Dietary Modulation of Oxidative Stress From Edible Insects: A Mini-Review

Edible insects are proposed as a nutritious and environmentally sustainable alternative source to animal proteins, due to their numerous advantages in terms of reduced ecological impact and high nutritional value. However, the novelty for edible insects relies on the content of bioactive ingredients potentially able to induce a functional effect in the body. The present review summarizes the main findings on the antioxidant properties of edible insects available in the literature. A total of 30 studies involving animals, cell cultures, or in vitro experimental studies evaluating the antioxidant effect of edible insects are presented in this work. When the antioxidant activity was investigated, using a wide variety of in vitro tests and in cellular models, positive results were shown. Dietary supplementation with edible insects was also able to counteract dietary oxidative stress in animal models, restoring the balance of antioxidant enzymes and reducing the formation of oxidation damage markers. On the basis of the reviewed evidences, edible insects might represent a source of novel redox ingredients at low ecological impact able to modulate oxidative stress. However, due to the fact that majority of these evidences have been obtained in vitro and in cellular and animal models, dietary intervention trials are needed to assess the efficacy of edible insect consumption to modulate redox status in humans

Mixed Linear Layouts of Planar Graphs

A $k$-stack (respectively, $k$-queue) layout of a graph consists of a total order of the vertices, and a partition of the edges into $k$ sets of non-crossing (non-nested) edges with respect to the vertex ordering. In 1992, Heath and Rosenberg conjectured that every planar graph admits a mixed $1$-stack $1$-queue layout in which every edge is assigned to a stack or to a queue that use a common vertex ordering. We disprove this conjecture by providing a planar graph that does not have such a mixed layout. In addition, we study mixed layouts of graph subdivisions, and show that every planar graph has a mixed subdivision with one division vertex per edge.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017

The Queue-Number of Posets of Bounded Width or Height

Heath and Pemmaraju conjectured that the queue-number of a poset is bounded by its width and if the poset is planar then also by its height. We show that there are planar posets whose queue-number is larger than their height, refuting the second conjecture. On the other hand, we show that any poset of width $2$ has queue-number at most $2$, thus confirming the first conjecture in the first non-trivial case. Moreover, we improve the previously best known bounds and show that planar posets of width $w$ have queue-number at most $3w-2$ while any planar poset with $0$ and $1$ has queue-number at most its width.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, Appears in the Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2018

Stack and Queue Layouts via Layered Separators

It is known that every proper minor-closed class of graphs has bounded stack-number (a.k.a. book thickness and page number). While this includes notable graph families such as planar graphs and graphs of bounded genus, many other graph families are not closed under taking minors. For fixed $g$ and $k$, we show that every $n$-vertex graph that can be embedded on a surface of genus $g$ with at most $k$ crossings per edge has stack-number $\mathcal{O}(\log n)$; this includes $k$-planar graphs. The previously best known bound for the stack-number of these families was $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{n})$, except in the case of $1$-planar graphs. Analogous results are proved for map graphs that can be embedded on a surface of fixed genus. None of these families is closed under taking minors. The main ingredient in the proof of these results is a construction proving that $n$-vertex graphs that admit constant layered separators have $\mathcal{O}(\log n)$ stack-number.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2016

Influenza vaccination in HIV-positive subjects: latest evidence and future perspective

nnual influenza vaccination is recommended for persons with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Recent reports indi- cate that immunizations may increase HIV replication in infected individuals. Generally, vaccination against influenza is well toler- ated in both children and adult individuals with HIV and does not induce significant changes in viral load and CD4+ cell counts. The observed increase in viral replication is usually transient and a clear, measurable progression of the underlying HIV disease is hard to be determined. Several studies reported immunogenicity data in HIV+ population, by comparing different influenza vaccines, adju- vanted or not, and different administration routes. Data are encour- aging because an adequate immune response is shown, although split/subunit vaccines do not elicite an efficient immune response in these subjects. New strategies have been evaluated to increase the immune response in immunocompromised patients.The aim of this review is to evaluate tolerability, safety, immunogenicity and effi- cacy of vaccines actually approved for human use and to consider latest evidence and future perspective in HIV positive subjects

A New Perspective on Clustered Planarity as a Combinatorial Embedding Problem

The clustered planarity problem (c-planarity) asks whether a hierarchically clustered graph admits a planar drawing such that the clusters can be nicely represented by regions. We introduce the cd-tree data structure and give a new characterization of c-planarity. It leads to efficient algorithms for c-planarity testing in the following cases. (i) Every cluster and every co-cluster (complement of a cluster) has at most two connected components. (ii) Every cluster has at most five outgoing edges. Moreover, the cd-tree reveals interesting connections between c-planarity and planarity with constraints on the order of edges around vertices. On one hand, this gives rise to a bunch of new open problems related to c-planarity, on the other hand it provides a new perspective on previous results.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Functional properties of edible insects: a systematic review

