| 1. |
- Bentham, James, et al.
(författare)
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A century of trends in adult human height
- 2016
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Ingår i: eLIFE. - 2050-084X. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.522.7) and 16.5 cm (13.319.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries.
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| 2. |
- Bentham, James, et al.
(författare)
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A century of trends in adult human height
- 2016
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Ingår i: eLIFE. - : eLife Sciences Publications Ltd. - 2050-084X. ; 5
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5–22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3– 19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8– 144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Ade, P. A. R., et al.
(författare)
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Planck intermediate results XXXIX. The Planck list of high-redshift source candidates
- 2016
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 596
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Planck mission, thanks to its large frequency range and all-sky coverage, has a unique potential for systematically detecting the brightest, and rarest, submillimetre sources on the sky, including distant objects in the high-redshift Universe traced by their dust emission. A novel method, based on a component-separation procedure using a combination of Planck and IRAS data, has been validated and characterized on numerous simulations, and applied to select the most luminous cold submillimetre sources with spectral energy distributions peaking between 353 and 857 GHz at 5' resolution. A total of 2151 Planck high-z source candidates (the PHZ) have been detected in the cleanest 26% of the sky, with flux density at 545 GHz above 500 mJy. Embedded in the cosmic infrared background close to the confusion limit, these high-z candidates exhibit colder colours than their surroundings, consistent with redshifts z > 2, assuming a dust temperature of T-xgal = 35K and a spectral index of beta(xgal) = 1.5. Exhibiting extremely high luminosities, larger than 10(14) L-circle dot, the PHZ objects may be made of multiple galaxies or clumps at high redshift, as suggested by a first statistical analysis based on a comparison with number count models. Furthermore, first follow-up observations obtained from optical to submillimetre wavelengths, which can be found in companion papers, have confirmed that this list consists of two distinct populations. A small fraction (around 3%) of the sources have been identified as strongly gravitationally lensed star-forming galaxies at redshift 2 to 4, while the vast majority of the PHZ sources appear as overdensities of dusty star-forming galaxies, having colours consistent with being at z > 2, and may be considered as proto-cluster candidates. The PHZ provides an original sample, which is complementary to the Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich Catalogue (PSZ2); by extending the population of virialized massive galaxy clusters detected below z < 1.5 through their SZ signal to a population of sources at z > 1.5, the PHZ may contain the progenitors of today's clusters. Hence the Planck list of high-redshift source candidates opens a new window on the study of the early stages of structure formation, particularly understanding the intensively star-forming phase at high-z.
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| 5. |
- Andlauer, TFM, et al.
(författare)
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Bipolar multiplex families have an increased burden of common risk variants for psychiatric disorders
- 2021
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Ingår i: Molecular psychiatry. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-5578 .- 1359-4184. ; 26:4, s. 1286-1298
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Multiplex families with a high prevalence of a psychiatric disorder are often examined to identify rare genetic variants with large effect sizes. In the present study, we analysed whether the risk for bipolar disorder (BD) in BD multiplex families is influenced by common genetic variants. Furthermore, we investigated whether this risk is conferred mainly by BD-specific risk variants or by variants also associated with the susceptibility to schizophrenia or major depression. In total, 395 individuals from 33 Andalusian BD multiplex families (166 BD, 78 major depressive disorder, 151 unaffected) as well as 438 subjects from an independent, BD case/control cohort (161 unrelated BD, 277 unrelated controls) were analysed. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for BD, schizophrenia (SCZ), and major depression were calculated and compared between the cohorts. Both the familial BD cases and unaffected family members had higher PRS for all three psychiatric disorders than the independent controls, with BD and SCZ being significant after correction for multiple testing, suggesting a high baseline risk for several psychiatric disorders in the families. Moreover, familial BD cases showed significantly higher BD PRS than unaffected family members and unrelated BD cases. A plausible hypothesis is that, in multiplex families with a general increase in risk for psychiatric disease, BD development is attributable to a high burden of common variants that confer a specific risk for BD. The present analyses demonstrated that common genetic risk variants for psychiatric disorders are likely to contribute to the high incidence of affective psychiatric disorders in the multiplex families. However, the PRS explained only part of the observed phenotypic variance, and rare variants might have also contributed to disease development.
