Effect of dietary protein on body composition in adolescents and older adults

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityProblem: Childhood and older adulthood represent critical periods for changes in body composition. Acquisition of excess body fat and loss of lean mass are linked with numerous co-morbidities and disabilities. This study explores the role of dietary protein as a modifiable determinant of body composition at different ages. Methods: Prospective data from two studies were used: 9-10 year-old girls (n=2330) followed for 10 years in the National Growth and Health Study and middle-aged/older adults (n=1490) followed up to 8 years in the Framingham Offspring Study. Diet was assessed using 3-day records. Body composition was assessed using body mass index (BMI), waist size (an anthropometric estimate of central adiposity), and bioelectrical impedance to estimate skeletal muscle mass (SMM) and percent body fat (%BF). Sarcopenia was defined as two SDs below mean SMM from young referent population. To avoid confounding of dietary protein by baseline weight, intake was expressed in two ways: per kilogram (kg) of nearest ideal body weight (IBW) and weight-adjusted protein residuals. Results: After adjusting for age, sex, height, socio-economic status, activity, smoking, energy intake, percent energy from fat and carbohydrates, increasing quintiles of protein intake (using weight-adjusted residuals) during early/mid-adolescence led to significantly lower %BF, BMI, and waist (p: <0.0001, 0.0003, 0.0025 respectively). With increasing quintiles of dietary protein, SMM increased linearly (p-trend: <0.0001). In older adults, higher total, animal, and plant protein intakes led to statistically significant 30%, 19%, and 37% reductions in risk of central adiposity, respectively. Risk of obesity was reduced by 35% (95% CI: 0.43-1.00), 21% (95% CI: 0.55-1.15) and 37% (95% CI: 0.42-0.97), respectively. Higher protein intakes led to nearly a 50% statistically significant reduction in risk of sarcopenia compared to the lowest tertile. Similar decreases in risk of obesity, central adiposity, and sarcopenia were observed with the clinically relevant measure of protein/kg IBW. Conclusion: Adolescent girls consuming more protein had a lower BMI and waist size and more SMM by late adolescence. Older adults consuming more protein had lower levels of body fat and a lower risk of developing sarcopenia over 8 years

S1_5 It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a pig!

It's likely we have all used the common adynation 'when pigs fly' at some time in our lives, but in this article we question how pigs may fly. Using a Strouhal number of 0.2 we calculated the combined minimum surface area of the wings required for a wild pig to fly to be 5.13 m^2

Capitalism, criminality and the state: the origins of illegal urban modernity

This essay argues that criminality provides a critical magnifying lens to understand the network of subversive disconnections and disjunctures in postcolonial cities. By connecting the postcolonial city to the discourse on crime, it investigates the specific relations between exploitation, colonisation and the underworld. As crossroads of the different intersections of power determined by colonialism, decolonisation and globalisation (Rashmi Varma, The Postcolonial City and Its Subjects: London, Nairobi, Bombay, London, Routledge, 2011), postcolonial cities expose the many and varied entanglements between the informal economies in the Global North and South, between the legal and the unofficial. Starting with the assumption that colonialism is predicated upon the principles of Western modernity, this essay frames criminal organisations as forces acting in opposition to and in concurrence with the state. Whereas the discourses on criminality are conventionally employed to reinforce processes of ‘Othering’ and racialisation in fringe locations, they also have the potential to unveil the ‘hidden truths’ of Western urban modernity. To this end, this essay employs Christ Stopped at Eboli (Carlo Levi, London: Penguin, 1947), a novel that unveils the links between exploitation and illegality. The society portrayed in the text shows the manifestations of an ‘unauthorised modernity’ (Iain Chambers, Postcolonial Interruptions: Unauthorized Modernity, London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017); an alternative view of development that refashions the meaning of what is conventionally regarded as legal and accepted

