Predicting of excess body fat in children

Purpose of reviewApproximately 370 million children and adolescents worldwide showed overweight or obesity in 2016. The risk of developing severe comorbidities depends on the age of onset and the duration of obesity. This review discusses available methodologies to detect excess body fat in children as well as the early life factors that predict excess body fat and its development.Recent findingsFactors, such as parental nutritional status, maternal weight gain during pregnancy, maternal malnutrition, maternal smoking during pregnancy, low and high birth weight, rapid weight gain, and short infant sleep duration have been independently and positively associated with neonatal, infant, and children adiposity. Early detection of excess body fat in children through the use of various tools is the first step in preventing nutrition-related diseases in adulthood.SummaryThe early detection of excess body fat and the implementation of efficient interventions to normalize the weight of children and adolescents at obesity risk are essential to prevent diseases in adult life. © 2022 Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. All rights reserved

Optical Particle Detection in Liquid Suspensions with a Hybrid Integrated Microsystem

AbstractA compact, robust and portable system for optical particle detection in liquid suspensions, achieved through the hybrid integration of commercial components, such as VCSELs and microlenses, in a silicon micromachined structure is presented. We demonstrate the feasibility of fabricating a device providing up to 4 collimated laser beams, with the ability of detecting and distinguishing microparticles of several diameters, even in mixed suspensions. This optical microsystem represents an alternative design for microflow cytometers based on optical fibres, and is aligned with the current tendency set by the Point-of-care devices

An improved model for fast and reliable harbour wave agitation assessment

ABSTRACT: This study presents the new advances achieved in the field of harbour agitation climate assessment. Based on the improvement of an elliptic mild-slope model (MSP), which realistically reconstructs waves inside any-sized basin, represented by high-detailed unstructured meshes, and forced by real-shaped outer spectral data. A new solver is proposed for high performance runs, which allow fast agitation hindcast for statistical downtime analysis within an iterative and multi-scenario approach. Also, a realistic assimilation of partial reflection processes in quays/docks/wharfs/breakwaters is proposed. The model has been successfully validated in several harbours of special relevance in Spain with in situ measurements, through the assimilation of the hybrid downscaling (Camus et al., 2011) technique combined with monochromatic-based wave spectral reconstruction.This work has been also partially funded under the RETOS program of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (BIA2017-87213-R). We would like to thank Puertos del Estado of Spain for providing spectral outer wave spectral forcing and wave agitation measurements, for gather/organize each Port Authority base data required

Real-time moving object segmentation in H.264 compressed domain based on approximate reasoning

AbstractThis paper presents a real-time segmentation algorithm to obtain moving objects from the H.264 compressed domain. The proposed segmentation works with very little information and is based on two features of the H.264 compressed video: motion vectors associated to the macroblocks and decision modes. The algorithm uses fuzzy logic and allows to describe position, velocity and size of the detected regions in a comprehensive way, so the proposed approach works with low level information but manages highly comprehensive linguistic concepts. The performance of the algorithm is improved using dynamic design of fuzzy sets that avoids merge and split problems. Experimental results for several traffic scenes demonstrate the real-time performance and the encouraging results in diverse situations

Influence of particle density on flow behavior and deposit architecture of concentrated pyroclastic density currents over a break in slope: Insights from laboratory experiments

Geological granular flows are highly complex, gravity-driven phenomena whose different behaviors depend on the mechanical properties, density and granulometric distributions of the constituent materials. Years of research have produced significant advances in understanding transport and deposition processes in granular flows. However, the role and effects of clast densities and density contrast in a granular flow are still not fully understood. In this paper we show the effect that pumice has on dry granular flows; specifically on flow velocity and longitudinal segregation of the deposits. Our work confirms, by experimental results, field observations on pumice/lithic segregation and longer pumice runout. We report results of velocity decay and deposit architecture for a granular flow passing over a break in slope (from 38° to 4° inclination). The 30 experimental runs were carried out in a five-meter long laboratory flume equipped with a series of sensors that include laser gates and high-speed cameras (400 fps). We used two polydisperse mixtures of dacitic lithics and rhyolitic pumice in varying amounts, with Weibull and Gaussian particle size distributions. The pumice/lithic ratio changes the flow response passing over a break in slope. This effect is particularly evident starting from 10% of pumice volume into the flow mixture, independently of its granulometric distribution. Runout relates to mass following a power law, with an exponent close 0.2. The experiments confirm that pumice segregation affects polydispersed mixtures, similarly to what has been observed in real field deposits, where density decoupling produces lithic-enriched proximal areas and pumice-enriched distal areas. The results obtained prove that the presence of low-density materials in a dense granular flow has a strong influence on its behavior

Water-ice driven activity on Main-Belt Comet P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) ?

The dust ejecta of Main-Belt Comet P/2010 A2 (LINEAR) have been observed with several telescopes at the at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma, Spain. Application of an inverse dust tail Monte Carlo method to the images of the dust ejecta from the object indicates that a sustained, likely water-ice driven, activity over some eight months is the mechanism responsible for the formation of the observed tail. The total amount of dust released is estimated to be 5E7 kg, which represents about 0.3% of the nucleus mass. While the event could have been triggered by a collision, this cannot be decided from the currently available data.Comment: Accepted for ApJ Letter

Stability mapping of bipartite tight-binding graphs with losses and gain: PT−{\cal PT}-symmetry and beyond

We consider bipartite tight-binding graphs composed by $N$ nodes split into two sets of equal size: one set containing nodes with on-site loss, the other set having nodes with on-site gain. The nodes are connected randomly with probability $p$. We give a rationale for the relevance of such "throttle/brake" coupled systems (physically open systems) to grasp the stability issues of complex networks in areas such as biochemistry, neurons or economy, for which their modelling in terms of non-hermitian Hamiltonians is still in infancy. Specifically, we measure the connectivity between the two sets with the parameter $\alpha$, which is the ratio of current adjacent pairs over the total number of possible adjacent pairs between the sets. For general undirected-graph setups, the non-hermitian Hamiltonian $H(\gamma,\alpha,N)$ of this model presents pseudo-Hermiticity, where $\gamma$ is the loss/gain strength. However, we show that for a given graph setup $H(\gamma,\alpha,N)$ becomes ${\cal PT}-$symmetric. In both scenarios (pseudo-Hermiticity and ${\cal PT}-$symmetric), depending on the parameter combination, the spectra of $H(\gamma,\alpha,N)$ can be real even when it is non-hermitian. Thus, we numerically characterize the average fractions of real and imaginary eigenvalues of $H(\gamma,\alpha,N)$ as a function of the parameter set $\{\gamma,\alpha,N\}$. We demonstrate, for both setups, that there is a well defined sector of the $\gamma\alpha-$plane (which grows with $N$) where the spectrum of $H(\gamma,\alpha,N)$ is predominantly real.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Sobre el número de módulos fotovoltaicos en serie para aplicaciones de riego

En sistemas de riego fotovoltaico la tensión mínima en el bus de continua del variador de frecuencia (VF) es impuesta por la tensión necesaria a la entrada de la moto-bomba. Así, siempre que esta tensión es más grande que la tensión del punto de máxima potencia del generador fotovoltaico parte de la energía que este podría entregar no se utiliza. El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar estas pérdidas para 20, 21 y 22 módulos en serie (para módulos de 60 células en serie). Se puede concluir que si no hay caídas de tensión entre el VF y la moto-bomba las pérdidas son depreciables. Sin embargo, el aumento de estas pérdidas lleva a un incremento del porcentaje de pérdidas en energía fotovoltaica. Además, se verifica un aumento de las pérdidas con el incremento de la temperatura de célula

LAPW frozen-phonon calculation, shell model lattice dynamics and specific-heat measurement of SnO

An ab-initio Linear Augmented Plane-Wave (LAPW) calculation of the zone-centered phonon frequencies of SnO has been performed. E$_g$ symmetry has been ascribed to the mode observed at 113 cm$^{-1}$ in Raman measurements, discarding a previous B$_{1g}$ assignement. The other phonon modes measured by Raman spectroscopy are also well reproduced. A new shell-model has also been developed, that gives good agreement of the zone-centered frequencies compared to the measured data and the LAPW results. Specific heat measurements have been performed between 5 K and 110 K. Computation of the specific heat and the M\"{o}ssbauer recoilless fraction with the improved shell-model shows a good agreement with the experimental data as a function of temperature.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure. to appear in Phys. Rev. B (November 1999

GIADA performance during Rosetta mission scientific operations at comet 67P

The Grain Impact Analyser and Dust Accumulator (GIADA) instrument onboard Rosetta studied the dust environment of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from 3.7 au inbound, through perihelion, to 3.8 au outbound, measuring the dust flow and the dynamic properties of individual particles. GIADA is composed of three subsystems: 1) Grain Detection System (GDS); 2) Impact Sensor (IS); and 3) Micro-Balances System (MBS). Monitoring the subsystems’ performance during operations is an important element for the correct calibration of scientific measurements. In this paper, we analyse the GIADA inflight calibration data obtained by internal calibration devices for the three subsystems during the period from 1 August 2014 to 31 October 2015. The calibration data testify a nominal behaviour of the instrument during these fifteen months of mission; the only exception is a minor loss of sensitivity for one of the two GDS receivers, attributed to dust contamination