4,743 research outputs found
Native American Weight Loss Movement: Pilot Test of a Culturally Tailored Weight Loss Program for American Indians
American Indians (AIs) have higher rates of obesity than other racial/ethnic groups, placing them at heightened risk for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and certain cancers. Culturally appropriate weight loss interventions may be the key to reducing risk. The most successful program used in AI communities has been the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), which limits enrollment to individuals with a clinical diagnosis of pre-diabetes. The purpose of this pilot project was to modify and culturally tailor a weight loss intervention to AI communities in Kansas to improve weight loss related behaviors among those who do not qualify for the DPP. The Native American Weight Loss Movement (NAWLM) was developed from 2012-2014 using an iterative process with 4 sequential modifications to the program. Group 1 received a slightly modified version of the DPP that was originally tailored to African Americans. Each group received an improved program based on modifications from the previous group. Our analysis shows 36.1% (95% CI: 25.7, 47.5) of all participants (n=72) lost weight; a majority (63.9%, 95% CI: 52.8-75.0) maintained weight, gained weight, or dropped out. Among individuals who completed the program (n=34), 76.5% lost weight (95% CI: 61.4, 91.5). These individuals lost an average of 2.98% body weight (95% CI: 1.58, 4.37), with 6 participants losing \u3e7% body weight. While most participants who completed the program lost weight, more research is needed to determine factors that discourage drop-out and promote behavioral changes. NAWLM shows promise as a weight loss program for AIs who do not qualify for the DPP
Physics Of Eclipsing Binaries. II. Towards the Increased Model Fidelity
The precision of photometric and spectroscopic observations has been
systematically improved in the last decade, mostly thanks to space-borne
photometric missions and ground-based spectrographs dedicated to finding
exoplanets. The field of eclipsing binary stars strongly benefited from this
development. Eclipsing binaries serve as critical tools for determining
fundamental stellar properties (masses, radii, temperatures and luminosities),
yet the models are not capable of reproducing observed data well either because
of the missing physics or because of insufficient precision. This led to a
predicament where radiative and dynamical effects, insofar buried in noise,
started showing up routinely in the data, but were not accounted for in the
models. PHOEBE (PHysics Of Eclipsing BinariEs; http://phoebe-project.org) is an
open source modeling code for computing theoretical light and radial velocity
curves that addresses both problems by incorporating missing physics and by
increasing the computational fidelity. In particular, we discuss triangulation
as a superior surface discretization algorithm, meshing of rotating single
stars, light time travel effect, advanced phase computation, volume
conservation in eccentric orbits, and improved computation of local intensity
across the stellar surfaces that includes photon-weighted mode, enhanced limb
darkening treatment, better reflection treatment and Doppler boosting. Here we
present the concepts on which PHOEBE is built on and proofs of concept that
demonstrate the increased model fidelity.Comment: 60 pages, 15 figures, published in ApJS; accompanied by the release
of PHOEBE 2.0 on http://phoebe-project.or
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