Influence of zinc on distiller’s yeast:cellular accumulation of zinc and impact on spirit congeners

Accumulation of zinc by a whisky distilling yeast strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was studied during fermentation of malt wort and synthetic defined medium. Zinc uptake by yeast cells was very rapid in malt wort, as zinc (0.32 μg/mL) was completely removed from the fermentation medium within one hour. The type of fermentable carbohydrate had an impact on the kinetics of zinc accumulation, with maltose most effective at enhancing metal uptake at zinc concentrations above 3.2 μg/mL. Enriching yeast cells with zinc by “preconditioning” impacted on the production of flavour congeners in the distillates produced from fermented cultures. Such distillates were characterized by an altered flavour and aroma profile. In particular, the production of some higher alcohols increased when yeast cells were preconditioned with zinc. This phenomenon is yeast strain related. Industrial fermentation processes, including brewing and distilling, may benefit from optimization of zinc bioavailability in yeast cultures resulting in more efficient fermentations and improved product quality

Zinc accumulation and utilisation by wine yeasts

The present study has focused on the accumulation of zinc by wine yeast strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae during fermentation of both grape juice and chemically defined medium with different carbohydrates and at varying levels of zinc. The results have shown that zinc accumulation by wine yeast was very rapid with all zinc being removed from the medium by yeast cells within the first two hours. Zinc uptake was stimulated by the presence of sucrose. Zinc affected fermentation progress at defined levels, with optimal concentrations at 1.5–2.5 ppm, depending on yeast strain and zinc bioavailability. The bioavailability of metal ions in grape must and the roles of metals in wine yeast physiology are aspects poorly understood by enologists. In brewing, it has long been recognized that malt wort may be zinc deficient and brewers often carry out zinc supplementations to avoid sluggish and incomplete fermentations. In winemaking, zinc levels in grape musts may be compromised depending on the bioavailability of zinc ions in vineyard soils as well as treatments with fertilizers and fungicides during grape growing. As a consequence, sub-optimal zinc levels in grape musts may negatively influence the fermentative performance of yeasts. We believe that optimization of metal ion bioavailability will improve yeast fermentation performance in industrial processes and this study addresses some issues relating to zinc in enology

A qualitative synthesis of pharmacist, other health professional and lay perspectives on the role of Community Pharmacy in facilitating care for people with long-term conditions.

Background: There is increasing interest in an enhanced role for community pharmacy (CP) in facilitating care for people with long-term conditions (LTCs). It is important to understand the perspectives of stakeholders in order to identify key issues that may impact on future development of the role and related services. Objectives: Explore pharmacist, other health professional and lay perspectives on the role of CP in facilitating care for people with LTCs. Methods: Synthesis of qualitative research from UK based studies published between 2007 and January 2017 using a meta-ethnographic interpretative approach. Results: Variation in the conceptualisation of the role of CP in facilitating the care of people with LTCs was apparent across and within lay and health professional accounts. Despite evidence of positive attitudes and a culture amenable to change, there remains a lack of clarity about the existing and potential role of the pharmacist in this area. A theoretical framework is proposed that highlights the dynamic nature of the process involved in the development of lay and health professionals’ understanding of the role and engagement with services. Influences on this process include experience and perceived need, service operationalisation, and ongoing developments within wider healthcare policy and commercial environments. Perceived integration with existing professional and peer support structures, views about traditional medical hierarchies and concerns about potential duplication are important influences on the value attributed to the role of CP and the services provided. Conclusions: There is acknowledged potential for an extended role in CP to support the care of people with LTCs. To ensure the likelihood of successful engagement with patients and positive health outcomes, developments should acknowledge influences within and beyond the CP setting. Potential overlap with other healthcare services should be explicitly addressed, ensuring this is framed and delivered as valued reinforcement with clearly defined boundaries of responsibility

The first use of Fulton's K for assessing and comparing the conditions of inter-tidal fish populations

Fulton's K condition factor was applied, for the first time, to inter-tidal specimens of the shanny (Lipophrys pholis) and long-spined scorpion fish (Taurulus bubalis) from two English rocky shore and two Welsh rocky shore sites during summer 2010 and winter 2011. As both species contribute to the diet of commercial species such as cod (Gadus morhua) and near-threatened species such as the European otter (Lutra lutra), their condition may affect that of these predators. Fulton's K found that inter-tidal Welsh fish maintained a ‘good’ condition between seasons, whereas the inter-tidal English fish were in a poorer condition during winter. Although condition also changed amongst the sites on each coast, further studies are needed into fish morphologies, environmental parameters, prey availabilities and abundances, and fish specimen sex and maturities

A strong form of the Quantitative Isoperimetric inequality

We give a refinement of the quantitative isoperimetric inequality. We prove that the isoperimetric gap controls not only the Fraenkel asymmetry but also the oscillation of the boundary

Extending alcohol brief advice into non-clinical community settings: A qualitative study of experiences and perceptions of delivery staff

