Food and Mood: Daily Associations Between Missed Meals and Affect Among Early Adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: Youth frequently miss meals and experience hunger, yet no studies have assessed how these experiences relate to changes in daily emotional states. This daily diary study examined associations of missing breakfast, missing lunch, and hunger with daily positive and negative affect among young adolescents. METHODS: A community sample of 133 grade 5 and 6 students (50.4% boys, Mage = 10.77, 19.5% BIPOC) from two public schools completed baseline socio-demographic measures at the beginning of the study and daily measures at the end of the school day over 5 consecutive days. Measures included positive and negative affect, breakfast, lunch, and hunger. Multilevel regression models were constructed to test the associations. RESULTS: Among participating youth, 27.8% missed breakfast at least once, 15.0% missed lunch at least once, and 26.3% felt hungry at least once. Missing breakfast was associated with increased negative affect (B = 0.36, p = .030) and missing lunch was related to both increased negative affect (B = 0.52, p = .019) and decreased positive affect (B = -0.80, p = .002). Hunger was not related to daily affect. CONCLUSION: This study provides a unique view of youths' experiences of missing meals, hunger, and daily emotional states. The findings underscore the importance of youth being adequately nourished through school meal programs. Clinicians should screen for and address missing meals among their young patients.

Associations between peer stress in early adolescence and multiple event-related potentials elicited during social feedback processing.

Interpersonal stress in adolescence has been associated with alterations in neural responses to peer feedback, and increased vulnerability to psychopathology. However, it is unclear whether the associations of interpersonal problems with neural responses are global across event-related potentials (ERPs) or might result in alterations only in specific ERPs. We examined associations between multiple informants of peer stress (self-reported, parent-reported, and peer-reported) and multiple ERPs (N1, P2, RewP, and LPP) to social feedback in a sample of 46 early adolescents (aged 12-13 years). Reports of peer stress were only moderately correlated with one another, indicating different informants capture different aspects of peer stress. Regressions using informant reports to predict ERPs revealed greater parent-reported peer stress was associated with a smaller RewP, whereas self-reported stress was associated with a smaller P2, to acceptance. In contrast, greater peer-reported stress was associated with larger P2, RewP, and LPP to acceptance. Findings suggest that different sources of stress measurement are differentially associated with ERPs. Future research using social feedback-related ERPs should consider multiple sources of information as well as multiple ERP components across the time-course of feedback processing, to gain a clearer understanding of the effects of peer stress on neural responses to feedback.

Adolescents and young adults differ in their neural response to and recognition of adolescent and adult emotional faces.

Peer relationships become increasingly important during adolescence. The success of these relationships may rely on the ability to attend to and decode subtle or ambiguous emotional expressions that are common in social interactions. However, most studies examining youths' processing and labeling of facial emotion have employed adult faces and faces that depict emotional extremes as stimuli. In this study, 40 adolescents and 40 young adults viewed blends of angry-neutral, fearful-neutral, and happy-neutral faces (e.g., 100% angry, 66% angry, 33% angry, neutral) portrayed by adolescent and adult actors as electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. Participants also labeled these faces according to the emotion expressed (i.e., angry, fearful, happy, or neutral). The Late Positive Potential (LPP), an event-related potential (ERP) component that reflects sustained attention to motivationally salient information, was scored from the EEG following face presentation. Among adolescents, as peer-age faces moved from ambiguous (33%) to unambiguous (100%) emotional expression, the LPP similarly increased. These effects were not found when adolescents viewed emotional face blends portrayed by adult actors. Additionally, while both adolescents and young adults showed greater emotion labeling accuracy as faces increased in emotional intensity from ambiguous to unambiguous emotional expression, adolescent participants did not show greater accuracy when labeling peer-compared to adult-age faces. Together, these data suggest that adolescents attend more to subtle differences in peer-age emotional faces, but they do not label these emotional expressions more accurately than adults.

Using Behavioural Insights to Improve the Uptake of Services for Drug and Alcohol Misuse.

In the U.K., 270,705 adults were in contact with drug and alcohol treatment services between April 2019 and March 2020. Within the same time period, 118,995 individuals exited the treatment system, and just over a third (36%) left treatment without completing it. The latter includes individuals declining further treatment and unsuccessful transfers between services. The aim of this study was to explore the factors that affect drug and alcohol treatment uptake within a drug and alcohol service in North East England. A mixed-methods approach was adopted. The exploration of factors affecting treatment uptake was captured through a behavioural insights survey and 1:1 in-depth qualitative interviews with service users within one council area within the North East of England. There were 53 survey participants, and a further 15 participants took part in qualitative interviews. We triangulated data sources to report consistencies and discrepancies in the data. Findings show that treatment services aiming to reduce missed appointments and increase retention rates need to implement several strategies. Consistently distributing appointment cards, using text message reminders, displaying a timetable presenting all treatment options, and displaying information in a format to ensure it is accessible to individuals with lower health literacy and reducing wait times for appointments will all improve appointment attendance.

