Infant BMI or Weight-for-Length and Obesity Risk in Early Childhood

Weight-for-length (WFL) is currently used to assess adiposity under 2 years. We assessed WFL- versus BMI-based estimates of adiposity in healthy infants in determining risk for early obesity

Informing investment to reduce inequalities: a modelling approach

Background: Reducing health inequalities is an important policy objective but there is limited quantitative information about the impact of specific interventions. Objectives: To provide estimates of the impact of a range of interventions on health and health inequalities. Materials and methods: Literature reviews were conducted to identify the best evidence linking interventions to mortality and hospital admissions. We examined interventions across the determinants of health: a ‘living wage’; changes to benefits, taxation and employment; active travel; tobacco taxation; smoking cessation, alcohol brief interventions, and weight management services. A model was developed to estimate mortality and years of life lost (YLL) in intervention and comparison populations over a 20-year time period following interventions delivered only in the first year. We estimated changes in inequalities using the relative index of inequality (RII). Results: Introduction of a ‘living wage’ generated the largest beneficial health impact, with modest reductions in health inequalities. Benefits increases had modest positive impacts on health and health inequalities. Income tax increases had negative impacts on population health but reduced inequalities, while council tax increases worsened both health and health inequalities. Active travel increases had minimally positive effects on population health but widened health inequalities. Increases in employment reduced inequalities only when targeted to the most deprived groups. Tobacco taxation had modestly positive impacts on health but little impact on health inequalities. Alcohol brief interventions had modestly positive impacts on health and health inequalities only when strongly socially targeted, while smoking cessation and weight-reduction programmes had minimal impacts on health and health inequalities even when socially targeted. Conclusions: Interventions have markedly different effects on mortality, hospitalisations and inequalities. The most effective (and likely cost-effective) interventions for reducing inequalities were regulatory and tax options. Interventions focused on individual agency were much less likely to impact on inequalities, even when targeted at the most deprived communities

Ultralow-light-level color image reconstruction using high-efficiency plasmonic metasurface mosaic filters

As single-photon imaging becomes progressively more commonplace in sensing applications such as low-light-level imaging, three-dimensional profiling, and fluorescence imaging, there exist a number of fields where multispectral information can also be exploited, e.g., in environmental monitoring and target identification. We have fabricated a high-transmittance mosaic filter array, where each optical filter was composed of a plasmonic metasurface fabricated in a single lithographic step. This plasmonic metasurface design utilized an array of elliptical and circular nanoholes, which produced enhanced optical coupling between multiple plasmonic interactions. The resulting metasurfaces produced narrow bandpass filters for blue, green, and red light with peak transmission efficiencies of 79%, 75%, and 68%, respectively. After the three metasurface filter designs were arranged in a 64×64 format random mosaic pattern, this mosaic filter was directly integrated onto a CMOS single-photon avalanche diode detector array. Color images were then reconstructed at light levels as low as approximately 5 photons per pixel, on average, via the simultaneous acquisition of low-photon multispectral data using both three-color active laser illumination and a broadband white-light illumination source

Neural correlates of sexual cue reactivity in individuals with and without compulsive sexual behaviours

Although compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB) has been conceptualized as a "behavioural" addiction and common or overlapping neural circuits may govern the processing of natural and drug rewards, little is known regarding the responses to sexually explicit materials in individuals with and without CSB. Here, the processing of cues of varying sexual content was assessed in individuals with and without CSB, focusing on neural regions identified in prior studies of drug-cue reactivity. 19 CSB subjects and 19 healthy volunteers were assessed using functional MRI comparing sexually explicit videos with non-sexual exciting videos. Ratings of sexual desire and liking were obtained. Relative to healthy volunteers, CSB subjects had greater desire but similar liking scores in response to the sexually explicit videos. Exposure to sexually explicit cues in CSB compared to non-CSB subjects was associated with activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate, ventral striatum and amygdala. Functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate-ventral striatum-amygdala network was associated with subjective sexual desire (but not liking) to a greater degree in CSB relative to non-CSB subjects. The dissociation between desire or wanting and liking is consistent with theories of incentive motivation underlying CSB as in drug addictions. Neural differences in the processing of sexual-cue reactivity were identified in CSB subjects in regions previously implicated in drug-cue reactivity studies. The greater engagement of corticostriatal limbic circuitry in CSB following exposure to sexual cues suggests neural mechanisms underlying CSB and potential biological targets for interventions

