So, will the NSA and CIA be investing in covert air samplers and rRNA sequencers next year?

Here.

ABSTRACT

Humans differ in their personal microbial cloud

Authors: James F. Meadow​, Adam E. Altrichter, Ashley C. Bateman, Jason Stenson, GZ Brown, Jessica L. Green, Brendan J.M. Bohannan

PEERJ: Published online September 22, 2015

Dispersal of microbes between humans and the built environment can occur through direct contact with surfaces or through airborne release; the latter mechanism remains poorly understood. Humans emit upwards of 106 biological particles per hour, and have long been known to transmit pathogens to other individuals and to indoor surfaces. However it has not previously been demonstrated that humans emit a detectible microbial cloud into surrounding indoor air, nor whether such clouds are sufficiently differentiated to allow the identification of individual occupants.

We used high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes to characterize the airborne bacterial contribution of a single person sitting in a sanitized custom experimental climate chamber. We compared that to air sampled in an adjacent, identical, unoccupied chamber, as well as to supply and exhaust air sources. Additionally, we assessed microbial communities in settled particles surrounding each occupant, to investigate the potential long-term fate of airborne microbial emissions. Most occupants could be clearly detected by their airborne bacterial emissions, as well as their contribution to settled particles, within 1.5–4 h. Bacterial clouds from the occupants were statistically distinct, allowing the identification of some individual occupants.

Our results confirm that an occupied space is microbially distinct from an unoccupied one, and demonstrate for the first time that individuals release their own personalized microbial cloud.

Working long hours (> 55 hours per week) linked to an increased risk of MI and stroke.

According to this article in the Lancet this week, working long hours can increase risk of coronary artery disease events by a factor of 13% (relative risk, 1.13) and the risk of stroke by 33% (relative risk, 1.33). The researchers adjusted for exercise and hypertension in the analysis but did not adjust for sleep quantity or quality, an omission that may be significant, as any worker working days and occasional second job nights and physicians whose long hours of work are added to significantly by sleep-interrupting night call may know.

-----------------------------------------------

ABSTRACT

Long working hours and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis of published and unpublished data for 603 838 individuals

Prof Mika Kivimäki, PhDcorrespondenceemail, Markus Jokela, PhD, Solja T Nyberg, MSc, Archana Singh-Manoux, PhD, Eleonor I Fransson, PhD, Prof Lars Alfredsson, PhD, Prof Jakob B Bjorner, MD, Marianne Borritz, MD, Hermann Burr, PhD, Annalisa Casini, PhD, Els Clays, PhD, Prof Dirk De Bacquer, PhD, Prof Nico Dragano, PhD, Prof Raimund Erbel, MD, Goedele A Geuskens, PhD, Mark Hamer, PhD, Wendela E Hooftman, PhD, Irene L Houtman, PhD, Prof Karl-Heinz Jöckel, Prof France Kittel, PhD, Prof Anders Knutsson, MD, Prof Markku Koskenvuo, MD, Thorsten Lunau, MSc, Ida E H Madsen, PhD, Martin L Nielsen, MD, Maria Nordin, PhD, Tuula Oksanen, MD, Jan H Pejtersen, PhD, Jaana Pentti, MSc, Prof Reiner Rugulies, PhD, Prof Paula Salo, PhD, Martin J Shipley, MSc, Prof Johannes Siegrist, PhD, Prof Andrew Steptoe, DSc, Prof Sakari B Suominen, MD, Prof Töres Theorell, MD, Prof Jussi Vahtera, MD, Prof Peter J M Westerholm, MD, Prof Hugo Westerlund, PhD, Dermot O'Reilly, PhD, Prof Meena Kumari, PhD, G David Batty, DSc, Jane E Ferrie, PhD, Prof Marianna Virtanen, PhD for the IPD-Work Consortium

Published Online: 19 August 2015

Open AccessArticle has an altmetric score of 175

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60295-1 |

Summary

Background

Long working hours might increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, but prospective evidence is scarce, imprecise, and mostly limited to coronary heart disease. We aimed to assess long working hours as a risk factor for incident coronary heart disease and stroke.

Methods

We identified published studies through a systematic review of PubMed and Embase from inception to Aug 20, 2014. We obtained unpublished data for 20 cohort studies from the Individual-Participant-Data Meta-analysis in Working Populations (IPD-Work) Consortium and open-access data archives. We used cumulative random-effects meta-analysis to combine effect estimates from published and unpublished data.

Findings

We included 25 studies from 24 cohorts in Europe, the USA, and Australia. The meta-analysis of coronary heart disease comprised data for 603 838 men and women who were free from coronary heart disease at baseline; the meta-analysis of stroke comprised data for 528 908 men and women who were free from stroke at baseline. Follow-up for coronary heart disease was 5·1 million person-years (mean 8·5 years), in which 4768 events were recorded, and for stroke was 3·8 million person-years (mean 7·2 years), in which 1722 events were recorded. In cumulative meta-analysis adjusted for age, sex, and socioeconomic status, compared with standard hours (35–40 h per week), working long hours (≥55 h per week) was associated with an increase in risk of incident coronary heart disease (relative risk [RR] 1·13, 95% CI 1·02–1·26; p=0·02) and incident stroke (1·33, 1·11–1·61; p=0·002). The excess risk of stroke remained unchanged in analyses that addressed reverse causation, multivariable adjustments for other risk factors, and different methods of stroke ascertainment (range of RR estimates 1·30–1·42). We recorded a dose–response association for stroke, with RR estimates of 1·10 (95% CI 0·94–1·28; p=0·24) for 41–48 working hours, 1·27 (1·03–1·56; p=0·03) for 49–54 working hours, and 1·33 (1·11–1·61; p=0·002) for 55 working hours or more per week compared with standard working hours (ptrend<0·0001).

