Brain and muscle ARNT-Like 1 (BMAL1) is a circadian clock transcription factor that regulates physiological functions. Male adrenal-specific () KO mice displayed blunted serum corticosterone rhythms, altered blood pressure rhythm, and altered timing of eating, but there is a lack of knowledge in females. This study investigates the role of adrenal BMAL1 in renal electrolyte handling and urinary aldosterone levels in response to low salt in male and female mice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAir pollution from transport hubs is a recognised health concern for local urban inhabitants. Within the domain of transport hubs, significant attention has been given to larger airport and port settings, however concerns have been raised about emissions from urban railway hubs, especially those with diesel trains. This paper presents an approach that adopts low-cost monitoring (LCM) for fixed site monitoring (FSM) to quantify and disaggregate PM and NO contributions from railway station and road traffic on air quality in the vicinity of railway station in Dublin, Ireland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis second paper in a series of two describes the chirped-pulse ice apparatus that permits the detection of buffer gas cooled molecules desorbed from an energetically processed ice using broadband mm-wave rotational spectroscopy. Here, we detail the lower ice stage developed to generate ices at 4 K, which can then undergo energetic processing via UV/VUV photons or high-energy electrons and which ultimately enter the gas phase via temperature-programmed desorption (TPD). Over the course of TPD, the lower ice stage is interfaced with a buffer gas cooling cell that allows for sensitive detection via chirped-pulse rotational spectroscopy in the 60-90 GHz regime.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aims: Bariatric and metabolic surgery (BMS) may adversely affect noninvasive stool tests for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening through several mechanisms. Multitarget stool DNA (mt-sDNA) is approved for CRC screening; however, performance in post-BMS patients is unknown. As the rates of BMS are anticipated to increase with rising incidence of obesity, it is important to evaluate mt-sDNA test performance among these patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aims: Variation in colorectal neoplasia detection limits the effectiveness of screening colonoscopy. By evaluating neoplasia detection rates of individual colonoscopists, we aimed to quantify the effects of pre-procedural knowledge of a positive (+) multi-target stool DNA (mt-sDNA) on colonoscopy quality metrics.
Methods: We retrospectively identified physicians who performed a high volume of + mt-sDNA colonoscopies; colorectal neoplasia at post-mt-sDNA colonoscopy was recorded.
We present a new technique for the detection of molecules desorbed from an ice surface using broad-band millimeter-wave rotational spectroscopy. The approach permits interrogation of molecules that have undergone the slow warmup process of temperature-programmed desorption (TPD), analogous to the warmup phase of icy grains in the interstellar medium as they approach the central protostar. The detection is conformer- and isomer-specific and quantitative, as afforded by chirped-pulse rotational spectroscopy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA new instrument is described that will employ buffer gas cooling with mm-wave rotational spectroscopy (60-90 GHz) to probe molecules desorbed from astrochemical ices prepared in an ultrahigh vacuum environment. Here the design and performance of the buffer gas cell, mm-wave spectrometer and data acquisition system are reported, while application to molecules desorbed from ice surfaces will be described in a future publication. The effective temperature of the neon-cooled buffer gas cell is determined by monitoring a range of rotational lines of propyl cyanide introduced into the cell.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Digital interventions have gained momentum in terms of behavioral health. However, owing to lacking standard approaches or tools for creating digital behavioral interventions, clinical researchers follow widely varying conceptions of how best to go about digital intervention development. Researchers also face significant cost-, time-, and expertise-related challenges in digital intervention development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Digital behavioral interventions have become increasingly popular for their ability to support patient diagnosis and treatment, chronic disease self-management, behavior change, and adherence to recommended care. However, digital intervention development is impeded by challenges such as limited technical skills, limited access to developers, and cost. The purpose of this study is to elicit in-depth qualitative feedback from intervention developers who have interest in digital behavioral interventions but lack programming skills regarding the barriers they experience and key considerations in the design and implementation of digital interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe importance of selecting appropriate air pollution monitoring sites in a city is vital for accurately reporting air quality, enhancing the quality of high-resolution modelling and informing policy to implement measures to deliver cleaner air in the urban environment. COVID-19 restrictions impacted air quality in urban centres worldwide as reduced mobility led to changes in traffic-related air pollution (TRAP). As such, it offered a unique dataset to examine the spatial and temporal variations in air quality between monitoring stations in Dublin, Ireland.