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| 6. |
- Beal, Jacob, et al.
(författare)
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Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
- 2020
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Ingår i: Communications Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2399-3642. ; 3:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data.
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| 7. |
- Santangelo, James S., et al.
(författare)
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Global urban environmental change drives adaptation in white clover
- 2022
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 375
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural dines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Pasquini, Chiara, et al.
(författare)
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Operando tracking of oxidation-state changes by coupling electrochemistry with time-resolved X-ray absorption spectroscopy demonstrated for water oxidation by a cobalt-based catalyst film
- 2021
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Ingår i: Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. - : Springer Nature. - 1618-2642 .- 1618-2650. ; 413:21, s. 5395-5408
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Transition metal oxides are promising electrocatalysts for water oxidation, i.e., the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which is critical in electrochemical production of non-fossil fuels. The involvement of oxidation state changes of the metal in OER electrocatalysis is increasingly recognized in the literature. Tracing these oxidation states under operation conditions could provide relevant information for performance optimization and development of durable catalysts, but further methodical developments are needed. Here, we propose a strategy to use single-energy X-ray absorption spectroscopy for monitoring metal oxidation-state changes during OER operation with millisecond time resolution. The procedure to obtain time-resolved oxidation state values, using two calibration curves, is explained in detail. We demonstrate the significance of this approach as well as possible sources of data misinterpretation. We conclude that the combination of X-ray absorption spectroscopy with electrochemical techniques allows us to investigate the kinetics of redox transitions and to distinguish the catalytic current from the redox current. Tracking of the oxidation state changes of Co ions in electrodeposited oxide films during cyclic voltammetry in neutral pH electrolyte serves as a proof of principle.
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| 10. |
- Pastor, Ada, et al.
(författare)
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Local and regional drivers of headwater streams metabolism : insights from the first AIL collaborative project
- 2017
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Ingår i: LIMNETICA. - : Asociacion Iberica de Limnologia. - 0213-8409 .- 1989-1806. ; 36:1, s. 67-85
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Streams play a key role in the global biogeochemical cycles, processing material from adjacent terrestrial systems and transporting it downstream. However, the drivers of stream metabolism, especially those acting at broad spatial scales, are still not well understood. Moreover, stream metabolism can be affected by hydrological changes associated with seasonality, and thus, assessing the temporality of metabolic rates is a key question to understand stream function. This study aims to analyse the geographical and temporal patterns in stream metabolism and to identify the main drivers regulating the whole ecosystem metabolic rates at local and regional scales. Using a coordinated distributed experiment, we studied ten headwaters streams located across five European ecoregions during summer and fall 2014. We characterized the magnitude and variability of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER) with the open-channel method. Moreover, we examined several climatic, geographical, hydrological, morphological, and physicochemical variables that can potentially control stream metabolic rates. Daily rates of stream metabolism varied considerately across streams, with GPP and ER ranging from 0.06 to 4.33 g O-2 m(-2) d(-1) and from 0.72 to 14.20 g O-2 m(-2) d(-1), respectively. All streams were highly heterotrophic (P/R < 1), except the southernmost one. We found that the drier climates tended to have the highest GPP, while humid regions presented the highest ER. Between the sampling periods no statistical differences were found. Partial-least squares models (PLS) explained similar to 80% of the variance in GPP and ER rates across headwater streams and included both local and regional variables. Rates of GPP varied primarily in response to the local variables, such as streambed substrate and stream water temperature. In contrast, regional variables, such as the mean annual temperature or the land use of the catchment, had more relevance to explain ER. Overall, our results highlight that stream metabolism depends on both local and regional drivers and show the positive experience of a young network of researchers to assess scientific challenges across large-scale geographic areas.
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| 11. |
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