Overconsumption of carbohydrate-rich food combined with adverse eating patterns contributes to the increasing incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in China. Therefore, we conducted a randomized... Show moreOverconsumption of carbohydrate-rich food combined with adverse eating patterns contributes to the increasing incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in China. Therefore, we conducted a randomized trial to determine the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet (LCD), an 8-h time-restricted eating (TRE) schedule, and their combination on body weight and abdominal fat area (i.e., primary outcomes) and cardiometabolic outcomes in participants with MetS. Compared with baseline, all 3-month treatments significantly reduce body weight and subcutaneous fat area, but only TRE and combination treatment reduce visceral fat area (VFA), fasting blood glucose, uric acid (UA), and dyslipidemia. Furthermore, compared with changes of LCD, TRE and combination treatment further decrease body weight and VFA, while only combination treatment yields more benefits on glycemic control, UA, and dyslipidemia. In conclusion, without change of physical activity, an 8-h TRE with or without LCD can serve as an effective treatment for MetS (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04475822). Show less
Electrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2R) is an attractive option for storing renewable electricity and for the sustainable production of valuable chemicals and fuels. In this roadmap, we review recent... Show moreElectrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2R) is an attractive option for storing renewable electricity and for the sustainable production of valuable chemicals and fuels. In this roadmap, we review recent progress in fundamental understanding, catalyst development, and in engineering and scale-up. We discuss the outstanding challenges towards commercialization of electrochemical CO2R technology: energy efficiencies, selectivities, low current densities, and stability. We highlight the opportunities in establishing rigorous standards for benchmarking performance, advances in in operando characterization, the discovery of new materials towards high value products, the investigation of phenomena across multiple-length scales and the application of data science towards doing so. We hope that this collective perspective sparks new research activities that ultimately bring us a step closer towards establishing a low- or zero-emission carbon cycle. Show less
Ma, M.; Stralen, M. van; Reiber, J.H.C.; Bosch, J.G.; Lelieveldt, B.P.F. 2010
This paper presents a novel model based segmentation technique for quantification of left ventricular (LV) function from sparse single-beat 3D echocardiographic data acquired with a fast rotating... Show moreThis paper presents a novel model based segmentation technique for quantification of left ventricular (LV) function from sparse single-beat 3D echocardiographic data acquired with a fast rotating ultrasound (FRU) transducer. This transducer captures cardiac anatomy in a sparse set of radially sampled, curved cross-sections within a single cardiac cycle. The method employs a 3D Active Shape Model of the left ventricle (LV) in combination with local appearance models as prior knowledge to steer the segmentation. A set of local appearance patches generate the model update points for fitting the model to the LV in the curved FRU cross-sections. Updates are then propagated over the dense 3D model mesh to overcome correspondence problems due to the data sparsity, whereas the 3D Active Shape Model serves to retain the plausibility of the generated shape. Leave-one-out cross-validation was carried out on single-beat FRU data from 28 patients suffering from various cardiac pathologies. Detection succeeded in 24 cases, and failed in 4 cases due to large dropouts in echo signal. For the successful 24 cases, detection yielded Point to Point errors of 3.1 +/- 1.1 mm, Point to Surface errors of 1.7 +/- 0.9 mm and an EF error of 7.3 +/- 4.9%. Comparison of fitting on single-beat versus denser multi-beat data showed a similar performance for both types of data irrespective of frame angles of the intersections. Robustness tests with respect to different model initializations showed acceptable performance for initial positions within a range of 26 mm for displacement and 12 degrees for orientation. Furthermore, a comparison study between the proposed method and global LV function measured from MR studies of the same patients showed an underestimation of volumes estimated from echocardiographic data compared to MR derived volumes, similar to other results reported in literature. All experiments demonstrate that the proposed method combines robustness with respect to initialization with an acceptable accuracy, while using sparse single-beat FRU data. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Show less
