Takeaway food consumption and cardio-metabolic risk factors in young adults

Background/objectives: Takeaway food consumption is positively associated with adiposity. Little is known about the associations with other cardio-metabolic risk factors. This study aimed to determine whether takeaway food consumption is associated with fasting glucose, insulin, lipids, homeostasis model assessment (HOMA) and blood pressure.

Subjects/methods: A national sample of 1896, 26–36 year olds completed a questionnaire on socio-demographics, takeaway food consumption, physical activity and sedentary behaviour. Waist circumference and blood pressure were measured, and a fasting blood sample was taken. For this analysis, takeaway food consumption was dichotomised to once a week or less and twice a week or more. Linear regression was used to calculate differences in the adjusted mean values for fasting lipids, glucose, insulin, HOMA and blood pressure. Models were adjusted for age, employment status, leisure time physical activity and TV viewing.

Results: Compared with women who ate takeaway once a week or less, women who ate takeaway twice a week or more had significantly higher adjusted mean fasting glucose (4.82 vs 4.88 mmol/l, respectively; P=0.045), higher HOMA scores (1.27 vs 1.40, respectively, P=0.034) and tended to have a higher mean fasting insulin (5.95 vs 6.45 mU/l, respectively, P=0.054). Similar associations were observed for men for fasting insulin and HOMA score, but the differences were not statistically significant. For both women and men adjustment for waist circumference attenuated the associations.

Conclusion: Consuming takeaway food at least twice a week was associated with cardio-metabolic risk factors in women but less so in men. The effect of takeaway food consumption was attenuated when adjusted for obesity.

A comparison of the classification of disparate malware collected in different time periods

It has been argued that an anti-virus strategy based on malware collected at a certain date, will not work at a later date because malware evolves rapidly and an anti-virus engine is then faced with a completely new type of executable not as amenable to detection as the first was.

In this paper, we test this idea by collecting two sets of malware, the first from 2002 to 2007, the second from 2009 to 2010 to determine how well the anti-virus strategy we developed based on the earlier set [18] will do on the later set. This anti-virus strategy integrates dynamic and static features extracted from the executables to classify malware by distinguishing between families. We also perform another test, to investigate the same idea whereby we accumulate all the malware executables in the old and new dataset, separately, and apply a malware versus cleanware classification.

The resulting classification accuracies are very close for both datasets, with a difference of approximately 5.4% for both experiments, the older malware being more accurately classified than the newer malware. This leads us to conjecture that current anti-virus strategies can indeed be modified to deal effectively with new malware.

High-pressure study of low-compressibility Ta2N

Room temperature synchrotron x-ray diffraction experiments were performed on nanocrystal Ta₂N in a diamond anvil cell to a pressure of 55.48 GPa. This nitride is a well-known kind of high-hardness material, and it is found to be highly incompressible. The structure is stable with no phase transitions observed in this pressure range. The zero-pressure bulk modulus and its pressure derivative at ambient pressure are B₀ = 360 ± 3 GPa, B₀' = 4, and in room conditions, the a and c parameters are 3.054 Å, 4.996 Å, respectively. The bulk modulus of Ta₂N is greater than those of TaC, ε-TaN, Cr₂N and MoN. The differences in bulk moduli might be due to the differences in structure and the cohesive energy among these phases.

Multilocus phylogeography of Australian teals (Anas spp.) : a case study of the relationship between vagility and genetic structure

Biogeographic barriers potentially restrict gene flow but variation in dispersal or vagility can influence the effectiveness of these barriers among different species and produce characteristic patterns of population genetic structure. The objective of this study was to investigate interspecific and intraspecific genetic structure in two closely related species that differ in several life-history characteristics. The grey teal Anas gracilis is geographically widespread throughout Australia with a distribution that crosses several recognized biogeographic barriers. This species has high vagility as its extensive movements track broad-scale patterns in rainfall. In contrast, the closely related chestnut teal A. castanea is endemic to the mesic southeastern and southwestern regions of Australia and is more sedentary. We hypothesized that these differences in life-history characteristics would result in more pronounced population structuring in the chestnut teal. We sequenced five nuclear loci (nuDNA) for 49 grey teal and 23 chestnut teal and compared results to published mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences. We used analysis of molecular variance to examine population structure, and applied coalescent based approaches to estimate demographic parameters. As predicted, chestnut teal were more strongly structured at both mtDNA and nuDNA (ΦST= 0.163 and 0.054, respectively) than were grey teal (ΦST < 0.0001 for both sets of loci). Surprisingly, a greater proportion of the total genetic variation was partitioned among populations within species (ΦSC= 0.014 and 0.047 for nuDNA and mtDNA, respectively) than between the two species (ΦCT < 0.0001 for both loci). The ‘Isolation with Migration’ coalescent model suggested a late Pleistocene divergence between the taxa, but remarkably, a deeper divergence between the southeastern and southwestern populations of chestnut teal. We conclude that dispersal potential played a prominent role in the structuring of populations within these species and that divergent selection associated with ecology and life history traits likely contributed to rapid and recent speciation in this pair.

Molecular-level dispersion of graphene into epoxidized natural rubber: Morphology, interfacial interaction and mechanical reinforcement

The interfacial interaction of composites dominates the properties of polymeric/inorganic nanocomposites. Herein, epoxy and hydroxyl groups are introduced into the natural rubber (NR) molecular chains to anchor oxygenous functional groups on the surface of graphene oxide (GO) sheets and therefore enhance the interfacial interaction between GO and rubber. From the morphological observation and interaction analysis, it is found that epoxidized natural rubber (ENR) latex particles are assembled onto the surfaces of GO sheets by employing hydrogen bonding interaction as driving force. This self-assembly depresses restacking and agglomeration of GO sheets and leads to homogenous dispersion of GO within ENR matrix. The formation of hydrogen bonding interface between ENR and GO demonstrates a significant reinforcement for the ENR host. Compared with those of pure ENR, the composite with 0.7 wt% GO loading receives 87% increase in tensile strength and 8.7 fold increase in modulus at 200% elongation after static in-situ vulcanization.

Predictors of adherence to a 12-week exercise program among men treated for prostate cancer: ENGAGE study

Understanding the factors that influence adherence to exercise programs is necessary to develop effective interventions for people with cancer. We examined the predictors of adherence to a supervised exercise program for participants in the ENGAGE study - a cluster randomized controlled trial that assessed the efficacy of a clinician-referred 12-week exercise program among men treated for prostate cancer. Demographic, clinical, behavioral, and psychosocial data from 52 participants in the intervention group were collected at baseline through self-report and medical records. Adherence to the supervised exercise program was assessed through objective attendance records. Adherence to the supervised exercise program was 80.3%. In the univariate analyses, cancer-specific quality of life subscales (role functioning r = 0.37, P = 0.01; sexual activity r = 0.26, P = 0.06; fatigue r = -0.26, P = 0.06, and hormonal symptoms r = -0.31, P = 0.03) and education (d = -0.60, P = 0.011) were associated with adherence. In the subsequent multivariate analysis, role functioning (B = 0.309, P = 0.019) and hormonal symptoms (B = -0.483, P = 0.054) independently predicted adherence. Men who experienced more severe hormonal symptoms had lower levels of adherence to the exercise program. Those who experienced more positive perceptions of their ability to perform daily tasks and leisure activities had higher levels of adherence to the exercise program. Hormonal symptoms and role functioning need to be considered when conducting exercise programs for men who have been treated for prostate cancer.