Infant Food Responsiveness in the Context of Temperament and Mothers' Use of Food to Soothe

Parents' use of food to soothe an infants' non-hunger related distress may impair an infants' development of appetite self-regulation. Parents tend to use food to soothe if their infant has more ‘difficult' temperamental tendencies. However, the role of infant appetite in this association is unclear. This study investigates the moderating effect of infant food responsiveness on cross-sectional and prospective associations between infant temperament and mothers' use of food to soothe. Mothers (n = 200) from low-income households reported their infants' temperament (i.e., surgency, negative affect and regulation) and food responsiveness at age 4 months, and their use of food to soothe at age 4 and 6 months. Temperament × food responsiveness interactions on mothers' use of food to soothe were examined using general linear models, adjusting for covariates. Cross-sectional associations showed that mothers used more food to soothe at 4 months for infants who were lower in negative affect and higher in food responsiveness (negative affect × food responsiveness interaction: p = 0.03). Prospective associations showed that mothers used more food to soothe at 6 months for infants who were lower in regulation and higher in food responsiveness (infant regulation × food responsiveness interaction: p = 0.009). Other interactions were not significant. Infant food responsiveness was consistently associated with mothers' use of food to soothe, independent of some temperamental dimensions. The findings highlight the salience of infant food responsiveness, both independent of and in association with temperament, on mothers' use of food to soothe.

The factors that influence the reestablishment of Podocarpus totara (totara) and Dacrycarpus dacrydioides (kahikatea) in a freshwater New Zealand wetland

<p>Wetlands are productive transitional lands between terrestrial and aquatic systems. They provide social, economic and cultural values, while providing valuable services such as carbon storage, water purification, flood abatement and biodiversity support. While wetlands only cover ~3% of the globe, they contribute up to 40% of these global renewable ecosystem services. Worldwide degradation of wetlands through urbanisation, conversion to agriculture and flood management schemes has resulted in a 50% loss of the worlds original wetlands, with New Zealand being one of the most extreme examples of this with >90% of the original extent of wetlands being lost. Wetlands unique hydrology results in distinct plant zonation and community composition and seedling survival is the primary factor that influences stand structure and community composition. However, restoring degraded wetlands is challenging because the alterations to the hydrology through filling or diverting water will impact the effect of physical, chemical and biotic environmental variables on native plant establishment. The use of facilitation in restoration through successional planting using nurse trees, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is common in restoration, however research into the effectiveness of these techniques in wetland systems is lacking. This thesis is comprised of two studies with aims to determine the factors that had the biggest impact on the survival and growth of kahikatea and totara in Wairio wetland and inform future restoration. Wairio wetland has large isolated remnant kahikatea trees, so my first study focused on how these established trees and a connection to fungal hyphae networks influenced the survival and growth of newly planted saplings. One sapling of each species was planted at the dripline of the remnant tree, and another sapling of each species was planted 2 metres from that point. Out of the 16 remnant kahikatea trees used, 8 were ‘disturbance’ plots where saplings were planted in 35μm mesh bags that excluded roots but fungal hyphae could penetrate, in slotted pots which were turned every 3 months. In the 8 remaining ‘undisturbed’ plots, saplings were planted into the ground. I assessed the influence of distance and disturbance on sapling survival and growth using a chi-square test of independence and general linear models. Results showed that kahikatea trees survived better than totara overall. The survival of totara was significantly reliant on a close proximity to the remnant kahikatea, and a connection with mycorrhizal networks. Kahikatea had greater biomass than totara, however they suffered strong conspecific competition with the remnant trees, with kahikatea saplings planted at the dripline having 51.28g greater biomass with regular disturbance of AMF mycelium. Kahikatea trees are light demanding species, and therefore growing under the canopy of a parent tree has a negative impact on kahikatea saplings growth. Knowing that kahikatea and totara trees respond differently to nurse trees and AMF, my second study focused on how nurse effects and AMF association changes with chemical, physical and environmental stressors. The survival and growth of 5-year-old kahikatea and totara trees, with or without a nurse across 10 blocks in Wairio wetland were analysed. At each tree, soil moisture and root available nutrients were measured and soil cores were taken to determine gravimetric soil moisture, reduction-oxidation reaction (redox), pH, soil carbon content and I counted the presence of AMF spores in two size classes. I assessed tree survival and growth against these variables using a chi-squared test of independence and general linear models. The results of this study showed that kahikatea survived better than totara trees in the very wet blocks, where no other species survived. Totara trees survived in the upland sites of the wetland and had better growth than kahikatea trees. Moreover, totara trees grew 24cm taller in the presence of a nurse tree, and were strongly positively associated with spore number. Nurse trees further benefitted totara trees by increasing plant available soil nitrate and potassium by almost double.</p>

