Associations of eating speed with fat distribution and body shape vary in different age groups and obesity status.

BACKGROUND: Eating speed has been reported to be associated with energy intake, body weight, waist circumference (WC), and total body fat. However, no study has explored the association between eating speed and body fat distribution, especially its difference among different age or body mass index (BMI) groups. METHODS: 4770 participants aged 18-80 years were recruited from the baseline survey of the Lanxi Cohort Study. They were categorized into three groups according to meal duration. Linear regression analyses were performed among all participants and separately by age group and obesity status to evaluate the associations of WC and total and regional fat mass percentages (FM%) with eating speed. RESULTS: After adjusting for confounding factors, eating slowly was significantly related to lower WC, lower total, trunk, and android FM%, lower android-to-gynoid fat mass ratio, and higher leg and gynoid FM%. After stratification by age or obesity status, the associations were especially prominent among participants aged 18-44 years or those with BMI < 24 kg/m2. No significant trends were found for participants aged 65-80 years or those who were overweight/obese. CONCLUSIONS: Eating slowly is closely related with better fat distribution among Chinese adults, especially for those aged 18-44 years and those with BMI < 24 kg/m2. If confirmed prospectively, it might be a potential efficient approach to improve fat distribution.

Polypyrrole-doped conductive self-healing multifunctional composite hydrogels with a dual crosslinked network.

Soft hydrogel materials can be applied for use in biosensors, wearable electronics, artificial skin, soft robots, and so on. Practical applications require the materials to have various properties such as high conductivity, toughness, self-healing, stretchability, and so on. However, achieving all these features in a single material remains challenging at present. Herein, the fabrication of novel composite carboxymethylcellulose/poly(acrylic acid)/polypyrrole/Al(III) (CMC/PAA/PPy/Al(III)) multifunctional hydrogels using a simple method is described. The mechanical and electrical self-healing properties are attained by multiple dynamic coordinations between Al3+ ions and carboxyl groups from CMC and PAA together with the hydrogen bonding between PPy and the -OH of CMC and/or the -COOH of PAA. The electrical conductivity is achieved by the conductive polymer PPy, free ions, and the synergistic effect between the PPy particles and the free ions. Moreover, desirable mechanical properties, such as stretchability (1344%), toughness, and mouldability are realized by establishing a balance between the chemical and physical crosslinking networks, and the nanostructure of PPy. Thus, the resultant hydrogels have potential applications in electronic skin, biomedical implants, and wearable electronic devices in the future.

Crop Classification Based on Red Edge Features Analysis of GF-6 WFV Data.

A red edge band is a sensitive spectral band of crops, which helps to improve the accuracy of crop classification. In view of the characteristics of GF-6 WFV data with multiple red edge bands, this paper took Hengshui City, Hebei Province, China, as the study area to carry out red edge feature analysis and crop classification, and analyzed the influence of different red edge features on crop classification. On the basis of GF-6 WFV red edge band spectral analysis, different red edge feature extraction and red edge indices feature importance evaluation, 12 classification schemes were designed based on GF-6 WFV of four bands (only including red, green, blue and near-infrared bands), stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) and random forest (RF) method were used for feature selection and importance evaluation, and RF classification algorithm was used for crop classification. The results show the following: (1) The red edge 750 band of GF-6 WFV data contains more information content than the red edge 710 band. Compared with the red edge 750 band, the red edge 710 band is more conducive to improving the separability between different crops, which can improve the classification accuracy; (2) According to the classification results of different red edge indices, compared with the SDA method, the RF method is more accurate in the feature importance evaluation; (3) Red edge spectral features, red edge texture features and red edge indices can improve the accuracy of crop classification in different degrees, and the red edge features based on red edge 710 band can improve the accuracy of crop classification more effectively. This study improves the accuracy of remote sensing classification of crops, and can provide reference for the application of GF-6 WFV data and its red edge bands in agricultural remote sensing.

Polypyrrole-Doped Conductive Self-Healing Composite Hydrogels with High Toughness and Stretchability.

In recent years, hydrogels with self-healing capability and conductivity have become ideal materials for the design of electrodes, soft robotics, electronic skin, and flexible wearable devices. However, it is still a critical challenge to achieve the synergistic characteristics of high conductivity, excellent self-healing efficiency without any stimulations, and decent mechanical properties. Herein, we developed a ferric-ion (Fe3+) crosslinked acrylic acid and chitosan polymer hydrogel using embedded polypyrrole particles with features of high conductivity (2.61S·m-1) and good mechanical performances (a tensile strength of 628%, a stress of 0.33 MPa, an elastic modulus of 0.146 MPa, and a toughness of 1.14 MJ·m-3). In addition, the self-healing efficiency achieved 93% in tensile strength after healing in the air for 9 h without any external stimuli. Therefore, with these outstanding mechanical, self-healing, and conductive abilities all in one, it is possible to fabricate a new kind of soft material with wide applications.

