UK Food Standards Agency Workshop Report: Diet and Immune Function

The UK Food Standards Agency convened a workshop on 13 May 2009 to discuss recently completed research on diet and immune function. The objective of the workshop was to review this research and to establish priorities for future research. Several of the trials presented at the workshop showed some effect of nutritional interventions (e.g. vitamin D, Zn, Se) on immune parameters. One trial found that increased fruit and vegetable intake may improve the antibody response to pneumococcal vaccination in older people. The workshop highlighted the need to further clarify the potential public health relevance of observed nutrition-related changes in immune function, e.g. susceptibility to infections and infectious morbidity.

UK Food Standards Agency Workshop Report: carbohydrate and cardiovascular risk

This report summarises a workshop convened by the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) on 14 October 2008 to discuss current FSA-funded research on carbohydrates and cardiovascular health. The objective of this workshop was to discuss the results of recent research and to identify any areas which could inform future FSA research calls. This workshop highlighted that the FSA is currently funding some of the largest, well-powered intervention trials investigating the type of fat and carbohydrate, whole grains and fruit and vegetables, on various CVD risk factors. Results of these trials will make a substantive contribution to the evidence on diet and cardiovascular risk.

Inherited defects in pedigree dogs. Part 2: Disorders that are not related to breed standards

Recent debate concerning health problems in pedigree animals has highlighted gaps in current knowledge of the prevalence, severity and welfare implications of deleterious inherited traits within the pedigree dog population. In this second part of a two-part review, inherited disorders in the top 50 UK Kennel Club registered breeds were researched using systematic searches of existing databases. A set of inclusion and exclusion criteria, including an evidence strength scale (SEHB), were applied to search results. A total of 312 non-conformation linked inherited disorders was identified, with German shepherd dogs and Golden retrievers associated with the greatest number of disorders. The most commonly reported mode of inheritance was autosomal recessive (71%; 57 breed-disorder combinations), and the most common primarily affected body system was the nervous sensory system. To provide a true assessment of the scale of inherited disorders in the pedigree dogs studied more effort is required to collect accurate prevalence data.

Inherited defects in pedigree dogs. Part 1: Disorders related to breed standards

The United Kingdom pedigree-dog industry has faced criticism because certain aspects of dog conformation Stipulated in the UK Kennel Club breed standards have a detrimental impact oil dog welfare. A review of conformation-related disorders was carried out in the top 50 UK Kennel Club registered breeds using systematic searches of existing information A novel index to score severity of disorders along a single-scale was also developed and used to conduct statistical analyses to determine the factors affecting reported breed predisposition to defects According to the literature searched, each of the top 50 breeds was found to have at least one aspect of its conformation predisposing it to a disorder. and 84 disorders were either directly or indirectly associated with conformation. The Miniature poodle, Bulldog. Pug and Basset hound had most associations with conformation-related disorders. Further research oil prevalence and severity is required to assess the impact of different disorders oil the welfare of affected breeds (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Secondary prevention in the clinical management of patients with cardiovascular diseases. Core components, standards and outcome measures for referral and delivery.

Despite major improvements in diagnostics and interventional therapies, cardiovascular diseases remain a major health care and socio-economic burden both in western and developing countries, in which this burden is increasing in close correlation to economic growth. Health authorities and the general population have started to recognize that the fight against these diseases can only be won if their burden is faced by increasing our investment on interventions in lifestyle changes and prevention. There is an overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of secondary prevention initiatives including cardiac rehabilitation in terms of reduction in morbidity and mortality. However, secondary prevention is still too poorly implemented in clinical practice, often only on selected populations and over a limited period of time. The development of systematic and full comprehensive preventive programmes is warranted, integrated in the organization of national health systems. Furthermore, systematic monitoring of the process of delivery and outcomes is a necessity. Cardiology and secondary prevention, including cardiac rehabilitation, have evolved almost independently of each other and although each makes a unique contribution it is now time to join forces under the banner of preventive cardiology and create a comprehensive model that optimizes long term outcomes for patients and reduces the future burden on health care services. These are the aims that the Cardiac Rehabilitation Section of the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention & Rehabilitation has foreseen to promote secondary preventive cardiology in clinical practice.

