bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Change in force profile of the hardstyle kettlebell swing in older adults is small following 16 weeks of training and may not be required to improve physical function: findings from the BELL trial
Authors: Meigh Neil J. , Keogh Justin W.L. , Rathbone Evelyne N. , Hing Wayne A. 
Published: September 2021

AbstractBackgroundHardstyle kettlebell training is characterised by the ballistic two-handed kettlebell swing with outcomes believed to be strongly influenced by swing proficiency. This study examines the effect of four months hardstyle kettlebell training on the force profile of the two-handed kettlebell swing, and peak ground reaction force during a kettlebell deadlift in older adults. These data will help inform healthcare providers and coaches about the use and prescription of kettlebell exercises with older adults.MethodsFive males and five females <70 years of age who participated in the BELL trial were recruited. Two-handed hardstyle swings were performed with 8-16 kg, and deadlifts with 8-32 kg. Ground reaction force (GRF) was obtained from a floor-mounted force platform. Force-time curves (FTCs), peak force, forward force relative to vertical force, rate of force development (RFD), and swing cadence were investigated. Results were compared with the same data variables collected from the participants in an exploratory pre-intervention study, conducted approximately seven months before the present study. Participants completed approximately 90 kettlebell training sessions during a four-month training intervention.ResultsParticipants used kettlebells to perform 3779 ± 802 swings, 923 ± 251 cleans, 825 ± 309 snatches and 744 ± 178 deadlifts during group-training sessions. Peak ground reaction force during kettlebell swings did not significantly change with any kettlebell weight. There was a significant 3% increase in the magnitude of forward force during 8 kg swings, and a significant 3% decrease in forward force during 16 kg swings. There were large significant improvements in swing cadence with a mean increase of three swings per minute and a small non-significant increase in RFD. Change in kettlebell swing force-time curve profiles were small. Change in peak ground reaction force during deadlifts were moderate to large. All participants increased in grip strength following training, with the magnitude of change greater than the minimum clinically important difference for seven participants. All participants had significant increases in multiple secondary outcomes.ConclusionGroup-based and online kettlebell training is likely to be ineffective for improving the force profile of the hardstyle kettlebell swing in older adults. Insufficiently active older adults engaged in high-volume kettlebell training performed 3-5 times weekly, can however expect to see clinically meaningful improvements in health-related physical fitness irrespective of swing proficiency, and have increased confidence with heavy lifting tasks. Results of this study suggest that beyond safe and competent performance, striving to optimise hardstyle swing technique may provide no additional benefit to clinical outcomes in older adults.
Approbation of Self-directed Learning by first year medical students: a mixed method study
Authors: Bhandari Bharti , Chopra Deepti , Agarwal Prerna , Panwar Aprajita , Kaur Daljit , Sidhu Tanvir K 
Published: September 2021

AbstractBackgroundOne of the primary roles played by Indian medical graduates is to be a lifelong learner. For being a lifelong learner, the students should inculcate the habit of Self-Directed Learning (SDL). Lack of SDL skills among undergraduate medical students is a concern, hence the study was planned to introduce SDL in Physiology to phase-1 undergraduate medical students and assess its effectiveness through students’ and faculty’s perceptions.MethodologyThe project was commenced after obtaining clearance from the Institutional Ethics Committee. The faculty members and students were sensitized on SDL. Feedback questionnaire was framed and the topics for SDL were selected. Six topics were covered as part of the project. The effectiveness of the sessions was evaluated by administering the feedback questionnaire to the students and recording perceptions of the students and faculty on SDL. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data was done.ResultsA total of 96 phase-1 students participated in the study. Majority of the students felt that self-directed learning sessions have improved their SDL skills; they are more prepared and aware of their learning strengths and have started taking ownership of their learning. However some students felt the activity was not sufficient and SDL was not useful in improving their analytical skills. Both the students and the faculty were fairly satisfied by this teaching learning innovation.ConclusionsStudents and faculty were satisfied with the SDL strategy. SDL has shown to make them independent learner, who are aware of their learning goals and capable of evaluating their learning.
The COVID-19 pandemic and ophthalmic care: a qualitative study of patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD)
Authors: O’Connor Seán R , Treanor Charlene , Ward Elizabeth , Wickens Robin A , O’Connell Abby , Culliford Lucy A , Rogers Chris A , Gidman Eleanor A , Peto Tunde , Knox Paul C , Burton Benjamin J L , Lotery Andrew J , Sivaprasad Sobha , Reeves Barnaby C , Hogg Ruth E , Donnelly Michael ,   MONARCH Study Group
Published: September 2021

