 93% (88-96%). Therefore, in endemic areas, the presence of abscesses in febrile patients should prompt empiric antibiotic therapy for melioidosis even in the absence of culture confirmation.
Toxicity prediction of chemical compounds is a grand challenge. Lately, it achieved significant progress in accuracy but using a huge set of features, implementing a complex blackbox technique such ...as a deep neural network, and exploiting enormous computational resources. In this paper, we strongly argue for the models and methods that are simple in machine learning characteristics, efficient in computing resource usage, and powerful to achieve very high accuracy levels. To demonstrate this, we develop a single task-based chemical toxicity prediction framework using only 2D features that are less compute intensive. We effectively use a decision tree to obtain an optimum number of features from a collection of thousands of them. We use a shallow neural network and jointly optimize it with decision tree taking both network parameters and input features into account. Our model needs only a minute on a single CPU for its training while existing methods using deep neural networks need about 10 min on NVidia Tesla K40 GPU. However, we obtain similar or better performance on several toxicity benchmark tasks. We also develop a cumulative feature ranking method which enables us to identify features that can help chemists perform prescreening of toxic compounds effectively.
Summary
Uncertainty surrounds estimates of microbial cell and organic detritus fluxes from glacier surfaces. Here, we present the first enumeration of biological particles draining from a ...supraglacial catchment, on Midtre Lovénbreen (Svalbard) over 36 days. A stream cell flux of 1.08 × 107 cells m−2 h−1 was found, with strong inverse, non‐linear associations between water discharge and biological particle concentrations. Over the study period, a significant decrease in cell‐like particles exhibiting 530 nm autofluorescence was noted. The observed total fluvial export of ∼ 7.5 × 1014 cells equates to 15.1–72.7 g C, and a large proportion of these cells were small (< 0.5 μm in diameter). Differences between the observed fluvial export and inputs from ice‐melt and aeolian deposition were marked: results indicate an apparent storage rate of 8.83 × 107 cells m−2 h−1. Analysis of surface ice cores revealed cell concentrations comparable to previous studies (6 × 104 cells ml−1) but, critically, showed no variation with depth in the uppermost 1 m. The physical retention and growth of particulates at glacier surfaces has two implications: to contribute to ice mass thinning through feedbacks altering surface albedo, and to potentially seed recently deglaciated terrain with cells, genes and labile organic matter. This highlights the merit of further study into glacier surface hydraulics and biological processes.
Prognosis in patients with sentinel node (SN)-positive melanoma correlates with several characteristics of the metastases in the SN such as size and site. These factors reflect biologic behavior and ...may separate out patients who may or may not need additional locoregional and/or systemic therapy.
Between 1993 and 2008, 1,080 patients (509 women and 571 men) were diagnosed with tumor burden in the SN in nine European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) melanoma group centers. In total, 1,009 patients (93%) underwent completion lymph node dissection (CLND). Median Breslow thickness was 3.00 mm. The median follow-up time was 37 months. Tumor load and tumor site were reclassified in all nodes by the Rotterdam criteria for size and in 88% by the Dewar criteria for topography.
Patients with submicrometastases (< 0.1 mm in diameter) were shown to have an estimated 5-year overall survival rate of 91% and a low nonsentinel node (NSN) positivity rate of 9%. This is comparable to the rate in SN-negative patients. The strongest predictive parameter for NSN positivity and prognostic parameter for survival was the Rotterdam-Dewar Combined (RDC) criteria. Patients with submicrometastases that were present in the subcapsular area only, had an NSN positivity rate of 2% and an estimated 5- and 10-year melanoma-specific survival (MSS) of 95%.
Patients with metastases < 0.1 mm, especially when present in the subcapsular area only, may be overtreated by a routine CLND and have an MSS that is indistinguishable from that of SN-negative patients. Thus the RDC criteria provide a rational basis for decision making in the absence of conclusions provided by randomized controlled trials.
Live feed enrichments are often used in fish larvicultures as an optimized source of essential nutrients to improve larval growth and survival. In addition to this, they may also play an important ...role in structuring larval-associated microbial communities and may help improve their resistance to diseases. However, there is limited information available on how larval microbial communities and larviculture water are influenced by different live feed enrichments. In the present study, we investigated the effects of two commercial rotifer enrichments (ER) on turbot (
) larval and post-larval gut-associated bacterial communities during larviculture production. We evaluated their effects on bacterial populations related to known pathogens and beneficial bacteria and their potential influence on the composition of bacterioplankton communities during larval rearing. High-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to assess the effects of different rotifer enrichments (ER1 and ER2) on the structural diversity of bacterial communities of the whole turbot larvae 10 days after hatching (DAH), the post-larval gut 30 DAH, and the larviculture water. Our results showed that different rotifer feed enrichments were associated with significant differences in bacterial composition of turbot larvae 10 DAH, but not with the composition of larval gut communities 30 DAH or bacterioplankton communities 10 and 30 DAH. However, a more in-depth taxonomic analysis showed that there were significant differences in the abundance of Vibrionales in both 10 DAH larvae and in the 30 DAH post-larval gut fed different RE diets. Interestingly, the ER1 diet had a higher relative abundance of specific amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) related to potential
-antagonists belonging to the Roseobacter clade (e.g.,
and
at 10 DAH and
at 30 DAH). In line with this, the diet was also associated with a lower relative abundance of
and a lower mortality. These results suggest that rotifer diets can affect colonization by
members in the guts of post-larval turbot. Overall, this study indicates that live feed enrichments can have modulatory effects on fish bacterial communities during the early stages of development, which includes the relative abundances of pathogenic and antagonist taxa in larviculture systems.
PDF
