| 1. |
- Mishra, A, et al.
(author)
-
Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents' growth and development
- 2023
-
In: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1476-4687 .- 0028-0836. ; 615:7954, s. 874-883
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
|
|
| 2. |
- Feroci, M., et al.
(author)
-
The large observatory for x-ray timing
- 2014
-
In: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. - : SPIE. - 9780819496126
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Large Observatory For x-ray Timing (LOFT) was studied within ESA M3 Cosmic Vision framework and participated in the final downselection for a launch slot in 2022-2024. Thanks to the unprecedented combination of effective area and spectral resolution of its main instrument, LOFT will study the behaviour of matter under extreme conditions, such as the strong gravitational field in the innermost regions of accretion flows close to black holes and neutron stars, and the supranuclear densities in the interior of neutron stars. The science payload is based on a Large Area Detector (LAD, 10 m2 effective area, 2-30 keV, 240 eV spectral resolution, 1° collimated field of view) and a Wide Field Monitor (WFM, 2-50 keV, 4 steradian field of view, 1 arcmin source location accuracy, 300 eV spectral resolution). The WFM is equipped with an on-board system for bright events (e.g. GRB) localization. The trigger time and position of these events are broadcast to the ground within 30 s from discovery. In this paper we present the status of the mission at the end of its Phase A study.
|
|
| 3. |
|
|
| 4. |
|
|
| 5. |
|
|
| 6. |
- Yang, Wen-Yi, et al.
(author)
-
Association of Office and Ambulatory Blood Pressure With Mortality and Cardiovascular Outcomes
- 2019
-
In: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). - : AMER MEDICAL ASSOC. - 0098-7484 .- 1538-3598. ; 322:5, s. 409-420
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- ImportanceBlood pressure (BP) is a known risk factor for overall mortality and cardiovascular (CV)-specific fatal and nonfatal outcomes. It is uncertain which BP index is most strongly associated with these outcomes. ObjectiveTo evaluate the association of BP indexes with death and a composite CV event. Design, Setting, and ParticipantsLongitudinal population-based cohort study of 11135 adults from Europe, Asia, and South America with baseline observations collected from May 1988 to May 2010 (last follow-ups, August 2006-October 2016). ExposuresBlood pressure measured by an observer or an automated office machine; measured for 24 hours, during the day or the night; and the dipping ratio (nighttime divided by daytime readings). Main Outcomes and MeasuresMultivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) expressed the risk of death or a CV event associated with BP increments of 20/10 mm Hg. Cardiovascular events included CV mortality combined with nonfatal coronary events, heart failure, and stroke. Improvement in model performance was assessed by the change in the area under the curve (AUC). ResultsAmong 11135 participants (median age, 54.7 years, 49.3% women), 2836 participants died (18.5 per 1000 person-years) and 2049 (13.4 per 1000 person-years) experienced a CV event over a median of 13.8 years of follow-up. Both end points were significantly associated with all single systolic BP indexes (P<.001). For nighttime systolic BP level, the HR for total mortality was 1.23 (95% CI, 1.17-1.28) and for CV events, 1.36 (95% CI, 1.30-1.43). For the 24-hour systolic BP level, the HR for total mortality was 1.22 (95% CI, 1.16-1.28) and for CV events, 1.45 (95% CI, 1.37-1.54). With adjustment for any of the other systolic BP indexes, the associations of nighttime and 24-hour systolic BP with the primary outcomes remained statistically significant (HRs ranging from 1.17 [95% CI, 1.10-1.25] to 1.87 [95% CI, 1.62-2.16]). Base models that included single systolic BP indexes yielded an AUC of 0.83 for mortality and 0.84 for the CV outcomes. Adding 24-hour or nighttime systolic BP to base models that included other BP indexes resulted in incremental improvements in the AUC of 0.0013 to 0.0027 for mortality and 0.0031 to 0.0075 for the composite CV outcome. Adding any systolic BP index to models already including nighttime or 24-hour systolic BP did not significantly improve model performance. These findings were consistent for diastolic BP. Conclusions and RelevanceIn this population-based cohort study, higher 24-hour and nighttime blood pressure measurements were significantly associated with greater risks of death and a composite CV outcome, even after adjusting for other office-based or ambulatory blood pressure measurements. Thus, 24-hour and nighttime blood pressure may be considered optimal measurements for estimating CV risk, although statistically, model improvement compared with other blood pressure indexes was small.
|
|
| 7. |
|
|
| 8. |
- Bernardi, G., et al.
(author)
-
The Future Circular Collider : a Summary for the US 2021 Snowmass Process
- 2022
-
Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this white paper for the 2021 Snowmass process, we give a description of the proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC) project and its physics program. The paper summarizes and updates the discussion submitted to the European Strategy on Particle Physics. After construction of an approximately 90 km tunnel, an electron-positron collider based on established technologies allows world-record instantaneous luminosities at center-of-mass energies from the Z resonance up to tt thresholds, enabling a rich set of fundamental measurements including Higgs couplings determinations at the sub percent level, precision tests of the weak and strong forces, and searches for new particles, including dark matter, both directly and via virtual corrections or mixing. Among other possibilities, the FCC-ee will be able to (i) indirectly discover new particles coupling to the Higgs and/or electroweak bosons up to scales around 7 and 50 TeV, respectively; (ii) perform competitive SUSY tests at the loop level in regions not accessible at the LHC; (iii) study heavy-flavor and tau physics in ultra-rare decays beyond the LHC reach, and (iv) achieve the best potential in direct collider searches for dark matter, sterile neutrinos, and axion-like particles with masses up to around 90 GeV. The tunnel can then be reused for a proton-proton collider, establishing record center-of-mass collision energy, allowing unprecedented reach for direct searches for new particles up to the around 50 TeV scale, and a diverse program of measurements of the Standard Model and Higgs boson, including a precision measurement of the Higgs self-coupling, and conclusively testing weakly-interacting massive particle scenarios of thermal relic dark matter.
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
- Ramirez, Kelly S., et al.
(author)
-
Detecting macroecological patterns in bacterial communities across independent studies of global soils
- 2018
-
In: Nature Microbiology. - : NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. - 2058-5276. ; 3:2, s. 189-196
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The emergence of high-throughput DNA sequencing methods provides unprecedented opportunities to further unravel bacterial biodiversity and its worldwide role from human health to ecosystem functioning. However, despite the abundance of sequencing studies, combining data from multiple individual studies to address macroecological questions of bacterial diversity remains methodically challenging and plagued with biases. Here, using a machine-learning approach that accounts for differences among studies and complex interactions among taxa, we merge 30 independent bacterial data sets comprising 1,998 soil samples from 21 countries. Whereas previous meta-analysis efforts have focused on bacterial diversity measures or abundances of major taxa, we show that disparate amplicon sequence data can be combined at the taxonomy-based level to assess bacterial community structure. We find that rarer taxa are more important for structuring soil communities than abundant taxa, and that these rarer taxa are better predictors of community structure than environmental factors, which are often confounded across studies. We conclude that combining data from independent studies can be used to explore bacterial community dynamics, identify potential 'indicator' taxa with an important role in structuring communities, and propose hypotheses on the factors that shape bacterial biogeography that have been overlooked in the past.
|
|
