Search Results (11)

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive multisystem disorder caused by mutations in the cystic fibrosis conductance regulator (CFTR) anion channel. In the lungs specifically, CFTR mutations lead to changes in mucus viscosity and defective mucociliary clearance. Moreover, people with CF (pwCF) mount an insufficient immune response to invading pathogens, which predisposes individuals to chronic airway disease associated with chronic inflammation, colonization, and recurrent infections by mainly opportunistic pathogens. These chronic infections in the CF lung are typically polymicrobial and frequently harbour multidrug-resistant pathogens, making both treatment and eradication very challenging. During the last decade, the development of highly effective CFTR modulator therapy (HEMT) has led to a breakthrough in treatment options for pwCF. While the majority of pwCF now live longer and have fewer CF exacerbations, colonisation with common respiratory pathogens persists, thereby contributing to chronic inflammation and infection. Interestingly, there are limited reports examining the lung microbiome in the post-modulator era. Since ETI treatment is still quite novel and has only been used for about five years by now, this review will be one of the first discussing the current literature on the effect of ETI on CF pathogens. In addition, we will identify unanswered questions that remain from the effect of HEMT on the CF microbiome. Full article

If the origin of life is rare and sensitive to the local conditions at the site of its emergence, then, using the principle of mediocrity within a multiverse framework, we may expect to find ourselves in a universe that is better than usual at creating these necessary conditions. We use this reasoning to investigate several origin of life scenarios to determine whether they are compatible with the multiverse, including the prebiotic soup scenario, hydrothermal vents, delivery of prebiotic material from impacts, and panspermia. We find that most of these scenarios induce a preference toward weaker-gravity universes, and that panspermia and scenarios involving solar radiation or large impacts as a disequilibrium source are disfavored. Additionally, we show that several hypothesized habitability criteria which are disfavored when the origin of life is not taken into account become compatible with the multiverse, and that the emergence of life and emergence of intelligence cannot both be sensitive to disequilibrium production conditions. Full article

Stellar activity and planetary atmospheric properties have the potential to strongly influence habitability. To date, neither have been adequately studied in the multiverse context, so there has been no assessment of how these effects impact the probabilities of observing our fundamental constants. Here, we consider the effects of solar wind, mass loss, and extreme ultra-violet (XUV) flux on planetary atmospheres, how these effects scale with fundamental constants, and how this affects the likelihood of our observations. We determine the minimum atmospheric mass that can withstand erosion, maintain liquid surface water, and buffer diurnal temperature changes. We consider two plausible sources of Earth’s atmosphere, as well as the notion that only initially slowly rotating stars are habitable, and find that all are equally compatible with the multiverse. We consider whether planetary magnetic fields are necessary for habitability, and find five boundaries in parameter space where magnetic fields are precluded. We find that if an Earth-like carbon-to-oxygen ratio is required for life, atmospheric effects do not have much of an impact on multiverse calculations. If significantly different carbon-to-oxygen ratios are compatible with life, magnetic fields must not be essential for life, and planet atmosphere must not scale with stellar nitrogen abundance, or else the multiverse would be ruled out to a high degree of confidence. Full article

Recent detections of potentially habitable exoplanets around sunlike stars demand increased exploration of the physical conditions that can sustain life, by whatever methods available. Insight into these conditions can be gained by considering the multiverse hypothesis; in a multiverse setting, the probability of living in our universe depends on assumptions made about the factors affecting habitability. Various proposed habitability criteria can be systematically considered to rate each on the basis of their compatibility with the multiverse, generating predictions which can both guide expectations for life’s occurrence and test the multiverse hypothesis. Here, we evaluate several aspects of planetary habitability, and show that the multiverse does indeed induce strong preferences among them. We find that the notion that a large moon is necessary for habitability is untenable in the multiverse scenario, as in the majority of parameter space, moons are not necessary to maintain stable obliquity. Further, we consider various proposed mechanisms for water delivery to the early Earth, including delivery from asteroids, both during giant planet formation and a grand tack, delivery from comets, and oxidation of a primary atmosphere by a magma ocean. We find that, depending on assumptions for how habitability depends on water content, some of these proposed mechanisms are disfavored in the multiverse scenario by Bayes factors of up to several hundred. Full article

We investigate the dependence of elemental abundances on physical constants, and the implications this has for the distribution of complex life for various proposed habitability criteria. We consider three main sources of abundance variation: differing supernova rates, alpha burning in massive stars, and isotopic stability, and how each affects the metal-to-rock ratio and the abundances of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, silicon, magnesium, and iron. Our analysis leads to several predictions for which habitability criteria are correct by determining which ones make our observations of the physical constants, as well as a few other observed features of our universe, most likely. Our results indicate that carbon-rich or carbon-poor planets are uninhabitable, slightly magnesium-rich planets are habitable, and life does not depend on nitrogen abundance too sensitively. We also find suggestive but inconclusive evidence that metal-rich planets and phosphorus-poor planets are habitable. These predictions can then be checked by probing regions of our universe that closely resemble normal environments in other universes. If any of these predictions are found to be wrong, the multiverse scenario would predict that the majority of observers are born in universes differing substantially from ours, and so can be ruled out, to varying degrees of statistical significance. Full article

