Fat Rights, Public Health Oppression and Prejudice, and the “Obesity Epidemic”

The pervasiveness, frequency, and intensity of fat shaming, bullying, and harassment experienced by fat people is well-documented, and three quarters of the American public support antidiscrimination protections for fat people. Yet fat people generally remain unprotected from discrimination under federal and state law in all but two jurisdictions. This Article traces these problems to the agendas of public health leaders, organizations (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization), and associated industries, which are fighting an “obesity epidemic.” It describes some of their fat-shaming strategies and persistent public-health-crisis framings, as well as sensationalized presentations of research to attract news attention, boost visibility, and attract more funding for research and/or support for anti-obesity interventions. These behaviors ensure profits for a $50 billion diet industry and a market for prescription weight loss drugs. Yet almost all medical and environmental interventions for weight loss have little to no evidence of effectiveness. Environmental interventions are also opposed by the public, fat people, and especially fat rights advocates, who describe these interventions and the rhetoric used to generate support for them as stigmatizing. In addition, they ignore discrimination against fat people and facilitate inaction on solutions to extend fat people antidiscrimination protections. This inaction in turn facilitates discrimination against individuals who are disproportionately Black, Latinx, poor, women, and persons with disabilities. This Article argues that politicians and advocacy leaders from marginalized populations will serve their constituents best by extending fat people antidiscrimination protections and placing fat rights advocates and fat people in charge of the policies purported to benefit them

Coal desulfurization

A method for enhancing solubilizing mass transport of reactive agents into and out of carbonaceous materials, such as coal. Solubility parameters of mass transfer and solvent media are matched to individual peaks in the solubility parameter spectrum of coals to enhance swelling and/or dissolution. Methanol containing reactive agent carriers are found particularly effective for removing organic sulfur from coals by chlorinolysis

Cultural effects on computational metrics of spatial and temporal context.

The concept of "prediction error" - the difference between what occurred and was expected - is key to understanding the cognitive processes of human decision making. Expectations have to be learned so the concept of prediction error critically depends on context, specifically the temporal context of probabilistically related events and their changes across time (i.e. volatility). While past research suggests context differently affects some cognitive processes in East Asian and Western individuals, it is currently unknown whether this extends to computationally-grounded measures of learning and prediction error. Here we compared Chinese and British nationals in an associative learning task that quantifies behavioural effects of prediction error, and-through a hierarchical Bayesian learning model-also captures how individuals learn about probabilistic relationships and their volatility. For comparison, we also administered a psychophysical task, the tilt illusion, to assess cultural differences in susceptibility to spatial context. We found no cultural differences in the effect of spatial context on perception. In the domain of temporal context there was no effect of culture on sensitivity to prediction error, or learning about volatility, but some suggestion that Chinese individuals may learn more readily about probabilistic relationships

Homozygous knockout of the piezo1 gene in the zebrafish is not associated with anemia

We have now examined the erythroid phenotype in this zebrafish strain carrying a ZFN genomic knockout of piezo1. Genotyping was performed as previously described. In contrast to the anemic phenotype observed in zebrafish subjected to morpholino knockdown of piezo, the genomic ZFN knockout of piezo1 did not segregate either with anemia in the 3-dpf embryo or with dysmorphic erythrocyte morphology in the adult fish

Thrombosis Is Reduced by Inhibition of COX-1, but Unaffected by Inhibition of COX-2, in an Acute Model of Platelet Activation in the Mouse

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

The 2012 Interferometric Imaging Beauty Contest

We present the results of the fifth Interferometric Imaging Beauty Contest. The contest consists in blind imaging of test data sets derived from model sources and distributed in the OIFITS format. Two scenarios of imaging with CHARA/MIRC-6T were offered for reconstruction: imaging a T Tauri disc and imaging a spotted red supergiant. There were eight different teams competing this time: Monnier with the software package MACIM; Hofmann, Schertl and Weigelt with IRS; Thi\'ebaut and Soulez with MiRA ; Young with BSMEM; Mary and Vannier with MIROIRS; Millour and Vannier with independent BSMEM and MiRA entries; Rengaswamy with an original method; and Elias with the radio-astronomy package CASA. The contest model images, the data delivered to the contestants and the rules are described as well as the results of the image reconstruction obtained by each method. These results are discussed as well as the strengths and limitations of each algorithm

