Improvement of Functional Bioactivity in Pear:Blackberry Synergies with Lactic Acid Fermentation for Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension Management

Type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic disease that has a worldwide prevalence which is expected to rise dramatically over the course of the next thirty years. The disease has reached pandemic stages of development in many cultures, most notably in developing countries, followed somewhat closely by developed countries with access to an overabundance of refined carbohydrates and fat (refined oils). T2DM is a condition that can be prevented or managed, but not cured; therefore a method of stymieing the development of this disease is paramount to halting its progressively increasing morbidity. In this study, bartlett pear and kiowa blackberry were investigated in relation to their ability to modify and improve both glucose metabolism and hypertension management with in vitro assay models. Effectiveness and bioactive functionality was evaluated by various in vitro assays to study the properties of: 100% bartlett pear juice, 100% kiowa blackberry juice and a ratio of 70:30 pear: blackberry juice found to have increased phenolic properties due to synergy in previous studies. These assays aimed at determining: alpha-amylase and alpha-glucosidase inhibition, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibition, total soluble phenolic content and antioxidant capabilities. These juices were also fermented with Lactobacillus helveticus and Bifidobacterium longum, common yogurt culture strains, to investigate if fermentation would improve the bioactive functionality of pear: blackberry synergies. A secondary goal of the experiment was to investigate if these fruit juices could prevent the growth of Helicobacter pylori, which is a common bacterium found in the stomach which can lead to cancer

Increasing Success For Children With Sensory Processing Difficulties: Education And Support For Individuals Working With Children In Community Settings

Integration into community settings with limited ability to control one’s exposure to sensory stimuli is often challenging for children with sensory processing difficulties (Isamel et al., 2018). To self-regulate, children often exhibit behaviors that appear to others as abnormal or inappropriate to the expectations within the social environment but are out of the child’s control (Brown et al., 2019). Individuals who do not know about sensory processing may respond to the behavior in a way that is unsupportive to the child’s sensory needs and overall daily functioning. To advocate for children in natural community contexts, Success with Sensory provides individuals who work with children in schools, daycares, and other settings, with sensory-based education and strategies to help children meet their sensory needs and engage in daily activities with minimal difficulty. Success With Sensory was designed for children ages six weeks to twelve years old, which are typical ages in which a child typically attends daycare and/or school. Success With Sensory is a resource guide developed for staff who work with children in community settings. It is a tool that provides education about sensory systems, sensory processing and its correlations with behavior, and strategies to utilize in each setting. Success With Sensory was designed using the following procedures: review of literature and determination of need, presentation of collaboration potential with stakeholders, initiation of collaboration with community agencies through interviews and meetings, and ongoing observation in clinic and community settings for analysis of current knowledge and specific needs of staff and children. The resource guide was designed during each of these steps and was later presented to staff in prioritized settings during and following in-service vii training. Additional community settings, such as hair salons, dental offices, and others, received sensory-based handouts through brief, informal meetings. Success With Sensory was intended to increase teacher and caregiver awareness about sensory processing and how it relates to behavior and task performance to support children in their natural environments. This resource guide was developed through the collection of needs through a review of literature, subjective reports from parents and staff, and observations in each community setting for generalizability. The resource guide is intended to be referred to by staff frequently and the strategies given are recommendations for daily use

Childhood Food Allergies in Association with Psychosocial Development

A pediatric food allergy is a chronic and potentially life-threatening anaphylactic condition affecting a child’s psychosocial health. Food allergies can impede upon many areas of a child’s life including the way they are parented, how they interact at daycare or school, and how they develop independence. The purpose of this literature review is to examine the stresses that surround childhood food allergies in order to keep a child in a safe, allergen free environment. The scholarly journal articles used for this review, that were published within the last ten years, were found in the article databases CINAHL Complete, Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews, and Web of Science, and the key search terms used were childhood food allergies, psychosocial development, overprotective parents, and food allergy support. From analyzing the research, the protective factors of resilience and building autonomy reveal to be helpful tools in combatting the negative psychosocial factors that can be associated with childhood food allergies. Support systems for the child and parents can help to take control and manage the food allergy while overcoming physical, mental, and social barriers. A pamphlet composed of useful information for parents about the psychosocial concerns of childhood food allergies is included at the end of the paper

Constraint Programming Model for Assembly Line Balancing and Scheduling with Walking Workers and Parallel Stations

