Early-childhood BMI trajectories: evidence from a prospective, nationally representative British cohort study

Background and Objectives: By age 5, 20% of British children are classed as overweight or obese, suggesting that early childhood is crucial for lifelong body mass index (BMI) trajectories. In this paper, we identify latent trajectories of early-childhood BMI from ages 3 to 11 years. Given the current context of growing socio-economic inequalities in childhood and adult overweight and obesity, we examine the socio-economic characteristics and mechanisms during pregnancy and infancy which underscore these trajectories.Subject and Methods: We use a nationally representative, prospective cohort study of 9699 children born in 2000–2002, living in the United Kingdom shortly after birth, with complete information on height and weight (measured by an interviewer) at ages 3, 5, 7 and 11. Trajectories of BMI are calculated using latent growth mixture models. Multinomial models characterize these trajectories by their socio-economic profiles and mechanisms during pregnancy and infancy.Results: Four trajectories were identified: two separate trajectories where BMI remains within a normal range (85% of the sample), an overweight trajectory (14.4%), and an obese trajectory (3.1%). No ‘declining BMI’ or late-onset groups were found. The obese group is already distinct from the other trajectories by age 3. The overweight group diverges from the normal groups around age 5. Strong socio-economic inequalities emerged; for the obese group, part of this disadvantage is mediated through early mechanisms such as pregnancy smoke and not initiating breastfeeding.Conclusions: This study provides strong evidence for the idea that childhood BMI trajectories develop early, especially for children who will follow an obese trajectory. Strong socio-economic patterns in these trajectories suggest that the observed trend in growing inequalities may be rooted in early life. Mediating mechanisms for the obese appear to be in the pregnancy and infant period, further research should explore mechanisms occurring around age 5 when the overweight trajectory diverges

Effective Action and Holography in 5D Gauge Theories

We apply the holographic method to 5D gauge theories on the warped interval. Our treatment includes the scalars associated with the fifth gauge field component, which appear as 4D Goldstone bosons in the holographic effective action. Applications are considered to two classes of models in which these scalars play an important role. In the Composite-Higgs (and/or Gauge-Higgs Unification) scenario, the scalars are interpreted as the Higgs field and we use the holographic recipe to compute its one-loop potential. In AdS/QCD models, the scalars are identified with the mesons and we compute holographically the Chiral Perturbation Theory Lagrangian up to p^4 order. We also discuss, using the holographic perspective, the effect of including a Chern-Simons term in the 5D gauge Lagrangian. We show that it makes a Wess-Zumino-Witten term to appear in the holographic effective action. This is immediately applied to AdS/QCD, where a Chern-Simons term is needed in order to mimic the Adler-Bardeen chiral anomaly.Comment: 37 pages; v2, minor changes, one reference added; v3, minor corrections, version published in JHE

Enhancement of hydrogen production rate by high biomass concentrations of Thermotoga neapolitana

The objective of this study was to enhance the hydrogen production rate of dark fermentation in batch operation. For the first time, the hyperthermophilic pure culture of Thermotoga neapolitana cf. Capnolactica was applied at elevated biomass concentrations. The increase of the initial biomass concentration from 0.46 to 1.74 g cell dry weight/L led to a general acceleration of the fermentation process, reducing the fermentation time of 5 g glucose/L down to 3 h with a lag phase of 0.4 h. The volumetric hydrogen production rate increased from 323 (±11) to 654 (±30) mL/L/h with a concomitant enhancement of the biomass growth and glucose consumption rate. The hydrogen yield of 2.45 (±0.09) mol H2/mol glucose, the hydrogen concentration of 68% in the produced gas and the composition of the end products in the digestate, i.e. 62.3 (±2.5)% acetic acid, 23.5 (±2.9)% lactic acid and 2.3 (±0.1)% alanine, remained unaffected at increasing biomass concentrations

Mapping the complete glycoproteome of virion-derived HIV-1 gp120 provides insights into broadly neutralizing antibody binding

The surface envelope glycoprotein (SU) of Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), gp120SU plays an essential role in virus binding to target CD4+ T-cells and is a major vaccine target. Gp120 has remarkably high levels of N-linked glycosylation and there is considerable evidence that this “glycan shield” can help protect the virus from antibody-mediated neutralization. In recent years, however, it has become clear that gp120 glycosylation can also be included in the targets of recognition by some of the most potent broadly neutralizing antibodies. Knowing the site-specific glycosylation of gp120 can facilitate the rational design of glycopeptide antigens for HIV vaccine development. While most prior studies have focused on glycan analysis of recombinant forms of gp120, here we report the first systematic glycosylation site analysis of gp120 derived from virions produced by infected T lymphoid cells and show that a single site is exclusively substituted with complex glycans. These results should help guide the design of vaccine immunogens

