Search

This study explored the association between socioecological factors and outdoor physical activity (PA) and play in children with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents (N = 133) completed a survey to report changes in their child’s outdoor PA and play during the pandemic (from prepandemic levels), and child, household, and neighborhood environment factors. Children with a PA-supporting parent and from multichild and White households had lower odds of reporting decreased outdoor PA. Children from multichild, higher income, married couple households and a PA-supporting parent had lower odds of decreased outdoor play. Living in neighborhoods with higher urbanization (i.e., high dwelling density, street intersections, and land-use mix) was associated with greater odds of decreased outdoor PA and play. Future research that uses larger and more representative samples of children with disabilities is needed to test for the multivariate effects of socioecological variables on outdoor PA and play.

Purpose: The purposes of the current study were to identify risk profiles for nonadherence among children and youth (5–17 y) at the 6-month mark of the COVID-19 pandemic and to discuss similarities and differences between risk profiles identified in the current study and those identified at the 1-month mark of the pandemic. Methods: Data were part of a nationally representative sample of 1143 parents (Mage = 43.07 y, SD = 8.16) of children and youth (5–17 y) living in Canada. Survey data were collected in October 2020. Results: Results showed that 3.8% met all movement behavior recommendations, 16.2% met the physical activity recommendation, 27% met the screen time recommendation, and 63.8% met the sleep recommendation. Characteristics associated with nonadherence to all movement behaviors included low parental perceived capability to restrict screen time and decreased overall time spent outdoors. Characteristics associated with nonadherence to the physical activity and screen time recommendations included youth (12–17 y), low parental perceived capability to restrict screen time, decreased time spent outdoors, and increased screen time. Conclusion: Results emphasized the importance of parental perceived capability to restrict screen time and children’s and youth’s outdoor time and showed that pandemic-related factors have impacted children and youth differently.

Shared e-scooter systems are operating across hundreds of cities worldwide. However, limited understanding of the user demand, as well as how this demand varies across individuals with various transportation preferences living in different urban contexts, is a key barrier to developing policy and regulations. This paper begins to close this gap by providing preliminary but novel insights into the socio-demographic, attitudinal and built-environment characteristics of potential users of shared e-scooters. In particular, we examine the self-reported intention to consider shared e-scooters by residents in Toronto and surrounding municipalities in Canada. Based on an online survey of 1,640 adults living in 17 neighbourhoods, we found that 21% were amenable to considering e-scooters for some of their current trips, and the majority would replace their existing walking (60%) and transit (55%) trips with shared e-scooters. Weighted logistic regression models revealed that all else being equal, preference toward trip efficiency, and environment and health-consciousness, were positively associated with potential e-scooter consideration. Perceived walkability/bikability and street safety also increased the likelihood of considering shared e-scooter in future. The findings begin to identify who will likely benefit from this micro-mobility option and where the impacts will be felt the most.

P availability determined the root uptake and root–shoot translocation of micronutrients. Total root 14C exudation was significantly higher under P−Fe− across wheat cultivars. Although malate than citrate was the predominant constituent of the root exudates in wheat, their release was higher under P− than P+ condition, irrespective of the Fe availability.A higher release of phytosiderophores was measured under P−Fe− than P+Fe+ for bread than durum wheat. The study highlights the role of root exudates in influencing the mobilization, uptake and translocation of not only P and Fe but also Mn and to some extent Cu, particularly under the nutrient-starved (P−Fe−) condition of growth.

Daily life has changed for families due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this repeated cross-sectional study was to describe movement behaviours in Canadian children and youth 6 months into the pandemic (T2; October 2020) compared with the start of the pandemic (T1, April 2020). An online survey was distributed to parents (N = 1568) of children and/or youth (5–17 years; 58% girls) in October 2020. The survey assessed changes in movement behaviours (physical activity and play, sedentary behaviours, and sleep) from before the pandemic to October 2020 (T2). We compared these data with spring data (T1; April 2020; Moore et al. 2020; Int. J. Behav. Nutr. Phys. Act, 17:85) collected using identical methodology (N = 1472; 54% girls). We report correlations between movement behaviours and relevant parental factors and provide word frequency distributions for open-ended responses. During the second wave, 4.5% of children (4.6% girls; 4.3% boys) and 1.9% of youth (1.3% girls, 2.4% boys) met the movement guidelines (3.1% overall). Whereas, during the first wave, 4.8% (2.8% girls, 6.5% boys) of children and 0.6% (0.8% girls, 0.5% boys) of youth were meeting combined guidelines (2.6% overall). Parental support was correlated with their child’s movement behaviours (T1 and T2). Our study demonstrates the ongoing challenges for children and youth to engage in healthy movement during the pandemic. Novelty: Our large-scale national study demonstrates that children and youth were not meeting the 24-hour movement guidelines during the second wave of the pandemic. Our findings illustrate the need to protect children and youth from the collateral consequences of the pandemic.