: Consumption of edible insects has been widely suggested as an environmentally sustainable substitute for meat to reduce GHG emissions. However, the novel research field for edible insects rely on the content of bioactive ingredients and on the ability to induce a functional effect in humans. The goal of this manuscript was to review the available body of evidence on the properties of edible insects in modulating oxidative and inflammatory stress, platelet aggregation, lipid and glucose metabolism and weight control. A search for literature investigating the functional role of edible insects was carried out in the PUBMED database using specific keywords. A total of 55 studies, meeting inclusion criteria after screening, were divided on the basis of the experimental approach: in vitro studies, cellular models/ex vivo studies or in vivo studies. In the majority of the studies, insects demonstrated the ability to reduce oxidative stress, modulate antioxidant status, restore the impaired activity of antioxidant enzymes and reduce markers of oxidative damage. Edible insects displayed anti-inflammatory activity reducing cytokines and modulating specific transcription factors. Results from animal studies suggest that edible insects can modulate lipid and glucose metabolism. The limited number of studies focused on the assessment of anticoagulation activity of edible insects make it difficult to draw conclusions. More evidence from dietary intervention studies in humans is needed to support the promising evidence from in vitro and animal models about the functional role of edible insects consumption

Valorization of orange peels in a biorefinery loop: recovery of limonene and production of volatile fatty acids and activated carbon

Orange peels (OPs) were valorized in a lab-scale biorefinery loop for the recovery of limonene and the subsequent production of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and activated carbon (AC). Solid/liquid extraction of limonene was optimized using n-hexane at 85 degrees C with an OPs-to-solvent ratio of 2:1, allowing for a limonene recovery yield of 1.20% w/w. Then, post-extraction OPs were used for the production of both VFAs and AC. For VFA production, a hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 5 days and a total solid (TS) inlet content of 10% w/w were adopted leading to a VFA yield of about 43% gVFAs/gTS. Adsorption tests revealed that, among all the solid matrixes tested, only powdered activated carbon (PAC) was able to discriminate no-VFA compounds and allowed for VFA purification. For AC production, post-extraction OPs were firstly converted into biochar through slow pyrolysis at 550 degrees C for 1 h and then physically activated with CO2 at 880 degrees C for 1 h. Extraction did not appreciably affect OP properties, while pyrolysis increased the carbon content (from 43 to 83%) and the heating value (from 17 to 29 MJ/kg) of the material. Physical activation of OP biochar increased its surface area by almost ten times, from 40 to 326 m(2)/g, proving the effectiveness of the treatment

Parental Impact on Child Physical Activity and Sedentary Time in Appalachian North Carolina

Introduction: Physical activity has positive health benefits across the lifespan including reduced rates of chronic disease. Despite having ample availability of outdoor space for physical activity in the Appalachian Mountain region, there are low rates of physical activity along with high rates of sedentary time and increased prevalence of overweight individuals across all age groups. Therefore, there is a need to understand the factors that influence family’s physical activity and sedentary time. Purpose: To assess whether parental attitudes and behaviors influence children’s physical activity and sedentary time. Methods: The current study was a secondary analysis of the baseline data from a pilot study of a pediatrician prescription program for outdoor physical activity. Parents (N = 70) with children aged 5–13 years living in a county served by a single-pediatrician office completed surveys in the pediatrician’s office during a well-child visit. The survey included questions related to parental attitudes toward children’s physical activity and the physical activity and sedentary time performed by the parent and their child. Results: Parent sedentary time was the only factor that had an impact on child sedentary time, with 18% of the variance in children’s sedentary time being explained by parent sedentary time. No factors predicted children’s physical activity. Implications: To decrease child sedentary time, interventions should focus on reducing parental and joint parent–child sedentary time

How to manage massive spatiotemporal dataset from stationary and non-stationary sensors in commercial DBMS?

The growing diffusion of the latest information and communication technologies in different contexts allowed the constitution of enormous sensing networks that form the underlying texture of smart environments. The amount and the speed at which these environments produce and consume data are starting to challenge current spatial data management technologies. In this work, we report on our experience handling real-world spatiotemporal datasets: a stationary dataset referring to the parking monitoring system and a non-stationary dataset referring to a train-mounted railway monitoring system. In particular, we present the results of an empirical comparison of the retrieval performances achieved by three different off-the-shelf settings to manage spatiotemporal data, namely the well-established combination of PostgreSQL + PostGIS with standard indexing, a clustered version of the same setup, and then a combination of the basic setup with Timescale, a storage extension specialized in handling temporal data. Since the non-stationary dataset has put much pressure on the configurations above, we furtherly investigated the advantages achievable by combining the TSMS setup with state-of-the-art indexing techniques. Results showed that the standard indexing is by far outperformed by the other solutions, which have different trade-offs. This experience may help researchers and practitioners facing similar problems managing these types of data