Fat intake and injury in female runners

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Our purpose was to determine the relationship between energy intake, energy availability, dietary fat and lower extremity injury in adult female runners. We hypothesized that runners who develop overuse running-related injuries have lower energy intakes, lower energy availability and lower fat intake compared to non-injured runners.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Eighty-six female subjects, running a minimum of 20 miles/week, completed a food frequency questionnaire and informed us about injury incidence over the next year.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Injured runners had significantly lower intakes of total fat (63 ± 20 vs. 80 ± 50 g/d) and percentage of kilocalories from fat (27 ± 5 vs. 30 ± 8 %) compared with non-injured runners. A logistic regression analysis found that fat intake was the best dietary predictor, correctly identifying 64% of future injuries. Lower energy intake and lower energy availability approached, but did not reach, a significant association with overuse injury in this study.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Fat intake is likely associated with injury risk in female runners. By documenting these associations, better strategies can be developed to reduce running injuries in women.</p

In silico approaches to study mass and energy flows in microbial consortia: a syntrophic case study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Three methods were developed for the application of stoichiometry-based network analysis approaches including elementary mode analysis to the study of mass and energy flows in microbial communities. Each has distinct advantages and disadvantages suitable for analyzing systems with different degrees of complexity and <it>a priori </it>knowledge. These approaches were tested and compared using data from the thermophilic, phototrophic mat communities from Octopus and Mushroom Springs in Yellowstone National Park (USA). The models were based on three distinct microbial guilds: oxygenic phototrophs, filamentous anoxygenic phototrophs, and sulfate-reducing bacteria. Two phases, day and night, were modeled to account for differences in the sources of mass and energy and the routes available for their exchange.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The <it>in silico </it>models were used to explore fundamental questions in ecology including the prediction of and explanation for measured relative abundances of primary producers in the mat, theoretical tradeoffs between overall productivity and the generation of toxic by-products, and the relative robustness of various guild interactions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The three modeling approaches represent a flexible toolbox for creating cellular metabolic networks to study microbial communities on scales ranging from cells to ecosystems. A comparison of the three methods highlights considerations for selecting the one most appropriate for a given microbial system. For instance, communities represented only by metagenomic data can be modeled using the pooled method which analyzes a community's total metabolic potential without attempting to partition enzymes to different organisms. Systems with extensive <it>a priori </it>information on microbial guilds can be represented using the compartmentalized technique, employing distinct control volumes to separate guild-appropriate enzymes and metabolites. If the complexity of a compartmentalized network creates an unacceptable computational burden, the nested analysis approach permits greater scalability at the cost of more user intervention through multiple rounds of pathway analysis.</p

The Information Content of Central Bank Minutes

One characteristic feature of central banks today is that policy decisions are almost exclusively made by a committee rather than by a single policy maker. Another is that central banks are considerably more transparent than they used to be. Together, this has brought to the fore an important but so far unresolved issue: to what extent should a central bank's communication reflect the full spectrum of opinions among its committee members? Does information on all members views make monetary policy easier to understand and predict, or does it make it harder? We address this issue by employing a novel method. We measure the sentiment and tone of the minutes of the Swedish central bank using an automated content analysis that converts the qualitative information in the minutes to a quantitative measure. We find that this measure is useful in predicting future policy rate decisions

Risk-On/Risk-Off, Capital Flows, Leverage, and Safe Assets

This paper describes the international flow of funds associated with calm and volatile global equity markets. During calm periods, portfolio investment by real money and leveraged investors in advanced countries flows into emerging markets. When central banks in the receiving countries resist exchange rate appreciation and buy dollars against domestic currency, they end up investing in medium-term bonds in reserve currencies. In the process they fund themselves (or "sterilize" the expansion of local bank reserves) by issuing safe assets in domestic currency to domestic investors. Thus, calm periods, marked by leveraged investing in emerging markets, lead to an asymmetric asset swap (risky emerging market assets against safe reserve currency assets) and leveraging up by emerging market central banks. In declining and volatile global equity markets, these flows reverse, and, contrary to some claims, emerging market central banks draw down reserves substantially. In effect emerging market central banks then release safe assets from their reserves, supplying safe havens to global investors

Behind Closed Doors: Revealing the ECB’S Decision Rule

This paper aims at discovering the decision rule the Governing Council of the ECB uses to set interest rates. We construct a Taylor rule for each member of the council and for the euro area as a whole, and aggregate the interest rates they produce using several classes of decision-making mechanisms: chairman dominance, bargaining, consensus, voting, and voting with a chairman. We test alternative scenarios in which individual members of the council pursue either a national or a federal objective. We then compare the interest-rate path predicted by each scenario with the observed euro area's interest rate. We find that scenarios in which all members of the Governing Council are assumed to pursue Euro-area-wide objectives are dominated by scenarios in which decisions are made collectively by a council consisting of members pursuing national objectives. The best-performing scenario is the one in which individual members of the Governing Council follow national objectives, bargain over the interest rate, and their weights are based on their country's share of the zone's GDP

The Impact of ECB Communication on Financial Market Expectations

This paper analyzes European financial markets' comprehension and interpretation of ECB communication signals. By applying a novel indicator developed by Berger et al. (2006), that quantifies the contents of the ECB's introductory statements, we find that communication affects the term structure of interest rates in the medium run over a horizon between five months to one year. Our results suggest that financial market agents expect the ECB to prepare them for a change in interest rates well in advance. However, judging upon the dynamics of the response, the exact timing of a decision is less foreseeable. Disentangling the effects of ECB statements on prices, the real and the monetary sector, we provide evidence that especially the ECB's interpretation and forecasts of price developments represent important news to financial market agents

Monetary Policy Committee Transparency: Measurement, Determinants, and Economic Effects

This paper studies monetary policy committee transparency (MPCT) based on a new index that measures central bankers' educational and professional backgrounds as disclosed through central bank websites. Based on a novel cross-sectional data set covering 75 central banks, we investigate the determinants of MPCT as well as its economic consequences. We find that past inflation, quality of institutional setup, and extent of Internet use in a country are important determinants of MPCT. MPCT has a robust and significantly negative impact on inflation variability, even after controlling for important macroeconomic variables and institutional transparency, as well as instrumenting MPCT in various ways

Some Further Evidence on Interest-Rate Smoothing: The Role of Measurement Errors in the Output Gap

It has been suggested that interest-rate smoothing may be partly explained by an omitted variable that relates to conditions in financial markets. We propose an alternative interpretation that suggests that it relates to measurement errors in the output gap