Beyond BMI: A Patient-Centered Approach to Discussing Obesity.

This Points to Remember column outlines an approach to initiating the discussion of obesity with a patient in the clinical setting. Written by faculty and residents of the Houston Methodist Family Medicine Residency Program, these points can help physicians develop a patient-centered approach to broaching the discussion of weight management that fosters an open dialogue and works to reduce weight stigma and biases surrounding obesity.

Temporal changes in the Swiss flora: implications for flower-visiting insects.

Background: Local floristic diversity has massively decreased during the twentieth century in Central Europe even though in the 1990s diversity began increasing again in several regions. However, little is known whether this increase is equally distributed among plant groups with different reproductive traits.

Methods: Our study is based on data of the Swiss Biodiversity Monitoring Program.

Combinatorial patterns of graded RhoA activation and uniform F-actin depletion promote tissue curvature.

During development, gene expression regulates cell mechanics and shape to sculpt tissues. Epithelial folding proceeds through distinct cell shape changes that occur simultaneously in different regions of a tissue. Here, using quantitative imaging in Drosophila melanogaster, we investigate how patterned cell shape changes promote tissue bending during early embryogenesis.

Tension, contraction and tissue morphogenesis.

D'Arcy Thompson was a proponent of applying mathematical and physical principles to biological systems, an approach that is becoming increasingly common in developmental biology. Indeed, the recent integration of quantitative experimental data, force measurements and mathematical modeling has changed our understanding of morphogenesis - the shaping of an organism during development. Emerging evidence suggests that the subcellular organization of contractile cytoskeletal networks plays a key role in force generation, while on the tissue level the spatial organization of forces determines the morphogenetic output.