Impact of single nucleotide polymorphism on short stature and reduced tongue pressure among community-dwelling elderly Japanese participants: a cross-sectional study

Background: Asian-specific single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) (rs3782886) is reported to be associated with myocardial infarction; sarcopenia is reported to be associated with coronary subclinical atherosclerosis. On the other hand, short stature has been revealed as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, no studies have reported on the association between sarcopenia and short stature nor on the impact of rs3782886 on this association. Methods: Since reduced maximum voluntary tongue pressure against the palate (MTP) reflects one aspect of sarcopenia, we conducted a cross-sectional study of 537 community-dwelling elderly Japanese participants aged 60?89 years who had participated in a general health checkup in 2015. Short stature was defined as values at or under the 25th percentile, and reduced MTP was defined as the lowest tertile of the study population (<158.0 cm and <26.5 kPa for men, <145.0 cm and <24.1 kPa for women). Results: Independent of classical cardiovascular risk factors, short stature was revealed to be positively associated with reduced MTP. The adjusted-odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of reduced MTP for short stature was 1.87 (1.19, 2.94). We also found that independent of known cardiovascular risk factors, with the non-minor homo of rs3782886 taken as the reference group, the adjusted OR and 95% CI for short stature and reduced MTP of the minor homo allele were 3.06 (1.23, 7.63) and 3.26 (1.33, 8.03), respectively. Conclusion: Short stature is independently associated with reduced MTP, with Asian-specific SNPs possibly playing an important role in this association

VOF Calculations of Countercurrent Gas-Liquid Flow in a PWR Hot Leg

We improved the computational grid and schemes in the VOF (volume of fluid) method with the standard − turbulent model in our previous study to evaluate CCFL (countercurrent flow limitation) characteristics in a full-scale PWR hot leg (750 mm diameter), and the calculated CCFL characteristics agreed well with the UPTF data at 1.5 MPa. In this paper, therefore, to evaluate applicability of the VOF method to different fluid properties and a different scale, we did numerical simulations for full-scale air-water conditions and the 1/15-scale air-water tests (50 mm diameter), respectively. The results calculated for full-scale conditions agreed well with CCFL data and showed that CCFL characteristics in the Wallis diagram were mitigated under 1.5 MPa steam-water conditions comparing with air-water flows. However, the results calculated for the 1/15-scale air-water tests greatly underestimated the falling water flow rates in calculations with the standard − turbulent model, but agreed well with the CCFL data in calculations with a laminar flow model. This indicated that suitable calculation models and conditions should be selected to get good agreement with data for each scale