Resistance- and endurance-trained young men display comparable carotid artery strain parameters that are superior to untrained men.

Purpose: Central arterial stiffness, a predictor of cardiovascular risk, attenuates with endurance-exercise in ageing populations. However, in young individuals, this effect is inconsistent and emerging evidence suggests resistance-exercise may increase arterial stiffness. Two-dimensional (2D)-Strain imaging of the common carotid artery (CCA) is more sensitive at detecting endurance-training induced alterations in CCA stiffness than conventional methods, but has not been used to examine CCA stiffness in young resistance-trained individuals.

Calorie Restriction Decreases Competitive Fitness in Following Heat Stress.

Experiments exposing to glucose limitation (calorie restriction) are widely used to determine impacts on cell health as a model for aging. Using growth on plates and in liquid culture, we demonstrated that calorie restriction reduces fitness in subsequent nutrient-limited environments. Yeast grown in a calorie-restricted environment took longer to emerge from the lag phase, had an extended doubling time and had a lower percentage of culturability.

GripAble: Interrater reliability and normative grip strength of UK population.

Background: Hand grip strength is an established indicator of individual health status and is used as a biomarker for predicting mortality, disability, and disease risks. GripAble hand grip dynamometer offers a modernized approach to measuring grip strength with its digital and high-accuracy measurement system.

Purpose: This study aimed to (1) assess the interrater reliability of maximum grip strength (MGS) measurement and (2) establish GripAble's own gender-, age group- and hand-stratified normative MGS reference values of the adult UK population.

Genetic assessment of the value of restoration planting within an endangered eucalypt woodland.

Assessment of woodland restoration often focusses on stand demographics, but genetic factors likely influence long-term stand viability. We examined the genetic composition of Yellow Box (Eucalyptus melliodora) trees in endangered Box-Gum Grassy Woodland in SE Australia, some 30 years after planting with seeds of reportedly local provenance. Using DArT sequencing for 1406 SNPs, we compared genetic diversity and population structure of planted E.

Exploring the Evidence: Using Technology to Improve Integrated Care Coordination.

A transition of care is defined as a change in level of health care services, as patient care needs change from one location to another during acute or chronic illness. The location of services can vary from the hospital, skilled nursing facility, an outpatient setting, a primary care provider's office, or home health. Care coordination gaps can occur due to a lack of information exchange through the electronic health record, a lack of evidence-based standards, and poor communication among providers.

The Yin-Yang of the Green Fluorescent Protein: Impact on Saccharomyces cerevisiae stress resistance.

Although fluorescent proteins are widely used as biomarkers (Yin), no study focuses on their influence on the microbial stress response. Here, the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) was fused to two proteins of interest in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Pab1p and Sur7p, respectively involved in stress granules structure and in Can1 membrane domains.

A cluster-randomised controlled trial of the LifeLab education intervention to improve health literacy in adolescents.

Adolescence offers a window of opportunity during which improvements in health behaviours could benefit long-term health, and enable preparation for parenthood-albeit a long way off, passing on good health prospects to future children. This study was carried out to evaluate whether an educational intervention, which engages adolescents in science, can improve their health literacy and behaviours. A cluster-randomised controlled trial of 38 secondary schools in England, UK was conducted.

Estimation of Microbial Viability Using Flow Cytometry.

For microorganisms in particular, viability is a term that is difficult to define and a state consequently difficult to measure. The traditional (and gold standard) usage equates viability and culturability (i.e.

LifeLab Southampton: a programme to engage adolescents with DOHaD concepts as a tool for increasing health literacy in teenagers -a pilot cluster-randomized control trial.

Adolescence is a critical time point in the lifecourse. LifeLab is an educational intervention engaging adolescents in understanding Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) concepts and the impact of the early life environment on future health, benefitting both their long-term health and that of the next generation. We aimed to assess whether engaging adolescents with DOHaD concepts improves scientific literacy and whether engagement alone improves health behaviours.

Engaging teenagers in improving their health behaviours and increasing their interest in science (Evaluation of LifeLab Southampton): study protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial.

Background: Lifestyle and health behaviours are strongly linked to non-communicable disease risk, but modifying them is challenging. There is an increasing recognition that adolescence is an important time for lifestyle and health behaviours to become embedded. Improving these behaviours in adolescents is important not only for their own health but also for that of their future children.

Effects of Noxious Electrical Stimulation and Eccentric Exercise on Pain Sensitivity in Asymptomatic Individuals.

Background: Achilles tendinopathy is a common overuse injury in running and jumping athletes. Currently, we do not understand why some conservative interventions (eg, noxious electrical stimulation and eccentric training) may reduce the pain associated with tendinopathy.

Objective: To determine whether noxious electrical stimulation (NES) or eccentric contractions would alter pain sensitivity around the asymptomatic Achilles tendon.

Surviving the heat: heterogeneity of response in Saccharomyces cerevisiae provides insight into thermal damage to the membrane.

