Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents’ growth and development

AbstractOptimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong health and well-being1–6. Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis of rural and urban place of residence in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2020. In 1990, children and adolescents residing in cities were taller than their rural counterparts in all but a few high-income countries. By 2020, the urban height advantage became smaller in most countries, and in many high-income western countries it reversed into a small urban-based disadvantage. The exception was for boys in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries in Oceania, south Asia and the region of central Asia, Middle East and north Africa. In these countries, successive cohorts of boys from rural places either did not gain height or possibly became shorter, and hence fell further behind their urban peers. The difference between the age-standardized mean BMI of children in urban and rural areas was &lt;1.1 kg m–2 in the vast majority of countries. Within this small range, BMI increased slightly more in cities than in rural areas, except in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and some countries in central and eastern Europe. Our results show that in much of the world, the growth and developmental advantages of living in cities have diminished in the twenty-first century, whereas in much of sub-Saharan Africa they have amplified.</jats:p

State feedback gain scheduling for linear systems with time-varying parameters

This paper addresses the problem of parameter dependent state feedback control (i.e. gain scheduling) for linear systems with parameters that are assumed to be available (measured or estimated) in real time and are allowed to vary in a compact polytopic set with bounded variation rates. A new sufficient condition given in terms of linear matrix inequalities permits to determine the controller gain as an analytical function of the time-varying parameters and of a set of constant matrices. The closed-loop stability is assured by means of a parameter dependent Lyapunov function. The condition proposed encompasses the well-known quadratic stabilizability condition and allows to impose structural constraints such as decentralization to the feedback gains. Numerical examples illustrate the efficiency of the technique.128236537

State feedback control of switched linear systems: An LMI approach

This paper addresses the problem of state feedback control of continuous-time switched linear systems with arbitrary switching rules. A quadratic Lyapunov function with a common matrix is used to derive a stabilizing switching control strategy that guarantees: (i) the assignment of all the eigenvalues of each linear subsystem inside a chosen circle in the left-hand half of the complex plane; (ii) a minimum disturbance attenuation level for the closed-loop switched system. The proposed design conditions are given in terms of linear matrix inequalities that encompass previous results based on quadratic stability conditions with fixed control gains. Although the quadratic stability based on a fixed Lyapunov matrix has been widely used in robust control design, the use of this condition to provide a convex design method for switching feedback gains has not been fully investigated. Numerical examples show that the switching control strategy can cope with more stringent design specifications than the fixed gain strategy, being useful to improve the performance of this class of systems. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.194219220