Obesity and Energetics Offerings

Featured

• Meal frequency and timing in health and disease.
• A role for mental imagery in the experience and reduction of food cravings.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• Neural feedback treatment produced significantly less weight loss at 6 months than did control.
• "A two-year school-based intervention with increased physical activity and healthy diet did not have a significant effect on common cardiovascular risk factors."
• RCT: Low-energy diets differing in fiber, red meat and coffee intake equally improve insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes.
• Weight loss is largely unsuccessful in NAFLD patients in the ambulatory care setting.
• "After controlling for race, regional education rates and socioeconomic status, the percentage of individuals living within a food desert was not predictive of elementary obesity rates at the school district level."
• RCT: Screen-time Weight-loss Intervention Targeting Children at Home.

Basic Science

• Muscle-specific overexpression of PGC-1a does not augment metabolic improvements in response to exercise and caloric restriction.
• Modeling human muscle metabolism: Using constraint-based modeling to investigate nutrition supplements, insulin resistance, and Type 2 Diabetes.
• Maternal nutrition induces gene expression changes in fetal muscle and adipose tissues in sheep.
• Resveratrol Ameliorates High Glucose and High-Fat/Sucrose Diet-Induced Vascular Hyperpermeability Involving Cav-1/eNOS Regulation.
• Catecholamine-induced lipolysis causes mTOR complex dissociation and inhibits glucose uptake in adipocytes.
• MED13-dependent signaling from the heart confers leanness by enhancing metabolism in adipose tissue and liver.

Video

• Michael Alderman: "Dietary sodium and health: Is the answer in?"
• Dariush Mozaffarian: "Dietary priorities for preventing obesity-are all calories created equal?"

Clinical

• Dietary restriction and exercise for diabetic patients with chronic kidney disease: A systematic review.
• RCT: An activity stimulation programme during a child's first year reduces some indicators of adiposity at the age of two-and-a-half.
• University of Alabama researchers take multi-disciplinary approaches to the challenge of obesity in community project.
• Lowering medical costs through the sharing of savings by physicians and patients.
• Review: Mechanisms of heart failure in obesity.

Epidemiology

• Replication of obesity and diabetes-related SNP associations in individuals from Yucatán, México.
• Out-of-home eating frequency, causal attribution of obesity and support to healthy eating policies from a cross-European survey.
• Building obesity in Canada: Understanding the individual- and neighborhood-level determinants using a multi-level approach.
• Serum Ferritin, Insulin Resistance, and Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical and Laboratory Associations in 769 Non-Hispanic Whites Without Diabetes Mellitus in the HEIRS Study.
• Does suburbanization cause obesity?

Food

• Forefronts in portion size. An overview and synthesis of a roundtable discussion.
• The role of breakfast in health: Definition and criteria for a quality breakfast.
• RCT: A web-based weight loss programme including breakfast cereals, results in greater loss of body.
• Blue lighting decreases the amount of food consumed in men, but not in women.
• Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation.

Sugar

• Michael Gibney: Book review: Fructose, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sucrose and Health Editor James M.Rippe.
• RCT: The effects of typical levels of consumption of dietary sugars on traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease and triglycerides.
• Sucrose preload reduces snacking after mild mental stress in healthy participants as a function of 5-hydroxytryptamine transporter gene promoter polymorphism.
• Consumers believe nutrition facts labeling for added sugar will be more helpful than confusing.

Calorie Restriction

• Anti-aging effects of nutritional modification: The state of the science on calorie restriction.
• The Interaction of Aging, Caloric Restriction, and the Sulfur Assimilation Pathway explored via Quantitative Time-lapse Flow Cytometry.
• Lifespan-extending caloric restriction or mTOR inhibition impair adaptive immunity of old mice by distinct mechanisms.

Diet

• Clues emerging about Arctic gene, diet, and health.
• Consumption of dietary portfolio of cholesterol lowering foods improves blood lipids without affecting concentrations of fat soluble compounds.

Drugs

• Obesity induced rapid melanoma progression is reversed by orlistat treatment and dietary intervention: Role of adipokines.
• Glypican 4 may be involved in the adipose tissue redistribution in high-fat feeding C57BL/6J mice with peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor γ  agonist rosiglitazone treatment .
• RCT: Statin therapy and risk of fracture.

