Unevenly distributed: a systematic review of the health literature about socioeconomic inequalities in adult obesity in the United Kingdom

Background: There is a growing literature documenting socioeconomic inequalities in obesity risk among adults in the UK, with poorer groups suffering higher risk. Methods: In this systematic review, we summarize and appraise the extant peer-reviewed literature about socioeconomic inequalities in adult obesity risk in the UK published between 1980 and 2010. Only studies featuring empirical assessments of relations between socioeconomic indicators and measures of obesity among adults in the UK were included. Results: A total of 35 articles met inclusion criteria, and were reviewed here. Conclusion: Socioeconomic indicators of low socioeconomic position (SEP), including occupational social class of the head-of-household at birth and during childhood, earlier adulthood occupational social class, contemporaneous occupational social class, educational attainment, and area-level deprivation were generally inversely associated with adult obesity risk in the UK. Measures of SEP were more predictive of obesity among women than among men. We outline important methodological limitations to the literature and recommend avenues for future research

IL-13 R130Q single nucleotide polymorphism in asthmatic Egyptian children

Background: Asthma and its associated phenotypes are under a substantial degree of genetic control. The common variant IL-13 gene polymorphism R130Q is reported to be associated with the risk of development of asthma in some populations. Objective: We sought to study the association of IL-13 genetic variant R130Q with bronchial asthma in Egyptian children and its relation to various clinical and laboratory phenotypes of the disease. Methods: IL13 gene polymorphism (R130Q) was detected by PCR amplification followed by sequencing using pure script total DNA in 20 asthmatic patients in acute exacerbation. The results were compared to 20 healthy age and sex matched children. Results: Asthmatic children had significantly higher frequency of distribution of R130Q genotype (50%) than controls (15%). The serum total IgE as percent of high normal for age was significantly higher in asthmatic patients as compared to controls with a mean of 208.77 ±237.06% and 14.21 ± 8.08% respectively. No significant difference was observed in the mean AEC(as a percent of high normal for age) of both groups (80.85 ± 116.4% and 82.50 ± 81.4% respectively). No significant differences were observed between patients with IL-13 polymorphism R130Q and those without such polymorphism as regards family history, relation of exacerbations to upper respiratory tract infections, history of food allergy or asthma grading. Serum total IgE was significantly higher in asthmatics with GA genotype as compared to those with GG genotype with a mean of 373.25 ± 238.11% and 44.28 ± 42.65% respectively. A similar finding was also observed among the control group with a mean of 28.03 ± 9.12% and 11.77 ± 5.00% respectively. Finally a significantly higher AEC was observed in controls with GA as compared to GG genotype with a mean of 250.00 ± 51.96% versus 52.94 ± 36.87% respectively. Conclusion: The common variant IL-13 gene polymorphism R130Q is frequently associated with pediatric asthma. This variant is more active than the wild type in inducing allergic inflammation as reflected by the higher serum total IgE and AEC. Hence, IL-13R130Q may be candidate for future gene therapy targeted at reducing the ill-effects of this polymorphism.Keywords: IL-13R130Q – bronchial asthma - pediatricsEgypt J Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2010;8(1):9-1

Editorial – Healthcare Worker Stress and Burnout in the time of COVID-19: A Call for Action

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Passivation and dissolution mechanisms in ordered anodic tantalum oxide nanostructures

Tantalum oxide (Ta2O5) nanostructures exhibit outstanding electrical and optical properties, as well as, high chemical resistance and stability. These materials have great potential for biomedical, catalysis, semiconductors and energy applications due to their large surface area and high specific charge, when arranged in nanoporous or nanotubular morphologies. In order to obtain these structures, an anodization process, which is inexpensive, reproducible and easy to scale up, is used. Yet, depending on the anodization conditions, the formation of a nanoporous or nanotubular layer is difficult to stabilize during the anodization process. In this regard, anodized tantalum oxide nanostructures were produced to understand the effect of the anodization conditions, including electrolyte concentration, potential and time. The nanopores or nanotubes morphologies, their chemical composition and structure were investigated by FIB-SEM, double-corrected TEM-STEM and EDS. We found that it is necessary to have high acid concentrations (mixture of H2SO4 with HF) to be able to form nanoporous or nanotubular structures. Despite the capacity of HF to dissolve and create anodic oxide nanostructures, the amount of H2SO4 concentration in the mixture is very important, leading to a dimple morphology. Furthermore, the increase of the anodization potential/electrical field clearly leads to an increase in the dimples diameter.This research is sponsored by FEDER funds through the program COMPETE -Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Funding UIDB/04650/2020, and UID/EMS/00285/2020 and with a PhD fellowship SFRH/BD/98199/2013.The authors thank the financial support in the framework of HEALTHYDENT -POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030708 and PTDC/CTM-NAN/4242/2014 projects.This work was supported by FCT, through IDMEC, under LAETA, project UIDB/50022/2020.The authors would like to acknowledge that this project has received funding from the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation H2020, scheme COFUND -Co-funding of Regional, National and International Programmes, under Grant Agreement 713640