In the context of aircraft assembly lines, increasing the production rate and decreasing the operating costs are two important, and sometimes contradictory, objectives. In small assembly lines, sharing production resources across workstations is a simple and efficient way to reduce operating costs. Therefore, workers are not assigned to a unique workstation but can walk between them. On the other side, paralleling workstations is an efficient way to increase the production rate. However, the combination of both strategies create complex conditions for tasks to access the production resources. This paper addresses the problem of allocating tasks to workstations and scheduling them in an assembly line where workers can freely walk across workstations, and where workstations can be organized in parallel. We model this novel problem with Constraint Programming. We evaluate it on real world industrial use cases coming from aircraft manufacturers, as well as synthetic use cases adapted from the literature

Network Synthesis

Contains reports on two research projects

Improving FDIR of Spacecraft Systems with Advanced Tools and Concepts

International audienceFaults in spacecraft systems are an important problem, mainly because of the cost of downtime, and because their remoteness makes maintenance more difficult. This is why automated handling of faults can greatly enhance the system overall performance. This automated fault management relies on dedicated functions for fault detection, identification, and recovery (FDIR), that are often interleaved with the system, which makes it difficult to guarantee tolerance with respect to a particular anomaly, and makes the system difficult to maintain as well. On the other hand, several advanced computational tools exist that are known to support the tasks of FDIR. In this paper, starting from the current state of affairs in spacecraft system development, we develop and test several options for enhancing the quality of FDIR functions. First, we use software validation and verification tools to prove that the FDIR functions meet some functional quality goals. A second option we explore is to re-implement FDIR functions by Model-Based Reasoning algorithms, that are guaranteed to produce exact results with respect to a model of the system’s behaviour. In each option, we use and compare several software tools, we compare the effort required to adapt, integrate and use them, and estimate the overall benefits theyprovide

How the Physical Long-Haul Symptoms of COVID-19 Influence Occupational Performance From a Person-Environment-Occupation Perspective: A Critically Appraised Topic

An increasing number of adults continue to experience the long-term physical effects of COVID-19. Currently, there is uncertainty regarding the best practices in occupational therapy to address long-haul COVID-19 symptomology and its effects on people as research on the topic continues to emerge (Robinson et al., 2021). The purpose of this critically appraised paper is to identify prominent areas on which occupational therapists should focus during evaluation and intervention planning while considering the person, environment, and occupation to encompass the ideals of best practice when working with adult clients who are facing disruptions as a result of long-haul COVID-19 symptoms

An Investigation Into Factors Influencing Men and Women in Becoming Professional Pilots

Increasing the number of and women pilots to meet future needs will require recruitment efforts based on an understanding of factors affecting the choice to be a professional pilot. This study integrated the factors that might positively or negatively influence men and women choosing to become professional pilots using force-field analysis. In addition, it investigated whether the factors differ for women and men. Random samples of 300 female and 300 male professional pilots were sent a brainstormed list of 70 factors that might influence the choice to be a pilot. The list was developed from the literature, focus groups and aviation experts. Subjects rated each factor in terms of whether it was a positive or negative influence and its strength. The overall response rate was 68%. Twenty of the factors were reported as important to both men and women. Only one factor, cost of training, was seen as a negative by both groups. Analyses of the 20 factors revealed that some of them are more important to men, while others are more important to women. Men appear to be influenced most by monetary reward, the technical and scientific nature of the occupation, the military career potential, and the glamour and mystique of flying. Additionally, men found having same gender teachers and mentors more important than women. Women found factors such as exposure to and desire to choose a non-traditional work role, opposite gender mentors and role models, desire for a challenging career, and to prove their personal abilities as more positive factors than men. Women also saw possibilities of travel and flight instructor encouragement as more important factors

Shot noise in mesoscopic systems

This is a review of shot noise, the time-dependent fluctuations in the electrical current due to the discreteness of the electron charge, in small conductors. The shot-noise power can be smaller than that of a Poisson process as a result of correlations in the electron transmission imposed by the Pauli principle. This suppression takes on simple universal values in a symmetric double-barrier junction (suppression factor 1/2), a disordered metal (factor 1/3), and a chaotic cavity (factor 1/4). Loss of phase coherence has no effect on this shot-noise suppression, while thermalization of the electrons due to electron-electron scattering increases the shot noise slightly. Sub-Poissonian shot noise has been observed experimentally. So far unobserved phenomena involve the interplay of shot noise with the Aharonov-Bohm effect, Andreev reflection, and the fractional quantum Hall effect.Comment: 37 pages, Latex, 10 figures (eps). To be published in "Mesoscopic Electron Transport," edited by L. P. Kouwenhoven, G. Schoen, and L. L. Sohn, NATO ASI Series E (Kluwer Academic Publishing, Dordrecht