The intake of sugar-sweetened soft drinks has been reported to be associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, but it is unclear whether this is because of the sugar content or related ...lifestyle factors, whether similar associations hold for artificially sweetened soft drinks, and how these associations are related to BMI. We aimed to conduct a systematic literature review and dose–response meta-analysis of evidence from prospective cohorts to explore these issues. We searched multiple sources for prospective studies on sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks in relation to the risk of type 2 diabetes. Data were extracted from eleven publications on nine cohorts. Consumption values were converted to ml/d, permitting the exploration of linear and non-linear dose–response trends. Summary relative risks (RR) were estimated using a random-effects meta-analysis. The summary RR for sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drinks were 1·20/330 ml per d (95 % CI 1·12, 1·29, P< 0·001) and 1·13/330 ml per d (95 % CI 1·02, 1·25, P= 0·02), respectively. The association with sugar-sweetened soft drinks was slightly lower in studies adjusting for BMI, consistent with BMI being involved in the causal pathway. There was no evidence of effect modification, though both these comparisons lacked power. Overall between-study heterogeneity was high. The included studies were observational, so their results should be interpreted cautiously, but findings indicate a positive association between sugar-sweetened soft drink intake and type 2 diabetes risk, attenuated by adjustment for BMI. The trend was less consistent for artificially sweetened soft drinks. This may indicate an alternative explanation, such as lifestyle factors or reverse causality. Future research should focus on the temporal nature of the association and whether BMI modifies or mediates the association.
Foetal development and infancy are life stages that are characterised by rapid growth, development and maturation of organs and systems. Variation in the quality or quantity of nutrients consumed by ...mothers during pregnancy, or infants during the first year of life, can exert permanent and powerful effects upon developing tissues. These effects are termed ‘programming’ and represent an important risk factor for noncommunicable diseases of adulthood, including the metabolic syndrome and coronary heart disease. This narrative review provides an overview of the evidence‐base showing that indicators of nutritional deficit in pregnancy are associated with a greater risk of type‐2 diabetes and cardiovascular mortality. There is also a limited evidence‐base that suggests some relationship between breastfeeding and the timing and type of foods used in weaning, and disease in later life. Many of the associations reported between indicators of early growth and adult disease appear to interact with specific genotypes. This supports the idea that programming is one of several cumulative influences upon health and disease acting across the lifespan. Experimental studies have provided important clues to the mechanisms that link nutritional challenges in early life to disease in adulthood. It is suggested that nutritional programming is a product of the altered expression of genes that regulate the cell cycle, resulting in effective remodelling of tissue structure and functionality. The observation that traits programmed by nutritional exposures in foetal life can be transmitted to further generations adds weight the argument that heritable epigenetic modifications play a critical role in nutritional programming.
Single‐junction photovoltaic devices exhibit a bottleneck in their efficiency due to incomplete or inefficient harvesting of photons in the low‐ or high‐energy regions of the solar spectrum. Spectral ...converters can be used to convert solar photons into energies that are more effectively captured by the photovoltaic device through a photoluminescence process. Here, recent advances in the fields of luminescent solar concentration, luminescent downshifting, and upconversion are discussed. The focus is specifically on the role that materials science has to play in overcoming barriers in the optical performance in all spectral converters and on their successful integration with both established (e.g., c‐Si, GaAs) and emerging (perovskite, organic, dye‐sensitized) cell types. Current challenges and emerging research directions, which need to be addressed for the development of next‐generation luminescent solar devices, are also discussed.
Sspectral converters can be applied to finished solar cells to overcome intrinsic non‐absorption and thermalization losses and improve the device efficiency. Recent progress in the development of new materials for spectral conversion through luminescent downshifting, luminescent solar concentration, and upconversion is reviewed, with emphasis placed on their integration with emerging technologies, including perovskite, organic, and dye‐sensitized solar cells.
Nucleic acid amplification is the basis for many molecular diagnostic assays. In these cases, the amplification product must be detected and analyzed, typically requiring extended workflow time, ...sophisticated equipment, or both. Here we present a novel method of amplification detection that harnesses the pH change resulting from amplification reactions performed with minimal buffering capacity. In loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) reactions, we achieved rapid (<30 min) and sensitive (<10 copies) visual detection using pH-sensitive dyes. Additionally, the detection can be performed in real time, enabling high-throughput or quantitative applications. We also demonstrate this visual detection for another isothermal amplification method (strand-displacement amplification), PCR, and reverse transcription LAMP (RT-LAMP) detection of RNA. The colorimetric detection of amplification presented here represents a generally applicable approach for visual detection of nucleic acid amplification, enabling molecular diagnostic tests to be analyzed immediately without the need for specialized and expensive instrumentation.
