Objective

We hypothesized that professional football teams would perform better than anticipated during games occurring close to their circadian peak in performance.

Design

We reviewed the past 40 years of evening and daytime professional football games between west coast and east coast United States teams. In order to account for known factors influencing football game outcomes we compared the results to the point spread which addresses all significant differences between opposing teams for sports betting purposes. One sample t-tests, Wilcoxon signed ranked tests, and linear regression were performed. Comparison to day game data was included as a control.

Setting

Academic medical center.

Participants

N/A.

Interventions

N/A.

Results

The results were strongly in favor of the west coast teams during evening games against east coast teams, with the west coast teams beating the point spread about twice as often (t = 3.95, P < 0.0001) as east coast teams. For similar daytime game match-ups, we observed no such advantage.

Conclusions

Sleep and circadian physiology have profound effects on human function including the performance of elite athletes. Professional football players playing close to the circadian peak in performance demonstrate a significant athletic advantage over those who are playing at other times. Application of this knowledge is likely to enhance human performance.

Maternal psychosocial stress increases the risk of adverse birth and postnatal outcomes for the mother and child, but the role of maternal exposure to childhood traumatic events (CTE) and multi-domain psychosocial stressors for the level and rise of placental Corticotrophin-Releasing Hormone (pCRH) across pregnancy has been understudied. In a sociodemographically and racially diverse sample of 1303 women (64% Black, 36% White/others) with low-medical risk pregnancies at enrollment from Shelby County, Tennessee, USA, blood samples were drawn twice, corresponding roughly to second and third trimester, and extracted prior to conducting radioimmune assays for pCRH. Mothers reported CTE (physical abuse, sexual abuse, or family violence, in childhood), adulthood traumatic events, and interpersonal violence during pregnancy. Neighborhood crime/deprivation was derived using geospatially-linked objective databases. General linear and mixed models tested associations between stress exposure variables and pCRH levels and rate of rise, adjusting for obstetric/clinical/health related factors. Maternal CTE did not predict pCRH levels at time 1, but positively predicted levels at time 2, and the rate of rise in pCRH across pregnancy. Race did not moderate this association. No additional maternal stress exposures across adulthood or during pregnancy predicted pCRH outcomes. Findings indicate that childhood violence or abuse exposure can become biologically embedded in a manner predicting later prenatal physiology relevant for maternal and offspring health, and that such embedding may be specific to childhood, but not adulthood, stress. Findings also highlight the placental-fetal unit as a mechanistic pathway through which intergenerational transmission of the adverse effects of childhood adversities may occur.

Following the charge provided by the University of California’s Direction and Oversight Committee in 2019, the Digital Preservation Strategy Working Group (DPS WG) focused Phase Two activities on identifying the steps needed to build a community of practice around digital preservation in the UC Library system with the primary goal of preparing a path for collective action in the stewardship of the content types held in common by the ten campuses and CDL. To this end, the DPS WG developed a taxonomy of digital content types to serve as the basis for a systemwide digital asset inventory, designed a comprehensive survey instrument administered through interviews with 44 individuals across all campuses and CDL, and conducted a literature review regarding relevant economic models for sustaining a digital preservation program.

In the Fall of 2018, the Direction and Oversight Committee (DOC) formed the Digital Preservation Strategy (DPS) Working Group with the charge of (1) developing a practical, shared vision of digital preservation for library content, and (2) outlining a roadmap to guide the UC Libraries in advancing that shared vision. The DPS Working Group will fulfill this charge in multiple phases, and this report presents the results of Phase One, which lays the groundwork for further discussion and, ultimately, recommendations on the policies, strategies, and actions required for the digital preservation of the millions of digital assets held across the ten UC campuses and the California Digital Library. Specifically, the Phase One report focuses on three areas: (1) an overview of external digital preservation service providers (exemplar organizations), including consortia, vendors, and university-based providers; (2) background information on current and planned UC libraries’ digital preservation activities; and (3) a high-level overview of current best practices for digital preservation, based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model.

Context

Phthalates may disrupt maternal-fetal-placental endocrine pathways, affecting pregnancy outcomes and child development. Placental corticotropin releasing hormone (pCRH) is critical for healthy pregnancy and child development, but understudied as a target of endocrine disruption.

Objective

To examine phthalate metabolite concentrations (as mixtures and individually) in relation to pCRH.

Design

Secondary data analysis from a prospective cohort study.

