The effects of flavonoid and other polyphenol consumption on cognitive performance: A systematic research review of human experimental and epidemiological studies

Literature reviews suggest flavonoids, a sub-class of polyphenols, are beneficial for cognition. This is the first review examining the effect of consumption of all polyphenol groups on cognitive function. Inclusion criteria were polyphenol vs. control interventions and epidemiological studies with an objective measure of cognitive function. Participants were healthy or mildly cognitively impaired adults. Studies were excluded if clinical assessment or diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, or cognitive impairment was the sole measure of cognitive function, or if the polyphenol was present with potentially confounding compounds such as caffeine (e.g. tea studies) or Ginkgo Biloba. 28 studies were identified; 4 berry juice studies, 4 cocoa studies, 13 isoflavone supplement studies, 3 other supplement studies, and 4 epidemiological surveys. Overall, 16 studies reported cognitive benefits following polyphenol consumption. Evidence suggests that consuming additional polyphenols in the diet can lead to cognitive benefits, however, the observed effects were small. Declarative memory and particularly spatial memory appear most sensitive to polyphenol consumption and effects may differ depending on polyphenol source. Polyphenol berry fruit juice consumption was most beneficial for immediate verbal memory, whereas isoflavone based interventions were associated with significant improvements for delayed spatial memory and executive function. Comparison between studies was hampered by methodological inconsistencies. Hence, there was no clear evidence for an association between cognitive outcomes and polyphenol dose response, duration of intervention, or population studied. In conclusion, however, the findings do imply that polyphenol consumption has potential to benefit cognition both acutely and chronically.

A comparative review of skill assessment: performance, prediction and profiling

The assessment of chess players is an increasingly attractive opportunity and an unfortunate necessity. The chess community needs to limit potential reputational damage by inhibiting cheating and unjustified accusations of cheating: there has been a recent rise in both. A number of counter-intuitive discoveries have been made by benchmarking the intrinsic merit of players’ moves: these call for further investigation. Is Capablanca actually, objectively the most accurate World Champion? Has ELO rating inflation not taken place? Stimulated by FIDE/ACP, we revisit the fundamentals of the subject to advance a framework suitable for improved standards of computational experiment and more precise results. Other domains look to chess as the demonstrator of good practice, including the rating of professionals making high-value decisions under pressure, personnel evaluation by Multichoice Assessment and the organization of crowd-sourcing in citizen science projects. The ‘3P’ themes of performance, prediction and profiling pervade all these domains.

The EU societal awareness of landscape indicator: a review of its meaning, utility and performance across different scales

There is increasing recognition that agricultural landscapes meet multiple societal needs and demands beyond provision of economic and environmental goods and services. Accordingly, there have been significant calls for the inclusion of societal, amenity and cultural values in agri-environmental landscape indicators to assist policy makers in monitoring the wider impacts of land-based policies. However, capturing the amenity and cultural values that rural agrarian areas provide, by use of such indicators, presents significant challenges. The EU social awareness of landscape indicator represents a new class of generalized social indicator using a top-down methodology to capture the social dimensions of landscape without reference to the specific structural and cultural characteristics of individual landscapes. This paper reviews this indicator in the context of existing agri-environmental indicators and their differing design concepts. Using a stakeholder consultation approach in five case study regions, the potential and limitations of the indicator are evaluated, with a particular focus on its perceived meaning, utility and performance in the context of different user groups and at different geographical scales. This analysis supplements previous EU-wide assessments, through regional scale assessment of the limitations and potentialities of the indicator and the need for further data collection. The evaluation finds that the perceived meaning of the indicator does not vary with scale, but in common with all mapped indicators, the usefulness of the indicator, to different user groups, does change with scale of presentation. This indicator is viewed as most useful when presented at the scale of governance at which end users operate. The relevance of the different sub-components of the indicator are also found to vary across regions.

