Prebiotic potential of a maize-based soluble fibre and impact of dose on the human gut microbiota

Dietary management of the human gut microbiota towards a more beneficial composition is one approach that may improve host health. To date, a large number of human intervention studies have demonstrated that dietary consumption of certain food products can result in significant changes in the composition of the gut microbiota i.e. the prebiotic concept. Thus the prebiotic effect is now established as a dietary approach to increase beneficial gut bacteria and it has been associated with modulation of health biomarkers and modulation of the immune system. Promitor™ Soluble Corn Fibre (SCF) is a well-known maize-derived source of dietary fibre with potential selective fermentation properties. Our aim was to determine the optimum prebiotic dose of tolerance, desired changes to microbiota and fermentation of SCF in healthy adult subjects. A double-blind, randomised, parallel study was completed where volunteers (n = 8/treatment group) consumed 8, 14 or 21 g from SCF (6, 12 and 18 g/fibre delivered respectively) over 14-d. Over the range of doses studied, SCF was well tolerated Numbers of bifidobacteria were significantly higher for the 6 g/fibre/day compared to 12g and 18g/fibre delivered/day (mean 9.25 and 9.73 Log10 cells/g fresh faeces in the pre-treatment and treatment periods respectively). Such a numerical change of 0.5 Log10 bifidobacteria/g fresh faeces is consistent with those changes observed for inulin-type fructans, which are recognised prebiotics. A possible prebiotic effect of SCF was therefore demonstrated by its stimulation of bifidobacteria numbers in the overall gut microbiota during a short-term intervention

Correlation Between “Very Early” Age Fracture Performance and Evolution of Rheological Properties of High Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composites with Adapted Rheology

The tremendous advances in concrete technologies our society is witness of, do not only provide the construction industry with new advanced materials and processing/ manufacturing techniques, but also require the performance of cement based materials to be investigated not only in its structural service state, but also throughout its very early and early age life. Tailored successful placement and development of mechanical performance, even in the first hours of life, can affect the structural durability and discriminate about the successful accomplishment of the structural performance throughout the service life. In this paper reference is made to a High-Performance Fibre-Reinforced Cementitious Composite, formulated with adapted rheology to ease its placement and most of all to achieve a tailored alignment of the fibres through the casting flow. The development of tensile and shear fracture properties in the first hours (up to three) after the first contact between cement and water has been studied with an ad-hoc designed test set-up. The knowledge of such properties is of the utmost importance to foster the use of these kind of advanced cement based materials with adapted rheology in precast construction, where the design of transient situations, including demoulding and handling, may play a crucial role, also in the sight of optimizing the productivity. In a quality control framework, the development of tensile and shear fracture properties of the investigated materials in the considered time frame have been also correlated to the evolution of rheological properties, so far evaluated through a mini-slump flow tests

Transmission ratio distortion in the human body louse, Pediculus humanus (Insecta : Phthiraptera)

We studied inheritance at three microsatellite loci in eight F-1 and two F-2 families of the body (clothes) louse of humans, Pediculus humanus. The alleles of heterozygous female-parents were always inherited in a Mendelian fashion in these families. Alleles from heterozygous male-parents, however, were inherited in two different ways: (i) in a Mendelian fashion and (ii) in a non-Mendelian fashion, where males passed to their offspring only one of their two alleles, that is, 100% nonrandom transmission. In male body lice, where there was non-Mendelian inheritance, the paternally inherited set of alleles was eliminated. We interpret this pattern of inheritance as evidence for extreme transmission ratio distortion of paternal alleles in this species