A complex relationship among chemical concentration, detection threshold and suprathreshold intensity of bitter compounds

Detection thresholds and psychophysical curves were established for caffeine, quinine-HCl (QHCl), and propylthiouracil (PROP) in a sample of 33 subjects (28 female mean age 24 &plusmn; 4). The mean detection threshold (&plusmn;standard error) for caffeine, QHCl, and PROP was 1.2 &plusmn; 0.12, 0.0083 &plusmn; 0.001, and 0.088 &plusmn; 0.07 mM, respectively. Pearson product&ndash;moment analysis revealed no significant correlations between detection thresholds of the compounds. Psychophysical curves were constructed for each bitter compound over 6 concentrations. There were significant correlations between incremental points of the individual psychophysical curves for QHCl and PROP. Regarding caffeine, there was a specific concentration (6 mM) below and above which the incremental steps in bitterness were correlated. Between compounds, analysis of psychophysical curves revealed no correlations with PROP, but there were significant correlations between the bitterness of caffeine and QHCl at higher concentrations on the psychophysical curve (P &lt; 0.05). Correlation analysis of detection threshold and suprathreshold intensity within a compound revealed a significant correlation between PROP threshold and suprathreshold intensity (r = 0.46&ndash;0.4, P &lt; 0.05), a significant negative correlation for QHCl (r = &ndash;0.33 to &ndash;0.4, P &lt; 0.05), and no correlation for caffeine. The results suggest a complex relationship between chemical concentration, detection threshold, and suprathreshold intensity.<br /

Subjetividades y espacio de posibilidades en programas juveniles: Contrarrestar los relatos mayoritarios como cambio social en el contexto australiano

The status quo of many not-for-profit organisations is well-intentioned service provision often coupled with an absence of critical understanding sustained by the restricting nature of neoliberal bureaucracy and funding. In this context, programs aimed at assisting young people from marginalised communities can become mired in individualistic thinking that constrains the space of possibilities for young people through depoliticisation and decontextualization of their realities and thus the kinds of subjectivities available to them. The challenge for the evaluation we discuss in this paper was not only to evaluate the outcomes of the program, but to promote community narratives about the realities for young racialized people in Australia that counter majoritarian stories. We conclude that social change begins within the multidirectional relationships and contact zones of the stakeholders, participants and researchers of youth programs. This means, extending the focus beyond generic youth development and moving toward engaging young people in critical social analysis and empowering them as future social change agents in their communities.El status quo de muchas organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro es la prestación de servicios bien intencionada, a menudo acompañada de una ausencia de comprensión crítica prolongada por la naturaleza restrictiva de la burocracia y la financiación neoliberales. En este contexto, los programas destinados a ayudar a los jóvenes de comunidades marginadas pueden enredarse en un pensamiento individualista que restringe el espacio de posibilidades para los jóvenes a través de la despolitización y descontextualización de sus realidades y, por lo tanto, los tipos de subjetividades disponibles para ellos. El desafío para la evaluación que abordamos en este artículo no fue solo evaluar los resultados del programa, sino también promover narrativas comunitarias sobre las realidades de los jóvenes racializados en Australia que contrarresten los relatos mayoritarios. Concluimos que el cambio social comienza dentro de las relaciones multidireccionales y zonas de contacto de las partes interesadas, participantes e investigadores de programas juveniles. Esto significa extender el enfoque más allá del desarrollo juvenil genérico y avanzar hacia la participación de los jóvenes en el análisis social crítico y empoderarlos como futuros agentes de cambio social en sus comunidades.