Diabetes

• Initial choice of oral glucose-lowering medication for Diabetes Mellitus.
• Uncontrolled Diabetes tied to poorer brain power.

Exercise

• RCT: Outdoor training enhances affective responses to exercise and leads to greater exercise adherence than indoor training in postmenopausal women.
• Effect of eight weeks resistance training on adipocyte fatty acid-binding.
• A candidate syntenic genetic locus is associated with voluntary exercise levels in mice and humans.
• Running for exercise mitigates age-related deterioration of walking economy.

Psychology

• The relationship between obesity and participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Is mental health a mediator?
• Anticipatory and reactive responses to chocolate restriction in frequent chocolate consumers.
• Food reinforcement and delay discounting in zBMI-discordant siblings.
• If death were food for thought, what would you choose for lunch? A terror management account of food choice decisions.
• RCT: Pilot trial of a cognitive reappraisal obesity prevention program.

Surgery

• RCT: No differential effect of Laparoscopic Gastric Imbrication v Laparoscopic Sleeve Gastrectomy.
• RCT: Effect of the endoscopic duodenal-jejunal bypass liner on obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus.
• RCT: Staple-line reinforcement versus no reinforcement during sleeve gastrectomy.

Smoking & Weight

• Weight gain after smoking cessation unrelated to mortality rate.
• Young woman smokers gain significantly more weight over 2-year follow-up than non-smokers: How Virginia doesn't slim.

Methods

• Measuring outcomes in adult weight loss studies that include diet and physical activity: A systematic review.
• Even modest prediction accuracy of genomic models can have large clinical utility.
• Application of global positioning system methods for the study of obesity and hypertension risk among low-income housing residents in New York City: A spatial feasibility study.
• Baseline participant characteristics and risk for dropout from ten obesity RCTs.

Model

• Novel mathematical models for investigating topics in obesity.
• Characterization of the ZDSD rat: A translational model for the study of Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes.

Bats

• F1000 Recommendation: Bats jamming bats: food competition through sonar interference.
• Bats harbor diverse pathogens: Could help researchers stymie deadly diseases.
• The resistance of a North American bat species to White-Nose Syndrome.

Gut Microbiota

• The human intestinal microbiome at extreme ages of life. Dietary intervention as a way to counteract alterations.
• Effect of Lactobacillus rhamnosus hsryfm 1301 on the gut microbiota and lipid metabolism in rats fed a high-fat diet.
• Contamination plagues some microbiome studies.
• Microflora for hire.

Stigma

• Influences of general self-efficacy and weight bias internalization on physical activity in bariatric surgery candidates.
• Fat in school: Applied interdisciplinary as a basis for consultation in oppressive social context.

Aging

• The three genetics (Nuclear DNA, Mitochondrial DNA, and Gut Microbiome) of longevity in humans considered as metaorganisms.
• The aging brain.
• Sex-specific effects of natural and sexual selection on the evolution of life span and aging in Drosophila simulans.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Do assortative preferences contribute to assortative mating for adiposity?
• Habitat use and body mass regulation among Warblers in the Sahel Region during the non-breeding season.

Commentary

• Ted Kyle: Listen to your genes, improve your diet?
• Demystifying calories: Already there, and miles to go.
• The obesity fix.
• Can the 5:2 diet lead to a longer life?
• Is lunch from home better than the school cafeteria?
• Does sugar make grown-ups cranky?
• Three social justice issues of obesity.

General Science

• Scientists crack cause for disease in starfish.
• Journals unite for reproducibility.
• Social science. Publication bias in the social sciences: unlocking the file drawer.
• Science communication as political communication.
• Impact of spin in the abstracts of articles reporting results of randomized controlled trials in the field of cancer: The SPIIN Randomized Controlled Trial.
• Climate change impacts on overstory Desmarestia spp. from the Western Antarctic Peninsula.
• Cows with human chromosomes enlisted to fight Hantavirus.
• A new species of Muscicapa Flycatcher from Sulawesi, Indonesia.
• The smart mouse with the half-human brain.
• Synthetic enzymes hint at life without DNA or RNA.

