Obesity and the food environment: income and ethnicity differences among people with diabetes: the Diabetes Study of Northern California (DISTANCE).

ObjectiveIt is unknown whether any association between neighborhood food environment and obesity varies according to individual income and/or race/ethnicity. The objectives of this study were to test whether there was an association between food environments and obesity among adults with diabetes and whether this relationship differed according to individual income or race/ethnicity.Research design and methodsSubjects (n = 16,057) were participants in the Diabetes Study of Northern California survey. Kernel density estimation was used to create a food environment score for each individual's residence address that reflected the mix of healthful and unhealthful food vendors nearby. Logistic regression models estimated the association between the modeled food environment and obesity, controlling for confounders, and testing for interactions between food environment and race/ethnicity and income.ResultsThe authors found that more healthful food environments were associated with lower obesity in the highest income groups (incomes 301-600% and >600% of U.S. poverty line) among whites, Latinos, and Asians. The association was negative, but smaller and not statistically significant, among high-income blacks. On the contrary, a more healthful food environment was associated with higher obesity among participants in the lowest-income group (<100% poverty threshold), which was statistically significant for black participants in this income category.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that the availability of healthful food environments may have different health implications when financial resources are severely constrained

Non-work-related services at the workplace : an exploratory study

In an era of diminishing public funds, the profession of social work is looking more and more toward the private sector as an arena for social work practice. Social work has had a long-standing interest in the impact of work and the workplace on the individual. This study was developed in response to the lack of documentation of non-work-related services in Oregon\u27s businesses and industries. The research team set out to discover what non-work-related services are available to employees at or through the workplace in the TriCounty area (Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington Counties) of Oregon. This study was exploratory, similar to one done by Hans Spiegel and colleagues in 1974, through Hunter College in New York City

When Your Decisions Are Not (Quite) Your Own: Action Observation Influences Free Choices

A growing number of studies have begun to assess how the actions of one individual are represented in an observer. Using a variant of an action observation paradigm, four experiments examined whether one person's behaviour can influence the subjective decisions and judgements of another. In Experiment 1, two observers sat adjacent to each other and took turns to freely select and reach to one of two locations. Results showed that participants were less likely to make a response to the same location as their partner. In three further experiments observers were asked to decide which of two familiar products they preferred or which of two faces were most attractive. Results showed that participants were less likely to choose the product or face occupying the location of their partner's previous reaching response. These findings suggest that action observation can influence a range of free choice preferences and decisions. Possible mechanisms through which this influence occurs are discussed

Bridging reproductive and microbial ecology: a case study in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Offspring size is a key trait for understanding the reproductive ecology of species, yet studies addressing the ecological meaning of offspring size have so far been limited to macro-organisms. We consider this a missed opportunity in microbial ecology and provide what we believe is the first formal study of offspring-size variation in microbes using reproductive models developed for macro-organisms. We mapped the entire distribution of fungal spore size in the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi (subphylum Glomeromycotina) and tested allometric expectations of this trait to offspring (spore) output and body size. Our results reveal a potential paradox in the reproductive ecology of AM fungi: while large spore-size variation is maintained through evolutionary time (independent of body size), increases in spore size trade off with spore output. That is, parental mycelia of large-spored species produce fewer spores and thus may have a fitness disadvantage compared to small-spored species. The persistence of the large-spore strategy, despite this apparent fitness disadvantage, suggests the existence of advantages to large-spored species that could manifest later in fungal life history. Thus, we consider that solving this paradox opens the door to fruitful future research establishing the relationship between offspring size and other AM life history traits

Anyone with a Long-Face? Craniofacial Evolutionary Allometry (CREA) in a Family of Short-Faced Mammals, the Felidae

Among adults of closely related species, a trend in craniofacial evolutionary allometry (CREA) for larger taxa to be long-faced and smaller ones to have paedomorphic aspects, such as proportionally smaller snouts and larger braincases, has been demonstrated in some mammals and two bird lineages. Nevertheless, whether this may represent a ‘rule’ with few exceptions is still an open question. In this context, Felidae is a particularly interesting family to study because, although its members are short-faced, previous research did suggest relative facial elongation in larger living representatives. Using geometric morphometrics, based on two sets of anatomical landmarks, and traditional morphometrics, for comparing relative lengths of the palate and basicranium, we performed a series of standard and comparative allometric regressions in the Felidae and its two subfamilies. All analyses consistently supported the CREA pattern, with only one minor exception in the geometric morphometric analysis of Pantherinae: the genus Neofelis. With its unusually long canines, Neofelis species seem to have a relatively narrow cranium and long face, despite being smaller than other big cats. In spite of this, overall, our findings strengthen the possibility that the CREA pattern might indeed be a ‘rule’ among mammals, raising questions on the processes behind it and suggesting future directions for its study

