3,145 research outputs found
International collaborative project to compare and track the nutritional composition of fast foods
BackgroundChronic diseases are the leading cause of premature death and disability in the world with over-nutrition a primary cause of diet-related ill health. Excess quantities of energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt derived from fast foods contribute importantly to this disease burden. Our objective is to collate and compare nutrient composition data for fast foods as a means of supporting improvements in product formulation.Methods/designSurveys of fast foods will be done in each participating country each year. Information on the nutrient composition for each product will be sought either through direct chemical analysis, from fast food companies, in-store materials or from company websites. Foods will be categorized into major groups for the primary analyses which will compare mean levels of saturated fat, sugar, sodium, energy and serving size at baseline and over time. Countries currently involved include Australia, New Zealand, France, UK, USA, India, Spain, China and Canada, with more anticipated to follow.DiscussionThis collaborative approach to the collation and sharing of data will enable low-cost tracking of fast food composition around the world. This project represents a significant step forward in the objective and transparent monitoring of industry and government commitments to improve the quality of fast foods.<br /
Quantitative Stability of Linear Infinite Inequality Systems under Block Perturbations with Applications to Convex Systems
The original motivation for this paper was to provide an efficient
quantitative analysis of convex infinite (or semi-infinite) inequality systems
whose decision variables run over general infinite-dimensional (resp.
finite-dimensional) Banach spaces and that are indexed by an arbitrary fixed
set . Parameter perturbations on the right-hand side of the inequalities are
required to be merely bounded, and thus the natural parameter space is
. Our basic strategy consists of linearizing the parameterized
convex system via splitting convex inequalities into linear ones by using the
Fenchel-Legendre conjugate. This approach yields that arbitrary bounded
right-hand side perturbations of the convex system turn on constant-by-blocks
perturbations in the linearized system. Based on advanced variational analysis,
we derive a precise formula for computing the exact Lipschitzian bound of the
feasible solution map of block-perturbed linear systems, which involves only
the system's data, and then show that this exact bound agrees with the
coderivative norm of the aforementioned mapping. In this way we extend to the
convex setting the results of [3] developed for arbitrary perturbations with no
block structure in the linear framework under the boundedness assumption on the
system's coefficients. The latter boundedness assumption is removed in this
paper when the decision space is reflexive. The last section provides the aimed
application to the convex case
Limit theorems for von Mises statistics of a measure preserving transformation
For a measure preserving transformation of a probability space
we investigate almost sure and distributional convergence
of random variables of the form where (called the \emph{kernel})
is a function from to and are appropriate normalizing
constants. We observe that the above random variables are well defined and
belong to provided that the kernel is chosen from the projective
tensor product with We establish a form of the individual ergodic theorem for such
sequences. Next, we give a martingale approximation argument to derive a
central limit theorem in the non-degenerate case (in the sense of the classical
Hoeffding's decomposition). Furthermore, for and a wide class of
canonical kernels we also show that the convergence holds in distribution
towards a quadratic form in independent
standard Gaussian variables . Our results on the
distributional convergence use a --\,invariant filtration as a prerequisite
and are derived from uni- and multivariate martingale approximations
Evolutionary relationships among barley and <i>Arabidopsis</i> core circadian clock and clock-associated genes
The circadian clock regulates a multitude of plant developmental and metabolic processes. In crop species, it contributes significantly to plant performance and productivity and to the adaptation and geographical range over which crops can be grown. To understand the clock in barley and how it relates to the components in the Arabidopsis thaliana clock, we have performed a systematic analysis of core circadian clock and clock-associated genes in barley, Arabidopsis and another eight species including tomato, potato, a range of monocotyledonous species and the moss, Physcomitrella patens. We have identified orthologues and paralogues of Arabidopsis genes which are conserved in all species, monocot/dicot differences, species-specific differences and variation in gene copy number (e.g. gene duplications among the various species). We propose that the common ancestor of barley and Arabidopsis had two-thirds of the key clock components identified in Arabidopsis prior to the separation of the monocot/dicot groups. After this separation, multiple independent gene duplication events took place in both monocot and dicot ancestors. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00239-015-9665-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users
