Consumption of Artificially-Sweetened Soft Drinks in Pregnancy and Risk of Child Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis

Background: Past evidence has suggested a role of artificial sweeteners in allergic disease; yet, the evidence has been inconsistent and unclear. Objective: To examine relation of intake of artificially-sweetened beverages during pregnancy with child asthma and allergic rhinitis at 18 months and 7 years. Methods: We analyzed data from 60,466 women enrolled during pregnancy in the prospective longitudinal Danish National Birth Cohort between 1996 and 2003. At the 25th week of gestation we administered a validated Food Frequency Questionnaire which asked in detail about intake of artificially-sweetened soft drinks. At 18 months, we evaluated child asthma using interview data. We also assessed asthma and allergic rhinitis through a questionnaire at age 7 and by using national registries. Current asthma was defined as self-reported asthma diagnosis and wheeze in the past 12 months. We examined the relation between intake of artificially-sweetened soft drinks and child allergic disease outcomes and present here odds ratios with 95% CI comparing daily vs. no intake. Results: At 18 months, we found that mothers who consumed more artificially-sweetened non-carbonated soft drinks were 1.23 (95% CI: 1.13, 1.33) times more likely to report a child asthma diagnosis compared to non-consumers. Similar results were found for child wheeze. Consumers of artificially-sweetened carbonated drinks were more likely to have a child asthma diagnosis in the patient (1.30, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.66) and medication (1.13, 95% CI: 0.98, 1.29) registry, as well as self-reported allergic rhinitis (1.31, 95% CI: 0.98, 1.74) during the first 7 years of follow-up. We found no associations for sugar-sweetened soft drinks. Conclusion: Carbonated artificially-sweetened soft drinks were associated with registry-based asthma and self-reported allergic rhinitis, while early childhood outcomes were related to non-carbonated soft drinks. These results suggest that consumption of artificially-sweetened soft drinks during pregnancy may play a role in offspring allergic disease development

Proton-Rich Nuclear Statistical Equilibrium

Proton-rich material in a state of nuclear statistical equilibrium (NSE) is one of the least studied regimes of nucleosynthesis. One reason for this is that after hydrogen burning, stellar evolution proceeds at conditions of equal number of neutrons and protons or at a slight degree of neutron-richness. Proton-rich nucleosynthesis in stars tends to occur only when hydrogen-rich material that accretes onto a white dwarf or neutron star explodes, or when neutrino interactions in the winds from a nascent proto-neutron star or collapsar-disk drive the matter proton-rich prior to or during the nucleosynthesis. In this paper we solve the NSE equations for a range of proton-rich thermodynamic conditions. We show that cold proton-rich NSE is qualitatively different from neutron-rich NSE. Instead of being dominated by the Fe-peak nuclei with the largest binding energy per nucleon that have a proton to nucleon ratio close to the prescribed electron fraction, NSE for proton-rich material near freeze-out temperature is mainly composed of Ni56 and free protons. Previous results of nuclear reaction network calculations rely on this non-intuitive high proton abundance, which this paper will explain. We show how the differences and especially the large fraction of free protons arises from the minimization of the free energy as a result of a delicate competition between the entropy and the nuclear binding energy.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

Cholesterol Serum Levels and Use of Statins in Graves' Orbitopathy: A New Starting Point for the Therapy.

Graves' Orbitopathy (GO) is the most frequent extrathyroidal manifestation of Graves' disease (GD). Its ultimate cause remains unclear, but it is commonly considered an autoimmune disorder due to self recognition of autoantigens constitutively expressed by orbital fibroblasts (OFs), and thyroid epithelial cells. High dose intravenous glucocorticoids (ivGC) are the most commonly used treatment for moderately severe and active GO. However, based on the complex pathogenesis of GO, a number of factors may have a protective and maybe a therapeutic role. The use of other medications improving the effect of GC may increase the overall effectiveness of the therapy and reduce GC doses, thereby limiting side effects. Recently, a possible protective role of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme reductase inhibitors, the so-called statins, and perhaps of lowering cholesterol levels, has been proposed. Thus, statins have been reported to be associated with a reduced frequency of GO in GD patients and in recent cross-sectional and retrospective studies a significant correlation was found between the occurrence of GO and both total and LDL-cholesterol in patients with a GD of relatively recent onset, suggesting a role of cholesterol in the development of GO. Moreover, a correlation was found between the GO clinical activity score and total as well as LDL-cholesterol in untreated GO patients, depending on GO duration, indicating a role of cholesterol on GO activity. Therefore, statin treatment may be beneficial for GO. Here we review this subject, which offers new therapeutic perspectives for patients with GO

