The Efficacy of Administering Fruit-Derived Polyphenols to Improve Health Biomarkers, Exercise Performance and Related Physiological Responses

open access articlePolyphenols are secondary metabolites involved in a myriad of critical processes in plants. Over recent decades, special attention has been paid to the anti-oxidative role of fruit-derived polyphenols in the human diet, with evidence supporting the contribution of polyphenols in the prevention of numerous non-communicable disease outcomes. However, due to the low concentration in biological fluids in vivo, the antioxidant properties of polyphenols seem to be related to an enhanced endogenous antioxidant capacity induced via signaling through the nuclear respiratory factor 2 pathway. Polyphenols also seem to possess anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and have been shown to enhance vascular function via nitric oxide mediated mechanisms. Consequently, there is rationale to support fruit-derived polyphenol supplementation to enhance exercise performance, possibly via improved muscle perfusion. Fruit-derived polyphenol supplementation in exercise studies have included a variety of fruits, e.g., New Zealand blackcurrant, pomegranate, and cherry, in the form of extracts (multicomponent or purified), juices and infusions to varying degrees of benefit. For example, research has yet to link the health-related benefits of black elderberry (Sambucus nigra L.) ingestion to exercise performance in spite of the purported health benefits associated with black elderberry provision in vitro and in vivo models, which has been attributed to their high antioxidant capacity and polyphenol content. This review summarizes the existing evidence supporting a beneficial effect of fruit-derived polyphenols on various biological processes and outlines the potential for black elderberry ingestion to improve nitric oxide production, exercise performance, and the associated physiological responses before-, during- and post-exercise

Fit with good fat? The role of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on exercise performance

N-3 PUFA (n-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are a family of fatty acids mainly found in oily fish and fish oil supplements. The effects of n-3 PUFA on health are mainly derived from its anti-inflammatory proprieties and its influence on immune function. Lately an increased interest in n-3 PUFA supplementation has reached the world of sport nutrition, where the majority of athletes rely on nutrition strategies to improve their training and performance. A vast amount of attention is paid in increasing metabolic capacity, delaying the onset of fatigue, and improving muscle hypertrophy and neuromuscular function. Nutritional strategies are also frequently considered for enhancing recovery, improving immune function and decreasing oxidative stress. The current review of the literature shows that data regarding the effects of n-3PUFA supplementation are conflicting and we conclude that there is, therefore, not enough evidence supporting a beneficial role on the aforementioned aspects of exercise performance

The Effect of Krill Oil Supplementation on Exercise Performance and Markers of Immune Function

Date of Acceptance: 08/09/2015 Acknowledgments We thank the technical support of the Institute of Medical Sciences Musculoskeletal Programme and the Iain Fraser Cytometry Centre.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Imobilização de lipases em filmes de poli(álcool vinílico) e carbOximetilcelulose

TCC (graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro de Ciências Físicas e Matemáticas. Curso de Química.As enzimas em sua maioria são catalisadores de natureza protéica. São versáteis, existindo um processo enzimático equivalente para vários tipos de reações orgânicas. Técnicas de imobilização vem sendo desenvolvidas para fornecer estabilidade para enzimas em meio orgânico, facilitando sua recuperação e reutilização. O ponto de partida desse trabalho foi a imobilização das lipases de Rhyzopous oryzae (LRO, 50mg - 150000u/g) ou de Mucor javanicus (LMJ, 50mg - 10000u/g) em filmes de carbóximetilcelulose(CMC,500mg em 25mL de água), poli(álcool vinílico) (PVA, 500mg em 25mL de água) e de PVA/CMC (250 mg de cada polímero em 25mL de água) e a utilização desses sistemas na catálise de reações de esterificação em quantidades equimolares de ácido e álcool, utilizando n-hexano como solvente externo. Primeiramente foram feitas reações utilizando as LRO e LMJ livres como biocatalisadores na esterificação dos ácidos láurico e esteárico com n-pentanol. Foram efetuados também estudos de esterificação dos ácidos decanóico, láurico, mirístico, palmítico e esteárico com n-pentanol utilizando a LRO e a LMJ imobilizadas em filmes de CMC, PVA e CMC:PVA(1:1). A maioria dos ésteres formaram-se em rendimentos quantitativos, exceto para os ácidos decanóico e mirístico que apresentaram 51% e 68% respectivamente de conversão em éster quando foi utilizado o sistema LRO/CMC:PVA. Na sequência foram feitas reações de esterificação dos ácidos insaturados 4-pentenóico, sórbico, 2-octenóico, linoleico e oleico com o n-pentanol. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que de forma geral os ésteres derivados do ácido oleico foram obtidos em maiores conversões (>90%). Também, pode-se destacar o resultado obtido na esterificação do ácido linoleico com o sistema LRO/CMC (72%). Na continuidade do trabalho, efetuaram-se estudos de esterificação do ácido láurico com etanol, propanol, butanol, pentanol, hexanol, octanol, decanol e octadecanol, utilizando as enzimas LRO e LMJ, imobilizadas em filmes de CMC, PVA e CMC:PVA. As melhores conversões em ésteres foram obtidas para álcoois de 2 a 5 átomos de carbono (>99%) em todos os sistemas. Para os álcoois de cadeia maiores as conversões foram de aproximadamente 80% com a LMJ imobilizada. Fêz-se também um estudo de esterificação do ácido láurico com os álcoois ramificados como o isopropanol, terc-butanol e isobutanol utilizando os sistemas descritos anteriormente. Nestas reações de esterificação não foram detectadas a formação de produtos, evidenciando a importância de efeitos estéreos

