A System for Nutritional Consulting Using Quick Questionnaires on Diet and Unidentified Complaints

The aging of society and ongoing health care cost-control policy set the trend for the self-medication which leads to the growing interest in health promotion and prolongation of healthy life expectancy through self-health management. We developed a self-medication support system to provide comprehensive support to consumers at pharmacies and drug stores. This system facilitates the effective use of information and knowledge based on medicine and health. This self-medication support system comprised a set of two terminals connected network server in the data center: a user terminal for consumers use and an advisor terminals for specialized advisor, pharmacists, registered dieticians, and etc. This system enables specialized sales people to provide the appropriate advice based on the factors of consumer’s problem, and to make suggestions for improving his/her lifestyle: eating habit, doing exercise, and having relaxation time. As a result of the trial use of this system at pharmacy stores, a certain degree of correlation between the results of a questionnaire on unidentified complaints and dietary patterns causing potential micronutrient deficiency was demonstrated

RAFT dispersion polymerization : a method to tune the morphology of thymine-containing self-assemblies

YesThe synthesis and self-assembly of thymine-containing polymers were performed using RAFT dispersion polymerization. A combination of microscopy and scattering techniques was used to analyze the resultant complex morphologies. The primary observation from this study is that the obtained aggregates induced during the polymerization were well-defined despite the constituent copolymers possessing broad dispersities. Moreover, a variety of parameters, including the choice of polymerization solvent, the degree of polymerization of both blocks and the presence of an adenine-containing mediator, were observed to affect the resultant size and shape of the assembly.University of Warwick, National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

Evaluation of Postprandial Glucose Excursion Using a Novel Minimally Invasive Glucose Area-Under-the-Curve Monitoring System

Objective: To develop a minimally invasive interstitial fluid extraction technology (MIET) to monitor postprandial glucose area under the curve (AUC) without blood sampling, we evaluated the accuracy of glucose AUC measured by MIET and compared with that by blood sampling after food intake. Methods: Interstitial fluid glucose AUC (IG-AUC) following consumption of 6 different types of foods was measured by MIET. MIET consisted of stamping microneedle arrays, placing hydrogel patches on the areas, and calculating IG-AUC based on glucose levels in the hydrogels. Glycemic index (GI) was determined using IG-AUC and reference AUC measured by blood sampling. Results: IG-AUC strongly correlated with reference AUC (R = 0.91), and GI determined using IG-AUC showed good correlation with that determined by reference AUC (R = 0.88). Conclusions: IG-AUC obtained by MIET can accurately predict the postprandial glucose excursion without blood sampling. In addition, feasibility of GI measurement by MIET was confirmed