FDA Regulation of Food Labeling

As one strolls down a grocery aisle, shift through the maze of cosmetic counters, or sits in front of the television, one is transported into various fantasies, identities, and scenarios. The power of advertisements and package designs to influence the consumers has grown tremendously over the years. Food and cosmetic manufacturers, cognizant of this power, have invested an enormous amount of their resources into the both advertising and packaging – so much so that a fissure has formed between the “image†and the “actuality†of the product. Manufacturers prey on the consumers becoming more impulsive and vulnerable, and the amplification of the product’s “image†has helped this cause. No agency or body of law is curtailing this growth and use of the power except the Food and Drug Administration. Through its stringent labeling regulations throughout this century, the FDA has limited how far the manufacturers can go with their package designs. By imposing its numerous requirements, the FDA has provided the consumers with an “awareness,†and room to dilute the appeal of the “image.†In this sense, the FDA is going far beyond the realm of its traditional role: a “policeman†who “serves the public interest†by “ensur[ing] that food is safe, pure, and wholesome…[and that] cosmetics are safe….†The FDA, like, the postmodern artist Barbara Kruger, is serving a significant cultural and political role. Please note that to keep this essay at a manageable length, I will discuss only foods and cosmetics to illustrate my theses

Longitudinal correlation of the triangular flow event plane in a hybrid approach with hadron and parton cascade initial conditions

The longitudinal long-range correlations of the triangular flow event plane angles are calculated in a Boltzmann + hydrodynamics hybrid approach. The potential to disentangle different energy deposition scenarios is explored by utilizing two different transport approaches for the early non-equilibrium evolution. In the hadronic transport approach the particle production in high energy heavy ion reactions is mainly governed by string excitation and fragmentation processes which are absent in the parton cascade approach. We find that in both approaches the initial state shows a strong longitudinal correlation of the event plane angles which is diluted but still persists in the final state momentum space distributions of the produced particles. A ridge-like structure can also be caused by near-collinear gluon radiation in a parton cascade approach and does not necessarily prove longitudinal flux tubes in the initial state.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, replaced with new version with correct labels and added references, conclusions are unchange

The lexical and grammatical sources of neg-raising inferences

We investigate neg(ation)-raising inferences, wherein negation on a predicate can be interpreted as though in that predicate\u27s subordinate clause. To do this, we collect a large-scale dataset of neg-raising judgments for effectively all English clause-embedding verbs and develop a model to jointly induce the semantic types of verbs and their subordinate clauses and the relationship of these types to neg-raising inferences. We find that some neg-raising inferences are attributable to properties of particular predicates, while others are attributable to subordinate clause structure

A Semantics-Based Measure of Emoji Similarity

Emoji have grown to become one of the most important forms of communication on the web. With its widespread use, measuring the similarity of emoji has become an important problem for contemporary text processing since it lies at the heart of sentiment analysis, search, and interface design tasks. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the semantic similarity of emoji through embedding models that are learned over machine-readable emoji meanings in the EmojiNet knowledge base. Using emoji descriptions, emoji sense labels and emoji sense definitions, and with different training corpora obtained from Twitter and Google News, we develop and test multiple embedding models to measure emoji similarity. To evaluate our work, we create a new dataset called EmoSim508, which assigns human-annotated semantic similarity scores to a set of 508 carefully selected emoji pairs. After validation with EmoSim508, we present a real-world use-case of our emoji embedding models using a sentiment analysis task and show that our models outperform the previous best-performing emoji embedding model on this task. The EmoSim508 dataset and our emoji embedding models are publicly released with this paper and can be downloaded from http://emojinet.knoesis.org/.Comment: This paper is accepted at Web Intelligence 2017 as a full paper, In 2017 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI). Leipzig, Germany: ACM, 201