Setting

Prenatal clinics in Tennessee, USA.

Patients

1018 pregnant women (61.4% non-Hispanic Black, 32% non-Hispanic White, 6.6% other) participated in the CANDLE study and provided data. Inclusion criteria included: low-medical-risk singleton pregnancy, age 16-40, and gestational weeks 16-29.

Intervention

None.

Main outcome measures

Plasma pCRH at two visits (mean gestational ages 23.0 and 31.8 weeks) and change in pCRH between visits (ΔpCRH).

Results

In weighted quantile sums (WQS) regression models, phthalate mixtures were associated with higher pCRH at Visit 1 (β = 0.07, 95 %CI: 0.02, 0.11) but lower pCRH at Visit 2 (β = -0.08, 95 %CI: -0.14, -0.02). In stratified analyses, among women with gestational diabetes (n = 59), phthalate mixtures were associated with lower pCRH at Visit 1 (β = -0.17, 95 %CI: -0.35, 0.0006) and Visit 2 (β = -0.35, 95 %CI: -0.50, -0.19), as well as greater ΔpCRH (β = 0.16, 95 %CI: 0.07, 0.25). Among women with gestational hypertension (n = 102), phthalate mixtures were associated with higher pCRH at Visit 1 (β = 0.20, 95 %CI: 0.03, 0.36) and Visit 2 (β = 0.42; 95 %CI: 0.19, 0.64) and lower ΔpCRH (β = -0.17, 95 %CI: -0.29, -0.06). Significant interactions between individual phthalate metabolites and pregnancy complications were observed.

Conclusions

Phthalates may impact placental CRH secretion, with differing effects across pregnancy. Differences in results between women with and without gestational diabetes and gestational hypertension suggest a need for further research examining whether women with pregnancy complications may be more vulnerable to endocrine-disrupting effects of phthalates.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous endocrine-disrupting combustion by-products that have been linked to preterm birth. One possible mechanism is through disruption of placental corticotropin releasing hormone (pCRH), a key hormone implicated in parturition. As an extension of recent research identifying pCRH as a potential target of endocrine disruption, we examined maternal PAH exposure in relation to pCRH in a large, diverse sample. Participants, drawn from the CANDLE cohort, part of the ECHO-PATHWAYS Consortium, completed study visits at 16-29 weeks (V1) and 22-39 weeks (V2) gestation (n=812). Seven urinary mono-hydroxylated PAH metabolites (OH-PAHs) were measured at V1 and serum pCRH at V1 and V2. Associations between individual log-transformed OH-PAHs (as well as two summed PAH measures) and log(pCRH) concentrations across visits were estimated using mixed effects models. Minimally-adjusted models included gestational age and urinary specific gravity, while fully-adjusted models also included sociodemographic characteristics. We additionally evaluated effect modification by pregnancy complications, fetal sex, and maternal childhood trauma history. We observed associations between 2-OH-Phenanthrene (2-OH-PHEN) and rate of pCRH change that persisted in fully adjusted models (β=0.0009, 0.00006, 0.0017), however, positive associations with other metabolites (most notably 3-OH-Phenanthrene and 1-Hydroxypyrene) were attenuated after adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics. Associations tended to be stronger at V1 compared to V2 and we observed no evidence of effect modification by pregnancy complications, fetal sex, or maternal childhood trauma history. In conclusion, we observed modest evidence of association between OH-PAHs, most notably 2-OH-PHEN, and pCRH in this sample. Additional research using serial measures of PAH exposure is warranted, as is investigation of alternative mechanisms that may link PAHs and timing of birth, such as inflammatory, epigenetic, or oxidative stress pathways.

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) has been observing the entire northern sky since the start of 2018 down to a magnitude of 20.5 (5σ for 30 s exposure) in the g, r, and i filters. Over the course of two years, ZTF has obtained light curves of more than a billion sources, each with 50–1000 epochs per light curve in g and r, and fewer in i. To be able to use the information contained in the light curves of variable sources for new scientific discoveries, an efficient and flexible framework is needed to classify them. In this paper, we introduce the methods and infrastructure that will be used to classify all ZTF light curves. Our approach aims to be flexible and modular and allows the use of a dynamical classification scheme and labels, continuously evolving training sets, and the use of different machine-learning classifier types and architectures. With this setup, we are able to continuously update and improve the classification of ZTF light curves as new data become available, training samples are updated, and new classes need to be incorporated.