Low-frequency vibratory exercise reduces the risk of bone fracture more than walking: a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Whole-body vibration (WBV) is a new type of exercise that has been increasingly tested for the ability to prevent bone fractures and osteoporosis in frail people. There are two currently marketed vibrating plates: a) the whole plate oscillates up and down; b) reciprocating vertical displacements on the left and right side of a fulcrum, increasing the lateral accelerations. A few studies have shown recently the effectiveness of the up-and-down plate for increasing Bone Mineral Density (BMD) and balance; but the effectiveness of the reciprocating plate technique remains mainly unknown. The aim was to compare the effects of WBV using a reciprocating platform at frequencies lower than 20 Hz and a walking-based exercise programme on BMD and balance in post-menopausal women. METHODS: Twenty-eight physically untrained post-menopausal women were assigned at random to a WBV group or a Walking group. Both experimental programmes consisted of 3 sessions per week for 8 months. Each vibratory session included 6 bouts of 1 min (12.6 Hz in frequency and 3 cm in amplitude with 60° of knee flexion) with 1 min rest between bouts. Each walking session was 55 minutes of walking and 5 minutes of stretching. Hip and lumbar BMD (g·cm(-2)) were measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and balance was assessed by the blind flamingo test. ANOVA for repeated measurements was adjusted by baseline data, weight and age. RESULTS: After 8 months, BMD at the femoral neck in the WBV group was increased by 4.3% (P = 0.011) compared to the Walking group. In contrast, the BMD at the lumbar spine was unaltered in both groups. Balance was improved in the WBV group (29%) but not in the Walking group. CONCLUSION: The 8-month course of vibratory exercise using a reciprocating plate is feasible and is more effective than walking to improve two major determinants of bone fractures: hip BMD and balance

Five insights from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 provides a rules-based synthesis of the available evidence on levels and trends in health outcomes, a diverse set of risk factors, and health system responses. GBD 2019 covered 204 countries and territories, as well as first administrative level disaggregations for 22 countries, from 1990 to 2019. Because GBD is highly standardised and comprehensive, spanning both fatal and non-fatal outcomes, and uses a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of hierarchical disease and injury causes, the study provides a powerful basis for detailed and broad insights on global health trends and emerging challenges. GBD 2019 incorporates data from 281 586 sources and provides more than 3.5 billion estimates of health outcome and health system measures of interest for global, national, and subnational policy dialogue. All GBD estimates are publicly available and adhere to the Guidelines on Accurate and Transparent Health Estimate Reporting. From this vast amount of information, five key insights that are important for health, social, and economic development strategies have been distilled. These insights are subject to the many limitations outlined in each of the component GBD capstone papers.Peer reviewe

Lawson criterion for ignition exceeded in an inertial fusion experiment

For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin "burn propagation" into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While "scientific breakeven" (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion

Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations1,2,3,4,5,6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees

Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities

Trees structure the Earth's most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations1-6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth's 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world's most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees

Processing of functional capsule powder particles based on multiple emulsions using a prilling process

