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Nutritional concerns and possible countermeasures to nutritional issues related to space flight
No full textThe experience obtained in astronauts until now has revealed many nutritional problems during both short- and long-term missions that are still under investigation. When the manned space program evolves to the point where it involves a considerable number of people operating at great distances from the Earth for long periods of time, continuous provision of food as well as physiopathological modifications partly related to nutrition will remain a challenge. Human space missions have outlined the importance of the diet on the quality of an astronaut's life, not only because an appropriate nutritional status can be maintained only through an adequate nutrient intake, but also because food plays an important socio-psychological role.A great amount of research has been done both by the Russian and American teams in order to identify the nutritional requirements for humans during space flights. Crew members should be provided with nutritional adequate diets characterized by many different food items carefully selected according to technological techniques aimed to ensure long shelf-life periods, health, safety, satisfaction and convenience. An astronaut's nutritional status is greatly influenced by important weightlessness, environmental physiological adaptations.Changes in muscle and bone mass, modifications of gastro-intestinal functions and immune alterations may be partly limited by adequate planned dietary countermeasures
Experimental diets for the prevention of the development of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
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Diets with low glycemic index minimized weight loss in rats reared in a simulation of microgravity by hindlimb suspension
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Effect of dietary glycemic index on food intake, adiposity and fasting plasma ghrelin levels in animals.
Full text linkBackground: An increase in lipid storage as a
consequence of feeding animals with high-glycemic index
(GI) diets has been observed by many authors. Ghrelin is one
of the most important orexigenic hormones, and curiously, its
fasting plasma levels are decreased in human obesity. Aim:
As ghrelin secretion is affected by insulin concentration, we
hypothesized that carbohydrates with different glycemic responses
might influence fasting plasma ghrelin levels. Material
and methods: Twenty rats were divided into two groups
and fed ad libitum a low-GI or a high-GI diet for 21 days. Results:
In rats fed a high- vs low-GI diet we observed: increased
food intake (18.9±0.6 vs 16.4±2.0 g/day; p<0.01), increased
weight gain (28.8±6.6 vs 16.4±6% of initial weight; p<0.01),
higher relative weight of epididymal fat pads (1.7±0.4 vs
1.4±0.3%; p=0.05), but lower total fasting ghrelin levels
(41.1±10.7 vs 59.5±9.8 pg/ml; p=0.05). Conclusions: Ghrelin
appeared to be downregulated in rats fed a high-GI diet; this
observation could be related to the higher food intake and
fat mass observed in these rats and to the effects of insulin
response on ghrelin levels
Experimental diets for the prevention of the development of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
No full textAutomatic measurement of the hand dimensions using consumer 3D cameras
Full text linkThis article describes the metrological characterisation of two prototypes that use the point clouds acquired by consumer 3D cameras for the measurement of the human hand geometrical parameters. The initial part of the work is focused on the general description of algorithms that allow for the derivation of dimensional parameters of the hand. Algorithms were tested on data acquired using Microsoft Kinect v2 and Intel RealSense D400 series sensors. The accuracy of the proposed measurement methods has been evaluated in different tests aiming to identify bias errors deriving from point-cloud inaccuracy and at the identification of the effect of the hand pressure and the wrist flexion/extension. Results evidenced an accuracy better than 1 mm in the identification of the hand’s linear dimension and better than 20 cm3 for hand volume measurements. The relative uncertainty of linear dimensions, areas, and volumes was in the range of 1-10 %. Measurements performed with the Intel RealSense D400 were, on average, more repeatable than those performed with Microsoft Kinect. The uncertainty values limit the use of these devices to applications where the requested accuracy is larger than 5 % (volume measurements), 3 % (area measurements), and 1 mm (hands’ linear dimensions and thickness)
A prototype for the automatic measurement of the hand dimensions using the Microsoft Kinect V2
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