Radiochromic film spectroscopy of laser-accelerated proton beams using the FLUKA code and dosimetry traceable to primary standards

A new approach to spectroscopy of laser induced proton beams using radiochromic film (RCF) is presented. This approach allows primary standards of absorbed dose-to-water as used in radiotherapy to be transferred to the calibration of GafChromic HD-810 and EBT in a 29 MeV proton beam from the Birmingham cyclotron. These films were then irradiated in a common stack configuration using the TARANIS Nd:Glass multi-terawatt laser at Queens University Belfast, which can accelerate protons to 10-12 MeV, and a depth-dose curve was measured from a collimated beam. Previous work characterizing the relative effectiveness (RE) of GafChromic film as a function of energy was implemented into Monte Carlo depth-dose curves using FLUKA. A Bragg peak (BP) "library" for proton energies 0-15 MeV was generated, both with and without the RE function. These depth-response curves were iteratively summed in a FORTRAN routine to solve for the measured RCF depth-dose using a simple direct search algorithm. By comparing resultant spectra with both BP libraries, it was found that the effect of including the RE function accounted for an increase in the total number of protons by about 50%. To account for the energy loss due to a 20 mu m aluminum filter in front of the film stack, FLUKA was used to create a matrix containing the energy loss transformations for each individual energy bin. Multiplication by the pseudo-inverse of this matrix resulted in "up-shifting" protons to higher energies. Applying this correction to two laser shots gave further increases in the total number of protons, N of 31% and 56%. Failure to consider the relative response of RCF to lower proton energies and neglecting energy losses in a stack filter foil can potentially lead to significant underestimates of the total number of protons in RCF spectroscopy of the low energy protons produced by laser ablation of thin targets.

Getting to the bottom of arsenic standards and guidelines

Public health policy for arsenic needs to better reflect the ability to detect the risk(s).

Inorganic arsenic levels in rice milk exceed EU and US drinking water standards

Under EU legislation, total arsenic levels in drinking water should not exceed 10 microg l(-1), while in the US this figure is set at 10 microg l(-1) inorganic arsenic. All rice milk samples analysed in a supermarket survey (n = 19) would fail the EU limit with up to 3 times this concentration recorded, while out of the subset that had arsenic species determined (n = 15), 80% had inorganic arsenic levels above 10 microg l(-1), with the remaining 3 samples approaching this value. It is a point for discussion whether rice milk is seen as a water substitute or as a food, there are no EU or US food standards highlighting the disparity between water and food regulations in this respect.

Assessing Lifetime Homes Standards and Part M Building Regulations for Housing Design in the UK

The aims of this article are to examine Lifetime Home Standards (LTHS) and Part M of the UK Building Regulations and to discuss how relevant and successful they are. The UK government expects all new homes to be built to LTHS by 2013. This is increasingly important with an ageing population. The home environment can enable independence and provide a therapeutic place for everyone. As Part M of the building regulations are compulsory in all housing and LTHS are mandatory for public sector housing, a review of research articles was undertaken on these standards. The paper begins with a brief background on accessibility regulations, followed by a critical review of the standards that takes the body of literature that has been written around them into account. This review suggests that the standards should be improved and that designers and architects face challenges to creatively incorporate them into housing design.

University Competition, Grading Standards, and Grade Inflation

We develop a model of strategic grade determination by universities distinguished by their distributions of student academic abilities. Universities choose grading standards to maximize the total wages of graduates, taking into account how the grading standards affect firms' productivity assessment and job placement. We identify conditions under which better universities set lower grading standards, exploiting the fact that firms cannot distinguish between good and badA''s. In contrast, a social planner sets stricter standards at better universities. We show how increases in skilled jobs drive grade inflation, and determine when grading standards fall faster at better schools. (JEL I21)