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFConvolutional neural networks (CNNs) offer the potential to generate comprehensive quantitative analysis of histologic features. Diagnostic reporting of benign breast disease (BBD) biopsies is usually limited to subjective assessment of the most severe lesion in a sample, while ignoring the vast majority of tissue features, including involution of background terminal duct lobular units (TDLUs), the structures from which breast cancers arise. Studies indicate that increased levels of age-related TDLU involution in BBD biopsies predict lower breast cancer risk, and therefore its assessment may have potential value in risk assessment and management.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The harmful effects of outdoor air pollution on stroke incidence are becoming increasingly recognised. We examined the impact of different air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, NO2, ozone, and SO2) on admission for all strokes in two Irish urban centres from 2013 to 2017.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Nonendoscopic Barrett's esophagus (BE) screening may help improve esophageal adenocarcinoma outcomes. We previously demonstrated promising accuracy of methylated DNA markers (MDMs) for the nonendoscopic diagnosis of BE using samples obtained from a capsule sponge-on-string (SOS) device. We aimed to assess the accuracy of these MDMs in an independent cohort using a commercial grade assay.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Links between air pollution and asthma are less well established for older adults than some younger groups. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations are widely used as an indicator of transport-related air pollution, and some literature suggests NO2 may directly affect asthma.
Methods: This study used data on 8162 adults >50 years old in the Republic of Ireland to model associations between estimated annual outdoor concentration of NO2 and the probability of having asthma.
Background: While promoting active commuting to school can positively affect children's daily physical activity levels, effectively engaging community members to maximize program impact remains challenging. We evaluated the initial utility of adding a technology-enabled citizen science engagement model, called Our Voice, to a standard Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program to enhance program engagement activities and student travel mode behavior.
Methods: In Investigation 1, a prospective controlled comparison design was used to compare the initial year of the Santa Clara County Public Health Department's SRTS program, with and without the Our Voice engagement model added, in two elementary schools in Gilroy, California, USA.
Infrared multiphoton excitation is combined with UV excitation and state-resolved probes of Cl(P), Cl*(P), and HCl to study the photochemistry of propargyl chloride. The results show evidence both of infrared multiphoton dissociation on the ground electronic state and infrared multiphoton excitation followed by UV dissociation. The results are interpreted with the aid of a full characterization of the stationary points on the ground state using ab initio methods, as well as our recent experimental and theoretical characterization of the UV photochemistry of the molecule.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe UV photodissociation of isoxazole (c-CHNO) is studied in this work by chirped-pulse Fourier transform mm-wave spectroscopy in a pulsed uniform Laval flow. This approach offers a number of advantages over traditional spectroscopic detection methods due to its broadband, sub-MHz resolution, and fast-acquisition capabilities. In coupling this technique with a quasi-uniform Laval flow, we are able to obtain product branching fractions in the 193 nm photodissociation of isoxazole.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground/objectives:: Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) are highly prevalent, stressful, and challenging to manage. Caregivers’ approaches for handling these behaviors have implications for both care partners’ well-being. Yet the specific strategies that caregivers use in their daily management of BPSD are relatively unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Women with atypical hyperplasia (AH) on breast biopsy have an aggregate increased risk of breast cancer (BC), but existing risk prediction models do not provide accurate individualized estimates of risk in this subset of high-risk women. Here, we used the Mayo benign breast disease cohort to develop and validate a model of BC risk prediction that is specifically for women with AH, which we have designated as AH-BC. Patients and Methods Retrospective cohorts of women age 18 to 85 years with pathologically confirmed benign AH from Rochester, MN, and Nashville, TN, were used for model development and external validation, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEstimating pollutant concentrations at a local and regional scale is essential in environmental and health policy decision making. Here we present a novel land use regression (LUR) modelling methodology that exploits the high temporal resolution of fixed-site monitoring (FSM) to produce a national-scale air quality model for the key pollutant NO. The methodology partitions concentration time series from a national FSM network into wind-dependent sectors or "wedges".
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