Rapid and simultaneous determination of curcuminoids and gingerols in food products containing turmeric and ginger using paper spray mass spectrometry.

Turmeric and ginger are extensively employed as functional ingredients due to their high content of curcuminoids and gingerols, considered the key bioactive compounds found in these roots. In this study, we present an innovative and fast method for the assay of curcuminoids and gingerols in different foods containing the two spices, with the aim of monitoring the quality of products from a nutraceutical perspective. The proposed approach is based on paper spray tandem mass spectrometry coupled with the use of a labeled internal standard, which has permitted to achieve the best results in terms of specificity and accuracy. All the calculated analytical parameters were satisfactory; accuracy values are around 100% for all spiked samples and the precision data result lower than 15%. The protocol was applied to several real samples, and to demonstrate its robustness and reliability, the results were compared to those arising from the common liquid chromatographic method.

Structural Characterization of Peripolin and Study of Antioxidant Activity of HMG Flavonoids from Bergamot Fruit.

The structural characterization of a new flavonoid from bergamot fruit (Citrus bergamia Risso) carrying the 3-hydroxy-3-methyl glutaryl (HMG) ester moiety has been accomplished, and its antioxidant ability was tested from a chemical point of view. The peculiarity of the new molecule, named peripolin, relies on the presence of the HMG chemical group linked to the sugar portion of neoeriocitrin; the structure was elucidated using both high-resolution mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments performed on the purified molecule extracted from the fruit. The antioxidant ability of the new molecule was tested by classical chemical approaches, such as DPPH, ABTS and FRAP assays, and from a theoretical point of view. 1H and 13C NMR experiments and HR-ESI-MS/MS experiments show unequivocally that the HMG moiety is linked to the primary position of the glucose unit of neohesperidose, while the chemical tests and the computational results show that peripolin possesses strong antioxidant behavior, similar to that of neoeriocitrin and remarkably higher respect to the other flavonoids present in the fruit. Furthermore, the quantitative assays carried out by UPLC-MS/MS showed that its amount in the fruit is similar to that of the other main flavonoids. Furthermore, molecular dynamics simulations allowed us to investigate the possible conformations adopted by the antioxidants in the presence of water molecules. In particular, the switch of open-closed conformations of HMG-containing species was evidenced. As far as the reaction with DPPH, the calculation of ΔGrea supported the experimental outcomes regarding the peripolin and neoeriocitrin activity. In conclusion, bergamot fruit, already known for its potential to lower the level of blood cholesterol, has been proven to contain molecules such as neoeriocitrin and the newly characterized peripolin, which could have important in-vivo antioxidant characteristics.

Lipid Peroxidation in Algae Oil: Antagonist Effects of Natural Antioxidants.

Tandem mass spectrometry is proposed to check lipid oxidation, a free radical-mediated phenomenon which effects oxidative deterioration in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Antioxidants are used by the food industry to delay the oxidation process. This process can be controlled by antioxidants, which may occur as natural constituents of foods or may be intentionally added to products. Synthetic antioxidants such as BHT, BHA, and propyl gallate have been extensively used as antioxidants in the industry. The worldwide tendency to avoid or minimize the use of synthetic food additives has prompted the replacement of synthetic antioxidants with natural analogues. The entire process can be supported by the detection and characterization of the reacting species by suitable application of electrospray tandem mass spectrometry under collision-induced dissociation (ESI-CID-MS/MS). Natural antioxidants were tested in this study to check the oxidative stability of algae oil when adding the natural additive. Results were observed in algae oil in situ using electrospray mass spectrometry in tandem with collision-induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-CID-MS/MS) and the POBN spin trapper. The results indicate that alpha-tocopherol is a better antioxidant.

Hydroxytyrosol-Fortified Foods Obtained by Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Olive Oil.

