HOW DO WE DETERMINE PLANT QUALITY OF ORGANIC CROPS?

Plants are photoautotrophic organisms being able to synthesize all metabolites and macro-molecules on the basis of light, CO2, H2O and 14 inorganic elements taken up from the soil. As plants are confined to the environment in which they germinate, this means that the plant ionome, metabolome and proteome are heavily influenced by soil mineralogy, climate and not least agricultural management. Organic plant products within the European Union are produced according to a specific set of regulations, which e.g. implicate that organic plants are cultivated without pesticides and synthetically produced nitrogen (N) fertilizers. In addition, N fertilizers are often used in lower amounts relative to conventional agriculture. Over more than a decade it has been intensively studied whether these marked agronomical differences lead to systematic differences in the chemical composition of plant tissue and whether this has an impact on selected plant quality attributes. From a theoretical point of view the marked differences in fertilization strategies between organic and conventional agriculture will cause systematic differences in the chemical composition of plants. The differences are expected to be very large when comparing plants representing the extremes of organic and conventional agriculture. Thus, if synthetic fertilizers are used exclusively for conventional plant production and in high amounts relative to organic production based on animal manure, green manures, compost etc., the conventional plants are likely to differ from the organic ones. However, in most cases plants are not produced with such extreme fertilization strategies and differences are often masked by natural variation caused by e.g. geographical locations and growth season and thereby little difference in plant quality is usually observed. Despite the fact that systematic differences in chemical composition between organic and conventional plants are usually overridden by natural variation it was recently found that the type of N fertilizers is reflected in the isotope ratios of plants and that the isotopic fingerprints are unbiased by geographical locations and growth season. However, the fundamental differences in isotope ratios are supposedly irrelevant regarding plant quality, but have shown to be a strong signature for authentication of organic plants products. In this lecture we will further explain how the fertilization strategy can affect the underlying biochemical mechanisms controlling the chemical composition of plants and discuss how these are related to organic plant quality. Special attention will be given to N fertilizer forms and quantity, as fertilization generally appears to be the single-most parameter with the strongest impact on metabolism when comparing plants from organic and conventional agricultural systems

Is it really organic? Authenticity testing of organic plant products using elemental and isotopic fingerprinting

The commercial market for high-value plant products is steadily increasing. Consumers are willingly paying premium prices for plants that originate from specific geographical regions or are produced according to certain agricultural management practices. This has significantly enhanced the market shares of organically grown plant products but has simultaneously increased the risk of food adulteration and fraudulent activities. Consequently, sophisticated analytical principles are currently being developed to enable discrimination of organic and conventional plants and ensure compliance with the regulations of organic agriculture. Some of the most promising principles for organic authentication are based on atomic spectroscopy which encompasses several analytical techniques suitable for analysis of the elemental and isotopic composition of plants (1). Analytical discrimination of organic and conventional plant products relies on an expectation of systematic differences in agricultural management practices. Thus, it has been hypothesized that the prohibition of pesticides and synthetically produced fertilizers in organic agriculture is reflected in the chemical composition of plants. This hypothesis was recently tested in a Danish research project called OrgTrace, in which analytical methods for elemental and isotopic fingerprinting were developed and combined with multivariate statistics for authenticity testing of organic crops (2-4). The unique experimental design of OrgTrace included numerous plant species grown either organically or conventionally at several geographical locations differing in soil type, climate etc. Furthermore, year-to-year variation was assessed by inclusion of two growth years. Results from the OrgTrace project will be presented at the seminar. Recently, the international research project AuthenticFood was initiated. In AuthenticFood novel analytical procedures will be tested and combined to enable authentication of selected organic plant products before and after processing of these. The main research hypotheses and methodologies of AuthenticFood will be presented

Case study: Ticagrelor in plato and prasugrel in triton-timi 38 and trilogy-acs trials in patients with acute coronary syndromes

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To Ban or Not to Ban: Foreign Lobbying and Cross National Externalities

This paper studies the costs and benefits of foreign lobbying. We show how and when foreign lobbying can help internalize cross national externalities. We argue that this is an often overlooked benefit of foreign lobbying. We also study under what conditions a constitutional rule banning foreign lobbying is in the national interest of a country. A key factor in this calculus is whether the interests of foreign lobby groups and domestic unorganized groups coincide or not. We illustrate the logic with examples from trade policy and environmental regulation

Effectiveness of accelerated perioperative care and rehabilitation intervention compared to current intervention after hip and knee arthroplasty. A before-after trial of 247 patients with a 3-month follow-up

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Denmark, approximately 12,000 hip and knee arthroplasties were performed in 2006, and the hospital costs were close to US$ 110,000,000. In a randomized clinical trial, we have recently demonstrated the efficacy of accelerated perioperative care and rehabilitation intervention after hip and knee arthroplasty compared to current intervention under ideal circumstances. We do not, however, know whether these results could be reached under usual circumstances of healthcare practice. We therefore investigated whether length of stay after implementation of accelerated perioperative care and rehabilitation after hip and knee arthroplasty could be reduced in a normal healthcare setting, and how the achieved results matched those observed during the randomized clinical trial.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An effectiveness study as a before-after trial was undertaken in which all elective primary total hip and total knee arthroplasty patients were divided into a before-implementation group receiving the current perioperative procedure, and an after-implementation group receiving the new accelerated perioperative care and rehabilitation procedures as provided by a new multi-disciplinary organization. We used the Breakthrough Series Collaborative Model for implementation. The primary outcome measure was in hospital length of stay (LOS), and the secondary outcome measure was adverse effects within 3 months postoperatively.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We included a total of 247 patients. Mean LOS was significantly (<it>P </it>< 0.001) reduced by 4.4 (95% CI 3.8–5.0) days after implementation of the accelerated intervention, from 8.8 (SD 3.0) days before implementation to 4.3 (SD 1.8) days after implementation. No significant differences in adverse effects were observed. LOS in this effectiveness study was significantly lower than LOS reported in the efficacy study.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Accelerated perioperative care and rehabilitation intervention after hip and knee arthroplasty was successfully and effectively implemented. Results obtained during usual hospital circumstances matched the results achieved under ideal circumstances in this group of patients.</p

Metabolism of ticagrelor in patients with acute coronary syndromes.

© The Author(s) 2018Ticagrelor is a state-of-the-art antiplatelet agent used for the treatment of patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Unlike remaining oral P2Y12 receptor inhibitors ticagrelor does not require metabolic activation to exert its antiplatelet action. Still, ticagrelor is extensively metabolized by hepatic CYP3A enzymes, and AR-C124910XX is its only active metabolite. A post hoc analysis of patient-level (n = 117) pharmacokinetic data pooled from two prospective studies was performed to identify clinical characteristics affecting the degree of AR-C124910XX formation during the first six hours after 180 mg ticagrelor loading dose in the setting of ACS. Both linear and multiple regression analyses indicated that ACS patients presenting with ST-elevation myocardial infarction or suffering from diabetes mellitus are more likely to have decreased rate of ticagrelor metabolism during the acute phase of ACS. Administration of morphine during ACS was found to negatively influence transformation of ticagrelor into AR-C124910XX when assessed with linear regression analysis, but not with multiple regression analysis. On the other hand, smoking appears to increase the degree of ticagrelor transformation in ACS patients. Mechanisms underlying our findings and their clinical significance warrant further research.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio