Individual Contributors Research Articles

Prospective life cycle assessment of a flexible all-organic battery

Strong interest from researchers and industry is accelerating development of flexible energy storage technologies for future flexible devices. It is critical to consider the environmental perspective in early development of new emerging technologies. In this study, cradle-to-factory gate prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed on production of an all-organic battery with conductive redox polymers as electrode material. To gain a better understanding of the environmental performance of the all-organic battery, a flexible lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery with lithium titanate oxide and lithium cobalt oxide as electrode active materials was modeled as reference. Main environmental impacts of the all-organic battery were attributable to anode and cathode production, with electrode backbones being the main contributors. Solvents, catalysts, waste treatment, energy, and bromine were key individual contributors. Comparison with the flexible Li-ion battery indicated inferior environmental performance of the all-organic battery due to its relatively low specific energy (Wh/kg) and large amount of materials needed for production of its electrode backbones. Sensitivity analysis showed that changing scaling-up parameters and the production route of 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (a precursor of electrode backbones) strongly influenced the results. In order to lower the environmental impacts of the all-organic battery, future research should focus on designing a short production chain with lower material inputs of electrode backbones, increasing battery cycle life, and improving the specific energy of the battery. In addition, relevant recommendations were provided for prospective LCAs of upscaled systems.

Obesity-associated sleep hypoventilation and increased adverse postoperative bariatric surgery outcomes in a large clinical retrospective cohort.

Although obesity hypoventilation syndrome (OHS) is associated with increased morbidity and mortality, post-bariatric surgery OHS risk remains unclear due to often nonsystematic OHS assessments. We leverage a clinical cohort with nocturnal CO2 monitoring during polysomnography to address the hypothesis that patients with obesity-associated sleep hypoventilation (OaSH; ie, stage II OHS) have increased adverse postoperative bariatric surgery outcomes. We retrospectively analyzed data from patients undergoing pre-bariatric surgery polysomnography at the Cleveland Clinic from 2011-2018. OaSH was defined by body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m2 and either polysomnography-based end-tidal CO2 ≥ 45 mmHg or serum bicarbonate ≥ 27 mEq/L. Outcomes considered were as follows: intensive care unit stay, intubation, tracheostomy, discharge disposition other than home or 30-day readmission individually and as a composite, and all-cause mortality. Two-sample t test or Wilcoxon rank-sum test for continuous variables and chi-square or Fisher's exact test for categorical variables were used for OaSH vs non-OaSH comparisons. All-cause mortality was compared using Kaplan-Meier estimation and Cox proportional hazards models. The analytic sample (n = 1,665) was aged 45.2 ± 12 years, 20.4% were male, had a body mass index of 48.7 ± 9 kg/m2, and 63.6% were White. OaSH prevalence was 68.5%. OaSH patients were older and more likely to be male with a higher BMI, apnea-hypopnea index, and glycated hemoglobin. The composite outcome was higher in OaSH vs non-OaSH patients (18.9% vs 14.3%, P = .021). Although some individual outcomes were respectively higher in OaSH vs non-OaSH patients, differences were not statistically significant: intubation (1.5% vs 1.3%, P = .81) and 30-day readmission (13.8% vs 11.3%, P = .16). Long-term mortality (median follow-up: 22.9 months) was not significantly different between groups, likely due to overall low event rate (hazard ratio = 1.39, 95% confidence interval: 0.56, 3.42). In this largest sample to date of systematically phenotyped OaSH in a bariatric surgery cohort, we identify increased postoperative morbidity in those with sleep-related hypoventilation in stage II OHS when a composite outcome was considered, but individual contributors of intubation, intensive care unit admission, and hospital length of stay were not increased. Further study is needed to identify whether perioperative treatment of OaSH improves post-bariatric surgery outcomes. Chindamporn P, Wang L, Bena J, etal. Obesity-associated sleep hypoventilation and increased adverse postoperative bariatric surgery outcomes in a large clinical retrospective cohort. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(12):2793-2801.