Contactless visible light probing for nanoscale ICs through 10 μm bulk silicon

This paper explains why only optical techniques will be able to provide debug and diagnosis of bulk silicon FinFET technologies. In order to apply optical techniques through a convenient thickness of silicon on the one hand, light is limited to NIR to minimize absorption. To match resolution requirements on the other hand, it becomes mandatory to use shorter wavelengths. Two key issues have to be addressed: First, the penetration depth of visible light is only a few μm. This challenges device preparation and integrity. Our approach makes use of confocal microscopy suppressing back surface reflection and thus relaxing the preparation requirements to around 10 μm. Second, only solid immersion lenses (SIL) enable nanoscale resolution. But instead of silicon, materials transparent to visible light and providing a high refractive index are necessary. Our concept is based on 658 nm/633 nm laser and supports GaP as SIL material. We demonstrate the power of confocal imaging and prove contactless probing through a device thickness of 10 μm. We discuss how confocal optics relax the thickness requirements for visible light imaging and probing and we layout the concept for a GaP SIL. This concept opens the path to the design of nanoscale visible light debug and diagnosis

Influence of ghrelin and growth hormone deficiency on AMP-activated protein kinase and hypothalamic lipid metabolism

This is the peer reviewed version of the article which has been published in final form at Wiley Online Library. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving[Abstract] Current evidence demonstrates that the stomach-derived hormone ghrelin, a potent growth hormone (GH) secretagogue, promotes feeding through a mechanism involving the short-term activation of hypothalamic AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), which in turn results in decreased hypothalamic levels of malonyl-CoA and increased carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 (CPT1) activity. Despite this evidence, no data have been reported about the effect of chronic, central ghrelin administration on hypothalamic fatty acid metabolism. In the present study, we examined the differences in hypothalamic fatty acid metabolism in the presence and absence of GH, by using a model for the study of GH-deficiency, namely the spontaneous dwarf rat and the effect of long-term central ghrelin treatment and starvation on hypothalamic fatty acid metabolism in this animal model. Our data showed that GH-deficiency induces reductions in both de novo lipogenesis and β-oxidation pathways in the hypothalamus. Thus, dwarf rats display reductions in fatty acid synthase (FAS) mRNA expression both in the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus (VMH) and whole hypothalamus, as well as in FAS protein and activity. CPT1 activity was also reduced. In addition, in the present study, we show that chronic ghrelin treatment does not promote AMPK-induced changes in the overall fluxes of hypothalamic fatty acid metabolism in normal rats and that this effect is independent of GH status. By contrast, we demonstrated that both chronic ghrelin and fasting decreased FAS mRNA expression in the VMH of normal rats but not dwarf rats, suggesting GH status dependency. Overall, these results suggest that ghrelin plays a dual time-dependent role in modulating hypothalamic lipid metabolism. Understanding the molecular mechanism underlying the interplay between GH and ghrelin on hypothalamic lipid metabolism will allow new strategies for the design and development of suitable drugs for the treatment of GH-deficiency, obesity and its comorbidities.Galicia. Consellería de Innovación, Industria e Comercio; PGIDIT06PXIB208063PRGalicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; GRC2006/66Xunta de Galicia; PS07/12Instituto de Salud Carlos III; PI061700Instituto de Salud Carlos III; PS09/01880Instituto de Salud Carlos III; PI051024Instituto de Salud Carlos III; PI070413Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia; BFU2008Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia; RyC-2007-00211Unión Europea; Health-F2-2008-22371

