The Effect of a Reduced-Calorie Diet on alpha-2 Adrenergic Receptor Responsiveness in Abdominal Adipose Tissue in Obese Men During Exercise

There is at present an imperfect understanding of the effect of diet on availability of inhibitory receptors in fat cells during exercise among obese men. 

*Objective:* The purpose of this study was to determine whether diet results in downregulation of alpha-2 adrenergic receptor ([alpha]~2-AR~) messenger RNA (mRNA), improving metabolism in exercise in obese men. 

*Design:* One group, pre-test, post-test design.

*Measurements:* Subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue was tested for physiologic response, such as changes in catecholamines and other markers of lipolysis measured during periods of exercise, before and after a 12-week diet. Plasma markers of lipolysis/antilipolytic activity (catecholamines [adrenaline and noradrenaline], NEFA, lactate, glucose, hematocrit, or insulin levels) were analyzed at four points in time in order to determine the effect of exercise on [alpha]~2-AR~ and [beta]-AR responsiveness to sympathetic stimulation.

*Subjects:* Otherwise healthy 18 to 45 year old obese men (defined as a body mass index (BMI) over 33 kg/m^2^).

*Results:* The 12-week reduced calorie diet did not result in improved metabolism. Instead, upregulation of alpha-2 adrenergic receptor ([alpha]~2-AR~) messenger RNA (mRNA) was observed. On average, [alpha]~2-AR~ mRNA levels (ratio of [alpha]~2-AR~ to cyclophilin) in subjects increased by 0.022-0.023 after the diet. The average differences in of [alpha]~2-AR~ mRNA and [beta]-AR mRNA measured before and after diet were both insignificant (M = 0.015) t(4) = -0.911; _P_ > 0.05; (M = 0.0139; t(4) = 0.077; _P_ > 0.05). 

*Conclusion:* The observed direction of change in [alpha]~2-AR~ mRNA levels, when viewed together with the stability of [beta]-AR mRNA levels, suggests that upregulation of [alpha]~2-AR~ rather than downregulation occurred. Downregulation would account for decreased lipolytic activity during exercise, future study is needed

Asymptotic safety, hypergeometric functions, and the Higgs mass in spectral action models

We study the renormalization group flow for the Higgs self coupling in the presence of gravitational correction terms. We show that the resulting equation is equivalent to a singular linear ODE, which has explicit solutions in terms of hypergeometric functions. We discuss the implications of this model with gravitational corrections on the Higgs mass estimates in particle physics models based on the spectral action functional.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX, 8 PDF figure

Hunger Incidence in the Philippines: Facts, Determinants and Challenges

The high level of hunger incidence in the country is perhaps one of the most pressing issues that need to be addressed by our policy makers. Official government statistics and data from self-rated hunger surveys show an increasing trend in hunger incidence among Filipino households. Data from National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) show that the percentage of subsistence poor in the country increased to 14.6 percent in 2006 from 13.5 percent in 2003. The Social Weather Stations (SWS) quarterly surveys on hunger incidence also show an increasing trend in the percentage of families that experienced hunger, reaching an alarming level of 24 percent in December 2009, representing about 4.4 million households. One probable cause of the increasing trend in hunger is the rising food prices akin to what the country experienced in 2008. This paper aims to determine the impact of food inflation and underemployment on hunger incidence in the Philippines, using the hunger incidence data from the SWS quarterly surveys on hunger. A vector autoregressive (VAR) model is used to determine the effect of a shock or increase to food inflation and underemployment on total involuntary hunger. Results from the model show that an increase in food prices at the current quarter will increase hunger incidence for a period of five quarters, starting with immediate quarter after the shock occurred. Shocks to underemployment will also increase hunger incidence but the effects last for only two quarters, also starting with immediate quarter after the shock. The results of this study provide relevant information that will be useful in crafting policies related to the Hunger Mitigation Program of the government.Hunger, food inflation, underemployment, vector autoregressive models.