Online communities on competing platforms: Evidence from game wikis

AbstractResearch SummaryMany platforms rely on volunteer contributions for value creation. Thus, unpaid contributors are valuable to the platform, but control over their activities is limited. We study whether and how volunteer communities can provide a competitive advantage and ask how contributor behavior depends on a platform's competitive position. We propose two channels: First, a stronger competitive position facilitates contributor coordination, leading to a larger active community. Second, a platform's competitive position is related to contributor motivation, which drives how much individuals contribute. Studying two competing game wiki platforms, we find that a platform's stronger competitive position is associated with higher activity, primarily driven by the number of contributors, which in turn triggers increased contributions by existing contributors. Further, high‐productivity contributors are especially active on a stronger platform.Managerial SummaryOnline “crowdsourcing” communities create value for many digital platforms, but managing them in a way that ensures productive contributions is challenging. To better understand the conditions under which online communities create value productively we analyze how contribution patterns differ between more and less successful platforms. We study 13 game wiki communities on two competing platforms and find that success is tied to higher activity, which is in turn the result of more manpower in the value creation process, but also higher productivity by individual contributors. In addition, a dedicated core of highly productive community members is an important driver of platform success. These findings have implications for the motivation of community members, and the entry and growth strategies of crowdsourced platforms.

Sección Bibliográfica

This section reviews books published recently. Most reviews are solicited by the editors from individual contributors but additional reviews are always most welcome. Reviews express the subjective opinions of individual reviewers.

Turnover of Companies in OpenStack: Prevalence and Rationale

To achieve commercial goals, companies have made substantial contributions to large open-source software (OSS) ecosystems such as OpenStack and have become the main contributors. However, they often withdraw their employees for a variety of reasons, which may affect the sustainability of OSS projects. While the turnover of individual contributors has been extensively investigated, there is a lack of knowledge about the nature of companies’ withdrawal. To this end, we conduct a mixed-methods empirical study on OpenStack to reveal how common company withdrawals were, to what degree withdrawn companies made contributions, and what the rationale behind withdrawals was. By analyzing the commit data of 18 versions of OpenStack, we find that the number of companies that have left is increasing and even surpasses the number of companies that have joined in later versions. Approximately 12% of the companies in each version have exited by the next version. Compared to the sustaining companies that joined in the same version, the withdrawn companies tend to have a weaker contribution intensity but contribute to a similar scope of repositories in OpenStack. Through conducting a developer survey, we find four aspects of reasons for companies’ withdrawal from OpenStack: company, community, developer, and project. The most common reasons lie in the company aspect, i.e., the company either achieved its goals or failed to do so. By fitting the survival analysis model, we find that commercial goals are associated with the probability of the company’s withdrawal, and that a company’s contribution intensity and scale are positively correlated with its retention. Maintaining good retention is important but challenging for OSS ecosystems, and our results may shed light on potential approaches to improve company retention and reduce the negative impact of company withdrawal.

The Shameful Story (La Storia Vergognosa)

The Shameful Story (La Storia Vergognosa)

Individual, Family, and Socioeconomic Contributors to Dental Caries in Children from Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