Generation and physiological roles of linear ubiquitin chains

Ubiquitination now ranks with phosphorylation as one of the best-studied post-translational modifications of proteins with broad regulatory roles across all of biology. Ubiquitination usually involves the addition of ubiquitin chains to target protein molecules, and these may be of eight different types, seven of which involve the linkage of one of the seven internal lysine (K) residues in one ubiquitin molecule to the carboxy-terminal diglycine of the next. In the eighth, the so-called linear ubiquitin chains, the linkage is between the amino-terminal amino group of methionine on a ubiquitin that is conjugated with a target protein and the carboxy-terminal carboxy group of the incoming ubiquitin. Physiological roles are well established for K48-linked chains, which are essential for signaling proteasomal degradation of proteins, and for K63-linked chains, which play a part in recruitment of DNA repair enzymes, cell signaling and endocytosis. We focus here on linear ubiquitin chains, how they are assembled, and how three different avenues of research have indicated physiological roles for linear ubiquitination in innate and adaptive immunity and suppression of inflammation

Aventura no sítio da vovó.

Cartilha informativa sobre a cana-de-açúcar, em formato de histórias em quadrinhos, dedicada ao público infantil. O objetivo deste gibi é transmitir às crianças noções sobre a cultura da cana e a produção de açúcar e de álcool.bitstream/item/11856/1/doc88.pd

Entropy production as correlation between system and reservoir

We derive an exact (classical and quantum) expression for the entropy production of a finite system placed in contact with one or several finite reservoirs each of which is initially described by a canonical equilibrium distribution. Whereas the total entropy of system plus reservoirs is conserved, we show that the system entropy production is always positive and is a direct measure of the system-reservoir correlations and/or entanglements. Using an exactly solvable quantum model, we illustrate our novel interpretation of the Second Law in a microscopically reversible finite-size setting, with strong coupling between system and reservoirs. With this model, we also explicitly show the approach of our exact formulation to the standard description of irreversibility in the limit of a large reservoir.Comment: 1 figure, 4 page

Polarimetry of the potential binary supermassive black hole system in J1430+2303

The growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) through merging has long been predicted but its detection remains elusive. However, a promising target has been discovered in the Seyfert-1 galaxy J1430+2303. If a binary system truly lies at the center of J1430+2303, the usual symmetry expected from pole-on views in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) responsible for the observed low ($\le$ 1\%) optical linear polarization in the continuum of these objects is expected to be broken. This should lead to higher-than-usual polarization degrees, together with time-dependent variations of the polarization signal. We used the specialized photopolarimeters RoboPol mounted on the 1.3m telescope at the Skinakas Observatory and the Alhambra Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (ALFOSC) mounted on the 2.56m Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) at the "Roque de los Muchachos" Observatory to measure the B-, V-, R-, and I-band polarization of J1430+2303. Observations were complemented using the FORS2 spectropolarimeter mounted on the VLT to acquire 3500 -- 8650 Angs polarized spectra. We compared our set of observations to Monte Carlo radiative-transfer predictions to look for the presence of a SMBH binary. The observed linear continuum polarization of J1430+2303 in the V and R bands is $\sim$ 0.4\% with an associated polarization angle of slightly larger than 0$^\circ$. We detected no significant changes in polarization or photometry between May, June, and July of 2022. In addition, there is no significant difference between the polarization of H$\alpha$ and the polarization of the continuum. A single SMBH at the center of an AGN model is able to reproduce the observed spectrum and polarization, while the binary hypothesis is rejected with a probability of $\sim$85\%.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures 6 tables, accepted for publication in A&

Topology of "white" stars in relativistic fragmentation of light nuclei

In the present paper, experimental observations of the multifragmentation processes of light relativistic nuclei carried out by means of emulsions are reviewed. Events of the type of "white" stars in which the dissociation of relativistic nuclei is not accompanied by the production of mesons and the target-nucleus fragments are considered. A distinctive feature of the charge topology in the dissociation of the Ne, Mg, Si, and S nuclei is an almost total suppression of the binary splitting of nuclei to fragments with charges higher than 2. The growth of the nuclear fragmentation degree is revealed in an increase in the multiplicity of singly and doubly charged fragments with decreasing charge of the non-excited part of the fragmenting nucleus. The processes of dissociation of stable Li, Be, B, C, N, and O isotopes to charged fragments were used to study special features of the formation of systems consisting of the lightest $\alpha$, d, and t nuclei. Clustering in form of the $^3$He nucleus can be detected in "white" stars via the dissociation of neutron-deficient Be, B, C, and N isotopes.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 9 tables, conference: Conference on Physics of Fundamental Interactions, Moscow, Russia, 1-5 Mar 2004.(Author's translation