S1_2 Melting Mars

Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a fluid outer core to provide a global magnetic field to shield it against harmful solar winds. Mars is estimated to have a largely solid core of Iron, Nickel and Sulphur. We calculated 7:75 x10^13 kg of Uranium-235 would be needed in a theoretical bomb to liquify a proportion of Mars' core. The proportions used were a scaled imitation of Earth's core

S1_ 6 The Wings Of Christmas

According to traditional lore, each Christmas Santa Claus travels across the globe delivering gifts to all of the children on his ‘Nice’ list. In this paper, we calculated the velocity he would travel at to be 1.56×106 ms−1. Thus, if his sleigh had aerofoils they would require a minimum surface area of 1.26×10−3 m2 each to provide lift

Thinking Global? Local Globalisms and Global Localisms in the Writing of Jhumpa Lahiri

This paper explores the reconfigurations of transnational urbanism in the texts of Jhumpa Lahiri. It argues that diasporic narratives become imaginary homelands articulating the tensions between the local and the global. Lahiri?s fictions allow the re-imagining of the connection with the ?lost country? and the process of reconstructing the ?self? in any location.Across these fictions there exists a constant dialogue between the interior and the exterior, where the dynamics of the outside world are expressed through the enactment of ?the cultural practices of everyday life? (Appadurai). This process manifests itself through a duality which sees the parents preserving the traditional and the local within the home and the children embracing the global in the outside world.This process will be analysed in The Namesake (2003), drawing on further support from Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and Unaccustomed Earth (2008). As a second generation South Asian diasporic writer ?growing up in a vacuum culture?, Lahiri best exemplifies ?the race to occupy the space of the hyphen? between India and America, ?the problematic situating of the self as simultaneously belonging here and there? (Mishra). In this work, Calcutta and New York constitute important dimensions of reference by finding their locatedness in the text itself.The accounts of the Indian parents and Indian-American children correspond to the heterogeneous composition of a diasporic existence, the tendency to express global and self-belonging in the form of local globalisms and global localisms. In Lahiri?s fiction, first generations tend to sanitise the Indian culture and delocalise it, while second generations are often charged with the task of localising their existence within a global environment

Clean Technology Bubble 2.0 – A Repeat of History from 2007?

In modern history, financial bubbles often entail disastrous consequences. Between 2004 and 2008, clean technologies suffered a bubble that burst at the start of the financial crisis. Stock prices plummeted and remained stable at preposterously low levels for over a decade. In recent years, however, the industry has witnessed yet another spectacular upswing, exceeding record highs observed during the previous bubble. This paper contends that a new clean technology bubble has emerged, sharing similar characteristics with the previous bubble but driven by novel components. To demonstrate this, the Renewable Energy Industrial Index (RENIXX) is evaluated using the Log Periodic Power Law Singularity (LPPLS) model. Analysis in this paper is consistent with a recent publication by Giorgis et al. (2021) on the 2007 clean-technology bubble (using the same index and procedure) ; this facilitate comparative research between bubbles and studies and validates this paper’s methodology. Furthermore, stricter filtering conditions are imposed and the paper employs a DS LPPLS Confidence Indicator to identify positive and negative bubbles over time, providing a more in-depth analysis compared to existing bubble detection literature (including a more thorough LPPLS conclusion than that provided by Giorgis et al., 2021). Having demonstrated empirical credibility, this paper discovers convincing evidence of a bubble between April 2018 and November 2020, with a positive fit between the LPPLS and RENIXX. For this time frame, the confidence indicator effectively detected two positive bubble periods and one negative bubble period, corresponding to well-known recent stock market occurrences. However, the model fails to detect bubble signals at the time of this paper's submission (August 2021). This does not indicate that the current bubble has burst. Qualitative analysis, employing contemporary academic research, supports findings and reveal extremely high levels of herding, volatility, and crowding within the index, possibly due to: an increase in "ESG investing", irrational excessive enthusiasm for electric vehicles and batteries, and a surge in retail investor activity via social media and online forums. In concluding remarks, parallels are drawn between both bubbles to substantiate this claim