Physical fitness, physical activity, and functional limitation in adults aged 40 and older

PURPOSE: A cohort of middle-aged and older men and women were followed for an average of 5.5 yr to examine the association between physical fitness, physical activity, and the prevalence of functional limitation. METHODS: The participants received medical assessments between 1980 and 1988 and responded to a mail-back survey regarding functional status in 1990. RESULTS: Among 3495 men and 1175 women over 40 yr of age at baseline, 350 (7.5%) reported at least one functional limitation in daily or household activities at follow-up. The prevalence of functional limitation was higher among women than men. Physically fit and physically active participants reported less functional limitation than unfit or sedentary participants. After controlling for age and other risk factors, the prevalence of functional limitation was lower for both moderately fit (odds ratio = 0.4, 95% CI = 0.2-0.6) and high fit men (odds ratio = 0.3, 95% CI = 0.2-0.4), compared with low fit men. Corresponding figures for women were 0.5 (0.3-0.7) and 0.3 (0.2-0.5) for moderately fit and high fit women. The association between physical activity and functional limitation was similar to the data for physical fitness. CONCLUSIONS: These data support a protective effect of physical fitness and physical activity on functional limitation among older adults and extend this protective effect to middle-aged men and women.     

A semantic approach to remove incoherent items from a user profile and improve the accuracy of a recommender system

Recommender systems usually suggest items by exploiting all the previous interactions of the users with a system (e.g., in order to decide the movies to recommend to a user, all the movies she previously purchased are considered). This canonical approach sometimes could lead to wrong results due to several factors, such as a change in user preferences over time, or the use of her account by third parties. This kind of incoherence in the user profiles defines a lower bound on the error the recommender systems may achieve when they generate suggestions for a user, an aspect known in literature as magic barrier. This paper proposes a novel dynamic coherence-based approach to define the user profile used in the recommendation process. The main aim is to identify and remove, from the previously evaluated items, those not semantically adherent to the others, in order to make a user profile as close as possible to the user’s real preferences, solving the aforementioned problems. Moreover, reshaping the user profile in such a way leads to great advantages in terms of computational complexity, since the number of items considered during the recommendation process is highly reduced. The performed experiments show the effectiveness of our approach to remove the incoherent items from a user profile, increasing the recommendation accuracy.     

Interplay between upsampling and regularization for provider fairness in recommender systems

User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction - Considering the impact of recommendations on item providers is one of the duties of multi-sided recommender systems. Item providers are key stakeholders...     

The Interplay between Autonomic Nervous System and Inflammation across Systemic Autoimmune Diseases

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the immune system are deeply interrelated. The ANS regulates both innate and adaptive immunity through the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, and an imbalance in this system can determine an altered inflammatory response as typically observed in chronic conditions such as systemic autoimmune diseases. Rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and systemic sclerosis all show a dysfunction of the ANS that is mutually related to the increase in inflammation and cardiovascular risk. Moreover, an interaction between ANS and the gut microbiota has direct effects on inflammation homeostasis. Recently vagal stimulation techniques have emerged as an unprecedented possibility to reduce ANS dysfunction, especially in chronic diseases characterized by pain and a decreased quality of life as well as in chronic inflammation.     

Subdynamics as a mechanism for objective description

Abstract

The relationship between microsystems and macrosystems is considered in the context of quantum field formulation of statistical mechanics: it is argued that problems on foundations of quantum mechanics can be solved relying on this relationship. This discussion requires some improvement of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics which is briefly presented.     

Reforming of olive mill wastewater through a Pd-membrane reactor

This work investigates the exploitation of olive mill wastewater (OMW) for producing hydrogen in a membrane reformer.     

Advances in silicon carbide X-ray detectors

The latest advances in SiC X-ray detectors are presented: a pixel detector coupled to a custom ultra low noise CMOS preamplifier has been characterized at room and high temperature. An equivalent noise energy (ENE) of 113 eV FWHM, corresponding to 6.1 electrons r.m.s., has been achieved with the detector/front-end system operating at +30 °C. A Fano factor of F=0.10 has been estimated from the ⁵⁵Fe spectrum. When the system is heated up to +100 °C, the measured ENE is 163 eV FWHM (8.9 electrons r.m.s.). It is determined that both at room and at high temperature the performance are fully limited by the noise of the front-end electronics. It is also presented the capability of SiC detectors to operate in environments under unstable temperature conditions without any apparatus for temperature stabilization; it has been proved that a SiC detector can acquire high resolution X-ray spectra without spectral line degradation while the system temperature changes between +30 and +75 °C.     

The impact of a required college health and physical education course on the health status of alumni

Social interactions between mothers that were holding their infants and other group members were studied in a wild group of moor macaques (Macaca maurus). Affiliative approaches to infants (AAI) by group members that were accompanied with particular behaviours, such as mouthing and touching or affiliative grunts, were observed frequently. Females approached mothers with infants more frequently than did males in all age classes. Female reproductive status, parity and dominance relationships between interactants had little effect on the frequency of approaches. Mothers received more grooming and performed less grooming when they were holding their infants than when they were not. A high level of social tolerance in macaque species with relaxed dominance styles might allow the free expression of AAI. Dominance styles among females and AAI could be linked via a positive feedback relationship since AAI might play a role in relaxing the dominance style among females.     

Clinical feasibility of a free-weight strength-training program for older adults

In the present study the intergraft mRNA formation immediately before and after transplantation of human livers was investigated by semi-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The analysis was carried out with mRNA isolated from biopsies routinely taken perioperatively and included the determination of the expression of tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukin (IL-6), IL-8, IL-10, transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) and beta-actin. It was found that biopsies obtained 30-60 min after reperfusion of the liver graft contained significantly higher levels of mRNA for TNF-alpha, IL-6 and IL-8 than biopsies collected subsequently to cold preservation. No such differences were obtained for TGF-beta and IL-10 mRNA. Considerable interindivdual differences were observed concerning the degree of inducibility, in particular for IL-6 mRNA. Retrospective comparison with the clinical course of the individual patients revealed a close and statistically significant correlation between low IL-6 expression and the occurrence of acute rejection episodes within 30 postoperative days, while high IL-6 mRNA levels coincided with the absence of rejection signs. High values for TNF-alpha mRNA were associated with ensuing acute rejection episodes.