Environmental heat stress impacts on the physiology and viability of microbial cells with concomitant implications for microbial activity and diversity. Previously, it has been demonstrated that gradual heating of Saccharomyces cerevisiae induces a degree of thermal resistance, whereas a heat shock results in a high level of cell death. Here, we show that the impact of exogenous nutrients on acquisition of thermal resistance differs between strains.

"Our child's significant disability shapes our lives": experiences of family social participation.

Purpose: This study explored the stories of parents of youth with severe physical disabilities to understand how they viewed the quality of their family social participation; the barriers to social participation faced as families and the strategies and supports that might be used to reduce these barriers.

Method: Ten parents of youth (10-18 years) with severe physical disabilities, recruited through specialist schools, health and disability services, were interviewed using a narratively-oriented interview tool: the Occupational Performance History Interview-II. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Impact of high coverage of monovalent human rotavirus vaccine on Emergency Department presentations for rotavirus gastroenteritis.

Introduction: Australia was one of the first countries to introduce nationally funded rotavirus vaccination. The program has had a substantial impact on both rotavirus and all-cause acute gastroenteritis (AGE) hospitalisations and rotavirus laboratory tests. Evidence for an impact on Emergency Department (ED) presentations is limited.

Predatory activity of Myxococcus xanthus outer-membrane vesicles and properties of their hydrolase cargo.

The deltaproteobacterium Myxococcus xanthus predates upon members of the soil microbial community by secreting digestive factors and lysing prey cells. Like other Gram-negative bacteria, M. xanthus produces outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), and we show here that M.

Genome-wide analysis of longevity in nutrient-deprived Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals importance of recycling in maintaining cell viability.

Although typically cosseted in the laboratory with constant temperatures and plentiful nutrients, microbes are frequently exposed to much more stressful conditions in their natural environments where survival and competitive fitness depend upon both growth rate when conditions are favourable and on persistence in a viable and recoverable state when they are not. In order to determine the role of genetic heterogeneity in environmental fitness we present a novel approach that combines the power of fluorescence-activated cell sorting with barcode microarray analysis and apply this to determining the importance of every gene in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome in a high-throughput, genome-wide fitness screen. We have grown > 6000 heterozygous mutants together and exposed them to a starvation stress before using fluorescence-activated cell sorting to identify and isolate those individual cells that have not survived the stress applied.

Life, death, and in-between: meanings and methods in microbiology.

Determination of microbial viability by the plate count method is routine in microbiology laboratories worldwide. However, limitations of the technique, particularly with respect to environmental microorganisms, are widely recognized. Many alternatives based upon viability staining have been proposed, and these are often combined with techniques such as image analysis and flow cytometry.

Red but not dead? Membranes of stressed Saccharomyces cerevisiae are permeable to propidium iodide.

Flow cytometric monitoring of propidium iodide (PI) uptake is a well-established and rapid method for monitoring cell death and is used on the basis that the intact membrane of viable cells excludes the propidium ion and that loss of this permeability barrier represents irreparable damage and thus cell death. These assumptions are typically based on analysis of live and killed cells. Here we have identified stress levels that lead to a loss of viability of a proportion of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells and under these conditions we show that there is a subpopulation of cells that can take up PI during and immediately following exposure to stress but that a short incubation allows repair of the membrane damage such that subsequent exposure to PI does not result in staining.

Multivariate data analysis methods for the interpretation of microbial flow cytometric data.

Flow cytometry is an important technique in cell biology and immunology and has been applied by many groups to the analysis of microorganisms. This has been made possible by developments in hardware that is now sensitive enough to be used routinely for analysis of microbes. However, in contrast to advances in the technology that underpin flow cytometry, there has not been concomitant progress in the software tools required to analyse, display and disseminate the data and manual analysis, of individual samples remains a limiting aspect of the technology.

Beliefs and beyond: what can we learn from qualitative studies of lay people's understandings of cancer risk?

Background: Clinicians and public health professionals are centrally concerned with mediating risk. However, people often resist the risk-related information that is communicated to them by experts, or have their own models of risk that conflict with expert views. Quantitative studies have clearly demonstrated the importance of health beliefs and various cognitive and emotional processes in shaping risk perception.

Helping women make choices about mammography screening: an online randomized trial of a decision aid for 40-year-old women.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a decision aid (DA) on women's knowledge of the benefits and harms of screening and on their ability to make an informed decision.

Methods: An online randomized controlled trial among 321 women aged 38-45 years was conducted. Participants were randomized to either immediate or delayed access to the online DA which (i) explained the benefits and harms, (ii) included a values clarification exercise and a worksheet to support decision making.

Writing social determinants into and out of cancer control: an assessment of policy practice.

A large literature concurs that social determinants of health (SDH) are demonstrable, important, and insufficiently attended to in policy and practice. A resulting priority for research should be to determine how the social determinants of health can best be addressed. In this paper we support the more effective transfer of social determinants research into policy by: (1) describing a qualitative analysis of thirty-two cancer control policy documents from six English-speaking OECD countries and two transnational organizations, demonstrating great variability in the treatment of social determinants in these policies; (2) critiquing these various policy practices in relation to their likely impact on social determinants of health; and (3) advancing a tool that policy writers can use to assess the way in which social determinants of health have been addressed in their work.