Lifestyle Intervention’s Effect and Predictive Value on Weight Loss for University Employees

Obesity is a costly and pervasive risk factor that requires attention to reduce chronic disease rates. This study evaluated the effect of a lifestyle medicine intervention, Complete Health Improvement Program (CHIP), on reducing weight, blood pressure, lipid levels, and hemoglobin A1c. A secondary aim was to build a preliminary predictive model for computing new participants’ potential weight change from CHIP. We evaluated pre- and post-intervention biometric data of 68 individuals who completed a 10-week CHIP intervention at a Midwestern university clinic. Significant reductions (p \u3c 0.05) were observed in weight, diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein, and A1c. Regression analyses indicated that the best linear model for predicting change in weight was a one-predictor model with systolic blood pressure. The CHIP intervention effectively promoted weight loss and meaningful reductions in chronic disease risk factors. Larger samples are needed for future regression analyses to create a more robust linear model

Mesonic Form Factors

We have started a program to compute the electromagnetic form factors of mesons. We discuss the techniques used to compute the pion form factor and present preliminary results computed with domain wall valence fermions on MILC asqtad lattices, as well as Wilson fermions on quenched lattices. These methods can easily be extended to rho-to-gamma-pi transition form factors.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, Workshop on Lattice Hadron Physics 2003 (LHP2003

Loss of AMP-activated protein kinase alpha 2 subunit in mouse beta-cells impairs glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and inhibits their sensitivity to hypoglycaemia

AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase) signalling plays a key role in whole-body energy homoeostasis, although its precise role in pancreatic β-cell function remains unclear. In the present stusy, we therefore investigated whether AMPK plays a critical function in β-cell glucose sensing and is required for the maintenance of normal glucose homoeostasis. Mice lacking AMPKα2 in β-cells and a population of hypothalamic neurons (RIPCreα2KO mice) and RIPCreα2KO mice lacking AMPKα1 (α1KORIPCreα2KO) globally were assessed for whole-body glucose homoeostasis and insulin secretion. Isolated pancreatic islets from these mice were assessed for glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and gene expression changes. Cultured β-cells were examined electrophysiologically for their electrical responsiveness to hypoglycaemia. RIPCreα2KO mice exhibited glucose intolerance and impaired GSIS (glucose-stimulated insulin secretion) and this was exacerbated in α1KORIPCreα2KO mice. Reduced glucose concentrations failed to completely suppress insulin secretion in islets from RIPCreα2KO and α1KORIPCreα2KO mice, and conversely GSIS was impaired. β-Cells lacking AMPKα2 or expressing a kinase-dead AMPKα2 failed to hyperpolarize in response to low glucose, although KATP (ATP-sensitive potassium) channel function was intact. We could detect no alteration of GLUT2 (glucose transporter 2), glucose uptake or glucokinase that could explain this glucose insensitivity. UCP2 (uncoupling protein 2) expression was reduced in RIPCreα2KO islets and the UCP2 inhibitor genipin suppressed low-glucose-mediated wild-type mouse β-cell hyperpolarization, mimicking the effect of AMPKα2 loss. These results show that AMPKα2 activity is necessary to maintain normal pancreatic β-cell glucose sensing, possibly by maintaining high β-cell levels of UCP2

Understanding the chronology and occupation dynamics of oversized pit houses in the southern Brazilian highlands