ABSTRACTBackground/aimsConcerns have been expressed about the relationship between reduced levels of health care utilisation and the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to elicit and explore the views of patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and their ophthalmic care.MethodsBetween April 29th and September 4th 2020, semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with thirty-five patients with nAMD taking part in a larger diagnostic accuracy study of home-monitoring tests. Participants were recruited using maximum variation sampling to capture a range of key characteristics including age, gender and time since initial treatment. Transcribed interview data were analysed using a deductive and inductive thematic approach.ResultsThree themes emerged from the analysis: i. access to eye clinic care. ii. COVID-19 mitigating factors and care delivery and iii. social and personal circumstances. Participants reported anxieties about cancelled or delayed appointments, limited communication from clinic-based services about appointments, and the impact of this on their ongoing care. Despite these concerns, there was apprehension about attending appointments due to infection risk and a perception that nAMD patients are a ‘high risk’ group. Views of those who attended clinics during the study period were, however, positive, with social distancing and infection control measures providing reassurance.ConclusionsThese findings contribute to our understanding about experiences of patients with nAMD during the COVID-19 pandemic and have potential implications for future planning of care services. Innovative approaches may be required to address issues related to access to care, including concerns about delayed or cancelled appointments.SynopsisPerspectives of patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration regarding the COVID-19 pandemic identified important issues regarding access to, and experience of ophthalmic care. These findings have implications for future planning of services.
A scalable, clinically severe pig model for Duchenne muscular dystrophy
Authors: Stirm Michael , Fonteyne Lina Marie , Shashikadze Bachuki , Lindner Magdalena , Chirivi Maila , Lange Andreas , Kaufhold Clara , Mayer Christian , Medugorac Ivica , Kessler Barbara , Kurome Mayuko , Zakhartchenko Valeri , Hinrichs Arne , Kemter Elisabeth , Krause Sabine , Wanke Rüdiger , Arnold Georg J. , Wess Gerhard , Nagashima Hiroshi , de Angelis Martin Hrabĕ , Flenkenthaler Florian , Kobelke Levin Arne , Bearzi Claudia , Rizzi Roberto , Bähr Andrea , Matiasek Kaspar , Walter Maggie C. , Kupatt Christian , Ziegler Sibylle , Bartenstein Peter , Fröhlich Thomas , Klymiuk Nikolai , Blutke Andreas , Wolf Eckhard 
Published: September 2021

AbstractLarge animal models for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) are crucial for preclinical evaluation of novel diagnostic procedures and treatment strategies. Pigs cloned from male cells lackingDMDexon 52 (DMDΔ52) resemble molecular, clinical and pathological hallmarks of DMD, but cannot be propagated by breeding due to death before sexual maturity. Therefore, femaleDMD+/-carriers were generated. A single founder animal had 11 litters with 29DMDY/-, 34DMD+/-as well as 36 male and 29 female wild-type (WT) offspring. Breeding with F1 and F2DMD+/-carriers resulted in additional 114DMDY/-piglets. The majority of them survived for 3-4 months, providing large cohorts for experimental studies. Pathological investigations and proteome studies of skeletal muscles and myocardium confirmed the resemblance of human disease mechanisms. Importantly,DMDY/-pigs reveal progressive fibrosis of myocardium and increased expression of connexin-43, associated with significantly reduced left ventricular fractional shortening and ejection fraction already at age 3 months. Furthermore, behavioral tests provided evidence for impaired cognitive ability ofDMDY/-pigs. Our breeding cohort ofDMDΔ52 pigs and standardized tissue repositories fromDMDY/-pigs,DMD+/-carriers, and WT littermate controls provide important resources for studying DMD disease mechanisms and for testing novel diagnostic procedures and treatment strategies.
Increased pathogenicity of the nematophagous fungus Drechmeria coniospora following long-term laboratory culture
Authors: Courtine Damien , Zhang Xing , Ewbank Jonathan J. 
Published: September 2021

AbstractDomestication provides a window into adaptive change. Over the course of 2 decades of laboratory culture, a strain of the nematode-specific fungus Drechmeria coniospora became more virulent during its infection of Caenorhabditis elegans. Through a close comparative examination of the genome sequences of the original strain and its more pathogenic derivative, we identified a small number of non-synonymous mutations in protein-coding genes. In one case, the mutation was predicted to affect a gene involved in hypoxia resistance and we provide direct corroborative evidence for such an effect. The mutated genes with functional annotation were all predicted to impact the general physiology of the fungus and this was reflected in an increased in vitro growth, even in the absence of C. elegans. While most cases involved single nucleotide substitutions predicted to lead to a loss of function, we also observed a predicted restoration of gene function through deletion of an extraneous tandem repeat. This latter change affected the regulatory subunit of a cAMP-dependent protein kinase. Remarkably, we also found a mutation in a gene for a second protein of the same, protein kinase A, pathway. Together, we predict that they result in a stronger repression of the pathway for given levels of ATP and adenylate cyclase activity. Finally, we also identified mutations in a few lineage-specific genes of unknown function that are candidates for factors that influence virulence in a more direct manner.
Motor learning in reaching tasks leads to homogenization of task space error distribution
Authors: Singh Puneet , Ghosal Oishee , Murthy Aditya , Ghosal Ashitava 
Published: September 2021

AbstractA human arm, up to the wrist, is often modelled as a redundant 7 degree-of-freedom serial robot. Despite its inherent nonlinearity, we can perform point-to-point reaching tasks reasonably fast and with reasonable accuracy in the presence of external disturbances and noise. In this work, we take a closer look at the task space error during point-to-point reaching tasks and learning during an external force-field perturbation. From experiments and quantitative data, we confirm a directional dependence of the peak task space error with certain directions showing larger errors than others at the start of a force-field perturbation, and the larger errors are reduced with repeated trials implying learning. The analysis of the experimental data further shows that a) the distribution of the peak error is made more uniform across directions with trials and the error magnitude and distribution approaches the value when no perturbation is applied, b) the redundancy present in the human arm is used more in the direction of the larger error, and c) homogenization of the error distribution is not seen when the reaching task is performed with the non-dominant hand. The results support the hypothesis that not only magnitude of task space error, but the directional dependence is reduced during motor learning and the workspace is homogenized possibly to increase the control efficiency and accuracy in point-to-point reaching tasks. The results also imply that redundancy in the arm is used to homogenize the workspace, and additionally since the bio-mechanically similar dominant and non-dominant arms show different behaviours, the homogenizing is actively done in the central nervous system.SignificanceThe human arm is capable of executing point-to-point reaching tasks reasonably accurately and quickly everywhere in its workspace. This is despite the inherent nonlinearities in the mechanics and the sensorimotor system. In this work, we show that motor learning enables homogenization of the task space error thus overcoming the nonlinearities and leading to simpler internal models and control of the arm movement. It is shown, across subjects, that the redundancy present in the arm is used to homogenize the task space. It is further shown, across subjects, that the homogenization is not an artifact of the biomechanics of the arm and is actively performed in the central nervous system since homogenization is not seen in the non-dominant hand.
Seasonal migration as a life history trait facilitating adaptation to climate change
Authors: Carbeck Katherine , Wang Tongli , Reid Jane , Arcese Peter 
Published: September 2021

AbstractPredicting the geographic range of species and their response to variation in climate are entwined goals in conservation and evolutionary ecology. Species distribution models (SDMs) are foundational in this effort and used to visualize the geographic range of species as the spatial representation of its realized niche, or when based only on climate, its climate niche. SDMs can also forecast shifts in species range given climate change, but often lack of empirical support for causal links between climate and demography, yielding uncertain predictions. We addressed such uncertainties whilst also exploring the role of migration and resident life-histories in climate adaptation in mobile animals using 48 years of detailed demographic and climate data for song sparrows (Melospiza melodia), a polytypic species that varies in migratory life history. We developed SDMs representing demographic and climate niches of migratory and resident populations in western North America from California (CA) to Alaska (AK) using data from a focal population in British Columbia (BC) and 1.2 million citizen science observations. Distributions of resident and migrant populations predicted by each model agreed strongly (72.8%) in the region of our focal population, but less well in regions with dissimilar climates. Mismatches were largest in CA, smaller in AK, but in all cases supported the hypothesis that climate influences the evolution of migration and limits year-round residency. Our results imply that migrants predominated in our focal population a century ago, but that climate change has favored range expansions by non-migratory phenotypes and facilitated an upward shift in the elevational range of residents. We suggest long-term studies are crucial to evaluating the predictions of SDMs positing causal links between climatic conditions and species demography. We found such links to be robust regionally and particularly useful to elucidating the potential for migration or residence to facilitate adaptation to climate change.
Learning to embed lifetime social behavior from interaction dynamics
Authors: Wild Benjamin , Dormagen David M , Smith Michael L , Landgraf Tim 
Published: September 2021

