Daily Archives: April 27, 2017

Goel for testing food supplements – The Hindu

Posted: April 27, 2017 at 2:07 am


The Hindu
Goel for testing food supplements
The Hindu
The Union Sports Minister Vijay Goel has stated that the government is probing the possibilities of setting up a mechanism to test food supplements to help the athletes. Emphasising the need for a scientific approach to diet and nutrition for athletes ...
Doping a criminal offence? NADA set to discuss possibilitySportstarlive
Sports Authority of India to adopt a policy of `zero tolerance` towards doping, says Sports Minister Vijay GoelZee News

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Goel for testing food supplements - The Hindu

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Rogue supplements: Czech authorities withdraw batch over aluminium concern – NutraIngredients.com

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A rogue batch of dietary food supplements with excessive levels of aluminium withdrawn from Czech Republic over health concerns.

The Czech food authorities have ordered a supply of a dietary supplements found to contain several times the tolerable daily dosage of aluminium to be withdrawn from the market over health concerns.

The supplier of the rogue batch of dietary supplements, Kamenn zdrav s.r.o, based in Prague, will now a face a fine enforced by the Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority (CAFIA).

The CAFIA said it had ordered the supplier to immediately withdraw the lot in question from retail network and inform all its customers.

The dietary supplement is called Schindeles Mineralien and is made by the Austrian company Robert Schindele GesmbH.

The batch of supplements was found on an inspection by the CAFIA, which checks the market in the Czech Republic for contaminated substances and wrongdoing.

Excessive aluminium

A test of the food supplements found them to contain aluminium amounting to 15,760 milligrams per 1 kg of dry mass of the product, which the CAFIA said was several times over the tolerable daily dosage.

It is unclear as to the size of the batch, which the CAFIA said was unsafe for human health, which was found, or whether any further batches are to be withdrawn.

The maximum fine that can be levied for such a wrongdoing in the Czech Republic is 50 million Czech Koruna (186,000) but it is unlikely that Kamenn zdrav s.r.o, which will be levied with the fine, will be hit with the maximum fine.

Supplier to face fine

As a national food inspection authority, the CAFIA is not entitled to fine the Austrian manufacturer, as it outside its jurisdiction, but the Austrian authorities will be informed about the rogue food supplements.

Kamenn zdrav s.r.o will now provide the CAFIA with details of the size of the batch that is being withdrawn.

Pavel Kopriva, CAFIA spokesperson, told Nutra Ingredients: Its not unusual that in a segment of food supplements that there are contaminated, and substances that are not legal or certain substances are present in a higher level than would be legal.

Kamenn zdrav s.r.o could not be contacted and Robert Schindele GesmbH was unavailable for comment.

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Rogue supplements: Czech authorities withdraw batch over aluminium concern - NutraIngredients.com

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Whey hybrid adds iron to food but not weird flavors – Futurity: Research News

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Researchers have come up with a new way to fortify food and drinks with iron: a hybrid material made of edible whey protein nanofibrils and iron nanoparticles.

Iron deficiency affects around 1.2 billion people worldwide, causing fatigue, anemia, headaches, and diminished work performance.Boosting iron levels through diet or supplements is difficult since it needs to be in a form that the body can absorb successfully. Further, iron can change the color, taste, and smell of food.

As reported in Nature Nanotechnology, the protein nanofibrils are formed by denaturing native whey protein by heating them to 90C, and then placing them in strong acid until they form the final protein filaments. Several protein filaments then organize themselves into thicker protein nanofibrils.

The nanofibrils are then combined with iron nanoparticles which can be readily absorbed by the body. To produce these nanoparticles, researchers mixed ferric chloride directly with the protein nanofibrils in the same acid solution, creating iron nanoparticles of 20 nanometers which immediately bind to the protein nanofibrils surface and are effectively stabilized.

The researchers, from ETH Zurich, say this part is key, since iron nanoparticles are normally not stable: they tend to clump together and form aggregates that cant easily mixinto foods or drinks.

To test the efficacy of the new iron compound, scientists gave it to rats with iron deficiency after they were fed a low-iron diet. The new preparation cured the animals iron deficiency and the associated anemia just as effectively as iron sulphatethe most common iron supplement for human usethat has a downside of causing undesirable sensory changes in foods.