Announcements

• UAB- Nutrition Science's Khaled earns Fulbright-Nehru award to study global health.
• Advances and Controversies in Clinical Nutrition Conference.
• Sylvia Rowe Fellowship Accepting Applications.

Featured

• RCT: Skipping breakfast leads to more (not less) weight loss.
• Branched-chain amino acids in metabolic signalling and insulin resistance.
• RCT: Meal timing during alternate day fasting: Impact on body weight and cardiovascular disease risk in obese adults.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• Review: “…overall the best designed studies (real world studies, with a comparison group) show that calorie labels do not have the desired effect in reducing total calories ordered at the population level.”
• Food Intake Does Not Differ between Obese Women Who Are Metabolically Healthy or Abnormal.
• “Contrary to widely stated claims, LOCF did not produce a conservative (i.e., lower) efficacy estimate compared to MI [multiple imputation].”
• RCT: No effect on BMI of a school-based healthy eating and physical activity program among children.
• “No relationship between the number of sport facilities per 1,000 population and physical inactivity was observed.”
• [T]he traditional risk factors for mortality, including high blood pressure, hypercholesterolaemia, overweight and obesity and diabetes, were not independent predictors of mortality in this population of older men.
• “We found limited evidence of an impact of the school food and nutrient-based standards on total diet among 11-12 year olds”.
• Kids' Bag Lunches Not Meeting Nutrition Guidelines: Bag lunches typically had more salt and fewer fruits, vegetables and whole grains, compared with standards set for school cafeterias.
• In a nationally representative sample of the non-institutionalised US population with diabetes, BMI and waist circumference were not associated with risk of mortality.
• In school-based physical activity program for diabetes prevention, BMI increased (instead of decreasing) in both male and female participants.

Caloric Restriction

• Interaction of growth hormone receptor/binding protein gene disruption and caloric restriction for insulin sensitivity and attenuated aging.
• Calorie restriction increases lipopolysaccharide-induced neuropeptide Y immunolabeling and reduces microglial cell area in the arcuate hypothalamic nucleus.

Exercise

• RCT: The impact of exercise during pregnancy on neonatal outcomes.
• Physically active rats lose more weight during calorie restriction.
• The influence of nighttime feeding of carbohydrate or protein combined with exercise training on appetite and cardiometabolic risk.
• Systematic review and meta-analysis: Exercise significantly reduced gestational weight gain.
• The independent roles of cardiorespiratory fitness and sedentary time on chronic conditions and body mass index in older adults.
• RCT: Inflammatory markers and adipocytokine responses to exercise training and detraining in men who are obese.

Methods

• Evaluating causal relationships between urban built environment characteristics and obesity: a methodological review of observational studies.
• Poor quality of external validity reporting limits generalizability of overweight and/or obesity lifestyle prevention interventions in young adults: a systematic review.
• Comparison of results from different imputation techniques for missing data from an anti-obesity drug trial.
• Scaling of adult body weight to height across sex and race/ethnic groups: relevance to BMI.
• Modern health care as a game theory problem.
• Establishing a Reliable Multiple Reaction Monitoring-Based Method for the Quantification of Obesity-Associated Comorbidities in Serum and Adipose Tissue Requires Intensive Clinical Validation.

Economics

• “Results suggested strategies to tackle obesity must address employed women's everyday financial troubles which may influence weight through more biological pathways than classical correlates of economic disadvantage and weight.”
• The Role of Time in Fast-Food Purchasing Behavior in the United States.

Food

• Food environment and obesity.
• Effects of long-term cycling between palatable cafeteria diet and regular chow on intake, eating patterns, and response to saccharin and sucrose in rats.
• RCT: Breakfast glycaemic index and exercise: Combined effects on adolescents' cognition.
• Personalized weight loss strategies-the role of macronutrient distribution.

Epidemiology

• Obesity Rate Highest in Teens With Disabilities.
• Obesity related risk of sudden cardiac death.
• The Association of Religious Affiliation and Body Mass Index.
• A Pooled Analysis of Body Mass Index and Mortality among African Americans.
• Correlates of sedentary behaviour in 8- to 10-year-old children at elevated risk for obesity.
• Double burden of undernutrition and obesity in Uruguay.
• Differential maternal feeding practices, eating self-regulation, and adiposity in young twins.
• Maternal obesity is associated with alterations in the gut microbiome in toddlers.

