The sedentary (r)evolution: Have we lost our metabolic flexibility?

The sedentary (r)evolution: Have we lost our metabolic flexibility?

During the course of evolution, up until the agricultural revolution, environmental fluctuations forced the human species to develop a flexible metabolism in order to adapt its energy needs to various climate, seasonal and vegetation conditions. Metabolic flexibility safeguarded human survival independent of food availability. In modern times, humans switched their primal lifestyle towards a co...

Customer satisfaction versus patient safety: have we lost our way?

The maturing science of the causes and consequences of boarding of admitted patients demonstrates unequivocally the dangers the patient may face when entering a crowded emergency department (ED). 1 Even the demonstration of increased mortality rates associated with crowding 2,3 has not compelled the hospital industry as a whole to implement policies and procedures to ameliorate crowding. Howeve...

Systems Engineering: Have we lost our Competitive Edge

Recent media reports include several large systems engineering failures. These failures are especially alarming given that they span different sectors (i.e., shipbuilding and space systems), and are not isolated to one firm. Therefore we need to ask: Have we lost our systems engineering competitive edge? What can the systems engineering discipline do to correct the apparent discrepancies that a...

Have we lost the war on obesity?

Have we lost our way? The need for dynamic formulations of smoking relapse proneness.

Current smoking cessation treatments seem to differ from one another in the proportion of ex-smokers who survive the first few days of the quit attempt. After this initial effect, parallel relapse processes appear to unfold in all treatment groups; no available treatments seem to alter the nature of this late relapse process. True relapse prevention will require that we obtain a better understa...