Bioavailability and Urinary Excretion of Phenolic-Derived Metabolites after Acute Consumption of Purple Majesty Potato in Humans

A novel purple potato variety, Purple Majesty (PM) contains an abundance of phenolic compounds, especially anthocyanins. The aim of this study was to assess the bioavailability of phenolic compounds in plasma measured as total polyphenols and urinary excretion of phenolic-derived metabolites after acute consumption of cooked PM. Five healthy male subjects (27-60 years; mean BMI: 26.7 ± 4.1) participated in a bioavailability study. Blood and urine were sampled at baseline and following consumption of 400 g cooked PM at 1h, 2h, 4h and 24h. A peak plasma antioxidant capacity was reached 1-2 hours post-consumption (from 1044 ± 281 µmol/L Fe(II) at baseline and increased to 1257 ± 180 after 1 hour (p = 0.045) and 1112 ± 251 µmol/L Fe(II) after 2 hours (p=0.06). Total phenols level in plasma was reached after 2 hours (from 342.4 ± 28.3 at baseline to 368.4 ± 25 umol/L GAE). Liquid chromatography mass spectrometric (LC-MS) analysis was used to track the levels of anthocyanin-like derivatives and metabolites in the urine of volunteers after intake of the cooked Purple Majesty potatoes. No anthocyanin derivatives were detected in urine by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry indicating levels were < 2 nM. The majority of peaks that increased after intake were putatively identified as sulphated phenolic metabolites. Phenolic glucuronides were identified but other peaks remain unidentified. Hippuric acid was identified as a major phenolic derivative. Hydroxy benzoic derivatives, characteristic of intake of anthocyanins, were not detected in urine, however metabolites expected from the B-ring of petunidin (i.e. methyl gallic acid) may have been obscured by other peaks. Some metabolites could have arisen through metabolism of chlorogenic acid, which is present at ~ equivalent amounts to anthocyanins in cooked PM. In conclusion, acute consumption of PM resulted in an increase in excretion of urinary phenolic derived metabolites. Identifying these unknown phenolic derivatives warrants further investigation

Bioavailability and Urinary Excretion of Phenolic-Derived Metabolites after Acute Consumption of Purple Majesty Potato in Humans

Nellie E. Gibney - wifehttps://stars.library.ucf.edu/cfm-ch-memoranda-1930/1322/thumbnail.jp

Quantum anti-Zeno effect in artificial quantum systems

In this paper, we study a quantum anti-Zeno effect (QAZE) purely induced by repetitive measurements for an artificial atom interacting with a structured bath. This bath can be artificially realized with coupled resonators in one dimension and possesses photonic band structure like Bloch electron in a periodic potential. In the presence of repetitive measurements, the pure QAZE is discovered as the observable decay is not negligible even for the atomic energy level spacing outside of the energy band of the artificial bath. If there were no measurements, the decay would not happen outside of the band. In this sense, the enhanced decay is completely induced by measurements through the relaxation channels provided by the bath. Besides, we also discuss the controversial golden rule decay rates originated from the van Hove's singularities and the effects of the counter-rotating terms.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Ribosomal S6K1 in POMC and AgRP Neurons Regulates Glucose Homeostasis but Not Feeding Behavior in Mice.

SummaryHypothalamic ribosomal S6K1 has been suggested as a point of convergence for hormonal and nutrient signals in the regulation of feeding behavior, bodyweight, and glucose metabolism. However, the long-term effects of manipulating hypothalamic S6K1 signaling on energy homeostasis and the cellular mechanisms underlying these roles are unclear. We therefore inactivated S6K1 in pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) and agouti-related protein (AgRP) neurons, key regulators of energy homeostasis, but in contrast to the current view, we found no evidence that S6K1 regulates food intake and bodyweight. In contrast, S6K1 signaling in POMC neurons regulated hepatic glucose production and peripheral lipid metabolism and modulated neuronal excitability. S6K1 signaling in AgRP neurons regulated skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity and was required for glucose sensing by these neurons. Our findings suggest that S6K1 signaling is not a general integrator of energy homeostasis in the mediobasal hypothalamus but has distinct roles in the regulation of glucose homeostasis by POMC and AgRP neurons

Engineering polymer informatics: Towards the computer-aided design of polymers

The computer-aided design of polymers is one of the holy grails of modern chemical informatics and of significant interest for a number of communities in polymer science. The paper outlines a vision for the in silico design of polymers and presents an information model for polymers based on modern semantic web technologies, thus laying the foundations for achieving the vision

Learning to Ask: Question-based Sequential Bayesian Product Search

Product search is generally recognized as the first and foremost stage of online shopping and thus significant for users and retailers of e-commerce. Most of the traditional retrieval methods use some similarity functions to match the user's query and the document that describes a product, either directly or in a latent vector space. However, user queries are often too general to capture the minute details of the specific product that a user is looking for. In this paper, we propose a novel interactive method to effectively locate the best matching product. The method is based on the assumption that there is a set of candidate questions for each product to be asked. In this work, we instantiate this candidate set by making the hypothesis that products can be discriminated by the entities that appear in the documents associated with them. We propose a Question-based Sequential Bayesian Product Search method, QSBPS, which directly queries users on the expected presence of entities in the relevant product documents. The method learns the product relevance as well as the reward of the potential questions to be asked to the user by being trained on the search history and purchase behavior of a specific user together with that of other users. The experimental results show that the proposed method can greatly improve the performance of product search compared to the state-of-the-art baselines.Comment: This paper is accepted by CIKM 201

Undergraduate medical textbooks do not provide adequate information on intravenous fluid therapy: a systematic survey and suggestions for improvement

&lt;b&gt;Background&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Inappropriate prescribing of intravenous (IV) fluid, particularly 0.9% sodium chloride, causes post-operative complications. Fluid prescription is often left to junior medical staff and is frequently poorly managed. One reason for poor intravenous fluid prescribing practices could be inadequate coverage of this topic in the textbooks that are used.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Methods&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; We formulated a comprehensive set of topics, related to important common clinical situations involving IV fluid therapy, (routine fluid replacement, fluid loss, fluids overload) to assess the adequacy of textbooks in common use. We assessed 29 medical textbooks widely available to students in the UK, scoring the presence of information provided by each book on each of the topics. The scores indicated how fully the topics were considered: not at all, partly, and adequately. No attempt was made to judge the quality of the information, because there is no consensus on these topics.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Results&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; The maximum score that a book could achieve was 52. Three of the topics we chose were not considered by any of the books. Discounting these topics as “too esoteric”, the maximum possible score became 46. One textbook gained a score of 45, but the general score was poor (median 11, quartiles 4, 21). In particular, coverage of routine postoperative management was inadequate.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Conclusions&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Textbooks for undergraduates cover the topic of intravenous therapy badly, which may partly explain the poor knowledge and performance of junior doctors in this important field. Systematic revision of current textbooks might improve knowledge and practice by junior doctors. Careful definition of the remit and content of textbooks should be applied more widely to ensure quality and “fitness for purpose”, and avoid omission of vital knowledge

Designing theoretically-informed implementation interventions

Clinical and health services research is continually producing new findings that may contribute to effective and efficient patient care. However, the transfer of research findings into practice is unpredictable and can be a slow and haphazard process. Ideally, the choice of implementation strategies would be based upon evidence from randomised controlled trials or systematic reviews of a given implementation strategy. Unfortunately, reviews of implementation strategies consistently report effectiveness some, but not all of the time; possible causes of this variation are seldom reported or measured by the investigators in the original studies. Thus, any attempts to extrapolate from study settings to the real world are hampered by a lack of understanding of the effects of key elements of individuals, interventions, and the settings in which they were trialled. The explicit use of theory offers a way of addressing these issues and has a number of advantages, such as providing: a generalisable framework within which to represent the dimensions that implementation studies address, a process by which to inform the development and delivery of interventions, a guide when evaluating, and a way to allow for an exploration of potential causal mechanisms. However, the use of theory in designing implementation interventions is methodologically challenging for a number of reasons, including choosing between theories and faithfully translating theoretical constructs into interventions. The explicit use of theory offers potential advantages in terms of facilitating a better understanding of the generalisability and replicability of implementation interventions. However, this is a relatively unexplored methodological area

Ribosomal S6K1 in POMC and AgRP Neurons Regulates Glucose Homeostasis but Not Feeding Behavior in Mice.

SummaryHypothalamic ribosomal S6K1 has been suggested as a point of convergence for hormonal and nutrient signals in the regulation of feeding behavior, bodyweight, and glucose metabolism. However, the long-term effects of manipulating hypothalamic S6K1 signaling on energy homeostasis and the cellular mechanisms underlying these roles are unclear. We therefore inactivated S6K1 in pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) and agouti-related protein (AgRP) neurons, key regulators of energy homeostasis, but in contrast to the current view, we found no evidence that S6K1 regulates food intake and bodyweight. In contrast, S6K1 signaling in POMC neurons regulated hepatic glucose production and peripheral lipid metabolism and modulated neuronal excitability. S6K1 signaling in AgRP neurons regulated skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity and was required for glucose sensing by these neurons. Our findings suggest that S6K1 signaling is not a general integrator of energy homeostasis in the mediobasal hypothalamus but has distinct roles in the regulation of glucose homeostasis by POMC and AgRP neurons

Wnt/Lef1 signaling acts via Pitx2 to regulate somite myogenesis

AbstractWnt signaling has been implicated in somite, limb, and branchial arch myogenesis but the mechanisms and roles are not clear. We now show that Wnt signaling via Lef1 acts to regulate the number of premyogenic cells in somites but does not regulate myogenic initiation in the limb bud or maintenance in the first or second branchial arch. We have also analysed the function and regulation of a putative downstream transcriptional target of canonical Wnt signaling, Pitx2. We show that loss-of-function of Pitx2 decreases the number of myogenic cells in the somite, whereas overexpression increases myocyte number particularly in the epaxial region of the myotome. Increased numbers of mitotic cells were observed following overexpression of Pitx2 or an activated form of Lef1, suggesting an effect on cell proliferation. In addition, we show that Pitx2 expression is regulated by canonical Wnt signaling in the epaxial somite and second branchial arch, but not in the limb or the first branchial arch. These results suggest that Wnt/Lef1 signaling regulates epaxial myogenesis via Pitx2 but that this link is uncoupled in other regions of the body, emphasizing the unique molecular networks that control the development of various muscles in vertebrates