Transgenerational Findings

• Novel theory connects mothers to childhood obesity: Evolution is the cause, and moms are the cure.
• Maternal body size prior to pregnancy, gestational diabetes and weight gain: associations with insulin resistance in children at 9-10 years.

Stigma

• Do the Plus Size Awards 'promote obesity'? Fat chance.
• Experiencing Weight Bias in an Unjust World: Impact on Exercise and Internalization.
• The Bad Taste of Social Ostracism: The Effects of Exclusion on the Eating Behaviors of African American Women.

Drugs

• Leptin Therapy in People with a Normal Leptin Gene.
• Haloperidol and rimonabant increase delay discounting in rats fed high-fat and standard-chow diets.

Surgery

• RCT: Use of positive pressure in the bariatric surgery and effects on pulmonary function and prevalence of atelectasis.
• Simplified gastric bypass.
• Psychological predictors of bariatric surgery attrition.
• Health-Related Quality of Life following Bariatric Surgery: A Systematic Review of Prospective Long-Term Studies.

Psychology

• Body Image Concerns, Muscle-Enhancing Behaviors, and Eating Disorders in Males.
• “Three studies demonstrate that exposure to drug (but not supplement) marketing for weight management encourages unhealthy consumer behavior, due to consumers' reliance on erroneous beliefs about health remedies.”
• Association of weight-focused social comparisons with diet and activity outcomes in overweight and obese young women.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• The energetics of a Malagasy rodent, Macrotarsomys ingens (Nesomyinae): a test of island and zoogeographical effects on metabolism.
• The foraging benefits of being fat in a highly migratory marine mammal.
• Evolutionary cell biology: Two origins, one objective.
• Geometric factors influencing the diet of vertebrate predators in marine and terrestrial environments.

Policy Related

• Can Government Regulate Portion Sizes?
• New York State's open records laws modified to protect biomedical research.
• FDA Finalizes Menu Label Rules.
• Considering the Potential Effect of Federal Policy on Childhood Obesity.

Commentary

• The Tipping Point in Obesity.
• Of Epidemic Proportions:  The Primary Colors of Obesity.
• Report| McKinsey Global Institute - How the world could better fight obesity.
• David Katz: Want Health? Try the Truth.
• Antibiotics, C-Sections, and Childhood Obesity.
• Active Moms May Be the Cure for Obesity.
• Why are educated adults slim-Causation or selection?
• An Experiment Begins with Calories Everywhere.
• The Gravity of Weight: The daunting science of weight control.
• How calorie-focused thinking about obesity and related diseases may mislead and harm public health. An alternative.
• Calories: Nothing Is Better Than Junk Data.
• Non-Genetic Evolution as Obesity Villain.
• Ending the Cycle of Blame in US Health Care.
• Critiquing US Health Care.
• Consequences of obesity and weight loss: a devil's advocate position.

Basic Science

• When fed during the day, mice, typically nocturnal animals, are less likely to explore novel objects and remember fearful places.
• Glucose uptake in brown fat cells is dependent on mTOR complex 2-promoted GLUT1 translocation.
• Nutrient-sensing nuclear receptors coordinate autophagy.

General Science

• F1000 Recommendation: Phylogenomics resolves the timing and pattern of insect evolution.
• F1000 Recommendation: Economics in the age of big data.
• U.S. urged to clarify extent of funding moratorium on risky virus research.
• Special Section on Moving Toward a Cumulative Science: Maximizing What Our Research Can Tell Us.
• Rat Study Suggests Schizophrenia May Stem from Surplus Brain Protein.
• Do Men Overperceive Women’s Sexual Interest?
• Ancient Egyptian Mummy Wearing Jewels Found.
• Obesity and poly cystic ovary syndrome.
• Impact of Spin in the Abstracts of Articles Reporting Results of Randomized Controlled Trials in the Field of Cancer.
• Consequences of obesity and weight loss: a devil's advocate position.
• Leveraging population admixture to characterize the heritability of complex traits.

Video

• Cathrine Hoyo: "Developmental Origins of Obesity: The Nest Cohort in Durham, NC."
• Carl J. Lavie: "Stressing the Importance of Physical Activity to Patients of All Ages."
• Angela Brooks-Wilson: “Genetics of Healthy Aging.”