A new original process has been set-up to obtain hydroxytyrosol-enriched food by means of CO2 supercritical fluid extraction. The process is based on the direct adsorption of hydroxytyrosol on selected foodstuff (e.g., flour, whole-wheat flour, and sugar) when placed in contact with olive oil (which is known to contain this phenol) under controlled temperature and pressure conditions of supercritical CO2. The transfer of the nutraceutical to the foodstuff was initially evaluated using a fortified olive oil model and was then applied to commercial olive oil and foodstuff. The yield of the hydroxytyrosol transfer was demonstrated to be quantitative. In order to prove the suitability of the final products, hydroxytyrosol-enriched flour was used to prepare a bread roll, which maintained the nutraceutical characteristics after the cooking. Finally, DPPH based experiments were performed to prove the radical scavenging activity of the functionalized foodstuff.

The influence of encoding and testing directions on retrieval of spatial information in explored and described environments.

The verbal descriptions of an environment elicit a spatial mental model, in which the linear disposition of the described objects might be related to the properties of the description. In particular the direction from which the environment is encoded might shape the spatial mental model, as a consequence of a cultural bias in reading and writing direction. The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of the direction in which objects are encoded on the retrieval of spatial information. In two experiments we asked participants to encode an environment through either physical exploration or verbal description, that are encoding modalities which preserve the sequential presentation of spatial information. We manipulated both the encoding and testing directions of the spatial information, and tested participants by using a two-alternative forced choice task. In both experiments, the results did not reveal any significant effect, disconfirming the idea of the left-right cultural bias for western people for this type of task. The lack of effect suggests that encoding an environment through physical movement and verbal descriptions determines the development of a mental representation which is relatively independent from encoding sequential order.

University Students' Hangover May Affect Cognitive Research.

University students are the most employed category of participants in cognitive research. However, researchers cannot fully control what their participants do the night before the experiments (e.g., consumption of alcohol) and, unless the experiment specifically concerns the effects of alcohol consumption, they often do not ask about it. Despite previous studies demonstrating that alcohol consumption leads to decrements in next-day cognitive abilities, the potential confounding effect of hangover on the validity of cognitive research has never been addressed. To address this issue, in the present study, a test-retest design was used, with two groups of university students: at T0, one group was constituted by hungover participants, while the other group was constituted by non-hungover participants; at T1, both groups were re-tested in a non-hangover state. In particular, the tests used were two versions of a parity judgment task and an arithmetic verification task. The results highlight that: (a) the response times of university students experiencing a hangover are significantly slower than those of non-hangover students and (b) the response times of hungover students are slower than those of the same students when re-tested in a non-hangover state. Additionally, it was also observed that the prevalence of hungover students in the university campus varies depending on the day of the week, with a greater chance of enrolling hungover participants on specific days. In light of the latter result, the recruitment of university students as participants in cognitive experiments might lead researchers to erroneously attribute their results to the variables they are manipulating, ignoring the effects of the potential hangover state.

Former Road Cyclists Still Involved in Cycling Report Lower Burnout Levels Than Those Who Abandoned This Sport.

Despite the numerous benefits associated with sport practice, many children and adolescents end up quitting it year after year, with a stable dropout rate between 10 and 19 years of age. Among the causes of sport abandonment, the scientific literature highlights the presence of burnout as a fundamental factor. In this regard, the aim of the present study was to investigate the levels of the three components of sport burnout-emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation-reported by a sample of young (former) athletes, depending on whether their sport abandonment was relative (i.e., change to another sport modality) or definitive. In particular, participants were former agonist road cyclists, who have been divided into three groups on the basis of what they did after abandoning road bicycle racing, namely: (a) those still involved in cycling, either in a different specialty (e.g., mountain bike) or with a different role (e.g., coach for kids); (b) those who started practicing a different sport; and (c) those who definitively abandoned sports. The general hypothesis was that, with respect to those who changed sport and those who definitively abandoned it, those still involved in cycling would report experiencing lower levels of the three burnout components during the last year practicing it. To test this hypothesis, the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ; Raedeke and Smith, 2001) was administered to 85 young former road cyclists. The results seem to support the hypothesis for two out of the three components, namely, emotional and physical exhaustion and sport devaluation; on the other hand, for reduced sense of accomplishment, no difference among the three groups emerged. Further research is needed to deepen the understanding of such processes, also in relation with other relevant constructs; yet, the results of the present study should already raise the awareness of sport organizations on the need to deal with this and related phenomena by adopting appropriate strategies to ensure the well-being of young athletes, thus trying to reduce early dropout.

