Obesity and low stature: nutritional status of individuals belonging to the same family

Chronic undernourishment in infancy and obesity associated with short stature in the adult phase may have common determining biological and socio-environmental factors. This study with a view to contributing to the understanding of this relationship has as objective the verification of how children and parents distribution of nutritional conditions in pauperized families takes place and what the factors of a social, environmental and biological nature involvedare. It was studied 214 children aged 6 months to 5 years and 293 children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years, belonging to pauper families earning monthly incomes less than US 70,living in two rural municipalities of the State of São Paulo, Brazil. Maternal schooling, number of rooms in the dwelling, age bellow 24 months, problems at birth and low stature of the mother especially when associated with obesity and, were all associated with the height deficitin children up to five years of age. The association of fathers height was weak. Conversely to the children of less then five years of age, the children of six year or over and adolescents were more clearly subject to the adverse socio-environmental and family conditions. Type of dwelling,number of individuals by dwelling, fathers absence and alcohol abuser in the family, lowstature of the mother associated with obesity were strongly related to the height deficit. Lowstature of the father was associated with the stature deficit, in this group..

Projecting the Bethe-Salpeter Equation onto the Light-Front and back: A Short Review

The technique of projecting the four-dimensional two-body Bethe-Salpeter equation onto the three-dimensional Light-Front hypersurface, combined with the quasi-potential approach, is briefly illustrated, by placing a particular emphasis on the relation between the projection method and the effective dynamics of the valence component of the Light-Front wave function. Some details on how to construct the Fock expansion of both i) the Light-Front effective interaction and ii) the electromagnetic current operator, satisfying the proper Ward-Takahashi identity, will be presented, addressing the relevance of the Fock content in the operators living onto the Light-Front hypersurface. Finally, the generalization of the formalism to the three-particle case will be outlined.Comment: 16 pages, macros included. Mini-review to be printed in a regular issue of Few-Body Systems devoted to the Workshop on "Relativistic Description of Two- and Three-body Systems in Nuclear Physics" ECT* Trento, 19 - 23 October 200

Arylated and dihydrofuran naphthoquinones: electrochemical parameters, evaluation of antitumor activity and their correlation.

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Petrosamine isolated from marine sponge Petrosia sp. demonstrates protection against neurotoxicity in vitro and in vivo

According to The World Alzheimer Report 2023 by Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) estimates that 33 to 38.5 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). A crucial hallmark associated with this disease is associated with the deficiency of the brain neurotransmitter acetylcholine, due to an affected acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity. Marine organisms synthesize several classes of compounds, some of which exhibit significant AChE inhibition, such as petrosamine, a coloured pyridoacridine alkaloid. The aim of this work was to characterize the activity of petrosamine isolated for the first time from a Brazilian marine sponge, using two neurotoxicity models with aluminium chloride, as exposure to aluminium is associated with the development of neurodegenerative diseases. The in vitro model was based in a neuroblastoma cell line and the in vivo model exploited the potential of zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos in mimicking hallmarks of AD. To our knowledge, this is the first report on petrosamine’s activity over these parameters, either in vitro or in vivo, in order to characterize its full potential for tackling neurotoxicity

Barragem subterrânea: I - Diagnóstico nos estados da Bahia, Pernambuco e Paraíba.

A Embrapa Semi-Árido desenvolve um Projeto de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento que tem por finalidade estudar alternativas de manejo de solo e água em sistema de cultivos explorados em Barragem Subterrânea (BS), bem como, favorecer o processo de irradiação da BS por meio da valorização dos espaços de experimentação científica com envolvimento de pesquisadores, agricultores e ONG's. Neste contexto, visando atingir s objetivos propostos pelo Projeto, três ações de Pesquisas foram elaboradas. Ação de Pesquisa 1 - Monitoramento de BS instaladas em áreas de Produtor, através da aplicação de questionários, com o objetivo de diagnosticar as causas do sucesso ou não desta tecnologia; Ação de Pesquisa 2 - Implantação de Unidades Demonstrativas (UD's), visando implementação de ações de transferência de tecnologia através de Campos de Aprendizagem Tecnológica (CAT's); Ação de Pesquisa 3 - Manejo de solo, água e planta em BS, com o intuito de definir alguns parâmetros para avaliar o potencial da BS e medir seu impacto na propriedade, consequentemente na qualidade de vida do agricultor. Em maio de 2004 o projeto foi iniciado com a realização de um Workshop, de Gestão do Projeto, na Embrapa Semi-Árido, com a participação de toda a equipe, inclusive das Instituições Parceiras, para discutir e definir as metodologias/métodos que estão sendo utilizadas na capacitação/sensibilização dos agricultores e nos temas de pesquisa a serem estudados. Neste evento foram estabelecidas, datas de quatro oficinas, três de intercâmbio e uma de coordenação e programação, assim como a aplicação de um questionário visando diagnóstico para determinação do "marco zero". Os questionários foram aplicados num raio de cobertura maior do que o que estava previsto no Projeto. Foram aplicados 103 questionários, 53 na Paraíba, 18 na Bahia e 32 em Pernambuco, abrangendo um total de 10 municípios na PB e 08 na BA e PE. Os resultados dos questionários juntamente com os das oficinas estão norteando demandas de pesquisas de cada Estado. Os dados quantitativos obtidos com os questionários demonstraram a necessidade de uma abordagem de pesquisa-ação participativa para guiar o agricultor no aprimoramento de seus conhecimentos e de suas práticas de manejo de solo-água-planta dentro do contexto da barragem subterrânea