Chlorothalonil Exposure Alters Virus Susceptibility and Markers of Immunity, Nutrition, and Development in Honey Bees.

Chlorothalonil is a broad spectrum chloronitrile fungicide that has been identified as one of the most common pesticide contaminants found in managed honey bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis mellifera L.), their food stores, and the hive environment. While not acutely toxic to honey bees, several studies have identified potential sublethal effects, especially in larvae, but comprehensive information regarding the impact of chlorothalonil on adults is lacking. The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of exposure to a field relevant level of chlorothalonil on honey bee antiviral immunity and biochemical markers of general and social immunity, as well as macronutrient markers of nutrition and morphological markers of growth and development. Chlorothalonil exposure was found to have an effect on 1) honey bee resistance and/or tolerance to viral infection by decreasing the survival of bees following a viral challenge, 2) social immunity, by increasing the level of glucose oxidase activity, 3) nutrition, by decreasing levels of total carbohydrate and protein, and 4) development, by decreasing the total body weight, head width, and wing length of adult nurse and forager bees. Although more research is required to better understand how chlorothalonil interacts with bee physiology to increase mortality associated with viral infections, this study clearly illustrates the sublethal effects of chlorothalonil exposure on bee immunity, nutrition, and development.

The use of a theatre workshop in developing effective communication in paediatric end of life care.

Being able to communicate effectively is an essential skill for all nurses. Communication in paediatric end of life care can be challenging for both the student and lecturer as it is a rare experience and challenging to teach. Innovative approaches to teaching communication skills such as role play, simulation and drama have been used; however there is a dearth of literature examining the use of drama in this specialist context. The aim of this study was to explore the effectiveness of a novel workshop in teaching transferable knowledge and skills in palliative, end of life and bereavement care communication to a convenience sample of first year pre-registration nursing students undertaking clinical skills training at a UK university. Qualitative and quantitative data were obtained from pre and post intervention questionnaires exploring student's perception of communication skills. Qualitative data were analysed thematically and quantitative data presented as standard descriptive statistics. The novel communication workshop facilitated students' exploration of how good and poor communication looks and feels and introduced aids to inform communication in clinical practice. Exposure to different learning approaches provided opportunities to both gain confidence in engaging in new learning activities and develop knowledge and skills through purposeful engagement.

In-Hive Acaricides Alter Biochemical and Morphological Indicators of Honey Bee Nutrition, Immunity, and Development.

The honey bee is a widely managed crop pollinator that provides the agricultural industry with the sustainability and economic viability needed to satisfy the food and fiber needs of our society. Excessive exposure to apicultural pesticides is one of many factors that has been implicated in the reduced number of managed bee colonies available for crop pollination services. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of exposure to commonly used, beekeeper-applied apicultural acaricides on established biochemical indicators of bee nutrition and immunity, as well as morphological indicators of growth and development. The results described here demonstrate that exposure to tau-fluvalinate and coumaphos has an impact on 1) macronutrient indicators of bee nutrition by reducing protein and carbohydrate levels, 2) a marker of social immunity, by increasing glucose oxidase activity, and 3) morphological indicators of growth and development, by altering body weight, head width, and wing length. While more work is necessary to fully understand the broader implications of these findings, the results suggest that reduced parasite stress due to chemical interventions may be offset by nutritional and immune stress.

Honey Bee Gut Microbiome Is Altered by In-Hive Pesticide Exposures.

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the primary pollinators of major horticultural crops. Over the last few decades, a substantial decline in honey bees and their colonies have been reported. While a plethora of factors could contribute to the putative decline, pathogens, and pesticides are common concerns that draw attention. In addition to potential direct effects on honey bees, indirect pesticide effects could include alteration of essential gut microbial communities and symbionts that are important to honey bee health (e.g., immune system). The primary objective of this study was to determine the microbiome associated with honey bees exposed to commonly used in-hive pesticides: coumaphos, tau-fluvalinate, and chlorothalonil. Treatments were replicated at three independent locations near Blacksburg Virginia, and included a no-pesticide amended control at each location. The microbiome was characterized through pyrosequencing of V2-V3 regions of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene and fungal ITS region. Pesticide exposure significantly affected the structure of bacterial but not fungal communities. The bee bacteriome, similar to other studies, was dominated by sequences derived from Bacilli, Actinobacteria, α-, ß-, γ-proteobacteria. The fungal community sequences were dominated by Ascomycetes and Basidiomycetes. The Multi-response permutation procedures (MRPP) and subsequent Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved States (PICRUSt) analysis indicated that chlorothalonil caused significant change to the structure and functional potential of the honey bee gut bacterial community relative to control. Putative genes for oxidative phosphorylation, for example, increased while sugar metabolism and peptidase potential declined in the microbiome of chlorothalonil exposed bees. The results of this field-based study suggest the potential for pesticide induced changes to the honey bee gut microbiome that warrant further investigation.

