The purpose of this study was to explore associations between early-life factors and the development of youth onset type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Until 1990, T2DM was seldom reported in youth, however rates of youth onset T2DM are rising worldwide. This retrospective case-control study utilized repository data housed at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy to review perinatal exposures of Manitoba youth with and without T2DM. The mean age at time of diagnosis was 13.1 years and 61% of youth onset T2DM cases were female. The majority of youth with T2DM resided in rural areas at time of diagnosis. This study found a 14-fold increase in the risk of youth onset T2DM when the mother had pre-gestational diabetes, and 6.5-fold increase in that risk if the mother had gestational diabetes. Breastfeeding was found to be protective, and a lower income quintile at time of birth was found to be more significantly associated with the development of youth onset T2DM than increasingly higher income quintiles . The findings emphasize that efforts aimed at preventing T2DM in youth must begin in the pre-conception period and continue throughout pregnancy.

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The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.

The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.

The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.

High mortality rates from cardiovascular disease underscore the need for improved therapies. Thus, it is important to further our understanding of factors and mechanisms promoting cardiac protection and repair. Fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2), administered to the heart before or during injury exerts beneficial effects such as cytoprotection and angiogenesis. However, the effects of a chronic elevation in endogenous FGF-2 on recovery/remodeling after ischemic injury are not known. My hypothesis was that chronic elevation in endogenous FGF-2 expression (in FGF-2 overexpressing transgenic mice) exerts beneficial effects such as improved function after isoproterenol-induced injury in vivo. The first study showed that treatment with the β-adrenergic agonist isoproterenol resulted in exaggerated levels of cellular infiltration and myocardial disarray in transgenic FGF-2 versus non-transgenic mouse myocardium. This was suggestive of increased cardiac injury in transgenic FGF-2 mice. Inhibition of T cells using the immunosuppressants cyclosporine A or antibodies against CD3ε attenuated cellular infiltration in transgenic FGF-2 mice, to levels comparable to those of non-transgenic mice, suggesting a T lymphocyte-mediated effect. Overall morphological data suggested that chronic FGF-2 elevation might have created an adverse outcome after cardiac injury. In a follow-up study the effect of chronic FGF-2 elevation on cardiac function was examined, as measured by tissue Doppler imaging (TDI), after isoproterenol administration. FGF-2 overexpressing mice displayed improved cardiac function compared to controls, after isoproterenol, both acutely (24 h) and in a sustained fashion (2-4 weeks). The FGF-2 associated functional improvement at 2-4 weeks was attenuated following immunosuppression with cyclosporine A, but not treatment with anti-CD3ε antibodies. The FGF-2–associated functional improvement may be partially attributed to a cyclosporine A-sensitive (but anti-CD3-insensitive) infiltrating cell population. Thus cellular infiltration, in response to elevated FGF-2, may have a net beneficial effect. In a third study, non-transgenic mice were put through a brief swimming protocol (exercise) prior to isoproterenol. This acute bout of exercise resulted in significant improvement in TDI function, compared to control groups, measured at 24 hours up to 4 weeks post-isoproterenol. In conclusion, increased endogenous cardiac FGF-2 expression, or an acute bout of exercise, exert sustained beneficial effects against isoproterenol-induced cardiac injury.

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The development of algorithms to efficiently determine an optimal path through a complex environment is a continuing area of research within Computer Science. When such environments can be represented as a graph, established graph search algorithms, such as Dijkstra’s shortest path and A*, can be used. However, many environments are constructed from a set of regions that do not conform to a discrete graph. The Weighted Region Problem was proposed to address the problem of finding the shortest path through a set of such regions, weighted with values representing the cost of traversing the region. Robust solutions to this problem are computationally expensive since finding shortest paths across a region requires expensive minimisation. Sampling approaches construct graphs by introducing extra points on region edges and connecting them with edges criss-crossing the region. Dijkstra or A* are then applied to compute shortest paths. The connectivity of these graphs is high and such techniques are thus not particularly well suited to environments where the weights and representation frequently change. The Field D* algorithm, by contrast, computes the shortest path across a grid of weighted square cells and has replanning capabilites that cater for environmental changes. However, representing an environment as a weighted grid (an image) is not space-efficient since high resolution is required to produce accurate paths through areas containing features sensitive to noise. In this work, we extend Field D* to weighted simplicial complexes – specifically – triangulations in 2D and tetrahedral meshes in 3D. Such representations offer benefits in terms of space over a weighted grid, since fewer triangles can represent polygonal objects with greater accuracy than a large number of grid cells. By exploiting these savings, we show that Triangulated Field D* can produce an equivalent path cost to grid-based Multi-resolution Field D*, using up to an order of magnitude fewer triangles over grid cells and visiting an order of magnitude fewer nodes. Finally, as a practical demonstration of the utility of our formulation, we show how Field D* can be used to approximate a distance field on the nodes of a simplicial complex, and how this distance field can be used to weight the simplicial complex to produce contour-following behaviour by shortest paths computed with Field D*.