The impact of logging roads on dung beetle assemblages in a tropical rainforest reserve

The demand for timber products is facilitating the degradation and opening up of large areas of intact habitats rich in biodiversity. Logging creates an extensive network of access roads within the forest, yet these are commonly ignored or excluded when assessing impacts of logging on forest biodiversity. Here we determine the impact of these roads on the overall condition of selectively logged forests in Borneo, Southeast Asia. Focusing on dung beetles along > 40 km logging roads we determine: (i) the magnitude and extent of edge effects alongside logging roads; (ii) whether vegetation characteristics can explain patterns in dung beetle communities, and; (iii) how the inclusion of road edge forest impacts dung beetle assemblages within the overall logged landscape. We found that while vegetation structure was significantly affected up to 34 m from the road edge, impacts on dung beetle communities penetrated much further and were discernible up to 170 m into the forest interior. We found larger species and particularly tunnelling species responded more than other functional groups which were also influenced by micro-habitat variation. We provide important new insights into the long-term ecological impacts of tropical logging. We also support calls for improved logging road design both during and after timber extraction to conserve more effectively biodiversity in production forests, for instance, by considering the minimum volume of timber, per unit length of logging road needed to justify road construction. In particular, we suggest that governments and certification bodies need to highlight more clearly the biodiversity and environmental impacts of logging roads

Dissimilar responses of fungal and bacterial communities to soil transplantation simulating abrupt climate changes.

Both fungi and bacteria play essential roles in regulating soil carbon cycling. To predict future carbon stability, it is imperative to understand their responses to environmental changes, which is subject to large uncertainty. As current global warming is causing range shifts toward higher latitudes, we conducted three reciprocal soil transplantation experiments over large transects in 2005 to simulate abrupt climate changes. Six years after soil transplantation, fungal biomass of transplanted soils showed a general pattern of changes from donor sites to destination, which were more obvious in bare fallow soils than in maize cropped soils. Strikingly, fungal community compositions were clustered by sites, demonstrating that fungi of transplanted soils acclimatized to the destination environment. Several fungal taxa displayed sharp changes in relative abundance, including Podospora, Chaetomium, Mortierella and Phialemonium. In contrast, bacterial communities remained largely unchanged. Consistent with the important role of fungi in affecting soil carbon cycling, 8.1%-10.0% of fungal genes encoding carbon-decomposing enzymes were significantly (p < 0.01) increased as compared with those from bacteria (5.7%-8.4%). To explain these observations, we found that fungal occupancy across samples was mainly determined by annual average air temperature and rainfall, whereas bacterial occupancy was more closely related to soil conditions, which remained stable 6 years after soil transplantation. Together, these results demonstrate dissimilar response patterns and resource partitioning between fungi and bacteria, which may have considerable consequences for ecosystem-scale carbon cycling

Higher fungal diversity is correlated with lower CO2 emissions from dead wood in a natural forest

Wood decomposition releases almost as much CO2 to the atmosphere as does fossil-fuel combustion, so the factors regulating wood decomposition can affect global carbon cycling. We used metabarcoding to estimate the fungal species diversities of naturally colonized decomposing wood in subtropical China and, for the first time, compared them to concurrent measures of CO2 emissions. Wood hosting more diverse fungal communities emitted less CO2, with Shannon diversity explaining 26 to 44% of emissions variation. Community analysis supports a ‘pure diversity’ effect of fungi on decomposition rates and thus suggests that interference competition is an underlying mechanism. Our findings extend the results of published experiments using low-diversity, laboratory-inoculated wood to a high-diversity, natural system. We hypothesize that high levels of saprotrophic fungal biodiversity could be providing globally important ecosystem services by maintaining dead-wood habitats and by slowing the atmospheric contribution of CO2 from the world’s stock of decomposing wood. However, large-scale surveys and controlled experimental tests in natural settings will be needed to test this hypothesis