Energy-momentum Prescriptions in General Spherically Symmetric Space-times

Einstein, Landau-Lifshitz, Papapetrou, Weinberg, and M{\o}ller energy-momentum prescriptions in general spherically symmetric space-times are investigated. It is shown that for two special but not unusual classes of general spherically symmetric space-times several energy-momentum prescriptions in Schwarzschild Cartesian coordinates lead to some coincidences in energy distribution. It is also obtained that for a special class of spherically symmetric metrics M{\o}ller and Einstein energy-momentum prescriptions give the same result for energy distribution if and only if it has a specific dependence on radial coordinate.Comment: LaTeX, 7 pages: added reference

The effect of a high-polyphenol Mediterranean diet (Green-MED) combined with physical activity on age-related brain atrophy: The Dietary Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial Polyphenols Unprocessed Study (DIRECT PLUS)

Background: The effect of diet on age-related brain atrophy is largely unproven. Objectives: We aimed to explore the effect of a Mediterranean diet (MED) higher in polyphenols and lower in red/processed meat (Green-MED diet) on age-related brain atrophy. Methods: This 18-mo clinical trial longitudinally measured brain structure volumes by MRI using hippocampal occupancy score (HOC) and lateral ventricle volume (LVV) expansion score as neurodegeneration markers. Abdominally obese/dyslipidemic participants were randomly assigned to follow 1) healthy dietary guidelines (HDG), 2) MED, or 3) Green-MED diet. All subjects received free gym memberships and physical activity guidance. Both MED groups consumed 28 g walnuts/d (+440 mg/d polyphenols). The Green-MED group consumed green tea (3-4 cups/d) and Mankai (Wolffia-globosa strain, 100 g frozen cubes/d) green shake (+800 mg/d polyphenols). Results: Among 284 participants (88% men; mean age: 51 y; BMI: 31.2 kg/m2; APOE-ε4 genotype = 15.7%), 224 (79%) completed the trial with eligible whole-brain MRIs. The pallidum (-4.2%), third ventricle (+3.9%), and LVV (+2.2%) disclosed the largest volume changes. Compared with younger participants, atrophy was accelerated among those ≥50 y old (HOC change: -1.0% ± 1.4% compared with -0.06% ± 1.1%; 95% CI: 0.6%, 1.3%; P Conclusions: A Green-MED (high-polyphenol) diet, rich in Mankai, green tea, and walnuts and low in red/processed meat, is potentially neuroprotective for age-related brain atrophy.This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03020186

Compactifying the state space for alternative theories of gravity

In this paper we address important issues surrounding the choice of variables when performing a dynamical systems analysis of alternative theories of gravity. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of compactifying the state space, and illustrate this using two examples. We first show how to define a compact state space for the class of LRS Bianchi type I models in $R^n$-gravity and compare to a non--compact expansion--normalised approach. In the second example we consider the flat Friedmann matter subspace of the previous example, and compare the compact analysis to studies where non-compact non--expansion--normalised variables were used. In both examples we comment on the existence of bouncing or recollapsing orbits as well as the existence of static models.Comment: 18 pages, revised to match published versio

The Italian National Register of infants with congenital hypothyroidism: twenty years of surveillance and study of congenital hypothyroidism

All the Italian Centres in charge of screening, diagnosis, and follow-up of infants with congenital hypothyroidism participate in the Italian National Registry of affected infants, which performs the nationwide surveillance of the disease. It was established in 1987 as a program of the Health Ministry and is coordinated by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. The early diagnosis performed by the nationwide newborn screening programme, the prompt treatment and the appropriate clinical management of the patients carried out by the Follow-up Centres, and the surveillance of the disease performed by the National Register of infants with congenital hypothyroidism are the components of an integrated approach to the disease which has been successfully established in our country

Graph-based topic models for trajectory clustering in crowd videos

Probabilistic topic modelings, such as latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and correlated topic models (CTM), have recently emerged as powerful statistical tools for processing video content. They share an important property, i.e., using a common set of topics to model all data. However such property can be too restrictive for modeling complex visual data such as crowd scenes where multiple fields of heterogeneous data jointly provide rich information about objects and events. This paper proposes graph-based extensions of LDA and CTM, referred to as GLDA and GCTM, to learn and analyze motion patterns by trajectory clustering in a highly cluttered and crowded environment. Unlike previous works that relied on a scene prior, we apply a spatio-temporal graph (STG) to uncover the spatial and temporal coherence between the trajectories of crowd motion during the learning process. The presented models advance the conventional approaches by integrating a manifold-based clustering as initialization and iterative statistical inference as optimization. The output of GLDA and GCTM are mid-level features that represent the motion patterns used later to generate trajectory clusters. Experiments on three different datasets show the effectiveness of the approaches in trajectory clustering and crowd motion modeling

A qualitative study on healthcare professionals’ perceived barriers to insulin initiation in a multi-ethnic population

Background: Nationwide surveys have shown that the prevalence of diabetes rates in Malaysia have almost doubled in the past ten years; yet diabetes control remains poor and insulin therapy is underutilized. This study aimed to explore healthcare professionals’ views on barriers to starting insulin therapy in people with type 2 diabetes. Methods: Healthcare professionals consisting of general practitioners (n = 11), family medicine specialists (n = 10), medical officers (n = 8), government policy makers (n = 4), diabetes educators (n = 3) and endocrinologists (n = 2) were interviewed. A semi-structured topic guide was used to guide the interviews by trained facilitators. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Results: Insulin initiation was found to be affected by patient, healthcare professional and system factors. Patients’ barriers include culture-specific barriers such as the religious purity of insulin, preferred use of complementary medication and perceived lethality of insulin therapy. Healthcare professionals’ barriers include negative attitudes towards insulin therapy and the ‘legacy effect’ of old insulin guidelines; whilst system barriers highlight the lack of resources, language and communication challenges. Conclusions: Tackling the issue of insulin initiation should not only happen during clinical consultations. It requires health education to emphasise the progressive nature of diabetes and the eventuality of insulin therapy at early stage of the illness. Healthcare professionals should be trained how to initiate insulin and communicate effectively with patients from various cultural and religious backgrounds

Skeletal Muscle Phenotypically Converts and Selectively Inhibits Metastatic Cells in Mice

Skeletal muscle is rarely a site of malignant metastasis; the molecular and cellular basis for this rarity is not understood. We report that myogenic cells exert pronounced effects upon co-culture with metastatic melanoma (B16-F10) or carcinoma (LLC1) cells including conversion to the myogenic lineage in vitro and in vivo, as well as inhibition of melanin production in melanoma cells coupled with cytotoxic and cytostatic effects. No effect is seen with non-tumorigenic cells. Tumor suppression assays reveal that the muscle-mediated tumor suppressor effects do not generate resistant clones but function through the down-regulation of the transcription factor MiTF, a master regulator of melanocyte development and a melanoma oncogene. Our findings point to skeletal muscle as a source of therapeutic agents in the treatment of metastatic cancers