AbstractInteractions of individuals in complex social systems give rise to emergent behaviors at the group level. Identifying the functional role that individuals take in the group at a specific time facilitates understanding the dynamics of these emergent processes. An individual’s behavior at a given time can be partially inferred by common factors, such as age, but internal and external factors also substantially influence behavior, making it difficult to disentangle common development from individuality. Here we show that such dependencies on common factors can be used as an implicit bias to learn a temporally consistent representation of a functional role from social interaction networks. Using a unique dataset containing lifetime trajectories of multiple generations of individually-marked honey bees in two colonies, we propose a new temporal matrix factorization model that jointly learns the average developmental path and structured variations of individuals in the social network over their entire lives. Our method yields inherently interpretable embeddings that are biologically relevant and consistent over time, allowing one to compare individuals’ functional roles regardless of when or in which colony they lived. Our method provides a quantitative framework for understanding behavioral heterogeneity in complex social systems, and is applicable to fields such as behavioral biology, social sciences, neuroscience, and information science.Author summaryGroup-level emergent behaviors are the result of interactions between individual group members. To understand these social dynamics, one must objectively measure the function of an individual in their group at any given time. Ideally, one would also like to compare individuals from different groups, for example, to measure how specific environmental conditions or other external factors influence group behavior. Unfortunately, such an objective measure is hard to obtain because the group and its dynamics constantly change, making it challenging to define an individual’s role in the group as a function of its actions and interactions. We propose a principled approach to model individuals in complex social systems by considering that function often depends, at least partially, on common factors such as age. The model learns a meaningful and interpretable descriptor for all individuals, and can be used to understand how complex social systems function and the emergence of group behavior.
How much the response of rice genotypes to water deficit at the reproductive phase is dependent from environmental conditions?
Authors: de Lima Isabela Pereira , Lafarge Tanguy , de Castro Adriano Pereira , Roques Sandrine , Soutiras Armelle , Clément-Vidal Anne , Botelho Flávia Barbosa Silva , de Raïssac Marcel 
Published: September 2021

AbstractRice crop is known as particularly sensitive to water deficit, especially during the reproductive phase when growth of vegetative organs and formation of spikelets are simultaneous. Many works have focused on the response of rice plants to water deficits varying in timing, duration and intensity. Oppositely, the impact of the environmental conditions on the response to a given water deficit remains largely unknown. In order to test it, two experiments under contrasted conditions of temperature, radiation and VPD were conducted on six genotypes in greenhouse in Brazil (S) and in growth chamber in France (GC). The plants were submitted to the same mild water deficit at the reproductive phase, by adjusting FTSW at 0.4. Under irrigation, plant growth rate was reduced and crop duration extended in GC in relation to S: ultimately, this trade-off resulted in similar plant height and biomass in both environments. Under water deficit and in both environments, elongation rate decreased and was associated with an increase in soluble sugars in stem and flag leaf, while starch was reduced in S and negligible in GC because of the low radiation. This common biochemical response displayed a large gradient of values across environments and genotypes, but differentially impacted the branch and spikelet formation on the developing panicle: in carbon limiting conditions (GC), the increase in soluble sugars was associated with the reduction in branch and spikelet number, and conversely in S. At the morphological level, the maintenance of spikelet number on the panicle was correlated with the maintenance of flag leaf width in all genotypes and conditions, that was discussed according to the maintenance of the apical meristem size. Genotypes were discriminated and the study underlined the global tolerance of Cirad 409 and sensitivity of IAC 25.
Unmasking the cryptic immunopeptidome of EZH2 mutated diffuse large B-cell lymphomas through combination drug treatment
Authors: Bourne Christopher M. , Mun Sung Soo , Dao Tao , Aretz Zita E. H. , Gejman Ron S. , Daman Andrew , Takata Katsuyoshi , Steidl Christian , Klatt Martin G. , Scheinberg David A. 
Published: September 2021

AbstractExploring the repertoire of peptides presented on major histocompatibility complexes (MHC) has been utilized to identify targets for immunotherapy in many hematological malignancies. However, such data have not been described systematically for diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL), which might be explained by the profound downregulation of MHC expression in many DLBCLs, and in particular in the EZH2-mutated subgroup. Epigenetic drug treatment, especially in the context of interferon gamma (IFNg), restored MHC expression in DLBCL. DLBCL MHC-presented peptides were identified via mass spectrometry following tazemetostat or decitabine treatments alone, or in combination with IFNg. Such treatment synergistically increased MHC class I surface protein expression up to 50-fold and class II expression up to 3-fold. Peptides presented on MHC complexes increased to a similar extent for MHC class I and remained constant for class II. Overall, these treatments restored the diversity of the immunopeptidome to levels described in healthy B cells and allowed the systematic search for new targets for immunotherapy. Consequently, we identified multiple MHC ligands from regulator of G protein signaling 13 (RGS13) and E2F transcription factor 8 (E2F8) on different MHC alleles, none of which have been described in healthy tissues and therefore represent tumor-specific MHC ligands, which are unmasked only after drug treatment. Overall, our results show that EZH2 inhibition in combination with decitabine and IFNg can expand the repertoire of MHC ligands presented on DLBCLs by revealing cryptic epitopes, thus allowing the systematic analysis and identification of new potential immunotherapy targets.Key pointsCombination therapy of interferon gamma with epigenetic regulators leads to large increases in the immunopeptidome of DLBCL.HLA ligands from proteins RGS13 and E2F8 may provide DLBCL-specific targets for immunotherapy.