15 Minute Cleanups for Every Room of Your Home

 

Glow Decor/Glow/Getty Images

What a 15 Minute Cleanup Is:

A 15 Minute Cleanup is a brief step-by-step guide to cleaning a room in 15 minutes or less. While the room may not be white glove clean, it will be presentable to guests. 15 Minute Cleanups are a great way to maintain a home in between more thorough cleanings. These cleanups include step-by-step instructions, a list of supplies, tips, and links for more thorough information.

What a 15 Minute Cleanup Isn’t:

A 15 Minute Cleanup is not the only cleaning regimen you’ll need to keep your home in tip top shape. It’s not an intense cleaning, but only a brief pickup of a room. To really keep a home clean, more thorough work will need to be done according to your cleaning schedule. Before intensely cleaning a room, it’s a good idea to start with that room's quick 15 Minute Cleanup.

The Cleanups:

15 Minute Living Area Cleanup

This cleanup can work for formal and informal living areas and sitting areas. It also works for formal dining rooms, and other rooms where entertaining is done. The idea with this cleanup is to get the room ready for guests, or events without spending a lot of time on the details.

15 Minute Kitchen Cleanup

The kitchen cleanup aims to remove trash, dirty dishes, and unwanted items from a kitchen, making it ready to be used, or in good shape for guests to be around. While you won’t scrub out the refrigerator, or clean under the sink in this cleanup, you will remove any offending trash and dishes, making your kitchen clean and clutter free.

15 Minute Bathroom Cleanup

The bathroom cleanup helps you quickly organize and wipe down bathroom surfaces. This cleanup will work to maintain your weekly bathroom scrub down, or get a bathroom ready in a hurry when unexpected guests show up.

15 Minute Kid’s Room Cleanup

This kid’s room cleanup is great for parents at a loss for where to begin when faced with a disaster area child’s room. It’s also perfect for older readers who can actually follow the list themselves to get their rooms clean. Print it off for them and watch as an all day chore turns into a 15 minute miracle.

15 Minute Bedroom Cleanup

Like many people, I usually leave cleaning my own bedroom for last. After a busy day or week, a bedroom can be in terrible shape. This cleanup will help maintain a bedroom or give it a quick pickup just in time for a restful night.

15 Minute Dorm Room Cleanup

The dorm room cleanup is for those who live in a very small area like an efficiency apartment, or campus housing. These small places can quickly fill up with junk and trash, but this quick cleanup will help organize even the worst-case scenario.

Why A 15 Minute Cleanup Works:

A 15 Minute Cleanup works because it recognizes that there are three types of items we need to clean up in a room. Everything falls into one of three categories...

• Trash
• Things that don't belong in the room.
• Things that belong in the room, in a different place.

Having only a few categories to sort items into makes a pickup run more smoothly. The 15 Minute Cleanups also work because they are designed to maintain a room. Having a 15 Minute Cleaning session in a room several times a week will keep your home looking great between more intense cleanings.

More Intense Cleanups:

If you need a little more intense cleanup, you can try the following. These cleanups will take you between 1-2 hours per room depending on how much cleaning they’ve had lately. When you make your cleaning schedule, you can use the 15 Minute Cleanups and the Intense Cleanups together to create a perfectly clean home.

Intense Living Area Cleanup
Intense Kitchen Cleanup
Intense Bathroom Cleanup
Intense Bedroom Cleanup
Intense Dorm Room Cleanup

Staring at a Screen for Hours Changes Your Tears

 

Office workers exhibit symptoms of dry eye

Aug 19, 2014 By Dina Fine Maron

Thomas Fuchs

Most Americans sit for at least six hours a day—an act that has been linked to obesity and heart disease, among other ailments. Mounting evidence suggests long hours staring at computer monitors may also be taking a toll on the eyes. People peering for hours into a screen tend to blink less often and have tears that evaporate more quickly, which dries out the eye and can cause blurred vision or pain. Left untreated, dry eye can lead to corneal ulcers and scarring.

Tears keep the eye moist and wash away dust or debris that could cause damage. But the tears of people with dry eye have less of a protein called mucin 5AC, which normally helps to keep tears sticky and spread evenly across the eye. A new study, based on 96 Japanese office workers, found that staring at a screen for eight hours or more is associated with lower mucin levels. The results were published online in June in JAMA Ophthalmology.

