Vitamin B-6 status of middle aged women consuming soymilk versus cow\u27s milk

Vitamin B-6 (B-6), an essential nutrient whose coenzyme form pyridoxal 5\u27-phosphate (PLP) is required by over 100 enzymes, is involved in many important metabolic processes. Pyridoxine glucoside (PNG), a less bioavailable form, is present in plant foods and absent in animal foods. With recognition of beneficial health effects of soy, there has been an increase in soyfoods consumption. Middle aged women frequently have marginal intakes of B-6, and many drink soymilk for its purported benefit in relieving menopausal symptoms. Although the PNG content of soymilk has not been reported, PNG content of other soyfoods ranges from 57-67% of the total B-6. The effect of substituting soymilk for cow\u27s milk on B-6 status was examined in middle aged women (aged 36-52 y; n = 16). The study employed a crossover design: 14-d adjustment period followed by 28-d experimental period, during which half the subjects consumed 4 cups of cow\u27s milk and half consumed 4 cups of soymilk per day; 14-d washout period and second 28-d experimental period when subjects switched to the other milk. Participants followed a self-selected B-6 restricted diet (~1 mg/d) throughout the study by following a list of prohibited or restricted foods. Three consecutive 24-h urine samples were collected and fasting blood was drawn every two weeks. Methionine loads (0.1 g/kg body weight) were given at the end of each experimental period. Plasma PLP, 4-pyridoxic acid (4-PA), urinary 4-PA, and pre- and postload plasma homocysteine were determined by HPLC analysis. Using crossover ANOVA tests, mean plasma 4-PA (P = 0.001), and urinary 4-PA-to-creatinine ratio (P \u3c0.001) were significantly lower when soymilk was consumed. Mean plasma PLP (P = 0.107) and increase in mean plasma total homocysteine concentrations after a methionine load (P = 0.316) were not significantly different between the cow\u27s milk and soymilk treatments. Significant effects may have been seen if the study period was longer (\u3e28 d), the diets more rigidly controlled, and sample size larger (n\u3e16). These results suggest that substituting soymilk for cow\u27s milk has an adverse effect on B-6 status in middle aged women as reflected by the reduced status indicators

Continuous variable entanglement enhancement and manipulation by a sub-threshold type-II optical parametric amplifier

We experimentally demonstrate that the quantum entanglement between amplitude and phase quadratures of optical modes produced from a non-degenerate optical parametric amplifier (NOPA) can be enhanced and manipulated phase-sensitively by means of another NOPA. When both NOPAs operate at de-amplification, the entanglement degree is increased at the cavity resonance of the second NOPA. When the first NOPA operates at de-amplification and the second one at amplification, the spectral features of the correlation variances are significantly changed. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical expectation

The influence of dietary lipid composition on skeletal muscle mitochondria from mice following eight months of calorie restriction

PMCID: PMC4138957.-- et al.Calorie restriction (CR) has been shown to decrease reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and retard aging in a variety of species. It has been proposed that alterations in membrane saturation are central to these actions of CR. As a step towards testing this theory, mice were assigned to 4 dietary groups (control and 3 CR groups) and fed AIN-93G diets at 95 % (control) or 60 % (CR) of ad libitum for 8 months. To manipulate membrane composition, the primary dietary fats for the CR groups were soybean oil (also used in the control diet), fish oil or lard. Skeletal muscle mitochondrial lipid composition, proton leak, and H2O2 production were measured. Phospholipid fatty acid composition in CR mice was altered in a manner that reflected the n-3 and n-6 fatty acid profiles of their respective dietary lipid sources. Dietary lipid composition did not alter proton leak kinetics between the CR groups. However, the capacity of mitochondrial complex III to produce ROS was decreased in the CR lard compared to the other CR groups. The results of this study indicate that dietary lipid composition can influence ROS production in muscle mitochondria of CR mice. It remains to be determined if lard or other dietary oils can maximize the CRinduced decreases in ROS production. © 2014 Institute of Physiology v.v.i.This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants R01 AG028125 and P01 AG025532.Peer Reviewe

Targeting the autophagy-lysosome pathway in a pathophysiologically relevant murine model of reversible heart failure

The key biological drivers that are responsible for reverse left ventricle (LV) remodeling are not well understood. To gain an understanding of the role of the autophagy-lysosome pathway in reverse LV remodeling, we used a pathophysiologically relevant murine model of reversible heart failure, wherein pressure overload by transaortic constriction superimposed on acute coronary artery (myocardial infarction) ligation leads to a heart failure phenotype that is reversible by hemodynamic unloading. Here we show transaortic constriction + myocardial infarction leads to decreased flux through the autophagy-lysosome pathway with the accumulation of damaged proteins and organelles in cardiac myocytes, whereas hemodynamic unloading is associated with restoration of autophagic flux to normal levels with incomplete removal of damaged proteins and organelles in myocytes and reverse LV remodeling, suggesting that restoration of flux is insufficient to completely restore myocardial proteostasis. Enhancing autophagic flux with adeno-associated virus 9-transcription factor EB resulted in more favorable reverse LV remodeling in mice that had undergone hemodynamic unloading, whereas overexpressing transcription factor EB in mice that have not undergone hemodynamic unloading leads to increased mortality, suggesting that the therapeutic outcomes of enhancing autophagic flux will depend on the conditions in which flux is being studied

AlignSDF: Pose-Aligned Signed Distance Fields for Hand-Object Reconstruction

International audienceRecent work achieved impressive progress towards joint reconstruction of hands and manipulated objects from monocular color images. Existing methods focus on two alternative representations in terms of either parametric meshes or signed distance fields (SDFs). On one side, parametric models can benefit from prior knowledge at the cost of limited shape deformations and mesh resolutions. Mesh models, hence, may fail to precisely reconstruct details such as contact surfaces of hands and objects. SDF-based methods, on the other side, can represent arbitrary details but are lacking explicit priors. In this work we aim to improve SDF models using priors provided by parametric representations. In particular, we propose a joint learning framework that disentangles the pose and the shape. We obtain hand and object poses from parametric models and use them to align SDFs in 3D space. We show that such aligned SDFs better focus on reconstructing shape details and improve reconstruction accuracy both for hands and objects. We evaluate our method and demonstrate significant improvements over the state of the art on the challenging ObMan and DexYCB benchmarks

Properties of aerosol and surface derived from OLCI/Sentinel-3A using GRASP approach: Retrieval development and preliminary validation

The Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite is a medium-resolution and multi-spectral push-broom imager acquiring radiance in 21 spectral bands covering from the visible to the far near-infrared. These measurements are primary dedicated to land & ocean color applications, but actually include also reliable information for atmospheric aerosol and surface brightness characterization. In the framework of the EUMETSAT funded study to support the Copernicus Program, we describe the retrieval of aerosol and surface properties from OLCI single-viewing multi-spectral Top-Of-Atmosphere (TOA) radiances based on the Generalized Retrieval of Atmosphere and Surface Properties (GRASP) algorithm. The high potential of the OLCI/GRASP configuration stems from the attempt to retrieve both aerosol load and surface reflectance simultaneously using a globally consistent high-level approach. For example, both over land and ocean surfaces OLCI/GRASP uses 9 spectral channels (albeit with different weights), strictly the same prescribed aerosol models and globally the same a priori constraints (though with some differences for observations over land and ocean). Due to the lack of angular multi-viewing information, the directional properties of underlying surface are strongly constrained in the retrieval: over ocean the Fresnel reflection together with foam/whitecap albedo are exclusively computed using a priori wind speed; over land, the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) is slightly adjusted from a priori values of climatological Ross-Li volumetric and geometric terms. Meanwhile, the isotropic reflectance is retrieved globally under mild spectral smoothness constraints. It should be noticed that OLCI/GRASP configuration employs innovative multi-pixel concept (Dubovik et al., 2011) that enhance retrieval by simultaneously inverting large group of pixels. The concept allows for benefiting from knowledge about natural variability of the retrieved parameters. The obtained OLCI/GRASP products were validated with the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) and Maritime Aerosol Network (MAN) and intercompared with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aerosol and surface products. The overall performance is quite comparable to the community-referenced MODIS. Over ocean the OLCI/GRASP results are encouraging with 67% of the AOD (550 nm) satisfying the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) requirement using AERONET coastal sites and 74% using MAN deep ocean measurements, and an AOD (550 nm) bias 0.01 with AERONET and nearly zero bias with MAN. Over land, 48% of OLCI/GRASP AOD (550 nm) satisfy the GCOS requirement and a bias within ±0.01 for total and AOD < 0.2. Key challenges are identified and discussed: adequate screening of cloud contaminations, retrieval of aerosol over bright surfaces and in the regions containing complex mixtures of aerosol

Promoting Green Brand of University in Social Media: Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis

Combating climate change and mitigating its negative consequences requires enhancing awareness of sustainable development. It is believed the education sector is an excellent trigger for green transformations. In turn, since social media has become a fundamental part of people's everyday lives, they are considered to be an effective tool in engaging the broader audience to green problems. In this view, this paper aims to analyze the social media activity of world-leading green universities in gaining the university community's commitment to sustainable development principles. This study involved text mining, statistical, content, and sentiment analyses to achieve the study aim and answer the following research questions: 1) What is the social media performance of the green universities? 2) What is a difference in the social media parameters used by the green universities involving the academic community and stakeholders to account for environmental issues? The research objects are five top-ranked sustainable universities worldwide according to the UI GreenMetric World University Rankings in 2021 and Sumy State University (as the first Ukrainian university listed by the mentioned above ranking). The study period covers data as of May 10, 2022. The data was retrieved from the analyzed universities' social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, etc.). The findings confirmed the research hypothesis that the social media activity of green universities could be a driving force in gaining sustainable development goals and promoting an eco-friendly lifestyle worldwide. Based on the obtained results, the authors provided some recommendations regarding strengthening the universities’ social media activity towards increasing the green awareness of netizens