Dietary excess regulates absorption and surface of gut epithelium through intestinal PPARα

Intestinal surface changes in size and function, but what propels these alterations and what are their metabolic consequences is unknown. Here we report that the food amount is a positive determinant of the gut surface area contributing to an increased absorptive function, reversible by reducing daily food. While several upregulated intestinal energetic pathways are dispensable, the intestinal PPARα is instead necessary for the genetic and environment overeating–induced increase of the gut absorptive capacity. In presence of dietary lipids, intestinal PPARα knock-out or its pharmacological antagonism suppress intestinal crypt expansion and shorten villi in mice and in human intestinal biopsies, diminishing the postprandial triglyceride transport and nutrient uptake. Intestinal PPARα ablation limits systemic lipid absorption and restricts lipid droplet expansion and PLIN2 levels, critical for droplet formation. This improves the lipid metabolism, and reduces body adiposity and liver steatosis, suggesting an alternative target for treating obesity.

Motor and Non-motor Symptoms Associated With Exercise Behavior in Parkinson's Disease Patients: Factors Differ Between Patients With and Without Postural Instability

Background: Exercise is an important treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD). Therefore, recognizing determinants of exercise behavior for PD based on disease stage is essential. We sought to find whether the determinants differ based on presence of postural instability (PI), which is indicative of disease stage in PD.Methods: We enrolled patients at Samsung Medical Center from September 2019 to November 2020, who had the ability to perform exercise [modified Hoehn and Yahr (HY) stage ≤ 3]. All the motor and non-motor symptoms were investigated. The exercise of the PD patients was evaluated using the Physical Activity Scale of the Elderly (PASE)-leisure score. We classified patients into PD without PI (HY stage 1 – 2) and PD with PI (HY stage 2.5 – 3) groups. Multivariate linear regression was performed using backward elimination in each group to determine factors associated with PASE-leisure score.Results: A total of 233 patients were enrolled. In the PD without PI group (n = 177), the positive determinant of exercise was Activities-Specific Balance Confidence (ABC) score (β = 0.142, p = 0.032), and the negative determinants were fatigue score (β = −0.228, p = 0.018), female (β = −6.900, p = 0.016) and currently employed status (β = −6.072, p = 0.046). In the PD with PI group (n = 56), the positive determinant was non-motor symptom scale (NMSS) score (β = 0.221, p = 0.017) and disease duration (β = 1.001, p = 0.036), while the negative determinants were UPDRS part 3 score (β = −0.974, p < 0.001), UPDRS part 4 score (β = −2.192, p = 0.002), and age (β = −1.052, p < 0.001).Conclusion: Different motor and non-motor symptoms were associated with the exercise in PD patients with and without PI. When encouraging PD patients to exercise, personalized and different strategies should be applied based on the presence of PI.

Spillovers Between Russia’s and Turkey’s Geopolitical Risk During the 2000–2021 Putin Administration

This paper sets out to explore the nexus between Russia and Turkey regarding their geopolitical uncertainty measures (GPR) during the Putin Administration era in Russia. The innovative Caldara and Iacoviello indices and the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) methodology are adopted. This study sheds light on the series of geopolitical events that have taken place in Russia and Turkey in recent decades. Empirical outcomes reveal that Turkish geopolitical uncertainty is a weak influencer that increases Russian GPR in the short-term while decreasing it in the medium-term. The reverse effect does not hold. The nexus between geopolitical risk in Turkey and Russia is found to be unstable. Uncertainty in Turkey constitutes both a negative and a positive determinant of geopolitical stability in Russia, depending on the time horizon of the impact. Russia could take advantage of Turkish positive effects in the medium-run. This could be alarming for investors but could also prove beneficial as they should not invest in Russian assets when the country’s geopolitical risk is elevated due to Turkey’s geopolitical instability. Additionally, it is documented that energy financial markets in Russia are not influential on geopolitical uncertainty.

SCIENCE ANXIETY AS A PREDICTOR OF STUDENTS PREFERRED SUBJECT IN THE POST JUNIOR SECONDARY CLASSROOM

The world, including Nigeria, is increasingly seeking to improve its educational system to attain the desired scientific-driven society. Thus, education is geared towards science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). To this effect, Nigeria is investing in science-based education, and the students are encouraged to embrace science in their educational pursuits. Based on this, the present study examined students subject preference in the post junior secondary classroom based on science anxiety. One hundred and sixty-six students drawn from public and private secondary schools in the Kogi State participated in the study. Their level of science anxiety was assessed with the Science Anxiety Scale (Oludipe & Oludipe, 2019). The simple regression analysis performed on the data revealed that science anxiety statistically significantly predicted the respondents subject preference. Thus, the study concludes that science anxiety is a positive determinant of students choice of subject in the secondary school classroom.

EFFECT OF INTERNET ADDICTION ON PHYSICS PRACTICAL WORK AMONG SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Physics education possesses great potential in providing an outstanding opportunity to drive and shape sustainable development for the future world. Perhaps, the subject is among the science subjects that are better learned through laboratory experiments. Practical physics work enables students to do experiments on the fundamental laws and principles and gain experience of using a variety of measuring instruments and other physics-related apparatus. However, insinuation suggests that most students show less commitment to practical work, attributed to various factors. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to examine internet addiction as a factor that could explain the variation in students participation in physics practical. One hundred and forty-four students who met the inclusion criteria were selected from secondary schools in the Kogi state as the participants. The respondents completed a self-report measure of internet addiction and practical physics participation. The result revealed that compulsive internet usage significantly predicts participation in physics practical. Thus, the study concluded that internet addiction is a positive determinant of students engagement in physics practical.