Assessment of eating rate and food intake in spoon versus fork users in a laboratory setting

Accumulating evidence show positive relationships between eating rate and body weight. Acute food intake is affected by eating rate, bite size, and palatability. The objective was to assess differences between participants who chose to use a spoon vs. fork in eating rate and food intake of four meals that differ in palatability (low vs. high salt) and in energy density (low vs. high fat). Forty-eight healthy adults (16 males, 18-54 y, BMI: 17.8-34.4 kg/m2) were recruited. Participants attended four lunch time sessions after a standardised breakfast. Meals were either (1) low-fat/low-salt, (2) low-fat/high-salt, (3) high-fat/low-salt, or (4) high-fat/high-salt. Nineteen participants (6 males) consistently used a fork and 21 (8 males) used a spoon, 8 participants were inconsistent in cutlery use and excluded from analyses. Spoon users had on average a higher BMI than fork users (p=0.006). Effects of cutlery use, BMI status (BMI&lt;25 vs. BMI&gt;25), salt, and fat, and their interactions were assessed in a General Linear Model. Spoon users consumed faster (fork: 53&plusmn;2.8g/min; spoon: 62&plusmn;2.1g/min, p=0.022) and tended to consume more (p=0.09), whereas the duration of the meals were similar (fork: 6.9&plusmn;0.3min; spoon: 6:7&plusmn;0.2min, p=0.55). BMI status affected both eating rate and food intake (p=0.005). There were no significant two-way or three-way interactions between salt, fat, and cutlery use on eating rate or food intake. In conclusion, participants who chose to consume with forks ate slower compared to spoon users

Bitterness suppression with zinc sulfate and na-cyclamate: a model of combined peripheral and central neural approaches to flavor modification

Purpose Zinc sulfate is known to inhibit the bitterness of the antimalarial agent quinine [R. S. J. Keast. The effect of zinc on human taste perception. J. Food Sci. 68:1871&ndash;1877 (2003)]. In the present work, we investigated whether zinc sulfate would inhibit other bitter-tasting compounds and pharmaceuticals. The utility of zinc as a general bitterness inhibitor is compromised, however, by the fact that it is also a good sweetness inhibitor [R. S. J. Keast, T. Canty, and P. A. S. Breslin. Oral zinc sulfate solutions inhibit sweet taste perception. Chem. Senses 29:513&ndash;521 (2004)] and would interfere with the taste of complex formulations. Yet, zinc sulfate does not inhibit the sweetener Na-cyclamate. Thus, we determined whether a mixture of zinc sulfate and Na-cyclamate would be a particularly effective combination for bitterness inhibition (Zn) and masking (cyclamate). Method We used human taste psychophysical procedures with chemical solutions to assess bitterness blocking. Results Zinc sulfate significantly inhibited the bitterness of quinine&ndash;HCl, Tetralone, and denatonium benzoate (DB) (p &lt; 0.05), but had no significant effect on the bitterness of sucrose octa-acetate, pseudoephedrine (PSE), and dextromethorphan. A second experiment examined the influence of zinc sulfate on bittersweet mixtures. The bitter compounds were DB and PSE, and the sweeteners were sucrose (inhibited by 25 mM zinc sulfate) and Na-cyclamate (not inhibited by zinc sulfate). The combination of zinc sulfate and Na-cyclamate most effectively inhibited DB bitterness (86%) (p &lt; 0.0016), whereas the mixture\u27s inhibition of PSE bitterness was not different from that of Na-cyclamate alone. Conclusion A combination of Na-cyclamate and zinc sulfate was most effective at inhibiting bitterness. Thus, the combined use of peripheral oral and central cognitive bitterness reduction strategies should be particularly effective for improving the flavor profile of bitter-tasting foods and pharmaceutical formulations. <br /

The Growth of Transplanted Tumours in Mice after Chronic Inhalation of Fresh Cigarette Smoke

The subcutaneous growth of the Lewis lung tumour in C57BL mice chronically exposed to fresh cigarette smoke was increased above that in age-matched control mice. When murine sarcoma virus (Harvey) induced tumour cells were introduced to the lungs of groups of BALB/c mice, only mice chronically exposed to fresh cigarette smoke died with tumour cells in the lungs. Tumour cell growth in mice during short term cigarette smoke exposure was indistinguishable from that in controls

A prospective cohort study of the effects of adjuvant breast cancer chemotherapy on taste function, food liking, appetite and associated nutritional outcomes

\u27Taste\u27 changes are commonly reported during chemotherapy. It is unclear to what extent this relates to actual changes in taste function or to changes in appetite and food liking and how these changes affect dietary intake and nutritional status

