At a regional scale,

highly differing climatic response patterns were observed.”
“Modern food systems are characterized by a range of resource use, environmental, and socioeconomic impacts, resulting from choices made by various actors, including the public, who are “distanced” from these impacts, with important implications for sustainability. In order to make ecologically responsible food choices, the public will need information that is reliable, easily comprehensible, and that allows them to discriminate between these choices in terms of the range of impacts, and their trade-offs with factors such as market price. We illustrate, by means of a case study involving nine variations of two meals of similar

nutritional see more energy content, some challenges and issues associated with estimating and integrating the diverse impacts of food systems, and explore the implications of our results for communicating these impacts in a manner that balances epistemic adequacy with heuristic usefulness in enabling ecologically responsible food choices. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.”
“OBJECTIVE Plasma adiponectin levels are reduced in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and other insulin-resistant states. We examined whether plasma adiponectin levels at baseline and after pioglitazone treatment in impaired glucose INCB28060 nmr tolerance (IGT) subjects were associated with improved insulin sensitivity (Si) and glucose tolerance status. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 602 high-risk IGT subjects in ACT NOW were randomized to receive pioglitazone or placebo with a median follow-up of 2.4 years. RESULTS Pioglitazone reduced IGT conversion to diabetes by 72% in association with improved n-cell function by 64% (insulin secretion/insulin resistance index) and increased tissue sensitivity by 88% (Matsuda index). In pioglitazone-treated subjects,

plasma adiponectin concentration increased threefold from 13 +/- Pitavastatin clinical trial 0.5 to 38 +/- 2.5 mu g/mL (P smaller than 0.001) and was strongly correlated with the improvement in SI (r = 0.436, P smaller than 0.001) and modestly correlated with glucose area under the curve during oral glucose tolerance test (r = 0.238, P smaller than 0.005) and insulin secretion/insulin resistance index (r = 0.306, P smaller than 0.005). The increase in adiponectin was a strong predictor of reversion to normal glucose tolerance and prevention of T2DM. In the placebo group, plasma adiponectin did not change and was not correlated with changes in glucose levels. There was an inverse association between baseline plasma adiponectin concentration and progression to diabetes in the placebo group but not in the pioglitazone group. CONCLUSIONS Baseline adiponectin does not predict the response to pioglitazone.