A long held view about the occupation of southern proto-Je pit house villages of the southern Brazilian highlands is that these sites represent cycles of long-term abandonment and reoccupation. However, this assumption is based on an insufficient number of radiocarbon dates for individual pit houses. To address this problem, we conducted a programme of comprehensive AMS radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling at the deeply stratified oversized pit Houe 1, Baggio 1 site (Cal. A.D. 1395-1650), Campo Belo do Sul, Santa Catarina, Brazil. The straigraphy of House 1 revealed an unparalleled sequence of twelve well preserved floors evidencing a major change in occupation dynamics including five completely burnt collapsed roofs. The results of the radiocarbon dating allowed us to understand for the first time the occupation dynamics of an oversized pit house in the southern Brazilian highlands. The Bayesian model demonstrates that House 1 was occupied for over two centuries with no evidence of major periods of abandonment, calling into question previous models of long-term abandonment. In addition, the House 1 sequence allowed us to tie transformations in ceramic style and lithic technology to an absolute chronology. Finally, we can provide new evidence that the emergence of oversized domestic structures is a relatively recent phenomenon among the southern proto-Je. As monumental pit houses start to be bulit, small pit houses continue to be inhabited, evidencing emerging disparities in domestic architecture after AD 1000. Our research shows the importance of programmes of intensive dating of individual structures to understand occupation dynamcis and site permanence, and challenges long held assumptions that the southern Brazilian highlands were home to marginal cultures in the context of lowland South America

Practical access to planar chiral 1,2-(α-Ketotetramethylene)- ferrocene by non-enzymatic kinetic resolution and conclusive confirmation of its absolute configuration

The asymmetric transfer hydrogenation (ATH) of racemic 1,2-(α-ketotetramethylene)ferrocene using the [N-(tosyl)-1,2-diphenylethylendiamine]ruthenium(II) complex [TsDPEN-Ru(II)] as catalyst takes place with a high level of kinetic resolution to deliver the ketone in up to 99% ee. The X-ray crystallographic structure of a derivative of the alcohol co-product serves to confirm conclusively both the absolute configuration of 1,2-(α-ketotetramethylene)ferrocene and the endo-reduction selectivity

Chaotic asymptotic behaviour of the solutions of the Lighthill Whitham Richards equation

[EN] The phenomenon of chaos has been exhibited in mathematical nonlinear models that describe traffic flows, see, for instance (Li and Gao in Modern Phys Lett B 18(26-27):1395-1402, 2004; Li in Phys. D Nonlinear Phenom 207(1-2):41-51, 2005). At microscopic level, Devaney chaos and distributional chaos have been exhibited for some car-following models, such as the quick-thinking-driver model and the forward and backward control model (Barrachina et al. in 2015; Conejero et al. in Semigroup Forum, 2015). We present here the existence of chaos for the macroscopic model given by the Lighthill Whitham Richards equation.The authors are supported by MEC Project MTM2013-47093-P. The second and third authors are supported by GVA, Project PROMETEOII/2013/013Conejero, JA.; Martínez Jiménez, F.; Peris Manguillot, A.; Ródenas Escribá, FDA. (2016). Chaotic asymptotic behaviour of the solutions of the Lighthill Whitham Richards equation. Nonlinear Dynamics. 84(1):127-133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-015-2245-4S127133841Albanese, A.A., Barrachina, X., Mangino, E.M., Peris, A.: Distributional chaos for strongly continuous semigroups of operators. Commun. Pure Appl. Anal. 12(5), 2069–2082 (2013)Aroza, J., Peris, A.: Chaotic behaviour of birth-and-death models with proliferation. J. Differ. Equ. Appl. 18(4), 647–655 (2012)Banasiak, J., Lachowicz, M.: Chaos for a class of linear kinetic models. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris Sér. II 329, 439–444 (2001)Banasiak, J., Lachowicz, M.: Topological chaos for birth-and-death-type models with proliferation. Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. 12(6), 755–775 (2002)Banasiak, J., Moszyński, M.: A generalization of Desch–Schappacher–Webb criteria for chaos. Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 12(5), 959–972 (2005)Banasiak, J., Moszyński, M.: Dynamics of birth-and-death processes with proliferation—stability and chaos. Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 29(1), 67–79 (2011)Barrachina, X., Conejero, J.A.: Devaney chaos and distributional chaos in the solution of certain partial differential equations. Abstr. Appl. Anal. Art. ID 457019, 11 (2012)Barrachina, X., Conejero, J.A., Murillo-Arcila, M., Seoane-Sepúlveda, J.B.: Distributional chaos for the forward and backward control traffic model (2015, preprint)Bayart, F., Matheron, É.: Dynamics of Linear Operators, Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics, vol. 179. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009)Bayart, F., Matheron, É.: Mixing operators and small subsets of the circle. J Reine Angew. Math. (2015, to appear)Bermúdez, T., Bonilla, A., Conejero, J.A., Peris, A.: Hypercyclic, topologically mixing and chaotic semigroups on Banach spaces. Stud. Math. 170(1), 57–75 (2005)Bermúdez, T., Bonilla, A., Martínez-Giménez, F., Peris, A.: Li-Yorke and distributionally chaotic operators. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 373(1), 83–93 (2011)Bernardes Jr, N.C., Bonilla, A., Müller, V., Peris, A.: Distributional chaos for linear operators. J. Funct. Anal. 265(9), 2143–2163 (2013)Brackstone, M., McDonald, M.: Car-following: a historical review. Transp. Res. Part F Traffic Psychol. Behav. 2(4), 181–196 (1999)Conejero, J.A., Lizama, C., Rodenas, F.: Chaotic behaviour of the solutions of the Moore–Gibson–Thompson equation. Appl. Math. Inf. Sci. 9(5), 1–6 (2015)Conejero, J.A., Mangino, E.M.: Hypercyclic semigroups generated by Ornstein-Uhlenbeck operators. Mediterr. J. Math. 7(1), 101–109 (2010)Conejero, J.A., Müller, V., Peris, A.: Hypercyclic behaviour of operators in a hypercyclic $$C_0$$ C 0 -semigroup. J. Funct. Anal. 244, 342–348 (2007)Conejero, J.A., Murillo-Arcila, M., Seoane-Sepúlveda, J.B.: Linear chaos for the quick-thinking-driver model. 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Definition of treatment goals for moderate to severe psoriasis: a European consensus

