Raw and Cooked Vegetable Consumption and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease:a Study of 400,000 Adults in UK Biobank

OBJECTIVES: Higher levels of vegetable consumption have been associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), but the independent effect of raw and cooked vegetable consumption remains unclear. METHODS: From the UK Biobank cohort, 399,586 participants without prior CVD were included in the analysis. Raw and cooked vegetable intakes were measured with a validated dietary questionnaire at baseline. Multivariable Cox regression was used to estimate the associations between vegetable intake and CVD incidence and mortality, adjusted for socioeconomic status, health status, and lifestyle factors. The potential effect of residual confounding was assessed by calculating the percentage reduction in the likelihood ratio (LR) statistics after adjustment for the confounders. RESULTS: The mean age was 56 years and 55% were women. Mean intakes of raw and cooked vegetables were 2.3 and 2.8 tablespoons/day, respectively. During 12 years of follow-up, 18,052 major CVD events and 4,406 CVD deaths occurred. Raw vegetable intake was inversely associated with both CVD incidence (adjusted hazard ratio (HR) [95% CI] for the highest vs. lowest intake: 0.89 [0.83–0.95]) and CVD mortality (0.85 [0.74–0.97]), while cooked vegetable intake was not (1.00 [0.91–1.09] and 0.96 [0.80–1.13], respectively). Adjustment for potential confounders reduced the LR statistics for the associations of raw vegetables with CVD incidence and mortality by 82 and 87%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Higher intakes of raw, but not cooked, vegetables were associated with lower CVD risk. Residual confounding is likely to account for much, if not all, of the observed associations. This study suggests the need to reappraise the evidence on the burden of CVD disease attributable to low vegetable intake in the high-income populations

Effect of Nitrogen Addition on Shape Memory Characteristics of Fe-Mn-Si-Cr Alloy

Nitrogen-microalloying and partial substitution of Cr for Mn have been employed to enhance the shape memory effect and corrosion resistance of Fe-Mn-Si based alloys. Typically, the tested alloys with nominal composition Fe-25Mn-6Si-5Cr-(0.12-0.14)N in mass% exhibit perfect shape recovery for a 3% pre-strain after only one cycle of thermomechanical training. The related mechanism has been discussed, taking account of the effect of nitrogen on the stacking fault energy (SFE) or the stacking fault probability (P sf ) of the alloy and the strengthening of the austenite matrix. Thermodynamic calculation and P sf measurement showed that the SFE increases with increasing N-content in the concentration range investigated, e.g. less than 0.3 mass%. Thus, the critical stress for the formation of stress-induced martensite increases with N-content. It is believed that the interstitial strengthening of the matrix by nitrogen predominantly contributes to the improvement of shape memory effect. Besides, nitrogen-microalloying remarkably improves the corrosion resistance of the alloys in aqueous solutions containing NaOH and NaCl, but not in HCl solution as indicated by the long-term immersion tests

Effect of alloying additions on the SFE, Neél temperature and shape memory effect in Fe–Mn–Si-based alloys

A range of Fe&ndash;Mn&ndash;Si-based shape memory alloys has been investigated to examine the interplay of composition, stacking fault probability (SFP) and Ne&eacute;l temperature on the shape memory effect (SME). It has been found that the SFP (inversely proportional to stacking fault energy) showed little correlation to the SME for the range of alloy compositions examined. Further, the Ne&eacute;l temperature was not found to exhibit a significant effect on the SME. The addition of interstitial elements, however, was found to markedly decrease the SME.<br /