Association between yoga and related contextual factors with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity among children and youth aged 5 to 17 years across five Indian states.

Physical inactivity is one of the four key preventable risk factors, along with unhealthy diet, tobacco use, and alcohol consumption, underlying most noncommunicable diseases. Promoting physical activity is particularly important among children and youth, whose active living behaviours often track into adulthood. Incorporating yoga, an ancient practice that originated in India, can be a culturally-appropriate strategy to promote physical activity in India. However, there is little evidence on whether yoga practice is associated with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) accumulation. Thus, this study aims to understand how yoga practice is associated with MVPA among children and youth in India. Data for this study were obtained during the coronavirus disease lockdown in 2021. Online surveys capturing MVPA, yoga practice, contextual factors, and sociodemographic characteristics, were completed by 5 to 17-year-old children and youth in partnership with 41 schools across 28 urban and rural locations in five states. Linear regression analyses were conducted to assess the association between yoga practice and MVPA. After controlling for age, gender, and location, yoga practice was significantly associated with MVPA among children and youth (ß = 0.634, p < 0.000). These findings highlight the value of culturally-appropriate activities such as yoga, to promote physical activity among children and youth. Yoga practice might have a particularly positive impact on physical activity among children and youth across the world, owing to its growing global prevalence.

Digital Health Dashboards for Decision-Making to Enable Rapid Responses During Public Health Crises: Replicable and Scalable Methodology.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has reiterated the need for cohesive, collective, and deliberate societal efforts to address inherent inefficiencies in our health systems and overcome decision-making gaps using real-time data analytics. To achieve this, decision makers need independent and secure digital health platforms that engage citizens ethically to obtain big data, analyze and convert big data into real-time evidence, and finally, visualize this evidence to inform rapid decision-making. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study is to develop replicable and scalable jurisdiction-specific digital health dashboards for rapid decision-making to ethically monitor, mitigate, and manage public health crises via systems integration beyond health care. METHODS: The primary approach in the development of the digital health dashboard was the use of global digital citizen science to tackle pandemics like COVID-19. The first step in the development process was to establish an 8-member Citizen Scientist Advisory Council via Digital Epidemiology and Population Health Laboratory's community partnerships. Based on the consultation with the council, three critical needs of citizens were prioritized: (1) management of household risk of COVID-19, (2) facilitation of food security, and (3) understanding citizen accessibility of public services. Thereafter, a progressive web application (PWA) was developed to provide daily services that address these needs. The big data generated from citizen access to these PWA services are set up to be anonymized, aggregated, and linked to the digital health dashboard for decision-making, that is, the dashboard displays anonymized and aggregated data obtained from citizen devices via the PWA. The digital health dashboard and the PWA are hosted on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud server. The digital health dashboard's interactive statistical navigation was designed using the Microsoft Power Business Intelligence tool, which creates a secure connection with the Amazon Relational Database server to regularly update the visualization of jurisdiction-specific, anonymized, and aggregated data. RESULTS: The development process resulted in a replicable and scalable digital health dashboard for decision-making. The big data relayed to the dashboard in real time reflect usage of the PWA that provides households the ability to manage their risk of COVID-19, request food when in need, and report difficulties and issues in accessing public services. The dashboard also provides (1) delegated community alert system to manage risks in real time, (2) bidirectional engagement system that allows decision makers to respond to citizen queries, and (3) delegated access that provides enhanced dashboard security. CONCLUSIONS: Digital health dashboards for decision-making can transform public health policy by prioritizing the needs of citizens as well as decision makers to enable rapid decision-making. Digital health dashboards provide decision makers the ability to directly communicate with citizens to mitigate and manage existing and emerging public health crises, a paradigm-changing approach, that is, inverting innovation by prioritizing community needs, and advancing digital health for equity. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR1-10.2196/46810.

Traditional surveys versus ecological momentary assessments: Digital citizen science approaches to improve ethical physical activity surveillance among youth.