The good news is that the damage from staring at a screen is not likely to be permanent. Certain molecules that help to produce mucin remained roughly equal among test subjects with and without dry eye, regardless of their eyestrain status. Although larger studies need to be done, the findings confirm mucin as a possible target for future diagnosis and treatments of dry eye disease. Doctors already suggest taking regular breaks from the screen. Take a walk—or you may have a reason to tear up.

This article was originally published with the title "Dried Up."

World War I: Naval Technology, 1914

 

 

A look at the science of naval warfare in the first year of the Great War

Sep 16, 2014 By Daniel C. Schlenoff

The battleship, while impressive looking, is an older and smaller “pre-dreadnought” design of the Braunschweig class.
Image: Scientific American, October 3, 1914

More In This Article

When the First World War engulfed Europe in August 1914 it was widely believed that sea power would be a decisive factor. In the decade before the war, Germany had begun to expand their fleet of battleships to challenge the dominance of British naval power. This arms race has been cited as one of the causes of the war.

Sea power was indeed decisive in the war. But it wasn’t the large fleets of giant battleships that were significant. In fact, the only large naval battle in the war, Jutland, in 1916, had no clear winner, and even today remains controversial. The real power of the sea came from the fleets of merchant ships bringing vast amounts of weapons, ammunition and raw materials to France, Britain, Russia and Italy—and after the U.S. entered the war, fresh troops by the million.

Through this same sea power a blockade denied food and weaponry to Germany and Austria. Do not underestimate the effect of this blockade: by the end of the war up to half a million people in the Central Powers had died of starvation and malnutrition because of it. As we noted in an editorial shortly after the war began, “food is as essential to success as guns.” [November 7, 1914]

The decisive fight at sea became a battle between fleets of cargo vessels escorted by naval surface ships against fleets of submarines. Those tasked with winning the war were under no illusion as to the importance of winning this battle.

>> Here is a slideshow of images from our archives on the science of naval warfare from 1914, the first year of the Great War.

For a more comprehensive look at all the aspects of World War I, military, economic, social, technological, see the World War I archive package at www.ScientificAmerican.com/wwi

Crime Ring Revelation Reveals Cybersecurity Conflict of Interest

 

Hold Security’s nebulous report on the “CyberVor” online hacker gang exposed the cybersecurity world’s troubling practice of uncovering online threats and then selling proposed solutions

Sep 15, 2014 By Erik Schechter

A small cybersecurity firm claimed this summer to have uncovered a scam by Russian Internet thieves to amass a mountain of stolen information from 420,000 Web and FTP sites. The hacker network, dubbed “CyberVor,” possessed 1.2 billion unique credentials—a user name and matching password—belonging to 500 million e-mail addresses, asserted Hold Security, LLC.

Those numbers made Internet security watchers and even some consumers sit up and take notice—people use such credentials to access banking, investment and social media accounts after all. If true, the CyberVor haul would dwarf last December’s data breach of retailer Target, in which 40 million customer credit cards were compromised. Although a New York Times story lent credibility to Hold Security’s claims, some observers question whether the cybersecurity vendor’s big reveal was more of a publicity stunt than a public service. The firm’s decision to charge potential victims a $120 fee for their Breach Notification Service did not help matters.

Panic and publicity certainly play a role in cybersecurity efforts, as companies that make antivirus and other protective software try to provide computer users with a sense of the unseen threats facing their devices and data on a daily basis. But questions arise when these companies yoke together the part of their businesses that finds and analyzes security threats with the part that sells software and services to mitigate those threats.

Even large, established firms such as Symantec Corp. have been accused of exaggerating the gravity of security threats to boost sales. A decade ago U.S. regulators cracked down on financial services firms for the questionable practice of having their equity research and investment banking divisions work together to endorse and then sell certain investments. No such oversight exists for cybersecurity companies. Although not surprising, given the relatively nascent nature of cyber threats, this conflict of interest means these companies walk a thin line between defending computers and other Internet-connected devices and profiting from people’s fear that their personal data is vulnerable at any time to online attackers.

