Consumption of Pomegranate Juice Attenuates Exercise-Induced Oxidative Stress, Blood Pressure and Urinary Cortisol/Cortisone Ratio in Human Adults

Oxidative stress is exacerbated in overweight and obese individuals after acute exercise compared with their non-obese counterparts. Antioxidant supplementation of the diet may be one intervention to reduce exercise-induced oxidative stress in this vulnerable population. The aim of this study was to investigate whether polyphenol-rich pomegranate juice attenuates post-exercise oxidative stress and contributors to oxidative stress (glucocorticoids) and blood pressure in healthy overweight subjects. Healthy male and female subjects participated in a randomized placebo controlled parallel pilot-study (mean BMI: 26.7 ± 6.6 kg/m2). Two groups of participants (n=12) received either 500 ml/day of pomegranate juice (containing 1685 mg GAE) or placebo (matched for total energy). Participants completed two standardized 30 min treadmill tests (50% Wmax) at baseline and after one week of the intervention. Exercise-induced lipid peroxidation (MDA) was significantly lower following pomegranate juice consumption compared with placebo (31.2 ± 10.6 to 26.5 ± 9.8 MDA μmole/day) (p=0.035). Urinary free cortisol was reduced from 179.4 ± 53.2 to 125.6 ± 43.5 nmole/24h which was significant (p=0.042). In addition, there was an increase in urinary free cortisone from 112.2 ± 40.4 to 187.6 ± 90.2 nmole/24 h (p=0.045), and a significant decrease in the urinary free cortisol/cortisone ratio (p=0.009) from 1.6 ± 1.1 to 0.67 ± 0.55 following one week of pomegranate juice intake. Pomegranate juice consumption was also found to decrease systolic blood pressure pre-exercise (136.7 ± 11.7 to 131.8 ± 8.8 mmHg (p=0.007), and post-exercise from 158.8 ± 15.8 to 148.1 ± 12.3 mmHg (p<0.01) and diastolic blood pressure (86.3 ± 10.6 to 82.5 ± 6.8 mmHg (p=0.04) and 103.1 ± 12.5 to 93.9 ± 11.5 mmHg (p=0.001), pre and post exercise, respectively. Correlation between the change in cortisol/cortisone ratio with the effect on blood pressure showed a negative significant association post pomegranate juice intake (p=0.028 for systolic and p=0.008 for diastolic BP). There were no changes in lipid peroxidation or blood pressure following placebo treatment. In conclusion, these findings suggest that pomegranate juice consumption prior to an acute bout of moderate intensity exercise may help to alleviate exercise-induced oxidative stress, and lower blood pressure in the overweight and obese population

EVALUATION OF CANOLA MEAL VERSUS SOYBEAN MEAL AS A PROTEIN SUPPLEMENT FOR BEEF CATTLE: EFFECTS ON GROWTH PERFORMANCE, CARCASS CHARACTERISTICS, RUMEN FERMENTATION, AND NUTRIENT DIGESTION.

The objective of this research was to determine the effect of canola meal (CM) as a protein supplement for beef cattle on growth performance, rumen fermentation, and nutrient digestion compared to soybean meal (SBM) and wheat dried distillers’ grains with solubles (WDDGS). A 95-d backgrounding trial (Trial 1) and a 61-d backgrounding, 147-d finishing trial (Trial 2) were used to evaluate performance and carcass characteristics of feedlot cattle fed CM vs. SBM with or without WDDGS. In Trial 1, cattle fed SBM had greater ADG (P 0.05) were detected for overall ADG, DMI, or gain : feed. Numerically, cattle fed SBM had the highest feed cost of gain with cattle fed WDDGS the lowest. Cattle fed SBM+WDDGS had the poorest fat deposition (P 0.05) noted in DM, OM, CP, ADF, or NDF digestibility. The results of all three trials indicate that CM is not different than SBM as protein supplement for feedlot cattle and that the inclusion of WDDGS did not improve feedlot performance, rumen fermentation, or nutrient digestibility

Sea surface temperature in global analyses: gains from the copernicus imaging microwave radiometer

Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) derived from passive microwave (PMW) observations benefit global ocean and SST analyses because of their near-all-weather availability. Present PMW SSTs have a real aperture-limited spatial resolution in excess of 50 km, limiting the spatial fidelity with which SST features, reflecting ocean dynamics, can be captured. This contrasts with the target resolution of global analyses of 5 to 10 km. The Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer (CIMR) is a mission concept under consideration as a high-priority candidate mission for the expansion of the Copernicus space programme. This instrument would be capable of real aperture resolution < 15 km with low total uncertainties in the range 0.4–0.8 K for channels between 1.4 and 36.5 GHz, and a dual-view arrangement that further reduces noise. This paper provides a comparative study of SST uncertainty and feature resolution with and without the availability of CIMR in the future SST-observing satellite constellation based on a detailed simulation of CIMR plus infrared observations and the processing of global SST analyses with 0.05◦ final grid resolution. Simulations of CIMR data including structured errors were added to an observing system consisting of the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) on Sentinel-3A and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on MetOp-A. This resulted in a large improvement in the global root-mean-square error (RMSE) for SST from 0.37 K to 0.21 K for January and 0.40 K to 0.25 K for July. There was a particularly noticeable improvement in the performance of the analysis, as measured by the reduction in RMSE, for dynamical and persistently cloudy areas. Of these, the Aghulas Current showed an improvement of 43% in January and 48% in July, the Gulf Stream showed 70% and 44% improvements, the Southern Ocean showed 57% and 74% improvements, and the Maritime Continent showed 50% and 40% improvements, respectively