The factors that influence the reestablishment of Podocarpus totara (totara) and Dacrycarpus dacrydioides (kahikatea) in a freshwater New Zealand wetland

<p>Wetlands are productive transitional lands between terrestrial and aquatic systems. They provide social, economic and cultural values, while providing valuable services such as carbon storage, water purification, flood abatement and biodiversity support. While wetlands only cover ~3% of the globe, they contribute up to 40% of these global renewable ecosystem services. Worldwide degradation of wetlands through urbanisation, conversion to agriculture and flood management schemes has resulted in a 50% loss of the worlds original wetlands, with New Zealand being one of the most extreme examples of this with >90% of the original extent of wetlands being lost. Wetlands unique hydrology results in distinct plant zonation and community composition and seedling survival is the primary factor that influences stand structure and community composition. However, restoring degraded wetlands is challenging because the alterations to the hydrology through filling or diverting water will impact the effect of physical, chemical and biotic environmental variables on native plant establishment. The use of facilitation in restoration through successional planting using nurse trees, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is common in restoration, however research into the effectiveness of these techniques in wetland systems is lacking. This thesis is comprised of two studies with aims to determine the factors that had the biggest impact on the survival and growth of kahikatea and totara in Wairio wetland and inform future restoration. Wairio wetland has large isolated remnant kahikatea trees, so my first study focused on how these established trees and a connection to fungal hyphae networks influenced the survival and growth of newly planted saplings. One sapling of each species was planted at the dripline of the remnant tree, and another sapling of each species was planted 2 metres from that point. Out of the 16 remnant kahikatea trees used, 8 were ‘disturbance’ plots where saplings were planted in 35μm mesh bags that excluded roots but fungal hyphae could penetrate, in slotted pots which were turned every 3 months. In the 8 remaining ‘undisturbed’ plots, saplings were planted into the ground. I assessed the influence of distance and disturbance on sapling survival and growth using a chi-square test of independence and general linear models. Results showed that kahikatea trees survived better than totara overall. The survival of totara was significantly reliant on a close proximity to the remnant kahikatea, and a connection with mycorrhizal networks. Kahikatea had greater biomass than totara, however they suffered strong conspecific competition with the remnant trees, with kahikatea saplings planted at the dripline having 51.28g greater biomass with regular disturbance of AMF mycelium. Kahikatea trees are light demanding species, and therefore growing under the canopy of a parent tree has a negative impact on kahikatea saplings growth. Knowing that kahikatea and totara trees respond differently to nurse trees and AMF, my second study focused on how nurse effects and AMF association changes with chemical, physical and environmental stressors. The survival and growth of 5-year-old kahikatea and totara trees, with or without a nurse across 10 blocks in Wairio wetland were analysed. At each tree, soil moisture and root available nutrients were measured and soil cores were taken to determine gravimetric soil moisture, reduction-oxidation reaction (redox), pH, soil carbon content and I counted the presence of AMF spores in two size classes. I assessed tree survival and growth against these variables using a chi-squared test of independence and general linear models. The results of this study showed that kahikatea survived better than totara trees in the very wet blocks, where no other species survived. Totara trees survived in the upland sites of the wetland and had better growth than kahikatea trees. Moreover, totara trees grew 24cm taller in the presence of a nurse tree, and were strongly positively associated with spore number. Nurse trees further benefitted totara trees by increasing plant available soil nitrate and potassium by almost double.</p>