Interpretation

Employees who work long hours have a higher risk of stroke than those working standard hours; the association with coronary heart disease is weaker. These findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the management of vascular risk factors in individuals who work long hours.

Image credit: ACP (acpinternist.org)

New vaccine for Ebola seems safe and effective.

Here.

For training working memory, run an obstacle course?

Prior studies have shown the benefit of walking and other moderate aerobic exercise programs on verbal memory and other cognition in the elderly. Working memory is usually intact in such subjects, so that the effects on working memory of walking programs are less well documented.

According to this article, working memory benefited from exercise requiring both locomotion and proprioception. This brings up the intriguing possibility of specific exercise programs to retrain specific cognitive deficits. On the critical side, I'd note that the results would have been more robust as specific to activities like climbing if a control group of fast walking or other aerobic program had been done, rather than just classroom and yoga control groups.

ABSTRACT

------------------------------------

Ross G. Alloway and Tracy Packiam Alloway (2015) THE WORKING MEMORY BENEFITS OF PROPRIOCEPTIVELY DEMANDING TRAINING: A PILOT STUDY, . Perceptual and Motor Skills: Volume 120, Issue , pp. 766-775.

doi: 10.2466/22.PMS.120v18x1

THE WORKING MEMORY BENEFITS OF PROPRIOCEPTIVELY DEMANDING TRAINING: A PILOT STUDY1, 2

Ross G. Alloway1 and Tracy Packiam Alloway1 1University of North Florida

Summary.—The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of proprioception on working memory. It was also of interest whether an acute and highly intensive period of exercise would yield working memory gains. The training group completed a series of proprioceptively demanding exercises. There were also control classroom and yoga groups. Working memory was measured using a backward digit recall test. The data indicated that active, healthy adults who undertook acute, proprioceptively demanding training improved working memory scores compared to the classroom and yoga groups. One possible reason that the training yielded significant working memory gains could be that the training was proprioceptively dynamic, requiring proprioception and at least one other factor—such as locomotion or navigation—at the same time, which may have contributed to the improvements in working memory performance.

Hawaiian Reef Photos: 'Alakuma and Humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa

I went snorkeling yesterday with ohana at Two-Step (just beyond the rocks bordering Keone'ele Cove at the north of Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, the old City of Refuge in south Kona district). This spot has some of the best coral formations easily accessible from the shorelines of the Big Island.

The 'Alakuma (Carpilius maculatus) has many common names: spotted reef crab, or the seven-eleven crab from numberings of its spotted markings. From the Hawaiian just-so story of the crab wounding the grasping fingers of a sea-god, it's also been called the bloody finger crab, with its bloodred spots as the god's fingerprints. Some of the locals here claim it can be poisonous to eat, perhaps from its diet of occasionally poisonous cone snails?

The state fish of Hawaii is the Humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa (Rhinecanthus rectangulus), a reef triggerfish with a mouthful of a name.

Sexual Identification: Genotype, Phenotype, and Sociotype

An amazing cuttlefish trick: underwater cross-dressing in body coloration. Wow.

Sexual identity is a cognitive, intentional state about ourselves. Like all intentional states, it may need to be subjected to error correction. On the other hand, the sexual classification of living things is an aspect of biology. In biology, a given organism may be identified as to its gender by genotype (determined mostly by XX versus XY chromosomal analysis in humans, with the usual border cases), or by phenotype (primary and secondary mammalian sexual characteristics in the case of humans).

In humans, the postmodernist conceit that gender is different from the biology of genotype and phenotype suggests that what we need is a sociotype of sex. A sociotype would be male and female as self identified or identified by one's society (for example, the M or F on the driver's license or birth certificate, which is one's legally defined gender).

Denying that biology is destiny here is mere foolish conceit on the part of the postmodernist. It is like saying that the cuttlefish is changing its sex by altering its color patterning. No biologist would agree that it does that.

CSF-Carrying Meningeal Lymphatics Found Running Along Dural Sinuses

Here's another cause for textbook revision in the works. I wonder how far into the pia these lymphatics run in humans? Are they periventricular at all? Perhaps some forms of communicating hydrocephalus will turn out to be a lymphatic drainage disorder.

------------------------------------------------------------------

ABSTRACT

Structural and functional features of central nervous system lymphatic vessels

Antoine Louveau, Igor Smirnov, Timothy J. Keyes, Jacob D. Eccles, Sherin J. Rouhani, J. David Peske, Noel C. Derecki, David Castle, James W. Mandell, Kevin S. Lee, Tajie H. Harris & Jonathan Kipnis

Nature (2015) doi:10.1038/nature14432

Received 30 October 2014 Accepted 20 March 2015 Published online 01 June 2015

One of the characteristics of the central nervous system is the lack of a classical lymphatic drainage system. Although it is now accepted that the central nervous system undergoes constant immune surveillance that takes place within the meningeal compartment1, 2, 3, the mechanisms governing the entrance and exit of immune cells from the central nervous system remain poorly understood4, 5, 6. In searching for T-cell gateways into and out of the meninges, we discovered functional lymphatic vessels lining the dural sinuses. These structures express all of the molecular hallmarks of lymphatic endothelial cells, are able to carry both fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid, and are connected to the deep cervical lymph nodes. The unique location of these vessels may have impeded their discovery to date, thereby contributing to the long-held concept of the absence of lymphatic vasculature in the central nervous system. The discovery of the central nervous system lymphatic system may call for a reassessment of basic assumptions in neuroimmunology and sheds new light on the aetiology of neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases associated with immune system dysfunction.