Background: At a population level, the majority of alcohol-related harm is attributable to drinkers whose consumption exceeds recommended drinking levels, rather than those with severe alcohol dependency. Identification and Brief Advice (IBA) interventions offer a cost-effective approach for reducing this harm. Traditionally, IBA interventions have been delivered in healthcare settings and therefore contextual influences on their use in non-clinical settings are not well understood. Methods: Qualitative face-to-face and telephone interviews with staff responsible for delivering a pilot IBA intervention across community settings in the UK. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify key issues and the constant comparison method was employed to compare barriers and facilitators to implementation across and within settings. Results: A number of facilitators and barriers to delivery and implementation was identified across settings. These included familiarity with the customer base, working within public spaces, and assimilation of the intervention within existing role boundaries. Despite underlying concerns relating to the sensitive nature of the topic, most delivery staff felt their respective settings were appropriate for the delivery of the intervention and had proactively engaged members of the public with varying levels of risky drinking and readiness for behaviour change. Perceptions of actual or potential intervention success were conceptualised in relation to existing day-to-day role boundaries and responsibilities and the contexts in which they took place. Conclusions: Findings support the potential value of multi-setting community approaches to facilitate more inclusive engagement with IBA. By comparing experiences and views from staff responsible for delivering the intervention across different community settings, our findings provide insight into how intervention acceptability and success are framed across settings, and how the intervention is assimilated within everyday practice and role boundaries. This study also highlights key areas to be addressed when implementing IBAs in non-clinical community settings by staff with diverse levels of health-related knowledge, skills and support needs. Although essential, the need for adaptable training and delivery approaches across different setting types is likely to result in methodological challenges that need to be addressed when evaluating future interventions and setting-specific influences on behaviour change and health outcomes

Cognitive visual tracking and camera control

Cognitive visual tracking is the process of observing and understanding the behaviour of a moving person. This paper presents an efficient solution to extract, in real-time, high-level information from an observed scene, and generate the most appropriate commands for a set of pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras in a surveillance scenario. Such a high-level feedback control loop, which is the main novelty of our work, will serve to reduce uncertainties in the observed scene and to maximize the amount of information extracted from it. It is implemented with a distributed camera system using SQL tables as virtual communication channels, and Situation Graph Trees for knowledge representation, inference and high-level camera control. A set of experiments in a surveillance scenario show the effectiveness of our approach and its potential for real applications of cognitive vision

The effects of c-reactive protein (CRP) isoforms on inflammation and wound healing processes

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a homopentameric acute-phase inflammatory protein that exhibits elevated expression during inflammation. CRP can be found in its pentameric form (nCRP) or monomeric form (mCRP). To date there has been little research investigating the effects of these CRP isoforms in wound healing processes and age-related impaired healing, which is known to have an altered inflammatory response. The study investigated CRP isoform localisation in murine wounds (detected by immunohistochemistry) and circulating blood (measured by immunoblotting) using models of acute healing in young adults and age-related impaired healing (n=3). Using in vitro inflammatory cell assays developed with the monocytic U937 cell line this study investigated the effects of CRP isoforms in nitric oxide release (detected by an immunoassay), phagocytosis (measured by a bacterial recovery assay), apoptosis (detected via DNA fragmentation) and cytokine secretion (measured by a multiplex immunoassay) in both monocyte and macrophage-like cells (n=6). Pharmacological inhibitors were used to determine the potential CRP-induced pathways or mechanisms. Both isoforms were localised to sites of inflammation, implying that they may play an active inflammatory role during wound repair. Moreover, the ratio of CRP isoforms (mCRP:nCRP) reflected the degree of inflammation, with higher values indicating elevated mCRP localisation and pronounced inflammation in the model of age-related impaired healing. In in vitro inflammatory cell assays, nCRP exhibited a more anti-inflammatory effect leading to significantly (P=0.01) increased phagocytosis, increased apoptosis, decreased nitric oxide (NO) production, and reduced overall pro-inflammatory cytokine production in monocytes and macrophages. The mCRP isoform significantly (P<0.001) increased NO production and overall levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, thus confirming its pro-inflammatory nature indicated in the literature. This research highlighted that estrogen mediated CRP-induced responses in a cell type- and status-specific manner, being pro-inflammatory in circulating cells (monocytes) but anti-inflammatory in wound tissue cells (mature activated macrophages). The profile of CRP isoforms shifted in age-related (estrogen-deprived) impaired healing to relatively higher levels of mCRP compared to nCRP, suggesting impaired healing in the elderly may result from the dissociation of nCRP to mCRP following the decline in estrogen with increasing age. In conclusion, this study has provided novel data showing that both isoforms of CRP may differentially mediate inflammatory responses during wound healing and may play key roles in age-related impaired healing and may ultimately provide potential therapeutic strategies for the treatment of chronic wounds in the elderly