| 1. |
- Bentham, James, et al.
(författare)
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A century of trends in adult human height
- 2016
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Ingår i: eLIFE. - : eLife Sciences Publications Ltd. - 2050-084X. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5–22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3– 19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8– 144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Zhou, Bin, et al.
(författare)
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Worldwide trends in diabetes since 1980: A pooled analysis of 751 population-based studies with 4.4 million participants
- 2016
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Ingår i: The Lancet. - : Elsevier B.V.. - 0140-6736 .- 1474-547X. ; 387:10027, s. 1513-1530
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: One of the global targets for non-communicable diseases is to halt, by 2025, the rise in the age standardised adult prevalence of diabetes at its 2010 levels. We aimed to estimate worldwide trends in diabetes, how likely it is for countries to achieve the global target, and how changes in prevalence, together with population growth and ageing, are aff ecting the number of adults with diabetes.Methods: We pooled data from population-based studies that had collected data on diabetes through measurement of its biomarkers. We used a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends in diabetes prevalence-defined as fasting plasma glucose of 7.0 mmol/L or higher, or history of diagnosis with diabetes, or use of insulin or oral hypoglycaemic drugs-in 200 countries and territories in 21 regions, by sex and from 1980 to 2014. We also calculated the posterior probability of meeting the global diabetes target if post-2000 trends continue.Findings: We used data from 751 studies including 4372000 adults from 146 of the 200 countries we make estimates for. Global age-standardised diabetes prevalence increased from 4.3% (95% credible interval 2.4-17.0) in 1980 to 9.0% (7.2-11.1) in 2014 in men, and from 5.0% (2.9-7.9) to 7.9% (6.4-9.7) in women. The number of adults with diabetes in the world increased from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014 (28.5% due to the rise in prevalence, 39.7% due to population growth and ageing, and 31.8% due to interaction of these two factors). Age-standardised adult diabetes prevalence in 2014 was lowest in northwestern Europe, and highest in Polynesia and Micronesia, at nearly 25%, followed by Melanesia and the Middle East and north Africa. Between 1980 and 2014 there was little change in age-standardised diabetes prevalence in adult women in continental western Europe, although crude prevalence rose because of ageing of the population. By contrast, age-standardised adult prevalence rose by 15 percentage points in men and women in Polynesia and Micronesia. In 2014, American Samoa had the highest national prevalence of diabetes (>30% in both sexes), with age-standardised adult prevalence also higher than 25% in some other islands in Polynesia and Micronesia. If post-2000 trends continue, the probability of meeting the global target of halting the rise in the prevalence of diabetes by 2025 at the 2010 level worldwide is lower than 1% for men and is 1% for women. Only nine countries for men and 29 countries for women, mostly in western Europe, have a 50% or higher probability of meeting the global target.Interpretation: Since 1980, age-standardised diabetes prevalence in adults has increased, or at best remained unchanged, in every country. Together with population growth and ageing, this rise has led to a near quadrupling of the number of adults with diabetes worldwide. The burden of diabetes, both in terms of prevalence and number of adults aff ected, has increased faster in low-income and middle-income countries than in high-income countries.
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| 4. |
- Augustsson, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Urban vegetable contamination - The role of adhering particles and their significance for human exposure
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 900
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While urban-grown vegetables could help combat future food insecurity, the elevated levels of toxic metals in urban soils need to be met with measures that minimise transfer to crops. The study firstly examines soil/dust particle inclusion in leafy vegetables and its contribution to vegetable metals (As, Ba, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Sb, and Zn), using vegetable, soil and dust data from an open-field urban farm in southeastern Sweden. Titanium concentrations were used to assess soil/dust adherence. Results showed that vegetables contained 0.05–1.3 wt% of adhering particles (AP) even after washing. With 0.5 % AP, an adult with an average intake of vegetables could ingest approximately 100mg of particles per day, highlighting leafy vegetables as a major route for soil/dust ingestion. The presence of adhering particles also significantly contributed to the vegetable concentrations of As (9-20%), Co (17-20%), Pb (25-29%), and Cr (33-34%). Secondly, data from an indoor experiment was used to characterise root metal uptake from 20 urban soils from Sweden, Denmark, Spain, the UK, and the Czech Republic. Combining particle adherence and root uptake data, vegetable metal concentrations were calculated for the 20 urban soils to represent hypothetical field scenarios for these. Subsequently, average daily doses were assessed for vegetable consumers (adults and 3-6 year old children), distinguishing between doses from adhering particles and root uptake. Risks were evaluated from hazard quotients (HQs; average daily doses/tolerable intakes). Lead was found to pose the greatest risk, where particle ingestion often resulted in HQs>1 across all assessed scenarios. In summary, since washing was shown to remove only a portion of adhering metal-laden soil/dust particles from leafy vegetation, farmers and urban planners need to consider that measures to limit particle deposition are equally important as cultivating in uncontaminated soil.
