Economic and other barriers to adopting recommendations to prevent childhood obesity: results of a focus group study with parents

Abstract Background Parents are integral to the implementation of obesity prevention and management recommendations for children. Exploration of barriers to and facilitators of parental decisions to adopt obesity prevention recommendations will inform future efforts to reduce childhood obesity. Methods We conducted 4 focus groups (2 English, 2 Spanish) among a total of 19 parents of overweight (BMI ≥ 85th percentile) children aged 5-17 years. The main discussion focused on 7 common obesity prevention recommendations: reducing television (TV) watching, removing TV from child's bedroom, increasing physically active games, participating in community or school-based athletics, walking to school, walking more in general, and eating less fast food. Parents were asked to discuss what factors would make each recommendation more difficult (barriers) or easier (facilitators) to follow. Participants were also asked about the relative importance of economic (time and dollar costs/savings) barriers and facilitators if these were not brought into the discussion unprompted. Results Parents identified many barriers but few facilitators to adopting obesity prevention recommendations for their children. Members of all groups identified economic barriers (time and dollar costs) among a variety of pertinent barriers, although the discussion of dollar costs often required prompting. Parents cited other barriers including child preference, difficulty with changing habits, lack of information, lack of transportation, difficulty with monitoring child behavior, need for assistance from family members, parity with other family members, and neighborhood walking safety. Facilitators identified included access to physical activity programs, availability of alternatives to fast food and TV which are acceptable to the child, enlisting outside support, dietary information, involving the child, setting limits, making behavior changes gradually, and parental change in shopping behaviors and own eating behaviors. Conclusions Parents identify numerous barriers to adopting obesity prevention recommendations, most notably child and family preferences and resistance to change, but also economic barriers. Intervention programs should consider the context of family priorities and how to overcome barriers and make use of relevant facilitators during program development.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78270/1/1471-2431-9-81.xmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78270/2/1471-2431-9-81.pdfPeer Reviewe

Higgs Boson Mass in Low Scale Gauge Mediation Models

We consider low scale gauge mediation models with a very light gravitino m_{3/2}~16 eV, in the light of recent experimental hints on the Higgs boson mass. The light gravitino is very interesting since there is no gravitino over-production problem, but it seems difficult to explain the Higgs boson mass of ~125 GeV. This is because of the conflict between the light gravitino mass and heavy SUSY particle masses needed for producing the relatively heavy Higgs boson mass. We consider two possible extensions in this paper: a singlet extension of the Higgs sector, and strongly coupled gauge mediation. We show that there is a large parameter space, in both scenarios, where the Higgs boson mass of ~125 GeV is explained without any conflict with such a very light gravitino.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figure

Pulmonary Toxicity and Adjuvant Effect of Di-(2-exylhexyl) Phthalate in Ovalbumin-Immunized BALB/c Mice

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a complex pulmonary inflammatory disease, which is characterized by airway hyperresponsiveness, variable airflow obstruction and inflammation in the airways. The majority of asthma is allergic asthma, which is a disease caused by type I hypersensitivity mediated by IgE. Exposures to a number of environmental chemicals are suspected to lead to asthma, one such pollutant is di-(2-ethylheyl) phthalate (DEHP). DEHP is a manufactured chemical that is commonly added in plastic products to make them flexible. Epidemiological studies have revealed a positive association between DEHP exposure and asthma prevalence. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The present study was aimed to determine the underlying role of DEHP exposure in airway reactivity, especially when combined with allergen exposure. The biomarkers include pulmonary histopathology, airway hyperresponsiveness (lung function), IgE, IL-4, IFN-γ and eosinophils. Healthy balb/c mice were randomly divided into eight exposure groups (n = 8 each): (1) saline control, (2) 30 µg/(kg•d) DEHP, (3) 300 µg/(kg•d) DEHP, (4) 3000 µg/(kg•d) DEHP, and (5) ovalbumin (OVA)-sensitized group, (6) OVA-combined with 30 µg/(kg•d) DEHP, (7) OVA-combined with 300 µg/(kg•d) DEHP, and (8) OVA-combined with 3000 µg/(kg•d) DEHP. Experimental tests were conducted after 52-day DEHP exposure and subsequently one week of challenge with aerosolized OVA. The principal findings include: (1) Strong postive associations exist between OVA-combined DEHP exposure and serum total IgE (T-IgE), as well as histological findings. These positive associations show a dose-dependent low dose sensitive effect of DEHP. (2) IL-4, eosinophil recruitment and lung function are also indicators for adjuvant effect of DEHP. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest that except the significant changes of immunological and inflammatory biomarkers (T-IgE, IL-4, IFN-γ and eosinophils), the pulmonary histological (histopathological examination) and physiological (lung function) data also support that DEHP may promote and aggravate allergic asthma by adjuvant effect

System analysis and robustness

Software is increasingly embedded in a variety of physical contexts. This imposes new requirements on tools that support the design and analysis of systems. For instance, modeling embedded and cyberphysical systems needs to blend discrete mathematics, which is suitable for modeling digital components, with continuous mathematics, used for modeling physical components. This blending of continuous and discrete creates challenges that are absent when the discrete or the continuous setting are considered in isolation. We consider robustness, that is, the ability of an analysis of a model to cope with small amounts of imprecision in the model. Formally, we identify analyses with monotonic maps between complete lattices (a mathematical framework used for abstract interpretation and static analysis) and define robustness for monotonic maps between complete lattices of closed subsets of a metric space.</p

