Rural idylls and urban economies: the making of metropolitan wine regions

In our quest to understand wine industries and their location and development worldwide, much emphasis has been given to key environmental, cultural and economic factors. The concept of terroir is used widely to describe, delimit and promote favoured wine regions. In this, we see constructions of rurality that tend to render invisible important connections between wine regions and urban places. However, many if not most wine regions owe much to their urban neighbours. Cities are sources of labour, capital and customers. Indeed, many wine regions are, in effect, metropolitan wine regions that owe as much to their proximity to cities than they do to any putative environmental distinctiveness and advantages. Wineries in such places develop strategies to survive and prosper not by producing bottles of wine that are widely sold on global markets – and compete on the basis on price or global reputation – but rather because they develop strong and loyal local markets tied to urban economies and because they appeal to the rural idylls held by urban consumers. This paper explores the way urban places have been critical in the development of certain wine regions in New Zealand.     

Numerical Evaluation of Grouting Scenarios for Reducing Water Inflows from Major Faults in Underground Excavations

Mine Water and the Environment - Water inflows through fracture networks are a major economic and safety issue in underground mines. Although pre-grouting of pilot holes during mine development...     

Cyanogenic,carotenoids and protein composition in leaves and roots across seven diverse population found in the world cassava germplasm collection at CIAT,Colombia

The objective of this study was to characterise the nutritional potential of leaves and identify a diversity centre with low cyanide and high nutrient content among 178 Latin American cassava genotypes. This field-based collection represents the seven diversity centres, held at The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT Palmira, Colombia) by the Cassava Program. The cyanide, all-trans-β-carotene and lutein concentrations in cassava leaves ranged from 346 to 7484 ppm dry basis (db), from 174–547 μg g⁻¹ db and 15–181 μg g⁻¹ db, respectively. Cassava leaves also showed significant levels of essential amino acids leucine, lysine, phenylalanine, valine and threonine, and average total protein content of 26.24 g 100 g⁻¹ db. Among seven diversity centres, South American rainforest group showed low cyanide and high carotene content in leaves. In addition, VEN77 and PAN51 genotypes stood out for having low cyanide in leaves and roots and high carotene in leaves. This genetic diversity can be used to select high potential progenitors for breeding purposes.     

Bayesian Inference for ARFIMA Models

This article develops practical methods for Bayesian inference in the autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) model using the exact likelihood function, any proper prior distribution, and time series that may have thousands of observations. These methods utilize sequentially adaptive Bayesian learning, a sequential Monte Carlo algorithm that can exploit massively parallel desktop computing with graphics processing units (GPUs). The article identifies and solves several problems in the computation of the likelihood function that apparently have not been addressed in the literature. Four applications illustrate the utility of the approach. The most ambitious is an ARFIMA(2,d,2) model for the Campito tree ring time series (length 5405), for which the methods developed in the article provide an essentially uncorrelated sample of size 16,384 from the exact posterior distribution in under four hours. Less ambitious applications take as little as 4 minutes without exploiting GPUs.     

Evaluation of the degree of rate control via automatic differentiation

The degree of rate control (DRC) quantitatively identifies the kinetically relevant (sometimes known as rate-limiting) steps of a complex reaction network. This concept relies on derivatives which are commonly implemented numerically, for example, with finite differences (FDs). Numerical derivatives are tedious to implement, and can be problematic, and unstable or unreliable. In this study, we demonstrate the use of automatic differentiation (AD) in the evaluation of the DRC. AD libraries are increasingly available through modern machine learning frameworks. Compared with the FDs, AD provides solutions with higher accuracy with lower computational cost. We demonstrate applications in steady-state and transient kinetics. Furthermore, we illustrate a hybrid local-global sensitivity analysis method, the distributed evaluation of local sensitivity analysis, to assess the importance of kinetic parameters over an uncertain space. This method also benefits from AD to obtain high-quality results efficiently.     

Structural breakdown of starch-based foods during gastric digestion and its link to glycemic response: In vivo and in vitro considerations

The digestion of starch-based foods in the small intestine as well as factors affecting their digestibility have been previously investigated and reviewed in detail. Starch digestibility has been studied both in vivo and in vitro, with increasing interest in the use of in vitro models. Although previous in vivo studies have indicated the effect of mastication and gastric digestion on the digestibility of solid starch-based foods, the physical breakdown of starch-based foods prior to small intestinal digestion is often less considered. Moreover, gastric digestion has received little attention in the attempt to understand the digestion of solid starch-based foods in the digestive tract. In this review, the physical breakdown of starch-based foods in the mouth and stomach, the quantification of these breakdown processes, and their links to physiological outcomes, such as gastric emptying and glycemic response, are discussed. In addition, the physical breakdown aspects related to gastric digestion that need to be considered when developing in vitro–in vivo correlation in starch digestion studies are discussed. The discussion demonstrates that physical breakdown prior to small intestinal digestion, especially during gastric digestion, should not be neglected in understanding the digestion of solid starch-based foods.     

Impact of military type footwear and load carrying workload on postural stability

Postural stability has been shown to be impacted by footwear and task performed. This study analysed the impact of two military footwear, standard boot (STB) and minimalist boot (MTB) on postural stability, before (PRE) and after (POST) a load carriage task. Sixteen participants were tested for postural stability using sensory organisation and motor control tests on Neurocom Equitest?. Postural sway, equilibrium scores and postural latencies were analysed using a two-factor repeated measures ANOVA: boot type (STB-MTB)?×?time (PRE-POST) load carriage task. Significantly greater postural sway variables, lower balance scores and slower postural latencies were seen in STB and POST load carriage conditions (p?<?.05). The results suggest that MTB exhibited greater balance compared to STB in balance conditions that rely on somatosensory feedback and that balance is lowered after a load carriage task. Decrements in postural stability could be attributed to boot design characteristics and muscular exertion due to the load carriage task.

Practitioner Summary: Maintaining optimal postural stability is crucial in military. Impact of military footwear types and load carriage task on postural stability are addressed. Findings provide footwear design and physical exertion implications on postural stability leading to potential interventions that reduce postural stability decrements; thereby, reducing potential falls and fall related injuries.     

Vitamin E and its anticancer effects

Abstract

Vitamin E is a lipid soluble vitamin comprising of eight natural isoforms, namely, α, β, δ, γ isoforms of tocopherol and α, β, δ, γ isoforms of tocotrienol. Many studies have been performed to elucidate its role in cancer. Until last decade, major focus was on alpha tocopherol and its anticancer effects. However, major clinical trials using alpha-tocopherol like SELECT trial and ATBC trial did not yield meaningful results. Hence there was a shift of focus to gamma-tocopherol, delta-tocopherol and tocotrienol. Unlike alpha-tocopherol, gamma-tocopherol and delta-tocopherol can scavenge reactive nitrogen species in addition to reactive oxygen species. Antiangiogenic effect, inhibition of HMG CoA reductase enzyme and inhibition of NF-κB pathway make the anti-cancer effects of tocotrienols unique compared to other vitamin E isoforms. Preclinical research on non-alpha tocopherol isoforms of vitamin E showed promising data on their anticancer effects. In this review, we deal with the current understanding on the potential mechanisms involved in the anticancer effects of vitamin E and the controversies in this field over last three decades. We also highlight the need to conduct further research on the anticancer effects of non-alpha-tocopherol isoforms in larger population and clinical setting.     

Professor Michel Che: Sino-French Chemist with Strong Anglophile Links

Topics in Catalysis -