Simple and Realistic Composite Higgs Models in Flat Extra Dimensions

We construct new composite Higgs/gauge-Higgs unification (GHU) models in flat space that overcome all the difficulties found in the past in attempting to construct models of this sort. The key ingredient is the introduction of large boundary kinetic terms for gauge (and fermion) fields. We focus our analysis on the electroweak symmetry breaking pattern and the electroweak precision tests and show how both are compatible with each other. Our models can be seen as effective TeV descriptions of analogue warped models. We point out that, as far as electroweak TeV scale physics is concerned, one can rely on simple and more flexible flat space models rather than considering their unavoidably more complicated warped space counterparts. The generic collider signatures of our models are essentially undistinguishable from those expected from composite Higgs/warped GHU models, namely a light Higgs, colored fermion resonances below the TeV scale and sizable deviations to the Higgs and top coupling.Comment: 30 figures, 9 figures; v2: minor improvements, one reference added, version to appear in JHE

Weak Mixing Angle and Higgs Mass in Gauge-Higgs Unification Models with Brane Kinetic Terms

We show that the idea of Gauge-Higgs unification(GHU) can be rescued from the constraint of weak mixing angle by introducing localized brane kinetic terms in higher dimensional GHU models with bulk and simple gauge groups. We find that those terms lead to a ratio between Higgs and W boson masses, which is a little bit deviated from the one derived in the standard model. From numerical analysis, we find that the current lower bound on the Higgs mass tends to prefer to exceptional groups E(6), E(7), E(8) rather than other groups like SU(3l), SO(2n+1), G(2), and F(4) in 6-dimensional(D) GHU models irrespective of the compactification scales. For the compactification scale below 1 TeV, the Higgs masses in 6D GHU models with SU(3l), SO(2n+1), G(2), and F(4) groups are predicted to be less than the current lower bound unless a model parameter responsible for re-scaling SU(2) gauge coupling is taken to be unnaturally large enough. To see how the situation is changed in more higher dimensional GHU model, we take 7D S^{3}/ Z_{2} and 8D T^{4}/ Z_{2} models. It turns out from our numerical analysis that these higher dimensional GHU models with gauge groups except for E(6) can lead to the Higgs boson whose masses are predicted to be above the current lower bound only for the compatification scale above 1 TeV without taking unnaturally large value of the model parameter, whereas the Higgs masses in the GHU models with E(6) are compatible with the current lower bound even for the compatification scale below 1 TeV.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure

AdS/QCD: The Relevance of the Geometry

We investigate the relevance of the metric and of the geometry in five-dimensional models of hadrons. Generically, the metric does not affect strongly the results and even flat space agrees reasonably well with the data. Nevertheless, we observe a preference for a decreasing warp factor, for example AdS space. The Sakai-Sugimoto model reduces to one of these models and the level of agreement is similar to the one of flat space. We also consider the discrete version of the five-dimensional models, obtained by dimensional deconstruction. We find that essentially all the relevant features of "holographic" models of QCD can be reproduced with a simple 3-site model describing only the states below the cut-off of the theory.Comment: 25 pages + appendix. v2 minor changes and Refs. adde

Italian cardiovascular mortality charts of the CUORE Project: are they comparable with the SCORE charts?

Background The aim of this study was to build risk charts for the assessment of cardiovascular mortality of the CUORE project, an Italian longitudinal study, and to compare them with the systematic coronary risk evaluation (SCORE) project charts for low risk European countries. Design Random population samples enrolled in the 1980s and 1990s in Italy were included in the analysis: 7520 men and 13 127 women aged 35-69 years without previous cardiovascular events and with a mean follow-up period of 10 years for cardiovascular disease. ICD-9 codes of death certificates similar to those of the SCORE project were considered when they appear as first cause of death. Methods Sex-stratified Cox proportional hazard model including age, systolic blood pressure, ratio between total and HDL cholesterol, and smoking habit as risk factors was used to assess cardiovascular mortality. Results Analysis showed that all risk factors included in the model were statistically significant. The corresponding area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.825 (95% confidence interval: 0.803-0.846) for men and 0.850 (0.823-0.877) for women. The CUORE project charts yielded similar results to the corresponding charts of the SCORE project: Lin's coefficient was 0.929 for men and 0.935 for women. Conclusion The comparison between CUORE and SCORE mortality risk charts shows that SCORE charts reflect quite well the Italian cardiovascular mortality and, correspondingly, Italian cohorts of the CUORE project are quite representative of European countries at low risk for cardiovascular mortality

Epigenome-wide association study reveals decreased average methylation levels years before breast cancer diagnosis

Interest in the potential of DNA methylation in peripheral blood as a biomarker of cancer risk is increasing. We aimed to assess whether epigenome-wide DNA methylation measured in peripheral blood samples obtained before onset of the disease is associated with increased risk of breast cancer. We report on three independent prospective nested case-control studies from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Italy; n = 162 matched case-control pairs), the Norwegian Women and Cancer study (NOWAC; n = 168 matched pairs), and the Breakthrough Generations Study (BGS; n = 548 matched pairs). We used the Illumina 450k array to measure methylation in the EPIC and NOWAC cohorts. Whole-genome bisulphite sequencing (WGBS) was performed on the BGS cohort using pooled DNA samples, combined to reach 50× coverage across ~16 million CpG sites in the genome including 450k array CpG sites. Mean β values over all probes were calculated as a measurement for epigenome-wide methylation