rho propagation and dilepton production at finite pion density and temperature

We study the propagation properties of the rho vector in a dense and hot pion medium. We introduce a finite value of the chemical potential associated to a conserved pion number and argue that such description is valid during the hadronic phase of a relativistic heavy-ion collision, between chemical and thermal freeze-out, where the strong interaction drives pion number to a fixed value. By invoking vector dominance and rho saturation, we also study the finite pion density effects into the low mass dilepton production rate. We find that the distribution moderately widens and the position of the peak shifts toward larger values of the pair invariant mass, at the same time that the height of the peak decreases when the value of the chemical potential grows. We conclude by arguing that for the description of the dilepton spectra at ultra-relativistic energies, such as those of RHIC and LHC, the proper treatment of the large pion density might be a more important effect to consider than the influence of a finite baryon density.Comment: 9 pages, 11 Postscript figures, uses ReVTeX4. Expanded discussion. References added. Published versio

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

Fast random sample matching of 3D fragments

Abstract. This paper proposes an efficient pairwise surface matching approach for the automatic assembly of 3d fragments or industrial components. The method rapidly scans through the space of all possible solutions by a special kind of random sample consensus (RANSAC) scheme. By using surface normals and optionally simple features like surface curvatures, we can highly constrain the initial 6 degrees of freedom search space of all relative transformations between two fragments. The suggested approach is robust, very time and memory efficient, easy to implement and applicable to all kinds of surface data where surface normals are available (e.g. range images, polygonal object representations, point clouds with neighbor connectivity, etc.).

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions. © Copyright