Stem Mechanical Strength in Thinned versus Non-thinned Ceanothus spinosus, KSP

What effect does the thinning of chaparral around building structures have on plant health? More specifically, does the thinning of Ceanothus spinosus influence mechanical strength? The ability of our native chaparral to withstand environmental factors, such as the Santa Ana winds, and overall health is directly related to plant strength. Seeking to answer these questions, we hypothesized that a difference in water potential between thinned and non-thinned chaparral affects the stem mechanical strength of the plants.We believed that thinned C. spinosus due to greater hydration will be mechanically stronger than non-thinned chaparral.The knowledge of what helps chaparral to be stronger and healthier can be used to further the understanding of plant survival after a wildfire.We collected C. spinosus from thinned and non-thinned areas on Drescher campus at Pepperdine University and brought them back to the lab to measure the stem mechanical strength using the Instron and the Scholander-Hammel Pressure Chamber.After performing our research on the C. spinosus, we found that, although our data reflected higher mechanical strength in the thinned chaparral, the difference was not significant enough to support our hypothesis

Blinking Phase-Change Nanocapsules Enable Background-Free Ultrasound Imaging

Microbubbles are widely used as contrast agents to improve the diagnostic capability of conventional, highly speckled, low-contrast ultrasound imaging. However, while microbubbles can be used for molecular imaging, these agents are limited to the vascular space due to their large size (\u3e 1 μm). Smaller microbubbles are desired but their ultrasound visualization is limited due to lower echogenicity or higher resonant frequencies. Here we present nanometer scale, phase changing, blinking nanocapsules (BLInCs), which can be repeatedly optically triggered to provide transient contrast and enable background-free ultrasound imaging. In response to irradiation by near-infrared laser pulses, the BLInCs undergo cycles of rapid vaporization followed by recondensation into their native liquid state at body temperature. High frame rate ultrasound imaging measures the dynamic echogenicity changes associated with these controllable, periodic phase transitions. Using a newly developed image processing algorithm, the blinking particles are distinguished from tissue, providing a background-free image of the BLInCs while the underlying B-mode ultrasound image is used as an anatomical reference of the tissue. We demonstrate the function of BLInCs and the associated imaging technique in a tissue-mimicking phantom and in vivo for the identification of the sentinel lymph node. Our studies indicate that BLInCs may become a powerful tool to identify biological targets using a conventional ultrasound imaging system

Semantic-based memory-encoding strategy and cognitive stimulation in enhancing cognitive function and daily task performance for older adults with mild cognitive impairment : a pilot non-randomised cluster controlled trial

Aim To investigate the effectiveness of a semantic-based memory-encoding strategy intervention and cognitive stimulation that enhances function for older adults with mild cognitive impairment. Methods A two-armed single-blind non-randomised cluster controlled trial was conducted. Participants in two centres were allocated to the semantic-based memory-encoding experimental group and those in the other two centres received cognitive stimulation. In both groups, one centre- or community-based session and one home-based session were provided weekly for 10 weeks. Outcome measures included attention, memory and general cognitive function (Word List Memory and Word List Recall of the Consortium to Establish a Registry for the Alzheimer's disease, Digit Span Forwards and Backwards and the Cognistat), and daily task performance (Disability Assessment for Dementia and Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale). They were administered pre- and post-intervention. Results Thirty-nine participants completed the study. No significant differences were revealed in the demographic or baseline data. The experimental group showed significant improvements in daily task performance (Disability Assessment for Dementia; p = 0.003), memory outcomes (Word List Recall; p < 0.001), general cognitive function (Cognistat subtests of Memory and Similarity; ps = 0.002 and < 0.001). The cognitive stimulation control group did not show any significant improvement in the measures. Between-group analysis showed significant differences in favour of the experimental group for the outcome measures of the Word List Recall and Cognistat Similarity subtest (ps < 0.001). Conclusions This study shows that the semantic-based memory-encoding strategy is more superior than cognitive stimulation with improvements in attention, memory, general cognitive function and daily task performance for people with a mild cognitive impairment