The global prevalence of overweight and obesity in pregnancy is rising and this represents a significant challenge for the management of pregnancy and delivery. Women who have a pre‐pregnancy body ...mass index greater than 25 kg m–2 are more likely than those with a body mass index in the ideal range (20–24.99 kg m–2) to have problems conceiving a child and are at greater risk of miscarriage and stillbirth. All pregnancy complications are more likely with overweight, obesity and excessive gestational weight gain, including those that pose a significant threat to the lives of mothers and babies. Labour complications arise more often when pregnancies are complicated by overweight and obesity. Pregnancy is a stage of life when women have greater openness to messages about their lifestyle and health. It is also a time when they come into greater contact with health professionals. Currently management of pregnancy weight gain and the impact of overweight tends to be poor, although a number of research studies have demonstrated that appropriate interventions based around dietary change can be effective in controlling weight gain and reducing the risk of pregnancy complications. The development of individualised and flexible plans for avoiding adverse outcomes of obesity in pregnancy will require investment in training of health professionals and better integration into normal antenatal care.
Highlights
Overweight and obesity before pregnancy and excessive gestational weight gain are major determinants of risk for pregnancy loss, gestational diabetes, hypertensive conditions, labour complications and maternal death.
Pregnancy is regarded as a teachable moment when women are at their most receptive to messages about their health. However, unclear guidance on diet and physical activity, weight stigma from health professionals, inexperience and reluctance among professionals about raising issues about weight, and stretched resources put the health of women and babies at risk.
Excessive weight gain in pregnancy and post‐partum weight retention compromise future fertility and increase risk for future pregnancies.
Large randomised controlled trials have had little success in addressing excessive gestational weight gain or antenatal complications. Individualised, culturally sensitive and responsive interventions appear to have greater success.
Overweight and obesity complicate up to two‐thirds of pregnancies, and increase risk of gestational diabetes, hypertension, pre‐eclampsia, and maternal and fetal death. Interventions to reduce risk can be effective but will require improved protocols to discuss weight with pregnant women and enhanced training for midwives to deliver appropriate guidance on lifestyle change.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented healthcare emergency causing mortality and illness across the world. Although primarily affecting the lungs, the SARS-CoV-2 virus also affects the ...cardiovascular system. In addition to cardiac effects, e.g. myocarditis, arrhythmias, and myocardial damage, the vasculature is affected in COVID-19, both directly by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and indirectly as a result of a systemic inflammatory cytokine storm. This includes the role of the vascular endothelium in the recruitment of inflammatory leucocytes where they contribute to tissue damage and cytokine release, which are key drivers of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), in disseminated intravascular coagulation, and cardiovascular complications in COVID-19. There is also evidence linking endothelial cells (ECs) to SARS-CoV-2 infection including: (i) the expression and function of its receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in the vasculature; (ii) the prevalence of a Kawasaki disease-like syndrome (vasculitis) in COVID-19; and (iii) evidence of EC infection with SARS-CoV-2 in patients with fatal COVID-19. Here, the Working Group on Atherosclerosis and Vascular Biology together with the Council of Basic Cardiovascular Science of the European Society of Cardiology provide a Position Statement on the importance of the endothelium in the underlying pathophysiology behind the clinical presentation in COVID-19 and identify key questions for future research to address. We propose that endothelial biomarkers and tests of function (e.g. flow-mediated dilatation) should be evaluated for their usefulness in the risk stratification of COVID-19 patients. A better understanding of the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on endothelial biology in both the micro- and macrovasculature is required, and endothelial function testing should be considered in the follow-up of convalescent COVID-19 patients for early detection of long-term cardiovascular complications.