The new supplement is also easy to digest: The enzymes in the rats stomachs entirely digested the whey protein nanofibrils. Further, acid conditions like those in the stomach dissolved the iron nanoparticles into iron ions, which can be quickly absorbed into the blood and used to produce new red blood cells.

The iron-coated whey protein nanofibrils can come in eitherpowder or liquid form, and the new compound can go into different types of food without affecting their taste, smell, or color.

To identify potential risks and side effects, researchers ran microscopic tests on the rats brain, heart, kidneys, and other organs, after they had eaten the nanofibrils for two weeks. They were particularly interested in the whey protein nanofibrils, which have never been used in foods or food supplements before.

The structures are similar to amyloid fibrils, which accumulate in the brain and have been linked to Alzheimers disease, but are made out of hydrolyzed edible food proteins. Researchers therefore wanted to make sure that eventually undigested protein fibers in the supplement wont accumulate in the body and potentially produce tissue anomalies.

On examining the organs and tissues of the rats, we did not find any evidence of nanoparticles or nanofibrils accumulating or possibly causing organ changes, says Raffaele Mezzenga, professor of health sciences and technology at ETH Zurich. Our new iron supplement has enormous potential for successfully combating iron deficiency in an economic and efficient way.

The ingredients in thefood supplement are cheap and plentiful. Whey proteins are a byproduct of the dairy industry. Iron salts are also cheap and readily available. As both the process and the ingredients are easy to work with, the supplement could also be a good alternative for people living in poor countries who are more prone to iron deficiency.

Mezzenga and coauthor Michael B. Zimmermann have filed a patent for the product. The Swiss National Science Foundation funded the work.

Source: ETH Zurich

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Running can lead to life extension – CapitalGazette.com

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I recently received an article taken from the New York Times on April 12 about how running is the most effective exercise to increase life expectancy. Based on new and past research this new study found that, compared to nonrunners, runners tended to live about three additional years, even if they run slowly or sporadically and smoke, drink or are overweight. This finding is a follow-up from a large trove of medical and fitness tests conducted by the Cooper Institute in Dallas. This analysis found that as little as five minutes of daily running was associated with prolonged life spans.

In the three years since the original study researchers were inundated with questions from fellow scientists and the general public, says Duck-chul Lee, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University and a co-author of the study. In the new study, which was published last month in Progress in Cardiovascular Disease, Dr. Lee and his colleagues reanalyzed the issues of the earlier work along with the results of other large scale studies looking at the association between exercise and mortality. Cumulatively, the data indicated that running, whatever one's pace or mileage, dropped a person's risk of premature death by almost 40 percent. This benefit held true even when researchers controlled for smoking, drinking and a history of health problems such as hypertension or obesity.

Perhaps most interesting, the researchers calculated that, hour for hour, running statistically returns more time to people's lives than it consumes. Figuring two hours per week of training, since that was the average reported by runners in the Cooper Institute's study, the researchers estimated that a typical runner would spend less than six months actually running over the course of almost 40 years, but could expect an increase in life expectancy of 3.2 years, for a net gain of about 2.8 years.

So, in concrete terms, an hour of running statistically lengthens life expectancy by seven hours. Of course, these additions "are not infinite," Dr Lee says. The gains are capped at around three extra years, however much people run. The good news is that running does not become counterproductive for longevity, with improvements in life expectancy generally plateaued at about four hours of running per week.

Other kinds of exercise also reliably benefited life expectancy, but not to the same degree as running. Walking, cycling and other activities, even if they require the same exertion as running, typically dropped the risk of premature death by about 12 percent. Running also raises aerobic fitness, which is one of the best-known indicators of an individual's long-term health.

We should be aware that these findings are associational, meaning that they prove that people who run also tend to be people who live longer, but not that running directly causes the increases in longevity. Runners typically also lead healthy lives, Dr. Lee notes and their lifestyles may be playing an outsize role in longevity. One thing is certain, however. And that is that while running may or may not add years to your life, it most certainly will add life to your years!

