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The article deals with individual aspects in professional training of tourism specialists in the UK. It has been specified that alongside with the global development of tourism education, the UK revealed the potential of its tourism industry with the introduction of the Development of Tourism Act in 1969. Consequently, the tourism education in the UK has undergone three periods, namely, the establishment of the tourism industry and the comprehension of the need to prepare highly qualified tourism specialists, the development of tourism and hospitality courses, the large-scale foundation of higher education institutions offering tourism and hospitality courses. It has been clarified that the Quality Assurance Agency developed the Subject Benchmark Statement for Events, Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism, which is rather innovative and multidisciplinary, so that programme developers can take into consideration global challenges and needs of the modern labour market to prepare competitive specialists, who can become their own curriculum producers. It has been stated that future tourism specialists in the UK are fully supplied with innovative communication and information technologies and can pay much attention to developing practical skills while undergoing industrial placements, live case studies, participating in volunteering activities, gain valuable professional experience due to advanced facilities. The following recommendations have been outlined to improve quality of future tourism specialists' professional training in Ukraine: (1) to develop relevant regulatory framework for professional tourism education; (2) to analyze the market of tourism supply and demand in order to define which tourism specialists are most required and, consequently, to expand a spectrum of specializations in professional training of tourism specialists; (3) to improve the state of facilities at higher education institutions offering tourism courses and provide students with the opportunity to gain valuable professional experience in modern technology-enhanced classrooms; (4) to increase the practical component of future tourism specialists' professional training through implementing industrial placements, work-based learning, direct collaborations with practitioners and employers, live case-studies, life performance and events, etc.; and (5) to involve students into the design of their own curricula, so that they can feel themselves responsible for their learning outcomes.

The association between alcohol outlets and violence has long been recognised, and is commonly used to inform policing and licensing policies (such as staggered closing times and zoning). Less investigated, however, is the association between violent crime and other urban points of interest, which while associated with the city centre alcohol consumption economy, are not explicitly alcohol outlets. Here, machine learning (specifically, LASSO regression) is used to model the distribution of violent crime for the central 9 km2 of ten large UK cities. Densities of 620 different Point of Interest types (sourced from Ordnance Survey) are used as predictors, with the 10 most explanatory variables being automatically selected for each city. Cross validation is used to test generalisability of each model. Results show that the inclusion of additional point of interest types produces a more accurate model, with significant increases in performance over a baseline univariate alcohol-outlet only model. Analysis of chosen variables for city-specific models shows potential candidates for new strategies on a per-city basis, with combined-model variables showing the general trend in POI/violence association across the UK. Although alcohol outlets remain the best individual predictor of violence, other points of interest should also be considered when modelling the distribution of violence in city centres. The presented method could be used to develop targeted, city-specific initiatives that go beyond alcohol outlets and also consider other locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• An Asian Indian population-specific rare variant (Arg148His) in the MFGE8 increased circulating Mfge8 and risk for T2DM. • Increased serum Mfge8 levels correlated significantly with blood glucose in non-South Asians without Arg148His variant. • Zebrafish larvae showed rapid effects on insulin-sensitive organs when exposed to Mfge8-enriched human exosomes. MFGE8 is a major exosome (EV) protein known to mediate inflammation and atherosclerosis in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in animal studies. The pathophysiological role of this protein in obesity, T2DM, and cardiovascular disease is less investigated in humans. Earlier we reported a rare Asian Indian population-specific missense variant (rs371227978; Arg148His) in the MFGE8 gene associated with increased circulating Mfge8 and T2DM. We have further investigated the role of Mfge8 with T2DM risk in additional Asian Indians (n = 4897) and Europeans and other multiethnic cohorts from UK Biobank (UKBB) (n = 455,808) and the US (n = 1150). We also evaluated the exposure of Mfge8-enriched human EVs in zebrafish (ZF) for their impact on cardiometabolic organ system. Most individual carriers of Arg148His variant not only had high circulating Mfge8 but also revealed a positive significant correlation with glucose (r = 0.42; p = 4.9 × 10−04), while the non-carriers showed a negative correlation of Mfge8 with glucose (r = −0.38; p = 0.001) in Asian Indians. The same variant was monomorphic in non-South Asian ethnicities. Even without the variant, serum Mfge8 correlated significantly with blood glucose in other non-South Asian ethnicities (r = 0.47; p = 2.2 × 10−13). Since Mfge8 is an EV marker, we tested the exposure of Mfge8-enriched human EVs to ZF larvae as an exploratory study. The ZF larvae showed rapid effects on insulin-sensitive organs, developing fatty liver disease, heart hypertrophy and exhibiting redundant growth with poor muscular architecture with and without the high-fat diet (HFD). In contrast, the control group fishes developed fatty liver disease and heart hypertrophy only after the HFD feeding. Backed with strong support from animal studies on the role of Mfge8 in obesity, insulin resistance, and atherosclerosis, the current research suggests that circulating Mfge8 may become a potential marker for predicting the risk of T2DM and cardiovascular disease in humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stroke is a significant health issue in the United States, and identifying biomarkers for the prevention and functional recovery after an acute stroke remains the highest priority. This study aims to identify circulating metabolite signatures that may be associated with stroke pathophysiology by performing discovery and validation studies. We performed targeted metabolomics profiling of 420 participants of the discovery dataset of Metabolome in an Ischemic Stroke Study (MISS) using high-throughput nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. A validation study of significantly altered metabolites was conducted using an independent cohort of 117,988 participants from the UK Biobank, whose metabolomics profiles were generated using the same NMR technology. Our study identified 16 metabolites to be significantly perturbed during acute stroke. Amino acid phenylalanine was significantly increased, while glutamine and histidine were significantly lowered in stroke. Serum levels of apolipoprotein A-1, HDL particles, small HDL particles, essential fatty acids, and phosphatidylcholine were reduced, while ketone bodies like 3-hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate were markedly increased in stroke. Based on the robust validation in a large independent UK Biobank dataset, some of these analytes may become clinically meaningful biomarkers to predict or prevent stroke in humans. • Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is a significant health issue in the United States. • The use of metabolomics for biomarker identification is still elementary in AIS. • A total of 420 stroke patients were profiled using NMR spectroscopy. • Significantly altered metabolites validated in 117,988 patients from UK Biobank. • Phenylalanine, ApoA-1, fatty acids, 3-hydroxybutyrate were significantly altered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]