Assessing obesity: classification and epidemiology

Obesity is generally defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 and higher. Overweight is defined as a BMI between 25 and 30 kg/m2. The prevalence varies considerably between countries, and between regions within countries. It is estimated that more than half of adults aged 35-65 living in Europe are either overweight or obese. Overweight is more common among men than among women but obesity is more common among women. The prevalence of obesity in Europe is probably in the order of 10-20% in men and 15-25% in adult women. In most European countries who have reliable data on time-trends the prevalence of obesity seems to be increasing. In most European countries, obesity is usually inversely associated with socio-economic status, particularly among women. New classifications of overweight may be based on cut-off points for simple anthropometric measures which reflects both total adiposity as well as abdominal fatness.     

Nanogoldpharmaceutics (i) The use of colloidal gold to treat experimentally-induced arthritis in rat models; (ii) Characterization of the gold in Swarna bhasma, a microparticulate used in traditional Indian medicine

Nanosized gold particles (27 +/− 3 nm) have been proven to be effective in ameliorating the symptoms of mycobacterial-, collagen- and pristane-induced arthritis in rat models. This contrasts with the drug sodium aurothiomalate that was only effective against mycobacterial-induced arthritis but not to the same extent as Au⁰. Gold in the traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine,Swarna bhasma (gold ash), has been characterized as globular particles of gold with an average size of 56–57 nm.     

A study of the properties of ink-jet printed cotton fabric following low-temperature plasma treatment

This paper studies the effect of low-temperature plasma treatment on an ink-jet printed cotton fabric. Due to the specific printing and conductivity requirements for ink-jet printing, not all conventional printing chemicals, such as sodium alginate and urea, used for cotton fabric can be directly incorporated into the ink formulation. As a result, the cotton fabric requires pretreatment with the printing chemicals prior to the stage of ink-jet printing. Cotton is pretreated with the printing chemicals by means of a coating method. The aim of this paper was to study the possibility and effectiveness of applying low-temperature plasma treatment to enhance the performance of pretreatment paste containing sodium alginate so as to improve the properties of the ink-jet printed cotton fabric. Experimental results revealed that a low-temperature plasma pretreatment coupled with the ink-jet printing technique could improve the final printed properties of cotton fabric.     

十四醇聚氧化烯烃醚琥珀酸单酯磺酸盐的表面活性研究

合成了一系列十四醇聚氧乙烯醚和聚氧丙烯醚琥珀酸单酯磺酸盐，比较了其临界胶束浓度、润湿力、起泡力等表面活性     

Characterization of ramie yarn treated with sodium hydroxide and crosslinked by 1,2,3,4‐butanetetracarboxylic acid

Ramie yarns were treated with various concentrations of NaOH at room temperature and subsequently crosslinked with 1,2,3,4‐butanetetracarboxylic acid (BTCA). The microstructure and tensile properties of the treated yarns were characterized. X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and FTIR were used to study the crystalline structure of the resultant ramie yarns. The results showed that the maximum change in the structure of the alkali‐modified ramie took place at 16% NaOH, which would completely transform cellulose I to cellulose II. At the same time, the crystallinity index and fiber orientation decreased to the minimum value while the absorption properties were enhanced. The average degree of polymerization (DP ) of the treated ramie yarns slightly decreased after NaOH treatment. Tensile properties including tenacity, breaking elongation, and modulus of the treated yarns were also investigated. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the breakage of the treated yarns. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 1857–1864, 2004     

Application of supercritical fluid chromatography in the quantitative analysis of minor components (carotenes,vitamin E,sterols, and squalene) from palm oil

The application of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) coupled with a UV variable-wavelength detector to isolate the minor components (carotenes, vitamin E, sterols, and squalene) in crude palm oil (CPO) and the residual oil from palm-pressed fiber is reported. SFC is a good technique for the isolation and analysis of these compounds from the sources mentioned. The carotenes, vitamin E, sterols, and squalene were isolated in less than 20 min. The individual vitamin E isomers present in palm oil were also isolated into their respective components, α-tocopherol, α-tocotrienol, γ-tocopherol, γ-tocotrienol, and δ-tocotrienol. Calibration of all the minor components of palm as well as the individual components of palm vitamin E was carried out and was found to be comparable to those analyzed by other established analytical methods.     

Evaluation of some of the properties of plasma treated wool fabric

Low temperature plasma (LTP) treatment was applied to wool fabric with the use of a nonpolymerizing gas, namely oxygen. Properties of the LTP‐treated samples including low stress mechanical behavior, air permeability, and thermal characteristics were evaluated in this study. Kawabata evaluation system fabric (KES‐F) was employed to determine the tensile, shearing, bending, and compression strength properties and surface roughness of the specimens. The changes in these properties are believed to be closely related to the interfiber and interyarn frictional force induced by the LTP. The decrease in the air permeability of the LTP‐treated wool fabric was found to be probably because of the plasma action effect on increasing the fabric thickness and a change in fabric surface morphology, which was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy micrographs. The change in the thermal properties of the LTP‐treated wool fabric was in good agreement with the earlier findings and can be attributed to the amount of air trapped between the yarns and fibers. This study suggested that the LTP treatment can influence the final properties of the wool fabric, and also provide information for developing LTP‐treated wool fabric for industrial use. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 5958–5964, 2006     

On a Mixture GARCH Time‐Series Model

Abstract. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in modelling real data with a heavy‐tailed distribution. A popular candidate is the so‐called generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) model. Unfortunately, the tails of GARCH models are not thick enough in some applications. In this paper, we propose a mixture generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (MGARCH) model. The stationarity conditions and the tail behaviour of the MGARCH model are studied. It is shown that MGARCH models have tails thicker than those of the associated GARCH models. Therefore, the MGARCH models are more capable of capturing the heavy‐tailed features in real data. Some real examples illustrate the results.     

Enhancing textile ink-jet printing with chitosan

Following on from previous research, the possibility of using chitosan in preparing the pretreatment print paste for textile ink-jet printing was investigated but the final colour was not as good as expected. In this study, chitosan was applied separately on cotton fabric for ink-jet printing. A two-bath method was proposed and it was confirmed that a better colour yield was achieved with this method. However, the use of chitosan reduced the tensile strength of the ink-jet printed fabric slightly.     

Thermal stability of composite phase change material microcapsules incorporated with silver nano-particles

This paper reports a study on the thermal stability of phase change material microcapsules that are incorporated with silver nano-particles (Ag-NPs). The novel microcapsules were fabricated by the technique of in situ polymerization, with aminoplast as the wall and phase change material bromo-hexadecane (PCM BrC16) as the core. Thermal gravimetry (TG) analysis was applied to measure the thermal stability of these microcapsules and surface morphology of the microcapsules was observed by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) after an application of curing treatment at 130 °C. Comparing with conventional phase change material microcapsules (PCMMs), nano-composite phase change material microcapsules (NCPCMMs) have higher thermal stability. This can be attributed to nano-composite structure of the microcapsules, in which metal Ag-NPs distributed on the surface to increase wall toughness and strength. The possible reinforcement mechanisms of the nano-composite structure are explored.