Lymphocyte Ratios Progressively Worsen in Non-Survivors of COVID-19

Background: Brazil became the South American epicenter for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) soon after the first case was diagnosed in February 2020 with the highest infection rate occurring in the state of Sao Paulo. COVID-19 is characterized by marked thrombo-inflammation mechanisms, and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) among many clinical and laboratory data, is becoming an inflammatory marker of severity and mortality of COVID-19. We evaluated the serial weekly lymphocyte ratios, which are easily derivable from the routine blood counts, in the survivors and non-survivors of COVID-19 at the Clinical Hospital of University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil, from time of diagnosis to the 3 rd week of care. This hospital is one of the referral centers for COVID-19 patients in this state. Methods: In this retrospective study, we reviewed the medical notes of 320 adults hospitalized patients with PCR-confirmed COVID-19 at the Clinical Hospital of UNICAMP, from March 2020 to March 2021. The serial weekly hematological parameters (analyzed using automated counter - XN 9000™, Sysmex, Japan) from the time of diagnosis were analyzed and lymphocytes ratios (neutrophil-lymphocyte, NLR, platelet-lymphocyte PLR, and monocyte-lymphocyte MLR) were calculated. The survivors (n=257) were those who recovered from the disease and were discharged from the hospital, while the non-survivors (n=63) were those who died in the course of treatment. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS (version 22). Unpaired data of Survivors and Non-survivors with COVID-19 were compared using Mann-Whitney tests. Repeated measures were compared within and between groups using univariate and multivariate tests in general linear models. All results were considered significant if p&lt;0.05. Results: Of the 320 patients, 257 (80.3%) were survivors and had lower mean age than the non-survivors (57.73 vs 64.65 years, p&lt;0.001). At diagnosis, the non-survivors had a lower lymphocyte count (p=0.002), basophil count (p=0.049), and hematocrit (p=0.021) than the survivors, Table 1. We used general linear models for repeated measures and corrected for the patients who did not stay long enough to have a complete series of blood counts, Figure 1 A-G. Multivariate tests between the survivor and non-survivor groups showed significant variations with serial weekly lymphocyte count (p&lt;0.001), neutrophil count (P=0.005), NLR (p=0.009), MLR (p=0.010), and PLR (p=0.035) but not with the weekly monocyte count (p=0.352) and platelet count (p=0.505). The NLR was higher and PLR was lower in the non-survivors at diagnosis (p&lt;0.001 and p=0.047 respectively), both were higher in the 2 nd week post-diagnosis (p&lt;0.001 and 0.043 respectively), and in the 3 rd week (p&lt;0.001 and p=0.043 respectively) (Figure 1D and E). The MLR was not significantly different at diagnosis but became elevated in the following two weeks post-diagnosis (p=0.09, p=0.022, and p&lt;0.001 respectively) (Figure 1F). Conclusions: The non-survivors were older and their NLR and MLR tend to increase from the time of diagnosis while their PLR tend to decrease after the 2 nd week post-COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment. On the other hand, all three ratios significantly decrease in the survivors. While neutrophilia and lymphopenia improved in the survivor, they worsen in non-survivors. These cells may have contributed towards the recovery by ameliorating the inflammatory response in survivors, and death by worsening the response in non-survivors of COVID-19. This study shows that serial lymphocyte count, neutrophil count, NLR, PLR, and MLR could serve as good and easily accessible markers of outcomes in patients with COVID-19 and could be used for monitoring of response to treatment. Figure 1 Figure 1. Disclosures Costa: Novartis: Consultancy.