Growth inhibitory effects of 3′-nitro-3-phenylamino nor-beta-lapachone against HL-60: A redox-dependent mechanism

AbstractIn this study, the cytotoxicity, genotoxicity and early ROS generation of 2,2-dimethyl-(3H)-3-(N-3′-nitrophenylamino)naphtho[1,2-b]furan-4,5-dione (QPhNO2) were investigated and compared with those of its precursor, nor-beta-lapachone (nor-beta), with the main goal of proposing a mechanism of antitumor action. The results were correlated with those obtained from electrochemical experiments held in protic (acetate buffer pH 4.5) and aprotic (DMF/TBABF4) media in the presence and absence of oxygen and with those from dsDNA biosensors and ssDNA in solution, which provided evidence of a positive interaction with DNA in the case of QPhNO2. QPhNO2 caused DNA fragmentation and mitochondrial depolarization and induced apoptosis/necrosis in HL-60 cells. Pre-treatment with N-acetyl-l-cysteine partially abolished the observed effects related to the QPhNO2 treatment, including those involving apoptosis induction, indicating a partially redox-dependent mechanism. These findings point to the potential use of the combination of pharmacology and electrochemistry in medicinal chemistry

Impactos ambientais do manejo agroecológico da caatinga no Rio Grande do Norte.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar os impactos ambientais do manejo agroecológico da caatinga, em unidades de produção familiar no Rio Grande do Norte, pelo método Ambitec de produção animal - dimensão ambiental, desenvolvido pela Embrapa Meio Ambiente. Foram avaliadas sete unidades de produção familiar, em quatro projetos de assentamentos de reforma agrária do Município de Apodi, RN. Os dados para o levantamento foram obtidos por meio de questionários aplicados aos representantes das unidades produtivas familiares, que atribuíram, a cada variável estudada, um valor que representou a alteração proporcionada pela implementação da tecnologia. Após a inserção dos coeficientes de alteração de cada variável dos indicadores por unidade de produção, o coeficiente de impacto foi automaticamente calculado por meio da planilha Ambitec. O manejo agroecológico da caatinga resultou num impacto ambiental positivo, e suas maiores contribuições foram relacionadas aos efeitos positivos dos seguintes indicadores: capacidade produtiva do solo, uso de insumos materiais, qualidade do produto e diminuição da emissão de poluentes à atmosfera. Dois indicadores geraram efeitos negativos: o uso de energia e o uso de recursos naturais. Pela superioridade dos benefícios gerados, o manejo agroecológico da caatinga é uma inovação tecnológica geradora de impactos ambientais positivos

Existing and potential infection risk zones of yellow fever worldwide: a modelling analysis.

BACKGROUND: Yellow fever cases are under-reported and the exact distribution of the disease is unknown. An effective vaccine is available but more information is needed about which populations within risk zones should be targeted to implement interventions. Substantial outbreaks of yellow fever in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Brazil, coupled with the global expansion of the range of its main urban vector, Aedes aegypti, suggest that yellow fever has the propensity to spread further internationally. The aim of this study was to estimate the disease's contemporary distribution and potential for spread into new areas to help inform optimal control and prevention strategies. METHODS: We assembled 1155 geographical records of yellow fever virus infection in people from 1970 to 2016. We used a Poisson point process boosted regression tree model that explicitly incorporated environmental and biological explanatory covariates, vaccination coverage, and spatial variability in disease reporting rates to predict the relative risk of apparent yellow fever virus infection at a 5 × 5 km resolution across all risk zones (47 countries across the Americas and Africa). We also used the fitted model to predict the receptivity of areas outside at-risk zones to the introduction or reintroduction of yellow fever transmission. By use of previously published estimates of annual national case numbers, we used the model to map subnational variation in incidence of yellow fever across at-risk countries and to estimate the number of cases averted by vaccination worldwide. FINDINGS: Substantial international and subnational spatial variation exists in relative risk and incidence of yellow fever as well as varied success of vaccination in reducing incidence in several high-risk regions, including Brazil, Cameroon, and Togo. Areas with the highest predicted average annual case numbers include large parts of Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan, where vaccination coverage in 2016 was estimated to be substantially less than the recommended threshold to prevent outbreaks. Overall, we estimated that vaccination coverage levels achieved by 2016 avert between 94 336 and 118 500 cases of yellow fever annually within risk zones, on the basis of conservative and optimistic vaccination scenarios. The areas outside at-risk regions with predicted high receptivity to yellow fever transmission (eg, parts of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand) were less extensive than the distribution of the main urban vector, A aegypti, with low receptivity to yellow fever transmission in southern China, where A aegypti is known to occur. INTERPRETATION: Our results provide the evidence base for targeting vaccination campaigns within risk zones, as well as emphasising their high effectiveness. Our study highlights areas where public health authorities should be most vigilant for potential spread or importation events. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation