Quality and Safety Aspects of Infant Nutrition

Quality and safety aspects of infant nutrition are of key importance for child health, but oftentimes they do not get much attention by health care professionals whose interest tends to focus on functional benefits of early nutrition. Unbalanced diets and harmful food components induce particularly high risks for untoward effects in infants because of their rapid growth, high nutrient needs, and their typical dependence on only one or few foods during the first months of life. The concepts, standards and practices that relate to infant food quality and safety were discussed at a scientific workshop organized by the Child Health Foundation and the Early Nutrition Academy jointly with the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, and a summary is provided here. The participants reviewed past and current issues on quality and safety, the role of different stakeholders, and recommendations to avert future issues. It was concluded that a high level of quality and safety is currently achieved, but this is no reason for complacency. The food industry carries the primary responsibility for the safety and suitability of their products, including the quality of composition, raw materials and production processes. Introduction of new or modified products should be preceded by a thorough science based review of suitability and safety by an independent authority. Food safety events should be managed on an international basis. Global collaboration of food producers, food-safety authorities, paediatricians and scientists is needed to efficiently exchange information and to best protect public health. Copyright (C) 2012 S. Karger AG, Base

Diverging climate trends in Mongolian taiga forests influence growth and regeneration of Larix sibirica

Central and semiarid north-eastern Asia was subject to twentieth century warming far above the global average. Since forests of this region occur at their drought limit, they are particularly vulnerable to climate change. We studied the regional variations of temperature and precipitation trends and their effects on tree growth and forest regeneration in Mongolia. Tree-ring series from more than 2,300 trees of Siberian larch (Larix sibirica) collected in four regions of Mongolia’s forest zone were analyzed and related to available weather data. Climate trends underlie a remarkable regional variation leading to contrasting responses of tree growth in taiga forests even within the same mountain system. Within a distance of a few hundred kilometers (140–490 km), areas with recently reduced growth and regeneration of larch alternated with regions where these parameters remained constant or even increased. Reduced productivity could be correlated with increasing summer temperatures and decreasing precipitation; improved growth conditions were found at increasing precipitation, but constant summer temperatures. An effect of increasing winter temperatures on tree-ring width or forest regeneration was not detectable. Since declines of productivity and regeneration are more widespread in the Mongolian taiga than the opposite trend, a net loss of forests is likely to occur in the future, as strong increases in temperature and regionally differing changes in precipitation are predicted for the twenty-first century

HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL EXERCISE ON BLOOD PRESSURE VARIABILITY: AGE DIFFERENCES

Saniya Waghmare1, PT, Alicen A. Whitaker-Hilbig2, DPT, PhD, Mark Chertoff1, PhD, & Sandra A. Billinger1,3, PT, PhD 1University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas; 2Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; 3University of Kansas Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Fairway, Kansas PURPOSE: With aging, studies have linked elevated beat-to-beat blood pressure variability (BTB BPV) with negative cardiovascular health. BTB BPV is a measure of the physiological autonomic nervous and cardiovascular systems interplay. The objective was to characterize mean arterial pressure BTB BPV response during high intensity interval exercise (HIIE, an exercise that repetitively switches between high intensity and active recovery) to determine the effect of aging on sympathetic nervous activity during a challenging exercise stimulus. METHODS: Secondary analysis was performed on datasets of 25 young adults, 24.96 (1.64) years of age, 48% women and 25 sedentary older adults, 60.84 (13.84) years of age, 36% women. HIIE, alternated 1-minute bouts at 70% and 10% estimated Wattmax for 10 minutes, switching between high intensity and active recovery. Maximal watts were determined using a submaximal exercise test. Blood pressure was measured using finger photoplethysmography. Raw data sampled at 500 Hz was resampled at 10 Hz to obtain beat-to-beat blood pressure. We separated high-intensity and active recovery bouts, concatenating 5 minutes of data for each intensity. Low frequency power spectral density (LF PSD) of BTB BPV was obtained by Fast Fourier transform and cross spectral density, 100-s Hanning window, 50% superposition. LF PSD, reflecting sympathetic nervous activity influence, was summed within the BTB BPV spectral range of 0.04 – 0.15 Hz. We tested normality using Shapiro Wilk test and sphericity using Mauchly’s test. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for analysis between age groups. RESULTS: LF PSD during the high-intensity bouts of HIIE for young adults was 1177.5 (662.3) mm2/Hg, and for older adults was 1274.4 (1348.2) mm2/Hg; Z = -0.84, p = 0.3. Average LF PSD during HIIE recovery for young adults was 1743.2 (1145.5) mm2/Hg, and for older adults was 1226.3 (1064.4) mm2/Hg; Z = -2.45, p \u3c 0.05. CONCLUSION: BTB BPV reflected sympathetic activity measured by LF PSD did not differ with aging during the high intensity bouts of HIIE, LF PSD reduced in older adults during the recovery bouts. Future studies should examine the relationship between reduced sympathetic activity responsiveness during HIIE and changes in vascular structures, reduced baroreflex sensitivity and adrenergic sensitivity with aging

Online repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation during working memory in younger and older adults: A randomized within-subject comparison.

Working memory is the ability to perform mental operations on information that is stored in a flexible, limited capacity buffer. The ability to manipulate information in working memory is central to many aspects of human cognition, but also declines with healthy aging. Given the profound importance of such working memory manipulation abilities, there is a concerted effort towards developing approaches to improve them. The current study tested the capacity to enhance working memory manipulation with online repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in healthy young and older adults. Online high frequency (5Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to test the hypothesis that active repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation would lead to significant improvements in memory recall accuracy compared to sham stimulation, and that these effects would be most pronounced in working memory manipulation conditions with the highest cognitive demand in both young and older adults. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied while participants were performing a delayed response alphabetization task with three individually-titrated levels of difficulty. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was identified by combining electric field modeling to individualized functional magnetic resonance imaging activation maps and was targeted during the experiment using stereotactic neuronavigation with real-time robotic guidance, allowing optimal coil placement during the stimulation. As no accuracy differences were found between young and older adults, the results from both groups were collapsed. Subsequent analyses revealed that active stimulation significantly increased accuracy relative to sham stimulation, but only for the hardest condition. These results point towards further investigation of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for memory enhancement focusing on high difficulty conditions as those most likely to exhibit benefits

Diversity and species distribution of polychaetes, isopods and bivalves in the Atlantic sector of the deep Southern Ocean

We examined deep-sea benthic data on polychaetes, isopods and bivalves from the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. Samples were taken during the expeditions EASIZ II (1998), ANDEEP I and II (2002) (depth: 742–6,348 m). The range between sites varies from 3 to 1,900 km. Polychaetes (175 species in total) and isopods (383 species) had a high proportion of species restricted to one or two sites (72 and 70%, respectively). Bivalves (46 species) had a higher proportion of species represented at more sites. Beta diversity (Whittaker and Jaccard) was higher for polychaetes and isopods than for bivalves. The impact of depth on species richness was not consistent among groups; polychaetes showed a negative relationship to depth, isopods displayed highest richness in the middle depth range (2,000–4,000 m), whereas bivalves showed no clear relationship to depth. Species richness was not related to latitude (58–74°S) or longitude (22–60°W) for any group