Strategies to improve non-haem iron absorption

Iron deficiency anaemia is one of the most prevalent nutritional deficiency disorders in the world. Food iron fortification is a widely used strategy to reduce the risk of deficiency but presents a major challenge to the food industry. The more bioavailable forms of iron, such as ferrous gluconate, cause adverse organoleptic changes when added to foods. The primary aim of the work described in this thesis was to test whether alginate would bind soluble forms of iron and thereby maintain its bioavailability. Initial in vitro studies demonstrated that alginate solutions and beads loaded with ferrous gluconate delivered iron in an available form for uptake into Caco-2 cells (measured by ferritin formation). A human study was undertaken to assess the bioavailability of ferrous gluconate in alginate beads, and it was found to be significantly lower than ferrous gluconate on its own, so further in vitro studies were undertaken to examine possible reasons for the inhibitory effect of the beads. It was concluded that alginate beads, containing calcium as a gelling agent, are not an effective delivery vehicle for soluble iron compounds. However, these findings should not rule out the potential use of alginates as a delivery system for iron, especially in diets containing high levels of phytate. Other related work reported in this thesis includes studies of iron availability from two wheat cultivars with varying phytate and iron concentrations, potential use of nicotianamine and 2'- deoxymugineic acid as iron enhancers, and investigations into calcium-iron interactions in a Caco-2 cell model, with the use of live cell imaging techniques and confocal microscopy

Some problems with the Russellian open future

In a recently published paper, Todd (Mind, 125(499), pp. 775-798, 2016a) advocates a novel treatment of future contingents. On his view, all statements concerning the contingent future are false. He motivates his semantic postulates by considerations in philosophy of time and modality, in particular by the claim that there is no actual future. I present a number of highly controversial consequences of Todd’s theory. Inadequacy of his semantics might indirectly serve as an argument against the philosophical view underpinning his proposal

Tensed metaphysics and non-local grounding of truth

It is argued that the assignment of truth values to future contingents is threatened not by a tensed metaphysics but by a temporally "local" notion of truth, i.e., by the assumption that whatever is true at a given time needs to be grounded in what exists at that time. If this assumption is accepted, tensed and tenseless metaphysics are equally vulnerable; if it is rejected, both can accommodate true future contingents. This means that semantic decisions are largely independent of metaphysical considerations. The work of Correia and Rosenkranz (2018) is a clear example of how the tensed metaphysics of the growing block can incorporate true future contingents. Two potential worries are discussed in the context of their work: (a) that their grounding strategy overgeneralizes and admits true counterfactual contingents; and (b) that the growing block theory lacks sufficient resources to distinguish the unique possible future course of events that is relevant for the grounding of future contingents

History relativism as extreme assessment relativism : a note on Prior's Ockhamism

Since the early days of Ockhamist semantics, it has been recognized that the history - relative notion of truth which the theory postulates is problematic : it is unclear what it means that a sentence is true relative to a possible course of events; it is also unclear how such a notion of relative truth relates to the everyday notion of truth simpliciter. To rationalize the Ockhamist notion of truth I compare two relativistic theories : the assessment relativism of John MacFarlane and the history relativism of Belnap et al. In the end, I suggest that we may understand the history-relative notion of truth as the truth assessed relative to an end of time. On the formal level, I introduce a doomsday extension of a branching model and prove that history - relative truth in any given model is equivalent to doomsday - relative truth in the extended model. It turns out that this equivalence holds in general only if the end of time is also, in a sense, beyond time

A future for the thin red line

The thin red line (TRL) is a theory about the semantics of future-contingents. The central idea is that there is such a thing as the ‘actual future’, even in the presence of indeterminism. It is inspired by a famous solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge associated with William of Ockham, in which the freedom of agents is argued to be compatible with God’s omniscience. In the modern branching time setting, the theory of the TRL is widely regarded to suffer from several fundamental problems. In this paper we propose several new TRL semantics, each with differing degrees of success. This leads up to our final semantics, which is a cross between the TRL and supervaluationism. We discuss the notions of truth, validity and semantic consequence which result from our final semantics, and demonstrate some of its pleasing results. This account, we believe, answers themain objection in the literature, and thus places the TRL on the same level as any other competing semantics for future contingents

Genetic diversity of Desulfovibrio spp. in environmental samples analyzed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of [NiFe] hydrogenase gene fragments

The genetic diversity of Desulfovibrio species in environmental samples was determined by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of PCR-amplified [NiFe] hydrogenase gene fragments. Five different PCR primers were designed after Comparative analysis of [NiFe] hydrogenase gene sequences from three Desulfovibrio species. These primers were tested in different combinations on the genomic DNAs of a variety of hydrogenase-containing and hydrogenase-lacking bacteria. One primer pair was found to be specific for Desulfovibrio species only, while the others gave positive results with other bacteria also. By using this specific primer pair, we were able to amplify the [NiFe] hydrogenase genes of DNAs isolated from environmental samples and to detect the presence of Desulfovibrio species in these samples. However, only after DGGE analysis of these PCR products could the number of different Desulfovibrio species within the samples be determined. DGGE analysis Of PCR products from differ ent bioreactors demonstrated up to two bands, while at least five distinguishable bands were detected in a microbial mat sample. Because these bands most likely represent as many Desulfovibrio species present in these samples, we conclude that the genetic diversity of Desulfovibrio species in the natural microbial mat is far greater than that in the experimental bioreactors

Reclassifying Polish Soil-agricultural Maps into USDA-compliant PTG2008 Soil Textural Classification. Consequence for Modelling Environmental Phenomena Examplified by Wind Erosion

This paper is a side effect of preparing international publications on our long term research on  soils’ susceptibility to wind erosion. For the paper to be internationally understandable we had to translate the texture classes from the Polish soil-agricultural maps (PTG1974), used as a basis to derive ten soil units investigated in the experiments, into the widely recognised USDA classification. We spotted that the PTG1974 classes of sandy soils, falling into USDA single SAND class, have large, reaching 1620% difference in deflation rates, 25% in the case of LOAMY SAND and  SANDY LOAM class the difference was 300%. The differences of this magnitude within a single textural class imply that the USDA classes may be too general to be used in some domains of environmental modelling. This also implies that translating soil kinds (soil textural classes) in Polish soil-agricultural maps into the USDA textural classes is not rational and may lead to the loss of spatial variability of soil cover and the loss of credibility in modelling of environmental phenomena

Towards a new theory of historical counterfactuals

We investigate the semantics of historical counterfactuals in indeterministic contexts. We claim that "plain" and "necessitated" counterfactuals differ in meaning. To substantiate this claim, we propose a new semantic treatment of historical counterfactuals in the Branching Time framework. We supplement our semantics with supervaluationist postsemantics, thanks to which we can explain away the intuitions which seem to talk in favor of the identification of "would" with "would necessarily"

Back to the actual future

The purpose of the paper is to rethink the role of actuality in the branching model of possibilities. We investigate the idea that the model should be enriched with an additional factor - the so-called Thin Red Line - which is supposed to represent the single possible course of events that gets actualized in time. We believe that this idea was often misconceived which prompted some unfortunate reactions. On the one hand, it suggested problematic semantic models of future tense and and on the other, it provoked questionable lines of criticism. We reassess the debate and point to potential pitfalls, focusing on the semantic dimension of the Thin Red Line theory. Our agenda transcends the semantics, however. We conclude that semantic considerations do not threaten the Thin Red Line theory and that the proper debate should be carried in the domain of metaphysics