SNARC-like compatibility effects for physical and phenomenal magnitudes: a study on visual illusions.

Both numerical and non-numerical magnitudes elicit similar Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effects, with small magnitudes associated with left hand responses and large magnitudes associated with right hand responses (Dehaene et al., J Exp Psychol Gen 122(3), 371, 1993). In the present study, we investigated whether the phenomenal size of visual illusions elicits the same SNARC-like effect revealed for the physical size of pictorial surfaces. Four experiments were conducted by using the Delboeuf illusion (Experiment 1) and the Kanizsa triangle illusion (Experiments 2, 3 and 4). Experiment 1 suggests the presence of a SNARC-like compatibility effect for the physical size of the inducers, while this effect was not revealed for the phenomenal size of the induced elements, possibly masked by a stronger effect of the inducers. A SNARC-like effect for the phenomenal size of the Kanizsa triangle was revealed when participants directly compared the size of the triangles (Experiment 4). Conversely, when participants performed an indirect task (orientation judgment), the SNARC-like effect was present neither for the illusory nor for the physical displays (Experiments 2 and 3). The effect revealed for the size of illusory triangles was comparable to that of real triangles with physical contours, suggesting that both phenomenal and physical magnitudes similarly elicit SNARC-like effects.

The Influence of the Encoding Modality on Spatial Navigation for Sighted and Late-Blind People.

People usually rely on sight to encode spatial information, becoming aware of other sensory cues when deprived of vision. In the absence of vision, it has been demonstrated that physical movements and spatial descriptions can effectively provide the spatial information that is necessary for the construction of an adequate spatial mental model. However, no study has previously compared the influence of these encoding modalities on complex movements such as human spatial navigation within real room-size environments. Thus, we investigated whether the encoding of a spatial layout through verbal cues - that is, spatial description - and motor cues - that is, physical exploration of the environment - differently affect spatial navigation within a real room-size environment, by testing blindfolded sighted (Experiment 1) and late-blind (Experiment 2) participants. Our results reveal that encoding the environment through physical movement is more effective than through verbal descriptions in supporting active navigation. Thus, our findings are in line with the studies claiming that the physical exploration of an environment enhances the development of a global spatial representation and improves spatial updating. From an applied perspective, the present results suggest that it might be possible to improve the experience for visually impaired people within a new environment by allowing them to explore it.

Sustainable and Selective Extraction of Lipids and Bioactive Compounds from Microalgae.

The procedures for the extraction and separation of lipids and nutraceutics from microalgae using classic solvents have been frequently used over the years. However, these production methods usually require expensive and toxic solvents. Based on our studies involving the use of eco-sustainable methodologies and alternative solvents, we selected ethanol (EtOH) and cyclopentyl methyl ether (CPME) for extracting bio-oil and lipids from algae. Different percentages of EtOH in CPME favor the production of an oil rich in saturated fatty acids (SFA), useful to biofuel production or rich in bioactive compounds. The proposed method for obtaining an extract rich in saturated or unsaturated fatty acids from dry algal biomass is disclosed as eco-friendly and allows a good extraction yield. The method is compared both in extracted oil percentage yield and in extracted fatty acids selectivity to extraction by supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2).

Pressing Crowd Noise Impairs the Ability of Anxious Basketball Referees to Discriminate Fouls.