Present studies show the ability of cold spray processing (prilling) to tailor the morphology of simple or double emulsion-based fluid systems as investigated for two types of air-assisted nozzle geometries under various processing conditions. The spray process parameters varied were: (i) gas to liquid flow rate ratio (GLR), (ii) spraying pressure and (iii) total mass flow rate. The results depicted that the emulsion flow inside the nozzle (liquid cap) as well as in the spray (outside nozzle) have a distinct impact on the resulting product structure due to the respective flow stresses acting. Increasing the flow stresses either lead to an additional dispersing impact or to separation and coalescence of the disperse fluid phase(s). Besides the process parameters, the material characteristics of the emulsion systems such as viscosity ratio λ of dispersed to continuous phase and the interfacial tension γ were varied in a wider range. The results demonstrated a systematic increase in structure stability for higher λ values within a range of 0.32–30. As representative dimensionless numbers, (a) a critical liquid Weber number Wel,Drop,cr/λ and (b) a critical gas Weber number Weg,Drop,cr/λ were defined to describe the effect of liquid cap-tip and air-assisted spraying, respectively, with respect to preserving the disperse microstructure of the treated emulsions. Above these critical We numbers, the dispersed emulsion phase drops were broken up and drop mean sizes were exponentially decreased due to the flow stresses acting either in the liquid flow inside the nozzle or in the spray filament outside the nozzle. Dynamic viscosity η and dynamic moduli (G′, G″) of treated emulsions increased with decreasing droplet size of the dispersed phase(s) thus altering the spraying performance as well as the properties of the liquid product systems reconstituted from resulting spray-chilled powders. A third critical Weber number Weg,Nozzle,cr was derived for the spray droplet (tertiary droplet) generation by the spray filament breakup providing information of the smallest spray droplet that could be attained, while keeping the dispersed emulsion (secondary) droplets unchanged in size. The impact of Weg,Nozzle on the resulting spray (tertiary) mean drop size was systematically explored for internal (INMIX) and external (EXMIX) liquid-gas mixing air-assisted nozzles. High-speed videography and laser shadowgraphy were applied to visualize liquid spray filament stretching and breakup, as well as the velocity distribution in the sprays. Sufficiently gentle spray conditions for complete preservation of the disperse emulsion structure were only achieved in the Rayleigh filament breakup regime. Accordingly, a pressure controlled rotary “Rayleigh atomizer” was developed to study emulsion spraying by filament stretching and gently spray drop formation, preserving the emulsion (secondary) droplet structure. At the same time pressure adjustment enabled higher throughput rates compared to conventional rotary spraying nozzles for which only centrifugal forces determine filament stretch and throughput rate simultaneously. Filament length and drop size decreased with increasing rotational speed at a given total pressure (centrifugal pressure + static liquid pressure at the nozzle inlet) or flow rate, and the filament length and drop size increased with higher liquid pressures and related throughput rates at a given rotational speed. Chilling solidification of the spray drops was superimposed in selected cases. Prilling (spraying + chilling) was carried out for various emulsion systems in a prilling tower applying average air temperatures of ca. −10 °C for higher melting fat-continuous emulsions down to −50 °C for low melting oil- or water-continuous emulsions, in order to produce solid powder particles. The microstructure of the solid particles was analyzed in further detail by cryo-scanning electron microscopy (Cryo-SEM). Concerning emulsion structure preservation in the sprayed products, the results clearly demonstrated that the disperse structure can differ significantly from the initial emulsion structure if critical flow stress conditions are exceeded. Respective process-structure functions were also quantified. For emulsion-based prilled powders, the applicability and adjustability as functional component carriers for controlled release applications is of big interest in industries such as food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics. For related functional component release experiments we designed an in vitro gastric/duodenal setup. With this, the release kinetics of functional components encapsulated/embedded in dispersed secondary or primary emulsion drop phase(s) were quantified under simulated gastric or duodenal digestion conditions. Accordingly, an iron compound (micronutrient) was encapsulated into the primary and/or secondary dispersed emulsion droplets of simple or double emulsions, and related solid emulsion powder particles were produced through prilling applying our selected air-assist atomizers. In a first testing step, the iron release kinetics for selected products were systematically investigated in the in-vitro gastric system at pH ≈ 2.0, and quantified as a function of prill powder particle size, secondary emulsion drop size and prill powder storage time under ambient conditions

The structure of calling songs in the cicada Pauropsalta annulata Goding and Froggatt (Hemiptera: Cicadidae): evidence of diverging populations?

Variation recorded within species is often taken to represent evidence for local and ongoing adaptation, but often without the interpopulation variation being subject to analysis across the geographic distribution occupied by the taxon. Here we investigate the rhythmic song structure across the range of three known song types in a variable cicada, Pauropsalta annulata Goding and Froggatt. Statistical analysis of the structure of songs across individuals reveals four discrete clusters that are demonstrated to be independent and stable across extensive geographic space in areas of allopatry and, generally, also into areas of sympatry. This suggests that P. annulata is a cryptic species complex. Unique combinations of plant species are linked with each of the clusters, suggesting that the different populations have independent plant associations. These findings are discussed in relation to similar case studies on cicadas and other organisms, with particular emphasis on the most appropriate approach to testing variation across populations, especially when it is thought to represent populations in the initial stages of evolutionary divergence