Introduction: Collective evidence on risk factors for dental caries remains elusive in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The objective was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis on risk factors for dental caries in deciduous or permanent teeth in LMICs. Methods: Studies were identified electronically through databases, including Cochrane Oral Health Group Trials Register, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PubMed/MEDLINE, and CINAHL, using “prevalence, dental caries, child, family, socioeconomic, and LMIC” as the keywords. A total of 11 studies fit the inclusion criteria. Quality assessment of the included studies was performed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). The MedCalc software and Review Manager 5.4.1 were used. Results: From 11,115 participants, 38.7% (95% CI: 28.4–49.5%) had caries and 49.68% were female. Among those with caries, 69.74% consumed sugary drinks/sweets (95% CI: 47.84–87.73%) and 56.87% (95% CI: 35.39–77.08%) had good brushing habits. Sugary drinks had a two times higher likelihood of leading to caries (OR: 2.04, p < 0.001). Good oral hygiene reduced the risk of caries by 35% (OR: 0.65, p < 0.001). Concerning maternal education, only secondary education reduced the likelihood of caries (OR: 0.96), but primary education incurred 25% higher risks (OR: 1.25, p = 0.03). A 65% reduction was computed when caregivers helped children with tooth brushing (OR: 0.35, p = 0.04). Most families had a low socioeconomic status (SES) (35.9%, 95% CI: 16.73–57.79), which increased the odds of caries by 52% (OR: 1.52, p < 0.001); a high SES had a 3% higher chance of caries. In the entire sample, 44.44% (95% CI: 27.73–61.82%) of individuals had access to dental services or had visited a dental service provider. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that high sugar consumption, low maternal education, and low and high socioeconomic status (SES) increased the risk of dental caries in LMICs. Good brushing habits, higher maternal education, help with tooth brushing, and middle SES provided protection against caries across LMIC children. Limiting sugars, improving oral health education, incorporating national fluoride exposure programs, and accounting for sociodemographic limitations are essential for reducing the prevalence of dental caries in these settings.

Mitigating Membership Inference in Deep Learning Applications with High Dimensional Genomic Data.

The use of deep learning techniques in medical applications holds great promises for advancing health care. However, there are growing privacy concerns regarding what information about individual data contributors (i.e., patients in the training set) these deep models may reveal when shared with external users. In this work, we first investigate the membership privacy risks in sharing deep learning models for cancer genomics tasks, and then study the applicability of privacy-protecting strategies for mitigating these privacy risks.

Southern Irish Loyalism, 1912–1949, ed. Brian Hughes and Conor Morrissey

The experience of the Protestant and loyalist (not necessarily always the same thing) minority in independent Ireland has of late been the subject of a volume of literature disproportionate to that group’s numerical size. This volume complements a related compendium on Protestant and Irish: The Minority’s Search for a Place in Independent Ireland (2019), edited by Ian d’Alton and Ida Milne and featuring a number of the same authors, including the editors of the volume under review, Brian Hughes and Conor Morrissey. Both Hughes and Morrissey have also produced recent monographs, Defying the IRA (Hughes, 2016; rev. ante, cxxxiii [2018], pp. 1000–1002), and Protestant Nationalists in Ireland, 1900–1923 (Morrissey; 2019), which delve deeper into aspects of the earlier part of the period covered by this volume. As the product of an academic conference held at Maynooth University in 2017, the content reflects the self-selecting nature of a response by individual contributors to a call for papers, a process affording editors less curatorial control over content. As a result, and while the editors have tried to focus ‘less on religious identity (Protestantism), or a firm political programme (unionism), and more on the outlook, perspective, or economic choice that characterised southern Irish loyalism’ (pp. 2–3), nevertheless the content is overwhelmingly focused on Protestants. The effort to move away from the Protestant/unionist focus is a helpful pointer to the potential for further exploration of ‘loyalism’ per se to encompass the attitudes of the lesser studied Catholic loyalists, such as those who figure in Niamh Gallagher’s Ireland and the Great War (2020; rev. ante, cxxxvii [2022]), explored there through the prism of their support for a war effort unpopular with the majority of their co-religionists.

Where the stars still shine: Some effects of star‐performers‐turned‐managers on organizational performance

AbstractResearch summaryDo former star performers become superior managers? If so, why? Using performance data from a professional sports league, this study finds that organizational performance is greater under star‐performers‐turned‐managers (SPTMs) than other managers. We develop a typology of six causal mechanisms by which SPTMs might affect organizational performance, and we indirectly test for each of them using data from a professional sports league. Our results indicate that SPTMs outperform other managers, and that this benefit is due to their role modeling and their superior ability to train and incentivize subordinates.Managerial summaryOrganizations are often, but not always, led by managers who previously achieved outstanding performance in an individual contributor role. Do such star‐performers‐turned‐managers (SPTMs) benefit an organization's performance more than other managers? If so, why? Our statistical analysis finds that National Basketball Association (NBA) teams managed by head coaches who had previously been All‐Star NBA players win games more often than other NBA teams, and also that this effect is due to a combination of SPTMs serving as a role model for their players, as well as training and incentivizing their players better.

