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

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)

Heat transfer from a laminar impinging jet of a power law fluid

10.1016/S0735-1933(03)00229-XInternational Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer312241-249IHMT

Joint spectrum mapping of polarization entanglement in parametric down-conversion

Optics InfoBase Conference Paper

Probing the quantum-classical boundary with compression software

10.1088/1367-2630/18/3/035011New Journal of Physics1833501

Left behind malaysian aged parents and their experiences with adult children’s migration

Migration is a widespread phenomenon throughout the world and it has been under way since time immemorial. While studies have focused on the causes of migration and the impact of migrants, studies focusing on the emotional experience of the left-behind older persons’ adjustments in their twilight years after the departure of their adult children, are few and far between. Thus, the perspectives of these left-behind older parents/ persons are less understood. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by addressing the gap which will be filled through the experiences of left-behind Malaysian older persons. Drawing on in-depth interviews extracted from a qualitative study that focused on the strength of long-term marriages among Malaysian Chinese couples, this paper captures four older couples’ experiences that depict their feelings about their adult children’s migration. Analysis suggests that the children’s migration was induced by a lack of support and resources, followed by unequal educational opportunities. To deal with the gap left by their children, these older urban parents depend on kinship connection and community support in times of need. Government initiatives may also be able to empower the community in innovating and implementing plans which are tailored to the needs of the older parents left behind by children who have migrated. The living arrangements and recent bereavement experiences captured from the older couples can serve as cues for healthcare professionals and social support providers to assess the risks of social isolation and suicide among these left-behind older parents. © 2020, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya. All rights reserved

Patient-specific hepatocyte-like cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells model pazopanib-mediated hepatotoxicity

10.1038/srep41238Scientific Reports74123

Corrigendum: Patient-specific hepatocyte-like cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells model pazopanib-mediated hepatotoxicity

10.1038/srep46391Scientific reports74639