Supply management capabilities, routine bundles and their impact on firm performance

Despite the generally positive contribution of supply management capabilities to firm performance their respective routines require more depth of assessment. Using the resource-based view we examine four routines bundles comprising ostensive and performative aspects of supply management capability – supply management integration, coordinated sourcing, collaboration management and performance assessment. Using structural equation modelling we measure supply management capability empirically as a second-order latent variable and estimate its effect on a series of financial and operational performance measures. The routines-based approach allows us to demonstrate a different, more fine-grained approach for assessing consistent bundles of homogeneous patterns of activity across firms. The results suggest supply management capability is formed of internally consistent routine bundles, which are significantly related to financial performance, mediated by operational performance. Our results confirm an indirect effect of firm performance for ‘core’ routines forming the architecture of a supply management capability. Supply management capability primarily improves the operational performance of the business, which is subsequently translated into improved financial performance. The study is significant for practice as it offers a different view about the face-valid rationale of supply management directly influencing firm financial performance. We confound this assumption, prompting caution when placing too much importance on directly assessing supply management capability using financial performance of the business.

The validation of a computer-based food record for older adults: the Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing (NANA) method

Dietary assessment in older adults can be challenging. The Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing (NANA) method is a touch-screen computer-based food record that enables older adults to record their dietary intakes. The objective of the present study was to assess the relative validity of the NANA method for dietary assessment in older adults. For this purpose, three studies were conducted in which a total of ninety-four older adults (aged 65–89 years) used the NANA method of dietary assessment. On a separate occasion, participants completed a 4 d estimated food diary. Blood and 24 h urine samples were also collected from seventy-six of the volunteers for the analysis of biomarkers of nutrient intake. The results from all the three studies were combined, and nutrient intake data collected using the NANA method were compared against the 4 d estimated food diary and biomarkers of nutrient intake. Bland–Altman analysis showed a reasonable agreement between the dietary assessment methods for energy and macronutrient intake; however, there were small, but significant, differences for energy and protein intake, reflecting the tendency for the NANA method to record marginally lower energy intakes. Significant positive correlations were observed between urinary urea and dietary protein intake using both the NANA and the 4 d estimated food diary methods, and between plasma ascorbic acid and dietary vitamin C intake using the NANA method. The results demonstrate the feasibility of computer-based dietary assessment in older adults, and suggest that the NANA method is comparable to the 4 d estimated food diary, and could be used as an alternative to the food diary for the short-term assessment of an individual’s dietary intake.

Changes in fire regimes since the Last Glacial Maximum: an assessment based on a global synthesis and analysis of charcoal data

Fire activity has varied globally and continuously since the last glacial maximum (LGM) in response to long-term changes in global climate and shorter-term regional changes in climate, vegetation, and human land use. We have synthesized sedimentary charcoal records of biomass burning since the LGM and present global maps showing changes in fire activity for time slices during the past 21,000 years (as differences in charcoal accumulation values compared to pre-industrial). There is strong broad-scale coherence in fire activity after the LGM, but spatial heterogeneity in the signals increases thereafter. In North America, Europe and southern South America, charcoal records indicate less-than-present fire activity during the deglacial period, from 21,000 to ∼11,000 cal yr BP. In contrast, the tropical latitudes of South America and Africa show greater-than-present fire activity from ∼19,000 to ∼17,000 cal yr BP and most sites from Indochina and Australia show greater-than-present fire activity from 16,000 to ∼13,000 cal yr BP. Many sites indicate greater-than-present or near-present activity during the Holocene with the exception of eastern North America and eastern Asia from 8,000 to ∼3,000 cal yr BP, Indonesia and Australia from 11,000 to 4,000 cal yr BP, and southern South America from 6,000 to 3,000 cal yr BP where fire activity was less than present. Regional coherence in the patterns of change in fire activity was evident throughout the post-glacial period. These complex patterns can largely be explained in terms of large-scale climate controls modulated by local changes in vegetation and fuel load

The application of a domains based analysis to family processes: implications for assessment and therapy

Social domains are classes of interpersonal processes each with distinct procedural rules underpinning mutual understanding, emotion regulation and action. We describe the features of three domains of family life – safety, attachment and discipline/expectation – and contrast them with exploratory processes in terms of the emotions expressed, the role of certainty versus uncertainty, and the degree of hierarchy in an interaction. We argue that everything that people say and do in family life carries information about the type of interaction they are engaged in – that is, the domain. However, sometimes what they say or how they behave does not make the domain clear, or participants in the social interactions are not in the same domain (there is a domain mismatch). This may result in misunderstandings, irresolvable arguments or distress. We describe how it is possible to identify domains and judge whether they are clear and unclear, and matched and mismatched, in observed family interactions and in accounts of family processes. This then provides a focus for treatment and helps to define criteria for evaluating outcomes.

