The use of commercially available personal UV-meters does cause less safe tanning habits: a randomized-controlled trial

UV Index information is currently recommended as a vehicle to raise public awareness about the risk of sun-exposure. It remains unknown to what extent this information can change personal sun-protective behavior. The aim of the study was to analyze the effects of UV-Index (UV-I) information provided by low cost, commercially available UV-I sensors on major indicators of sun-tanning behavior. A randomized-controlled trial was carried out on 94 healthy volunteers aged 21-23 years. After the exclusion of subjects with photosensitive disorders (n=3), 91 subjects were randomized in two arms after stratification based on phototype and sex. Both arms received a diary to be filled every day with a log of intentional sun-exposure during summer. Subjects in the intervention group also received a commercially available UV-I sensor. The UV-I sensors were switched on and the UV-value was recorded in 77% of days with sun-exposure. During days of sun-exposure, subjects randomized to the intervention group had longer average time of sun-exposure (227.7 vs 208.7 min per day, P=0.003), also between noon and 4 pm (P<0.001), and less frequently adopted sun protective measures than controls (hat [6.4%vs 10.2%, P=0.007], sunglasses [23.9%vs 30.8%, P=0.003], sunscreen [41.4%vs 47.2%, P=0.02]) and they experienced more frequent sunburns (27.8%vs 21.5%, P=0.004). The odd ratio of sunburns was 1.60 for subjects in the intervention group compared with controls (after adjustment for sex, sunscreen use and skin type). The mean UV-I value recorded by volunteers was lower (5.6 [SD+/-0.9]) than that (7.3 [SD+/-0.46]) recorded by a professional instrument in the same period at the same latitude. Poststudy laboratory tests showed that the sensor was able to detect only about 60% of the solar diffuse radiation. The use of UV-I sensors changed the sun protective behavior of sunbathers in the direction of less use of sun protective measures. One possible explanation is that the low cost UV-meters may have functioned incorrectly and under-reported UV exposure. This may have led to an underestimation of UV-I values, erroneously reassuring subjects and causing a less protective sunbathing behavior. Another hypothesis relies on a cognitive pitfall in the subjects' dealing with intermediate UV-I values, as they may have been discouraged in the use of sunscreen as they did not feel that they had yet been exposed to very harmful UV radiation.     

Artificial Molecular Ratchets: Tools Enabling Endergonic Processes

Non-equilibrium chemical systems underpin multiple domains of contemporary interest, including supramolecular chemistry, molecular machines, systems chemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and energy transduction. Experimental chemists are now pioneering the realization of artificial systems that can harvest energy away from equilibrium. In this tutorial Review, we provide an overview of artificial molecular ratchets: the chemical mechanisms enabling energy absorption from the environment. By focusing on the mechanism type—rather than the application domain or energy source—we offer a unifying picture of seemingly disparate phenomena, which we hope will foster progress in this fascinating domain of science.     

Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction and LC–MS/MS for Trace Analysis of UV Filters in Different Water Matrices

A simple, selective and highly sensitive method was developed and optimized to determine the most commonly used UV filters with endocrine-disrupting potential in water, namely benzophenone-3 (BP-3), octocrylene (OC), ethylhexyl dimethyl p-aminobenzoate (OD-PABA), ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate, ethylhexyl salicylate (EHS) and homosalate (HMS). Samples were extracted by stir bar sorptive extraction followed by liquid desorption (SBSE-LD). The important factors influencing SBSE-LD were optimized. Under optimal conditions, assays were performed on 50 mL of water sample using stir bars (0.5 mm in film thickness, 10 mm in length) at room temperature. The analytes were determined by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry with triple quadrupole analyzer using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization. The main parameters in HPLC–APCI–MS/MS were also optimized to provide the best performances for all analytes. Moreover, matrix effect was investigated using two methods the post-column infusion system and the method of spiked matrices after extraction. As a result, no significant matrix effect on the analysis was observed. The method showed good linearity (R ² coefficients greater than 0.996 in different water samples after SBSE-LD). Recoveries of the analytes were close to 90%, except for BP-3 (64%) and OC (76%) with relative standard deviation lower than 11%. Detection limits were between 0.6 and 3.3 ng L⁻¹ for all the analytes except for HMS (94 ng L⁻¹) and EHS (114 ng L⁻¹). This methodology was applied to measure UV filters in seawater, river water and wastewater in different sites of Liguria; BP-3 and OC were found in most of the considered samples at rather low concentration level.

     

Hidden order in 1D bose insulators

We investigate the phase diagram of spinless bosons with long range (variant 1/r(3)) repulsive interactions, relevant to ultracold polarized atoms or molecules, using density matrix renormalization group. Between the two conventional insulating phases, the Mott and density wave phases, we find a new phase possessing hidden order revealed by nonlocal string correlations analogous to those characterizing the Haldane gapped phase of integer spin chains. We develop a mean field theory that describes the low-energy excitations in all three insulating phases. This is used to calculate the absorption spectrum due to oscillatory lattice modulation. We predict a sharp resonance in the spectrum due to a collective excitation of the new phase that would provide clear evidence for the existence of this phase.     

