The impact on nurse digestive system caused by working the night shift

The specific of nursing job requires working around the clock. But the human is meant to work during the day not at night. Suchwise, a large number of nurses are working at night that is contrary to the biological rhythms. The aim of the thesis was to investigate the impact of night shift on nurse digestive system. By interviewing health care workers the goal was to find out, do they experi-ence gastrointestinal symptoms caused by rotating night shifts. In addition the aim was to determine from nurse experiences, are there methods to reduce the negative impact of night shifts. The purpose was to provide information that can be used to minimize problems with digestive system of nurses who are working on night shifts. The study was completed through qualitative research. The data was collected by semi-structured individual interview. Five nurses were interviewed, all of them had at least two years of night shift work experience. The data was retained by note-taking method and analyzed by inductive content analysis. The study found that nurses are experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating and flatulence, also constipation and abdominal pain. Investigated were also that physical activity and good rest in combination with a proper diet are main meth-ods to avoid digestive problems associated with work night shifts

Geometric Convolutional Neural Network for Analyzing Surface-Based Neuroimaging Data

The conventional CNN, widely used for two-dimensional images, however, is not directly applicable to non-regular geometric surface, such as a cortical thickness. We propose Geometric CNN (gCNN) that deals with data representation over a spherical surface and renders pattern recognition in a multi-shell mesh structure. The classification accuracy for sex was significantly higher than that of SVM and image based CNN. It only uses MRI thickness data to classify gender but this method can expand to classify disease from other MRI or fMRI dataComment: 29 page

Effects of feedback on parent-child language with infants and toddlers in Korea

The objective was to investigate changes in the natural language environments of families with typically-developing infants receiving language feedback in South Korea. Volunteer parents of 99 children aged 4–16 months were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. During six months intervention, the experimental group recorded weekly day-long automatically-analyzed LENA measures of language environment and viewed feedback, while the control group recorded only baseline, midperiod and post-test without feedback. LENA Adult Word Counts (AWC) and Conversational Turn (CT) counts correlated reasonably well with human transcripts. At baseline groups were not significantly different. At post-test there was no significant overall difference between experimental and control groups, but AWC and CT differences were significant for families below the 50th percentile at baseline. Korean parents whose linguistic environment was below average adapted their communicative interaction in response to linguistic feedback. The intervention has promise for use with at-risk families in many countries

Ageing alters the impact of nutrition on immune function

Immunosenescence during ageing is a major challenge which weakens the ability of older individuals to respond to infection or vaccination. There has been much interest in dietary strategies to improve immunity in older people, but there is an assumption that modulation of the immune response in older people will be based on the same principles as for younger adults. Recent evidence suggests that ageing fundamentally alters the impact of nutrition on immune function. As a result, interpretation of data from studies investigating the impact of diet on immune function is highly dependent on subject age. Study design is critically important when investigating the efficacy of dietary components, and most studies involving older people include rigorous inclusion/exclusion criteria based on medical history, laboratory tests, general health status and often nutritional status. However, immunological status is rarely accounted for, but can vary significantly, even amongst healthy older people. There are several clear examples of age-related changes in immune cell composition, phenotype and/or function, which can directly alter the outcome of an intervention. This review uses two case studies to illustrate how the effects of n-3 PUFA and probiotics differ markedly in young v. older subjects. Evidence from both suggests that baseline differences in immunosenescence influence the outcome of an intervention, highlighting the need for detailed immunological characterisation of subjects prior to interventions. Finally, future work elucidating alterations in metabolic regulation within cells of the immune system as a result of ageing may be important in understanding the impact of diet on immune function in older people

The effect of shell secretion rate on Mg / Ca and Sr / Ca ratios in biogenic calcite as observed in a belemnite rostrum

ArticleThis is the final version of the article. Available from European Geosciences Union via the DOI in this record.Isotopic ratios and concentrations of the alkaline earth metals Mg and Sr in biogenic calcite are of great importance as proxies for environmental parameters. In particular, the Mg / Ca ratio as a temperature proxy has had considerable success. It is often hard to determine, however, which parameter ultimately controls the concentration of these elements in calcite. Here, multiple Mg / Ca and Sr / Ca transects through a belemnite rostrum of Passaloteuthis bisulcata (Blainville, 1827) are used to isolate the effect of calcite secretion rate on incorporation of Mg and Sr into the calcite. With increasing calcite secretion rate Mg / Ca ratios decrease and Sr / Ca ratios in the rostrum increase. In the studied specimen this effect is found to be linear for both element ratios over a calcite secretion rate increase of ca. 150 %. Mg / Ca ratios and Sr / Ca ratios show a linear co-variation with increasing relative growth rate, where a 100 % increase in growth rate leads to a (8.1 ± 0.9) % depletion in Mg and a (5.9 ± 0.7) % enrichment in Sr. The magnitude of the calcite secretion rate effect on Mg is (37 ± 4) % greater than that on Sr. These findings are qualitatively confirmed by a geochemical transect through a second rostrum of Passaloteuthis sp. Growth rate effects are well defined in rostra of Passaloteuthis, but only account for a minor part of chemical heterogeneity. Biasing effects on palaeoenvironmental studies can be minimized by informed sampling, whereby the apex and apical line of the rostrum are avoided.Analyses and Philip Pogge von Strandmann were funded by NERC research fellowship grant NE/I020571/2. Clemens Ullmann acknowledges funding from the Leopoldina – German National Academy of Sciences (grant no. LPDS 2014-08). Kate Littler is thanked for comments on an earlier version of this paper. The authors thank the Associate Editor David Gillikin, Adrian Immenhauser and one anonymous reviewer for constructive comments that helped to significantly improve the quality of the manuscript