LOCAL RACE RESULTS

April 22/Escape from the Cape Fun Run (126 finishers)

Overall winners: Male Luis Beltran 20:33; Female Casey Jolicoeur 20:37

Age Group Winners:

Age 5 & under: Female Phoebe Collins 31;18

Age 6: Male Riley Mazur 41:27; Female Keely Sabat 38:11

Age 7: Male Tse Forti 29:13; Female Bailey Benyo 35;52

Age 8: Male Logan Nguyen 26:11; Female Sadie Seabrook 29:31

Age 9: Male Cooper Thompson 28;17; Female Austen Messer 29:33

Age 10: Male Trey Remmers 26;08; Female Eva Barrat 26:47

Age 11: Male Patrick Robillard 23:47; Female -Amelia Parham 36:47-

Age 12: Male Dylan Thompson 25:18; Female - Madison Messeer 44:03

13-15: Male Ben Myers 28:16; Female Mekayla Hammon 36:55

19-34: Male Ryan Martino 20:48; Female Sarah Robillard 33:36

35-49: Male Robert Wevodau 23:41; Female -Kim Kautzman 25:17

50-69: Male David Robillard 22:01; Female Ginny Fisher 27:42

April 22/Woodside Elem. School Spring into Wellness (31 finishers)

Age Group Winners

18 & under: Male Tripp Kennedy 22:16; Female Keeley Gangl 34:40

19 & over: Male Josh Zimmerman 18:24; Female Stephanie Dapko 28;03

April 23/Vet Dogs 5K/10K and 5K with dogs/Kent Island H.S. (185 total finishers)

5K (82 Finishers)

Overall Top Finishers: Male Dylan Hurlock 22:12; Female Lynn Zepp 22:16

Age Group Winners:

10 & under: Male- Cameron Hurlock 31:24

11-15: Male Floyd Butler 24:05; Female Allison Tannahill 39:41

16-19: Male- Scott Coble 22:39; Female Cathy Turner 24:07

20-29: Male Nicholas Bermudez 26:33; Female Meghan Kline 29:54

30-39: Male Daniel Walsh 26:14; Female Laura Buckley 26:34

40-49: Male Scott Crino 24:59; Female -Stacy Swann 32:49

50-59: Male David Brocht 25:54; Female Aprille Abbott 26:14

60-69: Male Patrick MacKin 31:22; Female Valerie Reihl 29:53

70 & over: Male E.T. 38:39

10K (61 finishers)

Overall top finishers: Male -Brandon Nichols 38:19; Female Charity Edelman 47:11

Age group winners;

10 & under: Male- Jordan McCoy 54:25; Female Samantha Wills 54:57

11-15: Male William Nagle 55:09

16-19: Male- Sean Hobbs 42:59; Female Devon Hunter 49:59

20-29: Male MacKenzie Oldfield 50:00; Female Marie Roy 56:08

30-39: Male Joseph Duchesneau 1:03:23; Female Jennifer Daugherty 53:17

40-49: Male Brian Sanborn 53:24; Female Kirsten Sstrohmer 52:24

50-59: Male Ronald Lee 49:31; Female Ruth Gaudreau 50:53

60-69: Male Kenneth Gaudreau 57:09; Female Janice Uthe 55:13

Runners with dogs (42 finishers)

Overall winnners: Male Justin Zepp 19:27; Female -Tara Inverso 23:17

Age Group 0-99: Male Joseph Kruegar 22:50; Female Joann Alvarez 24:47

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Running can lead to life extension - CapitalGazette.com

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Carmina Burana – ArtsHub (subscription)

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An exotic program of two twentieth-century classics.

Yu Longconductor via MSO.

Long Yu, artistic director and chief conductor of the China Philharmonic and music director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, is perhaps one of the most eminent directors of Western classical music in Asia. His direction of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night was a dignified occasion featuring two major works from the 20th Century: Ravels Daphnis et Chlo: Suite No 2 (one of Sergei Diaghilevs Ballets Russes Paris commissions completed in 1912) paired with Carl Orffs Carmina Burana (composed between 1935 and 1936).

The opening movement of the Ravel, Daybreak, struck me on this occasion as being one of the most ecstatic musical depictions of a sunrise in the repertoire. Scored for vast orchestra and wordless chorus, Daphnis et Chlo was originally a ballet. Two orchestral Suites, the second of which is often performed, were extracted by the composer.

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus is sounding fine and performed both works well thanks to guest chorus master, Marilyn Phillips. Blend overall was good, though on occasion the chorus felt underpowered in the Ravel perhaps owing to its threefold separated proximity to the orchestra. I wondered if having the chorus seated was a wise decision. While the orchestra generally performed well under Yu, I yearned for more to be imagined and expressed from the woodwind solos. Ravels orchestration may be seen as chamber music on a large scale requiring intensely vivid personality and verve.

