17 research outputs found
The neonatal tetrahydrobiopterin loading test in phenylketonuria: what is the predictive value?
Anti-inflammatory Components from Functional Foods for Obesity
Obesity, defined as excessive fat accumulation that may impair health, has been described throughout human history, but it has now reached epidemic proportions with the WHO estimating that 39% of the worldâs adults over 18 years of age were overweight or obese in 2016. Obesity is a chronic low-grade inflammatory state leading to organ damage with an increased risk of common diseases including cardiovascular and metabolic disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, osteo-arthritis and some cancers. This inflammatory state may be influenced by adipose tissue hypoxia and changes in the gut microbiota. There has been an increasing focus on functional foods and nutraceuticals as treatment options for obesity as drug treatments are limited in efficacy. This chapter summarises the importance of anthocyanin-containing fruits and vegetables, coffee and its components, tropical fruit and food waste as sources of phytochemicals for obesity treatment. We emphasise that preclinical studies can form the basis for clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of these treatments in humans
Mixed Berry Juice and Cellulose Fiber Have Differential Effects on Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell Respiration in Overweight Adults
Berries and other anthocyanin-rich foods have demonstrated anti-obesity effects in rodents and humans. However, the bioactive components of these foods and their mechanisms of action are unclear. We conducted an intervention study with overweight and obese adults to isolate the effects of different berry components on bioenergetics. Subjects consumed whole mixed berries (high anthocyanin, high fiber), pressed berry juice (high anthocyanin, low fiber), berry-flavored gelatin (low anthocyanin, low fiber), or fiber-enriched gelatin (low anthocyanin, high fiber) for one week prior to a meal challenge with the same treatment food as the pre-feed period. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were collected 2 h after the meal challenge, and cellular respiration was assessed via high-resolution respirometry. The high-anthocyanin, low-fiber treatment (berry juice) and the low-anthocyanin, high-fiber treatment (fiber-enriched gelatin) had opposite effects on cellular respiration. In the fasted state, berry juice resulted in the highest oxygen-consumption rate (OCR), while fiber-enriched gelatin resulted in the highest OCR in the fed state. Differences were observed in multiple respiration states (basal, state 3, state 4, uncoupled), with the greatest differences being between the pressed berry juice and the fiber-enriched gelatin. Different components of berries, specifically anthocyanins/flavonoids and fiber, appear to have differential effects on cellular respiration
Rethinking Rotated Object Detection with Gaussian Wasserstein Distance Loss
Boundary discontinuity and its inconsistency to the final detection metric
have been the bottleneck for rotating detection regression loss design. In this
paper, we propose a novel regression loss based on Gaussian Wasserstein
distance as a fundamental approach to solve the problem. Specifically, the
rotated bounding box is converted to a 2-D Gaussian distribution, which enables
to approximate the indifferentiable rotational IoU induced loss by the Gaussian
Wasserstein distance (GWD) which can be learned efficiently by gradient
back-propagation. GWD can still be informative for learning even there is no
overlapping between two rotating bounding boxes which is often the case for
small object detection. Thanks to its three unique properties, GWD can also
elegantly solve the boundary discontinuity and square-like problem regardless
how the bounding box is defined. Experiments on five datasets using different
detectors show the effectiveness of our approach. Codes are available at
https://github.com/yangxue0827/RotationDetection.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 9 tables, accepted by ICML21, codes are
available at https://github.com/yangxue0827/RotationDetectio
The development of a virtual reality training programme for ophthalmology:repeatability and reproducibility (part of the International Forum for Ophthalmic Simulation Studies)
PURPOSE: To evaluate the variability of performance among novice ophthalmic trainees in a range of repeated tasks using the Eyesi virtual reality (VR) simulator. METHODS: Eighteen subjects undertook three attempts of five cataract specific and generic three-dimensional tasks: continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis, cracking and chopping, cataract navigation, bimanual cataract training, anti-tremor. Scores for each attempt were out of a maximum of 100 points. A non-parametric test was used to analyse the data, where a P-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Highly significant differences were found between the scores achieved in the first attempt and that during the second (P<0.0001) and third (P<0.0001) but not between the second and third attempt (P=0.65). There was no significant variability in the overall score between the users (P=0.1104) or in the difference between their highest and lowest score (P=0.3878). Highly significant differences between tasks were shown both in the overall score (P=0.0001) and in the difference between highest and lowest score (P=0.003). CONCLUSION: This study, which is the first to quantify reproducibility of performance in entry level trainees using a VR tool, demonstrated significant intra-novice variability. The cohort of subjects performed equally overall in the range of tasks (no inter-novice variability) but each showed that performance varies significantly with the complexity of the task when using this high-fidelity instrument