The role of physical activity (PA) in minimizing non-communicable diseases is well established. Measurement bias can be reduced via ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) deployed via citizen-owned smartphones. This study aims to engage citizen scientists to understand how PA reported digitally by retrospective and prospective measures varies within the same cohort. This study used the digital citizen science approach to collaborate with citizen scientists, aged 13-21 years over eight consecutive days via a custom-built app. Citizen scientists were recruited through schools in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in 2018 (August 31-December 31). Retrospective PA was assessed through a survey, which was adapted from three validated PA surveys to suit smartphone-based data collection, and prospective PA was assessed through time-triggered EMAs deployed consecutively every day, from day 1 to day 8, including weekdays and weekends. Data analyses included paired t-tests to understand the difference in PA reported retrospectively and prospectively, and linear regressions to assess contextual and demographic factors associated with PA reported retrospectively and prospectively. Findings showed a significant difference between PA reported retrospectively and prospectively (p = 0.001). Ethnicity (visible minorities: ß = - 0.911, 95% C.I. = -1.677, -0.146), parental education (university: ß = 0.978, 95% C.I. = 0.308, 1.649), and strength training (at least one day: ß = 0.932, 95% C.I. = 0.108, 1.755) were associated with PA reported prospectively. In contrast, the number of active friends (at least one friend: ß = 0.741, 95% C.I. = 0.026, 1.458) was associated with retrospective PA. Physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of mortality globally, which requires accurate monitoring to inform population health interventions. In this digital age, where ubiquitous devices provide real-time engagement capabilities, digital citizen science can transform how we measure behaviours using citizen-owned ubiquitous digital tools to support prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases.

Correction to: Radical scavenging and antiproliferative effect of novel phenolic derivatives isolated from Nerium indicum against human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7)-an in silico and in vitro approach.

The correct presentation of the Author names are shown in this paper.

Radical scavenging and antiproliferative effect of novel phenolic derivatives isolated from Nerium indicum against human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7)-an in silico and in vitro approach.

Multiple drug resistance and increased side effects due to allopathic drugs has warned scientific community with a global alarm to identify molecules from natural sources to combat diseases with minimum or no side effects. The present investigation was aimed to identify and isolate secondary metabolites from traditionally used Nerium indicum using conventional column chromatography which led to the isolation of two compounds, C-I (fractions NB4f1) and C-II (fractions NC13b1). Further characterized, it is elucidated using spectral data and identified as N-(4-hydroxy-phenyl)-2-methoxy-2-phenyl-acetamide, molecular formula C15H15NO3, and molecular weight 257.3 (C-I) and N-(4-hydroxy-phenyl)-2-phenyl-N-phenylacetyl-acetamide, molecular formula C22H19NO3, and molecular weight 345.4 (C-II). Further, the isolated compounds were investigated using in silico approach by Autodock tool with four different proteins specific for cancer and in vitro assessed cell proliferation, and apoptosis against human breast cancer MCF 7 cell line. The results of the in silico model demonstrated potent binding affinity of both compounds with the proteins representing that the isolated molecules could be a drug of choice for cancer. Further, the isolated compounds revealed significant inhibition of cell proliferation (IC50 values 21 µg/mL for C-I, 19 µg/mL for C-II) with induced apoptosis with nuclear condensation effect on the MCF 7 cells in in vitro condition even at very low concentration. Compound treatment to MCF-7 cell line represented bright fetches indicating condensed chromatins and higher level of nuclear fragmentation with DAPI staining, indicating higher cell death due to induced apoptosis and confirmed using flow cytometry analysis representing inhibition of cell proliferation at S phase. Graphical abstract.

Stereoselective synthesis of substituted 1,2-annulated sugars by domino double-Michael addition reaction.

A simple, highly stereoselective one-pot methodology for the synthesis of novel 1,2-annulated sugars comprising of oxa-oxa and oxa-carbasugar fused skeletons from 2-nitrogalactal and a sugar-derived enone, obtained from 2-formylgalactal, promoted by KOtBu and CH3ONa respectively is described. Both processes rely on a domino double-Michael addition reaction resulting in the formation of three stereocenters in a single pot, including a quaternary center.