Fructose-containing sugars can exaggerate postprandial lipaemia and stimulate hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL) when compared to glucose-based carbohydrates(1). Galactose has recently been shown to increase postprandial lipaemia compared to glucose(2), but mechanisms remain uncharacterised. The aim of this study was to assess the effect and mechanisms of lactose-induced lipaemia.

Twenty-four non-obese adults (12 male and 12 female) completed three trials in a randomised, crossover design (28 ± 7-day washout). During trials, participants consumed test drinks containing 50 g fat with 100 g of carbohydrate. The control carbohydrate was a glucose polymer (maltodextrin), the experimental carbohydrate was galactose-containing carbohydrate (lactose) and the active comparator was fructose-containing carbohydrate (sucrose). Hepatic DNL was assessed by the 2H2O method and [U-13C]-palmitate was added to the test drink to trace the fate of the ingested fat. Blood and breath samples were taken to determine plasma metabolite and hormone concentrations, in addition to plasma and breath 2H and 13C enrichments. Data were converted into incremental under the curve (iAUC) and were checked for normality by visual inspection of residuals. Differences between trials were assessed by one-way ANOVA. Where a main effect of trial was detected, post- hoc t-tests were performed to determine which trials differed from lactose according to the principle of closed-loop testing.

The plasma triacylglycerol iAUC (mean ± SD) in response to maltodextrin was 51 ± 68 mmol/L*360 min. Following lactose ingestion, plasma triacylglycerol iAUC increased to 98 ± 88 mmol/L*360 min (p<0.001 vs maltodextrin), which was comparable to sucrose [90 ± 95 mmol/L*360 min (p=0.41 vs lactose)]. Hepatic DNL in response to maltodextrin was 6.6 ± 3.0%. Following ingestion of lactose, hepatic DNL increased to 12.4 ± 6.9% (p=0.02 vs maltodextrin), which was comparable to sucrose [12.2 ± 6.9% (p=0.96 vs lactose)]. Exhaled 13CO2 in response to maltodextrin was 10.4 ± 4.1 mmol/kgFFM*360 min. Following ingestion of lactose, exhaled 13CO2 was 8.8 ± 4.9 mmol/kgFFM*360 min (p=0.09 vs maltodextrin), which was lower than sucrose [11.1 ± 3.9 mmol/kgFFM*360 min (p=0.01 vs lactose)].

These data are consistent with the hypothesis that hepatic de novo lipogenesis contributes to both lactose and sucrose-induced lipaemia and provide a rationale to investigate the longer-term effects of lactose and sucrose on metabolism.

Exclusion of special populations (older adults; pregnant women, children, and adolescents; individuals of lower socioeconomic status and/or who live in rural communities; people from racial and ethnic minority groups; individuals from sexual or gender minority groups; and individuals with disabilities) in research is a pervasive problem, despite efforts and policy changes by the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. These populations are adversely impacted by social determinants of health (SDOH) that reduce access and ability to participate in biomedical research. In March 2020, the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute hosted the “Lifespan and Life Course Research: integrating strategies” “Un-Meeting” to discuss barriers and solutions to underrepresentation of special populations in biomedical research. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how exclusion of representative populations in research can increase health inequities. We applied findings of this meeting to perform a literature review of barriers and solutions to recruitment and retention of representative populations in research and to discuss how findings are important to research conducted during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight the role of SDOH, review barriers and solutions to underrepresentation, and discuss the importance of a structural competency framework to improve research participation and retention among special populations.

Coinfection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and viral hepatitis is associated with high morbidity and mortality in the absence of clinical management, making identification of these cases crucial. We examined characteristics of HIV and viral hepatitis coinfections by using surveillance data from 15 US states and two cities. Each jurisdiction used an automated deterministic matching method to link surveillance data for persons with reported acute and chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections, to persons reported with HIV infection. Of the 504 398 persons living with diagnosed HIV infection at the end of 2014, 2.0% were coinfected with HBV and 6.7% were coinfected with HCV. Of the 269 884 persons ever reported with HBV, 5.2% were reported with HIV. Of the 1 093 050 persons ever reported with HCV, 4.3% were reported with HIV. A greater proportion of persons coinfected with HIV and HBV were males and blacks/African Americans, compared with those with HIV monoinfection. Persons who inject drugs represented a greater proportion of those coinfected with HIV and HCV, compared with those with HIV monoinfection. Matching HIV and viral hepatitis surveillance data highlights epidemiological characteristics of persons coinfected and can be used to routinely monitor health status and guide state and national public health interventions.

During the recent Ebola crisis in West Africa, individual person-level details of disease onset, transmissions, and outcomes such as survival or death were reported in online news media. We set out to document disease transmission chains for Ebola, with the goal of generating a timely account that could be used for surveillance, mathematical modeling, and public health decision-making. By accessing public web pages only, such as locally produced newspapers and blogs, we created a transmission chain involving two Ebola clusters in West Africa that compared favorably with other published transmission chains, and derived parameters for a mathematical model of Ebola disease transmission that were not statistically different from those derived from published sources. We present a protocol for responsibly gleaning epidemiological facts, transmission model parameters, and useful details from affected communities using mostly indigenously produced sources. After comparing our transmission parameters to published parameters, we discuss additional benefits of our method, such as gaining practical information about the affected community, its infrastructure, politics, and culture. We also briefly compare our method to similar efforts that used mostly non-indigenous online sources to generate epidemiological information.

