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- Mishra, A, et al.
(författare)
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Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents' growth and development
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-4687 .- 0028-0836. ; 615:7954, s. 874-883
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong health and well-being1–6. Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis of rural and urban place of residence in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2020. In 1990, children and adolescents residing in cities were taller than their rural counterparts in all but a few high-income countries. By 2020, the urban height advantage became smaller in most countries, and in many high-income western countries it reversed into a small urban-based disadvantage. The exception was for boys in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries in Oceania, south Asia and the region of central Asia, Middle East and north Africa. In these countries, successive cohorts of boys from rural places either did not gain height or possibly became shorter, and hence fell further behind their urban peers. The difference between the age-standardized mean BMI of children in urban and rural areas was <1.1 kg m–2 in the vast majority of countries. Within this small range, BMI increased slightly more in cities than in rural areas, except in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and some countries in central and eastern Europe. Our results show that in much of the world, the growth and developmental advantages of living in cities have diminished in the twenty-first century, whereas in much of sub-Saharan Africa they have amplified.
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- Schael, S, et al.
(författare)
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Precision electroweak measurements on the Z resonance
- 2006
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Ingår i: Physics Reports. - : Elsevier BV. - 0370-1573 .- 1873-6270. ; 427:5-6, s. 257-454
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on the final electroweak measurements performed with data taken at the Z resonance by the experiments operating at the electron-positron colliders SLC and LEP. The data consist of 17 million Z decays accumulated by the ALEPH, DELPHI, L3 and OPAL experiments at LEP, and 600 thousand Z decays by the SLID experiment using a polarised beam at SLC. The measurements include cross-sections, forward-backward asymmetries and polarised asymmetries. The mass and width of the Z boson, m(Z) and Gamma(Z), and its couplings to fermions, for example the p parameter and the effective electroweak mixing angle for leptons, are precisely measured: m(Z) = 91.1875 +/- 0.0021 GeV, Gamma(Z) = 2.4952 +/- 0.0023 GeV, rho(l) = 1.0050 +/- 0.0010, sin(2)theta(eff)(lept) = 0.23153 +/- 0.00016. The number of light neutrino species is determined to be 2.9840 +/- 0.0082, in agreement with the three observed generations of fundamental fermions. The results are compared to the predictions of the Standard Model (SM). At the Z-pole, electroweak radiative corrections beyond the running of the QED and QCD coupling constants are observed with a significance of five standard deviations, and in agreement with the Standard Model. Of the many Z-pole measurements, the forward-backward asymmetry in b-quark production shows the largest difference with respect to its SM expectation, at the level of 2.8 standard deviations. Through radiative corrections evaluated in the framework of the Standard Model, the Z-pole data are also used to predict the mass of the top quark, m(t) = 173(+10)(+13) GeV, and the mass of the W boson, m(W) = 80.363 +/- 0.032 GeV. These indirect constraints are compared to the direct measurements, providing a stringent test of the SM. Using in addition the direct measurements of m(t) and m(W), the mass of the as yet unobserved SM Higgs boson is predicted with a relative uncertainty of about 50% and found to be less than 285 GeV at 95% confidence level. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 9. |
- Kazaks, A, et al.
(författare)
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Stop codon insertion restores the particle formation ability of hepatitis B virus core-hantavirus nucleocapsid protein fusions
- 2002
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Ingår i: Intervirology. - : S. Karger AG. - 0300-5526 .- 1423-0100. ; 45:4-6, s. 340-349
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In recent years, epitopes of various origin have been inserted into the core protein of hepatitis B virus (HBc), allowing the formation of chimeric HBc particles. Although the C-terminus of a C-terminally truncated HBc (HBcΔ) tolerates the insertion of extended foreign sequences, the insertion capacity is still a limiting factor for the construction of multivalent vaccines. Previously, we described a new system to generate HBcΔ mosaic particles based on a read-through mechanism in an <i>Escherichia coli</i> suppressor strain [J Gen Virol 1997;78:2049–2053]. Those mosaic particles allowed the insertion of a 114-amino acid (aa)-long segment of a Puumala hantavirus (PUUV) nucleocapsid (N) protein. To study the value and the potential limitations of the mosaic approach in more detail, we investigated the assembly capacity of ‘non-mosaic’ HBcΔ fusion proteins and the corresponding mosaic constructs carrying 94, 213 and 433 aa of the hantaviral N protein. Whereas the fusion proteins carrying 94, 114, 213 or 433 aa were not assembled into HBcΔ particles, or only at a low yield, the insertion of a stop codon-bearing linker restored the ability to form particles with 94, 114 and 213 foreign aa. The mosaic particles formed exhibited PUUV-N protein antigenicity. Immunization of BALB/c mice with these mosaic particles carrying PUUV-N protein aa 1–114, aa 1–213 and aa 340–433, respectively, induced HBc-specific antibodies, whereas PUUV-N protein-specific antibodies were detected only in mice immunized with particles carrying N-terminal aa 1–114 or aa 1–213 of the N protein. Both the anti-HBc and anti-PUUV antibody responses were IgG1 dominated. In conclusion, stop codon suppression allows the formation of mosaic core particles carrying large-sized and ‘problematic’, e.g. hydrophobic, hantavirus sequences.
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