Fat Mass Gain is Lower in Calcium-supplemented than in Unsupplemented Preschool Children with Low Dietary Calcium Intakes

BACKGROUND: Dietary calcium may play a role in the stimulation of lipolysis and the inhibition of lipogenesis, thereby reducing body fat.OBJECTIVE: The aim was to determine whether an association existed between change in percentage body fat (%BF) or fat mass and calcium intake in children aged 3-5 y.DESIGN: A secondary analysis of a 1-y randomized calcium and activity trial in 178 children was conducted. Three-day diet records and 48-h accelerometer readings were obtained at 0, 6, and 12 mo. Body composition was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry at 0 and 12 mo.RESULTS: The decrease in %BF was less in girls (-0.6 +/- 2.8%) than in boys (-1.5 +/- 2.6%; P = 0.03) and correlated with age (r = 0.19, P = 0.01) and maternal body mass index (r = 0.19, P = 0.02). Changes in fat mass were not significantly different by activity group or between children randomly assigned to receive calcium or placebo (0.5 +/- 0.9 and 0.6 +/- 0.8 kg, respectively; P = 0.32). Similar findings were observed for the change in %BF. No correlations between %BF and fat mass changes and dietary calcium (r = -0.01, P = 0.9 and r = -0.05, P = 0.5) or total (dietary + supplement) calcium intake (r = -0.02, P = 0.8 and r = -0.06, P = 0.4) were observed. Among children in the lowest tertile of dietary calcium (/d), fat mass gain was lower in the calcium group (0.3 +/- 0.5 kg) than in the placebo group (0.8 +/- 1.1 kg) (P = 0.04) but was not correlated with mean total calcium intake (r = -0.20).CONCLUSION: These findings support a weak relation between changes in fat mass gain and calcium intake in preschool children, who typically consume below recommended amounts of dietary calcium

The RAST Server: Rapid Annotations using Subsystems Technology

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The number of prokaryotic genome sequences becoming available is growing steadily and is growing faster than our ability to accurately annotate them.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>We describe a fully automated service for annotating bacterial and archaeal genomes. The service identifies protein-encoding, rRNA and tRNA genes, assigns functions to the genes, predicts which subsystems are represented in the genome, uses this information to reconstruct the metabolic network and makes the output easily downloadable for the user. In addition, the annotated genome can be browsed in an environment that supports comparative analysis with the annotated genomes maintained in the SEED environment.</p> <p>The service normally makes the annotated genome available within 12–24 hours of submission, but ultimately the quality of such a service will be judged in terms of accuracy, consistency, and completeness of the produced annotations. We summarize our attempts to address these issues and discuss plans for incrementally enhancing the service.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>By providing accurate, rapid annotation freely to the community we have created an important community resource. The service has now been utilized by over 120 external users annotating over 350 distinct genomes.</p

Fat mass gain is lower in calcium-supplemented than in unsupplemented preschool children with low dietary calcium intakes

Background: Dietary calcium may play a role in the stimulation of lipolysis and the inhibition of lipogenesis, thereby reducing body fat. Objective: The aim was to determine whether an association existed between change in percentage body fat (%BF) or fat mass and calcium intake in children aged 3\u965 y. Design: A secondary analysis of a 1-y randomized calcium and activity trial in 178 children was conducted. Three-day diet records and 48-h accelerometer readings were obtained at 0, 6, and 12 mo. Body composition was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry at 0 and 12 mo. Results: The decrease in %BF was less in girls (\u960.6 \ub1 2.8%) than in boys (\u961.5 \ub1 2.6%; P =3D 0.03) and correlated with age (r =3D 0.19, P =3D 0.01) and maternal body mass index (r =3D 0.19, P =3D 0.02). Changes in fat mass were not significantly different by activity group or between children randomly assigned to receive calcium or placebo (0.5 \ub1 0.9 and 0.6 \ub1 0.8 kg, respectively; P =3D 0.32). Similar findings were observed for the change in %BF. No correlations between %BF and fat mass changes and dietary calcium (r =3D \u960.01, P =3D 0.9 and r =3D \u960.05, P =3D 0.5) or total (dietary + supplement) calcium intake (r =3D \u960.02, P =3D 0.8 and r =3D \u960.06, P =3D 0.4) were observed. Among children in the lowest tertile of dietary calcium (<821 mg/d), fat mass gain was lower in the calcium group (0.3 \ub1 0.5 kg) than in the placebo group (0.8 \ub1 1.1 kg) (P =3D 0.04) but was not correlated with mean total calcium intake (r =3D \u960.20). Conclusion: These findings support a weak relation between changes in fat mass gain and calcium intake in preschool children, who typically consume below recommended amounts of dietary calcium

Recent progress in neutrino factory and muon collider research within the Muon collaboration

We describe the status of our effort to realize a first neutrino factory and the progress made in understanding the problems associated with the collection and cooling of muons towards that end. We summarize the physics that can be done with neutrino factories as well as with intense cold beams of muons. The physics potential of muon colliders is reviewed, both as Higgs Factories and compact high energy lepton colliders. The status and timescale of our research and development effort is reviewed as well as the latest designs in cooling channels including the promise of ring coolers in achieving longitudinal and transverse cooling simultaneously. We detail the efforts being made to mount an international cooling experiment to demonstrate the ionization cooling of muons