The people behind CyberVor started off buying stolen credentials on the black market, according to Hold Security. At some point the gang changed tactics and purchased information about certain Web sites’ security weaknesses. This data had been gleaned by botnets, a group of virus-infected computers secretly controlled by a hacker. CyberVor then used these vulnerabilities to steal more credentials from the sites. It is unclear, however, how long this process took or whether those credentials were ever used to commit fraud or steal from the credentials’ owners.

Hold Security did not respond to a media inquiry from Scientific American. But a FAQ page on the company’s Web site insisted that private e-mail users would not have to pay $120 to find out if they were on the CyberVor list. Only Web site owners and Internet service providers would be charged for the Breach Notification Service, which “also provides a full year of service for other breach notifications.”

Hold Security’s actions exposed key flaws in the way certain cybersecurity companies operate but were not emblematic of the industry as a whole, some cybersecurity executives argue. “There’s always some skepticism about the latest cyber crime of the day,” acknowledges Michael Malloy, executive vice president of products and strategy at Webroot, a provider of antivirus and antispyware services as well as research. Still, cyber crime is a real threat—large antivirus software makers must defend their customers’ computers from hundreds of thousands of new threats everyday, he says.
One red flag concerning the CyberVor warning was the lack of specifics about how much of a threat the hacker network posed and whom it affected. Hold Security begged off naming targeted Web sites, citing nondisclosure agreements, says Jasper Graham, a former U.S. National Security Agency technical director and now senior vice president of cyber technologies and analytics at network security provider Darktrace. But security companies usually offer breakdowns “that'll say something like 30 percent of the data was financial…60 percent of the data was social media,” he adds. These figures help other cybersecurity researchers and their customers assess the seriousness of the attack for themselves, but Hold Security withheld even that level of detail.

It is not uncommon for cybersecurity companies to research and hype threats that could drive sales, says Dan Guido, chief executive of information security company Trail of Bits and hacker-in-residence at New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering. The cybersecurity market and its customers would benefit from government regulation and research to help buyers separate good and bad security products and get objective reports on emerging cyber threats, he says.

And the same companies selling security engage in outright fraud. In March 2013 Symantec agreed to pay a settlement of $11 million to end a class-action lawsuit. The Norton antivirus program developer had been accused of tricking users into buying an unnecessary “registry cleaner” for $29.95 after running free scans with Symantec tools that identified nonexistent problems on their computers. Similarly, tiny companies such as MediaFire, Alpha Red and Branch Software have been sued for using pop-up advertisements to scare unsuspecting computer users into buying antivirus products, some of which actually damaged consumers’ computers, once installed.

Cybersecurity firms ideally should perform their work of finding and stopping malware and cyber attacks in a way that enables measurement of their success or failure, says Stefan Savage, a computer scientist in the Systems and Networking Group at the University of California, San Diego. Establishing a method by which people could determine and assess the quality and value of a product or service, he says, would go a long way toward helping the industry shake concerns that companies are simply resorting to scare tactics.

For electronics beyond silicon, a new contender emerges

 

Now, using a quantum material called a correlated oxide, Harvard researchers have achieved a reversible change in electrical resistance of eight orders of magnitude, a result the researchers are calling "colossal." In short, they have engineered this material to perform comparably with the best silicon switches.

The finding arose in what may seem an unlikely spot: a laboratory usually devoted to studying fuel cells -- the kind that run on methane or hydrogen -- led by Shriram Ramanathan, Associate Professor of Materials Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The researchers' familiarity with thin films and ionic transport enabled them to exploit chemistry, rather than temperature, to achieve the dramatic result.

Because the correlated oxides can function equally well at room temperature or a few hundred degrees above it, it would be easy to integrate them into existing electronic devices and fabrication methods. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, therefore firmly establishes correlated oxides as promising semiconductors for future three-dimensional integrated circuits as well as for adaptive, tunable photonic devices.

Challenging silicon

Although electronics manufacturers continue to pack greater speed and functionality into smaller packages, the performance of silicon-based components will soon hit a wall.

"Traditional silicon transistors have fundamental scaling limitations," says Ramanathan. "If you shrink them beyond a certain minimum feature size, they don't quite behave as they should."