Soil quality assessment based on carbon stratification index in different olive grove management practices in Mediterranean areas

In Mediterranean areas, conventional tillage increases soil organic matter losses, reduces soil quality, and contributes to climate change due to increased CO2 emissions. CO2 sequestration rates in soil may be enhanced by appropriate agricultural soil management and increasing soil organic matter content. This study analyzes the stratification ratio (SR) index of soil organic carbon (SOC), nitrogen (N) and C:N ratio under different management practices in an olive grove (OG) in Mediterranean areas (Andalusia, southern Spain). Management practices considered in this study are conventional tillage (CT) and no tillage (NT). In the first case, CT treatments included addition of alperujo (A) and olive leaves (L). A control plot with no addition of olive mill waste was considered (CP). In the second case, NT treatments included addition of chipped pruned branches (NT1) and chipped pruned branches and weeds (NT2). The SRs of SOC increased with depth for all treatments. The SR of SOC was always higher in NT compared to CT treatments, with the highest SR of SOC observed under NT2. The SR of N increased with depth in all cases, ranging between 0.89 (L-SR1) and 39.11 (L-SR3 and L-SR4).The SR of C:N ratio was characterized by low values, ranging from 0.08 (L-SR3) to 1.58 (NT1-SR2) and generally showing higher values in SR1 and SR2 compared to those obtained in SR3 and SR4. This study has evaluated several limitations to the SR index such as the fact that it is descriptive but does not analyze the behavior of the variable over time. In addition, basing the assessment of soil quality on a single variable could lead to an oversimplification of the assessment. Some of these limitations were experienced in the assessment of L, where SR1 of SOC was the lowest of the studied soils. In this case, the higher content in the second depth interval compared to the first was caused by the intrinsic characteristics of this soil's formation process rather than by degradation. Despite the limitations obtained SRs demonstrate that NT with the addition of organic material improves soil quality.

High performance polyester-based materials

Biaxially oriented films produced from semi-crystalline, semi-aromatic polyesters are utilised extensively as components within various applications, including the specialist packaging, flexible electronic and photovoltaic markets. However, the thermal performance of such polyesters, specifically poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and poly(ethylene-2,6-naphthalate) (PEN), is inadequate for several applications that require greater dimensional stability at higher operating temperatures. The work described in this project is therefore primarily focussed upon the copolymerisation of rigid comonomers with PET and PEN, in order to produce novel polyester-based materials that exhibit superior thermomechanical performance, with retention of crystallinity, to achieve biaxial orientation. Rigid biphenyldiimide comonomers were readily incorporated into PEN and poly(butylene-2,6-naphthalate) (PBN) via a melt-polycondensation route. For each copoly(ester-imide) series, retention of semi-crystalline behaviour is observed throughout entire copolymer composition ratios. This phenomenon may be rationalised by cocrystallisation between isomorphic biphenyldiimide and naphthalenedicarboxylate residues, which enables statistically random copolymers to melt-crystallise despite high proportions of imide sub-units being present. In terms of thermal performance, the glass transition temperature, Tg, linearly increases with imide comonomer content for both series. This facilitated the production of several high performance PEN-based biaxially oriented films, which displayed analogous drawing, barrier and optical properties to PEN. Selected PBN copoly(ester-imide)s also possess the ability to either melt-crystallise, or form a mesophase from the isotropic state depending on the applied cooling rate. An equivalent synthetic approach based upon isomorphic comonomer crystallisation was subsequently applied to PET by copolymerisation with rigid diimide and Kevlar®-type amide comonomers, to afford several novel high performance PET-based copoly(ester-imide)s and copoly(ester-amide)s that all exhibited increased Tgs. Retention of crystallinity was achieved in these copolymers by either melt-crystallisation or thermal annealing. The initial production of a semi-crystalline, PET-based biaxially oriented film with a Tg in excess of 100 °C was successful, and this material has obvious scope for further industrial scale-up and process development.

