Influence of Acute Turkesterone Dosing on Serum Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1) and Subjective Digestibility Scores in Recreationally-active Males

Turkesterone is a relatively novel phytoecdysteroid compound that has become increasingly popular amongst recreationally active demographics. Despite prior in vitro data suggesting that this compound may support enhanced body composition via both insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1)-mediated protein synthesis, no human evidence exists in this regard nor how well its digestibility is tolerated. PURPOSE: To determine the effect of multiple turkesterone doses on serum IGF-1 and to report any gastrointestinal (GI) distress symptoms in a healthy human sample. METHODS: Eleven recreationally active males (23.3±2.2y) visited the laboratory on three occasions separated by at least seven days and were randomized in single-blind, placebo-controlled, and counter-balanced crossover fashion to either 2000mg cellulose placebo (PLA), 1000mg turkesterone + 1000mg placebo, (1000T) or 2000mg (2000T) turkesterone. Venous blood was sampled to determine serum IGF-1 concentrations and a GI distress questionnaire was (nausea, vomiting, heartburn symptoms, etc.) administered both at baseline (PRE), as well as 3-hours (POST3H) and 24-hours (POST24H) post-acute supplementation at each visit. Serum IGF-1 was analyzed using a two-way (condition [PLA, 1000T, 2000T] x time [PRE, POST3H, POST24H]) ANOVA with repeated measures at a significance level of pRESULTS: Analyses failed to reveal any significant condition (p=.180; ηp2=0.228), time (p=0.227; ηp2=.390), nor interaction effects (p=0.547; ηp2=0.211) for serum IGF-1. Moreover, no participants reported any GI distress symptoms across any condition and/or time permutation. CONCLUSION: Although the current study did not find any significant IGF-1-associated serum alterations to multiple acute turkesterone doses in the times assessed, there were fortunately no adverse GI symptoms experienced by the participants across any dose throughout the investigation. Nevertheless, these data support turkesterone supplementation is well tolerated and thus future research should build upon our analysis by employing a longitudinal supplementation regimen alongside an exercise intervention to elucidate the potential long-term and anabolism-permissive impacts of this compound on the presently-explored and additional associated parameters

Creatine Supplementation Improves Muscular Performance without Additional Impact on the Cardiovascular System in Trained Women

Creatine monohydrate supplementation in females is largely under-represented in the literature, and their potentially differential hemodynamic responses are unknown. Methods: Twenty-eight resistance-trained women (25.5 ± 6.1 years, 59.7 ± 6.3 kg, 163 ± 5 cm) were randomly assigned to the supplement creatine monohydrate (CRE; 5 g creatine monohydrate + 5 g dextrose) or placebo (PLA; 10 g dextrose) four times per day for 7 days in a double-blind fashion. Each subject subsequently completed resistance training sessions (3 × week) for four weeks with four sets to muscular failure of both half-squat and leg press exercises. The change in body mass (BM), exercise repetition number (REP), rated perceived exertion (RPE), and cardiovascular variables were assessed (sessions 1, 6, and 12). Statistical analyses were performed at a significance level of p ≤ 0.05. Results: Analyses revealed a significant CRE-specific BM increase (p = 0.013), as well as significantly greater half-squat (p = 0.006) and leg press (p = 0.017) REP per set versus PLA. Additionally, CRE demonstrated significantly lower relative RPE values at session 12 compared with previous sessions. Any significant main or interaction effects were observed for the studied cardiovascular variable. Conclusions: The present data substantiate the creatine’s efficacy to improve muscular performance in females while demonstrating the safety of combined creatine monohydrate supplementation and resistance training on cardiovascular parameters

The bear in Eurasian plant names: Motivations and models

Ethnolinguistic studies are important for understanding an ethnic group's ideas on the world, expressed in its language. Comparing corresponding aspects of such knowledge might help clarify problems of origin for certain concepts and words, e.g. whether they form common heritage, have an independent origin, are borrowings, or calques. The current study was conducted on the material in Slavonic, Baltic, Germanic, Romance, Finno-Ugrian, Turkic and Albanian languages. The bear was chosen as being a large, dangerous animal, important in traditional culture, whose name is widely reflected in folk plant names. The phytonyms for comparison were mostly obtained from dictionaries and other publications, and supplemented with data from databases, the co-authors' field data, and archival sources (dialect and folklore materials). More than 1200 phytonym use records (combinations of a local name and a meaning) for 364 plant and fungal taxa were recorded to help find out the reasoning behind bear-nomination in various languages, as well as differences and similarities between the patterns among them. Among the most common taxa with bear-related phytonyms were Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (L.) Spreng., Heracleum sphondylium L., Acanthus mollis L., and Allium ursinum L., with Latin loan translation contributing a high proportion of the phytonyms. Some plants have many and various bear-related phytonyms, while others have only one or two bear names. Features like form and/or surface generated the richest pool of names, while such features as colour seemed to provoke rather few associations with bears. The unevenness of bear phytonyms in the chosen languages was not related to the size of the language nor the present occurence of the Brown Bear in the region. However, this may, at least to certain extent, be related to the amount of the historical ethnolinguistic research done on the selected languages

A new X-ray spectrometer with large focusing crystal analyzer

A new focusing spectrometer employing Johann geometry has been built and permanently installed at the wiggler beamline W1 at the Hamburger Synchrotron Strahlungslabor (HASYLAB) am Deutschen Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY). It is now available for user operation. The design of the spectrometer is optimized for the use of a large source spot size at the DORIS storage ring as well as for simple operation and robustness under user-mode conditions. Nevertheless, the ideal source for enlarging the number of possible applications in the future would be an undulator at one of the PETRA III beamlines. In the following the spectrometer design is described and boundary conditions such as the available energy range for future experiments are discussed. Two benchmark experiments, resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) and X-ray absorption fluorescence spectroscopy (XAFS), on samples with complicated matrices demonstrate the performance of the new instrument