Management of Noncatastrophic Internal Carotid Artery Injury in Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery.

Arterial injuries are the most feared complication of endoscopic skull base surgery. During resection of the middle fossa component of a large ventral skull base chondrosarcoma, arterial bleeding was encountered near the right internal carotid artery (ICA). Durable hemostasis could not be achieved with packing and the patient was taken for an emergent angiogram that revealed a pseudoaneurysm of the proximal intradural ICA. Given the presence of good collateral flow through the anterior and posterior communicating arteries, the right ICA was sacrificed by coil embolization. The patient was taken back to the operating room for closure then transferred to the intensive care unit and maintained on vasopressors for five days to ensure adequate perfusion. The right ICA was coil embolized and the patient was taken back to the operating room for closure. The patient recovered without complication. Arterial injuries, although serious, are not always catastrophic. Critical steps are immediate recognition of bleeding, vascular imaging, and vessel sacrifice if necessary

Wrinkling, creasing, and folding in fiber-reinforced soft tissues

Many biological tissues develop elaborate folds during growth and development. The onset of this folding is often understood in relation to the creasing and wrinkling of a thin elastic layer that grows whilst attached to a large elastic foundation. In reality, many biological tissues are reinforced by fibres and so are intrinsically anisotropic. However, the correlation between the fiber directions and the pattern formed during growth is not well understood. Here, we consider the stability of a two-layer tissue composed of a thin hyperelastic strip adhered to an elastic half-space in which are embedded elastic fibers. The combined object is subject to a uniform compression and, at a critical value of this compression, buckles out of the plane — it wrinkles. We characterize the wrinkle wavelength at onset as a function of the fiber orientation both computationally and analytically and show that the onset of surface instability can be either promoted or inhibited as the fiber stiffness increases, depending on the fibre angle. However, we find that the structure of the resulting folds is approximately independent of the fiber orientation. We also explore numerically the formation of large creases in fiber-reinforced tissue in the post-buckling regime

Electron dynamics in gold and gold–silver alloy nanoparticles: The influence of a nonequilibrium electron distribution and the size dependence of the electron–phonon relaxation

©1999 American Institute of Physics. The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://link.aip.org/link/?JCPSA6/111/1255/1DOI: 10.1063/1.479310Electron dynamics in gold nanoparticles with an average diameter between 9 and 48 nm have been studied by femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. Following the plasmon bleach recovery after low power excitation indicates that a non-Fermi electron distribution thermalizes by electron–electron relaxation on a time scale of 500 fs to a Fermi distribution. This effect is only observed at low excitation power and when the electron distribution is perturbed by mixing with the intraband transitions within the conduction band (i.e., when the excitation wavelength is 630 or 800 nm). However, exciting the interband transitions at 400 nm does not allow following the early electron thermalization process. Electron thermalization with the lattice of the nanoparticle by electron–phonon interactions occurs within 1.7 ps under these conditions, independent of the excitation wavelength. In agreement with the experiments, simulations of the optical response arising from thermalized and nonthermalized electron distributions show that a non-Fermi electron distribution leads to a less intense bleach of the plasmon absorption. Furthermore, the difference between the response from the two electron distributions is greater for small temperature changes of the electron gas (low excitation powers). No size dependence of the electron thermalization dynamics is observed for gold nanoparticles with diameters between 9 and 48 nm. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) reveals that these gold nanoparticles possess defect structures. The effect of this on the electron–phonon relaxation processes is discussed. 18 nm gold–silver alloy nanoparticles with a gold mole fraction of 0.8 are compared to 15 nm gold nanoparticles. While mixing silver leads to a blue-shift of the plasmon absorption in the ground-state absorption spectrum, no difference is observed in the femtosecond dynamics of the system

Segmentation of the right ventricle in MRI images using a dual active shape model

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/166226/1/ipr2bf01366.pd