Quick, Effective Screening Tasks Identify Children With Medical Conditions or Disabilities Needing Physical Literacy Support.

PURPOSE: This study evaluated screening tasks able to identify children with medical conditions or disabilities who may benefit from physical literacy. METHOD: Children completed ≤20 screening tasks during their clinic visit and then the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy (2nd edition) at a separate visit. Total Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy scores <30th percentile were categorized as potentially needing physical literacy support. Receiver operator characteristic curves identified assessment cut points with 80% sensitivity and 40% specificity relative to total physical literacy scores. RESULTS: 223 children (97 girls; 10.1 [2.6] y) participated. Physical activity adequacy, predilection, and physical competence achieved ≥80% sensitivity and ≥40% specificity in both data sets. Adequacy ≤ 6.5 had 86% to 100% sensitivity and 48% to 49% specificity. Daily screen time >4.9 hours combined with Adequacy ≤6.15 had 88% to 10% sensitivity and 53% to 56% specificity. CONCLUSIONS: Activity adequacy, alone or with screen time, most effectively identified children likely to benefit from physical literacy support. Adequacy and screen time questionnaires are suitable for clinical use. Similar results regardless of diagnosis suggest physical competence deficits are not primary determinants of active lifestyles. Research to enhance screening specificity is required.

Motivators and barriers to general surgery as a career among junior doctors and medical students in New Zealand.

AIM: Increasing diversity among surgeons is a priority of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS).1 This study aimed to identify motivators and barriers to general surgery among junior doctors (JD) and medical students (MS) to help guide the recruitment of under-represented minorities into surgical training. METHODS: An online survey was sent to 2,170 participants-1,327 JD in New Zealand and 843 MS at The University of Auckland (UA). Participants were asked about motivators or barriers to a career in general surgery. RESULTS: Twenty-one percent (452/2170) completed the survey. Most were female (65.1%), NZ European (53.6%) and MS (62.4%). Factors guiding career decision include interest in clinical and practical aspects (weighted average 4.43 and 4.34, respectively) and work-life balance (weighted average 4.11). Barriers to training were long hours and feeling overwhelmed (weighted average 4.05 and 3.64, respectively). There were perceived biases with 79.7% reporting a gender bias and 99.7% reporting male over-representation. Similarly, 68.4% reported an ethnicity bias; 97% reporting NZ European over-representation. 92.2% considered mentorship important but only 15.3% have a mentor. CONCLUSION: This study identified motivators and barriers to general surgery and perceived gender and ethnicity biases. With demand for a diverse surgical workforce, there should be focus on recruitment of underrepresented minorities and mentorship.

Fearless in Physical Activity: The Implications of Community-Based Physical Activity Interventions on Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Congenital Heart Disease.

People living with CHD do less moderate-to-vigorous activity than their peers. This study sought to examine the impact of a community-based physical activity intervention for individuals with CHD. Individuals with CHD and family members participated in a 3 h, one-day Fearless event consisting of a variety of physical activity and education sessions. Consenting participants completed self-administered questionnaires pre-/post-event and completed a post-event feedback form. Descriptive statistics and paired t-tests were calculated across subgroups for each outcome/questionnaire. Written feedback was analyzed using a six-phase framework of reflexive thematic analysis. A total of 32 participants (six children, six adolescents, five youth, five all ages, and ten adults) with CHD completed this study. Following Fearless, youth with CHD reported spending less time being 'inactive' and more time being 'somewhat active'. Adults with CHD reported spending more time walking and partaking in moderate activity and less time partaking in vigorous activity. Fearless successfully engaged individuals with CHD who were more sedentary, less active, and older. Fearless is a fun, family-friendly, physical activity intervention for individuals with CHD. Attending a Fearless event helped children, adolescents, and adults with CHD make incremental improvements to their physical activity levels and provided a framework for sport and recreation leaders who aim to promote physical activity amongst individuals with CHD.

Attitudes toward physical activity as a treatment component for adolescents with anorexia nervosa: An exploratory qualitative study of patient perceptions.

