Early improvement in food cravings are associated with long-term weight loss success in a large clinical sample.

BACKGROUND: Food cravings are associated with dysregulated eating behaviour and obesity, and may impede successful weight loss attempts. Gaining control over food craving is therefore a component in the management of obesity. The current paper examined whether early changes in control over food craving (assessed using the Craving Control subscale on the Control of Eating Questionnaire (CoEQ)) was predictive of weight loss in four phase 3 clinical trials investigating a sustained-release combination of naltrexone/bupropion (NB) in obese adults. The underlying component structure of the CoEQ was also examined. METHOD: In an integrated analysis of four 56-week phase 3 clinical trials, subjects completed the CoEQ and had their body weight measured at baseline and at weeks 8, 16, 28 and 56. All analyses were conducted on subjects who had complete weight and CoEQ measurements at baseline and week 56, and had completed 56 weeks of NB (n=1310) or placebo (n=736). A latent growth curve model was used to examine whether early changes in the CoEQ subscales were associated with decreases in weight loss over time. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to determine the psychometric properties of the CoEQ. RESULTS: The factor structure of the CoEQ was consistent with previous findings with a four-factor solution being confirmed: Craving Control, Positive Mood, Craving for Sweet and Craving for Savoury with good internal consistency (Cronbach's α=0.72-0.92). Subjects with the greatest improvement in Craving Control at week 8 exhibited a greater weight loss at week 56. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the importance of the experience of food cravings in the treatment of obesity and support the use of the CoEQ as a psychometric tool for the measurement of food cravings in research and the pharmacological management of obesity.

Corticosterone stress hormone responses in oil rehabilitated and non-rehabilitated little penguins.

Whether oiled wildlife should be rehabilitated during an oil spill is internationally debated. Research on little penguins (LP, Eudyptula minor) rehabilitated and released back into a cleaned environment after the New Zealand C/V Rena grounding oil spill in 2011 found the rehabilitation process was effective at treating and reversing the negative effects of oil-contamination on penguin post-release survival, productivity and diving behaviour. Here we investigated the acute corticosterone stress response of LPs to determine if responses of rehabilitated birds differed from those of "control" birds. Corticosterone responses of LPs two years after an oil spill did not differ between rehabilitated and non-rehabilitated penguins. These results show that the rehabilitation process for LP did not affect their long-term physiological responses to humans. This indicates that wildlife can be rehabilitated and returned to the wild with similar human tolerance levels to non-rehabilitated birds and an absence of habituation.

Is the way an oil spill response is reported in the media important for the final perception of the clean-up?

This research investigates the media coverage during the C/V Rena grounding in New Zealand (NZ), in 2011, to analyze if information reported in printed media is important for the final perception of the overall oil spill response. We took all articles available from NZ's largest circulated newspaper and the regional newspaper closest to the incident and analyzed the themes within each article; the article's tone (positive, neutral or negative); the time of the report relative to incident events and any differences between the regional and national papers. This analysis indicates that oil spills are reported and perceived as inherently negative incidents. However, along with coordinating an effective spill response, fast, factual and frequent media releases and increased effect in media liaison in areas of response with high public intrinsic value such as oiled wildlife response can significantly influence tone of media coverage and likely overall public perception.

Diving behaviour of wildlife impacted by an oil spill: A clean-up and rehabilitation success?

The value of rehabilitating oiled wildlife is an on-going global debate. On October 5, 2011, the cargo vessel C/V Rena grounded on Astrolabe Reef, New Zealand (NZ), spilling over 300 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. As part of the Rena oil spill response, 383 little blue penguins (LBP, Eudyptula minor) were captured, cleaned, rehabilitated and released back into a cleaned environment. This research investigates foraging behaviour changes due either to the oil spill or by the rehabilitation process by comparing the diving behaviour of rehabilitated (n=8) and non-rehabilitated (n=6) LBPs and with LBP populations throughout NZ. Stabile isotope analysis of feathers was also used to investigate diet. There were no foraging behaviour differences between rehabilitated and non-rehabilitated LBPs and the overall diving behaviour of these LBPs have similar, if not less energetic, foraging behaviour than other LBPs in NZ. This suggests the rehabilitation process and clean-up undertaken after the Rena appears effective and helps justify the rehabilitation of oiled wildlife across the world.

Risk of suicide and suicide attempts associated with physical disorders: a population-based, balancing score-matched analysis.

BACKGROUND: The association between physical disorders and suicide remains unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between physical disorders and suicide after accounting for the effects of mental disorders. METHOD: Individuals who died by suicide (n = 2100) between 1996 and 2009 were matched 3:1 by balancing score to general population controls (n = 6300). Multivariate conditional logistic regression compared the two groups across physician-diagnosed physical disorders [asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), ischemic heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease], adjusting for mental disorders and co-morbidity. Secondary analyses examined the risk of suicide according to time since first diagnosis of each physical disorder (1-90, 91-364, ⩾ 365 days). Similar analyses also compared individuals with suicide attempts (n = 8641) to matched controls (n = 25 923). RESULTS: Cancer was associated with increased risk of suicide [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 1.40, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03-1.91, p < 0.05] even after adjusting for all mental disorders. The risk of suicide with cancer was particularly high in the first 90 days after initial diagnosis (AOR 4.10, 95% CI 1.71-9.82, p < 0.01) and decreased to non-significance after 1 year. Women with respiratory diseases had elevated risk of suicide whereas men did not. COPD, hypertension and diabetes were each associated with increased odds of suicide attempts in adjusted models (AORs ranged from 1.20 to 1.73). CONCLUSIONS: People diagnosed with cancer are at increased risk of suicide, especially in the 3 months following initial diagnosis. Increased support and psychiatric involvement should be considered for the first year after cancer diagnosis.

Exercise, appetite and weight management: understanding the compensatory responses in eating behaviour and how they contribute to variability in exercise-induced weight loss.

Does exercise promote weight loss? One of the key problems with studies assessing the efficacy of exercise as a method of weight management and obesity is that mean data are presented and the individual variability in response is overlooked. Recent data have highlighted the need to demonstrate and characterise the individual variability in response to exercise. Do people who exercise compensate for the increase in energy expenditure via compensatory increases in hunger and food intake? The authors address the physiological, psychological and behavioural factors potentially involved in the relationship between exercise and appetite, and identify the research questions that remain unanswered. A negative consequence of the phenomena of individual variability and compensatory responses has been the focus on those who lose little weight in response to exercise; this has been used unreasonably as evidence to suggest that exercise is a futile method of controlling weight and managing obesity. Most of the evidence suggests that exercise is useful for improving body composition and health. For example, when exercise-induced mean weight loss is <1.0 kg, significant improvements in aerobic capacity (+6.3 ml/kg/min), systolic (-6.00 mm Hg) and diastolic (-3.9 mm Hg) blood pressure, waist circumference (-3.7 cm) and positive mood still occur. However, people will vary in their responses to exercise; understanding and characterising this variability will help tailor weight loss strategies to suit individuals.

Oestrous cycle of captive southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons) in South Australia, Australia.

There is limited information available on the oestrous cycle of female southern hairy-nosed wombats (Lasiorhinus latifrons). This is mainly due to an extremely poor breeding success in captivity and the difficulty in routine recapturing of these cryptic, semi-fossorial animals in the wild. The aim of this study was to characterise the oestrous cycle of this species by monitoring peripheral plasma concentrations of progesterone and oestradiol, assessing changes in vaginal cytology, pouch condition and the urogenital sinus. Eight adult female wombats were monitored during the breeding season (July-December) over 2 years (2002-2003). Samples were collected up to three times a week. Vaginal smears contained several cell types, categorised by morphology, as either superficial epithelial cells or parabasal-intermediate cells. Leucocytes were also counted. Plasma progesterone profiles showed a mean oestrous cycle length of 36.33+/-0.67 days with a peak progesterone concentration of 139.53+/-10.62nmol/L. Levels of oestradiol peaked at a mean level of 467.33+/-44.32pmol/L on average 5 days before a rise in plasma progesterone values. The proportion of epithelial cells in vaginal smears varied throughout the cycle, with a high percentage of superficial epithelial cells observed during the follicular phase. During periods when progesterone concentrations were high, a greater percentage of parabasal-intermediate cells was observed. In conclusion, this study has characterised the oestrous cycle of the southern hairy-nosed wombat and confirmed that changes in vaginal smears together with pouch and urogenital sinus details could be used to determine signs of oestrus in this species.

Color constancy at a pixel.

In computational terms we can solve the color constancy problem if device red, green, and blue sensor responses, or RGB's, for surfaces seen under an unknown illuminant can be mapped to corresponding RGB's under a known reference light. In recent years almost all authors have argued that this three-dimensional problem is too hard. It is argued that because a bright light striking a dark surface results in the same physical spectra as those of a dim light incident on a light surface, the magnitude of RGB's cannot be recovered. Consequently, modern color constancy algorithms attempt only to recover image chromaticities under the reference light: They solve a two-dimensional problem. While significant progress has been made toward achieving chromaticity constancy, recent work has shown that the most advanced algorithms are unable to render chromaticity stable enough so that it can be used as a cue for object recognition [B. V. Funt, K. Bernard, and L. Martin, in Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference on Computer Vision (European Vision Society, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998), Vol. II, p. 445.] We take this reductionist approach a little further and look at the one-dimensional color constancy problem. We ask, Is there a single color coordinate, a function of image chromaticities, for which the color constancy problem can be solved? Our answer is an emphatic yes. We show that there exists a single invariant color coordinate, a function of R, G, and B, that depends only on surface reflectance. Two corollaries follow. First, given an RGB image of a scene viewed under any illuminant, we can trivially synthesize the same gray-scale image (we simply code the invariant coordinate as a gray scale). Second, this result implies that we can solve the one-dimensional color constancy problem at a pixel (in scenes with no color diversity whatsoever). We present experiments that show that invariant gray-scale histograms are a stable feature for object recognition. Indexing on invariant distributions supports almost perfect recognition for a dataset of 11 objects viewed under five colored lights. In contrast, object recognition based on chromaticity histograms (post-color constancy preprocessing) delivers much poorer recognition.

Immunoglobulin A glomerulonephritis: a clinicopathologic study.

Renal biopsies from 10 patients staining predominantly for immunoglobulin A are reviewed. Historically, nine of 10 patients were less than 32 years of age; they all presented with either microscopic or gross hematuria. The initial creatinine clearances demonstrated good function in all patients; only one patient experienced a progressive decline in the creatinine clearance. Similarly, proteinuria was mild. The light and electron microscopic findings presented a variable pattern, including a group with changes confined to the mesangium, another group also having glomerular basement membrane changes, and one patient with severe, progressive glomerular sclerosis. Immunogluorescence demonstrated large amounts of IgA predominantly within the mesangium but occasionally involving the peripheral capillary loops. Serum IgA levels were elevated in six of eight patients tested, and two of five patients had elevated nasal IgA concentrations. These data suggest that there is an immunologic entity, IgA glomerulonephritis, characterized by the above clincial findings in association with elevated serum and occasionally nasal IgA levels, but that the pathologic findings are highly variable. Neither the mechanism nor the particular pathogenetic significance of the raised IgA levels is presently known. The similarities of this entity to the reported findings in anaphylactoid purpura are mentioned.