Impact of Facial Conformation on Canine Health: Corneal Ulceration

Concern has arisen in recent years that selection for extreme facial morphology in the domestic dog may be leading to an increased frequency of eye disorders. Corneal ulcers are a common and painful eye problem in domestic dogs that can lead to scarring and/or perforation of the cornea, potentially causing blindness. Exaggerated juvenile-like craniofacial conformations and wide eyes have been suspected as risk factors for corneal ulceration. This study aimed to quantify the relationship between corneal ulceration risk and conformational factors including relative eyelid aperture width, brachycephalic (short-muzzled) skull shape, the presence of a nasal fold (wrinkle), and exposed eye-white. A 14 month cross-sectional study of dogs entering a large UK based small animal referral hospital for both corneal ulcers and unrelated disorders was carried out. Dogs were classed as affected if they were diagnosed with a corneal ulcer using fluorescein dye while at the hospital (whether referred for this disorder or not), or if a previous diagnosis of corneal ulcer(s) was documented in the dogs’ histories. Of 700 dogs recruited, measured and clinically examined, 31 were affected by corneal ulcers. Most cases were male (71%), small breed dogs (mean± SE weight: 11.4±1.1 kg), with the most commonly diagnosed breed being the Pug. Dogs with nasal folds were nearly five times more likely to be affected by corneal ulcers than those without, and brachycephalic dogs (craniofacial ratio <0.5) were twenty times more likely to be affected than non-brachycephalic dogs. A 10% increase in relative eyelid aperture width more than tripled the ulcer risk. Exposed eye-white was associated with a nearly three times increased risk. The results demonstrate that artificially selecting for these facial characteristics greatly heightens the risk of corneal ulcers, and such selection should thus be discouraged to improve canine welfare

Ensembl Genomes: an integrative resource for genome-scale data from non-vertebrate species

Ensembl Genomes (http://www.ensemblgenomes.org) is an integrative resource for genome-scale data from non-vertebrate species. The project exploits and extends technology (for genome annotation, analysis and dissemination) developed in the context of the (vertebrate-focused) Ensembl project and provides a complementary set of resources for non-vertebrate species through a consistent set of programmatic and interactive interfaces. These provide access to data including reference sequence, gene models, transcriptional data, polymorphisms and comparative analysis. Since its launch in 2009, Ensembl Genomes has undergone rapid expansion, with the goal of providing coverage of all major experimental organisms, and additionally including taxonomic reference points to provide the evolutionary context in which genes can be understood. Against the backdrop of a continuing increase in genome sequencing activities in all parts of the tree of life, we seek to work, wherever possible, with the communities actively generating and using data, and are participants in a growing range of collaborations involved in the annotation and analysis of genomes

Genomic Tools for Evolution and Conservation in the Chimpanzee: Pan troglodytes ellioti Is a Genetically Distinct Population

In spite of its evolutionary significance and conservation importance, the population structure of the common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, is still poorly understood. An issue of particular controversy is whether the proposed fourth subspecies of chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes ellioti, from parts of Nigeria and Cameroon, is genetically distinct. Although modern high-throughput SNP genotyping has had a major impact on our understanding of human population structure and demographic history, its application to ecological, demographic, or conservation questions in non-human species has been extremely limited. Here we apply these tools to chimpanzee population structure, using ∼700 autosomal SNPs derived from chimpanzee genomic data and a further ∼100 SNPs from targeted re-sequencing. We demonstrate conclusively the existence of P. t. ellioti as a genetically distinct subgroup. We show that there is clear differentiation between the verus, troglodytes, and ellioti populations at the SNP and haplotype level, on a scale that is greater than that separating continental human populations. Further, we show that only a small set of SNPs (10–20) is needed to successfully assign individuals to these populations. Tellingly, use of only mitochondrial DNA variation to classify individuals is erroneous in 4 of 54 cases, reinforcing the dangers of basing demographic inference on a single locus and implying that the demographic history of the species is more complicated than that suggested analyses based solely on mtDNA. In this study we demonstrate the feasibility of developing economical and robust tests of individual chimpanzee origin as well as in-depth studies of population structure. These findings have important implications for conservation strategies and our understanding of the evolution of chimpanzees. They also act as a proof-of-principle for the use of cheap high-throughput genomic methods for ecological questions