The decision-making processes of referees in sports are affected by many factors, including the pressure of spectators. While the home/visitor bias has been previously investigated, the role of crowd noise has been less studied. In the present study, we investigated how the crowd noise (calm vs. pressing) influence the decisions of basketball referees, when examining videos of potential fouls. In doing so, we also considered the level of competitive anxiety of referees (low vs. high anxiety), as factor potentially interacting with the pressure exerted by the spectators. A 2 × 2 ANOVA (Crowd noise x Anxiety) revealed a significant interaction [F (1,28) = 7.33; p < 0.05; η p 2 = 0.21; power = 0.74], with the highly anxious referees showing poorer performances in the pressing crowd condition [t (14) = 2.24; p < 0.05; d = 0.64]. The results indicate that the crowd noise does not seem to affect the referees' decisions, unless we consider the anxiety. The present findings suggest that the decisions of referees with high anxiety might be more easily influenced by external factors like crowd noise. Based on these results, referees' federations should consider the possibility to develop training protocols dedicated to highly anxious referees, to avoid their decisions from being biased by spectators' pressure.

Eco-Friendly Extraction and Characterisation of Nutraceuticals from Olive Leaves.

Olive tree (Olea europaea L.) leaf, a waste by-product of the olive oil industry, is an inexpensive and abundant source of biophenols of great interest for various industrial applications in the food supplement, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries. In this work, the aqueous extraction of high-added value compounds from olive leaves by using microfiltered (MF), ultrapure (U), and osmosis-treated (O) water was investigated. The extraction of target compounds, including oleuropein (Olp), hydroxytyrosol (HyTyr), tyrosol (Tyr), verbascoside (Ver), lutein (Lut), and rutin (Rut), was significantly affected by the characteristics of the water used. Indeed, according to the results of liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, the extracting power of microfiltered water towards rutin resulted very poor, while a moderate extraction was observed for oleuropein, verbascoside, and lutein. On the other hand, high concentrations of hydroxytyrosol were detected in the aqueous extracts produced with microfiltered water. The extraction power of ultrapure and osmosis-treated water proved to be very similar for the bio-active compounds oleuropein, verbascoside, lutein, and rutin. The results clearly provide evidence of the possibility of devising new eco-friendly strategies based on the use of green solvents which can be applied to recover bioactive compounds from olive leaves.

Predicting the length of volleyball serves: The role of early auditory and visual information.

In light of the growing body of research that is revealing the significant role of the auditory domain in sport, the present study aims to investigate the contribution of early auditory and visual information to the prediction of volleyball serves' length. To this purpose, three within-subjects experiments were run, which differed among them in terms of stimuli (audiovisual congruent vs audiovisual incongruent; audio only vs video only) and/or in terms of number of possible answers. In particular, expert volleyball players were asked to predict the length of temporally occluded overhand serves, choosing among either two or three possible landing sectors. Response accuracy and response times were measured. For the incongruent stimuli, the results revealed that the percentage of predictions in line with early auditory information was significantly higher than the respective percentage of predictions in line with early visual information. For unimodal stimuli, prediction accuracy was significantly higher on the basis of auditory information than on the basis of visual information, without any difference on response times. Taken together, the results highlighted the relevance of early auditory information for the prediction of volleyball serves' length.

Aromatherapy: composition of the gaseous phase at equilibrium with liquid bergamot essential oil.

This work compares the composition at different temperatures of gaseous phase of bergamot essential oil at equilibrium with the liquid phase. A new GC-MS methodology to determine quantitatively the volatile aroma compounds was developed. The adopted methodology involved the direct injection of headspace gas into injection port of GC-MS system and of known amounts of the corresponding authentic volatile compounds. The methodology was validated. This study showed that gaseous phase composition is different from that of the liquid phase at equilibrium with it.

Modality and Perceptual-Motor Experience Influence the Detection of Temporal Deviations in Tap Dance Sequences.

Accurate temporal information processing is critically important in many motor activities within disciplines such as dance, music, and sport. However, it is still unclear how temporal information related to biological motion is processed by expert and non-expert performers. It is well-known that the auditory modality dominates the visual modality in processing temporal information of simple stimuli, and that experts outperform non-experts in biological motion perception. In the present study, we combined these two areas of research; we investigated how experts and non-experts detected temporal deviations in tap dance sequences, in the auditory modality compared to the visual modality. We found that temporal deviations were better detected in the auditory modality compared to the visual modality, and by experts compared to non-experts. However, post hoc analyses indicated that these effects were mainly due to performances obtained by experts in the auditory modality. The results suggest that the experience advantage is not equally distributed across the modalities, and that tap dance experience enhances the effectiveness of the auditory modality but not the visual modality when processing temporal information. The present results and their potential implications are discussed in both temporal information processing and biological motion perception frameworks.

