Feasibility and impact of a computerised clinical decision support system on investigation and initial management of new onset chest pain: a mixed methods study.

Background: Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) can modify clinician behaviour, yet the factors influencing their effect remain poorly understood. This study assesses the feasibility and acceptability of a CDSS supporting diagnostic and treatment decisions for patients with suspected stable angina.

Methods: Intervention The Optimising Management of Angina (OMA) programme includes a CDSS guiding investigation and medication decisions for clinicians managing patients with new onset stable angina, based on English national guidelines, introduced through an educational intervention.

Heavier smoking may lead to a relative increase in waist circumference: evidence for a causal relationship from a Mendelian randomisation meta-analysis. The CARTA consortium.

Objectives: To investigate, using a Mendelian randomisation approach, whether heavier smoking is associated with a range of regional adiposity phenotypes, in particular those related to abdominal adiposity.

Design: Mendelian randomisation meta-analyses using a genetic variant (rs16969968/rs1051730 in the CHRNA5-CHRNA3-CHRNB4 gene region) as a proxy for smoking heaviness, of the associations of smoking heaviness with a range of adiposity phenotypes.

Participants: 148,731 current, former and never-smokers of European ancestry aged ≥ 16 years from 29 studies in the consortium for Causal Analysis Research in Tobacco and Alcohol (CARTA).

Memory consolidation.

Conscious memory for a new experience is initially dependent on information stored in both the hippocampus and neocortex. Systems consolidation is the process by which the hippocampus guides the reorganization of the information stored in the neocortex such that it eventually becomes independent of the hippocampus. Early evidence for systems consolidation was provided by studies of retrograde amnesia, which found that damage to the hippocampus-impaired memories formed in the recent past, but typically spared memories formed in the more remote past.

First Passaggio Transition Gestures in Classically Trained Female Singers.

Objectives/hypothesis: The purpose of this project was to determine the spectral and electroglottograph (EGG) differences exhibited by classically trained female singers when singing through their primo passaggio. The hypotheses were that the singers would exhibit relatively steady EGG levels and minimal changes in speech spectra when singing through their primo passaggio. It also was hypothesized that EGG and spectral measurements at the crest and trough of the vibrato cycles would be similar to each other.

Diurnal patterns of objectively measured physical activity and sedentary behaviour in older men.

Background: Physical activity (PA) levels among older adults are generally low and sedentary behaviour (SB) very common; increasing PA and reducing SB levels could have appreciable health benefits. Quantifying PA and SB patterns through the day could help in defining strategies for change. We examined within day variations in PA and SB and whether these varied by demographic factors and health status.

"Keeping Moving": factors associated with sedentary behaviour among older people recruited to an exercise promotion trial in general practice.

Background: Sedentary behaviour is detrimental to health, even in those who achieve recommended levels of physical activity. Efforts to increase physical activity in older people so that they reach beneficial levels have been disappointing. Reducing sedentary behaviour may improve health and be less demanding of older people, but it is not clear how to achieve this.

Bacterial-induced calcium oscillations are common to nitrogen-fixing associations of nodulating legumes and nonlegumes.

Plants that form root-nodule symbioses are within a monophyletic 'nitrogen-fixing' clade and associated signalling processes are shared with the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis. Central to symbiotic signalling are nuclear-associated oscillations in calcium ions (Ca(2+) ), occurring in the root hairs of several legume species in response to the rhizobial Nod factor signal. In this study we expanded the species analysed for activation of Ca(2+) oscillations, including nonleguminous species within the nitrogen-fixing clade.

Adult height, coronary heart disease and stroke: a multi-locus Mendelian randomization meta-analysis.

Background: We investigated causal effect of completed growth, measured by adult height, on coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke and cardiovascular traits, using instrumental variable (IV) Mendelian randomization meta-analysis.

Methods: We developed an allele score based on 69 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with adult height, identified by the IBCCardioChip, and used it for IV analysis against cardiovascular risk factors and events in 21 studies and 60 028 participants. IV analysis on CHD was supplemented by summary data from 180 height-SNPs from the GIANT consortium and their corresponding CHD estimates derived from CARDIoGRAMplusC4D.

The association between smoking cessation and glycaemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes: a THIN database cohort study.

Background: Smoking increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. However, several population studies also show a higher risk in people 3-5 years after smoking cessation than in continuing smokers. After 10-12 years the risk equates to that of never-smokers.

Randomised controlled trial of the effectiveness of community group and home-based falls prevention exercise programmes on bone health in older people: the ProAct65+ bone study.

Background: exercise can reduce osteoporotic fracture risk by strengthening bone or reducing fall risk. Falls prevention exercise programmes can reduce fall incidence, and also include strengthening exercises suggested to load bone, but there is little information as to whether these programmes influence bone mineral density (BMD) and strength.

Objective: to evaluate the skeletal effects of home (Otago Exercise Programme, OEP) and group (Falls Exercise Management, FaME) falls prevention exercise programmes relative to usual care in older people.

Does the timed up and go test predict future falls among British community-dwelling older people? Prospective cohort study nested within a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Falling is common among older people. The Timed-Up-and-Go Test (TUG) is recommended as a screening tool for falls but its predictive value has been challenged. The objectives of this study were to examine the ability of TUG to predict future falls and to estimate the optimal cut-off point to identify those with higher risk for future falls.

Diet quality in older age: the influence of childhood and adult socio-economic circumstances.