OBJECTIVE: Anorexia nervosa (AN) with compulsive exercise is associated with poor treatment outcomes. This study sought to understand the attitudes of adolescents with AN from various stages of treatment, toward physical activity research practices and physical activity as a component of treatment. METHOD: Seventeen adolescents 12-18 years old (15 female) with AN (10 with acknowledged history of compulsive exercise) were recruited from a Canadian Tertiary Care Hospital's Eating Disorder Program. Six inpatients, 5-day program patients, and six outpatients treated by either the inpatient and/or day treatment program in the past 2 years completed individual, semi-structured interviews that were audio-recorded and transcribed. Results were analyzed deductively using qualitative techniques. RESULTS: Participants recognized both benefits (psychological, sociological, and physiological) and risks (trigger negative thoughts, increase competitive behavior) of implementing physical activity into acute AN treatment. Patient characteristics, such as stage of treatment and exercise history, had an impact on participants' perceptions toward physical activity in AN. Participants suggested that the ideal physical activity program would be focused on fun, individualized and progressively integrated, group-based, and directly supported by staff. Although the majority of participants stated that they would wear an activity monitor for research purposes, concerns were voiced regarding compliance and the potential impact on eating disorder symptomatology. DISCUSSION: Participants overwhelmingly supported the careful implementation of structured physical activity and physical activity psychoeducation into the acute treatment of adolescents with AN. This study allows for the inclusion of patient voices in the conversation surrounding the role of physical activity in AN treatment.

Optimizing the orbital occupation in the multiple minima problem of magnetic materials from the metaheuristic firefly algorithm.

We present the use and implementation of the firefly algorithm to help in scanning the multiple metastable minima of orbital occupations in density functional theory (DFT) plus Hubbard U correction and to identify the ground state occupations in strongly correlated materials. We show the application of this implementation with the Abinit code on KCoF3 and UO2 crystals, which are typical d and f electron systems with numerous occupation minima. We demonstrate the validity and performance of the method by comparing with previous methodologies. The method is general and can be applied to any code using constrained occupation matrices.

Heat/Pressure Treatment with Detergents Significantly Increases Curcumin Solubility and Stability: Its Use as an Environment-Friendly Protein Gel Stain.

Curcumin, the principal curcuminoid in the food spice turmeric, is insoluble in water at room temperature. We have previously solubilized curcumin in water with the application of heat (100 °C) and found that this solubilized curcumin could be used as a gel protein stain. However, heat solubilization in water solubilized only a small fraction of the curcuminoid (1.5%), making it relatively expensive to stain one gel ($1.5-2 per gel). Heat/pressure solubilization (121 °C/15 psi) helps increase the solubility of curcumin in water to only 5%. Therefore, we ventured into increasing curcumin solubility further by using detergents (Tween 20, Tween 80, or Triton X-100) combined with heat/pressure treatment. Curcumin solubilized with Tween 20, Tween 80 or Triton X-100 stained proteins efficiently as before. We could dramatically increase the solubility of curcumin by solubilizing in detergents such that we had to dilute the solubilized curcumin 1:100 with water to stain proteins. However, we had to use the soluble curcumin (extracted with heat/pressure alone) straight without dilution. Thus, the amount of curcumin solubilized with detergents was at least 100-fold, with 0.5% Tween 80 being the most efficient. Staining can be carried out in 30 min, and sensitivity of staining is similar or better than that obtained with Coomassie Brilliant Blue (CBB). It is unnecessary to destain the gel, and excess curcumin can be discarded into the sink, unlike CBB. Curcumin solubilized in Tween 20 has been found to be stable for a period of over 4 years. Therefore, curcumin solubilized in Tween 80 or Triton X-100 can serve as an efficient nontoxic and environment-friendly protein stain. Tween 80 has been used in cough syrups to make a colloidal suspension, and also in foods. Solubilizing curcumin with Tween 80 would be a useful alternative to increase curcumin bioavailability in clinical studies.

Firefly Algorithm Applied to Noncollinear Magnetic Phase Materials Prediction.

