1,557 research outputs found
Impact of obesity on cardiovascular disease
No full textObesity is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), heart failure, diabetes, cancer, and ultimately all-cause mortality. Obesity is causally related to dyslipidemia, hypertension, and diabetes, all strong CVD risk factors, and so causally related to CVD risk. In fact, a substantial part of the risk imparted by obesity on CVD outcomes operates via traditional risk factors. Obese men are almost twice as likely and women almost two and half times as likely to develop hypertension. Obese individuals are around 50% more likely to have a stroke and have around 6–12 times higher risks of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those with a normal BMI.
Obesity is also linked to greater risk for development of heart failure. Yet, there appears to be an obesity paradox in established heart failure such that the risk of death is lower in overweight and mildly obese individuals than in those with normal weight. Such observations are likely partially driven by reverse causality whereby disease-specific issues drive weight loss rather than higher weight per se being protective.
While obesity is most commonly defined by BMI, the importance of body fat distribution and markers such as waist circumference, waist: hip ratio, visceral and ectopic fat volumes are becoming better appreciated. The concept of harmful fat distribution is therefore topical and recent evidence suggest those who can store more fat subcutaneously (and so delay their ectopic depot expansions until much heavier) have lesser diabetes and cardiovascular risks. This paradigm may also largely explain men’s greater risks for both chronic conditions at similar BMI’s to women.
Trials of weight loss add strong support for causal links between adiposity and CVD; for example, the best evidence suggests that losing around 1 kg reduces SBP by around 1 mmHg. Weight loss also improves lipid profiles with reduced total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, and in particular triglyceride levels. Weight loss of around 5 kg reduces the risk of obese individuals progressing to impaired glucose tolerance and type 2 diabetes. In those with type 2 diabetes, 5 to <10% intentional weight loss is associated with 3.5 times increased odds of obtaining a 0.5% reduction in HbA1c. Not surprisingly, substantial weight loss has been associated with significantly lower mortality from several causes.
This chapter will show how the best epidemiological evidence, using methods to lessen the impact of reverse causality, supports strong graded links between adiposity and CVD. It will also examine and explain the apparent obesity paradox of heart failure. The chapter will then describe the effect on CVD outcomes of robust lifestyle and surgical intervention studies and trials. Finally, we will also explain how genetics data have helped support causal associations between increasing BMI and CVD, including understanding better the causal links between regional adiposity and CVD.
In conclusion, several lines of evidence, including observational, trial, and genetic, collectively support causal links between obesity, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and all-cause mortality
Adipose and height growth through childhood and blood pressure status in a large prospective cohort study
No full textRaised blood pressure (BP) is the world's leading mortality risk factor. Childhood BP substantially predicts adult levels, and although both prenatal and postnatal growth influence it, their relative importance is debated. In a longitudinal study (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children) of 12 962 healthy children, we aimed to assess the relative contribution of different growth periods and of standardized measures of height versus weight-for-height (an adiposity marker) to BP at age 10 years. Conditional growth modeling was used in the 3230 boys and 3346 girls with BP measurements. Systolic BP was inversely associated with birth weight and weight-for-height but not length (-0.33, -0.27, and -0.12 mm Hg · SD(-1); P=0.003, 0.035, and 0.35, respectively). In infancy, weight, weight-for-height, and height gains were all positively associated with systolic BP (0.90, 0.41, and 0.82 mm Hg · SD(-1), respectively; all P<0.001). After infancy, all of the growth modalities were positively associated with systolic BP (weight, 1.91; weight-for-height, 1.56; height, 1.20 mm Hg · SD(-1); all P<0.001). Similar but weaker associations were found with diastolic BP. Although BP at 10 years was associated with both prenatal and early postnatal growth, their influence was small compared with that of later growth. Because BP ranking relative to the population is substantially determined in the first decade of life, a focus on strategies to reduce the development of adiposity from infancy onward, rather than an emphasis on the nutrition and weight of mothers and infants, should bring greater reductions in population BP.Alexander Jones, Marietta Charakida, Emanuela Falaschetti, Aroon D. Hingorani, Nicholas Finer, Stefano Masi, Ann E. Donald, Debbie A. Lawlor, George Davey Smith, John E. Deanfiel
Turning into Sterne:Viktor Shklovskii and Literary Reception.
No full textViktor Shklovskii (1893-1984) is best known as an inventor of Russian Formalism, the literary theorist responsible for ostranenie, defamiliarisation. Just after the 1917 Revolution, Shklovskii claimed Tristram Shandy to be 'the most typical novel in world literature'; he then proceeded to theorise Sterne's formal experiments with plot; to chronicle his own wartime exploits in an autobiographical 'Sentimental Journey'; and to promote Tristram Shandy as a prototype for the new Soviet novel. His reading of Tristram Shandy and his lifelong relationship with its author, Laurence Sterne (1713-1769), were of enormous importance to Shklovskii, whose theory of prose remains current in Western academia. As Finer shows, they can tell us much not only about Shklovskii but also the extended, tangled ways of literary reception, and translation
Turning into Sterne:Viktor Shklovskii and Literary Reception.
