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Background: Many seniors need to increase their physical activity (PA) and participation in fall prevention exercise. Therefore, digital systems have been developed to support fall-preventive PA. Most of them lack video coaching and PA monitoring, two functionalities that may be relevant for increasing PA. Objective: To develop a prototype of a system to support seniors' fall-preventive PA, which includes also video coaching and PA monitoring, and to evaluate its feasibility and user experience. Methods: A system prototype was conceived by integrating applications for step-monitoring, behavioural change support, personal calendar, video-coaching and a cloud service for data management and co-ordination. Its feasibility and user experience were evaluated in three consecutive test periods combined with technical development. In total, 11 seniors tested the system at home for four weeks with video coaching from health care professionals. Results: Initially, the system's feasibility was non-satisfactory due to insufficient stability and usability. However, most problems could be addressed and amended. In the third (last) test period, both seniors and coaches experienced the system prototype to be fun, flexible and awareness-raising. Interestingly, the video coaching which made the system unique compared to similar systems was highly appreciated. Nonetheless, even the users in the last test period highlighted issues due to insufficient usability, stability and flexibility. Further improvements in these areas are needed. Conclusions: Video coaching in fall-preventive PA can be valuable for both seniors and health care professionals. High reliability, usability and flexibility of systems supporting seniors are essential.

Older adults are a heterogeneous population for which many e-health innovations are inaccessible. Involving older adults in user-centered design (UCD) with a specific focus on inclusive design is important to make e-health more accessible to this user group. This case study aimed to explore the feasibility of a new UCD approach aiming to minimize bias in the design phase of a digital support for older adults’ physical activity (PA). The study used mixed methods and applied UCD principles in a four-iteration design phase followed by an evaluation phase where 11 and 15 older adults participated, respectively. The users’ gender, PA level and technology experience (TE) were considered in recruitment, data analysis and prioritization of improvement efforts. In the design phase, users with different gender, PA level and TE participated and contributed with feedback, which was prioritized in the development. The adaptation included improving readability, simplifying layout and features, clarifying structure, and making the digital content more inclusive and relevant. The evaluation showed that the users had a positive experience of the prototype and could use it with some help. The study demonstrated that adopting e-health to assure digital inclusion among older adults must address several aspects. The UCD approach was feasible for amending user bias and for confirming that users of both genders and with varied PA- and TE level shaped the design. However, evaluation of the method with larger samples is needed. Moreover, further research on methods to involve digitally excluded populations in UCD is needed.

We analysed the effect of the 2018 European drought on greenhouse gas (GHG) exchange of five North European mire ecosystems. The low precipitation and high summer temperatures in Fennoscandia led to a lowered water table in the majority of these mires. This lowered both carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake and methane (CH4) emission during 2018, turning three out of the five mires from CO(2)sinks to sources. The calculated radiative forcing showed that the drought-induced changes in GHG fluxes first resulted in a cooling effect lasting 15-50 years, due to the lowered CH(4)emission, which was followed by warming due to the lower CO(2)uptake. This article is part of the theme issue 'Impacts of the 2018 severe drought and heatwave in Europe: from site to continental scale'.

Despite their potential as low-threshold, low-cost and high-flexibility treatments of depression, behavioral activation and physical exercise have not yet been directly compared. This study has examined the effects of these interventions, administered via the Internet. In this randomized controlled trial a total of 312 participants meeting the diagnostic criteria for mild to moderate major depression, recruited in multiple cycles and randomized to either a waiting list control group with delayed treatment, or one of the four active treatment groups: (1) physical exercise without a clear psychological treatment rationale; (2) physical exercise with a psychological treatment rationale; (3)behavioral activation a la Lewinsohn; or (4) behavioral activation a la Martel. A total of 72% were women and the average age of the participants were M=42.3 years (SD=13,5). More than half (53,9%) had a history of previous psychological treatment. Primary outcome measure was the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire. Assessments were made on a weekly basis for the full duration of the acute treatment which was 12 weeks. The preliminary results are in line with previous online studies showing that all active treatment groups were superior to the waitlist (large effect sizes) and that only minor differences could be identified between the four active groups (large within effect sizes). At the time of the conference 6-month follow-up data will be available in addition to the already collected post-assessment data (analyzed according to the intention-to-treat principle).

DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) are mainly repaired via homologous recombination (HR) or nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ). These breaks pose severe threats to genome integrity but can also be necessary intermediates of normal cellular processes such as immunoglobulin class switch recombination (CSR). During CSR, DSBs are produced in the G1 phase of the cell cycle and are repaired by the classical NHEJ machinery. By studying B lymphocytes derived from patients with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome, we observed a strong correlation between heterozygous loss-of-function mutations in the gene encoding the cohesin loading protein NIPBL and a shift toward the use of an alternative, microhomology-based end joining during CSR. Furthermore, the early recruitme

The northern latitudes are experiencing disproportionate warming relative to the mid-latitudes, and there is growing concern about feedbacks between this warming and methane production and release from high-latitude soils. Studies of methane emissions carried out in the Arctic, particularly those with measurements made outside the growing season, are underrepresented in the literature. Here we present results of 5 yr (2006-2010) of automatic chamber measurements at a high-Arctic location in Zackenberg, NE Greenland, covering both the growing seasons and two months of the following freeze-in periods. The measurements show clear seasonal dynamics in methane emission. The start of the growing season and the increase in CH4 fluxes were strongly related to the date of snowmelt. Within each particular growing season, CH4 fluxes were highly correlated with the soil temperature (R-2 > 0.75), which is probably explained by high seasonality of both variables, and weakly correlated with the water table. The greatest variability in fluxes between the study years was observed during the first part of the growing season. Somewhat surprisingly, this variability could not be explained by commonly known factors controlling methane emission, i.e. temperature and water table position. Late in the growing season CH4 emissions were found to be very similar between the study years (except the extremely dry 2010) despite large differences in climatic factors (temperature and water table). Late-season bursts of CH4 coinciding with soil freezing in the autumn were observed during at least three years. The cumulative emission during the freeze-in CH4 bursts was comparable in size with the growing season emission for the year 2007, and about one third of the growing season emissions for the years 2009 and 2010. In all three cases the CH4 burst was accompanied by a corresponding episodic increase in CO2 emission, which can compose a significant contribution to the annual CO2 flux budget. Th

Ecology Letters (2010) Abstract Carbon of terrestrial origin often makes up a significant share of consumer biomass in unproductive lake ecosystems. However, the mechanisms for terrestrial support of lake secondary production are largely unclear. By using a modelling approach, we show that terrestrial export of dissolved labile low molecular weight carbon (LMWC) compounds supported 80% (34-95%), 54% (19-90%) and 23% (7-45%) of the secondary production by bacteria, protozoa and metazoa, respectively, in a 7-km(2) boreal lake (conservative to liberal estimates in brackets). Bacterial growth on LMWC was of similar magnitude as that of primary production (PP), and grazing on bacteria effectively channelled the LMWC carbon to higher trophic levels. We suggest that rapid turnover of forest LMWC pools enables continuous export of fresh photosynthates and other labile metabolites to aquatic systems, and that substantial transfer of LMWC from terrestrial sources to lake consumers can occur within a few days. Sequestration of LMWC of terrestrial origin, thus, helps explain high shares of terrestrial carbon in lake organisms and implies that lake food webs can be closely dependent on recent terrestrial PP.

Although much attention in recent years has been devoted to methane (CH4) emissions from northern wetlands, measurement based datasets providing full annual budgets are still limited in number. This study was designed to help fill the gap of year-round measurements of CH4 emissions from subarctic mires. We report continuous eddy correlation CH 4 flux measurements made during 2006 and 2007 over the Stordalen mire in subarctic Sweden (68°20'N, 19°03'E, alt. 351 m) using a cryocooled tunable diode laser (TDL). The landscape scale CH4 fluxes originated mainly from the permafrost free wet parts of the mire dominated by tall graminoid vegetation. The midseason average CH4 emission mean was 6.2±2.6 mg m-2 h-1. A detailed footprint analysis indicates an additional strong influence on the flux by the nearby the shallow Lake Villasjön (0.17 km2, max depth 1.3 m). A stable bimodal distribution of wind flow from either the easier or the west allowed separating the lake and mire vegetation signals. The midseason lake emission rates were as high as 12.3±3.3 mg m-2 h-1. Fluxes from a homogeneous area dominated by Eriophorum augustifolium agree well with automatic chamber measurements located in similar vegetation in the wet minerotrophic parts of the peatland. The high fluxes observed from this vegetation type are significant because the areal distribution of this source in the mire is expanding due to ongoing thawing of the permafrost. A simple peat temperature relationship with CH4 emissions was used to fill data gaps to construct a complete annual budget of CH4 fluxes over the studied area. The calculated annual CH4 emissions in 2006 and 2007 equaled 24.5 and 29.5 g CH4 m-2 y-1 respectively. These are considerably higher annual sums than what has earlier been estimated for this mire based on manual cha