Histological atlases of the cerebral cortex, such as those made famous by Brodmann and von Economo, are invaluable for understanding human brain microstructure and its relationship with functional ...organization in the brain. However, these existing atlases are limited to small numbers of manually annotated samples from a single cerebral hemisphere, measured from 2D histological sections. We present the first whole-brain quantitative 3D laminar atlas of the human cerebral cortex. It was derived from a 3D histological atlas of the human brain at 20-micrometer isotropic resolution (BigBrain), using a convolutional neural network to segment, automatically, the cortical layers in both hemispheres. Our approach overcomes many of the historical challenges with measurement of histological thickness in 2D, and the resultant laminar atlas provides an unprecedented level of precision and detail. We utilized this BigBrain cortical atlas to test whether previously reported thickness gradients, as measured by MRI in sensory and motor processing cortices, were present in a histological atlas of cortical thickness and which cortical layers were contributing to these gradients. Cortical thickness increased across sensory processing hierarchies, primarily driven by layers III, V, and VI. In contrast, motor-frontal cortices showed the opposite pattern, with decreases in total and pyramidal layer thickness from motor to frontal association cortices. These findings illustrate how this laminar atlas will provide a link between single-neuron morphology, mesoscale cortical layering, macroscopic cortical thickness, and, ultimately, functional neuroanatomy.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Global peatlands store more carbon than is naturally present in the atmosphere
. However, many peatlands are under pressure from drainage-based agriculture, plantation development and fire, with the ...equivalent of around 3 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases emitted from drained peatland
. Efforts to curb such emissions are intensifying through the conservation of undrained peatlands and re-wetting of drained systems
. Here we report eddy covariance data for carbon dioxide from 16 locations and static chamber measurements for methane from 41 locations in the UK and Ireland. We combine these with published data from sites across all major peatland biomes. We find that the mean annual effective water table depth (WTD
; that is, the average depth of the aerated peat layer) overrides all other ecosystem- and management-related controls on greenhouse gas fluxes. We estimate that every 10 centimetres of reduction in WTD
could reduce the net warming impact of CO
and CH
emissions (100-year global warming potentials) by the equivalent of at least 3 tonnes of CO
per hectare per year, until WTD
is less than 30 centimetres. Raising water levels further would continue to have a net cooling effect until WTD
is within 10 centimetres of the surface. Our results suggest that greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands drained for agriculture could be greatly reduced without necessarily halting their productive use. Halving WTD
in all drained agricultural peatlands, for example, could reduce emissions by the equivalent of over 1 per cent of global anthropogenic emissions.
Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) show great potential for both broadening the spectral response of photovoltaic devices and facilitating their deployment in urban environments. However, the ...recent success of LSCs has brought to light severe deficiencies in reporting protocols: direct comparison between lab-scale LSCs is not possible due to inconsistencies in the experimental measurements and reporting of device performance. Here, we make the case for treatment of LSCs as photonic devices rather than photovoltaic cells and identify best practice guidelines for the measurement and reporting of LSC performance.
Recommendation of standardised experiments for adoption by all researchers on luminescent solar concentrators to unify reporting and legitimise the field.
Diffusion MRI is being used increasingly in studies of the brain and other parts of the body for its ability to provide quantitative measures that are sensitive to changes in tissue microstructure. ...However, inter-scanner and inter-protocol differences are known to induce significant measurement variability, which in turn jeopardises the ability to obtain ‘truly quantitative measures’ and challenges the reliable combination of different datasets. Combining datasets from different scanners and/or acquired at different time points could dramatically increase the statistical power of clinical studies, and facilitate multi-centre research. Even though careful harmonisation of acquisition parameters can reduce variability, inter-protocol differences become almost inevitable with improvements in hardware and sequence design over time, even within a site. In this work, we present a benchmark diffusion MRI database of the same subjects acquired on three distinct scanners with different maximum gradient strength (40, 80, and 300 mT/m), and with ‘standard’ and ‘state-of-the-art’ protocols, where the latter have higher spatial and angular resolution. The dataset serves as a useful testbed for method development in cross-scanner/cross-protocol diffusion MRI harmonisation and quality enhancement. Using the database, we compare the performance of five different methods for estimating mappings between the scanners and protocols. The results show that cross-scanner harmonisation of single-shell diffusion data sets can reduce the variability between scanners, and highlight the promises and shortcomings of today's data harmonisation techniques.
•A benchmarking database for diffusion MRI data harmonisation is presented.•The same 14 healthy controls were scanned on 3 scanners with 5 acquisition protocols.•5 harmonisation algorithms are compared for two tasks.•1) matched resolution scanner-to-scanner mapping, 2) spatial and angular resolution enhancement.•Cross-scanner harmonisation can reduce the variability between scanners and protocols.
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