Children’s independent mobility (CIM) is critical to healthy development in childhood. The physical layout and social characteristics of neighbourhoods can impact opportunities for CIM. While global evidence is mounting on CIM, to the authors’ knowledge, Canadian data on CIM and related health outcomes (i.e., physical activity (PA) behaviour) are missing. The purpose of this study was to examine if CIM is related to multiple characteristics of accelerometry-measured PA behaviour (total PA, light PA, moderate-to-vigorous PA, time spent sedentary) and whether associations between CIM and PA behaviour systematically vary by place of residence, stratifying by gender and type of day/period (weekdays, after-school, weekend). Participants were recruited through Project BEAT (Built Environment and Active Transport; http://www.beat.utoronto.ca ). Children (n = 856) were stratified into four neighbourhood classifications based on the period of neighbourhood development (urban built environment (BE) (old BE) versus inner-suburban BE (new BE)) and socioeconomic status (SES; low SES and high SES). Physical activity was measured via accelerometry (ActiGraph GT1M). CIM was assessed via parental report and two categories were created (low CIM, n = 332; high CIM, n = 524). A series of two-factor ANOVAs were used to determine gender-specific differences in PA for weekdays, weekend days and the after-school period, according to level of CIM, across four neighbourhood classifications. Children who were granted at least some independent mobility (high CIM) had more positive PA profiles across the school week, during the after-school period, and over the weekend; they were also less sedentary. The influence of CIM on PA behaviour was particularly salient during the after-school period. Associations of CIM with PA varied by gender, and also by neighbourhood classification. CIM seemed to matter more in urban neighbourhoods for boys and suburban neighbourhoods for girls. Our findings highlight the importance of independent mobility to multiple characteristics of children’s PA behaviour across the week. Furthermore, they emphasize that independent mobility-activity relationships need to be considered by gender and the type of neighbourhood independent mobility is offered in. Future work will focus on developing a predictive model of CIM that could be used to inform decision-making around alleviating barriers to CIM.

Research on the millennial generation's travel behaviour is emerging, but little is known about the socio-demographic, attitudinal and environmental factors that influence day-to-day trips by these young adults. In this study, data collected from four universities in Toronto, Canada, was analyzed to explore patterns in transportation behaviour, or transportation life-styles, of post-secondary students. A latent class analysis identified five distinct student groups based on a one-day travel diary data and self-reported long-term travel behaviour, namely: Transit dependent (31%), Active and neighbourhood oriented (23%), Multi-modal (11%), Occasional driver (12%) and Driver (23%). Two-thirds of students (65%) predominantly relied on either walking/cycling or transit. Logistic regression models indicated that a student's socio-demographic characteristics and life-course situations might explain their travel behaviour. Neighbourhood type of residence was an important indicator of a student's transportation life-style. Strong associations between travel attitudes, residential location preferences and a student's transportation life-style was also observed. Post-secondary students are at an important stage in their life-course where they begin to form habitual travel behaviour as young adults. Findings from this study contribute an improved understanding of travel behaviour, which may also inform planning, policy and service provision relating to transportation, land development and affordable housing.

Regional commuter rail has become an important means of traveling to urban employment centers across North America, but planners are faced with the challenge of connecting commuters from their origin or destination locations to a train station. Cycling may be an efficient and low-cost way of taking these transit-access trips. However, cycling behavior of rail commuters, particularly in a suburban context, remains understudied. This research examined perceptions of cycling and current cycling behavior of 257 transit users from three suburban commuter rail stations in the Toronto region, Canada. Using a cluster analysis approach, four distinct cyclist types were identified, namely: recreational cyclists (29%), all-purpose cyclists (10%), safety-conscious occasional cyclists (33%), and facility-demanding occasional cyclists (28%). Differences between these groups included different mode-choice motivations, tolerance for adverse weather conditions, comfort bicycling in various hypothetical traffic/infrastructure conditions, and current frequency of cycling for transportation and recreational purposes. The safety-conscious group included a higher percentage of women compared to other groups. Overall, 32.5% of regional transit users would be interested in cycling more often to rail stations. A higher proportion of recreational cyclists (compared to other groups) were “interested first-mile cyclists”, whereas the safety-conscious group had a significantly greater proportion of “uninterested” respondents. With careful planning of bicycle infrastructure and awareness campaigns targeting perceptions of cycling, there is much potential for cycling to accommodate a greater proportion of transit-access trips in suburban communities, reducing demand for automobile parking at transit stations.