Announcements

• Advanced Gene Mapping Course - The Rockefeller University, New York - Feb. 9-13, 2015.

Featured

• Energy balance measurement: when something is not better than nothing.
• Human embryos from overweight and obese women display phenotypic and metabolic abnormalities.
• First Short Course on Strengthening Causal Inference in Behavioral Obesity Research.
• The Childhood Obesity Epidemic as a Result of Nongenetic Evolution: The Maternal Resources Hypothesis.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• RCT: Acute Consumption of an Energy Drink Does Not Improve Physical Performance of Female Volleyball Players.
• RCT: Calorie-Tracking Apps May Not Help You Lose Weight.
• No association between glycemic index, glycemic load and weight change was found.
• “Results show that state rates of obesity are not associated with the enactment of obesity legislation among either age group.”
• No association between perceived stress and BMI was observed.
• RCT: Physical Activity Intervention led to no weight loss in Middle-Aged Women.
• RCT: In School-Based Program, significantly more children in control group decreased their BMI than did children in intervention group.

Food

• Meal frequency and timing in health and disease.
• RCT: The Effects of Whole Grain High-Amylose Maize Flour as a Source of Resistant Starch on Blood Glucose, Satiety, and Food Intake in Young Men.
• RCT: Head-to-head RCTs, providing the most robust evidence available, demonstrated that Atkins, WW, and Zone achieved modest and similar long-term weight loss.
• A Mixture of Cod and Scallop Protein Reduces Adiposity and Improves Glucose Tolerance in High-Fat Fed Male C57BL/6J Mice.
• Effects of salt substitutes on blood pressure: a meta-analysis of RCTs.
• The association between a biomarker score for fruit and vegetable intake and incident type 2 diabetes: the EPIC-Norfolk study.

Exercise

• RCT: Objective physical activity and weight loss in adults.
• RCT: Facebook-based Physical Activity Intervention for Government Employees with Metabolic Syndrome.
• Fatness and fitness related to exercise in normal and obese children and adolescents.

Social Standing

• Higher weight, lower education: a longitudinal association between adolescents' BMI and their subsequent educational achievement level?
• F1000 Recommendation: Intergenerational and socioeconomic gradients of child obesity.
• F1000 Recommendation: The intergenerational transmission of inequality: maternal disadvantage and health at birth.
• School social capital and BMI in the national longitudinal study of adolescent health.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• The Great Roundleaf Bat (Hipposideros armiger) as a Good Model for Cold-Induced Browning of Intra-Abdominal White Adipose Tissue.
• The foraging benefits of being fat in a highly migratory marine mammal.
• Prey state shapes the effects of temporal variation in predation risk.
• The role of gut microbes in satisfying the nutritional demands of adult and juvenile wild, black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra).
• Differences in the metabolic response to temperature acclimation in nine-spined stickleback (Pungitius pungitius) populations from contrasting thermal environments.
• Heavily hunted wolves have higher stress and reproductive steroids than wolves with lower hunting pressure.
• Rapid changes in the gut microbiome during human evolution.

Epidemiology

• Increasing parental age at childbirth is associated with greater insulin sensitivity and more favorable metabolic profile in overweight adult male offspring.
• Interpersonal violence and overweight in adolescents.
• The interplay between maternal obesity and gestational diabetes mellitus.
• Exposure to tobacco smoke and roadway air pollution is associated with obesity development in kids.

Clinical

• RCT: An Automated Internet Behavioral Weight Loss Program by Physician Referral.
• Diet or Exercise Interventions vs Combined Behavioral Weight Management Programs: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Direct Comparisons.

Surgery

• Kidney function in severely obese adolescents undergoing bariatric surgery.
• RCT: Effect of clonidine versus dexmedetomidine on pain control after laparoscopic gastric sleeve.
• Laser Lipolysis Without Suction: Reality or Myth?

Drugs

• Liraglutide for the Treatment of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta-analysis of RCTs.
• RCT: Effect of orlistat on weight loss, hormonal and metabolic profiles in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

Policy Related

• Affirmative Disclosure in Fast Food Advertisements: Its Effect on Attitudes Toward the Ad, Attitude Toward the Brand and Purchase Intentions.
• Three Comments on Paternalism in Public Health.
• Consumers believe nutrition facts labeling for added sugar will be more helpful than confusing.
• Savings in Medical Expenditures Associated with Reductions in BMI Among US Adults with Obesity, by Diabetes Status.
• Benefits of adding small financial incentives or optional group meetings to a web-based statewide obesity initiative.

Psychology

• Social Competence and Obesity in Elementary School.
• Reduce temptation or resist it? Experienced temptation mediates the relationship between implicit evaluations of unhealthy snack foods and subsequent intake.

Energy Balance

• Leptin-inhibited PBN neurons enhance responses to hypoglycemia in negative energy balance.
• Exercise-Trained Men and Women: Role of Exercise and Diet on Appetite and Energy Intake.
• Effects of winter military training on energy balance, whole-body protein balance, muscle damage, soreness, and physical performance.

Technology

• Are obese crash test dummies the key to preventing road deaths?
• Design of service delivery for a child obesity prevention and management program using technology convergence.

Mathematical

• Modeling energy intake by adding homeostatic feedback and drug intervention.
• Modeling Body Mass Variation: Incorporating Social Influence into Calculations of Caloric Intake and Energy Expenditure.
• Scaling of adult regional body mass and body composition as a whole to height: Relevance to body shape and BMI.

Adipose

• Contributions of white and brown adipose tissues and skeletal muscles to acute cold-induced metabolic responses in healthy men.
• Thermogenic Activity of UCP1 in Human White Fat-Derived Beige Adipocytes.
• Adipose Hypothermia in Obesity and Its Association with Period Homolog 1, Insulin Sensitivity, and Inflammation in Fat.

Methods

• A Framework for Using GPS Data in Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior Studies.
• Validation of Self-Reported Measures in Health Disparities Research.
• Development of an instrument for assessment of Korean nurses' attitudes toward obese patients.
• Spanish adaptation of the Antifat Attitudes Scale.

Stigma

• Double Stigma of Obesity, Mental Illness.
• Parental Support for Policy Actions To Reduce Weight Stigma Toward Youth in Schools and Children's Television Programs: Trends From 2011 to 2013.
• CDC Shelves Workplace Obesity Website After Complaints.

Transparent Science

• Sharing and Reporting the Results of Clinical Trials.
• Could digital badges clarify the roles of co-authors?
• Open practice recognition from APS.

Commentary

• Ted Kyle on absurd wasteful spending - $10 Million to Escape Fat City.
• A changing view on saturated fatty acids and dairy: from enemy to friend.

Basic Science

• Preliminary Investigation into a Potential Role for Myostatin and Its Receptor (ActRIIB) in Lean and Obese Horses and Ponies.
• MIR-200 is induced by thioredoxin-interacting protein and regulates ZEB1 signaling and beta cell apoptosis.
• Effects of long-term feeding of the polyphenols resveratrol and kaempferol in obese mice.
• Development and Survival of Th17 Cells within the Intestines: The Influence of Microbiome- and Diet-Derived Signals.
• Epigenetic regulation by selected dietary phytochemicals in cancer chemoprevention.
• The liver and brain communicate in order to regulate appetite.
• Cellular origins of cold-induced brown adipocytes in adult mice.
• Effects of biological, environmental, and nutritional factors on fecal pellet size and morphology in the sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus.
• The Sleeping Beauty: How Reproductive Diapause Affects Hormone Signaling, Metabolism, Immune Response and Somatic Maintenance in Drosophila melanogaster.
• Nutrient-sensing nuclear receptors coordinate autophagy.

General Science

• Is Being Good at Science a Genetic Trait?
• The Rules of Replication: Should there be standard protocols for how researchers attempt to reproduce the work of others?
• Dealing with Irreproducibility: Researchers discuss the growing pressures that are driving increases in retraction rates.
• F1000 Recommendation: Comparison of captive lifespan, age-associated liver neoplasias and age-dependent gene expression between two annual fish species: Nothobranchius furzeri and Nothobranchius korthause.
• The Secret of a Snake's Slither.

Opportunities

• Internships, fellowships, and scholarships through NASA.
• Undergraduate and graduate research opportunities through NSF.
• ABOM item writing committee seeks applicants (pdf).
• Obesity Challenge - Submit your innovative idea.
• Brown University School of Public Health Job Announcement for Associate or Full Professor.

