The weight-inclusive vs. weight-normative approach to health: Evaluating the evidence for prioritizing well-being over weight

Using an ethical lens, this review evaluates two methods of working within patient care and public health: the weight-normative approach (emphasis on weight and weight loss when defining health and well-being) and the weight-inclusive approach (emphasis on viewing health and well-being as multifaceted while directing efforts toward improving health access and reducing weight stigma). Data reveal that the weight-normative approach is not effective for most people because of high rates of weight regain and cycling from weight loss interventions, which are linked to adverse health and well-being. Its predominant focus on weight may also foster stigma in health care and society, and data show that weight stigma is also linked to adverse health and well-being. In contrast, data support a weight-inclusive approach, which is included in models such as Health at Every Size for improving physical (e.g., blood pressure), behavioral (e.g., binge eating), and psychological (e.g., depression) indices, as well as acceptability of public health messages. Therefore, the weight-inclusive approach upholds nonmaleficience and beneficience, whereas the weight-normative approach does not. We offer a theoretical framework that organizes the research included in this review and discuss how it can guide research efforts and help health professionals intervene with their patients and community

The Influence of Veteran Status, Psychiatric Diagnosis, and Traumatic Brain Injury on Inadequate Sleep

Adequate sleep is essential for health, social participation, and wellbeing. We use 2010 and 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data (N = 35,602) to examine differences in sleep adequacy between: non-veterans; non-combat veterans with no psychiatric diagnosis or traumatic brain injury (TBI); combat veterans with no psychiatric diagnosis or TBI; and veterans (non-combat and combat combined) with a psychiatric diagnosis and/or TBI. On average, respondents reported 9.28 days of inadequate sleep; veterans with a psychiatric diagnosis and/or TBI reported the most—12.25 days. Multivariate analyses indicated that veterans with a psychiatric diagnosis and/or TBI had significantly more days of inadequate sleep than all other groups. Findings contribute to a growing literature on the relevance of the military service–psychiatric diagnosis–TBI nexus for sleep problems by using population-representative data and non-veteran and healthy veteran comparison groups. This research underscores the importance of screening and treating veterans for sleep problems, and can be used by social workers and health professionals to advocate for increased education and research about sleep problems among veterans with mental health problems and/or TBI

Efficient exploration of unknown indoor environments using a team of mobile robots

Whenever multiple robots have to solve a common task, they need to coordinate their actions to carry out the task efficiently and to avoid interferences between individual robots. This is especially the case when considering the problem of exploring an unknown environment with a team of mobile robots. To achieve efficient terrain coverage with the sensors of the robots, one first needs to identify unknown areas in the environment. Second, one has to assign target locations to the individual robots so that they gather new and relevant information about the environment with their sensors. This assignment should lead to a distribution of the robots over the environment in a way that they avoid redundant work and do not interfere with each other by, for example, blocking their paths. In this paper, we address the problem of efficiently coordinating a large team of mobile robots. To better distribute the robots over the environment and to avoid redundant work, we take into account the type of place a potential target is located in (e.g., a corridor or a room). This knowledge allows us to improve the distribution of robots over the environment compared to approaches lacking this capability. To autonomously determine the type of a place, we apply a classifier learned using the AdaBoost algorithm. The resulting classifier takes laser range data as input and is able to classify the current location with high accuracy. We additionally use a hidden Markov model to consider the spatial dependencies between nearby locations. Our approach to incorporate the information about the type of places in the assignment process has been implemented and tested in different environments. The experiments illustrate that our system effectively distributes the robots over the environment and allows them to accomplish their mission faster compared to approaches that ignore the place labels

Telaprevir-based triple-therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C in Germany: a 12-week interim analysis of real-life data