High temperature challenges global crop production by limiting the growth and development of the reproductive structures and seed. It impairs the developmental stages of male and female gametogenesis, pollination, fertilization, endosperm formation and embryo development. Among these, the male reproductive processes are highly prone to abnormalities under high temperature at various stages of development. The disruption of source–sink balance is the main constraint for satisfactory growth of the reproductive structures which is disturbed at the level of sucrose import and utilization within the tissue. Seed development after fertilization is affected by modulation in the activity of enzymes involved in starch metabolism. In addition, the alteration in the seed-filling rate and its duration affects the seed weight and quality. The present review critically discusses the role of sugar metabolism in influencing the various stages of gamete and seed development under high temperature stress. It also highlights the interaction of the sugars with hormones that mediate the transport of sugars to sink tissues. The role of transcription factors for the regulation of sugar availability under high temperature has also been discussed. Further, the omics-based systematic investigation has been suggested to understand the synergistic or antagonistic interactions between sugars, hormones and reactive oxygen species at various points of sucrose flow from source to sink under high temperature stress.

Students with disabilities have largely been left out of travel behaviour research. We examined differences in student reported transport mode share, and perceptions about commuting impacts on education, between students with and without mobility impairment(s). Data are taken from the 2019 StudentMoveTO survey of university and college student travel in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Students with mobility impairment(s) reported greater use of modified vehicles and shared modes, particularly with other household members. Students with mobility impairment(s) were also more likely to report that commuting discourages them from coming to campus and limits their academic success.

Motivation Methods to model dynamic changes in gene expression at a genome-wide level are not currently sufficient for large (temporally rich or single-cell) datasets. Variational autoencoders offer means to characterize large datasets and have been used effectively to characterize features of single-cell datasets. Here, we extend these methods for use with gene expression time series data. Results We present RVAgene: a recurrent variational autoencoder to model gene expression dynamics. RVAgene learns to accurately and efficiently reconstruct temporal gene profiles. It also learns a low dimensional representation of the data via a recurrent encoder network that can be used for biological feature discovery, and from which we can generate new gene expression data by sampling the latent space. We test RVAgene on simulated and real biological datasets, including embryonic stem cell differentiation and kidney injury response dynamics. In all cases, RVAgene accurately reconstructed complex gene expression temporal profiles. Via cross validation, we show that a low-error latent space representation can be learnt using only a fraction of the data. Through clustering and gene ontology term enrichment analysis on the latent space, we demonstrate the potential of RVAgene for unsupervised discovery. In particular, RVAgene identifies new programs of shared gene regulation of Lox family genes in response to kidney injury. Availability and implementation All datasets analyzed in this manuscript are publicly available and have been published previously. RVAgene is available in Python, at GitHub: https://github.com/maclean-lab/RVAgene; Zenodo archive: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4271097. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Trans-acting expression quantitative trait loci (trans-eQTLs) account for ≥70% expression heritability and could therefore facilitate uncovering mechanisms underlying the origination of complex diseases. Identifying trans-eQTLs is challenging because of small effect sizes, tissue specificity, and a severe multiple-testing burden. Tejaas predicts trans-eQTLs by performing L2-regularized “reverse” multiple regression of each SNP on all genes, aggregating evidence from many small trans-effects while being unaffected by the strong expression correlations. Combined with a novel unsupervised k-nearest neighbor method to remove confounders, Tejaas predicts 18851 unique trans-eQTLs across 49 tissues from GTEx. They are enriched in open chromatin, enhancers, and other regulatory regions. Many overlap with disease-associated SNPs, pointing to tissue-specific transcriptional regulation mechanisms.

Additional file 1:. Complete children and youth movement and play behaviours survey items.

In this chapter, we place particular focus on children’s independent mobility and discuss the role of outdoor free play as a means to enable more independence and less parental supervision. Planning local neighborhood streets and public spaces to accommodate children and people of all ages is crucial to welcoming citizens back into these spaces and for children to have a sense of belonging in their neighborhood. While bringing a change in the planning approach can take time, tactical urbanism-inspired interventions have gained popularity in bringing outdoor play back to public spaces. We have discussed one such type of intervention, broadly known as play streets, which is a community-led play intervention that opens up neighborhood streets for children’s play by limiting or restricting access by automobiles. Examples of successful play street programs are discussed with a more in-depth examination of the programming and the benefits from the StreetPLAY pilot that took place in Toronto, Canada in 2017.