Threat of Sabotage as a Driver of Collective Action

AbstractA model is presented where the welfare of contributors to a public good can increase when they face an adversary who ex post sabotages their efforts. It is a best response for the adversary to maximally sabotage the smallest effort, thus increasing a defector's marginal product of effort. This creates a kink in the individual contributor's payoff function around the equilibrium effort, which can lock contributors into exerting high effort. For a sufficiently large degree of complementarity between the contributors’ efforts, the adversary increases contributors’ welfare. This result is robust when departing from several simplifying assumptions of the model.

Development of a decision-support tool to quantify authorship contributions in clinical trial publications

Purpose: This study aimed to develop a decision-support tool to quantitatively determine authorship in clinical trial publications.Methods: The tool was developed in three phases: consolidation of authorship recommendations from the Good Publication Practice (GPP) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, identifying and scoring attributes using a 5-point Likert scale or a dichotomous scale, and soliciting feedback from editors and researchers.Results: The authorship criteria stipulated by the ICMJE and GPP recommendations were categorized into 2 Modules. Criterion 1 and the related GPP recommendations formed Module 1 (sub-criteria: contribution to design, data generation, and interpretation), while Module 2 was based on criteria 2 to 4 and the related GPP recommendations (sub-criteria: contribution to manuscript preparation and approval). The two modules with relevant sub-criteria were then differentiated into attributes (n = 17 in Module 1, n = 12 in Module 2). An individual contributor can be scored for each sub-criterion by summing the related attribute values; the sum of sub-criteria scores constituted the module score (Module 1 score: 70 [contribution to conception or design of the study, 20; data acquisition, 7; data analysis, 27; interpretation of data, 16]; Module 2 score: 50 [content development, 27; content review, 18; accountability, 5]). The concept was integrated into Microsoft Excel with adequate formulae and macros. A threshold of 50% for each sub-criterion and each module, with an overall score of 65%, is predefined as qualifying for authorship.Conclusion: This authorship decision-support tool would be helpful for clinical trial sponsors to assess and provide authorship to deserving contributors.

Stemming the rising tide of anger in the workplace: how to build emotion control among employees before anger spills out

PurposeThe combined impact of the pandemic together with political and social disruption has led to a rising tide of anger that is impacting the workplace. The purpose of this article is to trace the range and depth of anger among employed adults in 2021 and to identify three practical ways for leaders to reduce the risk of anger in their workforce.Design/methodology/approachWeb-based survey of 5,475 employed adults aged 18 and older.FindingsAcross the entire sample, 21% of employees report getting angry more easily or more often lately. While there was no significant difference between men and women, younger workers (younger than 30) were 1.4× more likely (31% for <30 vs 20% for 30+) to report getting angry more easily or more often. Managers were slightly more likely to report increases in anger compared to individual contributors (23% vs 21%).Originality/valueWhile leaders cannot alter the root causes of the rising tide of anger, they can equip the workforce with the emotional and behavioral skills to improve self-management. Three practical steps for leaders are offered: acknowledge, assess and understand the problem by integrating data that helps identify the scope, scale and root cause of the challenges and frustrations the workforce is facing; adopt innovative strategies proven to support mental health; and empower a more resilient workforce by providing the tools and techniques that improve coping skills.