Evidence of negative energy balance using doubly labelled water in elite Kenyan endurance runners prior to competition

Previous studies have found Kenyan endurance runners to be in negative energy balance during training and prior to competition. The aim of the present study was to assess energy balance in nine elite Kenyan endurance runners during heavy training. Energy intake and expenditure were determined over 7d using weighed dietary intake and doubly labelled water, respectively. Athletes were on average in negative energy balance (mean energy intake 13 241 (SD 1330) kJ/d v. mean energy expenditure 14 611 (SD 1043) kJ/d; P=0·046), although there was no loss in body mass (mean 56·0 (SD 3·4) kg v. 55·7 (SD 3·6) kg; P=0·285). The calculation of underreporting was 13; (range −24 to +9%) and almost entirely accounted for by undereating (9% (range −55 to +39%)) as opposed to a lack of significant underrecording (i.e. total water intake was no different from water loss (mean 4·2 (SD 0·6) l/d v. 4·5 (SD 0·8) l/d; P=0·496)). Fluid intake was modest and consisted mainly of water (0·9 (SD 0·5) l/d) and milky tea (0·9 (SD 0·3) l/d). The diet was high in carbohydrate (67·3 (SD 7·8) %) and sufficient in protein (15·3 (SD 4·0) %) and fat (17·4 (SD 3·9) %). These results confirm previous observations that Kenyan runners are in negative energy balance during periods of intense training. A negative energy balance would result in a reduction in body mass, which, when combined with a high carbohydrate diet, would have the potential in the short term to enhance endurance running performance by reducing the energy cost of runnin

New Log of the Columbia

"The second voyage [of the Columbia] is the one, during which the great discoveries were made. Any new light on those occurrences would be welcome, but historians in the Northwest were certainly not expecting a new journal giving a day-by-day record of the entire voyage. Just such a rich find has come to light in this John Boit journal.

The Effectiveness of Transfer Learning Systems on Medical Images

Deep neural networks have revolutionized the performances of many machine learning tasks such as medical image classification and segmentation. Current deep learning (DL) algorithms, specifically convolutional neural networks are increasingly becoming the methodological choice for most medical image analysis. However, training these deep neural networks requires high computational resources and very large amounts of labeled data which is often expensive and laborious. Meanwhile, recent studies have shown the transfer learning (TL) paradigm as an attractive choice in providing promising solutions to challenges of shortage in the availability of labeled medical images. Accordingly, TL enables us to leverage the knowledge learned from related data to solve a new problem. The objective of this dissertation is to examine the effectiveness of TL systems on medical images. First, a comprehensive systematic literature review was performed to provide an up-to-date status of TL systems on medical images. Specifically, we proposed a novel conceptual framework to organize the review. Second, a novel DL network was pretrained on natural images and utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of TL on a very large medical image dataset, specifically Chest X-rays images. Lastly, domain adaptation using an autoencoder was evaluated on the medical image dataset and the results confirmed the effectiveness of TL through fine-tuning strategies. We make several contributions to TL systems on medical image analysis: Firstly, we present a novel survey of TL on medical images and propose a new conceptual framework to organize the findings. Secondly, we propose a novel DL architecture to improve learned representations of medical images while mitigating the problem of vanishing gradients. Additionally, we identified the optimal cut-off layer (OCL) that provided the best model performance. We found that the higher layers in the proposed deep model give a better feature representation of our medical image task. Finally, we analyzed the effect of domain adaptation by fine-tuning an autoencoder on our medical images and provide theoretical contributions on the application of the transductive TL approach. The contributions herein reveal several research gaps to motivate future research and contribute to the body of literature in this active research area of TL systems on medical image analysis

Navigating the process of building parent-teacher partnerships: Experiences of early childhood pre-service teachers

This study utilized the qualitative phenomenological approach to explore pre -service teachers’ experiences in their engagement with parents of young children as they practiced building partnerships with parents. Pre-service teachers (N=50) were each assigned a preschool child with whom they interacted together with the child’s parents and teacher; completing a semester-long assignment created within a family, schools and community course for students in an early childhood teacher preparation program. Pre-service teachers’ responses to a survey and their final written reflections were analyzed using the process of axial and open coding. Results indicated the importance of communication and understanding different dynamics and challenges in parent-teacher partnerships. Therefore, educators should continuously strive to equip pre-service teachers with the skills they will need to succeed as they work with schools, the community and especially in their work with parents