A Statistical Method for Generating Temporally Downscaled Geochemical Tracers in Precipitation

Sampling intervals of precipitation geochemistry measurements are often coarser than those required by fine-scale hydrometeorological models. This study presents a statistical method to temporally downscale geochemical tracer signals in precipitation so that they can be used in high-resolution, tracer-enabled applications. In this method, we separated the deterministic component of the time series and the remaining daily stochastic component, which was approximated by a conditional multivariate Gaussian distribution. Specifically, statistics of the stochastic component could be explained from coarser data using a newly identified power-law decay function, which relates data aggregation intervals to changes in tracer concentration variance and correlations with precipitation amounts. These statistics were used within a copula framework to generate synthetic tracer values from the deterministic and stochastic time series components based on daily precipitation amounts. The method was evaluated at 27 sites located worldwide using daily precipitation isotope ratios, which were aggregated in time to provide low resolution testing datasets with known daily values. At each site, the downscaling method was applied on weekly, biweekly and monthly aggregated series to yield an ensemble of daily tracer realizations. Daily tracer concentrations downscaled from a biweekly series had average (+/- standard deviation) absolute errors of 1.69‰ (1.61‰) for δ2H and 0.23‰ (0.24‰) for δ18O relative to observations. The results suggest coarsely sampled precipitation tracers can be accurately downscaled to daily values. This method may be extended to other geochemical tracers in order to generate downscaled datasets needed to drive complex, fine-scale models of hydrometeorological processes

Profiles and outcome of traditional healing practices for severe mental illnesses in two districts of Eastern Uganda

Background : The WHO estimates that more than 80% of African populations attend traditional healers for health reasons and that 40%–60% of these have some kind of mental illness. However, little is known about the profiles and outcome of this traditional approach to treatment. Objective : The purpose of this study was to describe the profiles and outcome of traditional healing practices for severe mental illnesses in Jinja and Iganga districts in the Busoga region of Eastern Uganda. Methods : Four studies were conducted. Study I used focus group discussions (FGDs) with case vignettes with local community members and traditional healers to explore the lay concepts of psychosis. Studies II and III concerned a cross-sectional survey of patients above 18 years at the traditional healer's shrines and study IV was made on a prospective cohort of patients diagnosed with psychosis in study III. Manual content analysis was used in study I; quantitative data in studies II, III, and IV were analyzed at univariate, bivariate, and multivariate levels to determine the association between psychological distress and socio-demographic factors; for study IV, factors associated with outcome were analyzed. One-way ANOVA for independent samples was the analysis used in Study IV. Results : The community gave indigenous names to psychoses (mania, schizophrenia, and psychotic depression) and had multiple explanatory models for them. Thus multiple solutions for these problems were sought. Of the 387 respondents, the prevalence of psychological distress was 65.1%, where 60.2% had diagnosable current mental illness, and 16.3% had had one disorder in their lifetime. Over 80% of patients with psychosis used both biomedical and traditional healing systems. Those who combined these two systems seemed to have a better outcome. All the symptom scales showed a percentage reduction of more than 20% at the 3- and 6-month follow-ups. Conclusion : Traditional healers shoulder a large burden of care of patients with mental health problems. This calls for all those who share the goal of improving the mental health of individuals to engage with traditional healers

Comment on "The extent of forest in dryland biomes"

Bastin et al (Reports, 12 May 2017, p. 635) infer forest as more globally extensive than previously estimated using tree cover data. However, their forest definition does not reflect ecosystem function or biotic composition. These structural and climatic definitions inflate forest estimates across the tropics and undermine conservation goals, leading to inappropriate management policies and practices in tropical grassy ecosystems

The Effect Stacking Fault Segregation and Phase Transformations have on Creep Strength in Ni-based Superalloys

In this study, two commercially similar polycrystalline Ni-based disk superalloys (LSHR and ME3) were creep tested at 760C and 552MPa to approximately 0.3% plastic strain. LSHR consistently displayed superior creep properties at this stress/temperature regime even though the microstructural characteristics between the two alloys were comparable. High resolution structural and chemical analysis, however, revealed significant differences between the two alloys among active gamma prime shearing modes involving superlattice intrinsic and extrinsic stacking faults. In ME3, Co and Cr segregation and Ni and Al depletion were observed along the intrinsic faults - revealing a gamma prime -to- gamma phase transformation. Conversely in LSHR, an alloy with a higher W content, Co and W segregation was observed along the intrinsic faults. This observation combined with scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) simulations confirm a gamma prime-to-D019 phase transformation along the intrinsic faults in LSHR. Using experimental observations and density functional theory calculations, a novel local phase transformation strengthening mechanism is proposed that could be further utilized to improve the high temperature creep capabilities of Ni-base disk alloys