Socio-economic gradients in diet quality are well established. However, the influence of material socio-economic conditions particularly in childhood, and the use of multiple disaggregated socio-economic measures on diet quality have been little studied in the elderly. In the present study, we examined childhood and adult socio-economic measures, and social relationships, as determinants of diet quality cross-sectionally in 4252 older British men (aged 60-79 years).

The origin and implications of clay minerals from Yellowknife Bay, Gale crater, Mars.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity has documented a section of fluvio-lacustrine strata at Yellowknife Bay (YKB), an embayment on the floor of Gale crater, approximately 500 m east of the Bradbury landing site. X-ray diffraction (XRD) data and evolved gas analysis (EGA) data from the CheMin and SAM instruments show that two powdered mudstone samples (named John Klein and Cumberland) drilled from the Sheepbed member of this succession contain up to ~20 wt% clay minerals. A trioctahedral smectite, likely a ferrian saponite, is the only clay mineral phase detected in these samples.

The mantle of the heavens: Reflections on the 2014 Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology.

The award of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 2014 for the discovery of place and grid cells was both a personal award to three great scientists and also a mark of the maturity of systems neuroscience as a discipline. This article offers both personal and scientific reflections on these discoveries, detailing both how getting to know all three winners had an impact on my life and the research questions that we shared in common work together. It ends with brief reflections on three important outstanding questions.

Frequency-Dependent Gating of Hippocampal-Neocortical Interactions.

How and where hippocampal-neocortical interactions required for memory formation take place is a major issue of current research. Using a combined in vivo functional magnetic resonance imaging/electrophysiology approach, we have investigated whether specific frequencies of CA3 neuronal activation, inducing different forms of short-term plasticity at CA1 synapses, contribute to differential activity propagation in brain-wide networks connected to the hippocampus. We report that localized activation of CA3 neurons in dorsal hippocampus produced activity propagation within the hippocampal formation, including the subiculum and entorhinal cortex, which increased monotonically with frequency to a maximum at 20-40 Hz.

Activation of symbiosis signaling by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in legumes and rice.

Establishment of arbuscular mycorrhizal interactions involves plant recognition of diffusible signals from the fungus, including lipochitooligosaccharides (LCOs) and chitooligosaccharides (COs). Nitrogen-fixing rhizobial bacteria that associate with leguminous plants also signal to their hosts via LCOs, the so-called Nod factors. Here, we have assessed the induction of symbiotic signaling by the arbuscular mycorrhizal (Myc) fungal-produced LCOs and COs in legumes and rice (Oryza sativa).

Use of high resolution dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry-region free analysis (DXA-RFA) to detect local periprosthetic bone remodeling events.

Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the gold standard method for measuring periprosthetic bone remodeling, but relies on a region of interest (ROI) analysis approach. While this addresses issues of anatomic variability, it is insensitive to bone remodeling events at the sub-ROI level. We have validated a high-spatial resolution tool, termed DXA-region free analysis (DXA-RFA) that uses advanced image processing approaches to allow quantitation of bone mineral density (BMD) at the individual pixel (data-point) level.

Device connectivity: the next big wave in diabetes.

Patients with diabetes have to take numerous factors/data into their therapeutic decisions in daily life. Connecting the devices they are using by feeding the data generated into a database/app is supposed to help patients to optimize their glycemic control. As this is not established in practice, the different roadblocks have to be discussed to open the road.

Cardiovascular risk prediction models for people with severe mental illness: results from the prediction and management of cardiovascular risk in people with severe mental illnesses (PRIMROSE) research program.

Importance: People with severe mental illness (SMI), including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, have excess rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Risk prediction models validated for the general population may not accurately estimate cardiovascular risk in this group.

Objective: To develop and validate a risk model exclusive to predicting CVD events in people with SMI incorporating established cardiovascular risk factors and additional variables.

Variation in the SLC23A1 gene does not influence cardiometabolic outcomes to the extent expected given its association with L-ascorbic acid.

Background: Observational studies showed that circulating L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is inversely associated with cardiometabolic traits. However, these studies were susceptible to confounding and reverse causation.

Objectives: We assessed the relation between L-ascorbic acid and 10 cardiometabolic traits by using a single nucleotide polymorphism in the solute carrier family 23 member 1 (SLC23A1) gene (rs33972313) associated with circulating L-ascorbic acid concentrations.

Thalamocortical integration of instrumental learning and performance and their disintegration in addiction.

A recent focus of addiction research has been on the effect of drug exposure on the neural processes that mediate the acquisition and performance of goal-directed instrumental actions. Deficits in goal-directed control and a consequent dysregulation of habit learning processes have been described as resulting in compulsive drug seeking. Similarly, considerable research has focussed on the motivational and emotional changes that drugs produce and that result in changes in the incentive processes that modulate goal-directed performance.

Initial investigation of the effects of an experimentally learned schema on spatial associative memory in humans.

Networks of interconnected neocortical representations of prior knowledge, "schemas," facilitate memory for congruent information. This facilitation is thought to be mediated by augmented encoding and accelerated consolidation. However, it is less clear how schema affects retrieval.

The first X-ray diffraction measurements on Mars.

The Mars Science Laboratory landed in Gale crater on Mars in August 2012, and the Curiosity rover then began field studies on its drive toward Mount Sharp, a central peak made of ancient sediments. CheMin is one of ten instruments on or inside the rover, all designed to provide detailed information on the rocks, soils and atmosphere in this region. CheMin is a miniaturized X-ray diffraction/X-ray fluorescence (XRD/XRF) instrument that uses transmission geometry with an energy-discriminating CCD detector.