Validation of the mobile verbal learning test: Illustration of its use for age and disease‐related cognitive deficits

ObjectiveWe developed a mobile cognitive test of verbal learning and memory, the mobile verbal learning test (mVLT), to allow for brief, repeated and portable delivery of a 12‐item list learning test through a smartphone. This study examined the psychometric properties of the mVLT among older persons with and without human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).MethodsSixty‐eight persons with HIV and 36 HIV‐negative individuals (aged 50–74) completed three trials of the mVLT on a smartphone once daily for 14 days. A different word list was administered each day.ResultsParticipants completed 80% of the 14 mVLT administrations, equating to 1166 valid and complete mVLTs. Neither adherence nor mean mVLT total score (number correct in 3 recall trials) differed by HIV status. No practice effects from repeated mVLT administration were observed, and there were moderately strong correlations of mVLT performance with performance on the in‐lab version of the task and with traditional cognitive assessments of cognitive processes contributing to memory. We found evidence of within‐person learning across mVLT trials, with persons with HIV demonstrating less learning from trials 1 to 3 compared to HIV‐negative participants.ConclusionsThe mVLT is a valid method to assess learning in the real world in older adults with and without HIV.     

Impact of various ecological parameters on the life-history characteristics of Bufotes viridis sitibundus from Turkey

In this study, we used the skeletochronology method to estimate various growth parameters, such as age structure, minimum and maximum life span, age of sexual maturity, and the relationship between body size and weight of eight different populations of the variable toad, Bufotes viridis sitibundus, in Turkey. Further, we determined the relationship between these parameters and ecologic factors using the partial Mantel test. A significant difference was found among the populations with respect to age, body size, and body weight in both males and females. On average, the maximum life span was recorded as 10 years for males and 11 years for females. In the studied populations, the average age of sexual maturity ranged between 2 and 4 years for both sexes. Sexual dimorphism in terms of snout-vent length (SVL) was not observed between males and females in all the populations. Toads from the higher altitudes tended to be significantly larger, older, and heavier than those from lower altitudes. We concluded that altitude and temperature have an impact on the growth rate, body size, and body mass.     

Monitoring Dietary Intake and Physical Activity Electronically: Feasibility,Usability, and Ecological Validity of a Mobile-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment Tool

Background

Despite the growing body of research on complex lifestyle behaviors (eg, Dietary Intake [DI] and Physical Activity [PA]), monitoring of these behaviors has been hampered by a lack of suitable methods. A possible solution to this deficiency is mobile-based Ecological Momentary Assessment (mEMA), which enables researchers to collect data on participants’ states in real-time by means of a smartphone application. However, feasibility, usability, and ecological validity need to be anticipated and managed in order to enhance the validity of mEMA.

Objective

To examine the feasibility, usability, and ecological validity of a mEMA application (app) with regard to DI and PA among Dutch vocational education students.

Methods

The students (n=30) participated in the mEMA study for seven consecutive days. They downloaded the mEMA app on their smartphone. Feasibility and usability of the mEMA app were evaluated by completing an online evaluation after seven days of participation. Ecological validity was measured by assessing the degree to which the content of the mEMA app approximated the real-world setting that was being examined, through several multiple-choice questions.

Results

Compliance rates, as registered by the mEMA app, declined 46% over a seven-day period, while self-reported compliance, as measured with an online evaluation questionnaire afterwards, indicated a smaller decrease in compliance (29%). The students evaluated the mEMA app as feasible and usable. Ecological validity analyses showed that all DI and almost all PA multiple-choice options were covered with the compound response categories.

Conclusions

The mEMA app offers the opportunity to assess complex health behaviors (eg, DI and PA) in real-time settings, in which specifically routinized behaviors are involved. However, the mEMA app faced several challenges that needed to be overcome in order to improve its validity. Overall, the present study showed that the mEMA app is a usable and ecologically valid tool to measure DI and PA behaviors among vocational education students, but compliance is still limited.     

Changes in work affect in response to lunchtime walking in previously physically inactive employees: A randomized trial

Physical activity may regulate affective experiences at work, but controlled studies are needed and there has been a reliance on retrospective accounts of experience. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of lunchtime walks on momentary work affect at the individual and group levels. Physically inactive employees (N = 56; M age = 47.68; 92.86% female) from a large university in the UK were randomized to immediate treatment or delayed treatment (DT). The DT participants completed both a control and intervention period. During the intervention period, participants partook in three weekly 30‐min lunchtime group‐led walks for 10 weeks. They completed twice daily affective reports at work (morning and afternoon) using mobile phones on two randomly chosen days per week. Multilevel modeling was used to analyze the data. Lunchtime walks improved enthusiasm, relaxation, and nervousness at work, although the pattern of results differed depending on whether between‐group or within‐person analyses were conducted. The intervention was effective in changing some affective states and may have broader implications for public health and workplace performance.     

