Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol—which is a marker of cardiovascular risk—changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million–4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.</p

Helium identification with LHCb

The identification of helium nuclei at LHCb is achieved using a method based on measurements of ionisation losses in the silicon sensors and timing measurements in the Outer Tracker drift tubes. The background from photon conversions is reduced using the RICH detectors and an isolation requirement. The method is developed using pp collision data at √(s) = 13 TeV recorded by the LHCb experiment in the years 2016 to 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.5 fb-1. A total of around 105 helium and antihelium candidates are identified with negligible background contamination. The helium identification efficiency is estimated to be approximately 50% with a corresponding background rejection rate of up to O(10^12). These results demonstrate the feasibility of a rich programme of measurements of QCD and astrophysics interest involving light nuclei

Momentum scale calibration of the LHCb spectrometer

For accurate determination of particle masses accurate knowledge of the momentum scale of the detectors is crucial. The procedure used to calibrate the momentum scale of the LHCb spectrometer is described and illustrated using the performance obtained with an integrated luminosity of 1.6 fb-1 collected during 2016 in pp running. The procedure uses large samples of J/ψ → μ + μ - and B+ → J/ψ K + decays and leads to a relative accuracy of 3 × 10-4 on the momentum scale

Curvature-bias corrections using a pseudomass method

Momentum measurements for very high momentum charged particles, such as muons from electroweak vector boson decays, are particularly susceptible to charge-dependent curvature biases that arise from misalignments of tracking detectors. Low momentum charged particles used in alignment procedures have limited sensitivity to coherent displacements of such detectors, and therefore are unable to fully constrain these misalignments to the precision necessary for studies of electroweak physics. Additional approaches are therefore required to understand and correct for these effects. In this paper the curvature biases present at the LHCb detector are studied using the pseudomass method in proton-proton collision data recorded at centre of mass energy √(s)=13 TeV during 2016, 2017 and 2018. The biases are determined using Z→μ + μ - decays in intervals defined by the data-taking period, magnet polarity and muon direction. Correcting for these biases, which are typically at the 10-4 GeV-1 level, improves the Z→μ + μ - mass resolution by roughly 18% and eliminates several pathological trends in the kinematic-dependence of the mean dimuon invariant mass

A century of trends in adult human height

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries

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)

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol�which is a marker of cardiovascular risk�changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95 credible interval 3.7 million�4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

Niveaux du 19F peuplés au cours de la réaction 18 O(d, n)19F a 4 MeV

The 18O(d, n) 19F reaction has been studied at Ed = 4 MeV. Spectroscopic factors have been derived from DWBA calculations. Spins and parities have been confirmed for the ground state (1/2+), and for the 0,197 MeV (5/2+), 6,27 MeV (1/2+), 6,79 MeV (3/2-) levels. We now propose the assignements Jπ = (1/2-, 3/2-), 1/2+, 1/2+, for the 7.52 MeV, 7.67 MeV and 8.13 MeV states respectively.Nous avons étudié la réaction 18O(d, n)19F à une énergie incidente Ed = 4 MeV. Les facteurs spectroscopiques ont été déduits des calculs en DWBA pour les niveaux du 19F peuplés sélectivement au cours de ce transfert. Les parités et les spins du niveau fondamental (1/2+), des niveaux excités à 0,197 MeV (5/2+), 6,27 MeV (1/2+) et 6,79 MeV (3/2-) ont été confirmés ; nous proposons les attributions Jπ =1/2-, 3/2 pour le niveau à 7,52 MeV; Jπ = 1/2+ pour les niveaux excités à 7,67 MeV et 8,13 MeV

CRYSTAL STRUCTURES OF DIPEPTIDES CONTAINING THE DMT-TIC PHARMACOPHORE

The crystal structures of three analogues of the potent delta-opioid receptor antagonist H-Dmt-Tic-OH (2',6'-dimethyl-L-tyrosine-L-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-carboxylate), N,N (CH(3))(2)-Dmt-Tic-OH (1), H-Dmt-Tic-NH-1-adamantane (2), and N,N(CH(3))(2)-Dmt-Tic-NH-1-adamantane (3) were determined by X-ray single-crystal analysis. Crystals of 1 were grown by slow evaporation, while those of 2 and 3 were grown by vapor diffusion. Compounds 1 and 3 crystallized in the monoclinic space group P2(1), and 2 crystallized in the tetragonal space group P4(3). Common backbone atom superimpositions of structures derived from X-ray diffraction studies resulted in root-mean-square (rms) deviations of 0.2-0.5 A, while all-atom superimpositions gave higher rms deviations from 0.8 to 1.2 A. Intramolecular distances between the aromatic ring centers of Dmt and Tic were 5.1 A in 1, 6.3 A in 2, and 6.5 A in 3. The orientation of the C-terminal substituent 1-adamantane in 2 and 3 was affected by differences in the psi torsion angles and strong hydrogen bonds with adjacent molecules. Despite the high delta-opioid receptor affinity exhibited by each analogue (K(i) < 0.3 nM), high mu receptor affinity (K(i) < 1 nM) was manifested only with the bulky C-terminal 1-adamantane analogues 2 and 3. Furthermore, the bioactivity of both 2 and 3 exhibited mu-agonism, while 3 also had potent delta-antagonist activity. Those data demonstrated that a C-terminal hydrophobic group was an important determinant for eliciting mu-agonism, whereas N-methylation maintained delta-antagonism. Furthermore, the structural results support the hypothesis that expanded dimensions between aromatic nuclei is important for acquiring mu-agonism