Service evaluation of weight outcomes as a function of initial BMI in 34,271 adults referred to a primary care/commercial weight management partnership scheme

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Governing Artificial Intelligence to benefit the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Big Tech's unregulated roll-out out of experimental AI poses risks to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with particular vulnerability for developing countries. The goal of financial inclusion is threatened by the imperfect and ungoverned design and implementation of AI decision-making software making important financial decisions affecting customers. Automated decision-making algorithms have displayed evidence of bias, lack ethical governance, and limit transparency in the basis for their decisions, causing unfair outcomes and amplify unequal access to finance. Poverty reduction and sustainable development targets are risked by Big Tech's potential exploitation of developing countries by using AI to harvest data and profits. Stakeholder progress toward preventing financial crime and corruption is further threatened by potential misuse of AI. In the light of such risks, Big Tech's unscrupulous history means it cannot be trusted to operate without regulatory oversight. The article proposes effective pre-emptive regulatory options to minimize scenarios of AI damaging the SDGs. It explores internationally accepted principles of AI governance, and argues for their implementation as regulatory requirements governing AI developers and coders, with compliance verified through algorithmic auditing. Furthermore, it argues that AI governance frameworks must require a benefit to the SDGs. The article argues that proactively predicting such problems can enable continued AI innovation through well-designed regulations adhering to international principles. It highlights risks of unregulated AI causing harm to human interests, where a public and regulatory backlash may result in over-regulation that could damage the otherwise beneficial development of AI.Qatar National Research Fund, Grant/Award Number: NPRP 11S-1119-17001

BookLeaf: An Unstructured Hydrodynamics Mini-application

With the age of Exascale computing causing a diversification away from traditional CPU-based homogeneous clusters, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that computationally complex codes are able to run on these emerging architectures. This is especially important for large physics simulations that are themselves becoming increasingly complex and computationally expensive. One proposed solution to the problem of ensuring these applications can run on the desired architectures is to develop representative mini-applications that are simpler and so can be ported to new frameworks more easily, but which are also representative of the algorithmic and performance characteristics of the original applications. In this paper we present BookLeaf, an unstructured Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian mini-application to add to the suite of representative applications developed and maintained by the UK Mini-App Consortium (UK-MAC). First, we outline the reference implementation of our application in Fortran. We then discuss a number of alternative implementations using a variety of parallel programming models and discuss the issues that arise when porting such an application to new architectures. To demonstrate our implementation, we present a study of the performance of BookLeaf on number of platforms using alternative designs, and we document a scaling study showing the behaviour of the application at scale

The Eat Smart Study: A randomised controlled trial of a reduced carbohydrate versus a low fat diet for weight loss in obese adolescents

Background Despite the recognition of obesity in young people as a key health issue, there is limited evidence to inform health professionals regarding the most appropriate treatment options. The Eat Smart study aims to contribute to the knowledge base of effective dietary strategies for the clinical management of the obese adolescent and examine the cardiometablic effects of a reduced carbohydrate diet versus a low fat diet. Methods and design Eat Smart is a randomised controlled trial and aims to recruit 100 adolescents over a 2½ year period. Families will be invited to participate following referral by their health professional who has recommended weight management. Participants will be overweight as defined by a body mass index (BMI) greater than the 90th percentile, using CDC 2000 growth charts. An accredited 6-week psychological life skills program ‘FRIENDS for Life’, which is designed to provide behaviour change and coping skills will be undertaken prior to volunteers being randomised to group. The intervention arms include a structured reduced carbohydrate or a structured low fat dietary program based on an individualised energy prescription. The intervention will involve a series of dietetic appointments over 24 weeks. The control group will commence the dietary program of their choice after a 12 week period. Outcome measures will be assessed at baseline, week 12 and week 24. The primary outcome measure will be change in BMI z-score. A range of secondary outcome measures including body composition, lipid fractions, inflammatory markers, social and psychological measures will be measured. Discussion The chronic and difficult nature of treating the obese adolescent is increasingly recognised by clinicians and has highlighted the need for research aimed at providing effective intervention strategies, particularly for use in the tertiary setting. A structured reduced carbohydrate approach may provide a dietary pattern that some families will find more sustainable and effective than the conventional low fat dietary approach currently advocated. This study aims to investigate the acceptability and effectiveness of a structured reduced dietary carbohydrate intervention and will compare the outcomes of this approach with a structured low fat eating plan. Trial Registration: The protocol for this study is registered with the International Clinical Trials Registry (ISRCTN49438757)

Implicit mapping of pointers inside C++ Lambda closure objects in OpenMP target offload regions

With the diversification of HPC architectures beyond traditional CPU-based clusters, a number of new frameworks for performance portability across architectures have arisen. One way of implementing such frameworks is to use C++ templates and lambda expressions to design loop-like functions. However, lower level programming APIs that these implementations must use are often designed with C in mind and do not specify how they interact with C++ features such as lambda expressions. This paper proposes a change to the behavior of the OpenMP specification with respect to lambda expressions such that when functions generated by lambda expressions are called inside GPU regions, any pointers used in the lambda expression correctly refer to device pointers. This change has been implemented in a branch of the Clang C++ compiler and demonstrated with two representative codes. Our results show that the implicit mapping of lambda expressions always exhibits identical performance to an explicit mapping but without breaking the abstraction provided by the high level frameworks, and therefore also reduces the burden on the application developer

Pointers inside lambda closure objects in OpenMP target offload regions

With the diversification of HPC architectures beyond traditional CPU-based clusters, a number of new frameworks for performance portability across architectures have arisen. One way of implementing such frameworks is to use C++ templates and lambda expressions to design loop-like functions. However, lower level programming APIs that these implementations must use are often designed with C in mind and do not specify how they interact with C++ features such as lambda expressions. This paper discusses a change to the behavior of the OpenMP specification with respect to lambda expressions such that when functions generated by lambda expressions are called inside GPU regions, any pointers used in the lambda expression correctly refer to device pointers. This change has been implemented in a branch of the Clang C++ compiler and demonstrated with two representative codes. This change has also been accepted into the draft OpenMP specification for inclusion in OpenMP 5. Our results show that the implicit mapping of lambda expressions always exhibits identical performance to an explicit mapping but without breaking the abstraction provided by the high level frameworks

3D printing of liquid crystal elastomeric actuators with spatially programed nematic order

This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi:10.1002/adma.201706164.Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft materials capable of large, reversible shape changes, which may find potential application as artificial muscles, soft robots, and dynamic functional architectures. Here, the design and additive manufacturing of LCE actuators (LCEAs) with spatially programed nematic order that exhibit large, reversible, and repeatable contraction with high specific work capacity are reported. First, a photopolymerizable, solvent-free, main-chain LCE ink is created via aza-Michael addition with the appropriate viscoelastic properties for 3D printing. Next, high operating temperature direct ink writing of LCE inks is used to align their mesogen domains along the direction of the print path. To demonstrate the power of this additive manufacturing approach, shape-morphing LCEA architectures are fabricated, which undergo reversible planar-to-3D and 3D-to-3D′ transformations on demand, that can lift significantly more weight than other LCEAs reported to date.The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through the Harvard MRSEC (Grant No. DMR-1420570) and the DMREF (Grant No. DMR-1533985). A.K. and R.L.T. acknowledge support from their National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. J.A.L. acknowledges support from the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship Program sponsored by the Basic Research Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and funded by the Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-16-1-2823 as well as the generous donation from the GETTYLAB in support of our work. This work made use of the Shared Experimental Facilities supported in part by the MRSEC Program of the National Science Foundation under award number DMR-1419807. Finally, the authors thank L. K. Sanders and C. Settens for technical assistance and Brian Donovan and Tyler Guin (AFRL) for useful discussions. (DMR-1420570 - National Science Foundation through Harvard MRSEC; National Science Foundation; DMR-1533985 - DMREF; Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship Program - Basic Research Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; N00014-16-1-2823 - Office of Naval Research; DMR-1419807 - MRSEC Program of the National Science Foundation)Accepted manuscrip

Commercial weight loss diets meet nutrient requirements in free living adults over 8 weeks: A randomised controlled weight loss trial

Objective: To investigate the effect of commercial weight loss programmes on macronutrient composition and micronutrient adequacy over a 2 month period

Lifeworld Inc. : and what to do about it

Can we detect changes in the way that the world turns up as they turn up? This paper makes such an attempt. The first part of the paper argues that a wide-ranging change is occurring in the ontological preconditions of Euro-American cultures, based in reworking what and how an event is produced. Driven by the security – entertainment complex, the aim is to mass produce phenomenological encounter: Lifeworld Inc as I call it. Swimming in a sea of data, such an aim requires the construction of just enough authenticity over and over again. In the second part of the paper, I go on to argue that this new world requires a different kind of social science, one that is experimental in its orientation—just as Lifeworld Inc is—but with a mission to provoke awareness in untoward ways in order to produce new means of association. Only thus, or so I argue, can social science add to the world we are now beginning to live in