To treat or not to treat: comparison of different criteria used to determine whether weight loss is to be recommended

Background  

Excess body fat is a major risk factor for disease primarily due to its endocrine activity. In recent years several criteria have been introduced to evaluate this factor. Nevertheless, treatment need is currently assessed only on the basis of an individual's Body Mass Index (BMI), calculated as body weight (in kg) divided by height in m². The aim of our study was to determine whether application of the BMI, compared to adiposity-based criteria, results in underestimation of the number of subjects needing lifestyle intervention.     

A self-resonant frequency-modulated micromachined passive pressure transensor

In this paper, we report on the design, fabrication, and test of a passive pressure transensor. The sensor uses the self-resonant frequency modulation of an integrated coil to detect the pressure variations. This modulation is generated by the relative displacement of a ferrite core attached to a silicone rubber membrane. This scheme simplifies the packaging of the passive transensor by removing the requirement for a separate capacitor to form the resonator. A 30-turn 1.7-/spl mu/H coil having dimensions of 3/spl times/3 mm/sup 2/ is used in a prototype design yielding a sensitivity of 9.6 kHz/kPa with a cylindrical ferrite core of 0.95-mm diameter and 0.5-mm height. We also present a theoretical model of the sensor that shows good agreement with the experimental data. This model can be a useful tool for further optimization of the senors.     

THE ROLE OF INTERFACIAL PHENOMENA IN A LIQUID-LIQUID REACTION SYSTEM: EXTRACTION OF PROPANOIC ACID BY TRIOCTYLAMINE

The kinetics of extraction of propanoic acid from water to isobulanol by reaction with trioctylamine have been investigated. Mass transfer was modelled by extending the approach used in absorption with chemical reaction, as it is usually done for liquid-liquid reactions. The presence of the amine, however, gave rise to phenomena that cause this method to fail, producing inconsistent results. In order to explain these data, the presence of relevant interfacial phenomena must be supposed.     

Optimized H.264 Video Encoding and Packetization for Video Transmission Over Pipeline Forwarding Networks

Previous works showed that the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of multimedia applications can be optimally satisfied by pipeline forwarding (PF) by providing end-to-end delay guarantees as well as high network resource utilization. However, the unavoidable mismatch between reserved resources and the unpredictable traffic profile of a video stream has an impact on the resulting application layer quality. Therefore, a new low-complexity H.264 video encoding and packetization scheme based on a distortion-optimized macroblock grouping technique is designed here to maximize the performance of video transmission on PF networks. The scheme considers the perceptual importance of the different parts of the video data to group the most important information in few packets that are the natural candidates to receive the deterministic service provided by PF. Results show peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) gains up to 2.5 dB over traditional video encoding and packetization schemes, as well as more graceful degradation in case of high network load.     

Asymptotic switched composite adaptive control with application to robotic interaction tasks

This article proposes a new switched adaptive control design for uncertain switched systems with composite (time-driven and state-dependent) switching and shows its applicability in switched impedance control. A composite switched adaptive control design, consisting of the direct switched adaptive control and the indirect switched adaptive control counterpart, is developed to improve the control performance. Specifically, a new stability condition for composite switching is proposed by making use of differential matrix equations and Sylvester matrix equations, which are a generalization of Lyapunov matrix equations. The design results in a time-varying multiple Lyapunov function that is decreasing at the switching instants. From the theoretical point of view, the relevance of this work is the construction of the adaptive laws that guarantee asymptotic tracking error and asymptotic estimation for the direct and indirect switched adaptive control loops, respectively. From the practical point of view, the relevance of this work is validated in a new switched impedance control for the robot interaction with uncertain and discontinuous environments.     

Gold nanoparticles induce cytotoxicity in the alveolar type-II cell lines A549 and NCIH441

Background  

During the last years engineered nanoparticles (NPs) have been extensively used in different technologies and consequently many questions have arisen about the risk and the impact on human health following exposure to nanoparticles. Nevertheless, at present knowledge about the cytotoxicity induced by NPs is still largely incomplete. In this context, we have investigated the cytotoxicity induced by gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), which differed in size and purification grade (presence or absence of sodium citrate residues on the particle surface) in vitro, in the human alveolar type-II (ATII)-like cell lines A549 and NCIH441.     

Fault detection and identification for a class of continuous piecewise affine systems with unknown subsystems and partitions

This paper establishes a novel online fault detection and identification strategy for a class of continuous piecewise affine (PWA) systems, namely, bimodal and trimodal PWA systems. The main contributions with respect to the state‐of‐the‐art are the recursive nature of the proposed scheme and the consideration of parametric uncertainties in both partitions and in subsystems parameters. In order to handle this situation, we recast the continuous PWA into its max‐form representation and we exploit the recursive Newton‐Gauss algorithm on a suitable cost function to derive the adaptive laws to estimate online the unknown subsystem parameters, the partitions, and the loss in control authority for the PWA model. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is verified via simulations applied to the benchmark example of a wheeled mobile robot.     

Temperature and storage effects on antioxidant activity of juice from red and white grapes

The effect of temperature and storage time on the phenolic composition and on the antioxidant activity of grape (Vitis vinifera L.) juices made using a red (Sangiovese, SG) and a white (Muscat of Alexandria, MA) variety was studied. Total phenolics, flavonoids, flavan‐3‐ols and hydroxycinnamoyl‐tartrates (HCT) were determined on grape extracts (GE) and juices. Total anthocyanins and anthocyanins composition were measured on GE. The antioxidant activity was assessed by means of two different in vitro tests: scavenging of the stable 2,2‐diphenyl‐1‐picrylhydrazyl radical and the inhibition of tyrosine nitration mediated by authentic peroxynitrite (ONOO^?). All the juices were analysed after 24 h and 2 weeks of storage by means of two‐way anova (factors being cultivar and temperature). Anthocyanins were not detected in MA extract, whereas in SG their content was 534 mg malvidin‐equivalent per 100 g of dry matter (d.m.) and malvidin derivatives (glycosylated and coumaroylated) were the most represented (respectively 169 and 41 malvidin‐equivalent per 100 g of d.m.). HCT content of the extracts was higher in SG (overall +33%). Also in grape juices, HCT were lower in MA and in this variety, the trans‐fertaric and cis‐coutaric acids were also undetectable. Cultivar effect proved to be highly significant, while no significant differences in the phenolic composition were observed for storage temperatures (4 and ?20 °C) and cultivar × temperature interaction. However, when statistical analysis was focused on each cultivar, MA was found to be more sensible to storage conditions and a significant reduction in total phenolics (?20%) and flavonoids (?53%) content and in the ONOO^? scavenging potential (?32%) was evident after 2 weeks at 4 °C (when compared with the same storage temperature after 24 h). On the contrary, SG juices did not show significant differences among the four storage treatments investigated. These results could be explained suggesting that anthocyanins presence in red grape plays a key role in juice stability.