Publications

The goal of this special issue is to contribute to the advancement of ubiquitous information societies, where computers and humans are part of the same ecosystem. One crucial property of entities living in the same ecosystem is that they mutually influence and affect each other's behavior in a variety of ways. This special issue, organized as a follow-up to the Second International Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding, investigates several domains where such mutual influence is attempted through human behavior analysis.

With the increasing prevalence of middleboxes, networks today are capable of doing far more than merely delivering packets. In fact, to realize their full potential for both supporting innovation and generating revenue, we should think of carrier networks as service-delivery platforms. This requires providing open interfaces that allow third-parties to leverage carrier-network infrastructures in building global-scale services. In this position paper, we take the first steps towards making this vision concrete by identifying a few such interfaces that are both simple-to-support and safe-to-deploy (for the carrier) while being flexibly useful (for third-parties).

We developed an ecologically valid virtual peer interaction paradigm--the Chatroom Interact Task in which 60 pre-adolescents and adolescents (ages 9-17 years) were led to believe that they were interacting with other youth in a simulated internet chatroom. Youth received rejection and acceptance feedback from virtual peers. Findings revealed increased pupil dilation, an index of increased activity in cognitive and affective processing regions of the brain, to rejection compared to acceptance trials, which was greater for older youth. Data from a cell-phone Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) protocol completed following the task indicated that increased pupillary reactivity to rejection trials was associated with lower feelings of social connectedness with peers in daily life. Eyetracking analyses revealed attentional biases toward acceptance feedback and away from rejection feedback. Biases toward acceptance feedback were stronger for older youth. Avoidance of rejection feedback was strongest among youth with increased pupillary reactivity to rejection, even in the seconds leading up to and following rejection feedback. These findings suggest that adolescents are sensitive to rejection feedback and seek to anticipate and avoid attending to rejection stimuli. Furthermore, the salience of social rejection and acceptance feedback appears to increase during adolescence.

The results of quantum chemical and molecular dynamics calculations reveal that polyanionic gallium-based cages accelerate cyclization reactions of pentadienyl alcohols as a result of substrate cage interactions, preferential binding of reactive conformations of substrate/H₃O⁺ pairs, and increased substrate basicity. However, the increase in basicity dominates. Experimental structure-activity relationship studies in which the metal vertices and overall charge of the cage are varied confirm the model derived <i>via</i> calculations.

Key points Strategies to enhance the loss of fat while preserving muscle mass during energy restriction are of great importance to prevent sarcopenia in overweight older adults. We show for the first time that the integrated rate of synthesis of numerous individual contractile, cytosolic and mitochondrial skeletal muscle proteins was increased by resistance training (RT) and unaffected by dietary protein intake pattern during energy restriction in free‐living, obese older men. We observed a correlation between the synthetic rates of skeletal muscle‐derived proteins obtained in serum (creatine kinase M‐type, carbonic anhydrase 3) and the synthetic rates of proteins obtained via muscle sampling; and that the synthesis rates of these proteins in serum revealed the stimulatory effects of RT. These results have ramifications for understanding the influence of RT on skeletal muscle and are consistent with the role of RT in maintaining muscle protein synthesis and potentially supporting muscle mass preservation during weight loss. Abstract We determined how the pattern of protein intake and resistance training (RT) influenced longer‐term (2 weeks) integrated myofibrillar protein synthesis (MyoPS) during energy restriction (ER). MyoPS and proteome kinetics were measured during 2 weeks of ER alone and 2 weeks of ER plus RT (ER + RT) in overweight/obese older men. Participants were randomized to consume dietary protein in a balanced (BAL: 25% daily protein per meal × 4 meals) or skewed (SKEW: 7:17:72:4% daily protein per meal) pattern ( n = 10 per group). Participants ingested deuterated water during the consecutive 2‐week periods, and skeletal muscle biopsies and serum were obtained at the beginning and conclusion of ER and ER + RT. Bulk MyoPS (i.e. synthesis of the myofibrillar protein sub‐fraction) and the synthetic rates of numerous individual skeletal muscle proteins were quantified. Bulk MyoPS was not affected by protein distribution during ER or ER + RT (ER: BAL = 1.24 ± 0.31%/day, SKEW = 1.26 ± 0.37%/day; ER + RT: BAL = 1.64 ± 0.48%/day, SKEW = 1.52 ± 0.66%/day) but was ∼26% higher during ER + RT than during ER ( P = 0.023). The synthetic rates of 175 of 190 contractile, cytosolic and mitochondrial skeletal muscle proteins, as well as synthesis of muscle‐derived proteins measured in serum, creatine kinase M‐type (CK‐M) and carbonic anhydrase 3 (CA‐3), were higher during ER + RT than during ER ( P &lt; 0.05). In addition, the synthetic rates of CK‐M and CA‐3 measured in serum correlated with the synthetic rates of proteins obtained via muscle sampling ( P &lt; 0.05). This study provides novel data on the skeletal muscle adaptations to RT and dietary protein distribution.

Abstract Many freshwater systems receive substantial inputs of terrestrial organic matter. Terrestrially derived dissolved organic carbon (t‐DOC) inputs can modify light availability, the spatial distribution of primary production, heat, and oxygen in aquatic systems, as well as inorganic nutrient bioavailability. It is also well‐established that some terrestrial inputs (such as invertebrates and fruits) provide high‐quality food resources for consumers in some systems. In small to moderate‐sized streams, leaf litter inputs average approximately three times greater than the autochthonous production. Conversely, in oligo/mesotrophic lakes algal production is typically five times greater than the available flux of allochthonous basal resources. Terrestrial particulate organic carbon (t‐POC) inputs to lakes and rivers are comprised of 80%–90% biochemically recalcitrant lignocellulose, which is highly resistant to enzymatic breakdown by animal consumers. Further, t‐POC and heterotrophic bacteria lack essential biochemical compounds that are critical for rapid growth and reproduction in aquatic invertebrates and fishes. Several studies have directly shown that these resources have very low food quality for herbivorous zooplankton and benthic invertebrates. Much of the nitrogen assimilated by stream consumers is probably of algal origin, even in systems where there appears to be a significant terrestrial carbon contribution. Amino acid stable isotope analyses for large river food webs indicate that most upper trophic level essential amino acids are derived from algae. Similarly, profiles of essential fatty acids in consumers show a strong dependence on the algal food resources. Primary production to respiration ratios are not a meaningful index to assess consumer allochthony because respiration represents an oxidised carbon flux that cannot be utilised by animal consumers. Rather, the relative importance of allochthonous subsidies for upper trophic level production should be addressed by considering the rates at which terrestrial and autochthonous resources are consumed and the growth efficiency supported by this food. Ultimately, the biochemical composition of a particular basal resource, and not just its quantity or origin, determines how readily this material is incorporated into upper trophic level consumers. Because of its highly favourable biochemical composition and greater availability, we conclude that microalgal production supports most animal production in freshwater ecosystems.