Walking during the encoding of described environments enhances a heading-independent spatial representation.

Previous studies demonstrated that physical movement enhanced spatial updating in described environments. However, those movements were executed only after the encoding of the environment, minimally affecting the development of the spatial representation. Thus, we investigated whether and how participants could benefit from the execution of physical movement during the encoding of described environments, in terms of enhanced spatial updating. Using the judgement of relative directions task, we compared the effects of walking both during and after the description of the environment, and walking only after the description on spatial updating. Spatial updating was evaluated in terms of accuracy and response times in different headings. We found that the distribution of response times across Headings seemed not to be related to the physical movement executed, whereas the distribution of accuracy scores seemed to significantly change with the action executed. Indeed, when no movement occurred during the encoding of the environment, a preference for the learning heading was found, which did not emerge when walking during encoding occurred. Therefore, the results seem to suggest that physical movement during encoding supports the development of a heading-independent representation of described environments, reducing the anchoring for a preferred heading in favor of a global representation.

Walking reduces the gap between encoding and sensorimotor alignment effects in spatial updating of described environments.

Spatial updating allows people to keep track of the self-to-object relations during movement. Previous studies demonstrated that physical movement enhanced spatial updating in remote environments, but failed to find the same effect in described environments. However, these studies mainly considered rotation as a physical movement, without examining other types of movement, such as walking. We investigated how walking affects spatial updating within described environments. Using the judgement of relative directions task, we compared the effects of imagination of rotation, physical rotation, and walking on spatial updating. Spatial updating was evaluated in terms of accuracy and response times in different perspectives, and by calculating two indexes, namely the encoding and sensorimotor alignment effects. As regards response times, we found that in the imagination of rotation and physical rotation conditions the encoding alignment effect was higher than the sensorimotor alignment effect, while in the walking condition this gap disappeared. We interpreted these results in terms of an enhanced link between allocentric and sensorimotor representations, due to the information acquired through walking.

Perceptual belongingness determines the direction of lightness induction depending on grouping stability and intentionality.

Contrast and assimilation are two opposite perceptual phenomena deriving from the relationships among perceptual elements in a visual field. In contrast, perceptual differences are enhanced; while, in assimilation, they are decreased. Indeed, if contrast or assimilation occurs depends on various factors. Interestingly, Gestalt scientists explained both phenomena as the result of perceptual belongingness, giving rise to an intriguing paradox. Benary suggested that belongingness determines contrast; conversely, Fuchs suggested that it determines assimilation. This paradox can be related both to the grouping stability (stable/multi-stable) and to the grouping intentionality (intentional/non-intentional). In the present work we ran four experiments to test whether the contrast/assimilation outcomes depend on the above-mentioned variables. We found that, intentionality and multi-stability elicit assimilation; while, non-intentionality and stability elicit contrast.

Ecological sounds affect breath duration more than artificial sounds.

Previous research has demonstrated that auditory rhythms affect both movement and physiological functions. We hypothesized that the ecological sounds of human breathing can affect breathing more than artificial sounds of breathing, varying in tones for inspiration and expiration. To address this question, we monitored the breath duration of participants exposed to three conditions: (a) ecological sounds of breathing, (b) artificial sounds of breathing having equal temporal features as the ecological sounds, (c) no sounds (control). We found that participants' breath duration variability was reduced in the ecological sound condition, more than in the artificial sound condition. We suggest that ecological sounds captured the timing of breathing better than artificial sounds, guiding as a consequence participants' breathing. We interpreted our results according to the Theory of Event Coding, providing further support to its validity, and suggesting its possible extension in the domain of physiological functions which are both consciously and unconsciously controlled.