Optimised recovery of lignin-derived phenols in a Scottish fjord by the CuO oxidation method.

Lignin is found only in vascular plant tissues, hence monitoring of lignin in aquatic environments is important in the determination of the sources and fate of terrestrial organic matter (OM). Concentrations of lignin-derived phenols provide an estimate of the amount of terrestrial OM in a system. Other lignin parameters such as the ratios of syringyl to vanillyl (S/V) and cinnamyl to vanillyl (C/V) phenols provide information on vegetation sources; and the ratios of vanillic acid to vanillin, (Ad/Al)v, and syringic acid to syringaldehyde, (Ad/Al)s, indicate the degradation stage of lignin materials. Concentrations of lignin-derived phenols were determined for the surface and subsurface sediments of a Scottish sea loch, Loch Creran, using a CuO oxidation method. In order to achieve the highest methodological efficiency, a series of validation experiments for each procedural step were carried out. As a result, several procedural steps were optimized. It was found that a lower oxidation temperature resulted in higher product yield and the duration and temperature of the silylation step have no effect on the outcome of the process. Studies of seasonal variations of lignin parameters showed that the occasional increase in lignin content in sediment trap samples was attributable to materials discharged from River Creran and the incoming water from the direction of Creagan bridge. The flow regime caused resuspension of surface sediments and entrainment of lignin materials into the water column. Lignin parameters exhibited more significant trends across an axial transect of the loch (from the head to mouth). Total lignin content decreased and the C/V ratios increased from upper to lower Loch Creran as these lignin materials were transported further down the loch and were subjected to hydrodynamic sorting processes.

The observation and quantification of oil migration and binding in sediments using T2 magnetic resonance imaging.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) makes use of the interactions between atomic nuclei and an external, strong, magnetic field to image the distribution of these nuclei through a substance. In this study, proton MRI has been used to indicate the presence of oil in sediment. Using a multiecho spin-echo acquisition sequence, images of relative oil density, and hence concentration, and of the magnetic resonance relaxation rate, T2, were produced. T2, which is greatly influenced by molecular motion, was equated to binding between the oil and the sediment, thus, providing an almost real-time "description" of all aspects of the oil-sediment interaction including motion of the oil. The interactions among three sediments from the Tay Estuary (East Coast of Scotland) and three crude oils (Fulmar, Forties and Venezuelan) are discussed. Observation of changes in images of oil density and changes in T2, using spread sheets, allow both rates of diffusion of the oil into the sediment and changes in the binding of the oil to the sediment to be calculated. Both the Forties and Fulmar oils move more rapidly than the Venezuelan oil in all of the sediments examined, while the strength of binding is sediment dependent. Thus, the ability of MRI to distinguish between the rates of flow of the oils into the sediment and the strengths of interaction between the various sediments and oils is demonstrated.

Prenatal stress diminishes neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of juvenile rhesus monkeys.

BACKGROUND: Early life stress, including during fetal development, has been hypothesized to predispose individuals to several illnesses and psychiatric disorders later in adulthood. METHODS: To determine whether prenatal stress alters neural, hormonal, and behavioral processes in nonhuman primates, pregnant rhesus monkeys were acutely stressed on a daily basis for 25% of their 24-week gestation with an acoustical startle protocol. At 2 to 3 years of age, hippocampal volume, neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus, and cortisol levels were evaluated in the offspring generated from stressed and control pregnancies. RESULTS: Prenatal stress, both early and late in pregnancy, resulted in a reduced hippocampal volume and an inhibition of neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus. These changes were associated with increased pituitary-adrenal activity, as reflected by higher cortisol levels after a dexamethasone suppression test, and also with behavioral profiles indicative of greater emotionality. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that the prenatal environment can alter behavior, dysregulate neuroendocrine systems, and affect the hippocampal structure of primates in a persistent manner.