Although Orffs Carmina Burana was one of the most popular works of the 20th century, it is now hardly ever performed. On this occasion I was struck by how unusual this hybrid flower is, with connections to plainchant, Renaissance music through to Hollywood and with a strong flavour from Stravinsky, particularly from his ballet Les noces. The text is a collection of secular medieval poetry in Latin, Old French and Middle High German, discovered in the Bavarian abbey of Benediktbeurn in 1803. It describes the apparent futility of life symbolised as an ever rotating wheel where Fate randomly dethrones the exalted at whim, along the way providing various diversions of elation and distraction including sex and drink.

I concur with Alex Ross when he describes Orffs setting of 23 of the 320 poems as primitive unreflective enthusiasm. The opening movement O Fortuna has been used as signature music for many advertisements from aftershave to coffee. Indeed, one continues to hear imitations of this opening rapturous movement in film, television and even as background music to video games. The work was intended as a cantata with dance and sets and it would be interesting to see it staged. But in this concert form, even with its clean-cut and energetic Stravinskyan percussive writing, it seemed to me vulgar, simplistic and in particular, irritatingly repetitive. The work was to become Orffs one great success when, following its first performance in 1937, it appealed to the Zeitgeist of Nazi Germany, perhaps owing to its direct musical rhetoric and secular egalitarian Socialist resonance.

I wondered why Orff wrote such extreme ranges for his soloists. Tenor John Longmuir was excellent in his brief appearance as an unfortunate charred swan nostalgic for his former white beauty, singing almost all of the aria in forthright chest voice. Distinguished baritone Warwick Fyfe, however, struggled valiantly with much of his unsingable material set absurdly high for his voice type, particularly in Dies, nox et omnia. His Estuans interius however delighted for its suavity. I wondered if his awkwardness in attempting to realise the music was somehow Orffs intent and if so why. Eva Kong was superb throughout, though I wondered if the part would be better suited to a slightly fuller, more lyrical voice. The performance was distinguished by the appearance of twenty choristers from the National Boys Choir of Australia singing their parts from memory.

The work ends as it began with the rousing chorus O Fortuna (How horrid Life: / Now it blocks/ And now gives way/ A vicious mental game to play/ Misery and potency melt away/ Like ice.)

Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5

MSO Carmina Burana

Eva Kong, soprano

John Longmuir, tenor

Warwick Fyfe, baritone

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus

Marilyn Phillips, Guest Chorus Master

National Boys Choir of Australia

Peter Casey, National Boys Choir Chorus Master

Presented by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday, 22 April, 2017

8pm

First published on Thursday 27 April, 2017

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Canada shouldn’t shy away from fintech it’s our opportunity to shine – The Globe and Mail

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John Armstrong is national industry leader, financial services, KPMG in Canada.

Every day, another article in the North American business press cites the threat that banks and other financial institutions (FIs) face from fintech firms, which will disintermediate them from their customers, provide better products and services for a fraction of the cost and steal away market share and significant revenues from those hapless old economy firms.

While the David-versus-Goliath narrative makes for a good story, it is not supported by the emerging trends in the Canadian fintech sector and the rest of the world. The strength of banks and insurers in Canada, and their history of innovation, are what make Canada, and especially Ontario, an ideal environment to foster the growth of the industry and make this country a beacon to the financial-services industry.

Firstly, investors are increasingly looking beyond the hype to understand if firms have a differentiated business model and the ability to deliver. In 2016, some missteps in the industry were a wake-up call for investors. Powa, a British-based payments firm, filed for protection after it burned through $250-million of investors money and its putative valuation fell from $2.5-billion to zero.

The funding trend is now moving toward enablers versus disruptors. Disruptors are firms with a business model based on disintermediating financial institutions or competing with them, a group that includes Lending Club, robo-advisers Betterment in the United States and Wealthsimple in Canada. The enablers are fintechs focused on partnering with current financial institutions to deliver an improved client experience or provide banks with more efficient technology, streamlined processes and better security. More than 42 per cent of new money is going to enablers.

Banks and other FIs have large incumbency advantages, and fintech firms recognize that convincing the large base of satisfied bank customers to switch is difficult for a monoline fintech. Banks have an unparalleled ability to cross-sell existing customers using sophisticated analytics that target key buyer values.

Finally, Canadian banks are not standing still in mobile and digital. In Canada, major banks undertake large investments to make their organizations agile and faster to market. Internally, most banks have changed how they build technology, using new approaches and new platforms. Canadian banks are also aggressively partnering with fintech firms and Ontario incubators.