No full textViktor Shklovskii (1893-1984) is best known as an inventor of Russian Formalism, the literary theorist responsible for ostranenie, defamiliarisation. Just after the 1917 Revolution, Shklovskii claimed Tristram Shandy to be 'the most typical novel in world literature'; he then proceeded to theorise Sterne's formal experiments with plot; to chronicle his own wartime exploits in an autobiographical 'Sentimental Journey'; and to promote Tristram Shandy as a prototype for the new Soviet novel. His reading of Tristram Shandy and his lifelong relationship with its author, Laurence Sterne (1713-1769), were of enormous importance to Shklovskii, whose theory of prose remains current in Western academia. As Finer shows, they can tell us much not only about Shklovskii but also the extended, tangled ways of literary reception, and translation
Towards a finer heritage management: Evaluating the tourism carrying capacity using an agent-based model
No full textAs one of the most important areas in the Palace Museum, Beijing, China, the Hall of Mental Cultivation had suffered from overcrowding of visitors before it was closed in 2016 for conservation. Preparing for the reopening in 2020, the Palace Museum decided to take the chance and initiate finer-grained tourism management in the Hall. This research intends to provide an audio-guided touring program by dynamically evaluating the Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC) with the highlight spots in the Hall, to operate the touring program spatiotemporally. Framing an optimization problem for the touring program, an agent-based simulator, Thunderhead Pathfinder, originally developed for evacuation in the emergency, is utilized to verify the performance of the touring system. The simulation shows that the proposed touring program could precisely fit all the key requirements to improve the visitors' experience, to guarantee heritage safety, and to ensure more efficient management.Heritage & ValuesDesign InformaticsArchitectural Engineering +Technolog
Reflections on Artificial intelligence and Digital Audio to imagine life beyond the human
No full textPublic lecture and live performance.
Presented as an extension of the VOLTA Abismal Festival, a world reference in the improvisation, sound art and experimental music scene.
The invited artists will participate with two improvisation sets and will discuss their most recent research
With the participation of British sound artists and researchers Ella Finer and J. Milo Taylor, the Polish Robert Piotrowics and the Mexican Juanjosé Rivas, the sound art and experimental music concert “VOLTA Showcase” will be held at the National Sound Library.
The author of the book Acoustic Commons and the Wild Life of Sound, soon to be published, Ella Finer, and whose work in the field of sound and performance includes writing, composition and curating, will talk about her Score for Dark Voices.
It is a work in which the acoustic worlds of the birds that live in the parks of London and Mexico City are superimposed with a vocal score that transposes the sounds of the language of birds into written symbols.
In turn, J. Milo Taylor, whose study topics are listening strategies, cross-cultural exchange, open source and acoustic ecology, will focus his participation on artificial intelligence and open source digital technology to imagine diverse forms of life beyond the human
An Introductory Approach to Risk Visualization as a Service
No full textThis paper introduces the Risk Visualization as a Service (RVaaS) and presents the motivation, rationale, methodology, Cloud APIs used, operations and examples of using RVaaS. Risks can be calculated within seconds and presented in the form of Visualization to ensure that unexploited areas are ex-posed. RVaaS operates in two phases. The first phase includes the risk modeling in Black Scholes Model (BSM), creating 3D Visualization and Analysis. The second phase consists of calculating key derivatives such as Delta and Theta for financial modeling. Risks presented in visualization allow the potential investors and stakeholders to keep track of the status of risk with regard to time, prices and volatility. Our approach can improve accuracy and performance. Results in experiments show that RVaaS can perform up to 500,000 simulations and complete all simulations within 24 seconds for time steps of up to 50. We also introduce financial stock market analysis (FSMA) that can fully blend with RVaaS and demonstrate two examples that can help investors make better decision based on the pricing and market volatility information. RVaaS provides a structured way to deploy low cost, high quality risk assessment and support real-time calculations
Study on redeposition of eroded finer particles during suffusion with image processing
No full textRecent research on soil suffusion has highlighted the critical role of the redeposition of eroded finer particles in the development of suffusion and the suffusion-induced failure of dam foundations and alluvial slopes. However, a quantitative assessment of redeposition during suffusion is still needed. To this end, an image processing-based approach was developed and integrated into the one-dimensional suffusion tests to quantify the redeposition of eroded finer particles along the seepage direction. The results indicate that the redeposition mass of eroded finer particles exhibits an exponential decay along the seepage direction across various soil gradations and hydraulic conditions. A theoretical relationship was established between this exponential decay and the redeposition probability. Furthermore, the redeposition probability was found to be negatively related to the content of finer fraction, which was demonstrated to be rooted in the transition from a homogeneous to a localized distribution of redeposition position within the cross-section as the content of finer fraction increases from 15% to 35%.The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the pdf file of the accepted manuscript may differ slightly from what is displayed on the item page. The information in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript reflects the original submission by the author
Infrastructure Preference and Value Among Transportation Cyclists in the U.S.
No full textA decade of surging bicycle use has attracted little research seeking to measure bicycle utility, infrastructure preferences, and the tension between transportation budgets versus the demands of cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists. A review of the literature shows only one study applying non-market valuation tools to study this issue and demographic surveys tracking gender, age, and income have provided little guidance. Using paired comparison and contingent valuation methods, this paper adds to existing research regarding cyclists’ infrastructure preference and attempts to identify a model for valuing specific infrastructure options. Results suggest strong and easily identifiable preference ordering but do not return an explanatory model for infrastructure valuation
Infrastructure Preference and Value Among Transportation Cyclists in the U.S.
No full textA decade of surging bicycle use has attracted little research seeking to measure bicycle utility, infrastructure preferences, and the tension between transportation budgets versus the demands of cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists. A review of the literature shows only one study applying non-market valuation tools to study this issue and demographic surveys tracking gender, age, and income have provided little guidance. Using paired comparison and contingent valuation methods, this paper adds to existing research regarding cyclists’ infrastructure preference and attempts to identify a model for valuing specific infrastructure options. Results suggest strong and easily identifiable preference ordering but do not return an explanatory model for infrastructure valuation
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