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| 5. |
- Gómez-Elvira, J., et al.
(författare)
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REMS : The environmental sensor suite for the Mars Science Laboratory rover
- 2012
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Ingår i: Space Science Reviews. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0038-6308 .- 1572-9672. ; 170:1-4, s. 583-640
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) will investigate environmental factors directly tied to current habitability at the Martian surface during the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. Three major habitability factors are addressed by REMS: the thermal environment, ultraviolet irradiation, and water cycling. The thermal environment is determined by a mixture of processes, chief amongst these being the meteorological. Accordingly, the REMS sensors have been designed to record air and ground temperatures, pressure, relative humidity, wind speed in the horizontal and vertical directions, as well as ultraviolet radiation in different bands. These sensors are distributed over the rover in four places: two booms located on the MSL Remote Sensing Mast, the ultraviolet sensor on the rover deck, and the pressure sensor inside the rover body. Typical daily REMS observations will collect 180 minutes of data from all sensors simultaneously (arranged in 5 minute hourly samples plus 60 additional minutes taken at times to be decided during the course of the mission). REMS will add significantly to the environmental record collected by prior missions through the range of simultaneous observations including water vapor; the ability to take measurements routinely through the night; the intended minimum of one Martian year of observations; and the first measurement of surface UV irradiation. In this paper, we describe the scientific potential of REMS measurements and describe in detail the sensors that constitute REMS and the calibration procedures. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
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| 6. |
- Li, Jian-Yang, et al.
(författare)
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Ejecta from the DART-produced active asteroid Dimorphos
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 616, s. 452-456
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Some active asteroids have been proposed to be formed as a result of impact events1. Because active asteroids are generally discovered by chance only after their tails have fully formed, the process of how impact ejecta evolve into a tail has, to our knowledge, not been directly observed. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission of NASA2, in addition to having successfully changed the orbital period of Dimorphos3, demonstrated the activation process of an asteroid resulting from an impact under precisely known conditions. Here we report the observations of the DART impact ejecta with the Hubble Space Telescope from impact time T + 15 min to T + 18.5 days at spatial resolutions of around 2.1 km per pixel. Our observations reveal the complex evolution of the ejecta, which are first dominated by the gravitational interaction between the Didymos binary system and the ejected dust and subsequently by solar radiation pressure. The lowest-speed ejecta dispersed through a sustained tail that had a consistent morphology with previously observed asteroid tails thought to be produced by an impact4,5. The evolution of the ejecta after the controlled impact experiment of DART thus provides a framework for understanding the fundamental mechanisms that act on asteroids disrupted by a natural impact1,6.
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| 7. |
- Qvarforth, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Future food contaminants: An assessment of the plant uptake of Technology-critical elements versus traditional metal contaminants
- 2022
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Ingår i: Environment International. - : Elsevier. - 0160-4120 .- 1873-6750. ; 169
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Technology-critical elements (TCEs) include most rare earth elements (REEs), the platinum group elements (PGEs), and Ga, Ge, In, Nb, Ta, Te, and Tl. Despite increasing recognition of their prolific release into the environment, their soil to plant transfer remains largely unknown. This paper provides an approximation of the potential for plant uptake by calculating bioconcentration factors (BCFs), defined as the concentration in edible vegetable tissues relative to that in cultivation soil. Here data were obtained from an indoor cultivation experiment growing lettuce, chard, and carrot on 22 different European urban soils. Values of BCFs were determined from concentrations of TCEs in vegetable samples after digestion with concentrated HNO3, and from concentrations in soil determined after 1) Aqua Regia digestion and, 2) diluted (0.1 M) HNO3 leaching. For comparison, BCFs were also determined for 5 traditional metal contaminants (TMCs; As, Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn). The main conclusions of the study were that: 1) BCF values for the REEs were consistently low in the studied vegetables;2) the BCFs for Ga and Nb were low as well;3) the BCFs for Tl were high relative to the other measured TCEs and the traditional metal contaminants; and 4) mean BCF values for the investigated TCEs were generally highest in chard and lowest in carrot. These findings provide initial evidence that there are likely to be real and present soil-plant transfer of TCEs, especially in the case of Tl. Improvements in analytical methods and detection limits will allow this to be further investigated in a wider variety of edible plants so that a risk profile may be developed.