In this chapter, we will introduce the concept of wellbeing and how it can be impacted by transport. Wellbeing is commonly defined as pertaining to the physical, psychological, and social domains. The literature on the interactions between transport and children’s health or wellbeing has primarily focused on physical measures such as physical activity and safety (injuries and death). However, transport also facilitates children’s social interaction and recently, it has also been shown that transport impacts their life satisfaction. The aim of this book is not only to consider the most obvious physical impacts of transport on children’s wellbeing, but also the psychological and social impacts. Many people think of transport as simply a means of getting somewhere, in order to access activities; in essence, this is probably the most fundamental role of transport. However, there are both intrinsic and extrinsic differences between the various transport options that will impact children’s wellbeing. Thus, transport can impact children’s wellbeing: by facilitating the movement of individuals between locations (access); through what occurs during trips (intrinsic); and as a result of how others travel (extrinsic). We end this introduction with a brief summary of the 19 chapters contributing to this book, divided up into sections focusing on pathways, mechanisms, solutions, examples, and the way forward.

This chapter will examine how transport interacts with children’s physical wellbeing. The discussion is organized by intrinsic, access, and extrinsic influences. Intrinsic influences primarily focus on gains from active travel, though other impacts are evident. Access influences discuss how transport can facilitate children reaching locations and the tension between the high mobility of cars to reach disparate locations, and local destinations that children can reach independently on their own time. Literature on extrinsic influences primarily focus on collisions, emissions, and noise. However, other extrinsic impacts include the barrier effect which prevents children from reaching a destination, and the effect of occupying a space that could otherwise be used for physical activity such as local streets. Studies from sociology and urbanism have researched the idea of streets as playgrounds, but the notion is less well studied in transport. Finally, although grouped together as active travel, the chapter distinguishes differences between walking and cycling with their impacts on physical well-being.

Over the past several decades, urban regions across the world have seen a dramatic shift in how, when, and where children spend their time, and how they travel to their daily destinations. Current research has indicated a significant increase in parental supervision, and more children are now being driven than ever before. In this chapter, we offer a conceptual framework for understanding children’s mobility using a social-ecological approach. We propose that the household members, including adult caregivers/parents and a child evaluate alternative outcomes relating to the location where a child is traveling to/from (i.e., the destination), whether or not the child is being accompanied by an adult (i.e., the accompaniment), and the transportation option that is being used to make the trip (i.e., the travel mode), based on the socio-demographic, environmental and social-political contexts within which these decisions are being made. We offer a discussion of how a child’s socio-demographic characteristics and household composition, available transportation options and parental availability, social and the built environment in the neighborhood, and other external aspects such as urban policy/regulations may affect a child’s transportation outcomes. An improved understanding of these influences is important because it can help policy makers, professionals, and communities to develop targeted interventions that might improve children’s health and wellbeing.

This book adopts a cross-disciplinary approach on the relationships between transport and children’s wellbeing by bringing together a series of works by authors from a variety of disciplinary orientations (e.g., urban planning, geography, psychology, transport engineering, and public health). The book’s breadth and diversity convey an inclusive view of the complex nature of transport and children’s wellbeing. This closing chapter provides a brief overview of and summarizes some important evidence in this field. We point to gaps in knowledge and diagnose difficulties that will provide a roadmap for future research and practice.

Additional file 3: Table 1. Inside and outside hobbies during COVID-19 virus outbreak. Table 2. New or returning family hobbies during the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Table 3. Use of online resources during the COVID-19 virus outbreak.

Additional file 2:. STROBE statement checklist of items for cross-sectional studies.

Background: Healthy child and youth development is fostered through sufficient physical activity (PA; including time outdoors), limiting sedentary behaviours (SB), and adequate sleep; collectively known as movement behaviours. Though the COVID-19 virus outbreak has changed the daily lives of children and youth, it is unknown to what extent related restrictions may compromise the ability to play and meet movement behaviour recommendations. This study examined the immediate impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on movement and play behaviours in children and youth.Methods: A national sample of Canadian parents (n=1,472) of children (5-11 years) or youth (12-17 years) (54% girls) completed an online survey that assessed immediate changes in child movement and play behaviours during the COVID-19 outbreak. Behaviours included PA and play, SB, and sleep. Family demographics and parental factors that may influence movement behaviours were assessed. Correlations between behaviours and demographic and parental factors were determined. For open-ended questions, word frequency distributions were reported.Results: Only 4.8% (2.8% girls, 6.5% boys) of children and 0.8% (1.1% girls, 0.5% boys) of youth were meeting combined movement behaviour guidelines during COVID-19 restrictions. Children and youth had lower PA levels, less outside time, higher SB (including screen time), and more sleep during the outbreak. Parental encouragement and support, parental engagement in PA, and family dog ownership were positively associated with healthy movement behaviours. Although families spent less time in PA and more time in SB, several parents reported adopting new hobbies or accessing new resources.Conclusions: This study provides evidence of immediate collateral consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak, demonstrating an adverse impact on the movement and play behaviours of Canadian children and youth. These findings can guide efforts to preserve and promote child health during the COVID-19 outbreak and crisis recovery period, and to inform strategies to mitigate potential harm during future pandemics.