Effect of High Fat Diets on Body Mass,Oleylethanolamide Plasma Levels and Oxytocin Expression in Growing Rats

Obesity prevalence in developed countries has promoted the need to identify the mechanisms involved in control of feeding and energy balance. We have tested the hypothesis that different fats present in diet composition may contribute in body weight gain and body indexes by regulation of oxytocin gene (oxt) expression in hypothalamus and Oleylethanolamide (OEA) levels in plasma. Sprague–Dawley rats were fed two high fat diets, based on corn (HCO) and extra virgin olive oil (HOO) and results were compared to a low fat diet (LF). LC‐MS/MS analysis showed an increasing trend of OEA plasma levels in HOO group, although no significant differences were found. However, body weight gain of LF and HOO were similar and significantly lower than HCO. HCO rats also had higher Lee index than HOO. Rats fed HOO diet showed higher levels of hypothalamic oxt mRNA expression, which could indicate that oxytocin may be modulated by dietary lipids.     

Taste loss in the elderly: Possible implications for dietary habits

Aging may coincide with a declining gustatory function that can affect dietary intake and ultimately have negative health consequences. Taste loss is caused by physiological changes and worsened by events often associated with aging, such as polypharmacy and chronic disease. The most pronounced increase in elderly people's detection threshold has been observed for sour and bitter tastes, but their perception of salty, sweet, and umami tastes also seems to decline with age. It has often been suggested that elderly people who lose their sense of taste may eat less food or choose stronger flavors, but the literature has revealed a more complicated picture: taste loss does not appear to make elderly people prefer stronger flavors, but nutrition surveys have pointed to a greater consumption of sweet and salty foods.

Real-life eating habits thus seem to be more influenced by other, social and psychological factors. Elderly gustatory function is worth investigating to identify dietary strategies that can prevent the consequences of unhealthy eating habits in the elderly.

This paper discusses age-related changes in taste perception, focusing on their consequences on food preferences, and pointing to some strategies for preserving appropriate dietary habits in elderly people.     

Family formation,parental background and young adults’ first entry into homeownership in Britain and Germany

Abstract

Although previous research shows that family dynamics and parental socioeconomic status influence the timing of young adults’ first entry into homeownership, much less is known about how the role of family factors may vary across countries with different housing systems. In this article, we use panel survey data from Britain and Germany to compare how family life course careers and parental socioeconomic background influence young adults’ initial entry into homeownership in these two divergent national contexts. The results show that in Britain, first-time homeownership transitions are tightly synchronized with partnership formation. By contrast, in Germany first moves into homeownership typically occur later around or after the arrival of children. Parental owner-occupation accelerates entry into homeownership in both contexts, while the effects of other parental characteristics are relatively muted. Furthermore, the results highlight how individual socioeconomic factors are critical determinants of entering owner-occupation. This is particularly true in Britain where there is a strong socioeconomic gradient in first-time homeownership transitions.     

Electronic structure of dinuclear gold(i) complexes

Cyclic voltammetry (CV) experiments on LL(AuSR *)(2) complexes [LL = diphenylphosphinomethane (dppm), diphenylphosphinopentane (dpppn); R(*) = p-SC(6)H(4)CH(3)] show anodic sweeps that broaden by about 25 mV on going from the longer (dpppn) to the shorter (dppm) bidentate phosphine ligand. Changing concentrations had no effect on the shape of the waveform. The result suggests a weak intramolecular metal-metal interaction in dppm(AuSR *)(2) that correlates well with rate acceleration occurring in the reaction of dppm(AuSR *)(2) with organic disulfides. Quantum yields for cis-dppee(AuX)(2) [dppee = 1,2-bis(diphenylphosphino)ethylene; X = Cl, Br, I] complexes, (disappearance) Phi , are significantly higher in complexes with a softer X ligand, a trend that correlates well with aurophilicity. This result also suggests that electronic perturbation caused by Au(I)-Au(I) interactions is important in explaining the reactivity of some dinuclear gold(I) complexes. The crystal structure for cis-dppee(Aul)(2) shows short intramolecular Au(I)-Au(I) interactions of 2.9526 (6) A degrees , while the structure of trans-dppee(AuI)(2) , shows intermolecular Au(I)-Au(I) interactions of 3.2292 (9) A degrees . The substitution of .As for P results in a ligand, cis-diphenylarsinoethylene (cis-dpaee), that is photochemically active, in contrast to the cis-dppee ligand. The complexes, cis-dpaee(AuX)(2), are also photochemically active but with lower quantum yields than the cis-dppee(AuX)(2) complexes.     

Extending project management research: Insights from social theories

Our article answers the call for renewing the theoretical bases of project management in order to overcome the problems that stem from the application of methods based on decision-rationality norms, which bracket the complexity of action and interactions in projects. By grounding our reflection in the practice perspective and by adopting Nicolini's (2013) toolkit approach, we suggest ways that could help practitioners and theorists make better sense of aspects that are highly relevant for project management but are usually overlooked. The paper discusses Nicolini's five dimensions of practice and three social theories (activity theory, actor–network theory and structuration theory) to highlight the combinations that are most appropriate and fruitful for addressing various theoretical and practical issues requiring the attention of project management researchers.     

Emerging motor behaviors: Learning joint coordination in articulated mobile robots

In this paper, we analyze the insights behind the common approach to the assessment of robot motor behaviors in articulated mobile structures with compromised dynamic balance. We present a new approach to this problem and a methodology that implements it for motor behaviors encapsulated in rest-to-rest motions. As well as common methods, we assume the availability of kinematic information about the solution to the task, but reference is not made to the workspace, allowing the workspace to be free of restrictions. Our control framework, based on local control policies at the joint acceleration level, attracts actuated degrees of freedom (DOFs) to the desired final configuration; meanwhile, the resulting final states of the unactuated DOFs are viewed as an indirect consequence of the profile of the policies. Dynamical systems are used as acceleration policies, providing the actuated system with convenient attractor properties. The control policies, parameterized around imposed simple primitives, are deformed by means of changes in the parameters. This modulation is optimized, by means of a stochastic algorithm, in order to control the unactuated DOFs and thus carry out the desired motor behavior.     

Promoting the development of secure mobile agent applications

In this paper, we present a software architecture and a development environment for the implementation of applications based on secure mobile agents. Recent breakthroughs in mobile agent security have unblocked this technology, but there is still one important issue to overcome: the complexity of programming applications using these security solutions. Our proposal aims to facilitate and speed up the process of implementing cryptographic protocols, and to allow the reuse of these protocols for the development of secure mobile agents. As a result, the proposed architecture and development environment promote the use of mobile agent technology for the implementation of secure distributed applications.