Localization of AQP5 during development of the mouse submandibular salivary gland

Aquaporin 5 (AQP5) is known to be central for salivary fluid secretion. A study of the temporal-spatial distribution of AQP5 during submandibular gland (SMG) development and in adult tissues might offer further clues to its unknown role during development. In the present work, SMGs from embryonic day (E) 14.5–18.5 and postnatal days (P) 0, 2, 5, 25, and 60 were immunostained for AQP5 and analyzed using light microscopy. Additional confocal and transmission electron microscopy were performed on P60 glands. Our results show that AQP5 expression first occurs in a scattered pattern in the late canalicular stage and becomes more prominent and organized in the terminal tubuli/pro-acinar cells towards birth. Additional apical membrane staining in the entire intralobular duct is found just prior to birth. During postnatal development, AQP5 is expressed in both the luminal and lateral membrane of pro-acinar/acinar cells. AQP5 is also detected in the basal membrane of acinar cells at P25 and P60. In the intercalated ducts at P60, the male glands show apical staining in the entire segment, while only the proximal region is positive in the female glands. These results demonstrate an evolving distribution of AQP5 during pre- and postnatal development in the mouse SMGs

Boundary State from Ellwood Invariants

Boundary states are given by appropriate linear combinations of Ishibashi states. Starting from any OSFT solution and assuming Ellwood conjecture we show that every coefficient of such a linear combination is given by an Ellwood invariant, computed in a slightly modified theory where it does not trivially vanish by the on-shell condition. Unlike the previous construction of Kiermaier, Okawa and Zwiebach, ours is linear in the string field, it is manifestly gauge invariant and it is also suitable for solutions known only numerically. The correct boundary state is readily reproduced in the case of known analytic solutions and, as an example, we compute the energy momentum tensor of the rolling tachyon from the generalized invariants of the corresponding solution. We also compute the energy density profile of Siegel-gauge multiple lump solutions and show that, as the level increases, it correctly approaches a sum of delta functions. This provides a gauge invariant way of computing the separations between the lower dimensional D-branes.Comment: v2: 63 pages, 14 figures. Major improvements in section 2. Version published in JHE

Mass Spectrometry Reveals that Oxysterols are Secreted from Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Induced Organoids

Oxysterols are potential biomarkers for liver metabolism that are altered under disease conditions such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We here apply sterolomics to organoids used for disease modeling of NAFLD. Using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry with on-line sample clean-up and enrichment, we establish that liver organoids produce and secrete oxysterols. We find elevated levels of 26-hydroxycholesterol, an LXR agonist and the first oxysterol in the acidic bile acid synthesis, in medium from steatotic liver organoids compared to untreated organoids. Other upregulated sterols in medium from steatotic liver organoids are dihydroxycholesterols, such as 7α,26–dihydroxycholesterol, and 7α,25-dihydroxycholesterol. Through 26-hydroxycholesterol exposure to human stem cell-derived hepatic stellate cells, we observe a trend of expressional downregulation of the pro-inflammatory cytokine CCL2, suggesting a protective role of 26-hydroxycholesterol during early-phased NAFLD disease development. Our findings support the possibility of oxysterols serving as NAFLD indicators, demonstrating the usefulness of combining organoids and mass spectrometry for disease modeling and biomarker studies

Cardy and Kerr

The Kerr/CFT correspondence employs the Cardy formula to compute the entropy of the left moving CFT states. This computation, which correctly reproduces the Bekenstein--Hawking entropy of the four-dimensional extremal Kerr black hole, is performed in a regime where the temperature is of order unity rather than in a high-temperature regime. We show that the comparison of the entropy of the extreme Kerr black hole and the entropy in the CFT can be understood within the Cardy regime by considering a D0-D6 system with the same entropic properties.Comment: 20 pages; LaTeX; JHEP format; v.2 references added, v.3 Section 4 adde

Combining Experiments and Simulations Using the Maximum Entropy Principle

A key component of computational biology is to compare the results of computer modelling with experimental measurements. Despite substantial progress in the models and algorithms used in many areas of computational biology, such comparisons sometimes reveal that the computations are not in quantitative agreement with experimental data. The principle of maximum entropy is a general procedure for constructing probability distributions in the light of new data, making it a natural tool in cases when an initial model provides results that are at odds with experiments. The number of maximum entropy applications in our field has grown steadily in recent years, in areas as diverse as sequence analysis, structural modelling, and neurobiology. In this Perspectives article, we give a broad introduction to the method, in an attempt to encourage its further adoption. The general procedure is explained in the context of a simple example, after which we proceed with a real-world application in the field of molecular simulations, where the maximum entropy procedure has recently provided new insight. Given the limited accuracy of force fields, macromolecular simulations sometimes produce results that are at not in complete and quantitative accordance with experiments. A common solution to this problem is to explicitly ensure agreement between the two by perturbing the potential energy function towards the experimental data. So far, a general consensus for how such perturbations should be implemented has been lacking. Three very recent papers have explored this problem using the maximum entropy approach, providing both new theoretical and practical insights to the problem. We highlight each of these contributions in turn and conclude with a discussion on remaining challenges