Dynamics of Buyer-Seller Relations in Norwegian Wine Imports

As for all traded products, aggregated wine imports build on numerous trades at the firm level. To ensure consumers access to a variety of wines with different qualities, importers need to connect to different wine exporters. Some of these relationships will last for a long time, while the duration of others may be short. In this article, we employ transaction-level data to analyze the duration of trade relationships in wine imports to Norway from 2004 to 2014. We find that most relationships are short-lived, as more than 75% of trade relationships end after less than two years. Furthermore, we find that higher-quality wines, as indicated by the import price, increase trade duration. Deeper firm-to-firm trade relationships for more exclusive wines are likely due to higher search costs for high-quality products. The results also show that the size of the initial trade between the partners, or degree of commitment, is a positive determinant for persistent relationships. (JEL Classifications: C41, F14, Q27)

The Quasiconvex Envelope of Conformally Invariant Planar Energy Functions in Isotropic Hyperelasticity

We consider conformally invariant energies W on the group $${{\,\mathrm{GL}\,}}^{\!+}(2)$$ GL + ( 2 ) of $$2\times 2$$ 2 × 2 -matrices with positive determinant, i.e., $$W:{{\,\mathrm{GL}\,}}^{\!+}(2)\rightarrow {\mathbb {R}}$$ W : GL + ( 2 ) → R such that $$\begin{aligned} W(A\, F\, B) = W(F) \quad \text {for all }\; A,B\in \{a\, R\in {{\,\mathrm{GL}\,}}^{\!+}(2) \,|\,a\in (0,\infty ),\; R\in {{\,\mathrm{SO}\,}}(2)\}, \end{aligned}$$ W ( A F B ) = W ( F ) for all A , B ∈ { a R ∈ GL + ( 2 ) | a ∈ ( 0 , ∞ ) , R ∈ SO ( 2 ) } , where $${{\,\mathrm{SO}\,}}(2)$$ SO ( 2 ) denotes the special orthogonal group and provides an explicit formula for the (notoriously difficult to compute) quasiconvex envelope of these functions. Our results, which are based on the representation $$W(F)=h\bigl (\frac{\lambda _1}{\lambda _2}\bigr )$$ W ( F ) = h ( λ 1 λ 2 ) of W in terms of the singular values $$\lambda _1,\lambda _2$$ λ 1 , λ 2 of F, are applied to a number of example energies in order to demonstrate the convenience of the singular-value-based expression compared to the more common representation in terms of the distortion $${\mathbb {K}}:=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\Vert F \Vert ^2}{\det F}$$ K : = 1 2 ‖ F ‖ 2 det F . Applying our results, we answer a conjecture by Adamowicz (in: Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di Scienze Fisiche, Matematiche e Naturali. Rendiconti Lincei. Serie IX. Matematica e Applicazioni, vol 18(2), pp 163, 2007) and discuss a connection between polyconvexity and the Grötzsch free boundary value problem. Special cases of our results can also be obtained from earlier works by Astala et al. (Elliptic partial differential equations and quasiconformal mappings in the plane, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008) and Yan (Trans Am Math Soc 355(12):4755–4765, 2003). Since the restricted domain of the energy functions in question poses additional difficulties with respect to the notion of quasiconvexity compared to the case of globally defined real-valued functions, we also discuss more general properties related to the $$W^{1,p}$$ W 1 , p -quasiconvex envelope on the domain $${{\,\mathrm{GL}\,}}^{\!+}(n)$$ GL + ( n ) which, in particular, ensure that a stricter version of Dacorogna’s formula is applicable to conformally invariant energies on $${{\,\mathrm{GL}\,}}^{\!+}(2)$$ GL + ( 2 ) .

Universal access to quality childcare is good policy and a positive determinant of health. Let’s invest.

Research shows that affordable nonprofit childcare results in a variety of beneficial developmental outcomes for children, as well as benefitting families and society at-large. As leaders and influencers, paediatricians are well positioned to advocate for access to affordable, nonprofit childcare. This commentary aims to provide a framework and evidence base for Canadian paediatricians interested in learning more about this issue and how they can support increased access to nonprofit childcare.

Impact of Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, and Citizen Trust on the Adoption of Electronic Voting System in Ghana

This study examined the impact of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and citizen trust in institutions on the adoption of an electronic voting system. This was done by proposing and validating a unified model of electronic voting system adoption (UMEVSA) based on UTAUT. The results show that while performance expectancy was significant in determining the intention to adopt an e-voting system, effort expectancy does not. However, effort expectancy was found to be a positive determinant of the performance expectancy of an electronic voting system. Also, citizen trust in institutions positively predicts both the performance and effort expectancy of an electronic voting system and the intention to use an electronic voting system. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Ethnonationalism and attitudes towards same-sex marriage and abortion in Northern Ireland

The issue of sexuality and human rights has generated increasing international attention in recent years. This is particularly the case in societies emerging from chronic ethnonationalist conflict, where scholarly debates on the impact of ethnonationalism on sexual rights, such as abortion and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people (LGBT), generate much controversy and division. It is with this disagreement in mind that this paper focuses on the influence of ethnonationalism on attitudes towards the legalisation of same-sex marriage and abortion. Using nationally representative data from Northern Ireland, the results suggest that while ethnonational identity is a significant positive determinant of attitudes towards same-sex marriage within both the Catholic population and among supporters of their main political party (Sinn Féin), it is also a key negative predictor of attitudes to abortion, albeit solely among Sinn Féin supporters.