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| 8. |
- Catalan-Figueroa, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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A mechanistic approach for the optimization of loperamide loaded nanocarriers characterization : Diafiltration and mathematical modeling advantages
- 2018
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Ingår i: European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. - : Elsevier. - 0928-0987 .- 1879-0720. ; 125, s. 215-222
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Oral bioavailability of loperamide is restricted by its limited absorption in the gastrointestinal tract due to its poor aqueous solubility and its P-glycoprotein (Pgp) substrate characteristic. In addition, ammonium methacrylate copolymers have shown to have mucoadhesive properties, whereas poloxamer 188, has been suggested as a Pgp inhibitor. Thus, in this work, we evaluate conditions that affect physicochemical parameters of ammonium methacrylate/poloxamer 188-based nanocarriers loaded with loperamide hydrochloride. Nanocarriers were synthesized by nanoprecipitation, enhancing loperamide encapsulation efficiency by modifying the aqueous phase to basic pH. The isolation of the non-encapsulated drug fraction from the nanocarriers-incorporated fraction was conducted by centrifugation, ultrafiltration, vacuum filtration and diafiltration. The last method was effective in providing a deeper understanding of drug-nanocarrier loading and interactions by means of modeling the data obtained by it. Through diafiltration, it was determined an encapsulation efficiency of about 93%, from which a 38% ±6 was shown to be reversibly (thermodynamic interaction) and a 62% ±6 irreversibly (kinetic interaction) bound. Finally, release profiles were assessed through empirical and semi-empirical modeling, showing a biphasic release behavior (burst effect 11.34% and total release at 6 h = 33% ±1). Thus, encapsulation efficiency and release profile were shown to have a strong mathematical modeling-based correlation, providing the mechanistic approach presented in this article a solid support for future translational investigations.
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| 9. |
- Vandaele, Ann Carine, et al.
(författare)
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Martian dust storm impact on atmospheric H2O and D/H observed by ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer. - 1476-4687 .- 1476-4687 .- 0028-0836. ; 568:7753, s. 521-525
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Global dust storms on Mars are rare1,2 but can affect the Martian atmosphere for several months. They can cause changes in atmospheric dynamics and inflation of the atmosphere3, primarily owing to solar heating of the dust3. In turn, changes in atmospheric dynamics can affect the distribution of atmospheric water vapour, with potential implications for the atmospheric photochemistry and climate on Mars4. Recent observations of the water vapour abundance in the Martian atmosphere during dust storm conditions revealed a high-altitude increase in atmospheric water vapour that was more pronounced at high northern latitudes5,6, as well as a decrease in the water column at low latitudes7,8. Here we present concurrent, high-resolution measurements of dust, water and semiheavy water (HDO) at the onset of a global dust storm, obtained by the NOMAD and ACS instruments onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. We report the vertical distribution of the HDO/H2O ratio (D/H) from the planetary boundary layer up to an altitude of 80 kilometres. Our findings suggest that before the onset of the dust storm, HDO abundances were reduced to levels below detectability at altitudes above 40 kilometres. This decrease in HDO coincided with the presence of water-ice clouds. During the storm, an increase in the abundance of H2O and HDO was observed at altitudes between 40 and 80 kilometres. We propose that these increased abundances may be the result of warmer temperatures during the dust storm causing stronger atmospheric circulation and preventing ice cloud formation, which may confine water vapour to lower altitudes through gravitational fall and subsequent sublimation of ice crystals3. The observed changes in H2O and HDO abundance occurred within a few days during the development of the dust storm, suggesting a fast impact of dust storms on the Martian atmosphere.
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