Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3–6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to re

In this talk three 2-sigma deviations from the Standard Model predictions in the top quark sector are briefly discussed. These are the excess of events in the tail of the H_T distribution in ttbar events, the top-quark charge asymmetry and the discrimination of s- and t-channel events in single top. The latter has only been observed by CDF, while the other two are found by both CDF and D0.

It has been almost fifteen years ago that the top quark, the heaviest and most intriguing among the six known quarks, was observed at the Tevatron experiments at Fermilab. Some of its properties, such as the mass and the production cross sections are by now quite well known. Other important aspects, however, such as the top quark invariant mass distribution, the structure of the tWb coupling, the

The kinetics of enzymatic conversion in a microemulsion have been investigated. Racemic 3-methylcyclohexanone was oxidized by horse-liver alcohol dehydrogenase (HLADH, E.C. 1.1.1.1.) using a coupled substrate-coenzyme regenerating cycle in a sodium bis-(2-ethylhexyl) sulphosuccinate (AOT)-isooctane-buffer microemulsion. Initial enzyme activity was measured as a function of the oil volume fraction

Twelve commercially available triacylglycerol lipase preparations were screened for their suitability as catalysts in the interesterification of palm oil mid fraction and ethyl stearate to form a cocoa butter equivalent. Five fungal lipase preparations were found to be suitable. The hydrolytic activity of the commercial lipase preparations was tested with sunflower seed oil and was independent of

p-Cresol was oxidized by hydrogen peroxide in a reaction catalysed by horseradish peroxidase and the low molecular weight products were investigated. In aqueous media Pummerer's ketone (I) was the dominating product but in organic media the product distribution was quite different; 2,2'-dihydroxy-5,5'-dimethyldiphenyl (II) was the main low molecular weight product. Similar product distributions we

BACKGROUND: Mild hypothermia is currently standard of care for cardiac arrest patients in many hospitals and a common belief is that hypothermia attenuates platelet aggregation. We wanted to examine the effects of clopidogrel on platelet aggregation during hypothermia.METHODS: Platelet reactivity at 37° C and 33° C was evaluated by light transmission aggregometry and vasodilator-stimulated phospho

The European Directive 2008/96/CE on Road Infrastructures Safety Management gives great emphasis to road Safety Inspections SI as tool for safety management of existing roads. In this framework, development of surrogate measures of safety derived from data collected during safety inspections can provide a source of information for risk assessment. Furthermore, SIs derived information seems to be p

The investigations of light kaonic atoms offer the unique opportunity to perform experiments equivalent to scattering at vanishing relative energies, being their atomic binding energies in the keV range. This allows the determination of the hadron-nucleus interaction at threshold without the need of an extrapolation to zero relative energy. The energy shift and broadening of the lowest-lying state

Background: The exact pathophysiological mechanism(s) underlying endolymphatic hydrops (EH) remain elusive. We have previously shown that chronic administration of vasopressin and inhibitors of the cAMP/cGMP degrading enzymes (PDE3, PDE4, PDE5) results in the development of EH to mice. Aims/objectives: Evaluate the ability of spironolactone, an aldosterone antagonist, to prevent EH, when induced b

Two radiopharmaceuticals, 99Tcm-hexamethyl propylene amine oxime (99Tcm-HMPAO) and 99Tcm-ethyl cysteinate dimer (99Tcm-ECD), are currently used to determine cerebral blood flow. 99Tcm-ECD is, by virtue of its greater stability, superceding 99Tcm-HMPAO for routine examinations. Since the clinical assessment of 99Tcm-ECD images is usually based on experience with 99Tcm-HMPAO, we used both radiopharm

Objectives. To study whether there is an increased fracture incidence following thyrotoxicosis. Design. A case-control study. Setting. Malmo University Hospital, Malmo, Sweden. Subjects: All patients (n = 333) from the population of Malmo who were treated for thyrotoxicosis for the first time during the 5-year period 1970-74. A total of 618 controls were selected from the local municipality regist

Based on a molecularly imprinted polymer, a competitive binding assay analogous to competitive enzyme immunoassay has been developed. The assay is specific for the herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and uses, for the first time, an enzyme-labelled conjugate as a tracer. The label tobacco peroxidase allowed for colorimetric and chemiluminescence detection. The molecularly imprinted polymer wa

In the present study, molecularly imprinted affinity sorbents against theophylline and 17β-estradiol are synthesised via precipitation polymerisation, a synthetic method that yields monodisperse, spherical polymer particles in the micronscale range, quickly, cleanly and in good yield. The specific binding sites that are created during the imprinting process are analysed via radioligand binding ana