A 24-Week, Randomized, Treat-to-Target Trial Comparing Initiation of Insulin Glargine Once-Daily With Insulin Detemir Twice-Daily in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Inadequately Controlled on Oral Glucose-Lowering Drugs

OBJECTIVE - To determine whether glargine is noninferior to detemir regarding the percentage of patients reaching A1C <7% without symptomatic hypoglycemia <= 3.1 mmol/l. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS - In this 24-week trial, 973 insulin-naive type 2 diabetic patients on stable oral glucose-lowering drugs with A1CS. 7.0-10.5% were randomized to glargine once daily or detemir twice daily. Insulin doses were systematically titrated. RESULTS - 27.5 and 25.6% of patients reached the primary outcome with glargine and detemir, respectively, demonstrating the noninferiority of glargine. Improvements in A1C were -1.46 +/- 1.09% for glargine and -1.54 +/- 1.11% for detemir (P = 0.149), with similar proportions of patients achieving A1C <7% (P = 0.254) but more detemir-treated patients reaching A1C <6.5% (P = 0.017). Hypoglycemia risk was similar. Weight gain was higher for glargine (difference: 0.77 kg, P <0.001). Glargine doses were lower than detemir doses: 43.5 +/- 129.0 vs. 76.5 +/- 50.5 units/day (P <0.001). CONCLUSIONS - In insulin-naive type 2 diabetic patients, glargine reached similar control as detemir, with more weight gain, but required significantly lower dose

Coordination Dependence of Hyperfine Fields of 5sp Impurities on Ni Surfaces

We present first-principles calculations of the magnetic hyperfine fields H of 5sp impurities on the (001), (111), and (110) surfaces of Ni. We examine the dependence of H on the coordination number by placing the impurity in the surfaces, on top of them at the adatom positions, and in the bulk. We find a strong coordination dependence of H, different and characteristic for each impurity. The behavior is explained in terms of the on-site s-p hybridization as the symmetry is reduced at the surface. Our results are in agreement with recent experimental findings.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

The impacts of EU accession on the agriculture of the Visegrad Countries

The Visegrad Countries (VC)2 joined the European Union in 2004, which has offered several possibilities and challenges for their agriculture. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the status of the sector in the light of latest available data as well as to identify the factors lying behind different country performances. Results suggest that EU accession has had a diverse impact on the Visegrad Countries’ agriculture and member states capitalised their possibilities in a different manner, due to initial conditions and pre- and post-accession policies

Food Price Shocks and the Political Economy of Global Agricultural and Development Policy

The recent spikes of global food prices induced a rapid increase in mass media coverage, public policy attention, and donor funding for food security and for agriculture and rural poverty. This has occurred while the shift from low to high food prices has induced a shift in (demographic or social) location of the hunger and poverty effects, but the total number of undernourished and poor people has declined over the same period. We suggest that the observed pattern can be explained by the presence of a global urban bias on agriculture and food policy in developing countries, and we discuss whether this global urban bias may actually benefit poor farmers. We argue that the food price spikes have succeeded where others have failed in the past: to move the problems of poor and hungry farmers to the top of the policy agenda and to induce development and donor strategies to help them

Globalization's effects on world agricultural trade, 1960–2050

Recent globalization has been characterized by a decline in the costs of cross-border trade in farm and other products. It has been driven primarily by the information and communication technology revolution and—in the case of farm products—by reductions in governmental distortions to agricultural production, consumption and trade. Both have boosted economic growth and reduced poverty globally, especially in Asia. The first but maybe not the second of these drivers will continue in coming decades. World food prices will depend also on whether (and if so by how much) farm productivity growth continues to outpace demand growth and to what extent diets in emerging economies move towards livestock and horticultural products at the expense of staples. Demand in turn will be driven not only by population and income growth, but also by crude oil prices if they remain at current historically high levels, since that will affect biofuel demand. Climate change mitigation policies and adaptation, water market developments and market access standards particularly for transgenic foods will add to future production, price and trade uncertainties

Excitability of the Motor Cortex Ipsilateral to the Moving Body Side Depends on Spatio-Temporal Task Complexity and Hemispheric Specialization

Unilateral movements are mainly controlled by the contralateral hemisphere, even though the primary motor cortex ipsilateral (M1ipsi) to the moving body side can undergo task-related changes of activity as well. Here we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate whether representations of the wrist flexor (FCR) and extensor (ECR) in M1ipsi would be modulated when unilateral rhythmical wrist movements were executed in isolation or in the context of a simple or difficult hand-foot coordination pattern, and whether this modulation would differ for the left versus right hemisphere. We found that M1ipsi facilitation of the resting ECR and FCR mirrored the activation of the moving wrist such that facilitation was higher when the homologous muscle was activated during the cyclical movement. We showed that this ipsilateral facilitation increased significantly when the wrist movements were performed in the context of demanding hand-foot coordination tasks whereas foot movements alone influenced the hand representation of M1ipsi only slightly. Our data revealed a clear hemispheric asymmetry such that MEP responses were significantly larger when elicited in the left M1ipsi than in the right. In experiment 2, we tested whether the modulations of M1ipsi facilitation, caused by performing different coordination tasks with the left versus right body sides, could be explained by changes in short intracortical inhibition (SICI). We found that SICI was increasingly reduced for a complex coordination pattern as compared to rest, but only in the right M1ipsi. We argue that our results might reflect the stronger involvement of the left versus right hemisphere in performing demanding motor tasks

Polar and hydrogen-bonding effects of alcohols on the emission spectrum of styrene-triethylamine system

The emission spectra of styrene (ST)-triethylamine (TEA) systems were measured under steady-state illumination conditions in some THF-protic solvent mixtures. The fluorescence spectrum of the ST-TEA system in THF consists of two bands (band A at 304 nm (fluorescence of ST) and band B at 460 nm (emission from an exciplex)). The intensity of band A increased and that of band B decreased with increasing amounts of protic solvents in THF-protic solvent mixtures. The increase in the intensity of band A was explained by the decrease in the concentration of free amine owing to the hydrogen-bonding interaction (or protonation) between TEA and protic solvents. The decrease in the intensity of band B was considered to be caused by the decrease in the concentration of free amine on the addition of protic solvents and the enhanced conversion of the exciplex to an ion pair with increasing solvent polarity. The polar effect was expressed as a function of the relative permittivity of the solution.</p