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To examine the relationship between metabolically healthy and unhealthy obesity phenotypes and risk of vasomotor symptoms (VMS) in premenopausal women.Prospective cohort study.Middle-aged women in a cohort based on regular health screening examinations.Premenopausal Korean women aged 42-52 years were recruited and were followed up for a median of 4.2 years. The cross-sectional and cohort studies comprised 4672 women and 2590 women without VMS at baseline, respectively.Adiposity measures included body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and percentage body fat. Being metabolically healthy was defined as not having any metabolic syndrome components or a homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance of 2.5 or more.VMS (hot flushes and night sweats) assessed using the questionnaire.All adiposity measures were positively associated with an increased risk of VMS in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. The multivariable-adjusted prevalence ratio (95% confidence interval [CI]) for VMS comparing percentage body fat of 35% or more with the reference was 1.47 (95% CI 1.14-1.90) in metabolically healthy women, and the corresponding prevalence ratio was 2.32 (95% CI 1.42-3.78) in metabolically unhealthy women (PMaintaining normal weight and being metabolically healthy may help to prevent VMS in premenopausal women.Avoiding obesity and a metabolically unhealthy status may help reduce vasomotor symptoms in premenopausal women.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Little is known about the impact of metabolically healthy obesity on fibrosis progression in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We investigated the association of body mass index (BMI) category, body fat percentage and waist circumference with worsening of noninvasive fibrosis markers in metabolically healthy and unhealthy individuals with NAFLD. METHODS A cohort study was performed on 59 957 Korean adults with NAFLD (13 285 metabolically healthy and 46 672 metabolically unhealthy individuals) who were followed for a median of 7.7 years. Being metabolically healthy was defined as not having any metabolic syndrome component and having a homoeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance

A relationship between acne and free fatty acids (FFAs) has been suggested recently. However, the effects of FFAs on sebaceous glands are still largely unknown. At the same time, the role of FFAs during chronic inflammation is well established. Considering that FFAs are also a major component of sebum, it is likely that changes in FFA affect both the synthesis of sebum and the inflammatory response in sebaceous glands. In this study, we examined a hypothesis that FFAs increase the production of sebum and induce inflammation in the sebaceous glands. We found that treatment of SZ95 sebocytes with exogenously applied palmitic acid (PA), a major saturated FFA, induced a significant increase in intracellular lipid levels. Moreover, PA treatment also increased the expression and secretion of the proinflammatory cytokines in SZ95 sebocytes. We also found that Toll-like receptors were required for the inflammatory response triggered by PA. The results of our study strengthen the notion about the link between acne and FFAs and suggest the mechanism underlying this relationship. Our results serve as a foundation for future work that will explore the association between FFA and acne and pave way to the development of novel treatment options for acne.

Polymorphism allows the symmetry of the lattice and spatial charge distributions of atomically thin materials to be designed. While various polymorphs for superconducting, magnetic, and topological states have been extensively studied, polymorphic control is a challenge for robust ferroelectricity in atomically thin geometries. Here, the atomic and electric manipulation of ferroelectric polymorphs in Mo

The effect of atomic substitution on the optoelectronic properties of a coplanar donor-acceptor (D-A) semiconducting polymer (SPs), prepared using cyclopentadithiophene (CDT) and 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (BT) moieties, is investigated. By substituting a carbon atom in the BT unit with CF or C-Cl, two random D-A SPs are prepared, and their optoelectronic properties are thoroughly investigated. Density functional theory calculations demonstrate that the fluorinated polymer has a slightly smaller dihedral angle (ϴ = 0.6°) than the pristine polymer (ϴ = 1.9°) in its lowest-energy conformation, implying efficient charge transport through the coplanar backbone of the fluorinated polymer. However, the chlorinated polymer shows the lowest energy at a relatively larger dihedral angle (ϴ = 139°) due to the steric hindrance induced by bulky chlorine atoms in the backbone, thereby leading to thin-film morphology, which is unfavorable for charge transport. Consequently, the fluorinated polymer yields the highest field-effect mobility (μ) of 0.57 cm2 V-1 s-1 , slightly higher than that of the pristine polymer (μ = 0.33 cm2 V-1 s-1 ), and the extended device lifetime of organic field-effect transistors over 12 d without any encapsulation layers. The results of this study provide design guidelines for air-stable D-A SPs.

The movements of the human body are difficult to capture owing to the complexity of the three-dimensional skeleton model and occlusion problems. In this paper, we propose a motion capture system that tracks dynamic human motions in real time. Without using external markers, the proposed system adopts multiple depth sensors (Microsoft Kinect) to overcome the occlusion and body rotation problems. To combine the joint data retrieved from the multiple sensors, our calibration process samples a point cloud from depth images and unifies the coordinate systems in point clouds into a single coordinate system via the iterative closest point method. Using noisy skeletal data from sensors, a posture reconstruction method is introduced to estimate the optimal joint positions for consistent motion generation. Based on the high tracking accuracy of the proposed system, we demonstrate that our system is applicable to various motion-based training programs in dance and Taekwondo.

Timing plays a key role in expressing the qualitative aspects of a character's motion; that is, conveying emotional state, personality, and character role, all potentially without changing spatial positions. Temporal editing of locomotion style is particularly difficult for a novice animator since observers are not well attuned to the sense of weight and energy displayed through motion timing; and the interface for adjusting timing is far less intuitive to use than that for adjusting pose. In this paper, we propose an editing system that effectively captures the timing variations in an example locomotion set and utilizes them for style transfer from one motion to another via both global and upper-body timing transfers. The global timing transfer focuses on matching the input motion to the body speed of the selected example motion, while the upper-body timing transfer propagates the sense of movement flow - succession - through the torso and arms. Our transfer process is based on key times detected from the example set and transferring the relative changes of angle rotation in the upper body joints from a timing source to an input target motion. We demonstrate that our approach is practical in an interactive application such that a set of short locomotion cycles can be applied to generate a longer sequence with continuously varied timings.