Interest in Humans: Comparisons between Riding School Lesson Equids and Assisted-Intervention Equids

Little is known about the impact of equine-assisted interventions (EAI) on equids’ perception of humans. In this study 172 equids, living in 12 riding centres, were submitted to a standardised human–horse relationship test: the motionless person test. Age, sex, type (horse/pony), housing, and feeding conditions of subjects were recorded. Overall, 17 equids worked in EAI, 95 in riding school lessons (RS), and 60 in both (EAI-RS). There were high inter-individual variations in the number of interactive behaviours directed towards the experimenter: negative binomial general linear models showed that activity was the most important factor: RS equids performed more interactive behaviours than EAI (p = 0.039) and EAI-RS (p < 0.001) equids. Daily quantity of hay appeared as the second most important factor (equids with more than 3 kg interacted more than equids with less than 3 kg, p = 0.013). Individual characteristics were also important as horses interacted more than ponies (p = 0.009), geldings more than mares (p = 0.032), and 3–15-year-old equids more than equids over 15 years (p = 0.032). However, there was no interaction between factors. The lower number of interactive behaviours of EAI equids leads to different hypotheses—namely, selection on temperament, specific training, or compromised welfare (apathy). In any case, our results raised new lines of questions on EAI.

Obesity years: clinical variation by age pre/post biliopancreatic diversion/duodenal switch (BPD/DS)

Objective: To identify clinical variation by age, pre/post BPD/DS. Methods: 1673 BPD/DS patients from the Surgical Review Corporation’s BOLD database were analyzed retrospectively by age: <30(177), 30-40(456), 40-50(486), 50-60(407), 60-70(138), >70(9). Data: Demographics, BMI and 33 obesity co-morbidities. Statistics: ANOVA and General Linear Models including pre- and post-operative data modified for binomial distribution of dichotomous variables. Results: Pre-op BMI varied inversely by age and continued through to 12 months post operatively. Gout varied directly and tobacco abuse inversely by age at baseline. The incidence of 12 of the 33 obesity-co-morbidities increased directly with age up to 12 months post operatively. In >60 patients, angina, MS pain, LEE and SUI increased from baseline after undergoing BPD/DS. Conclusion: Despite lower pre-operative and 12-month BMI in older BPD/DS patients, baseline co-morbidities varied directly with age, and post-operative resolution of 12 weight-related problems was inversely proportional to age. Only diabetes resolved better among older patients. These findings suggest the concept of “obesity years”, wherein patients carrying obesity the longest accumulate more co-morbidities and resolve them less.

Identity: rapid alignment-free prediction of sequence alignment identity scores using self-supervised general linear models

Pairwise global alignment is a fundamental step in sequence analysis. Optimal alignment algorithms are quadratic—slow especially on long sequences. In many applications that involve large sequence datasets, all what is needed is calculating the identity scores (percentage of identical nucleotides in an optimal alignment—including gaps—of two sequences); there is no need for visualizing how every two sequences are aligned. For these applications, we propose Identity, which produces global identity scores for a large number of pairs of DNA sequences using alignment-free methods and self-supervised general linear models. For the first time, the new tool can predict pairwise identity scores in linear time and space. On two large-scale sequence databases, Identity provided the best compromise between sensitivity and precision while being faster than BLAST, Mash, MUMmer4 and USEARCH by 2–80 times. Identity was the best performing tool when searching for low-identity matches. While constructing phylogenetic trees from about 6000 transcripts, the tree due to the scores reported by Identity was the closest to the reference tree (in contrast to andi, FSWM and Mash). Identity is capable of producing pairwise identity scores of millions-of-nucleotides-long bacterial genomes; this task cannot be accomplished by any global-alignment-based tool. Availability: https://github.com/BioinformaticsToolsmith/Identity.