Crowdsourcing research questions in science

Scientists are increasingly crossing the boundaries of the professional system by involving the general public (the crowd) directly in their research. However, this crowd involvement tends to be confined to empirical work and it is not clear whether and how crowds can also be involved in conceptual stages such as formulating the questions that research is trying to address. Drawing on five different “paradigms” of crowdsourcing and related mechanisms, we first discuss potential merits of involving crowds in the formulation of research questions (RQs). We then analyze data from two crowdsourcing projects in the medical sciences to describe key features of RQs generated by crowd members and compare the quality of crowd contributions to that of RQs generated in the conventional scientific process. We find that the majority of crowd contributions are problem restatements that can be useful to assess problem importance but provide little guidance regarding potential causes or solutions. At the same time, crowd-generated research questions frequently cross disciplinary boundaries by combining elements from different fields within and especially outside medicine. Using evaluations by professional scientists, we find that the average crowd contribution has lower novelty and potential scientific impact than professional research questions, but comparable practical impact. Crowd contributions outperform professional RQs once we apply selection mechanisms at the level of individual contributors or across contributors. Our findings advance research on crowd and citizen science, crowdsourcing and distributed knowledge production, as well as the organization of science. We also inform ongoing policy debates around the involvement of citizens in research in general, and agenda setting in particular.

Multi-species amphibian monitoring across a protected landscape: Critical reflections on 15 years of wetland monitoring in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks

Widespread amphibian declines were well documented at the end of the 20th century, raising concerns about the need to identify individual and interactive contributors to this global trend. At the same time, there was growing interest in the use of amphibians as ecological indicators. In the United States, wetland and amphibian monitoring programs were launched in some national parks as a necessary first step to evaluating the status and trends of amphibian populations within some of North America’s most protected areas. In Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, a multi-species amphibian monitoring program was launched by many of the authors in 2006 and continues to this day. This Viewpoint Article serves as a self-evaluation of our journey from conception through implementation of an ongoing, long-term monitoring program. This self-evaluation should provide a framework and guidance for other monitoring programs. We address whether we are fulfilling the program’s main objective of describing status and trends of the four amphibian species, discuss how a one-size-fits-all monitoring approach does not serve all species equally, and describe opportunities to bolster our core work using emerging statistical approaches and thoughtful integration of remote sensing and molecular tools. We also describe how the data generated over the program’s first 15 years have been useful beyond our initial goal of characterizing status and trend. Notably, our integration of climate datasets has allowed us to describe wetland and species-specific amphibian responses to variations in climate drivers. Documenting climate links to amphibian occurrence and their primary habitats has allowed us to identify which species, habitat types, and subregions within this large, protected landscape are most vulnerable to anticipated climate change. Recognizing that tools and threats change over time, it will be important to adapt our original monitoring design to maximize opportunities and use of resulting information. Maintaining engagement by multiple stakeholders and expanding our funding portfolio will also be necessary to sustain our program into the future. Finally, collaboration has become standard for long-term, cross-jurisdictional, landscape-scale monitoring. We argue that collaborative monitoring facilitates resource sharing, leveraging of limited funds, completion of work, and mutual learning. Such collaboration also increases the efficacy of conservation.

Combined Experimental/Finite Element Investigation of Transverse Barrel Movement

Abstract Transverse barrel movement was measured during the firing of a Ruger Precision Rifle chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor. The use of laser vibrometers enabled high-speed measurement at good resolution during the projectile in-bore transient. Lateral vibrations have been broken into constituents based on source using a combination of experiments and finite element modeling. Individual contributors to overall vibration discussed include firing pin impact, primer ignition, and the combined load of combustion gas pressure and projectile–bore interaction. Good correlation was obtained between barrel motion in the vertical plane and model predictions during the in-bore period. It was concluded that action of the firing pin and primer impulse contribute significantly to the overall dynamic response of the barrel.

Severe Psychological Distress Among Medical Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Toward a Safer Mental Health