Yet silicon transistors are hard to beat, with an on/off ratio of at least 10⁴ required for practical use. "It's a pretty high bar to cross," Ramanathan explains, adding that until now, experiments using correlated oxides have produced changes of only about a factor of 10, or 100 at most, near room temperature. But Ramanathan and his team have crafted a new transistor, made primarily of an oxide called samarium nickelate, that in practical operation achieves an on/off ratio of greater than 10⁵ -- that is, comparable to state-of-the-art silicon transistors.

In future work the researchers will investigate the device's switching dynamics and power dissipation; meanwhile, this advance represents an important proof of concept.

"Our orbital transistor could really push the frontiers of this field and say, you know what? This is a material that can challenge silicon," Ramanathan says.

Solid-state chemical doping

Materials scientists have been studying the family of correlated oxides for years, but the field is still in its infancy, with most research aimed at establishing the materials' basic physical properties.

"We have just discovered how to dope these materials, which is a foundational step in the use of any semiconductor," says Ramanathan.

Doping is the process of introducing different atoms into the crystal structure of a material, and it affects how easily electrons can move through it -- that is, to what extent it resists or conducts electricity. Doping typically effects this change by increasing the number of available electrons, but this study was different. The Harvard team manipulated the band gap, the energy barrier to electron flow.

"By a certain choice of dopants -- in this case, hydrogen or lithium -- we can widen or narrow the band gap in this material, deterministically moving electrons in and out of their orbitals," Ramanathan says. That's a fundamentally different approach than is used in other semiconductors. The traditional method changes the energy level to meet the target; the new method moves the target itself.

In this orbital transistor, protons and electrons move in or out of the samarium nickelate when an electric field is applied, regardless of temperature, so the device can be operated in the same conditions as conventional electronics. It is solid-state, meaning it involves no liquids, gases, or moving mechanical parts. And, in the absence of power, the material remembers its present state -- an important feature for energy efficiency.

"That's the beauty of this work," says Ramanathan. "It's an exotic effect, but in principle it's highly compatible with traditional electronic devices."

Quantum materials

Unlike silicon, samarium nickelate and other correlated oxides are quantum materials, meaning that quantum-mechanical interactions have a dominant influence over the material properties -- and not just at small scales.

"If you have two electrons in adjacent orbitals, and the orbitals are not completely filled, in a traditional material the electrons can move from one orbital to another. But in the correlated oxides, the electrons repulse each other so much that they cannot move," Ramanathan explains. "The occupancy of the orbitals and the ability of electrons to move in the crystal are very closely tied together -- or 'correlated.' Fundamentally, that's what dictates whether the material behaves as an insulator or a metal."

Ramanathan and others at SEAS have successfully manipulated the metal-insulator transition in vanadium oxide, too. In 2012, they demonstrated a tunable device that can absorb 99.75% of infrared light, appearing black to infrared cameras.

Similarly, samarium nickelate is likely to catch the attention of applied physicists developing photonic and optoelectronic devices.

"Opening and closing the band gap means you can now manipulate the ways in which electromagnetic radiation interacts with your material," says Jian Shi, lead author of the paper in Nature Communications. He completed the research as a postdoctoral fellow in Ramanathan's lab at Harvard SEAS and joined the faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute this fall. "Just by applying an electric field, you're dynamically controlling how light interacts with this material."

Further ahead, researchers at the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials, established at Harvard in 2013 through a grant from the National Science Foundation, aim to develop an entirely new class of quantum electronic devices and systems that will transform signal processing and computation.

Ramanathan compares the current state of quantum materials research to the 1950s, when transistors were newly invented and physicists were still making sense of them. "We are basically in that era for these new quantum materials," he says. "This is an exciting time to think about establishing the basic, fundamental properties. In the coming decade or so, this could really mature into a very exciting device platform."

You Zhou, a graduate student at Harvard SEAS, was co-lead author of the paper in Nature Communications. The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) (CCF-0926148) and the National Academy of Sciences, as well as an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to Prof. Ramanathan (DMR-0952794).

Scientists twist radio beams to send data: Transmissions reach speeds of 32 gigibits per second

 

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Graphic showing the intensity of the radio beams after twisting.

Building on previous research that twisted light to send data at unheard-of speeds, scientists at USC have developed a similar technique with radiowaves, reaching high speeds without some of the hassles that can go with optical systems.