Cerebral Metabolic Stress Is Increased in Children with Sickle Cell Anemia Compared to Anemic Controls

Children with sickle cell anemia (SCA) experience a host of neurologic complications, including cognitive dysfunction, silent and overt stroke. Oxygen extraction fraction (OEF), the percent of oxygen removed from the blood into the brain tissue, can increase to compensate for decreased oxygen delivery and maintain the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen utilization (CMRO2), as stroke occurs with a decrease in CMRO2. Elevated OEF is an independent predictor for ischemic injury in adults without SCA. We have previously shown that OEF is increased in children with SCA compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, the region of the brain with greatest elevation in OEF in SCA co-localizes with the regions at greatest risk for stroke, and OEF indirectly correlates with hemoglobin. However, it remains unclear if OEF is only elevated due to decreased arterial oxygen content with severe anemia in SCA, or if other factors contribute to this ongoing cerebral metabolic stress. We prospectively obtained brain MRIs in children with SCA, children with non-sickle cell anemia (ACTL) and healthy controls (CTL) to test our hypothesis that all children with anemia would have elevated OEF compared to controls, but those with SCA would have more elevated OEF than children with non-sickle cell anemia. Brain MRI measured voxel-wise OEF with an asymmetric spin echo sequence. OEF processing is described in Fields et al. Blood. 2019; 133(22):2436-2444. Group comparisons were made with a Mann-WhitneyUor chi-square tests. General linear models were used to understand the difference in whole brain (WB), gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) OEF between cohorts while controlling for hemoglobin. Table 1 describes the 78 participants (20 CTL, 17 ACTL, 41 SCA). The CTL cohort includes 11 HbAA and 9 HbAS participants; the ACTL cohort includes 4 hereditary spherocytosis, 1 congenital dyserythropoietic anemia, 1 beta thalassemia intermedia, 6 iron deficiency, 4 aplastic anemia and 1 loxoscelism participant; the SCA cohort includes 36 HbSS and 5 HbS beta thalassemia null participants. Hemoglobin was lower in the ACTL (p &lt; 0.001) and SCA (p &lt; 0.001) cohorts compared to CTL, but was not different between the ACTL and SCA cohorts (p = 0.682). Ninety percent of the SCA cohort was receiving hydroxyurea at a median dose of 29.1 [21.5-33.1] mg/kg/day, and none were receiving chronic transfusions. Thirty-four percent of the SCA cohort had a history of silent cerebral infarct, while none had a history of overt stroke or vasculopathy identified on screening MRA. OEF was significantly elevated in the ACTL cohort compared to the CTL cohort, but significantly lower than the SCA cohort in the WB, GM and WM (Table 1, Figure 1). Final general linear models predicting WB, GM and WM OEF used a quadratic fit for hemoglobin, and included hemoglobin, hemoglobin2, and cohort as covariates. After accounting for hemoglobin and hemoglobin2(indicating that the relationship between hemoglobin and OEF is not linear), OEF is significantly higher in the SCA cohort compared to the ACTL cohort in WB, GM and WM, while there was not a significant difference in OEF between the ACTL and CTL cohorts (Table 2, Figure 2). The volume of WM with elevated OEF was significantly higher in the ACTL cohort compared to the CTL cohort (OEF 35%: p &lt; 0.001, OEF 37%: p &lt; 0.001, OEF 39%: p &lt; 0.001), but lower in ACTL cohort compared to the SCA cohort (OEF 35%: p = 0.032, OEF 37%: p = 0.028, OEF 39%: p = 0.029). We conclude that OEF is significantly higher in children with SCA compared to age- and sex-matched children that are equally anemic for reasons other than SCA. While severity of anemia was a significant predictor of OEF, cohort (SCA vs. ACTL) remained an independent predictor of OEF across the WB, GM and WM while accounting for hemoglobin. These data suggest that further investigation is required to understand additional covariates contributing to increased cerebral metabolic stress, as measured by OEF, in children with SCA, as these may be clinical targets to reduce OEF and provide further neuroprotection in this vulnerable population. Disclosures Ford: Bluebird Bio: Honoraria. Lee:Biogen: Research Funding. Fields:Global Blood Therapeutics: Other: Speaking engagement without financial compensation; Proclara Biosciences: Current equity holder in private company; Bluebird Bio: Honoraria.