Lycopene from two food sources does not affect antioxidant or cholesterol status of middle-aged adults

Background

Epidemiological studies have reported associations between reduced cardiovascular disease and diets rich in tomato and/or lycopene. Intervention studies have shown that lycopene-containing foods may reduce cholesterol levels and lipid peroxidation, factors implicated in the initiation of cardiovascular disease. The objective of this study was to determine whether consumption of lycopene rich foods conferred cardiovascular protection to middle-aged adults as indicated by plasma lipid concentrations and measures of ex vivo antioxidants.

Methods

Ten healthy men and women consumed a low lycopene diet with no added lycopene (control treatment) or supplemented with watermelon or tomato juice each containing 20 mg lycopene. Subjects consumed each treatment for three weeks in a crossover design. Plasma, collected weekly was analyzed for total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglyceride concentrations and for the antioxidant biomarkers of malondialdehyde formation products (MDA), plasma glutathione peroxidase (GPX) and ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP). Data were analyzed using Proc Mixed Procedure and associations between antioxidant and lipid measures were identified by Pearson's product moment correlation analysis.

Results

Compared to the control diet, the lycopene-containing foods did not affect plasma lipid concentrations or antioxidant biomarkers. Women had higher total cholesterol, HDL-C and triglyceride concentrations than did the men. Total cholesterol was positively correlated to MDA and FRAP while HDL-C was positively correlated to MDA and GPX. GPX was negatively correlated to triglyceride concentration.

Conclusions

The inclusion of watermelon or tomato juice containing 20 mg lycopene did not affect plasma lipid concentrations or antioxidant status of healthy subjects. However, plasma cholesterol levels impacted the results of MDA and FRAP antioxidant tests.     

Anthropogenic nutrient sources and loads from a Mediterranean catchment into a coastal lagoon: Mar Menor, Spain

The Mar Menor is a coastal lagoon increasingly threatened by urban and agricultural pressures. The main watercourse draining into the lagoon is the Rambla del Albujón. A fortnightly campaign carried out over one annual cycle enabled us to characterize the treated urban sewage effluents and agricultural sources which contribute to the nutrient fluxes in the watercourse. Multivariate analysis provided information for establishing chemical signatures and for assessing the relative influence of the various sources on the water quality at the outlet. Mass balances were used to examine net gains and losses, and cross-correlations with rainfall to analyze climatic influence and control factors in the trends of the nutrient flux. The rainfall pattern was significantly cross-correlated with nitrate and phosphorus fluxes from agricultural sources, while fluctuations in the resident population explained the phosphorus flux trend in urban sources. 50% of dissolved inorganic nitrogen was from agricultural sources, while 70% of total phosphate and 91% of total organic carbon were from urban point sources. The net amounts of all the nutrients fell as a result of plant uptake and/or denitrification in the channel. The control of urban point sources (phosphorus-enriched) is suggested as a promptly action for improving the health of the coastal lagoon.     

The Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP) in the era of evidence-based practice.

Professional psychology has increasingly moved toward evidence-based practice. However, instruments used to assess psychologists seeking licensure, such as the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP), have received relatively little empirical scrutiny. Therefore, the authors evaluated the available evidence in support of the EPPP’s validity and current use as a core component of professional licensure. Although the EPPP has in many ways been extensively evaluated, there is a paucity of criterion, predictive, and incremental validity evidence available. Further, several aspects of the content validation studies were examined, and the authors question whether the EPPP, as currently constructed, can meet its stated goals. Given that the EPPP is a high-stakes examination and given the authors’ best estimate (based on a sample of 16 states) that 35% of applicants fail the examination, it is recommended that the EPPP be more extensively evaluated. An outline of major decision points in this proposed evaluation process is provided, several suggestions for further research are proposed, and the field is encouraged to discuss these issues further. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Architecture,Environment, History: Questions and Consequences

There is increasing interest among architectural historians in addressing environmental concerns on both historical and theoretical terms. Simultaneously, other fields have been looking to architectural scholarship to understand the historical relationship between the built and the natural environment. For architectural historians, and others, this has also involved correlating the shifting discourse on environment with a history of architectural transformations and disciplinary expansions. These engagements have made clear that the environmental history of architecture does not simply add more objects to the historical database, but also changes the terms of historical analysis, as new matters of concern and new conceptual frameworks come to the fore. This paper gathers together a dialogic set of projections from scholars responding to the question of how we might newly understand the historical relationship between the built and the natural environment, and the opportunities and challenges this new phase presents to scholars, design researchers, and architects.     

Unique and common mechanisms of change across cognitive and dynamic psychotherapies.

