Designing the eatwell week: the application of eatwell plate advice to weekly food intake

<p>To develop a menu and resource to illustrate to consumers and health professionals what a healthy balanced diet looks like over the course of a week.</p> <p>Development and analysis of an illustrative 7 d ‘eatwell week’ menu to meet current UK recommendations for nutrients with a Dietary Reference Value, with a daily energy base of 8368 kJ (2000 kcal). Foods were selected using market research data on meals and snacks commonly consumed by UK adults. Analysis used the food composition data set from year 1 (2008) of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey rolling programme. The eatwell week menu was developed using an iterative process of nutritional analysis with adjustments made to portion sizes and the inclusion/exclusion of foods in order to achieve the target macronutrient composition.</p> <p>Three main meals and two snacks were presented as interchangeable within the weekdays and two weekend days to achieve adult food and nutrient recommendations. Main meals were based on potatoes, rice or pasta with fish (two meals; one oily), red meat (two meals), poultry or vegetarian accompaniments. The 5-a-day target for fruit and vegetables (range 5–6·7 portions) was achieved daily. Mean salt content was below recommended maximum levels (<6 g/d). All key macro- and micronutrient values were achieved.</p> <p>Affordable foods, and those widely consumed by British adults, can be incorporated within a 7 d healthy balanced menu. Future research should investigate the effect of using the eatwell week on adults’ dietary habits and health-related outcomes.</p&gt

A short history of the successes and failures of the international climate change negotiations

The last 35 years have been a period of intense and continuous international negotiations to deal with climate change. During the same period of time humanity has doubled the amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There has, however, been progress and some notable successes in the negotiations. In 2015, at COP21 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 196 countries adopted the Paris Agreement stating that they would limit global temperatures to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and would pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The first review of the Paris Agreement was at COP26 in Glasgow with many countries pledging to go to net zero emissions by the middle of the century. But currently these pledges, if fulfilled, will only limit the global average temperature to between 2.4°C and 2.8°C. At COP27 in Egypt the core agreements from the Glasgow Climate Pact were maintained and countries finally agreed to set up a loss and damage facility – although details of who will provide the finance and who can claim are still be to be worked out. This article reviews the key moments in the history of international climate change negotiations and discusses what the key objectives are for future COP meetings

Determining a welfare prioritization for horses using a Delphi method

Equine welfare issues are receiving increasing attention in the UK, but welfare problems can arise from a wide range of causes. In order to identify the most important welfare concerns for horses, we used a Delphi method with 19 equine welfare experts. An initial list of 84 equine welfare issues was generated using an online discussion board and NVivo thematic analysis. Subsequently, experts ranked these welfare issues for perceived prevalence, severity and duration of suffering associated with each issue on a 6-point Likert scale. All issues with a mean score of 3 or above (n = 37) were included in subsequent rounds. Finally, a subset of experts attended a two-day workshop to determine the final priority list of welfare issues. The welfare issues perceived to be most prevalent were lack of biosecurity, delayed euthanasia, lack of owner knowledge of equine welfare needs, fear and stress from use, and obesity. The issues considered to cause greatest suffering for individual horses were delayed euthanasia, lack of recognition by owners of pain behaviour, large worm burdens, obesity and being fed unsuitable diets for equine feeding behaviour. These outcomes can help to focus research and education interventions on the most pressing welfare issues for horses

The effects of feed area design on the social behaviour of dairy cattle

The overall objective of this thesis was to assess the effect of feed area design including feeding space availability, barrier type and stocking density, on the feeding behaviour of dairy cows. Feed intake in dairy cows is directly related to milk production, thus a good food supply is extremely important to the modern, high producing dairy cow. Intake is critical for improving milk production, health, body condition and the welfare of the animals. Feeding designs can have a major effect on behaviour and feed intake, therefore it is an important consideration when housing cattle and other livestock. The effect of altering the amount of space allowance available at the feed-face highlighted a significant effect on feeding patterns. As the space allowance increased the number of feeding bouts also increased (P<0.001) and length of bouts decreased (P<0.05). However, when provided with extra space at the feed-face, cows did not increase their feed intake as hypothesised, possibly as a result of the differences between individual animals being masked by an overall group effect. The number of aggressive interactions decreased as the space allowance increased (P<0.001) and furthermore, the number of times individuals were displaced from the feeding area also decreased as the space allowance increased (P<0.05). Subsequently, preference tests were used as a behavioural tool to determine how individual cows perceive their feeding environment with specific emphasis on understanding what difficulties low ranking animals face at the feed-face. Subordinate cows showed a significant preference for feeding alone rather than next to a dominant when they were offered high quality feed on both sides of a Y-maze test (P<0.001). When “asked” to trade-off between feed quality and proximity to a dominant cow, subordinate cows chose to feed alone on low quality food. A follow-on experiment using the same methodology was undertaken and aimed to identify the space allowances at which cows would not trade-off food quality. Four different space allowances were tested. At the two smaller space allowances, cows preferred to feed alone and for the two larger space allowances, cows had no significant preferences. The feed barrier has been shown to have a major effect on feeding and social behaviour of group housed dairy cows. A barrier design that provides some sort of separation between cows has also been shown to reduce competition. The aim of the final study was to determine if a feed barrier which obscured the cows’ visual field whilst feeding would increase vigilance behaviour and alter normal feeding behaviour, particularly for subordinates. Two different types of feed barrier were tested at four different stocking densities. The average daily feeding time was higher when cows were fed using a conventional headlock system compared to an electronic feeding system (P<0.05). All groups of cows displayed vigilance scans, however, neither type of barrier, feed space allowance, or dominance rank had an effect on the frequency of scans. These results indicate that neither feeder design nor stocking rate affect vigilance in dairy cows, at least over the treatment conditions assessed in the current study. The results of this research illustrate that to achieve the maximum levels of feeding behaviour and a reduction of aggressive behaviour, the cows’ environment must be such that it provides sufficient space and feed barrier design which will allow normal social behaviour. Over-stocking at the feed-face should be avoided to reduce competition. Future research should consider the long term effects of over stocking and competition on dry matter intake (DMI), milk production and health

Exposure to secondhand smoke and cognitive impairment in non-smokers: national cross sectional study with cotinine measurement

Objective To examine the association between a biomarker of exposure to secondhand smoke (salivary cotinine concentration) and cognitive impairment

Production and characterization of anti-human interferon γ receptor antibody fragments that inhibit cytokine binding to the receptor

Three single-chain antibody fragments that recognize the extracellular human interferon γ receptor α-chain (IFNγR), and inhibit the binding of human IFNγ, have been produced in Escherichia coli. These fragments are derived from murine anti-receptor monoclonal antibodies, and comprise the variable heavy (VH) domain linked to the variable light (VL) chain through a 15 amino acid linker [(GGGGS)3]. Using surface plasmon resonance technology (BIAcore), the soluble proteins were shown to retain a high affinity for recombinant IFNγR, and by radioimmunoassay to possess high inhibitory activity towards IFNγ-binding to human Raji cells. The antibody fragments most likely recognize epitopes that overlap the cytokine binding site on the receptor surface. Attempts to dissect further the antibodies to isolated VH- and VL-chains and to synthetic linear and cyclic peptides derived from the individual complementarity determining regions failed to afford fragments with significant IFNγR binding affinity. Nevertheless, these native-like variable region fragments and petidomimetics derived from them are of interest in the design of novel IFNγR antagonist

Constraints on the Compact Object Mass in the Eclipsing HMXB XMMU J013236.7+303228 in M33

We present optical spectroscopic measurements of the eclipsing High Mass X-ray Binary XMMU J013236.7+303228 in M33. Based on spectra taken at multiple epochs of the 1.73d binary orbital period we determine physical as well as orbital parameters for the donor star. We find the donor to be a B1.5IV sub-giant with effective temperature T=22,000-23,000 K. From the luminosity, temperature and known distance to M33 we derive a radius of R = 8.9 \pm 0.5 R_sun. From the radial--velocity measurements, we determine a velocity semi-amplitude of K_opt = 63 \pm 12 km/sec. Using the physical properties of the B-star determined from the optical spectrum, we estimate the star's mass to be M_opt = 11 \pm 1 M_sun. Based on the X-ray spectrum, the compact companion is likely a neutron star, although no pulsations have yet been detected. Using the spectroscopically derived B-star mass we find the neutron star companion mass to be M_X = 2.0 \pm 0.4 M_sun, consistent with the neutron star mass in the HMXB Vela X-1, but heavier than the canonical value of 1.4 M_sun found for many millisecond pulsars. We attempt to use as an additional constraint that the B star radius inferred from temperature, flux, and distance, should equate the Roche radius, since the system accretes by Roche lobe overflow. This leads to substantially larger masses, but from trying to apply the technique to known systems, we find that the masses are consistently overestimated. Attempting to account for that in our uncertainties, we derive M_X = 2.2^{+0.8}_{-0.6} M_sun and M_opt =13 \pm 4 M_sun. We conclude that precise constraints require detailed modeling of the shape of the Roche surface.Comment: 11 pages emulateapj, 9 figures, ApJ accepte