Obesity is associated with impaired health-related quality of life (QOL) and reduced productivity; less is known about the effect of dietary factors. The present study investigated how dietary behaviours, physical activity and BMI relate to weight-specific QOL and work productivity. The study was conducted in thirty-one small blue-collar and service industry worksites in Seattle. Participants w...

Two experiments (Exp.) were conducted to determine the effects of dietary addition of five herbal plants (HP) alone or as herbal plant mixture (HPM) on in vitro gas production and ruminal fermentation patterns. In Exp. 1, five varieties of HP (garlic, eucalyptus, cinnamon, thyme, and peppermint) were added to the diet at 3 different concentrations (5, 10 and 15% of concentrate dry matt...

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate effects of strain [five in Experiment (Exp.) 1 and six in Exp. 2)] and age (29, 47, and 57 wk in Exp. 1 and 29, 41, and 52 wk in Exp. 2) of commercial broiler breeders on incubation time and chick weight. Highly significant differences in egg weight were found among strains in both Exp. After adjusting for effects of egg weight, significant effects of ...

BACKGROUND Early menarche tends to be preceded by rapid infancy weight gain and is associated with increased childhood and adult obesity risk. As age at menarche is a heritable trait, we hypothesised that age at menarche in the mother may in turn predict her children's early growth and obesity risk. METHODS AND FINDINGS We tested associations between mother's age at menarche, mother's adult b...

BACKGROUND Given the long-term adverse sequelae of childhood obesity, identification of early life factors related to fetal growth and childhood obesity is warranted. Investigation on growth and obesity in early life in association with intrauterine exposure to maternal hyperglycemia, a common metabolic pregnancy complication, is of public health significance and clinical implications. OBJECT...

BACKGROUND The role of dairy calcium intake and serum vitamin D concentrations in weight loss is controversial. OBJECTIVE The objective was to assess the association of dairy calcium intake and serum vitamin D with weight loss. DESIGN We analyzed data from participants in the 2-y Dietary Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial (DIRECT) [n = 322; mean body mass index (BMI; in kg/m²): 31; me...

Two experiments were conducted to determine the efficacy of whole raw soybeans as a partial or whole replacement for soybean meal in a corn/soybean meal-based feedlot diet. In Exp. 1, 80 crossbred steers (average BW = 441.3 kg) and, in Exp. 2, 96 Angus-sired steers (average BW = 413.7 kg) were blocked by weight and assigned randomly to one of four dietary treatments. Treatments were 0, 8, 16, a...

We study a planar polynomial differential system, given by ẋ = P (x, y), ẏ = Q(x, y). We consider a function I(x, y) = exp{h2(x)A1(x, y) A0(x, y)} h1(x) ∏l i=1(y − gi(x))i , where gi(x) are algebraic functions of x, A1(x, y) = ∏r k=1(y − ak(x)), A0(x, y) = ∏s j=1(y − g̃j(x)) with ak(x) and g̃j(x) algebraic functions, A0(x, y) and A1(x, y) do not share any common factor, h2(x) is a rational functi...

Patterns of pregnancy weight gain and predictors of first trimester and total weight gain were investigated in a sample of 1367 women from Cebu, Philippines, with pregnancy intervals of < 2 y. The mean total weight gain based on actual measurements of prepregnant weight was 8.4 kg. Controlling for gestational week when weight was measured, multivariate-regression models predicted higher first t...