Hyperinsulinemia in African-American Adolescents Compared With Their American White Peers Despite Similar Insulin Sensitivity: A reflection of upregulated β-cell function?

OBJECTIVE—African-American (AA) children are hyperinsulinemic and insulin resistant compared with American white (AW) children. Previously, we demonstrated that insulin secretion relative to insulin sensitivity was ∼75% higher in AA compared with AW children, suggesting that hyperinsulinemia in AA children is not merely a compensatory response to lower insulin sensitivity. The aim of the present investigation was to assess whether glucose-stimulated insulin response is higher in AA versus AW adolescents who have comparable in vivo insulin sensitivity

Integral Human Pose Regression

State-of-the-art human pose estimation methods are based on heat map representation. In spite of the good performance, the representation has a few issues in nature, such as not differentiable and quantization error. This work shows that a simple integral operation relates and unifies the heat map representation and joint regression, thus avoiding the above issues. It is differentiable, efficient, and compatible with any heat map based methods. Its effectiveness is convincingly validated via comprehensive ablation experiments under various settings, specifically on 3D pose estimation, for the first time

Development of novel multiplex microsatellite polymerase chain reactions to enable high-throughput population genetic studies of Schistosoma haematobium

© 2015 Webster et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article

Phenotypic and genotypic monitoring of Schistosoma mansoni in Tanzanian schoolchildren five years into a preventative chemotherapy national control programme

We conducted combined in vitro PZQ efficacy testing with population genetic analyses of S. mansoni collected from children from two schools in 2010, five years after the introduction of a National Control Programme. Children at one school had received four annual PZQ treatments and the other school had received two mass treatments in total. We compared genetic differentiation, indices of genetic diversity, and estimated adult worm burden from parasites collected in 2010 with samples collected in 2005 (before the control programme began) and in 2006 (six months after the first PZQ treatment). Using 2010 larval samples, we also compared the genetic similarity of those with high and low in vitro sensitivity to PZQ

The taxonomy and anatomy of rauisuchian archosaurs from the Late Triassic of Germany and Poland

The German Late Triassic archosaur Teratosaurus suevicus is a historically important taxon, being the first described rauisuchian. Unfortunately the holotype is a single element, a maxilla, which is poorly preserved and incomplete. We redescribe this maxilla and identify a single potential autapomorphy. The fragmentary type specimen complicates attempts to refer additional material to this taxon, and other unassociated archosaur and rauisuchian specimens from the Mittlerer Stubensandstein of Germany cannot be referred to T. suevicus with any degree of confidence. The stratigraphically older T. silesiacus, from the upper Carnian of Poland, is represented by a much more complete and better preserved specimen. Comparison of the maxillae of T. suevicus and T. silesiacus reveals that the two are distinct taxa, contra recent suggestions, but also that they do not share any synapomorphies or a unique combination of characters relative to Postosuchus kirkpatricki and other rauisuchians. Thus, the Polish material must be transferred to a new genus, Polonosuchus gen. nov. Both Polonosuchus and Teratosaurus are very similar to Postosuchus kirkpatricki, and the three taxa are likely closely related

The optical-ultraviolet continuum of Seyfert 2 galaxies

This paper aims to understand the continuum of Seyfert 2 galaxies. By fitting the single galaxies in the sample of Heckman et al. (1995) with composite models (shock+ photoionization from the active center), we show that five main components characterize the SED of the continuum. Shocks play an important role since they produce a high temperature zone where soft X-rays are emitted. We show that in the optical-UV range, the slope of the NLR emission reproduces the observed values, and may be the main component of the featureless continuum. The presence of star forming regions cannot be excluded in the circumnuclear region of various Seyfert galaxies. An attempt is made to find their fingerprints in the observed AGN spectra. Finally, it is demonstrated that multi-cloud models are necessary to interpret the spectra of single objects, even in the global investigation of a sample of galaxies.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX (including 5 Tables) + 17 PostScript figures. To appear in "The Astrophysical Journal

Newly qualified physical education teachers’ experiences of developing subject knowledge prior to, during and after a Postgraduate Certificate in Education course

Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspections of secondary Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) physical education courses in England between 1996 and 1998 (OFSTED, 1999) were critical of student teachers' subject knowledge. The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of subject knowledge and influences on the development of that subject knowledge in a sample of three newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who had completed a PGCE physical education course in England. The research comprised semi-structured interviews and analysis of documentation. Among these three NQTs there were some similarities, but more differences in terms of the development of subject knowledge as well as different influences on the development of subject knowledge. These results suggest that teacher educators may need to be flexible in how they approach and support the development of student teachers' subject knowledge. Results also suggest that teacher educators should work more closely with colleagues teaching sports-related undergraduate degree courses to support the development of subject knowledge for those students who wish to progress to a PGCE physical education course

Estimation of productivity in pine and oak forests in northern Portugal using Biome-BGC

Studies about the productivity of forest ecosystems help to quantify sequestered carbon and provide data that are used in forest management. Forests in northern Portugal are an important economic resource, but their productivity in scenarios of future climate change is not yetwell understood. The objectives of this study were to evaluate and compare simulated net primary production (NPP) andNPPbased onmeasured data of twotree species located in the Vila Real district forests, pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton) and oak (Quercus pyrenaica Willd.) and assess their simulatedNPPin diverse climate conditions, including future climate scenariosandincreasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. An ecosystem process model, Biome-BGC, which simulates carbon, nitrogen and water cycles of forest ecosystems close to equilibrium conditions, was used to examine the importance of site and ecophysiological factors on the productivity of these forests. Climate change scenarios and increased CO2 concentrations were tested to explore potential responses of the studied species. The model provided good estimates of NPP. There was a strong correlation between the simulated and measured NPP values in the pine (15) and oak (15) stands. The NPP of these forests are predicted to increase in the future with a CO2 increase whereas in a climate with higher temperature and lower soil moisture, the NPP will decrease. These results confirm that precipitation is a very important climate variable to growth and productivity in the Mediterranean forest ecosystems. This study also demonstrated the ability of Biome-BGC to accurately simulate forest ecosystems behaviour and encourages the application of model simulations in Portugalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio