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It is unclear whether obesity is associated with the development of inflammatory bowel disease despite compelling data from basic science studies. We therefore examined the association between obesity and risk of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). We conducted pooled analyses of 5 prospective cohorts with validated anthropometric measurements for body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio and other lifestyle factors. Diagnoses of CD and UC were confirmed through medical records or ascertained using validated definitions. We used Cox proportional hazards modeling to calculate pooled multivariable-adjusted HRs (aHRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Among 601,009 participants (age range, 18-98 years) with 10,110,018 person-years of follow-up, we confirmed 563 incident cases of CD and 1047 incident cases of UC. Obesity (baseline BMI ≥30 kg/m2) was associated with an increased risk of CD (pooled aHR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.05-1.71, I 2 = 0%) compared with normal BMI (18.5 to <25 kg/m2). Each 5 kg/m2 increment in baseline BMI was associated with a 16% increase in risk of CD (pooled aHR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.05-1.22; I 2 = 0%). Similarly, with each 5 kg/m2 increment in early adulthood BMI (age, 18-20 years), there was a 22% increase in risk of CD (pooled aHR, 1.22; 95% CI, 1.05-1.40; I 2 = 13.6%). An increase in waist-hip ratio was associated with an increased risk of CD that did not reach statistical significance (pooled aHR across quartiles, 1.08; 95% CI, 0.97-1.19; I 2 = 0%). No associations were observed between measures of obesity and risk of UC. In an adult population, obesity as measured by BMI was associated with an increased risk of older-onset CD but not UC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpreters designed for efficiency execute a huge number of indirect branches and can spend more than half of the execution time in indirect branch mispredictions. Branch target buffers (BTBs) are the most widely available form of indirect branch prediction; however, their prediction accuracy for existing interpreters is only 2%-50%. In this article we investigate two methods for improving the prediction accuracy of BTBs for interpreters: replicating virtual machine (VM) instructions and combining sequences of VM instructions into superinstructions. We investigate static (interpreter build-time) and dynamic (interpreter runtime) variants of these techniques and compare them and several combinations of these techniques. To show their generality, we have implemented these optimizations in VMs for both Java and Forth. These techniques can eliminate nearly all of the dispatch branch mispredictions, and have other benefits, resulting in speedups by a factor of up to 4.55 over efficient threaded-code interpreters, and speedups by a factor of up to 1.34 over techniques relying on dynamic superinstructions alone. Categories and Subject Descriptors: D.3.4 [Programming Languages]: Processors Interpreters General Terms: Languages, Performance, Experimentation Additional Key Words and Phrases: Interpreter, branch target buffer, branch prediction, code replication, superinstruction ACM Reference Format: DOI = 10.1145/1286821.1286828 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1286821.1286828

The 30th Annual Meeting of the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CCNP) was held in Banff, Alberta, June 15 to June 19, 2007. This report summarizes the 3 CCNP award lectures [...]

Generalized surface acoustic wave (GSAW), pseudo-SAW (PSAW), and high-velocity PSAW (HVPSAW) propagation for langatate (LGT) are presented and discussed.

Summary: Background and aims: There are limited data on alcohol dose and types and risk of Crohn's Disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC). We therefore sought to comprehensively examine the association between alcohol consumption and risk of CD and UC. Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 237,835 participants from the Nurses' Health Study, Nurses' Health Study II, and Health Professional Follow‐Up Study. Alcohol consumption was obtained through questionnaires submitted every four years; additional covariates were obtained at two or four‐year intervals. Cases were confirmed independently by two physicians through medical record review. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate age and multivariable‐adjusted hazards ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Results: Across 5,170,474 person‐years of follow‐up, 370 cases of CD and 486 cases of UC were documented. Increased consumption of alcohol intake was not associated with CD (Ptrend = 0.455) or UC (Ptrend = 0.745). Compared to non‐users, the MV‐adjusted HRs for 15.0 + g/day of alcohol intake group were 0.84 (95% CI 0.56, 1.24) for CD and 1.08 (95% CI 0.77, 1.51) for UC. In analyses of alcohol subtypes, we observed that only moderate consumption of beer (>1‐4 servings/week) was marginally associated with reduced risk of CD, while consumption of >4 servings/week of liquor was associated with an increased risk of UC. Conclusion: This prospective study did not identify a relationship between overall alcohol consumption and risk of CD or UC. Our suggestive associations between alcohol types and risk of CD and UC deserve additional investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and practice suggest that student-created videos--structured, well-defined course assignments that have a video created by a student or group of students as the outcome product or deliverable--uphold constructivist goals for higher education while meeting student engagement and universal learning design objectives. A natural progression of the technological revolution in education, student-created videos can be leveraged to provide universal design for learning, transform the learning experience, and improve student learning outcomes. This paper synthesizes relevant research with professional perspective from professors with years of experience assigning student-created videos in college business courses. A theoretical framework, a series of best practices, and avenues for potential future research are outlined in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]