Announcements

• Sarah McDonald awarded the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Maternal and Child Obesity Prevention and Intervention.
• UAB NORC’s First Movie (10 min).
• Congressman Rush D. Holt, Ph.D., has accepted offer to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), as chief executive officer.
• Advances and Controversies in Clinical Nutrition, December 4-6.

Featured

• UAB NORC’s First Movie (10 min).
• Scaling of free-ranging primate energetics with body mass predicts low energy expenditure in humans.
• Mechanisms of increased in vivo insulin sensitivity by dietary methionine restriction in mice.

Findings Contrary to Hypotheses or Popular Beliefs

• “Neither self-reported distance nor time to the nearest grocery store was consistently associated with fruit and vegetable intake, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, or body mass index.”
• RCT: Eating speed at breakfast did not affect postprandial ghrelin, GLP-1, PYY, hunger, and fullness values or daily energy and macronutrient intake.
• RCT: Diets High in Protein or Saturated Fat Do Not Affect Insulin Sensitivity or Plasma Concentrations of Lipids and Lipoproteins in Overweight and Obese Adults.
• RCT: Increased fruit and vegetable consumption (in a study with bone as primary endpoint) had no effect on body weight (or bone).
• Morbidly obese liver transplant recipients have similar short-term outcomes to non-morbidly obese persons.
• RCT: “The results have found very little evidence to support the claims that school gardening alone can improve children's daily fruit and vegetable intake.”

Basic Science

• Hypothalamic control of seasonal changes in food intake and body weight.
• 20 years of leptin: from the discovery of the leptin gene to our therapeutic armamentarium.
• Alpha-lipoic acid supplementation reduces mTORC1 signaling in skeletal muscle from high fat fed, obese zucker rats.
• Fruit chemicals minimize cardiac damage in mice and rats.

Fat & the Aging Brain

• High-fat diet postpones brain aging in rodents.
• High-Fat Diet did not alter exploration ability and working, learning, and memory performance in aging rodents.
• High-fat diet impaired memory in aging rodents.

Caloric Restriction

• Effects of age and caloric restriction on the cardiac and coronary response to endothelin-1 in rats.
• Differential effects of fasting versus food restriction on liver thyroid hormone metabolism in rats.
• Fibroblast Growth Factor 21 is not required for the reductions in circulating Insulin-Like Growth Factor-1 or global cell proliferation rates in response to moderate calorie restriction in adult mice.
• Artemisinin mimics calorie restriction to initiate antioxidative responses and compromise telomere shortening.

Methods

• Statistical methods for dealing with publication bias in meta-analysis.
• Accelerometer-based measures in physical activity surveillance: current practices and issues.
• Reproducibility of exhaled nitric oxide measurements in overweight and obese adults.
• A study documenting the ubiquity of DNA contamination calls into question a recent paper on food-derived nucleic acids in the human bloodstream.

Surgery

• Impact of bariatric surgery on the medical management and costs of obese patients in France: an analysis of a national representative claims database.
• Weight-loss surgery has low complication rates.

Stigma

• Weight-biased health professionals and the effects on overweight patients.
• Obesity stigma researcher asks “I used my research for advocacy. Was I wrong?”
• Is the CDC fueling anti-fat bias in workplaces?

Questioning Claims

• Sit by a window , and lose weight?
• University of Alabama Professor Sticks to His Principles and Refuses to Be Part of Discovery's New Snake-Eats-Man Show.
• Sugar: Bad science ~ Great headlines.

Policy Related

• RCT: Restaurant menu labelling: Is it worth adding sodium to the label?
• Child obesity as a child protection concern in the United States and the United Kingdom: a proposed framework.
• Difficulty reading the menu (Data).
• Food marketing to youth is a serious business.
• NY politician proposes warning label on sugary drinks to fight obesity.
• Child-directed marketing inside and on the exterior of fast food restaurants.

Transgenerational Effects

• Maternal weight gain in pregnancy and risk of obesity among offspring: A systematic review.
• The cellularity of offspring’s adipose tissue is programmed by maternal nutritional manipulations.