Objective: As we learn how to live with the COVID pandemic, understanding this psychological impact of the coronavirus outbreak and its determinants is the first step towards finding solutions. The aim of the study is to examine the status of medical students' mental health and assess psychological distress determinants and pathways in order to suggest adapted strategies to help them. Methods: We performed a convergent parallel mixed-methods analysis of an online survey administered to medical students from March 23 to March 28, 2020. Psychological distress was assessed through the Kessler 6 (K6) questionnaire. Factors associated with severe psychological distress (SPD, K6&gt;13) were identified by multivariable logistic regression. The qualitative part analyzed responses to open-ended questions addressing medical students' perspectives on the impact of the pandemic and relieving factors. Results: 808 medical students completed the survey. Severe psychological distress was reported by 234(28.96%) respondents and was independently associated with: Female sex (OR,2.8;[ 95%CI ,1.791-4.363];P&lt;0.001), clinical study level (OR,0.621;[95%CI,0.437-0.881];P =0.008), Tobacco use (OR, 3.664;[95% CI,1.9 - 7.07];P =0.001), history of psychiatric meds (OR, 2.454 ;[95%CI,1.384 - 4.454];P=0.001) and quarantine (OR, 1.5 ;[95%CI, 1.015 - 2.337];P =0.04). Students submitted a total of 2424 concerns about ways the pandemic affected different areas of their lives and redundants determinants were summarized. Conclusion: During the COVID crisis, 28% of our students experienced severe mental distress due to multifactorial determinants including social and individual psychological and behavioral contributors. This crisis is an opportunity to address the well known mental health morbidities of future physicians and increase the awareness about the important role that medical schools could have as a safety net and support system. Keywords: COVID-19, Medical student, Mental health, Psychological distress, lifting lockdown measures

Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ed. by William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns

Reviewed by: Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ed. by William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns Benjamin Bertrand William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns, eds., Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ( Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), xvii + 289 pp., 60 ills. This new volume offers an exciting collection of interdisciplinary essays on a well-known but seldom-studied player in twelfth-century English history, Henry of Blois. By calling attention to the multifaceted career of this bishop, abbot, papal legate, and brother to King Stephen of England, the contributors hope to subvert long-standing historiographical biases about his life and blaze a trail for future research. As editors William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns make clear in their introduction, historians have often trivialized Henry of Blois as a corrupt opportunist, disregarding his place as a churchman of international importance and as a powerful patron of the arts. The book and its nine collected essays are [End Page 260] the result of a symposium on the eponymous bishop held at Fitzwilliam College in 2015, with contributors from the fields of history, archaeology, and art history. By reexamining various aspects of Henry of Blois's life through available written, archaeological, and artistic evidence, the book's editors and contributors hope to inject new life into discussions of the bishop. Kynan-Wilson and Munns are careful to define the scope of their project in their introduction. They describe the book not as a new biography of Henry of Blois but as an attempt to "offer new interpretations of specific aspects of Henry's life, personality, career and significance as they have drawn the interest of individual contributors." (3). They are particularly interested in breaking down older scholarly interpretations that sought to characterize Henry's career as either a success or a failure. The editors seek to integrate Henry into "the narrative of medieval European history" by understanding him in the context of his many continental connections (2). There is a commendable focus in their introduction on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars who embraced Henry as a symbol of a more "muscular Church" (14). Their historiographical survey speaks favorably of Lena Voss's Heinrich von Blois, Bischof von Winchester, the last major monograph published on Henry in 1932, and somewhat less so of David Knowles's discussion of the bishop in his writing. Knowles's rather negative portrait of Henry as an opportunist and lackluster churchman is much of what this volume hopes to reinterpret. The editors' limited scope for the volume is both realistic and commendable, positioning the reader for the nine essays that follow. While not organized into sections per se, the volume's essays seem to have been grouped thematically, with the first three addressing Henry's place in twelfth-century ecclesiastical politics. M. J. Franklin's article concerns Henry's attachments and loyalties to the monastery where he was raised, Cluny. He pores over the evidence for Henry's itinerary, noting his many visits to the abbey and the considerable time and resources he devoted to it. Franklin argues that scholars must recognize this commitment to his mother house in order to understand fully Henry's political motivations. Barbara Bombi analyzes another aspect of Henry's career by focusing on his tenure as England's papal legate from 1139–43. She reassesses Henry's legatine achievements to argue that, rather than wielding his power capriciously and corruptly, Henry primarily used his position to advance Church reform and papal interests. She argues for a re-contextualization not only of his career but also of legatine powers in the twelfth century, offering a fresh perspective on Henry's legatine activities. John Munns's contribution to the volume further reconsiders Henry's episcopacy by comparing him to his "episcopal colleagues" (69). He pushes back on scholars who have characterized Henry as uniquely nepotistic, militaristic, and opportunistic. On the contrary, Munns suggests that his behavior was in fact fairly typical of English bishops at this time. He argues that historians have been too quick to "substitute caricature for complexity" when analyzing figures such as Henry of Blois (92). Throughout this handful of essays, the authors do an admirable job of providing context for the bishop's...

