Nutrition epidemiology of flavan-3-ols: the known unknowns

Nutritional epidemiology has an important role, as it can provide long-term data from large populations and does not rely on surrogate markers for morbidity/mortality. Meaningful interpretation and applications of outcomes from epidemiological studies depend on the accurate assessment of dietary intake, which is currently mainly based on a combination of self-reporting and food composition data. Flavan-3-ols are a group of bioactives (non-essential dietary components with significant impact on health) that is a possible candidate for the development of dietary recommendations. The breadth of data available on their effect on health also provides the basis for investigating the suitability of the methods currently used in nutritional epidemiology to assess the health effects of bioactives. The outcomes of this assessment demonstrate that the limitations of currently used methods make it virtually impossible to estimate intake accurately from self-reported dietary data. This is due to the limitations of self-reporting, especially from food-frequency questionnaires, and the inability of currently used methods to deal with the high variability of food composition. Indeed, the estimated intake of flavan-3-ols, can only be interpreted as a marker of specific dietary patterns, but not as the actual intake amount. The interpretation of results from such studies are fraught with serious limitations, especially for establishing associations between intake and health and the development of dietary recommendations. Alternative assessment not affected by these limitations, such as biomarkers, are required to overcome these limitations. The development of nutritional biomarkers is therefore crucial to investigate the health effect of bioactives

Contribution of the adrenal gland to the production of androstenedione and testosterone during the first two years of life

Androstenedione and testosterone were measured in whole adrenal glands of 56 previously healthy boys who died suddenly between birth and 2 yr of age. In each adrenal gland, the concentration of androstenedione considerably exceeded that of testosterone. The highest concentrations were found during the first week of life (median, 295 ng/g; range, 98- 320 ng/g). Thereafter, values decreased rapidly until the end of the first year of life (median, 10 ng/g; range, 4.4-22.7 ng/g). Adrenal testosterone concentrations averaged 15% of those of androstenedione in the same gland and similarly decreased until the end of the first year. The decrease of adrenal androgen concentrations paralleled the involution of the fetal adrenal zone. A close correlation existed between the concentration of androstenedione in adrenal tissue and plasma. However, no correlation existed between adrenal and plasma testosterone. When the adrenals and testes of the same infant were compared, there was 10 times more androstenedione in the adrenals than in the testes during the first 2 yr of life. The testes contained more testosterone than the adrenals only during the first 4 months. Thus, in infant boys the adrenals are the main source of androstenedione during the first 2 yr. After the sixth month of life, they also are the main source of testosterone

Bragg spectroscopy of a strongly interacting Fermi gas

We present a comprehensive study of the Bose-Einstein condensate to Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BEC-BCS) crossover in fermionic $^6$Li using Bragg spectroscopy. A smooth transition from molecular to atomic spectra is observed with a clear signature of pairing at and above unitarity. These spectra probe the dynamic and static structure factors of the gas and provide a direct link to two-body correlations. We have characterised these correlations and measured their density dependence across the broad Feshbach resonance at 834 G.Comment: Replaced with published versio

Testosterone and androstenedione concentrations in human testis and epididymis during the first two years of life

Testosterone and androstenedione were measured in testicular and epididymal tissue of 37 previously healthy infants between 1 and 24 months of age who died suddenly. In half of the patients elevated plasma levels of cortisol and androstenedione suggested preterminal stress. Plasma testosterone levels, however, did not differ from those in healthy infants. Testicular testosterone concentrations were maximal in boys from 1-3 months of age (median, 36.6 ng/g; range, 7-380 ng/g) with peak values similar to those found in pubertal or even adult testes. Thereafter testicular testosterone concentrations decreased and after the age of 6 months all values were below 12.5 ng/g, which corresponds to the low normal range of older prepubertal boys. Plasma testosterone and testicular testosterone correlated significantly (P less than 0.001). On average the testicular concentrations were 36.4 times higher than the corresponding plasma concentrations. Testicular androstenedione was low but correlated significantly with testicular testosterone (P less than 0.001). Epididymal testosterone concentrations were surprisingly high (1-3 months: median, 10.3 ng/g; range, 4-42.7 ng/g) and averaged 30% of the testicular testosterone concentration. Thus, epididymal testosterone concentrations were significantly higher than the circulating plasma testosterone levels, indicating the capacity of the infant epididymis to accumulate androgens. These findings suggest that high local testosterone concentrations during early infancy are important not only for the testis itself but particularly for the developing epididymi

Pseudo-Separation for Assessment of Structural Vulnerability of a Network

Based upon the idea that network functionality is impaired if two nodes in a network are sufficiently separated in terms of a given metric, we introduce two combinatorial \emph{pseudocut} problems generalizing the classical min-cut and multi-cut problems. We expect the pseudocut problems will find broad relevance to the study of network reliability. We comprehensively analyze the computational complexity of the pseudocut problems and provide three approximation algorithms for these problems. Motivated by applications in communication networks with strict Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements, we demonstrate the utility of the pseudocut problems by proposing a targeted vulnerability assessment for the structure of communication networks using QoS metrics; we perform experimental evaluations of our proposed approximation algorithms in this context

Sugar intake among German adolescents: trends from 1990-2016 based on biomarker excretion in 24-h urine samples

Trend analyses based on dietary records suggest decreases in the intakes of total (TS), added (AS) and free sugar (FS) since 2005 among children and adolescents in Germany. In terms of age trends, TS intake decreased with increasing age. However, self-reported sugar intake in epidemiological studies is criticized, as it may be prone to bias due to selective underreporting. Furthermore, adolescents are more susceptible to underreporting than children. We thus analyzed time and age trends in urinary fructose excretion (FE), sucrose excretion (SE) and the sum of both (FE+SE) as biomarkers for sugar intake among 8.5-16.5-year-old adolescents. Urinary sugar excretion was measured by UPLC-MS/MS in 997 24-h urine samples collected from 239 boys and 253 girls participating in the DONALD study cohort between 1990 and 2016. Time and age trends of log-transformed FE, SE and FE+SE were analyzed using polynomial mixed-effects regression models. Between 1990 and 2016 FE as well as FE+SE decreased (linear time trend: p=0.0272 and p<0.0001, respectively). A minor increase in excretion during adolescence was confined to FE (linear age trend: p=0.0017). The present 24-h excretion measurements support a previously reported dietary-record based decline in sugar intake since 2005. However, the previous seen dietary record-based decrease in TS from childhood to late adolescence was not confirmed by our biomarker analysis, suggesting a constant sugar intake for the period of adolescence

Ontology-Based Production Simulation with OntologySim

Imagine the possibility to save a simulation at any time, modify or analyze it, and restart again with exactly the same state. The conceptualization and its concrete manifestation in the implementation OntologySim is demonstrated in this paper. The presented approach of a fully ontology-based simulation can solve current challenges in modeling and simulation in production science. Due to the individualization and customization of products and the resulting increase in complexity of production, a need for flexibly adaptable simulations arises. This need is exemplified in the trend towards Digital Twins and Digital Shadows. Their application to production systems, against the background of an ever increasing speed of change in such systems, is arduous. Moreover, missing understandability and human interpretability of current approaches hinders successful, goal oriented applications. The OntologySim can help solving this challenge by providing the ability to generate truly cyber physical systems, both interlocked with reality and providing a simulation framework. In a nutshell, this paper presents a discrete-event-based open-source simulation using multi-agency and ontology