Impact of corpulence parameters and haemoglobin A1c on metabolic control in type 2 diabetic patients: comparison of apolipoprotein B/A-I ratio with fasting and postprandial conventional lipid ratios

Background and objective: The incidence of diabetes co-morbidities could probably be better assessed by studying its associations with major corpulence parameters and glycaemic control indicators. We assessed the utility of body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), and glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels in metabolic control for type 2 diabetic patients.Methods: Fasting and postprandial blood samples were collected from 238 type 2 diabetic patients aged 57.4911.9 years. The sera were analysed for glucose, HbA1c, total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), highdensity lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c), and apolipoproteins (apoA-I and apoB). Ratios of lipids and apolipoproteins were calculated and their associations with BMI, WC, and HbA1c levels were analysed.Results: Our investigation showed increases in most fasting and postprandial lipid parameters according to BMI and WC. In men, postprandial HDL-c and TG levels were significantly higher (pB0.05) in overweight and obese patients, respectively, as well as in patients with abdominal obesity. Contrariwise, postprandial TC levels were significantly higher (pB0.01) in overweight and abdominal obese women. However, elevations of apoA-I and apoB levels were according to BMI and WC in both genders. There was a strong influence of BMI,WC, and HbA1c levels on the apoB/apoA-I ratio compared to traditional fasting and postprandial lipid ratios in both men and women. The apoB/apoA-I ratio was more correlated with postprandial TC/HDL and LDL-c/HDL-c ratios in men and with postprandial TG/HDL-c in women.Conclusion: The apoB/apoA-I ratio is helpful in assessing metabolic risk caused by overall obesity, abdominal obesity and impaired glycaemia in type 2 diabetic patients.Keywords: type 2 diabetes; body mass index; waist circumference; HbA1c; metabolic contro

Renewable, ethical? Assessing the energy justice potential of renewable electricity

Energy justice is increasingly being used as a framework to conceptualize the impacts of energy decision making in more holistic ways and to consider the social implications in terms of existing ethical values. Similarly, renewable energy technologies are increasingly being promoted for their environmental and social benefits. However, little work has been done to systematically examine the extent to which, in what ways and in what contexts, renewable energy technologies can contribute to achieving energy justice. This paper assesses the potential of renewable electricity technologies to address energy justice in various global contexts via a systematic review of existing studies analyzed in terms of the principles and dimensions of energy justice. Based on publications including peer reviewed academic literature, books, and in some cases reports by government or international organizations, we assess renewable electricity technologies in both grid integrated and off-grid use contexts. We conduct our investigation through the rubric of the affirmative and prohibitive principles of energy justice and in terms of its temporal, geographic, socio-political, economic, and technological dimensions. Renewable electricity technology development has and continue to have different impacts in different social contexts, and by considering the different impacts explicitly across global contexts, including differences between rural and urban contexts, this paper contributes to identifying and understanding how, in what ways, and in what particular conditions and circumstances renewable electricity technologies may correspond with or work to promote energy justice

A multilevel automatic thresholding method based on a genetic algorithm for a fast image segmentation

International audienceno abstrac

A comparative study of various meta-heuristic techniques applied to the multilevel thresholding problem

International audienc

A comparative study of various meta‐heuristic techniques applied to the multilevel thresholding problem

International audienceno abstrac