Characterization of dietary patterns and assessment of their relationships with metabolomic profiles: A community-based study.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Determining dietary patterns in China is challenging due to lack of external validation and objective measurements. We aimed to characterize dietary patterns in a community-based population and to validate these patterns using external validation cohort and metabolomic profiles. DESIGN: We studied 5145 participants, aged 18-80 years, from two districts of Hangzhou, China. We used one district as the discovery cohort (N = 2521) and the other as the external validation cohort (N = 2624). We identified dietary patterns using a k-means clustering. Associations between dietary patterns and metabolic conditions were analyzed using adjusted logistic models. We assessed relationships between metabolomic profile and dietary patterns in 214 participants with metabolomics data. RESULTS: We identified three dietary patterns: the traditional (rice-based), the mixed (rich in dairy products, eggs, nuts, etc.), and the high-alcohol diets. Relative to the traditional diet, the mixed (ORadj = 1.7, CI 1.3-2.4) and the high-alcohol diets (ORadj = 1.9, CI 1.3-2.7) were associated with type 2 diabetes and hypertension, respectively. Similar results were confirmed in the external validation cohort. In addition, we also identified 18 and 22 metabolites that could distinguish the mixed (error rate = 12%; AUC = 96%) and traditional diets (error rate = 19%; AUC = 88%) from the high-alcohol diet. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the complexity of Chinese diet, identifying dietary patterns helps distinguish groups of individuals with high risk of metabolic diseases, which can also be validated by external population and metabolomic profiles.

Electroconductive and free-shapeable nanocomposite hydrogels with an ultrafast self-healing property and high stretchability performance.

Conductive self-healing hydrogels as a fascinating class of materials have received much attention in recent years and been widely used in many fields. However, a long healing time and poor electrical conductivity have limited their extended applications. To overcome these shortcomings, we fabricated an excellent conductive self-healing hydrogel by embedding a nanocomposite of Ag nanoparticles and reduced graphene oxide (Ag/RGO) in PVA-borax dynamic networks, which exhibits a relatively high conductivity (4.43 S m-1), good flexibility and excellent self-healing properties without any external stimuli. The multifunctional hydrogel could self-heal within 3 s at room temperature. It also exhibits an excellent free-shapeable property like clay such that it can be modeled into any different complex geometrical shape as desired. It is expected to have potential applications in many fields such as flexible electronic wearable devices, sensors, rechargeable batteries, and biomaterials.

Facile Synthesis of Water-soluble Carbon Spheres for the Sensitive and Selective Determination of Fe3+, Cr3+, and Hg2+ Ions.

Water-soluble carbon spheres (CS) were prepared by a facile one-step hydrothermal synthetic method using glucose as a carbon source and sodium hydroxide as additives. The morphology and the chemical structure were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). In addition, the ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption spectrum and the fluorescence spectrum of the prepared CS were also investigated. The emission spectrum of the obtained CS depends on the excitation wavelength, which is similar to that of most carbon quantum dots. The fluorescence of the CS is quenched in the presence of Cr3+, Fe3+ and Hg2+. Based on this feature, the selective and sensitive detections of Cr3+, Fe3+ and Hg2+ were performed, and the detection limits were 6.72, 7.26, and 9.51 µM, respectively.

Changes in maternal age and prevalence of congenital anomalies during the enactment of China's universal two-child policy (2013-2017) in Zhejiang Province, China: An observational study.

BACKGROUND: China implemented a partial two-child policy (2013) followed by a universal two-child policy (2015), replacing the former one-child policy mandated by the government. The changes affect many aspects of China's population as well as maternal and infant health, but their potential impact on birth defects (BDs) remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the associations of these policy changes with BDs in Zhejiang Province, China. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used data from the BD surveillance system in Zhejiang Province, China, which covers 90 hospitals in 30 urban districts and rural counties, capturing one-third of the total births in this province. To fully consider the time interval between conception and delivery, we defined the one-child policy period as data from 2013 (births from October 2012 to September 2013), the partial two-child policy period as data from 2015 (births from October 2014 to September 2015), and the universal two-child policy period as data from 2017 (births from October 2016 to September 2017). Data from 2009 and 2011 were also used to show the changes in the proportion of births to women with advanced maternal age (35 years and older) prior to the policy changes. Main outcome measures were changes in the proportion of mothers with advanced maternal age, prevalence of BDs, rankings of BD subtypes by prevalence, prenatal diagnosis rate, and live birth rate of BDs over time. A total of 1,260,684 births (including live births, early fetal losses, stillbirths, and early neonatal deaths) were included in the analyses. Of these, 644,973 (51.16%) births were to women from urban areas, and 615,711 (48.84%) births were to women from rural areas. In total, 135,543 (10.75%) births were to women with advanced maternal age. The proportion increased by 85.68%, from 8.52% in 2013 to 15.82% in 2017. However, it had remained stable prior to policy changes. Overall, 23,095 BDs were identified over the policy changes (2013-2017). The prevalence of BDs during 2013, 2015, and 2017 was 245.95, 264.86, and 304.36 per 10,000 births, respectively. Trisomy 21 and other chromosomal defects increased in both risk and ranking from 2013 to 2017 (crude odds ratio [95% confidence interval] 2.13 [1.75-2.60], from ranking 10th to 5th, and 3.63 [2.84-4.69], from ranking 16th to 6th, respectively). The prenatal diagnosis rate increased by 3.63 (2.2-5.1) percentage points (P < 0.001), from 31.10% to 34.72%, and identification of BDs occurred 1.88 (1.81-1.95) weeks earlier (P < 0.001). The live birth rate for infants with BDs born before 28 gestational weeks increased from 1.29% to 11.45%. The major limitations of this observational study include an inability to establish causality and the possible existence of unknown confounding factors, some of which could contribute to BDs. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we observed significant increases in maternal age and the prevalence of total and age-related anomalies following China's new two-child policy. Increases in live birth rate for infants with BDs born before 28 gestational weeks suggest that healthcare for very preterm births with BDs may be warranted in the future, as well as updating the definition of perinatal period.