Recent research and development of functional food in Taiwan

As the living standard rises, people are more concerned with the health benefits of foods. Functional foods are, therefore, receiving increasing attention worldwide. The functional food market in Taiwan reached 1.78 billion US dollars in 2005. Only those which have been certified by the Department of Health can claim their health benefits. Until January 2007, only 88 functional foods have received the certificates. In addition to the product development in the food industry, research institutes and universities are also actively engaged in the technology development and basic research of functional foods. Many raw materials harvested in Taiwan, including edible plants, herbs, medicinal mushrooms, and sea foods, are investigated for their health benefits, bioactive components and suitable processing technologies

Trajectories of objectively measured physical activity in free-living older men.

BACKGROUND: The steep decline in physical activity (PA) among the oldest old is not well understood; there is little information about the patterns of change in PA and sedentary behaviour (SB) in older people. Longitudinal data on objectively measured PA data can give insights about how PA and SB change with age. METHODS: Men age 70-90 yr, from a United Kingdom population-based cohort wore a GT3X accelerometer over the hip annually on up to three occasions (56%, 50%, and 51% response rates) spanning 2 yr. Multilevel models were used to estimate change in activity. Men were grouped according to achieving ≥150 min·wk of MVPA in bouts of ≥10 min (current guidelines) at two or three time points. RESULTS: A total of 1419 ambulatory men had ≥600 min wear time on ≥3 d at ≥2 time points. At baseline, men took 4806 steps per day and spent 72.5% of their day in SB, 23.1% in light PA, and 4.1% in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). Mean change per year was -341 steps, +1.1% SB, -0.7% light PA, and -0.4% MVPA each day (all P 30 min increased from 5.1 by 0.1 per year (P = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: Among older adults, the steep decline in total PA occurred because of reductions in MVPA, while light PA is relatively spared and sedentary time and long sedentary bouts increase

Mechanism of salt flux transport in a tidal dynamic delta

The annual mean combined river discharge from the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) riverine system is 100,000 – 140,000 m3/s (EGIS 2000), draining to Bay of Bengal, covering 83% of total area of Bangladesh, and making Bangladesh delta more vulnerable to both the freshwater and the mixing with sea water. This estuarine environment varies spatially and temporally, over all multiple time scales, due to its funnel-shaped vast river networks, strong tides, and saltwater intrusion. Recent studies reported a drastic salinity increasing at the end of the dry season in the past 20 years (Murshed et al., 2019). Significant salinity intrusion appears from the Sundarbans (over 20ppt in 2015), and then extends inland, which makes salinity a key factor for changing land use and demographic migration. We examine volume and salt flux transports at multi-river channels where the GBM drains to the Bay of Bengal, using our unstructured-grid Bangladesh-FVCOM model (Bricheno et al., 2016). This realistic simulation of the whole delta has been shown to reproduce the present-day river flow circulation, tidal dynamics, and salinity stratification. We then summarise results from the detailed hydrodynamic numerical model into a simplified flow budget, to summarise the climate impacts on salt-intrusion in the delta. In this way, we can investigate the mechanism of salt flux transports in Bangladesh delta, and improve our understanding of the controlling processes driving salinity intrusion in this region

Prevalence, Co-Occurring Difficulties, and Risk Factors of Developmental Language Disorder: First Evidence for Mandarin-Speaking Children in a Population-Based Study

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a condition that significantly affects children\u27s achievement but has been understudied. We aim to estimate the prevalence of DLD in Shanghai, compare the co-occurrence of difficulties between children with DLD and those with typical development (TD), and investigate the early risk factors for DLD

Saline intrusion in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna megadelta

In the fertile Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta, which spans the boundary from West Bengal in India and Bangladesh, the availability of freshwater is crucial to subsistence livelihoods and protected ecosystems. Controlled by large tides and widely variable river discharge, the delta experiences rising river salinity and salt intrusion, as well as seasonal flooding during the monsoon. Future climate change is projected to increase rainfall in South Asia and river discharge in the GBM system. We address how this process might combine with sea-level rise (SLR) to control future river salinity. Model experiments designed using a range of SLR and climate change scenarios are performed to investigate the forces controlling river salinity in the delta. A flexible mesh modelling approach allows us to investigate the impacts at a wide range of time and space scales. In future projections the disparity between wet and dry season salt intrusion intensifies. In the future, SLR acts to increase river salinity in the GBM delta. During the dry season, this effect is worsened by reduced river discharge. In the wet season, this can be mitigated in the eastern part of the delta by larger seasonal river flows. The central and western delta is dominated by SLR, leading to increased salt intrusion all year round, impacting on water resources and agricultural productivity. In the context of an intensifying hydrological cycle, these conclusions have implications for similar tide-dominated deltas, where SLR can increase tidal range, and therefore exacerbate salt intrusion

Application of infrared spectral techniques on quality and compositional attributes of coffee: An overview

AbstractDuring the last two decades, near and mid-infrared spectral analyses have emerged as a reliable and promising analytical tool for objective assessment of coffee quality attributes. The literature presented in this review clearly reveals that near and mid-infrared approaches have a huge potential for gaining rapid information about the chemical composition and related properties of coffee. In addition to its ability for effectively quantifying and characterising quality attributes of some important features of coffee such as moisture, lipids and caffeine content, classification into quality grades and determination of sensory attributes, it is able to measure multiple chemical constituents simultaneously avoiding extensive sample preparation. Developing a quality evaluation system based on infrared spectral information to assess the coffee quality parameters and to ensure its authentication would bring economical benefits to the coffee industry by increasing consumer confidence in the quality of products. This paper provides an overview of the recently developed approaches and latest research carried out in near and mid-infrared spectral technology for evaluating the quality and composition of coffee and the possibility of its widespread deployment

Linking drought indices to impacts in the Liaoning province of China

Drought is an inherent meteorological characteristic of any given region, but is particularly important in China due to its monsoon climate and the “three ladder” landform system. The Chinese government has constructed large-scale water conservation projects since 1949, and developed drought and water scarcity relief frameworks. However, drought still causes huge impacts on water supply, environment and agriculture. China has, therefore, created specialized agencies for drought management called Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, which include four different levels: state, provincial, municipal and county. The impact datasets they collect provide an effective resource for drought vulnerability assessment, and provide validation options for hydro-meteorological indices used in risk assessment and drought monitoring. In this study, we use the statistical drought impact data collected by the Liaoning province Drought Relief Headquarter and meteorological drought indices (Standardized Precipitation Index, SPI and Standard Precipitation Evaporation Index, SPEI) to explore a potential relationship between drought impacts and these indices. The results show that SPI-24 and SPEI-24 are highly correlated to the populations that have difficulties in obtaining drinking water in four out of the six cities studied. Three impacts related to reservoirs and the availability of drinking water for humans and livestock exhibit strong correlations with SPI and SPEI of different accumulated periods. Results reveal that meteorological indices used for drought monitoring and early warning in China can be effectively linked to drought impacts. Further work is exploring how this information can be used to optimize drought monitoring and risk assessment in the whole Liaoning province and elsewhere in China

On the influence of ram-pressure stripping on the star formation of simulated spiral galaxies

We investigate the influence of ram-pressure stripping on the star formation and the mass distribution in simulated spiral galaxies. Special emphasis is put on the question where the newly formed stars are located. The stripping radius from the simulation is compared to analytical estimates. Disc galaxies are modelled in combined N-body/hydrodynamic simulations (GADGET-2) with prescriptions for cooling, star formation, stellar feedback, and galactic winds. These model galaxies move through a constant density and temperature gas, which has parameters comparable to the intra-cluster medium (ICM) in the outskirts of a galaxy cluster (T=3 keV ~3.6x10^7 K and rho=10^-28 g/cm^3). With this numerical setup we analyse the influence of ram-pressure stripping on the star formation rate of the model galaxy. We find that the star formation rate is significantly enhanced by the ram-pressure effect (up to a factor of 3). Stars form in the compressed central region of the galaxy as well as in the stripped gas behind the galaxy. Newly formed stars can be found up to hundred kpc behind the disc, forming structures with sizes of roughly 1 kpc in diameter and with masses of up to 10^7 M_sun. As they do not possess a dark matter halo due to their formation history, we name them 'stripped baryonic dwarf' galaxies. We also find that the analytical estimate for the stripping radius from a Gunn & Gott (1972) criterion is in good agreement with the numerical value from the simulation. Like in former investigations, edge-on systems lose less gas than face-on systems and the resulting spatial distribution of the gas and the newly formed stars is different.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Reconstructing galaxy fundamental distributions and scaling relations from photometric redshift surveys. Applications to the SDSS early-type sample

Noisy distance estimates associated with photometric rather than spectroscopic redshifts lead to a mis-estimate of the luminosities, and produce a correlated mis-estimate of the sizes. We consider a sample of early-type galaxies from the SDSS DR6 for which both spectroscopic and photometric information is available, and apply the generalization of the V_max method to correct for these biases. We show that our technique recovers the true redshift, magnitude and size distributions, as well as the true size-luminosity relation. We find that using only 10% of the spectroscopic information randomly spaced in our catalog is sufficient for the reconstructions to be accurate within about 3%, when the photometric redshift error is dz = 0.038. We then address the problem of extending our method to deep redshift catalogs, where only photometric information is available. In addition to the specific applications outlined here, our technique impacts a broader range of studies, when at least one distance-dependent quantity is involved. It is particularly relevant for the next generation of surveys, some of which will only have photometric information.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 1 table, new section 3.1 and appendix added, MNRAS in pres