Hunger Incidence in the Philippines: Facts, Determinants and Challenges

The high level of hunger incidence in the country is perhaps one of the most pressing issues that need to be addressed by our policy makers. Official government statistics and data from self-rated hunger surveys show an increasing trend in hunger incidence among Filipino households. Data from National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) show that the percentage of subsistence poor in the country increased to 14.6 percent in 2006 from 13.5 percent in 2003. The Social Weather Stations (SWS) quarterly surveys on hunger incidence also show an increasing trend in the percentage of families that experienced hunger, reaching an alarming level of 24 percent in December 2009, representing about 4.4 million households. One probable cause of the increasing trend in hunger is the rising food prices akin to what the country experienced in 2008. This paper aims to determine the impact of food inflation and underemployment on hunger incidence in the Philippines, using the hunger incidence data from the SWS quarterly surveys on hunger. A vector autoregressive (VAR) model is used to determine the effect of a shock or increase to food inflation and underemployment on total involuntary hunger. Results from the model show that an increase in food prices at the current quarter will increase hunger incidence for a period of five quarters, starting with immediate quarter after the shock occurred. Shocks to underemployment will also increase hunger incidence but the effects last for only two quarters, also starting with immediate quarter after the shock. The results of this study provide relevant information that will be useful in crafting policies related to the Hunger Mitigation Program of the government.hunger; food inflation; underemployment; vector autoregressive models

GTI-space : the space of generalized topological indices

A new extension of the generalized topological indices (GTI) approach is carried out torepresent 'simple' and 'composite' topological indices (TIs) in an unified way. Thisapproach defines a GTI-space from which both simple and composite TIs represent particular subspaces. Accordingly, simple TIs such as Wiener, Balaban, Zagreb, Harary and Randićconnectivity indices are expressed by means of the same GTI representation introduced for composite TIs such as hyper-Wiener, molecular topological index (MTI), Gutman index andreverse MTI. Using GTI-space approach we easily identify mathematical relations between some composite and simple indices, such as the relationship between hyper-Wiener and Wiener index and the relation between MTI and first Zagreb index. The relation of the GTI space with the sub-structural cluster expansion of property/activity is also analysed and some routes for the applications of this approach to QSPR/QSAR are also given

Distributional versions of Littlewood's Tauberian theorem

We provide several general versions of Littlewood's Tauberian theorem. These versions are applicable to Laplace transforms of Schwartz distributions. We apply these Tauberian results to deduce a number of Tauberian theorems for power series where Ces\`{a}ro summability follows from Abel summability. We also use our general results to give a new simple proof of the classical Littlewood one-sided Tauberian theorem for power series.Comment: 15 page

Two infrared Yang-Mills solutions in stochastic quantization and in an effective action formalism

Three decades of work on the quantum field equations of pure Yang-Mills theory have distilled two families of solutions in Landau gauge. Both coincide for high (Euclidean) momentum with known perturbation theory, and both predict an infrared suppressed transverse gluon propagator, but whereas the solution known as "scaling" features an infrared power law for the gluon and ghost propagators, the "massive" solution rather describes the gluon as a vector boson that features a finite Debye screening mass. In this work we examine the gauge dependence of these solutions by adopting stochastic quantization. What we find, in four dimensions and in a rainbow approximation, is that stochastic quantization supports both solutions in Landau gauge but the scaling solution abruptly disappears when the parameter controlling the drift force is separated from zero (soft gauge-fixing), recovering only the perturbative propagators; the massive solution seems to survive the extension outside Landau gauge. These results are consistent with the scaling solution being related to the existence of a Gribov horizon, with the massive one being more general. We also examine the effective action in Faddeev-Popov quantization that generates the rainbow and we find, for a bare vertex approximation, that the the massive-type solutions minimise the quantum effective action.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures. Change of title to reflect version accepted for publicatio

Suppressed decay into open charm for the Y(4260) being an hybrid

We investigate the Y(4260) resonance recently discovered by the Babar collaboration. We propose the observation of its decay into J/psi pi pi and its non observation into open charm as a consequence of it being a charmonium hybrid state with a magnetic constituent gluon. We prove a selection rule forbidding its decay into two S-wave charmed mesons in any potential model. We suggest a generalisation of the selection rule based only on the heavy quark nature of the charm.Comment: 5 page