Training attention control of very preterm infants: protocol for a feasibility study of the Attention Control Training (ACT)

Background Children born preterm may display cognitive, learning, and behaviour difficulties as they grow up. In particular, very premature birth (gestation age between 28 and less than 32 weeks) may put infants at increased risk of intellectual deficits and attention deficit disorder. Evidence suggests that the basis of these problems may lie in difficulties in the development of executive functions. One of the earliest executive functions to emerge around 1 year of age is the ability to control attention. An eye-tracking-based cognitive training programme to support this emerging ability, the Attention Control Training (ACT), has been developed and tested with typically developing infants. The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using the ACT with healthy very preterm (VP) infants when they are 12 months of age (corrected age). The ACT has the potential to address the need for supporting emerging cognitive abilities of VP infants with an early intervention, which may capitalise on infants’ neural plasticity. Methods/design The feasibility study is designed to investigate whether it is possible to recruit and retain VP infants and their families in a randomised trial that compares attention and social attention of trained infants against those that are exposed to a control procedure. Feasibility issues include the referral/recruitment pathway, attendance, and engagement with testing and training sessions, completion of tasks, retention in the study, acceptability of outcome measures, quality of data collected (particularly, eye-tracking data). The results of the study will inform the development of a larger randomised trial. Discussion Several lines of evidence emphasise the need to support emerging cognitive and learning abilities of preterm infants using early interventions. However, early interventions with preterm infants, and particularly very preterm ones, face difficulties in recruiting and retaining participants. These problems are also augmented by the health vulnerability of this population. This feasibility study will provide the basis for informing the implementation of an early cognitive intervention for very preterm infants. Trial registration Registered Registration ID: NCT03896490. Retrospectively registered at Clinical Trials Protocol Registration and Results System (clinicaltrials.gov)

Fish consumption, omega-3 fatty acids, and environmental contaminants in relation to low-grade inflammation and early atherosclerosis

Available online 22 October 2012

Cross-industry Collaborations in the Convergence Area of Functional Foods

Convergence processes are based on the activity of distinct industry sectors showing crossindustrycollaborations. The aim of this paper is to analyze cross-industry collaborations betweenthe food and pharmaceutical sectors in the convergence area of functional foods. Selectedcompanies from food (Nestlé/Danone) and pharmaceutical (Martek/Bayer HealthCare) sectorsare analyzed using the determinants of motivation and industrial scope. The analysis shows thatfood companies are more active in cross-industry collaborations than pharmaceutical companies.The latter are more active at the front-end of the value chain focusing on research anddevelopment, and delivering their ingredients to food companies that due to their higherexpertise in consumer marketing launch the products. While the first cross-industrycollaborations were based on an exploration motivation, those that follow focus on exploitation.Acquisitions and licensing agreements are dominant in inside-out and outside-in processes,whereas strategic alliances and joint ventures are based on a coupled process between the foodand pharmaceutical sectors

Using a bio-economic farm model to evaluate the economic potential and pesticide load reduction of the greenRelease technology

CONTEXT: Policies and strategies at EU and national level aim at a reduced use of pesticides in agriculture, such as the Farm to Fork Strategy of the EU Commission. Technological progress can lower pesticide application and contribute to a sustainable bioeconomy. As an example, the greenRelease technology increases the attachment of the active ingredient of plant protection products to the leaf surface and slowly releases the active ingredient from a microgel container. Experiments under both controlled and field conditions have demonstrated the po-tential of the greenRelease technology to reduce pesticide use. As a so-called platform technology, the green -Release concept can be applied to various crops and plant protection chemicals.OBJECTIVE: To guide further development, this study analyses the greenRelease technology regarding its eco-nomic potential and its possible contribution to the reduction of environmental and health risks from pesticide use. METHODS: To do so, we use a bio-economic farm model to assess the technology potential for a typical farm and spraying sequences of various crops in northwestern Germany.RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The results reveal that the economic potential of the greenRelease technology is highest for systemic fungicides in all assessed crops as well as for herbicides for potato cultivation. It is lowest for insecticides in winter barley and potato as well as for contact fungicides, due to the small doses and low product costs. The potential to lower possible environmental and health risks of pesticide use, indicated by the Danish pesticide load indicator, is highest for fungicides in potato, winter wheat, and winter barley as well as for herbicides in sugar beet cultivation. Relative to overall costs in arable farming, the cost changes induced by the greenRelease technology are minor, such that the environmental benefits will be key for promoting its appli-cation. However, the economic competitiveness of the technology increases if agri-environmental policies pro-gressively internalize the negative externalities of pesticides use.SIGNIFICANCE: This research is the first comprehensive economic and environmental assessment of the tech-nology greenRelease which can contribute to lower the environmental burden of pesticide use in agriculture

Dynamics of molecular self-ordering in tetraphenyl porphyrin monolayers on metallic substrates

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Estimation of ecological exergy using weighing parameters determined from DNA contents of organisms – a case study

We studied the changes of exergy and specific exergy with data of benthic macrofauna communities, periodically sampled along an estuarine gradient of eutrophication in the Mondego estuary (Western Portugal). Exergy estimates were calculated from organism biomass, based on weighing factors for the relative content of exergy per unit of biomass determined from DNA contents of organisms. Results were discussed in terms of both the macrofauna biomass production and the structural organisation of the system. Estimates for the exergy indices provided useful indications for the evaluation of environmental impact due to the eutrophication process. Different average values for the indices of exergy and specific exergy were estimated relatively to areas with different levels of eutrophication, in the ‘spatial’ gradient of eutrophication. Higher exergy levels and lower exergy content per unit of biomass (specific exergy) were associated to populations more stabilized or areas less perturbed. Additionally, the index of specific exergy seemed capable of providing indications for the qualitative alterations in the communities (in temporal and spatial terms) that go in the direction of the observations made in this ecosystem