Thermal niches of planktonic foraminifera are static throughout glacial–interglacial climate change

Abiotic niche lability reduces extinction risk by allowing species to adapt to changing environmental conditions in situ. In contrast, species with static niches must keep pace with the velocity of climate change as they track suitable habitat. The rate and frequency of niche lability have been studied on human timescales (months to decades) and geological timescales (millions of years), but lability on intermediate timescales (millennia) remains largely uninvestigated. Here, we quantified abiotic niche lability at 8-ka resolution across the last 700 ka of glacial–interglacial climate fluctuations, using the exceptionally well-known fossil record of planktonic foraminifera coupled with Atmosphere–Ocean Global Climate Model reconstructions of paleoclimate. We tracked foraminiferal niches through time along the univariate axis of mean annual temperature, measured both at the sea surface and at species’ depth habitats. Species’ temperature preferences were uncoupled from the global temperature regime, undermining a hypothesis of local adaptation to changing environmental conditions. Furthermore, intraspecific niches were equally similar through time, regardless of climate change magnitude on short timescales (8 ka) and across contrasts of glacial and interglacial extremes. Evolutionary trait models fitted to time series of occupied temperature values supported widespread niche stasis above randomly wandering or directional change. Ecotype explained little variation in species-level differences in niche lability after accounting for evolutionary relatedness. Together, these results suggest that warming and ocean acidification over the next hundreds to thousands of years could redistribute and reduce populations of foraminifera and other calcifying plankton, which are primary components of marine food webs and biogeochemical cycles.

Abiotic niche dynamics determine patterns of community composition over space and regulate trajectories of diversity over time (1). Both niche lability (2, 3) and conservatism (1, 4) have been proposed to spur speciation, and abiotic niche lability has been associated with ecological invasions (5–7) and with reduced risk of extinction during times of climate change (8). Thus, a deeper understanding of species’ propensity for niche stasis versus lability could improve predictions of biodiversity restructuring in response to anthropogenic climate change (9).Stasis in species’ abiotic niches through time has been documented in empirical research, but most such studies have been limited to ecological niche modeling on decadal scales (reviewed in ref. 10) or paleoecological examination on 10⁶ to 10⁷ y scales (5, 11, 12). Since empirical rates of niche change are scarce and difficult to acquire, many studies merely assume that niche evolution occurs at a constant rate along branches of a phylogeny (2, 3, 6, 7). Niche dynamics at intermediate timescales of centuries to millennia are particularly poorly documented (10), and studies at this meso scale have been restricted to terrestrial systems (e.g., refs. 13–15) or to comparisons between the present day and the single historical time step of the Last Glacial Maximum, ∼21 ka (16–20). Quantifying the rate and relative frequency of niche change in marine species over timescales of 10² to 10⁵ years is important, however, because species will adapt or go extinct in response to anthropogenic ocean changes over this timescale (21).Here, we investigated climatic niche lability from the rich sedimentary archive of global planktonic foraminifera across the last 700 ka of glacial–interglacial cycles at 8-ka resolution. Planktonic foraminifera (Protista) construct “shells” (tests) of calcite, thereby sequestering carbon and recording an isotopic signature of past ocean conditions. Tests readily accumulate over large expanses of the seafloor. Consequently, the fossil record of foraminifera—arguably “the best fossil record on Earth” (22)—affords an exceptionally high-resolution view into past species distributions. This detailed record fuels studies of biostratigraphy, paleoclimatology, and paleoecology (20, 22–25). Moreover, the complete species diversity of planktonic foraminifera has been described for the Plio–Pleistocene, with good agreement between morphological and molecular phylogenies (22, 25–27). Although some have speculated that foraminifera competitively exclude each other (24), recent work found that planktonic foraminifera species seldom restrict each other’s distributions (28). Presumably, therefore, species occupy the full envelope of existing environmental conditions within their tolerance limits, and geographic distributions are determined almost entirely by physical ocean conditions.We developed five analyses to investigate the degree of abiotic niche lability in foraminifera. All methods examined the univariate niche axis of temperature, which is the single most important explanatory variable in regard to geographic distributions of foraminifera (20, 29–32) and is a climate-related stressor and extinction driver for diverse marine fauna across timescales (33, 34). The adaptive potential of thermal niches has been taken as a key determinant of global community structure and genetic connectance in plankton (35). Primary productivity and other environmental variables, however, may also structure abiotic niches of plankton (36). Our suite of analyses quantified whether and by how much planktonic foraminiferal niches shifted along a temperature axis. First, we correlated time series of species’ thermal optima with global temperature to determine whether species tracked suitable habitat or experienced environmental fluctuations in situ. We then quantified species’ niche dissimilarity between pairs of time bins—either tracking niches across bin boundaries or contrasting niches at climatic extremes of glacial maxima and interglacial thermal peaks. To characterize niche change we applied trait evolution models to time series of temperatures at occupied sites. Lastly, we explored variation in intraspecific niche lability among ecotypes while accounting for phylogenetic relatedness. SI Appendix, Table S1 lists the response variable and sample size for each analysis.     

