Capsiate Intake with Exercise Training Additively Reduces Fat Deposition in Mice on a High-Fat Diet,but Not without Exercise Training

While exercise training (ET) is an efficient strategy to manage obesity, it is recommended with a dietary plan to maximize the antiobesity functions owing to a compensational increase in energy intake. Capsiate is a notable bioactive compound for managing obesity owing to its capacity to increase energy expenditure. We aimed to examine whether the antiobesity effects of ET can be further enhanced by capsiate intake (CI) and determine its effects on resting energy expenditure and metabolic molecules. Mice were randomly divided into four groups (n = 8 per group) and fed high-fat diet. Mild-intensity treadmill ET was conducted five times/week; capsiate (10 mg/kg) was orally administered daily. After 8 weeks, resting metabolic rate and metabolic molecules were analyzed. ET with CI additively reduced the abdominal fat rate by 18% and solely upregulated beta-3-adrenoceptors in adipose tissue (p = 0.013) but did not affect the metabolic molecules in skeletal muscles. Surprisingly, CI without ET significantly increased the abdominal fat rate (p = 0.001) and reduced energy expenditure by 9%. Therefore, capsiate could be a candidate compound for maximizing the antiobesity effects of ET by upregulating beta-3-adrenoceptors in adipose tissue, but CI without ET may not be beneficial in managing obesity.     

Large neighborhood search for the bike request scheduling problem

This paper introduces an efficient algorithm for the bike request scheduling problem (BRSP). The BRSP is built around the concept of request, defined as the pickup or dropoff of a number of identical items (bikes) at a specific station, within a certain time window, and with a certain priority. The aim of the BRSP is to sequence requests on (and hence determine the routes of) a set of vehicles, in such a way that the sum of the priorities of the executed requests is maximized, all time windows are respected, and the capacity of the vehicles is not exceeded. The generation of the set of requests is explicitly not a part of the problem definition of the BRSP. The primary application of the BRSP, from which it derives its name, is to determine the routes of a set of repositioning vehicles in a bike sharing system, although other applications exist. The algorithm introduced in this paper is based on a set of related greedy randomized adaptive search procedure followed by variable neighborhood descent (GRASP + VND) operators embedded in a large neighborhood search (LNS) framework. Since this paper presents the first heuristic for the BRSP, a computational comparison to existing approaches is not possible. We therefore compare the solutions found by our LNS heuristic to those found by an exact solver (Gurobi). These experiments confirm that the proposed algorithm scales to realistic dimensions and is able to find near‐optimal solutions in seconds.     

The role of Persian-language word exercise games in improving spelling of students with dyslexia: Word exercise games in improving spelling

Children with dyslexia have reduced sensitivity to phonological sounds and words, and this deficiency in lexical processing causes many problems for them. Word exercise games based on phonological awareness have emphasized the mistakes of students with dyslexia, attempting to help children avoid these mistakes. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of Persian-language word exercise games on the spelling of students with dyslexia. The design of the present study was quasi-experimental, with a pretest and posttest of an experimental group and a control group. Participants were 30 students with dyslexia from second grade to fifth grade in elementary schools in Bojnord, who completed the spelling test as a pretest and posttest. The experimental group played eleven 40-min sessions of word exercise games. The results showed that the word exercise programme improved the spelling of the children with dyslexia. This suggests that basing training on the phonological mistakes of students with dyslexia and using the word exercise games can improve their spelling.     

“Thank heavens for the lease”: histories of shared ownership

Drawing on and developing Kingdon’s multiple streams analysis, this article examines the development of one aspect of the UK’s low cost home ownership programme: shared ownership. We demonstrate how key human and non-human policy entrepreneurs were able to set the agenda from 1973–1983 in favour of shared ownership; they neutralized the alternatives, while retaining some of their instruments; and solved a number of early problems by bringing key players into the programme. Our data-sets include a range of archival material and elite interviews. The policy entrepreneurs included John Stanley (who was the housing minister in the First Thatcher government), the National Federation of Housing Associations, and the Building Societies Association. Our development of the multiple streams analysis is to argue that documents, including the lease, act as policy entrepreneurs in their own right. The lease was central to the development of shared ownership and its transformation into a model lease enrolled other organizations, most critically the building societies.     