Structure of a putative NTP pyrophosphohydrolase: YP_001813558.1 from Exiguobacterium sibiricum 255-15.

The crystal structure of a putative NTPase, YP_001813558.1 from Exiguobacterium sibiricum 255-15 (PF09934, DUF2166) was determined to 1.78 Å resolution. YP_001813558.1 and its homologs (dimeric dUTPases, MazG proteins and HisE-encoded phosphoribosyl ATP pyrophosphohydrolases) form a superfamily of all-α-helical NTP pyrophosphatases. In dimeric dUTPase-like proteins, a central four-helix bundle forms the active site. However, in YP_001813558.1, an unexpected intertwined swapping of two of the helices that compose the conserved helix bundle results in a `linked dimer' that has not previously been observed for this family. Interestingly, despite this novel mode of dimerization, the metal-binding site for divalent cations, such as magnesium, that are essential for NTPase activity is still conserved. Furthermore, the active-site residues that are involved in sugar binding of the NTPs are also conserved when compared with other α-helical NTPases, but those that recognize the nucleotide bases are not conserved, suggesting a different substrate specificity

Metasurface optics with on-axis polarization control for terahertz sensing applications

Non-destructive testing and imaging of materials with unknown properties are important applications of terahertz technology. Different contrast forming methods are available to obtain diverse information on the imaged region, including intensity, color, phase and polarization. Polarimetric imaging is relatively under-investigated owing to the difficulty in its implementation with complex optical arrangements. In this paper we present the design and monolithic fabrication of an anisotropic metasurface that incorporates several beam forming functions in a single layer with high efficiency thus simplifying instrument construction. The probe beam generated by the metasurface consists of an orthogonally polarized pair of collinear Bessel beams that create a well-defined on-axis change of polarization. The metasurface is integrated into a polarimetric imaging microscope for 3D beam profiling and sensing experiments at 2.52 THz. An analytical model to describe the on-axis polarization variation was found to be in excellent agreement with both finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations and the experimental results. The setup was used to measure the refractive index and diattenuation of homogeneous sample regions in a proof-of-principle application. We anticipate this technology will find future application in non-destructive testing and polarimetric imaging of polymer composites and 3D profilometry of reflective surfaces

Search for the disappearance of muon antineutrinos in the NuMI neutrino beam

We report constraints on antineutrino oscillation parameters that were obtained by using the two MINOS detectors to measure the 7% muon antineutrino component of the NuMI neutrino beam. In the Far Detector, we select 130 events in the charged-current muon antineutrino sample, compared to a prediction of 136.4 ± 11.7(stat)^(+10.2)_(-8.9)(syst) events under the assumption │Δm^2│ = 2.32 X 10^(-3) eV^2, sin^2(2θ) = 1.0

Measurement of the neutrino mass splitting and flavor mixing by MINOS

Measurements of neutrino oscillations using the disappearance of muon neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI neutrino beam as observed by the two MINOS detectors are reported. New analysis methods have been applied to an enlarged data sample from an exposure of $7.25 imes 10^{20}$ protons on target. A fit to neutrino oscillations yields values of $|Delta m^2| = (2.32^{+0.12}_{-0.08}) imes10^{-3}$,eV$^2$ for the atmospheric mass splitting and m sin^2!(2 heta) > 0.90 (90%,C.L.) for the mixing angle. Pure neutrino decay and quantum decoherence hypotheses are excluded at 7 and 9 standard deviations, respectively