Combination of electron energy-loss spectroscopy and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy to determine indium concentration in InGaN thin film structures

We demonstrate a method to determine the indium concentration, x, of In x Ga1-x N thin films by combining plasmon excitation studies in electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) with a novel way of quantification of the intensity of x-ray lines in energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDXS). The plasmon peak in EELS of InGaN is relatively broad. We fitted a Lorentz function to the main plasmon peak to suppress noise and the influence from the neighboring Ga 3d transition in the spectrum, which improves the precision in the evaluation of the plasmon peak position. As the indium concentration of InGaN is difficult to control during high temperature growth due to partial In desorption, the nominal indium concentrations provided by the growers were not considered reliable. The indium concentration obtained from EDXS quantification using Oxford Instrument ISIS 300 x-ray standard quantification software often did not agree with the nominal indium concentration, and quantification using K and L lines was inconsistent. We therefore developed a self-consistent iterative procedure to determine the In content from thickness-dependent k-factors, as described in recent work submitted to Journal of Microscopy. When the plasmon peak position is plotted versus the indium concentration from EDXS we obtain a linear relationship over the whole compositional range, and the standard error from linear least-squares fitting shows that the indium concentration can be determined from the plasmon peak position to within Δx = ± 0.037 standard deviation

A Robust Solution Procedure for Hyperelastic Solids with Large Boundary Deformation

Compressible Mooney-Rivlin theory has been used to model hyperelastic solids, such as rubber and porous polymers, and more recently for the modeling of soft tissues for biomedical tissues, undergoing large elastic deformations. We propose a solution procedure for Lagrangian finite element discretization of a static nonlinear compressible Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic solid. We consider the case in which the boundary condition is a large prescribed deformation, so that mesh tangling becomes an obstacle for straightforward algorithms. Our solution procedure involves a largely geometric procedure to untangle the mesh: solution of a sequence of linear systems to obtain initial guesses for interior nodal positions for which no element is inverted. After the mesh is untangled, we take Newton iterations to converge to a mechanical equilibrium. The Newton iterations are safeguarded by a line search similar to one used in optimization. Our computational results indicate that the algorithm is up to 70 times faster than a straightforward Newton continuation procedure and is also more robust (i.e., able to tolerate much larger deformations). For a few extremely large deformations, the deformed mesh could only be computed through the use of an expensive Newton continuation method while using a tight convergence tolerance and taking very small steps.Comment: Revision of earlier version of paper. Submitted for publication in Engineering with Computers on 9 September 2010. Accepted for publication on 20 May 2011. Published online 11 June 2011. The final publication is available at http://www.springerlink.co

Dietary fat restriction increases fat taste sensitivity in people with obesity

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with obesity may be less sensitive to the taste of fat, and it is hypothesized that this is due to excess dietary fat intake. This study assessed the effect of a 6-week low-fat (LF) or portion control (PC) diet matched for weight loss on fat taste thresholds, fat perception, and preference in people with overweight/obesity. METHODS: Participants (n&thinsp;=&thinsp;53) completed a randomized dietary intervention and consumed either a LF diet (25% fat) or PC diet (33% fat) for 6 weeks. Fat taste thresholds (lowest detectable fat concentration), fat perception (discrimination ability), preference, and anthropometry were assessed at baseline and week 6. RESULTS: Consumption of a LF diet (n&thinsp;=&thinsp;26) and PC diet (n&thinsp;=&thinsp;27) reduced participants\u27 weight (P&thinsp;&lt;&thinsp;0.001), with no significant differences between groups (LF, -2.9%, PC, -2.7%). Both diets resulted in a decrease in fat taste thresholds (P&thinsp;=&thinsp;0.014), and the effect tended to be stronger in the LF diet vs. the PC diet (P&thinsp;=&thinsp;0.060). The ability to perceive different fat concentrations in foods was increased after the LF diet only (P&thinsp;=&thinsp;0.017); however, food preference did not change on either diet. CONCLUSIONS: A PC and LF diet both increase fat taste sensitivity in people with overweight/obesity, with the strongest effect after the LF diet