Conformational flexibility in the peripheral site of Torpedo californica acetylcholinesterase revealed by the complex structure with a bifunctional inhibitor

The X-ray crystallographic structure of Torpedo californica acetylcholinesterase (TcAChE) in complex with the bifunctional inhibitor NF595, a potentially new anti-Alzheimer drug, has been solved. For the first time in TcAChE, a major conformational change in the peripheral-site tryptophan residue is observed upon complexation. The observed conformational flexibility highlights the dynamic nature of protein structures and is of importance for structure-based drug design.     

Optimal predictive densities and fractional moments

The maximum entropy approach used together with fractional moments has proven to be a flexible and powerful tool for density approximation of a positive random variable. In this paper we consider an optimality criterion based on the Kullback–Leibler distance in order to select appropriate fractional moments. We discuss the properties of the proposed procedure when all the available information comes from a sample of observations. The method is applied to the size distribution of the U.S. family income. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>(<Emphasis Type="Italic">h</Emphasis>, 1, 1)-labeling of outerplanar graphs

An L(h, 1, 1)-labeling of a graph is an assignment of labels from the set of integers {0, . . . , λ} to the nodes of the graph such that adjacent nodes are assigned integers of at least distance h ≥ 1 apart and all nodes of distance three or less must be assigned different labels. The aim of the L(h, 1, 1)-labeling problem is to minimize λ, denoted by λ _{h, 1, 1} and called span of the L(h, 1, 1)-labeling. As outerplanar graphs have bounded treewidth, the L(1, 1, 1)-labeling problem on outerplanar graphs can be exactly solved in O(n ³), but the multiplicative factor depends on the maximum degree Δ and is too big to be of practical use. In this paper we give a linear time approximation algorithm for computing the more general L(h, 1, 1)-labeling for outerplanar graphs that is within additive constants of the optimum values. This research is partially supported by the European Research Project Algorithmic Principles for Building Efficient Overlay Computers (AEOLUS) and was done during the visit of Richard B. Tan at the Department of Computer Science, University of Rome “Sapienza”, supported by a visiting fellowship from the University of Rome “Sapienza”.     

One-way multiparty communication lower bound for pointer jumping with applications

In this paper we study the one-way multiparty communication model, in which every party speaks exactly once in its turn. For every k, we prove a tight lower bound of Ω(n ^1/(k?1)}) on the probabilistic communication complexity of pointer jumping in a k-layered tree, where the pointers of the i-th layer reside on the forehead of the i-th party to speak. The lower bound remains nontrivial even for k = (logn)^1/2?? parties, for any constant ? > 0. Previous to our work a lower bound was known only for k =3 (Wigderson, see [7]), and in restricted models for k>3 [2},24,18,4,13]. Our results have the following consequences to other models and problems, extending previous work in several directions. The one-way model is strong enough to capture general (not one-way) multiparty protocols with a bounded number of rounds. Thus we generalize two problem areas previously studied in the 2-party model (cf. [30,21,29]). The first is a rounds hierarchy: we give an exponential separation between the power of r and 2r rounds in general probabilistic k-party protocols, for any k and r. The second is the relative power of determinism and nondeterminism: we prove an exponential separation between nondeterministic and deterministic communication complexity for general k-party protocols with r rounds, for any k,r. The pointer jumping function is weak enough to be a special case of the well-studied disjointness function. Thus we obtain a lower bound of Ω(n ^1/(k?1)) on the probabilistic complexity of k-set disjointness in the one-way model, which was known only for k = 3 parties. Our result also extends a similar lower bound for the weaker simultaneous model, in which parties simultaneously send one message to a referee [12]. Finally, we infer an exponential separation between the power of any two different orders in which parties send messages in the one-way model, for every k. Previous results [29, 7] separated orders based on who speaks first. Our lower bound technique, which handles functions of high discrepancy over cylinder intersections, provides a “party-elimination” induction, based on a restricted form of a direct-product result, specific to the pointer jumping function.     

Linear extensions of partial orders and reverse mathematics

We introduce the notion of τ‐like partial order, where τ is one of the linear order types ω, ω*, ω + ω*, and ζ. For example, being ω‐like means that every element has finitely many predecessors, while being ζ‐like means that every interval is finite. We consider statements of the form “any τ‐like partial order has a τ‐like linear extension” and “any τ‐like partial order is embeddable into τ” (when τ is ζ this result appears to be new). Working in the framework of reverse mathematics, we show that these statements are equivalent either to $\mathsf {B}{\Sigma }^{0}_{2}$ or to $\mathsf {ACA}_0$ over the usual base system $\mathsf {RCA}_0$.