The goal of this article was to examine theoretically important mechanisms of change in psychotherapy outcome across different types of treatment. Specifically, the role of gains in self-understanding, acquisition of compensatory skills, and improvements in views of the self were examined. A pooled study database collected at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Psychotherapy Research, which includes studies conducted from 1995 to 2002 evaluating the efficacy of cognitive and psychodynamic therapies for a variety of disorders, was used. Patient samples included major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, borderline personality disorder, and adolescent anxiety disorders. A common assessment battery of mechanism and outcome measures was given at treatment intake, termination, and 6-month follow-up for all 184 patients. Improvements in self-understanding, compensatory skills, and views of the self were all associated with symptom change across the diverse psychotherapies. Changes in self-understanding and compensatory skills across treatment were predictive of follow-up symptom course. Changes in self-understanding demonstrated specificity of change to dynamic psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adaptive decision-making frameworks for dynamic multi-agent organizational change

This article presents a capability called Adaptive Decision-Making Frameworks (ADMF) and shows that it can result in significantly improved system performance across run-time situation changes in a multi-agent system. Specifically, ADMF can result in improved and more robust performance compared to the use of a single static decision-making framework (DMF). The ADMF capability allows agents to dynamically adapt the DMF in which they participate to fit their run-time situation as it changes. A DMF identifies a set of agents and specifies the distribution of decision-making control and the authority to assign subtasks among these agents as they determine how a goal or set of goals should be achieved. The ADMF capability is a form of organizational adaptation and differs from previous approaches to organizational adaptation and dynamic coordination in that it is the first to allow dynamic and explicit manipulation of these DMF characteristics at run-time as variables controlling agent behavior. The approach proposed for selecting DMFs at run-time parameterizes all domain-specific knowledge as characteristics of the agents’ situation, so the approach is application-independent. The presented evaluation empirically shows that, for at least one multi-agent system, there is no one best DMF for multiple agents across run-time situational changes. Next, it motivates the further exploration of ADMF by showing that adapting DMFs to run-time variations in situation can result in improved overall system performance compared to static or random DMFs.     

Predicting Addiction Severity Index (ASI) interviewer severity ratings for a computer-administered ASI.

The Addiction Severity Index (ASI) is a reliable and valid measure of problem severity among addicted patients. Concerns have been raised about the reliability of the Interviewer Severity Rating (ISR), a summary score for each of 7 domains. As part of an effort to build a computer-administered ASI, regression equations were developed to predict the ISR. Repeated resampling of a large dataset, consisting of 1,124 ASIs conducted by trained interviewers, permitted derivation of stable regression equations predicting the ISR for each ASI domain from patients' answers to preselected interview items. The resulting 7 Predicted Severity Ratings (PSRs) were tested on 8, standardized vignettes, with "gold standard," expert-generated ISRs. Reliabilities compared well with those of intensively trained interviewers. The PSRs could provide an alternative to potentially unreliable interviewer ratings, enhancing the ASI's role in treatment planning and treatment matching and make possible a computer-administered version of the ASI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Protein kinase C regulates a vesicular class of calcium channels in the bag cell neurons of aplysia

Protein kinase C (PKC) acutely increases calcium currents in Aplysia bag cell neurons by recruiting calcium channels different from those constitutively active in the plasma membrane. To study the mechanism of PKC regulation we previously identified two calcium channel alpha1-subunits expressed in bag cell neurons. One of these, BC-alpha1A, is localized to vesicles concentrated primarily in somata and growth cones. We used antibodies to BC-alpha1A to analyze its expression in the bag cell neurons of juvenile Aplysia at a developmental stage at which PKC-sensitive calcium currents have previously been shown to be low. We find that vesicular BC-alpha1A staining is generally reduced in juvenile bag cell neurons but that its expression level can vary among juvenile animals. In 17 bag cell clusters examined, the percentage of neurons that displayed punctate alphaBC-alpha1A staining ranged from 0 to 85%. Sampling of calcium currents from cells of the same clusters by whole cell patch-clamp techniques revealed that the PKC-sensitive calcium current density is significantly correlated with the degree of vesicular staining. In contrast, no correlation of basal calcium current levels with aBC-alpha1A staining was found. These results strongly suggest that BC-alpha1A, a member of the ABE-subfamily of calcium channels, carries the PKC-sensitive calcium current in bag cell neurons. They are consistent with a model in which PKC recruits channels from the vesicular pool to the plasma membrane.     

The relationship of chronic mucin secretion to airway disease in normal and CFTR-deficient mice

In the cystic fibrosis (CF) patient, lung function decreases throughout life as a result of continuous cycles of infection, particularly with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. The mechanism underlying the pathophysiology of the disease in humans has not been established. However, it has been suggested that abnormal, tenacious mucus, resulting perhaps from improper hydration from loss of Cl- secretion via the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein, impairs clearance of bacteria from the CF airway and provides an environment favorable to bacterial growth. If this hypothesis is correct, it could explain the absence of respiratory disease in CFTR-deficient mice, since mice have only a single submucosal gland and display few goblet cells in their lower airways, even when exposed to bacteria. To test this hypothesis further, we induced allergic airway disease in CFTR-deficient mice. We found that induction of allergic airway disease in mice, unlike bacterial infection, results in an inflammatory response characterized by goblet cell hyperplasia, increased mucin gene expression, and increased production of mucus. However, we also found that disease progression and resolution is identical in Cftr-/- mice and control animals. Furthermore, we show that the presence of mucus in the Cftr-/- airway does not lead to chronic airway disease, even upon direct inoculation with S. aureus and P. aeruginosa. Therefore, factors in addition to the absence of high levels of mucus secretion protect the mouse from the airway disease seen in human CF patients.