Visceral Obesity and Its Shared Role in Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease: A Scoping Review of the Pathophysiology and Pharmacological Treatments

The association between obesity, cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been demonstrated in animal and epidemiological studies. However, the specific role of visceral obesity on cancer and CVD remains unclear. Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) is a complex and metabolically active tissue, that can produce different adipokines and hormones, responsible for endocrine-metabolic comorbidities. This review explores the potential mechanisms related to VAT that may also be involved in cancer and CVD. In addition, we discuss the shared pharmacological treatments which may reduce the risk of both diseases. This review highlights that chronic inflammation, molecular aspects, metabolic syndrome, secretion of hormones and adiponectin associated to VAT may have synergistic effects and should be further studied in relation to cancer and CVD. Reductions in abdominal and visceral adiposity improve insulin sensitivity, lipid profile and cytokines, which consequently reduce the risk of CVD and some cancers. Several medications have shown to reduce visceral and/or subcutaneous fat. Further research is needed to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms by which visceral obesity may cause both cancer and CVD. The role of visceral fat in cancer and CVD is an important area to advance. Public health policies to increase public awareness about VAT’s role and ways to manage or prevent it are needed.     

Thermal-stability of electric field-induced strain and energy storage density in Nb-doped BNKT-ST piezoceramics

In this work, the relationship between the structural mechanisms and macroscopic electrical properties of the Nb-modified 0.96(Bi_0.5Na_0.84K_0.16TiO₃)–0.04SrTiO₃ (BNKT–ST) system were elucidated by using temperature dependent and in situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. For the composition x?=?0.0175, a large-signal piezoelectric coefficient (S_max/E_max?=?d₃₃*) of 735 pm?V^?1 at 6?kV mm^?1 was observed at room temperature. Interestingly, at a higher temperature of 110?°C, the sample still showed a large d₃₃* of 570 pm V^?1. Furthermore, the temperature-invariant electrostrictive coefficient for this sample was found to be 0.0285?m⁴?C^?2 over the temperature range of 25–170?°C. Moreover, the energy density for x?=?0.030 sample was ～1.0?J?cm^?3 with an energy storage efficiency of ?70% in the temperature range of 25–135?°C. These results suggest that the synthesized Nb-modified BNKT–ST system is promising for the design of ceramic actuators as well as capacitor applications.     

Sensei: Enforcing secure coding guidelines in the integrated development environment

We discuss the potential benefits, requirements, and implementation challenges of a security-by-design approach in which an integrated development environment plugin assists software developers to write code that complies with secure coding guidelines. We discuss how such a plugin can enable a company's policy-setting security experts and developers to pass their knowledge on to each other more efficiently, and to let developers more effectively put that knowledge into practice. This is achieved by letting the team members develop customized rule sets that formalize coding guidelines and by letting the plugin check the compliance of code being written to those rule sets in real time, similar to an as-you-type spell checker. Upon detected violations, the plugin suggests options to quickly fix them and offers additional information for the developer. We share our experience with proof-of-concept designs and implementations rolled out in multiple companies, and present some future research and development directions.     

Web-GIS models: accomplishing modularity with aspects

Spatial concerns of Web geographical information systems (Web-GIS) are inherently crosscutting and volatile: crosscutting because they affect multiple functionalities of Web-GIS systems, and volatile because their status may change often. If these concerns are not modularized properly, the quality of Web-GIS services, particularly with regard to adaptation and evolution, can be severely compromised. This paper uses aspect-orientation to model crosscutting and volatile spatial concerns. By modeling both types of concerns, crosscutting and volatile, as candidate aspects, one can use dynamic weaving to add or remove them from a system at runtime. The aspect-oriented approach proposed starts with the identification and specification of crosscutting concerns and follows by composing these using modeling aspects using a transformation approach, an aspect-oriented modeling technique. The conflicts that can emerge due to the composition order are also taken into consideration. Finally, this paper proposes a set of reusable GIS crosscutting concerns, documenting them in a concern catalogue.     

Physiological compliance for social gaming analysis: Cooperative versus competitive play

We report the results of an empirical study demonstrating the value of using physiological compliance as a measure of social presence during digital game playing. The physiological activity (facial EMG, electrodermal activity, cardiac activity and respiration) of 21 dyads were acquired synchronously while they were playing a digital game either cooperatively or competitively and either at home or in the laboratory. Physiological compliance was defined as the correlation between the physiological signals of the dyad members. The results of this study confirm that physiological compliance is higher in a conflicting situation than when playing cooperatively. Importantly, the results also demonstrate that physiological compliance is related to self-reported social presence. This suggests that physiological compliance is not limited to negative situations but rather increases due to rich interactions. Only minor differences in physiological compliance were observed between home play and laboratory play, suggesting the ecological validity of laboratory measures. Finally, we propose that compliance measures can be considered as objective indices of social presence in digital gaming.     

Processing cherries (Prunus avium) using supercritical fluid technology. Part 2. Evaluation of SCF extracts as promising natural chemotherapeutical agents

In the last years, there has been a growing interest in the recovery of bioactive compounds from natural sources for the development of novel functional foods.In this study, natural extracts, previously obtained by fractioned high pressure extraction from “Saco” cherry culls, were characterized in terms of anticancer activity. The product derived from CO₂:EtOH (90:10, v/v) extraction after a pre-treatment of raw material with supercritical CO₂ during 1 h, exhibited the highest antiproliferative activity in human HT29 colon cancer cells. In addition, when compared with doxorubicin, cherry extracts induced cell cycle arrest in a different cell cycle checkpoint.In order to obtain extracts with enhanced antiproliferative activity, the extraction process was further explored. Using highly pure CO₂ and EtOH 96% the inhibition of cancer cell growth was significantly enhanced by 16-fold. In addition, the incorporation of a conventional extraction step with MetOH or EtOH:H₂O (50:50, v/v) prior to fractioned process allowed to obtain cherry extracts more concentrated in antiproliferative compounds. Perillyl alcohol present in cherry extracts was pointed to be one of the major responsible for anticancer properties of cherry extracts.     

Synergistic action between Caryocar coriaceum Wittm. fixed oil with aminoglycosides in vitro

The oil obtained from the Caryocar coriaceum Wittm. (pequi) fruit pulp (C. coriaceum fixed oil – CCFO), rich in fatty acids, has been secularly employed by traditional medicine in the treatment of respiratory affections, skin inflammation, and wounds. These observations encouraged us to investigate the antimicrobial activity of CCFO and to investigate its effect in combination with aminoglycosides. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of CCFO alone and associated with aminoglycosides against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus strains were determined using microdilution assay. CCFO alone had a MIC of 512 µg/mL against E. coli and S. aureus resistant strains. Combining the CCFO with aminoglycosides reduced the MIC of aminoglycosides against the resistant strains of E. coli and S. aureus. The results obtained indicate that CCFO displays a significant synergistic antibiotic effect when combined with aminoglycosides, demonstrating that the oil constituents (fatty acids) may act as potentiators of the antibiotic activity of aminoglycosides. These properties make CCFO oil an interesting alternative as a remedy or nutraceutical against multiresistant bacteria, preventing the development of resistance by these microorganisms. Practical applications: This article demonstrates the capacity of the C. coriaceum oil to enhance the antibiotic activity of aminoglycosides. This activity could represent a new way to combat the growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics, an important problem of public health.