The researchers, led by electrical engineering professor Alan Willner of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, reached data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5 meters of free space in a basement lab at USC.

For reference, 32 gigabits per second is fast enough to transmit more than 10 hour-and-a-half-long HD movies in one second and is 30 times faster than LTE wireless.

"Not only is this a way to transmit multiple spatially collocated radio data streams through a single aperture, it is also one of the fastest data transmission via radio waves that has been demonstrated," Willner said.

Faster data transmission rates have been achieved -- Willner himself led a team two years ago that twisted light beams to transmit data at a blistering 2.56 terabits per second -- but methods to do so rely on light to carry the data.

"The advantage of radio is that it uses wider, more robust beams. Wider beams are better able to cope with obstacles between the transmitter and the receiver, and radio is not as affected by atmospheric turbulence as optics," Willner said.

Willner is the corresponding author of an article about the research that will be published in Nature Communications on Sept. 16. The study's co-lead authors Yan Yan and Guodong Xie are both graduate students at USC Viterbi, and other contributors came from USC, the University of Glasgow, and Tel Aviv University.

To achieve the high transmission rates, the team took a page from Willner's previous work and twisted radio beams together. They passed each beam -- which carried its own independent stream of data -- through a "spiral phase plate" that twisted each radio beam into a unique and orthogonal DNA-like helical shape. A receiver at the other end of the room then untwisted and recovered the different data streams.

"This technology could have very important applications in ultra-high-speed links for the wireless 'backhaul' that connects base stations of next-generation cellular systems," said Andy Molisch of USC Viterbi. Molisch, whose research focuses on wireless systems, co-designed and co-supervised the study with Willner.

Future research will focus on attempting to extend the transmission's range and capabilities.

The work was supported by Intel Labs University Research Office and the DARPA InPho (Information in a Photon) Program.

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Southern California. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Yan Yan, Guodong Xie, Martin P. J. Lavery, Hao Huang, Nisar Ahmed, Changjing Bao, Yongxiong Ren, Yinwen Cao, Long Li, Zhe Zhao, Andreas F. Molisch, Moshe Tur, Miles J. Padgett, Alan E. Willner. High-capacity millimetre-wave communications with orbital angular momentum multiplexing. Nature Communications, 2014; 5: 4876 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5876

First water-based nuclear battery can be used to generate electrical energy

 

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Artist's concept (stock illustration).

From cell phones to cars and flashlights, batteries play an important role in everyday life. Scientists and technology companies constantly are seeking ways to improve battery life and efficiency. Now, for the first time using a water-based solution, researchers at the University of Missouri have created a long-lasting and more efficient nuclear battery that could be used for many applications such as a reliable energy source in automobiles and also in complicated applications such as space flight.

"Betavoltaics, a battery technology that generates power from radiation, has been studied as an energy source since the 1950s," said Jae W. Kwon, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and nuclear engineering in the College of Engineering at MU. "Controlled nuclear technologies are not inherently dangerous. We already have many commercial uses of nuclear technologies in our lives including fire detectors in bedrooms and emergency exit signs in buildings."

The battery uses a radioactive isotope called strontium-90 that boosts electrochemcial energy in a water-based solution. A nanostructured titanium dioxide electrode (the common element found in sunscreens and UV blockers) with a platinum coating collects and effectively converts energy into electrons.

"Water acts as a buffer and surface plasmons created in the device turned out to be very useful in increasing its efficiency," Kwon said. "The ionic solution is not easily frozen at very low temperatures and could work in a wide variety of applications including car batteries and, if packaged properly, perhaps spacecraft."

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Baek Hyun Kim, Jae W. Kwon. Plasmon-assisted radiolytic energy conversion in aqueous solutions. Scientific Reports, 2014; 4 DOI: 10.1038/srep05249

Medications for Obesity: Naltrexone/Bupropion

 

Brad Wilson/Getty Images

Updated September 12, 2014.
Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.

On September 10, 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new medication for the treatment of obesity. The medication, known by the brand name Contrave® and marketed by Takeda Pharmaceuticals, is a combination of two other drugs, naltrexone hydrochloride and bupropion hydrochloride.

For Whom Is Naltrexone/Bupropion Intended?