While we have made great progress and have strong fintech players in Canada, there is the potential to make fintech even more important in the financial-services cluster. To do this, there are several actions to take:

As the Canadian economy changes from resource-based to more services-oriented, the financial services cluster is critical. We must continue to foster innovation in the industry, and a robust fintech ecosystem is a key component. Canada is well positioned to play a global leadership role in the fintech sector if we act decisively.

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Canada shouldn't shy away from fintech it's our opportunity to shine - The Globe and Mail

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Community pitching together puts Lindsay on the list for Basic Income Guarantee pilot – Kawartha Media Group

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Community pitching together puts Lindsay on the list for Basic Income Guarantee pilot
Kawartha Media Group
LINDSAY Mike Perry jokes that giving Kawartha Dairy ice cream to government officials might have helped bring an important basic income guarantee initiative to Lindsay. And several people are saying that without Perry's leadership, it wouldn't have ...

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Community pitching together puts Lindsay on the list for Basic Income Guarantee pilot - Kawartha Media Group

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Automation.com – Contact Us

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Will the robots ruin us? – The Sydney Morning Herald

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Thanks to automation a life of potential leisure beckons whether we like it or not.

Once one combines the advances in computing, big data mining, artificial intelligence, speech recognition, driverless vehicles and robotics it's not too hard to foresee that the impacts of the digital technology revolution may have, to date, been simply a clearing of the throat.

Don't just take my word for it, A 2016 report titledTechnology at Work v2.0: The Future Is Not What It Used To Be, prepared for global finance giant Citi, stated that "a job is considered to be 'exposed to automation'or 'automatable'if the tasks it entails allows the work to be performed by a computer, even if a job is not actually automated". On that basis, the researchersfound 47 per centof current US jobs at risk.

According to Futurist.com, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) data shows that, averaged across the world, 57 per centof jobs are susceptible to automation. This rises to 69 per centin India and 77 per centin China.

The low-risk jobs tend to be those which emphasise social orcreative skills. Which puts me in mind of the cuts to funding for the humanities subjects over the last few decades. Can you spell"irony"?

Commenting on the Citi report, one expert said: "Focus less on pure academics, and more on creativity and presentation skills. The enormous likelihood is that however good you are at STEM subjects there are likely to be people in the world who are infinitely better than you this is to say nothing of the computers that will eventually take over all STEM related roles. Communication skills, creativity and the ability to adapt to change are hugely more valuable and a much better differentiator medium term."

In other words, an emphasis on levels of education and a shift in the educational areas of importance are going to be needed to prepare people for employment in a highly automated future.

This is usually the point where one starts to hear some variation on the words "strong leadership will be required to help us meet these challenges". Feeling confident anyone?

In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies(1988) historian Joseph Tainter examines the collapse of three complex, sophisticated societies, the Western Roman Empire, the Chacoan and Mayan civilisations. Heposits, broadly speaking thatpast a certain point of complexitysocieties do not collapse despite their levels of sophistication but because of them.

While "collapse" is perhaps an overly dramatic term, we have already seen the struggles that numerous industries media in particular have faced when confronted with digital disruption. If the impacts of automation hit harder and faster than what we have already seen, will there be the ability or the will or the consensus to pivot with the necessary speed?

How will the transitions be managed? Even if the idea of a universal wage gains traction, how will governments generate revenue to supply it if their taxable base starts to dramatically dilute?

Drawing on Keynsian parallels, Andy Haldane, Chief Economist for the Bank of England said in 2015 that a longer-term solution to countering the impact of automationwould be to embrace "a world of progressively shorter working weeks, where mini-breaks become maxi-breaks".

Mind you, he also pointed out that the lowest paid jobs would be at the most risk so, a life of potential leisure beckons, assuming you don't starve.

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Will the robots ruin us? - The Sydney Morning Herald

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How To Apply The Right Automation And Reporting Tools To Your Business – Forbes

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Forbes
How To Apply The Right Automation And Reporting Tools To Your Business
Forbes
Automation, or the act of utilizing technology to oversee and simplify repeatable tasks, may seem most common in the manufacturing industry. The truth, however, is that automation can be employed in all fieldsand across many departmentsto provide ...

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How To Apply The Right Automation And Reporting Tools To Your Business - Forbes

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