Gut Microbiota

• Human milk and infant intestinal mucosal glycans guide succession of the neonatal intestinal microbiota.
• Crosstalk between intestinal microbiota, adipose tissue and skeletal muscle as an early event in systemic low grade inflammation and the development of obesity and diabetes.

Food

• Diets, Diatribes, and a Dearth of Data – David Katz editorial on new diet RCT.
• Snacking for a cause: Nutritional insufficiencies and excesses of US children, a critical review of food consumption patterns and macronutrient and micronutrient intake of US children.
• In a mother’s milk, nutrients, and a message, too.
• Fat sensing and metabolic syndrome.
• Agavins from Agave angustifolia and Agave potatorum affect food intake, body weight gain and satiety-related hormones (GLP-1 and ghrelin) in mice.

Clinical

• RCT: A pilot randomized trial of a cognitive reappraisal obesity prevention program.
• How to fight obesity with antidiabetic drugs: targeting gut or kidney?

Exercise

• Book review: Sport in prison: Exploring the role of physical activity in correctional settings.
• The Effectiveness of Interventions to Increase Physical Activity Among Adolescent Girls: A Meta-analysis.
• Objective measures of activity level and mortality in older men.

Epidemiology

• Weight change after spinal cord injury.
• BMI and pressure ulcers: Improved predictability of pressure ulcers in intensive care patients.
• A longitudinal cohort study of BMI and childhood exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke and air pollution.

Energy Balance

• RCT: A high energy flux state attenuates the weight loss-induced energy gap by acutely decreasing hunger and increasing satiety and resting metabolic rate.
• The effects of energy balance, obesity-proneness and sex on the neuronal response to sweet taste.

Evolution, Energetics, & Ecology

• Thermal tolerances in rodents: species that evolved in cold climates exhibit a wider thermoneutral zone.
• Species and size selective predation by raccoons preying on introduced intertidal clams.
• Bats make calls to jam rivals' sonar— the technique can block another bat from getting food.
• Fatty treats and the domestication of cats.

Economics

• Why obese workers earn less: Occupational sorting and its implications for the legal system.
• Big and Tall: Is there a height premium or obesity penalty in the labor market?
• The wage effects of social norms - Evidence of deviations from peers' body mass in Europe.
• The long term impact of cash transfers to poor families in depression era reduced underweight and increased BMI.

Drugs

• Antibiotic dosing in obesity: the search for optimum dosing strategies.
• Gelesis presents additional clinical data.
• Another combination drug for obesity in the works.
• UAB to test drug shown to completely reverse diabetes in human islets and mice.

General Science

• Reporting of various methodological and statistical parameters in negative studies published in prominent Indian Medical Journals: A systematic review.
• The New Statistics: Estimation and Research Integrity.
• Dance choreography improves girls' computational skills.
• Geroscience: Linking aging to chronic disease.
• Women in academic science: A changing landscape.
• It’s complicated—in fact, it’s complex: Explaining the gender gap in academic achievement in science and mathematics.
• Though more costly, virtual diabetes intervention yield comparable results to face-to-face intervention among small sample of African American women.
• Should Life Insurers Have Access to Genetic Test Results?
• F1000 Recommendation: Failure to replicate depletion of self-control.

Video

• Nir Barzilai: How to die young at a very old age.
• John Fernstrom: Non-nutritive sweeteners and obesity.

Commentary

• David Katz on milk and mortality: Questioning the answers.
• Obesity—a disease with many aetiologies disguised in the same oversized phenotype: has the overeating theory failed?
• How fit is that Fitbit?
• Health-related quality of life in dogs with obesity.
• When nutrient profiling can (and cannot) be useful.
• Are Americans falling out of love with restaurants?
• We often have no idea what we’re talking about when we debate public policy.

Announcements

• New book, "Obesity Interventions in Underserved Communities": Evidence and directions.
• U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine seeks post-doc in nutrition epidemiology.
• U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine seeks post-doc in human factors and ergonomics influence nutrition, eating behavior and food choice in ad libitum eating environments.
• UAB Seeks Post-Docs in Obesity Research.
• John Dye awarded Templeton Prize for his obesity work.
• Crowdfunding projects at UAB.
• Applications now open for the Dannon Institute Early Career Nutrition Leadership Institute