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)

Carbon dioxide, hydrographic, and chemical data obtained during the R/V Thomas Washington TUNES-1 in the equatorial Pacific Ocean (WOCE Section P17C)

This report discusses the procedures and methods used to obtain measurements of total carbon dioxide (TCO{sub 2}), total alkalinity (TALK), and radiocarbon ({Delta} {sup 14}C), as well as hydrographic and chemical data, during the Research Vessel Thomas Washington Expedition TUNES-1 in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean (Section P17C). Conducted as part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), the cruise began in San Diego, California, on May 31, 1991, and ended in Papeete, Tahiti, on July 11, 1991. WOCE Meridional Section P17C, along 135{degree}W and between {approximately}5{degree}S and 36{degree}N, was completed during the 42-day expedition. All 123 hydrographic stations (including 9 large-volume stations) were completed to the full water-column depth. Spacing between stations was 30 nautical miles, except between 3{degree}N and 3{degree}S, where it was 10 nautical miles. At 30 stations, CO{sub 2} measurements were provided for the US Department of Energy`s Carbon Dioxide Program. Hydrographic and chemical measurements made along WOCE Section P17C included pressure, temperature, salinity, and oxygen (measured by conductivity, temperature, and depth sensor), as well as bottle measurements of salinity, oxygen, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, silicate, chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-11, CFC-12, {Delta} {sup 14}C, TCO{sub 2}, and TALK. In addition, potential temperatures were calculated from the measured variables

Discovery of common and rare genetic risk variants for colorectal cancer

To further dissect the genetic architecture of colorectal cancer (CRC), we performed whole-genome sequencing of 1,439 cases and 720 controls, imputed discovered sequence variants and Haplotype Reference Consortium panel variants into genome-wide association study data, and tested for association in 34,869 cases and 29,051 controls. Findings were followed up in an additional 23,262 cases and 38,296 controls. We discovered a strongly protective 0.3% frequency variant signal at CHD1. In a combined meta-analysis of 125,478 individuals, we identified 40 new independent signals at P < 5 × 10 −8 , bringing the number of known independent signals for CRC to ~100. New signals implicate lower-frequency variants, Krüppel-like factors, Hedgehog signaling, Hippo-YAP signaling, long noncoding RNAs and somatic drivers, and support a role for immune function. Heritability analyses suggest that CRC risk is highly polygenic, and larger, more comprehensive studies enabling rare variant analysis will improve understanding of biology underlying this risk and influence personalized screening strategies and drug development. © 2018, This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply

Multiparticle azimuthal correlations for extracting event-by-event elliptic and triangular flow in Au++Au collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200 GeV

International audienceWe present measurements of elliptic and triangular azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles detected at forward rapidity 1<|η|<3 in Au + Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV, as a function of centrality. The multiparticle cumulant technique is used to obtain the elliptic flow coefficients v2{2},v2{4},v2{6}, and v2{8}, and triangular flow coefficients v3{2} and v3{4}. Using the small-variance limit, we estimate the mean and variance of the event-by-event v2 distribution from v2{2} and v2{4}. In a complementary analysis, we also use a folding procedure to study the distributions of v2 and v3 directly, extracting both the mean and variance. Implications for initial geometrical fluctuations and their translation into the final-state momentum distributions are discussed

Measurement of charged pion double spin asymmetries at midrapidity in longitudinally polarized p+pp+p collisions at s\sqrt {s} = 510 GeV

International audienceThe PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has measured the longitudinal double spin asymmetries, ALL, for charged pions at midrapidity (|η|<0.35) in longitudinally polarized p+p collisions at s=510  GeV. These measurements are sensitive to the gluon spin contribution to the total spin of the proton in the parton momentum fraction x range between 0.04 and 0.09. One can infer the sign of the gluon polarization from the ordering of pion asymmetries with charge alone. The asymmetries are found to be consistent with global quantum-chromodynamics fits of deep-inelastic scattering and data at s=200  GeV, which show a nonzero positive contribution of gluon spin to the proton spin

J/ψJ/\psi and ψ(2S)\psi(2S) production at forward rapidity in pp+pp collisions at s=510\sqrt{s}=510 GeV

International audienceThe PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has measured the differential cross section, mean transverse momentum, mean transverse momentum squared of inclusive J/ψ, and cross section ratio of ψ(2S) to J/ψ at forward rapidity in p+p collisions at s=510  GeV via the dimuon decay channel. Comparison is made to inclusive J/ψ cross sections measured at s=200  GeV and 2.76–13 TeV. The result is also compared to leading-order nonrelativistic QCD calculations coupled to a color-glass-condensate description of the low-x gluons in the proton at low transverse momentum (pT) and to next-to-leading order nonrelativistic QCD calculations for the rest of the pT range. These calculations overestimate the data at low pT. While consistent with the data within uncertainties above ≈3  GeV/c, the calculations are systematically below the data. The total cross section times the branching ratio is BR dσppJ/ψ/dy(1.2<|y|<2.2,0<pT<10  GeV/c)=54.3±0.5(stat)±5.5(syst)  nb