Usual intake of dietary isoflavone and its major food sources in Koreans: Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2016-2018 data.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVESAccumulating evidence has shown the beneficial effects of isoflavone on health. There is limited information on the usual isoflavone intake for Koreans. This study examined the usual intake of total isoflavone and its major food sources in Koreans according to age and gender.SUBJECTS/METHODSThe dietary intake data of 21,271 participants aged 1 yrs and older from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) VII 2016–2018 were analyzed. The average isoflavone intake was estimated based on the 24-h dietary recall data in KNHANES and the isoflavone database from the Korea Rural Development Administration (RDA) and literatures. The usual isoflavone intake was estimated by applying the ratio of within- and between-participant variance estimated from the 2009 KNHANES data to the 7th KNHANES (2016–2018) data. The variance of the isoflavone intake was calculated using MIXTRAN macro with intake data for two days in the 2009 KNHANES. Complex sample analysis with stratified variables and integrated weights was conducted.RESULTSThe mean total isoflavone intake in the Korean population aged 1 yrs and older (n = 21,271) was 139.27 mg/d, which was higher than the usual intake of 47.44mg/d. Legumes were a major contributing food group (91%), with arrowroot being a major individual contributor to the isoflavone intake (67.2%), followed by 21.3% of soybean, 5.4% of bean sprouts, and 2.1% of tofu. The usual isoflavone intake was highest in the participants aged 50 to 64 yrs old and increased with age until 50 to 64 yrs and then decreased with further increases in age. The usual isoflavone intake of participants aged 65 yrs and older was higher for men than for women, showing gender differences.CONCLUSIONSThe usual dietary intake of isoflavone varied according to age and gender in the Korean population. This study showed that the usual isoflavone intake was lower than the average isoflavone intake. The difference between percentiles of the usual isoflavone intake was similarly smaller than the average intake. An estimation of average intake can be hindered by the occasional consumption of foods high in isoflavones, suggesting that the usual intake estimation method can be more appropriate. Further research will be needed to establish isoflavone dietary guidelines regarding the effects of isoflavone intake on health outcomes.

Metabolic Syndrome Associated with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Some Nigerian Women

Background: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a group of symptoms associated with endocrine disorders in women of reproductive age. Women with this syndrome is at increased risk of metabolic syndrome. This study described the metabolic syndrome and its associated components among women with PCOS in Nigerian populace. Methods: A total of 90 participants (50 PCOS and 40 controls) were recruited for the study. The diagnosis of PCOS was established using the criteria defined by International PCOS guidelines 2018. Demographic, anthropometric, and clinico-pathological data, including blood pressure, were obtained for each participant. Metabolic syndrome was diagnosed using the 2005 revised National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel-III (revised NCEP ATP_III) guidelines. Fasting blood glucose, insulin, total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, and triglycerides were evaluated with conventional spectrophotometric methods. Results: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome in PCOS women was 24%, with an odds ratio of 5.211, while the prevalence of 5.7% was observed in the control group. The prevalence of central obesity (waist circumference &gt;88cm), FBS ≥100 mg/dl, HDL &lt;50 mg/dl, triglycerides ≥150 mg/dl, and blood pressure ≥130/85 mmHg in PCOS women was 60%, 22%, 54%, 12%, and 20%, respectively. The most frequently observed individual components of metabolic syndrome were increased waist circumference and decreased HDL cholesterol. Conclusion: Metabolic syndrome and its components, especially obesity, are a major risk factor of PCOS in our population. Routine screening and modulating individual contributors of metabolic syndrome may support PCOS management.