Homophily horizons and ethnic mover flows among homeowners in Scotland

Abstract

This article analyses mover flows in Glasgow and the role of ethnic homophily, the tendency for movers to be drawn to areas with similar ethnicities to their own. We look at how homophily affects the spatial relocation patterns of homeowners in Glasgow from Scottish, Indian, Pakistani and Chinese descent, and focus on the extent to which homophily extends beyond the immediate locality to surrounding neighbourhoods. Our interest is in estimating the “homophily horizon” – how far the gaze of homophily reaches in mover location decisions. Using a simple Schelling-type theoretical model, we argue that homophily horizons are potentially important in shaping the long-term social structure of cities as they may profoundly affect how potent the overall sorting tendencies of the housing market are in driving segregation. In principle, the more distant the homophily horizon, the more quickly the housing market will tend towards segregation, other things being equal. We adopt Folch and Rey’s use of the local centralization index to capture the influence of surrounding neighbourhoods in shaping mover flows and neighbourhood dynamics. Our estimation combines ethnic mover flows derived from surname analysis of house buyers from the house transactions recorded in Registers of Scotland data. Our results show that the presence of the own ethnic group in the local surroundings is important for explaining mover flows, and that homophily is a local phenomenon.     

Aerobic Exercise Ameliorates Cancer Cachexia-Induced Muscle Wasting through Adiponectin Signaling

Cachexia is a multifactorial syndrome characterized by muscle loss that cannot be reversed by conventional nutritional support. To uncover the molecular basis underlying the onset of cancer cachectic muscle wasting and establish an effective intervention against muscle loss, we used a cancer cachectic mouse model and examined the effects of aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise successfully suppressed muscle atrophy and activated adiponectin signaling. Next, a cellular model for cancer cachectic muscle atrophy using C2C12 myotubes was prepared by treating myotubes with a conditioned medium from a culture of colon-26 cancer cells. Treatment of the atrophic myotubes with recombinant adiponectin was protective against the thinning of cells through the increased production of p-mTOR and suppression of LC3-II. Altogether, these findings suggest that the activation of adiponectin signaling could be part of the molecular mechanisms by which aerobic exercise ameliorates cancer cachexia-induced muscle wasting.     

Hybridizing adaptive large neighborhood search with kernel search: a new solution approach for the nurse routing problem with incompatible services and minimum demand

The average age of the population has grown steadily in recent decades along with the number of people suffering from chronic diseases and asking for treatments. Hospital care is expensive and often unsafe, especially for older individuals. This is particularly true during pandemics as the recent SARS-CoV-2. Hospitalization at home has become a valuable alternative to face efficiently a huge increase in treatment requests while guaranteeing a high quality of service and lower risk to fragile patients. This new model of care requires the redefinition of health services organization and the optimization of scarce resources (e.g., available nurses). In this paper, we study a Nurse Routing Problem that tries to find a good balance between hospital costs reduction and the well-being of patients, also considering realistic operational restrictions like maximum working times for the nurses and possible incompatibilities between services jointly provided to the same patient. We first propose a Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation for the problem and use some valid inequalities to strengthen it. A simple branch-and-cut algorithm is proposed and validated to derive ground benchmarks. In addition, to efficiently solve the problem, we develop an Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search hybridized with a Kernel Search and validate its performance over a large set of different realistic working scenarios. Computational tests show how our matheuristic approach manages to find good solutions in a reasonable amount of time even in the most difficult settings. Finally, some interesting managerial insights are discussed through an economic analysis of the operating context.     

Lightweight reactor design by additive manufacturing for preheating applications using metal hydrides

Thermal energy storage systems based on metal hydrides can be a solution for preheating fuel cells (FCs). They can provide thermal energy at temperatures below −20 °C during startup, while heat at 50 °C during operation is sufficient for regeneration. The challenge of such a system in mobile applications is the final weight specific thermal power. In this study, a reactor design based on additive manufacturing techniques for ~300 g of metal hydride is presented. Here, a reactor (passive) to hydride (active) mass ratio of 0.97 is realized, still reaching high weight specific thermal power of up to 2.1 kW/kg_MH at −20 °C and 8 bar (LmNi_4.91Sn_0.15). Considering the example of preheating a FC from −20 °C in ~120 s, the performance of LaNi₅ and LmNi_4.91Sn_0.15 is studied. While LaNi₅ requires higher regeneration temperatures than LmNi_4.91Sn_0.15 (>40 °C compared to >20 °C), its performance is less sensitive to operative variations due to its nearly ideal thermodynamic characteristic.     

Distributionally robust optimization of home energy management system based on receding horizon optimization

This paper investigates the scheduling strategy of schedulable load in home energy management system (HEMS) under uncertain environment by proposing a distributionally robust optimization (DRO) method based on receding horizon optimization (RHO-DRO). First, the optimization model of HEMS, which contains uncertain variable outdoor temperature and hot water demand, is established and the scheduling problem is developed into a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) by using the DRO method based on the ambiguity sets of the probability distribution of uncertain variables. Combined with RHO, the MILP is solved in a rolling fashion using the latest update data related to uncertain variables. The simulation results demonstrate that the scheduling results are robust under uncertain environment while satisfying all operating constraints with little violation of user thermal comfort. Furthermore, compared with the robust optimization (RO) method, the RHO-DRO method proposed in this paper has a lower conservation and can save more electricity for users.