The analytic continuation of the resolvent kernel and scattering operator associated with the Schroedinger operator,
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/33406/1/0000807.pd
Constraints on Nucleon Decay via "Invisible" Modes from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
Data from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory have been used to constrain the
lifetime for nucleon decay to ``invisible'' modes, such as n -> 3 nu. The
analysis was based on a search for gamma-rays from the de-excitation of the
residual nucleus that would result from the disappearance of either a proton or
neutron from O16. A limit of tau_inv > 2 x 10^{29} years is obtained at 90%
confidence for either neutron or proton decay modes. This is about an order of
magnitude more stringent than previous constraints on invisible proton decay
modes and 400 times more stringent than similar neutron modes.Comment: Update includes missing efficiency factor (limits change by factor of
2) Submitted to Physical Review Letter
Histamine H4 receptor antagonism diminishes existing airway inflammation and dysfunction via modulation of Th2 cytokines
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Airway remodeling and dysfunction are characteristic features of asthma thought to be caused by aberrant production of Th2 cytokines. Histamine H<sub>4 </sub>receptor (H<sub>4</sub>R) perturbation has previously been shown to modify acute inflammation and Th2 cytokine production in a murine model of asthma. We examined the ability of H<sub>4</sub>R antagonists to therapeutically modify the effects of Th2 cytokine production such as goblet cell hyperplasia (GCH), and collagen deposition in a sub-chronic model of asthma. In addition, effects on Th2 mediated lung dysfunction were also determined.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Mice were sensitized to ovalbumin (OVA) followed by repeated airway challenge with OVA. After inflammation was established mice were dosed with the H<sub>4</sub>R antagonist, JNJ 7777120, or anti-IL-13 antibody for comparison. Airway hyperreactivity (AHR) was measured, lungs lavaged and tissues collected for analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Therapeutic H<sub>4</sub>R antagonism inhibited T cell infiltration in to the lung and decreased Th2 cytokines IL-13 and IL-5. IL-13 dependent remodeling parameters such as GCH and lung collagen were reduced. Intervention with H<sub>4</sub>R antagonist also improved measures of central and peripheral airway dysfunction.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data demonstrate that therapeutic H<sub>4</sub>R antagonism can significantly ameliorate allergen induced, Th2 cytokine driven pathologies such as lung remodeling and airway dysfunction. The ability of H<sub>4</sub>R antagonists to affect these key manifestations of asthma suggests their potential as novel human therapeutics.</p
Regularity Properties and Pathologies of Position-Space Renormalization-Group Transformations
We reconsider the conceptual foundations of the renormalization-group (RG)
formalism, and prove some rigorous theorems on the regularity properties and
possible pathologies of the RG map. Regarding regularity, we show that the RG
map, defined on a suitable space of interactions (= formal Hamiltonians), is
always single-valued and Lipschitz continuous on its domain of definition. This
rules out a recently proposed scenario for the RG description of first-order
phase transitions. On the pathological side, we make rigorous some arguments of
Griffiths, Pearce and Israel, and prove in several cases that the renormalized
measure is not a Gibbs measure for any reasonable interaction. This means that
the RG map is ill-defined, and that the conventional RG description of
first-order phase transitions is not universally valid. For decimation or
Kadanoff transformations applied to the Ising model in dimension ,
these pathologies occur in a full neighborhood of the low-temperature part of the first-order
phase-transition surface. For block-averaging transformations applied to the
Ising model in dimension , the pathologies occur at low temperatures
for arbitrary magnetic-field strength. Pathologies may also occur in the
critical region for Ising models in dimension . We discuss in detail
the distinction between Gibbsian and non-Gibbsian measures, and give a rather
complete catalogue of the known examples. Finally, we discuss the heuristic and
numerical evidence on RG pathologies in the light of our rigorous theorems.Comment: 273 pages including 14 figures, Postscript, See also
ftp.scri.fsu.edu:hep-lat/papers/9210/9210032.ps.
- …