In most noncollinear crystal magnets, the number of metastable states is quite large and any calculation that tries to predict the ground state can fall into one of the possible metastable phases. In this work, we generalize the population based meta-heuristic firefly algorithm to the problem of the noncollinear magnetic phase ground state prediction within density functional theory (DFT). We extend the different steps in the firefly algorithm to this specific problem by using polarized constrained DFT calculations, whereby using Lagrange multipliers the directions of the atom magnetic moments remain fixed. By locking the directions of the magnetic moments at each search iteration, the method allows one to explore the entire Born-Oppenheimer energy surface of existing and physically plausible noncollinear configurations present in a crystal. We demonstrate that the number of minima can be large, which restrains the use of exhaustive searches.

Significantly reduced lymphadenopathy, salivary gland infiltrates and proteinuria in MRL-lpr/lpr mice treated with ultrasoluble curcumin/turmeric: increased survival with curcumin treatment.

OBJECTIVES: Commercial curcumin (CU), derived from food spice turmeric (TU), has been widely studied as a potential therapeutic for a variety of oncological and inflammatory conditions. Lack of solubility/bioavailability has hindered curcumin's therapeutic efficacy in human diseases. We have solubilised curcumin in water applying heat/pressure, obtaining up to 35-fold increase in solubility (ultrasoluble curcumin (UsC)). We hypothesised that UsC or ultrasoluble turmeric (UsT) will ameliorate systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Sjögren's syndrome (SS)-like disease in MRL-lpr/lpr mice. METHODS: Eighteen female MRL-lpr/lpr (6 weeks old) and 18 female MRL-MpJ mice (6 weeks old) were used. Female MRL-lpr/lpr mice develop lupus-like disease at the 10th week and die at an average age of 17 weeks. MRL-MpJ mice develop lupus-like disease around 47 weeks and typically die at 73 weeks. Six mice of each strain received autoclaved water only (lpr-water or MpJ-water group), UsC (lpr-CU or MpJ-CU group) or UsT (lpr-TU or MpJ-TU group) in the water bottle. RESULTS: UsC or UsT ameliorates SLE in the MRL-lpr/lpr mice by significantly reducing lymphoproliferation, proteinuria, lesions (tail) and autoantibodies. lpr-CU group had a 20% survival advantage over lpr-water group. However, lpr-TU group lived an average of 16 days shorter than lpr-water group due to complications unrelated to lupus-like illness. CU/TU treatment inhibited lymphadenopathy significantly compared with lpr-water group (p=0.03 and p=0.02, respectively) by induction of apoptosis. Average lymph node weights were 2606±1147, 742±331 and 385±68 mg, respectively, for lpr-water, lpr-CU and lpr-TU mice. Transferase dUTP nick end labelling assay showed that lymphocytes in lymph nodes of lpr-CU and lpr-TU mice underwent apoptosis. Significantly reduced cellular infiltration of the salivary glands in the lpr-TU group compared with the lpr-water group, and a trend towards reduced kidney damage was observed in the lpr-CU and lpr-TU groups. CONCLUSIONS: These studies show that UsC/UsT could prove useful as a therapeutic intervention in SLE/SS.

Filial cannibalism improves survival and development of beaugregory damselfish embryos.

Cannibalism of small numbers of offspring by a parent has been proposed as an adaptive parental strategy, by providing energy to support parental care. However, there are few empirical studies to support this hypothesis. We conducted field and laboratory experiments to investigate partial filial cannibalism in Stegastes leucostictus, a coral reef fish with paternal care. Partial cannibalism was shown to be common, and males were found to remove developing embryos from throughout a clutch in a random pattern, rather than in the more aggregated pattern seen during embryo predation. Males that received a diet supplement grew faster than control males, but did not engage in less cannibalism. Also, males did not concentrate cannibalism on early embryonic stages with the highest energetic value. Experimental reduction of embryo densities was found to significantly increase embryo development rate and survival from egg deposition to hatching, and experimental reduction of oxygen levels significantly increased rates of partial filial cannibalism by males. Artificial spawning sites with low oxygen levels were avoided by spawning females, and cannibalism rates by males were higher. We propose that partial filial cannibalism serves as an adaptive parental strategy to low oxygen levels in S. leucostictus by increasing the hatching success of embryos.