Replacement Meal: Effectiveness of a Soluble Powder Rich in Fibers and at Low Glycemic Index in Overweight but Not in Obese Patients

Active lifestyle and qualitative and quantitative diets are the best way to lose weight. In our study we have assessed the effectiveness and tolerability of a soluble powder rich in fibers and at low glycemic index and used, with a portion of fresh fruit, as replacement meal (for a total calorie intake ranging from a minimum of about 130 kcal to a maximum of 260 kcal) in 52 overweight/obese subjects of the outpatient clinic of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) of Rome already in treatment with a low-fat low-carbohydrates qualitative diet. The study was a parallel, prospective trial of two randomized sample groups, “intervention” (26 subjects) and “control” (26 subjects). After 8 weeks, the treatment based on the replacement meal has improved the results obtained through the qualitative diet alone above all in the overweight subjects: 11/16, versus only 2/16 in the control group, became ranged within normal weight. On the contrary, the majority of obese subjects didn’t change their BMI classification suggesting that, in case of obesity, a controlled quantitative correction with weighing food portions could be a better strategy than low-calorie replacement meal.

RESTful implementation of geospatial services for Earth and Space Science applications

In recent years,Representational State Transfer(REST)has been proposed as the architectural style for the World Wide Web.REST promises of scalability and simple deployment of Web Services seem to be particularly appealing for Earth and Space Science(ESS)applications.In fact,most of the available solutions for geospatial data sharing,applying standard interoperability specifications,require complex service-oriented infrastructures;these are powerful and extensible environments,but they usually result in difficult to deploy and manage for ESS research teams.Thus,ESS researchers would gain great benefit from an easy way of sharing geo-information using the international interoperability standards.The variety and complexity of geo-information sharing services poses several architectural issues;in fact these services encompass sensor planning and observation,coverages and features publication and retrieving,models and simulations running,data citation and annotation.Consequently,the adoption of a specific architectural style must be carefully evaluated against these specific requirements.In this work we analyse the existing geospatial services from an architectural perspective and investigate their possible RESTful implementation.Particular attention is paid to the OGC Web Coverage Service(WCS).Possible benefits and drawbacks,along with open issues and possible solutions are discussed.Our investigation suggests that REST may fit well to the typical ESS research usage cases.However,the architectural choice(e.g.Simple Object Access Protocol(SOAP)vs REST)will depend on a case-by-case analysis.Other important factors must be considered,such as the application context:a valuable example in point are the e-Business and e-Government application scenarios which require message based solutions-like those implemented by SOAP.In any case,there is a clear need for harmonization and reconciliation of these two approaches.

GALT Protein Database, a Bioinformatics Resource for the Management and Analysis of Structural Features of a Galactosemia-related Protein and Its Mutants

We describe the GALT-Prot database and its related web-based application that have been developed to collect information about the structural and functional effects of mutations on the human enzyme galactose-l-phosphate uridyltransferase （GALT） involved in the genetic disease named galactosemia type I. Besides a list of missense mutations at gene and protein sequence levels, GALT-Prot reports the analysis results of mutant GALT structures. In addition to the structural information about the wild-type enzyme, the database also includes structures of over 100 single point mutants simulated by means of a computational procedure, and the analysis to each mutant was made with several bioinformatics programs in order to investigate the effect of the mutations. The web-based interface allows querying of the database, and several links are also provided in order to guarantee a high integration with other resources already present on the web. Moreover, the architecture of the database and the web application is flexible and can be easily adapted to store data related to other proteins with point mutations. GALT-Prot is freely available at http：//bioinformatica.isa.cnr.it/GALT/.

Shipborne oceanic high-spectral-resolution lidar for accurate estimation of seawater depth-resolved optical properties

Lidar techniques present a distinctive ability to resolve vertical structure of optical properties within the upper water column at both day-and night-time.However,accuracy challenges remain for existing lidar instruments due to the ill-posed nature of elastic backscatter lidar retrievals and multiple scattering.Here we demonstrate the high performance of,to the best of our knowledge,the first shipborne oceanic high-spectral-resolution lidar(HSRL)and illustrate a multiple scattering correction algorithm to rigorously address the above challenges in estimating the depth-resolved diffuse attenuation coefficient Kd and the particulate backscattering coefficient bbp at 532 nm.HSRL data were collected during day-and night-time within the coastal areas of East China Sea and South China Sea,which are connected by the Taiwan Strait.Results include vertical profiles from open ocean waters to moderate turbid waters and first lidar continuous observation of diel vertical distribution of thin layers at a fixed station.The root-mean-square relative differences between the HSRL and coincident in situ measurements are 5.6%and 9.1%for Kd and bbp,respectively,corresponding to an improvement of 2.7-13.5 and 4.9-44.1 times,respectively,with respect to elastic backscatter lidar methods.Shipborne oceanic HSRLs with high performance are expected to be of paramount importance for the construction of 3D map of ocean ecosystem.

Weighted individual-resource networks in prey–predator systems: the role of prey availability on the emergence of modular structures

Ecological networks,usually depicting interactions among species,have been recently down-scaled to the individual level,permitting description of patterns of inter-individual resource variation that are usually hindered at the species level.Optimal diet theory(ODT)models,applied to prey–predator systems,predict different patterns of nestedness and modularity in the network,depending on the available resources and intra-specific competition.The effect of resource availability on the emergence of networks structures,and ODT framework,has not yet fully been clarified.Here,we analyzed the structural patterns of individual-resource networks in 3 species of Mediterranean salamanders,in relation to changes in prey availability.We used weighted individual-resource network metrics to interpret the observed patterns,according to 3 ODT models.We found significant nestedness recurring in our study system,indicating that both selective and opportunistic individuals occur in the same population.Prey diversity,rather than abundance,was apparently related to inter-individual resource variation and promoted the emergence of significant modularity within all networks.The observed patterns of nestedness and modularity,together with the variation in resource diversity and intra-specific competition,are in agreement with the distinct preferences model of ODT.These findings suggest that in the focal prey–predator systems,individuals were able to perceive changes in prey diversity and to exploit in different ways the variations in composition of available resources,shifting their diet assembly rules accordingly.Our findings also confirm that the use of weighted individual-resource networks,in prey–predator systems,allows to disclose dynamics that are masked at the species or population level.