Thin sections and acetate peels of the sediment within, and adhering to the outsides of, tests of Late Eocene echinoids from the southeastern United States have proven to be useful checks on inferences from test morphology concerning substrate preference. Previous characterizations of species' sediment preferences have concentrated primarily on the functional morphology of spatangoids, and relied particularly heavily upon Recent relatives of nonspatangoids. Reassessment of the preferences of spatangoids has led to a few discrepancies between interpretations herein and those of previous workers. In addition, this study attempts a more thorough assessment of functional morphology of nonspatangoid irregular echinoids than has previously been tried.

Carbonate sand-dwelling species from the Ocala Limestone (thin sections are clean grainstones) include Oligopygus, Echinolampas, Rhyncholampas, fibulariids, Durhamella, Neolaganum, Agassizia, Macropneustes, some species of Plagiobrissus and Periarchus, and most species of Eupatagus. All these have been interpreted previously as preferring clean sand. Species that preferred, or at least tolerated, significant carbonate mud in the substrate (thin sections are poorly washed grainstones and packstones) include all the regular echinoids and the irregular echinoids Schizaster, Ditremaster, Brissopsis, Brissopatagus, Amblypygus, Eurhodia, Weisbordella, Wythella, Paraster, some species of Periarchus and Plagiobrissus, and perhaps some species of Eupatagus. The last seven of these have previously been interpreted as sand-dwellers.

In general, species preferring mud-rich sands are found in the upper Ocala of peninsular Florida and in the middle to upper Ocala equivalents in the rest of the Gulf Coast. Sand-dwellers are most often found in the lower Ocala strata of both regions and up into the middle Ocala in Florida. These generalizations are consistent with existing paleoenvironmental models for the region.

The Parkes 64 m telescope has been used to survey a complete sample of nearby red giants (i.e. not members of close binaries or showing strong emission lines of CaII). The sample consisted of all 82 stars in the Bright Star Catalogue within 30 pc having spectral types G, K, M and luminosity classes I, II, III south of the celestial equator.

Our knowledge of the universe comes from recording the photon and particle fluxes incident on the Earth from space. We thus require sensitive measurement across the entire energy spectrum, using large telescopes with efficient instrumentation located on superb sites. Technological advances and engineering constraints are nearing the point where we are recording as many photons arriving at a site as is possible. Major advances in the future will come from improving the quality of the site. The ultimate site is, of course, beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, such as on the Moon, but economic limitations prevent our exploiting this avenue to the degree that the scientific community desires. Here we describe an alternative, which offers many of the advantages of space for a fraction of the cost: the Antarctic Plateau.

The Figaro data reduction system was originally written for DEC VAXes running VMS, and little attention was paid to making it portable. Recently, however, a cooperative effort between the AAO, MSSSO, UNSW, the UK Starlink network and Caltech has resulted in a version for UNIX. This new version has been run under VMS and three different versions of UNIX. The files produced by any version may be read directly by any other version, although Figaro has a particularly complex file format which contains an extensible, self-defining, hierarchical structure of data items. This complexity has allowed the addition of error and quality data, as well as specific structures used, for example, for echelle data. Figaro is written mainly in Fortran (with numerous DEC extensions) but there is also a significant use of C. While C and Fortran are reasonably portable, the way one is called from the other is less portable and needs careful handling. Ports to other systems are possible, with effort; a Macintosh version is being considered.

The University of NSW’s Automated Patrol Telescope is a modified Baker-Nunn satellite tracking camera, now used for CCD imaging of astronomical objects. The f/1 Baker-Nunn optical design gives a 30° field of view with an approximately spherical focal surface of radius ≈500 mm. While the focal plane curvature is tolerable across the 1.4° × 1.0° field of the present CCD, it becomes unacceptable when a larger CCD is used. In addition, the use of glass filters in the highly convergent beam produces intolerable spherical aberration. We present a design modification to the original Baker-Nunn which enables a 5° diameter flat field to be produced when using B, V, R or I filters. By making this modification, we plan to perform multicolour imaging, using a new large-format CCD with a 2.9° × 1.9° field of view.

We describe the application of Peltier effect cooling to charge coupled device (CCD) detectors. We are developing this technique to produce a CCD camera which requires low maintenance, yet has sufficiently small dark-current for long exposure imaging. This camera will be used in an automated imaging telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. The design principles used to maximise cooling of the detector, and hence minimise dark-current, are discussed. A small dark-current can be obtained only if great care is taken to reduce or eliminate convective, conductive and radiative heating of the chip. In addition, a path of high thermal conductivity must be provided for the heat removed from the CCD. A recent laboratory test of our cooling system demonstrates that careful design can lead to sufficiently low CCD dark-current for many astronomical applications.

This paper presents the results of a multiwavelength observational study of the active young F-type star HR 1817. The star was monitored at 4.80 and 8.64 GHz over 2 × 12 h allocations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array on 8 and 9 December, 2000. The Anglo-Australian Telescope was used for simultaneous optical spectropolarimetry during a 2 h period on 9 December.

The low levels of observed radio emission have characteristics that are similar to those seen in other active stars, and a gyrosynchrotron mechanism is proposed to explain them; this is supported by the relatively low fractions of circular polarisation measured in HR 1817.

Comparison of the emissions from 4.80 and 8.64 GHz shows a very strong cross-correlation peak, indicative of a common origin, although the shift of this peak indicates that 8.64 GHz variations tend to precede those at 4.80 GHz by, typically, ˜20 min.

The optical spectropolarimetry reveals polarisation signals characteristic of surface magnetic fields, with profile changes indicating a complex dynamo-type magnetic topology is present on the star. This result makes HR 1817 the star with the earliest spectral type on which dynamo magnetic fields have been detected directly up to now.