Modelling the bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in agricultural food chains for regulatory exposure assessment

New models for estimating bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the agricultural food chain were developed using recent improvements to plant uptake and cattle transfer models. One model named AgriSim was based on K OW regressions of bioaccumulation in plants and cattle, while the other was a steady-state mechanistic model, AgriCom. The two developed models and European Union System for the Evaluation of Substances (EUSES), as a benchmark, were applied to four reported food chain (soil/air-grass-cow-milk) scenarios to evaluate the performance of each model simulation against the observed data. The four scenarios considered were as follows: (1) polluted soil and air, (2) polluted soil, (3) highly polluted soil surface and polluted subsurface and (4) polluted soil and air at different mountain elevations. AgriCom reproduced observed milk bioaccumulation well for all four scenarios, as did AgriSim for scenarios 1 and 2, but EUSES only did this for scenario 1. The main causes of the deviation for EUSES and AgriSim were the lack of the soil-air-plant pathway and the ambient air-plant pathway, respectively. Based on the results, it is recommended that soil-air-plant and ambient air-plant pathway should be calculated separately and the K OW regression of transfer factor to milk used in EUSES be avoided. AgriCom satisfied the recommendations that led to the low residual errors between the simulated and the observed bioaccumulation in agricultural food chain for the four scenarios considered. It is therefore recommended that this model should be incorporated into regulatory exposure assessment tools. The model uncertainty of the three models should be noted since the simulated concentration in milk from 5th to 95th percentile of the uncertainty analysis often varied over two orders of magnitude. Using a measured value of soil organic carbon content was effective to reduce this uncertainty by one order of magnitude.

Physical disability, recent illnesses and health self-assessment in a population-based study in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Objectives. To investigate health self-assessment and to estimate the prevalence of chronic diseases and recent illnesses in people with and without physical disabilities (PD) in the state of Sao Paulo, southeastern Brazil. Study design. A Cross-sectional study comprising two population-based health surveys conducted in 2002 and 2003. Methods. A total of 8317 persons (165 with PD) were interviewed in the two studies. Variables concerning to health self-assessment; chronic disease and recent illness were compared in the people with and without PD. Negative binomial regression was used in the analysis. Results. Subjects with PD more often assessed their health as poor/very poor compared to non-disabled ones. They reported more illnesses in the 15 days prior to interview as well as more chronic diseases (skin conditions, anaemia, chronic kidney disease, stroke, depression/anxiety, migraine/headache, pulmonary diseases, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis/arthrosis/rheumatic conditions and heart disease). This higher disease prevalence can be either attributed to disability itself or be associated to gender, age and schooling. Conclusions. Subjects with PD had more recent illnesses and chronic diseases and poorer health self-assessment than non-disabled ones. Age, gender, schooling and disability have individual roles in disease development among disabled people.

Assessment of production efficiency, physicochemical properties and storage stability of spray-dried chlorophyllide, a natural food colourant, using gum Arabic, maltodextrin and soy protein isolate-based carrier systems

P>The aim of this research was to study spray drying as potential action to protect chlorophyllide from environmental conditions for shelf-life extension and characterisation of the powders. Six formulations were prepared with 7.5 and 10 g of carrier agents [gum Arabic (GA), maltodextrin (MA) and soybean protein isolate (SPI)]/100 mL of chlorophyllide solutions. The powders were evaluated for morphological characteristics (SEM), particle size, water activity, moisture, density, hygroscopicity, cold water solubility, sorption isotherms, colour and stability, during 90 days. All the powders were highly soluble, with solubility values around 97%. A significant lower hygroscopicity was observed for GA powders, whilst the lower X(m) values obtained by GAB equation fitting of the sorption isotherms was observed for the 7.5 g MA/100 mL samples. All formulations, but the 1 (7.5 g SPI/100 mL of chlorophyllide), provided excellent stability to the chlorophyllide during 90 days of storage even at room temperature.

Evaluation of mechanical, physical and thermal performance of cement-based tiles reinforced with vegetable fibers

The objective of this work was to analyze mechanical, physical and thermal performance of roofing tiles produced with several formulations of cement-based matrices reinforced with sisal and eucalyptus fibers. The physical properties of the tiles were more influenced by the fiber content of the composite than by the type of reinforcement. The type of the fiber was the main variable for the achievement of the best results of mechanical properties. Exposure to tropical climate has caused a severe reduction in the mechanical properties of the composites. After approximately four months of age under external weathering the toughness of the vegetable fiber-cement fell to 53-68% of the initial toughness at 28 days of age. The thermal performance showed that roofing tiles reinforced with vegetable fiber are acceptable as substitutes of asbestos-cement sheets. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.