Patients with moderate to severe psoriasis are undertreated. To solve this persistent problem, the consensus programme was performed to define goals for treatment of plaque psoriasis with systemic therapy and to improve patient care. An expert consensus meeting and a collaborative Delphi procedure were carried out. Nineteen dermatologists from different European countries met for a face-to-face discussion and defined items through a four-round Delphi process. Severity of plaque psoriasis was graded into mild and moderate to severe disease. Mild disease was defined as body surface area (BSA) ≤10 and psoriasis area and severity index (PASI) ≤10 and dermatology life quality index (DLQI) ≤10 and moderate to severe psoriasis as (BSA > 10 or PASI > 10) and DLQI > 10. Special clinical situations may change mild psoriasis to moderate to severe including involvement of visible areas or severe nail involvement. For systemic therapy of plaque psoriasis two treatment phases were defined: (1) induction phase as the treatment period until week 16; however, depending on the type of drug and dose regimen used, this phase may be extended until week 24 and (2) maintenance phase for all drugs was defined as the treatment period after the induction phase. For the definition of treatment goals in plaque psoriasis, the change of PASI from baseline until the time of evaluation (ΔPASI) and the absolute DLQI were used. After induction and during maintenance therapy, treatment can be continued if reduction in PASI is ≥75%. The treatment regimen should be modified if improvement of PASI is <50%. In a situation where the therapeutic response improved ≥50% but <75%, as assessed by PASI, therapy should be modified if the DLQI is >5 but can be continued if the DLQI is ≤5. This programme defines the severity of plaque psoriasis for the first time using a formal consensus of 19 European experts. In addition, treatment goals for moderate to severe disease were established. Implementation of treatment goals in the daily management of psoriasis will improve patient care and mitigate the problem of undertreatment. It is planned to evaluate the implementation of these treatment goals in a subsequent programme involving patients and physicians

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres