Obesity: A Biobehavioral Point of View

Excerpt: If you ask an overweight person, “Why are you fat?’, you will, almost invariably, get the answer, “Because 1 eat too much.” You will get this answer in spite of the fact that of thirteen studies, six find no significant differences in the caloric intake of obese versus nonobese subjects, five report that the obese eat significantly less than the nonobese, and only two report that they eat significantly more

Sport, physical activity and the establishment of Health and Wellbeing Boards in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire

This paper will examine the emergence of Health and Wellbeing Boards in Nottinghamshire and the City of Nottingham and explore the implications for sport and physical activity. At the time of writing the transfer of responsibilities for Public Health and the establishment of Health and Wellbeing Boards in both the City of Nottingham and within Nottinghamshire County Council are considered to be relatively advanced by the Strategic Health Authorities, the respective local authorities and by the boards of the two Primary Care Trusts. "Shadow"� Health and Well being Board have been established in both authorities and they have been meeting regularly for s everal months. Public health and commissioning staff have also been successfully relocated and new strategies and priorities are starting to emerge. Nottingham and Nottinghamshire have traditionally acknowledged the role of sport and physical activity to the wider determinants of public health and given a relatively high priority to the contribution that sport and physical activity can make to the ir preventative health and early intervention agendas. This paper will look at the transition to Health and Wellbeing boards to assess how the role of sport and physical activity may be changing and to identify opportunities for its contribution to policy and practise in the future. It will examine both the theory and practise behind the emerging governance arr angements, the strategic objectives and priorities, and the developing evidential base for future policy and delivery within the two areas

Early Stages of Homopolymer Collapse

Interest in the protein folding problem has motivated a wide range of theoretical and experimental studies of the kinetics of the collapse of flexible homopolymers. In this Paper a phenomenological model is proposed for the kinetics of the early stages of homopolymer collapse following a quench from temperatures above to below the theta temperature. In the first stage, nascent droplets of the dense phase are formed, with little effect on the configurations of the bridges that join them. The droplets then grow by accreting monomers from the bridges, thus causing the bridges to stretch. During these two stages the overall dimensions of the chain decrease only weakly. Further growth of the droplets is accomplished by the shortening of the bridges, which causes the shrinking of the overall dimensions of the chain. The characteristic times of the three stages respectively scale as the zeroth, 1/5 and 6/5 power of the the degree of polymerization of the chain.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Two-component {CH} system: Inverse Scattering, Peakons and Geometry

An inverse scattering transform method corresponding to a Riemann-Hilbert problem is formulated for CH2, the two-component generalization of the Camassa-Holm (CH) equation. As an illustration of the method, the multi - soliton solutions corresponding to the reflectionless potentials are constructed in terms of the scattering data for CH2.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures, draft, please send comment

Glomerular injury induced in mice by intraperitoneal injection of Shiga-like toxins

Background and Objectives: Shiga-like toxins I and II (Stx1 and Stx2) play an important role in the pathogenesis of renal disease by causing renal microvascular injury. A murine model was used to study glomerular lesions produced by Stx1 and Stx2. Methods: Swiss albino mice of the Rockefeller strain were inoculated intraperitoneally with LD(50) doses of endotoxin-free Stx1 of Stx2 and observed for signs of disease. Samples of renal cortical tissue from mice were examined with the electron microscope. Results: the mice developed systemic and neurological symptoms including hind limb paralysis and generalised convulsions. Renal arteriolar damage and glomerular endothelial cytoplasmic swelling, vacuolation, lysis and intravascular coagulation were present and resembled the microangiopathy seen in renal biopsies from patients. Interpretation and Conclusions: these experiments establish the role of Stx1 and Stx2 in glomerular vascular injury and provide a model for studying the pathogenesis of Shiga-like toxin related microangiopathy