假肢适配重心对线技术的研究

目的提出一种基于人体重心变化的对线技术。方法利用重力传感器测取人体重力数据;根据平衡力学体系合力为0,由专用软件计算出人体重心的实时位置;通过串口通讯将重心的实时位置传输给控制单元,控制单元将实时位置的横坐标转换成电机的驱动脉冲信号,驱动与电机相连的装有激光器滑台进行重心跟随运动,从而可以根据重心的变化进行精确的对线。同时加入人体平衡功能检测,对假肢对线起辅助判断作用。结果和结论开发出通过检测人体重心位置的对线方法,可用于假肢矫形康复领域。     

Fine-scale ecological and economic assessment of climate change on olive in the Mediterranean Basin reveals winners and losers

The Mediterranean Basin is a climate and biodiversity hot spot, and climate change threatens agro-ecosystems such as olive, an ancient drought-tolerant crop of considerable ecological and socioeconomic importance. Climate change will impact the interactions of olive and the obligate olive fruit fly (Bactrocera oleae), and alter the economics of olive culture across the Basin. We estimate the effects of climate change on the dynamics and interaction of olive and the fly using physiologically based demographic models in a geographic information system context as driven by daily climate change scenario weather. A regional climate model that includes fine-scale representation of the effects of topography and the influence of the Mediterranean Sea on regional climate was used to scale the global climate data. The system model for olive/olive fly was used as the production function in our economic analysis, replacing the commonly used production-damage control function. Climate warming will affect olive yield and fly infestation levels across the Basin, resulting in economic winners and losers at the local and regional scales. At the local scale, profitability of small olive farms in many marginal areas of Europe and elsewhere in the Basin will decrease, leading to increased abandonment. These marginal farms are critical to conserving soil, maintaining biodiversity, and reducing fire risk in these areas. Our fine-scale bioeconomic approach provides a realistic prototype for assessing climate change impacts in other Mediterranean agro-ecosystems facing extant and new invasive pests.The Mediterranean Basin is a climate change (1) and biodiversity (2) hot spot where substantial warming is predicted in the next few decades (3). A 2 °C increase in average temperature is a widely used metric for assessing risks associated with global warming and as a policy reference, and this level of warming will likely occur in the Basin between 2030 and 2060 (4) with unknown biological and economic impact on major crop systems. Small differences in average climate warming are predicted for the Basin by A1B and higher greenhouse-gases (GHG) forcing scenarios within the 2050 time horizon (5).A major agro-ecosystem in the Basin is olive (Olea europaea L.), an ancient ubiquitous crop of considerable socioeconomic importance (6). A detailed review of methods used to assess the impact of weather and of climate change on the olive system is given in SI Appendix. Most of the crop is used to produce olive oil, with Basin countries producing 97% of the world supply (International Olive Council, www.internationaloliveoil.org/). Olive is a long-lived drought-tolerant species limited by frost and high temperatures, and to a lesser extent by low soil fertility and soil water (7). Temperatures <−8.3 °C damage olive and limit its northward distribution, whereas annual rainfall <350 mm y⁻¹ limits its distribution in arid regions. Commercial olive production occurs in areas with >500 mm rainfall y⁻¹ (SI Appendix, Fig. S1). Climate models predict increased temperatures for the Mediterranean Basin in response to increasing [GHG], but only a weak negative trend in precipitation and no trend in evaporation are predicted (8). Growth rates in some plants will increase with [CO₂] within their thermal and moisture limits (7, 9), but the response for olive is unknown.Mainstream assessments of climate change impact on agricultural and other ecosystems have omitted trophic interactions (10). Here we include the effects of climate change on olive phenology, growth, and yield, and on the dynamics and impact of its obligate major pest, the olive fruit fly [Bactrocera oleae (Rossi)]. The thermal limits of olive and the fly differ and affect the trophic interactions (11) crucial to estimating the bioeconomic impact of climate change in olive across the Basin.Previous assessments of climate change on heterothermic species have used ecological niche modeling (ENM) approaches that characterize climatically a species’ geographic range based on observed aggregate weather data in areas of its recorded distribution (for olive, see, e.g., ref. 12). ENMs are often used to predict the distribution of the species in response to climate change (13) despite serious deficiencies including the inability to include trophic interactions (14). Moreover, the implicit mathematical and ecological assumptions of ENMs hinder biological interpretation of the results (15).As an alternative we use mechanistic physiologically based demographic models (PBDMs) that explicitly capture the weather-driven biology of interacting species (e.g., ref. 16) and predict the geographic distribution and relative abundance of species across time and space independent of species distribution records using extant and climate change weather scenarios as drivers for the system. The explicit assumptions in PBDMs have heuristic value, and bridge the gap between long run field experiments used to study global change biology and the narrow methodological and conceptual bases of ENM approaches commonly used in macroecology (17, 18). These attributes are essential for assessing the bioeconomic consequences of climate warming on trophic interactions across large landscapes.Linked PBDMs for olive and olive fly in a geographic information system (GIS) context (11) (Fig. 1 and SI Appendix, Fig. S2) are used to estimate the fine-scale ecological and economic impact of climate warming on olive yield and fly infestation across the Basin using baseline daily weather (scenario ) simulated under observed [GHG], and the increasing [GHG] A1B emissions scenario () of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Materials and Methods and SI Appendix, SI Materials and Methods).Open in a separate windowFig. 1.Multitrophic biology of the olive/olive fly system. (A) Dry matter flow in olive and to olive fly, and (B) dynamics of olive fly number (see ref. 22).     

