Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol—which is a marker of cardiovascular risk—changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million–4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.</p

A century of trends in adult human height

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol�which is a marker of cardiovascular risk�changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95 credible interval 3.7 million�4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

An optimized parallel order scheme of the deblocking filtering process for enhancing the performance of the HEVC standard using GPUs

In HEVC, deblocking filtering (DF) is responsible for about 20% of the time consumed to perform video compression. In a typical parallel DF scheme, a set of horizontal and vertical edges are processed using deblocking filters. In conventional parallel DF schemes, deblocking filters could be applied to the same edges more than once. Moreover, some edges are assigned to cores to be filtered even though those edges are not designated to be filtered. Accordingly, the used parallel hardware architecture requires more on-chip memory modules. Those challenges negatively affect HEVC performance resulting in an increase in computational complexity. In this paper, an optimized parallel DF scheme is proposed for HEVC using graphical processing units (GPUs). The proposed scheme outperforms competing ones in terms of reducing the decoding time of all frames of video sequences by average speed-up factors of 2.83 and 2.45 using the all-intra and low-delay video coding configuration modes, respectively. The proposal does not change the rate-distortion between the decoded video sequences and their original sequences

Détection, numération des œufs de parasites et évaluation de leur viabilité dans les boues d’épuration de la station d’épuration de Settat

Les procédés de traitement des eaux usées tels que le lagunage, concentrent la charge microbiologique initialement contenue dans les effluents bruts reçus en station d’épuration. Les œufs d’helminthes parasites, qui en sont éliminés par décantation, constituent un danger et un risque réels liés à l’épandage des boues formées au fond des bassins. Ils sont l’un des principaux agents pathogènes ciblés dans les nouvelles lignes directrices de l’Organisation Mondiale de la Santé pour la réutilisation des eaux usées et boues résiduaires en agriculture et aquaculture. Le présent travail évalue le contenu en œufs d’helminthes viables des boues de l’un des bassins anaérobie après 7 années de fonctionnement. La technique suivie pour l’isolement et la numération des œufs d’helminthes est celle de la triple flottation au sulfate de zinc améliorée. Les techniques adoptées pour apprécier la viabilité sont tributaires du genre d’helminthes, pour les œufs de Taenidés, la technique utilisée est celle fondée sur une coloration au Methyl Tetrazolium (MTT) qui est une norme expérimentale AFNOR. Pour les autres genres d’œufs d’helminthes, l’étude de leur viabilité a reposé sur leur aptitude à s’embryonner après incubation à 30 °C pendant une durée déterminée. La charge moyenne recensée est de 40 œufs/1,5 g de matière sèche avec un taux de viabilité de 34,2 %

A review on algae and plants as potential source of arachidonic acid

Some of the essential polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) as ARA (arachidonic acid, n-6), EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid, n-3) and DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid, n-3) cannot be synthesized by mammals and it must be provided as food supplement. ARA and DHA are the major PUFAs that constitute the brain membrane phospholipid. n-3 PUFAs are contained in fish oil and animal sources, while the n-6 PUFAs are mostly provided by vegetable oils. Inappropriate fatty acids consumption from the n-6 and n-3 families is the major cause of chronic diseases as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. The n-6: n-3 ratio (lower than 10) recommended by the WHO can be achieved by consuming certain edible sources rich in n-3 and n-6 in daily food meal. Many researches have been screened for alternative sources of n-3 and n-6 PUFAs of plant origin, microbes, algae, lower and higher plants, which biosynthesize these valuable PUFAs needed for our body health. Biosynthesis of C18 PUFAs, in entire plant kingdom, takes place through certain pathways using elongases and desaturases to synthesize their needs of ARA (C20-PUFAs). This review is an attempt to highlight the importance and function of PUFAs mainly ARA, its occurrence throughout the plant kingdom (and others), its biosynthetic pathways and the enzymes involved. The methods used to enhance ARA productions through environmental factors and metabolic engineering are also presented. It also deals with advising people that healthy life is affected by their dietary intake of both n-3 and n-6 FAs. The review also addresses the scientist to carry on their work to enrich organisms with ARA. Keywords: Algae, Arachidonic acid, Metabolic engineering, Pathways, Plant, Polyunsaturated fatty acid

Enviro-economic assessment of buildings decarbonization scenarios in hot climates: Mindset toward energy-efficiency

As buildings consume a considerable portion of the global energy output and have a key role in greenhouse gas emissions, several steps have been taken to lower the energy and emissions from buildings especially through the adoption of renewable energy sources. The emerging building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) technologies act as replacements for conventional building envelopes as well as energy generation sources. The purpose is examining, through parametric analysis, the potentials of energy-efficient building solutions in different hot climatic regions. Through an enviro-economic assessment, a building envelope solution is proposed that enhances the building energy performance in terms of reducing the building energy use, generating green energy, and reducing indoor thermal discomfort. Results showed that CO2 emission reductions ranged from 9% to 31% and the discomfort hours reductions ranged from 10% to 25% based on the model specifications. Moreover, several financial elements were considered such as IRR, ROI, NPV and the Payback period were calculated for each model. Promising numbers were obtained in terms of the economic analysis of the models. The models demonstrate an IRR index of 26.45%, 21.6%, and 16.85% for Aswan, Cairo, and Alexandria, respectively, an ROI index of 18.32%, 15.68%, and 13.23% for Aswan, Cairo, and Alexandria, respectively, with nearly half the PBP in all locations. According to the techno-economic outcomes, the Reflective paint model integrated with the Glazing Integrated PV tends to be the most cost-effective implementation in the three different locations

The HCG ratio as a predictor of pregnancy outcome in assisted conception cycles

Objective: To determine whether the HCG ratio can be used to predict pregnancy viability in patients undergoing IVF/ICSI treatment. Design and settings: This was a prospective observational study conducted in a private assisted conception unit. Subjects and methods: The patients recruited had one either a long luteal agonist protocol, a short agonist protocol, or an antagonist protocol. All patients had a maximum of three embryos transferred per cycle. Pregnancy detection was by routine serum HCG measurement on day 14 after oocyte retrieval (HCG 0) followed by another HCG sample 48h later (HCG 48). Patients with an initial positive HCG had a transvaginal ultrasound 14days later to determine viability. Results: Three hundred and twenty patients were included in the study. We used receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis to predict the ability of HCG measured at 14days (HCG 0), HCG measured at 16days (HCG 48) after oocyte retrieval as well as the HCG ratio (HCG 48/HCG 0) to predict pregnancy viability as well as to predict multiple pregnancy. The HCG ratio with an optimal cut-off of 1.82 had a sensitivity of 97.6%, a specificity of 98.2% and an area under the ROC curve of 98% in the prediction of pregnancy viability. In the prediction of multiple pregnancy the HCG ratio had an optimal cut-off of 2.06 with a sensitivity of 94.5% and a specificity of only 35.6% and an area under of only the ROC curve of 64%. However, the HCG 0 with a cut-off value of 118.56mIU/ml (sensitivity 97%, specificity 96.5%) and the HCG 48 with a cut-off value of 258.16mIU/ml (sensitivity 97.2%, specificity 99.4%) were shown to be accurate in predicting a viable intrauterine multiple pregnancy with an area under the ROC curve of 97% and 99%, respectively. Conclusion: The HCG ratio with a cut-off value of 1.82 can be used to predict pregnancy viability in assisted conception cycles. Also HCG measured 14 and 16days after oocyte retrieval with a cut-off value of 118.56mIU/ml and 258mIU/ml can be used to predict viable multiple pregnancy