There has been a proliferation of digital health interventions (DHIs) targeting dietary intake. Despite their potential, the effectiveness of DHIs are thought to be dependent, in part, on user engagement. However, the relationship between engagement and the effectiveness of dietary DHIs is not well understood. The aim of this review is to describe the association between DHI engagement and dietary intake. A systematic search of four electronic databases and grey literature for records published before December 2019 was conducted. Studies were eligible if they examined a quantitative association between objective measures of engagement with a DHI (subjective experience or usage) and measures of dietary intake in adults (aged ≥18 years). From 10,653 citations, seven studies were included. Five studies included usage measures of engagement and two examined subjective experiences. Narrative synthesis, using vote counting, found mixed evidence of an association with usage measures (5 of 12 associations indicated a positive relationship, 7 were inconclusive) and no evidence regarding an association with subjective experience (both studies were inconclusive). The findings provide early evidence supporting an association between measures of usage and dietary intake; however, this was inconsistent. Further research examining the association between DHI engagement and dietary intake is warranted. Full article

Digital food environments are now commonplace across many food service and retail settings, influencing how the population orders and accesses foods. As such, digital food environments represent a novel platform to deliver strategies to improve public health nutrition. The purpose of this review was to explore the impact of dietary interventions embedded within online food ordering systems, on user selection and purchase of healthier foods and beverages. A systematic search of eight electronic databases and grey literature sources was conducted up to October 2020. Eligible studies were randomized controlled trials and controlled trials, designed to encourage the selection and purchase of healthier products and/or discourage the selection and purchase of less-healthy products using strategies delivered via real-world online food ordering systems. A total of 9441 articles underwent title and abstract screening, 140 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility, and 11 articles were included in the review. Meta-analysis of seven studies indicated that interventions delivered via online food ordering systems are effective in reducing the energy content of online food purchases (standardized mean difference (SMD): −0.34, p = 0.01). Meta-analyses including three studies each suggest that these interventions may also be effective in reducing the fat (SMD: −0.83, p = 0.04), saturated fat (SMD: −0.7, p = 0.008) and sodium content (SMD: −0.43, p = 0.01) of online food purchases. Given the ongoing growth in the use of online food ordering systems, future research to determine how we can best utilize these systems to support public health nutrition is warranted. Full article

The association between healthy eating practices and child dietary intake in childcare centres where parents pack foods from home has received little attention. This study aimed to: (1) Describe the nutritional content of foods and beverages consumed by children in care; and (2) Assess the association between centre healthy eating practices and child intake of fruit and vegetable servings, added sugar(grams), saturated fat(grams) and sodium(milligrams) in care. A cross-sectional study amongst 448 children attending 22 childcare centres in New South Wales, Australia, was conducted. Child dietary intake was measured via weighed lunchbox measurements, photographs and researcher observation, and centre healthy eating practices were assessed via researcher observation of centre nutrition environments. Children attending lunchbox centres consumed, on average 0.80 servings (standard deviation 0.69) of fruit and 0.27 servings (standard deviation 0.51) of vegetables in care. The availability of foods within children’s lunchboxes was associated with intake of such foods (p < 0.01). Centre provision of intentional healthy eating learning experiences (estimate −0.56; p = 0.01) and the use of feeding practices that support children’s healthy eating (estimate −2.02; p = 0.04) were significantly associated with reduced child intake of saturated fat. Interventions to improve child nutrition in centres should focus on a range of healthy eating practices, including the availability of foods packed within lunchboxes. Full article

In this paper, we present a novel method for vision based plants phenotyping in indoor vertical farming under artificial lighting. The method combines 3D plants modeling and deep segmentation of the higher leaves, during a period of 25–30 days, related to their growth. The novelty of our approach is in providing 3D reconstruction, leaf segmentation, geometric surface modeling, and deep network estimation for weight prediction to effectively measure plant growth, under three relevant phenotype features: height, weight and leaf area. Together with the vision based measurements, to verify the soundness of our proposed method, we also harvested the plants at specific time periods to take manual measurements, collecting a great amount of data. In particular, we manually collected 2592 data points related to the plant phenotype and 1728 images of the plants. This allowed us to show with a good number of experiments that the vision based methods ensure a quite accurate prediction of the considered features, providing a way to predict plant behavior, under specific conditions, without any need to resort to human measurements. Full article

Satellite-derived spectral indices such as the relativized burn ratio (RBR) allow fire severity maps to be produced in a relatively straightforward manner across multiple fires and broad spatial extents. These indices often have strong relationships with field-based measurements of fire severity, thereby justifying their widespread use in management and science. However, satellite-derived spectral indices have been criticized because their non-standardized units render them difficult to interpret relative to on-the-ground fire effects. In this study, we built a Random Forest model describing a field-based measure of fire severity, the composite burn index (CBI), as a function of multiple spectral indices, a variable representing spatial variability in climate, and latitude. CBI data primarily representing forested vegetation from 263 fires (8075 plots) across the United States and Canada were used to build the model. Overall, the model performed well, with a cross-validated R² of 0.72, though there was spatial variability in model performance. The model we produced allows for the direct mapping of CBI, which is more interpretable compared to spectral indices. Moreover, because the model and all spectral explanatory variables were produced in Google Earth Engine, predicting and mapping of CBI can realistically be undertaken on hundreds to thousands of fires. We provide all necessary code to execute the model and produce maps of CBI in Earth Engine. This study and its products will be extremely useful to managers and scientists in North America who wish to map fire effects over large landscapes or regions. Full article

Recently, much of the literature on sharing in cities has focused on the sharing economy, in which people use online platforms to share underutilized assets in the marketplace. This view of sharing is too narrow for cities, as it neglects the myriad of ways, reasons, and scales in which citizens share in urban environments. Research presented here by the Liveable Cities team in the form of participant workshops in Lancaster and Birmingham, UK, suggests that a broader approach to understanding sharing in cities is essential. The research also highlighted tools and methods that may be used to help to identify sharing in communities. The paper ends with advice to city stakeholders, such as policymakers, urban planners, and urban designers, who are considering how to enhance sustainability in cities through sharing. Full article