Correlates of sedentary behaviour in Asian adults: A systematic review

The objective of this study is to systematically review the evidence on correlates of sedentary behaviour (SB) among Asian adults. We searched for studies that examined individual, environmental, and political/cultural correlates of total and domain‐specific SB (transport, occupation, leisure, and screen time) in Asian adults published from 2000 onwards in nine scientific databases. Two reviewers independently screened identified references. Following quality assessment of included studies, we performed narrative synthesis that considered differences based on SB measurements, regions, and population characteristics (PROSPERO: CRD42018095268). We identified 13 249 papers of which we included 49, from four regions and 12 countries. Researchers conducted cross‐sectional analyses and most relied on SB self‐report for SB measurement. Of the 118 correlates studied, the following associations were consistent: higher age, living in an urban area (East Asia), and lower mental health with higher total SB; higher education with higher total and occupational SB; higher income with higher leisure‐time SB; higher transit density with higher total SB in older East Asians; and being an unmarried women with higher SB in the Middle East. We encourage more research in non‐high‐income countries across regions, further exploration of important but neglected correlates using longitudinal designs and qualitative research, and the use of objective instruments to collect SB data.     

Tempo of trophic evolution and its impact on mammalian diversification

Mammals are characterized by the complex adaptations of their dentition, which are an indication that diet has played a critical role in their evolutionary history. Although much attention has focused on diet and the adaptations of specific taxa, the role of diet in large-scale diversification patterns remains unresolved. Contradictory hypotheses have been proposed, making prediction of the expected relationship difficult. We show that net diversification rate (the cumulative effect of speciation and extinction), differs significantly among living mammals, depending upon trophic strategy. Herbivores diversify fastest, carnivores are intermediate, and omnivores are slowest. The tempo of transitions between the trophic strategies is also highly biased: the fastest rates occur into omnivory from herbivory and carnivory and the lowest transition rates are between herbivory and carnivory. Extant herbivore and carnivore diversity arose primarily through diversification within lineages, whereas omnivore diversity evolved by transitions into the strategy. The ability to specialize and subdivide the trophic niche allowed herbivores and carnivores to evolve greater diversity than omnivores.