Telaprevir (TVR)-based triple therapy in patients (pts) with chronic hepatitis C (HCV) in daily practice in Germany is investigated in this non-interventional study. Aims are the evaluation of the implementation of futility rules, as well as safety and efficacy of TVR-based therapy. This prospective, multi-center study investigates TVR-based therapy in therapy-naïve and pretreated pts with genotype 1 chronic HCV in Germany, including pts with HIV co-infection. Patients are treated with a combination of TVR, ribavirin and peg-interferon. This interim analysis includes data from the first 100 pts (12.5% of the planned total) at 32 sites completing 12 weeks (W) of treatment. 66% of pts were pretreated for HCV. 36.4% of pts with pre-treatment were prior relapsers and 30.3% null or partial responders. Cirrhosis was present in 11% of all pts at baseline. HCV RNA levels below 800.000 IU/ml at baseline were present in 50% of pts. 67% of pts showed rapid virological response (RVR, undetectable HCV RNA at W4). Adherence to the futility rule (treatment stop if HCV-RNA>1000 IU/ml at W4) was 100% (N=9). At W12, 91.4% of pts had undetectable HCV RNA. 57.7% of therapy-naïve pts and 86.4% of previous relapsers were HCV-RNA negative at both W4 and 12 (70.8% in total). Only one patient achieving RVR at W4 suffered a virologic breakthrough. Nearly all pts (99%) had adverse events (AE) during the first 12W, 6% reported serious adverse events (SAE). AEs were mostly mild (63.9%) or moderate (34.6%) and frequently mentioned dry skin/pruritus (54%), gastrointestinal disorders (48%), anorectal discomfort (30%), rash (29%) and anemia (23%). Rash was mostly rated as mild or moderate (97.1%). An Hb decrease<12 g/dl (female) or<13 g/dl (male) was reported in 87% of pts. Mean Hb levels decreased from 14.8 g/dl at baseline to 10.6 g/dl at W12; Hb levels<8.5 g/dl at any time within the first 12W of treatment were present in 11% of anemia cases and 6.6% required transfusion. Only one patient received erythropoietin treatment. 2 cases each of anemia and rash were considered as SAE. These interim results suggest that TVR-based triple-therapy is efficient against GT1 chronic hepatitis C in a real life setting. Adherence to futility rules was confirmed in all patients. As observed in clinical trials, adverse events were reported frequently, including anemia and rash. As more data become available, results will be updated

Size Acceptance: A Discursive Analysis of Online Blogs

This document is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Fat Studies on 25 May 2018, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2018.1473704. Under embargo until 25 May 2019.Dominant discourses of “fatness” and “fat people” have implications for physical and mental health. Although alternative discourses such as “size acceptance” exist, there has been little consideration of the ways in which these alternative arguments (and speakers) may be positioned to be heard. Using a discursive thematic analysis, the authors demonstrate that size acceptance online bloggers have created a community online that enables them to persuasively provide alternative claims to “expertise,” which positions their views as credible and legitimate alternatives to those of more established authority figures—such as health professionals. This has implications not only for the lived experience of fat people, but also for researchers by emphasizing the importance of exploring not just what is said, but how, if we are to understand how different articulated positions are to be persuasive.Peer reviewe

An Autonomous Robotic System for Mapping Abandoned Mines

We present the software architecture of a robotic system for mapping abandoned mines. The software is capable of acquiring consistent 2D maps of large mines with many cycles, represented as Markov random fields. 3D C-space maps are acquired from local 3D range scans, which are used to identify navigable paths using A* search. Our system has been deployed in three abandoned mines, two of which inaccessible to people, where it has acquired maps of unprecedented detail and accuracy

Interplay of gravitation and linear superposition of different mass eigenstates

The interplay of gravitation and the quantum-mechanical principle of linear superposition induces a new set of neutrino oscillation phases. These ensure that the flavor-oscillation clocks, inherent in the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, redshift precisely as required by Einstein's theory of gravitation. The physical observability of these phases in the context of the solar neutrino anomaly, type-II supernovae, and certain atomic systems is briefly discussed

Exploiting the pathway structure of metabolism to reveal high-order epistasis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Biological robustness results from redundant pathways that achieve an essential objective, e.g. the production of biomass. As a consequence, the biological roles of many genes can only be revealed through multiple knockouts that identify a <it>set </it>of genes as essential for a given function. The identification of such "epistatic" essential relationships between network components is critical for the understanding and eventual manipulation of robust systems-level phenotypes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We introduce and apply a network-based approach for genome-scale metabolic knockout design. We apply this method to uncover over 11,000 minimal knockouts for biomass production in an <it>in silico </it>genome-scale model of <it>E. coli</it>. A large majority of these "essential sets" contain 5 or more reactions, and thus represent complex epistatic relationships between components of the <it>E. coli </it>metabolic network.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The complex minimal biomass knockouts discovered with our approach illuminate robust essential systems-level roles for reactions in the <it>E. coli </it>metabolic network. Unlike previous approaches, our method yields results regarding high-order epistatic relationships and is applicable at the genome-scale.</p

MVCSLAM: Mono-Vision Corner SLAM for Autonomous Micro-Helicopters in GPS Denied Environments

We present a real-time vision navigation and ranging method (VINAR) for the purpose of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) using monocular vision. Our navigation strategy assumes a GPS denied unknown environment, whose indoor architecture is represented via corner based feature points obtained through a monocular camera. We experiment on a case study mission of vision based SLAM through a conventional maze of corridors in a large building with an autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV). We propose a method for gathering useful landmarks from a monocular camera for SLAM use. We make use of the corners by exploiting the architectural features of the manmade indoors