According to the FDA news release of September 10, 2014, this new drug is approved for use in adult patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater, or in adult patients with a BMI of 27 or greater who have at least one weight-related condition (such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obstructive sleep apnea, or Type 2 diabetes).

As noted by the FDA, this medication is meant to be a “treatment option for chronic weight management in addition to a reduced-calorie diet and physical activity.” It is not meant to replace lifestyle changes that include a healthy diet and exercise.

What Is Naltrexone/Bupropion?

What kind of drug is naltrexone/bupropion? It is a fixed-dose combination of two medications: naltrexone, which is an opioid receptor antagonist and has been used for many years primarily for the management of alcohol and/or opioid dependence; and bupropion, which has been and continues to be used for the treatment of depression as well as for smoking cessation. This fixed-dose combination is in an extended-release formulation as Contrave®.

How Effective Is It?

Multiple clinical trials were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the naltrexone/bupropion fixed-dose combination now known as Contrave®. These trials included approximately 4,500 obese and overweight individuals over the course of one year. In one clinical trial, patients had an average weight loss of 4.1% more when taking Contrave® (when compared to placebo; all patients received lifestyle modification that included a reduced-calorie diet and regular physical activity). This trial also found that 42% of the patients who were taking Contrave® lost at least 5% of their body weight, compared to 17% of patients who did the same while taking placebo.

In another clinical trial that looked at patients who were obese or overweight and also had Type 2 diabetes, those who took Contrave® were found to have an average weight loss of 2% more than placebo at one year. This trial also found that 36% of the patients who were treated with Contrave® lost at least 5% of their body weight, compared to 18% of patients treated with placebo.

It is worth noting that the percentage of patients in these trials who lost weight on placebo was still substantial—meaning that dietary and physical activity modifications, known as “lifestyle changes,” do make a difference.

Further, the FDA states that Contrave® should be discontinued if a patient has not lost at least 5% of baseline body weight after 12 weeks on the drug.

Black Box Warning

The FDA has given Contrave® a black box warning because it contains bupropion. This warning notes that there can be an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors associated with antidepressant drugs, including bupropion. The warning also notes that “serious neuropsychiatric events have been reported in patients taking bupropion for smoking cessation.”

Possible Side Effects

Common side effects reported during the clinical trials with Contrave® included nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, insomnia and dry mouth.

The FDA’s news release noted that Contrave® can cause seizures and should therefore not be used in patients with seizure disorders. Another serious potential side effect is the possibility of an increase in blood pressure and heart rate on Contrave®; for this reason, the medication is contraindicated in patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure. Blood pressure and pulse should be monitored while a patient is taking Contrave®. In addition, other products containing bupropion should not be taken along with Contrave®.

Because of its naltrexone component, Contrave® is also contraindicated in patients who are taking opioids or who are being treated for opioid dependence. Patients who are abruptly discontinuing benzodiazepines, alcohol, barbiturates, or antiepileptic drugs should also not take Contrave®.

Contrave® is also contraindicated in women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant.

_References:

_{U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA approves weight-management drug Contrave. Accessed online at http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm413896.htm on September 11, 2014.}

Vitamin E intake critical during 'the first 1,000 days'

 

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Sunflower seeds and oil are a particularly good dietary source of vitamin E.

Amid conflicting reports about the need for vitamin E and how much is enough, a new analysis published today suggests that adequate levels of this essential micronutrient are especially critical for the very young, the elderly, and women who are or may become pregnant.

A lifelong proper intake of vitamin E is also important, researchers said, but often complicated by the fact that this nutrient is one of the most difficult to obtain through diet alone. It has been estimated that only a tiny fraction of Americans consume enough dietary vitamin E to meet the estimated average requirement.

Meanwhile, some critics have raised unnecessary alarms about excessive vitamin E intake while in fact the diet of most people is insufficient, said Maret Traber, a professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University, principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute and national expert on vitamin E.

"Many people believe that vitamin E deficiency never happens," Traber said. "That isn't true. It happens with an alarming frequency both in the United States and around the world. But some of the results of inadequate intake are less obvious, such as its impact on things like nervous system and brain development, or general resistance to infection."

Some of the best dietary sources of vitamin E -- nuts, seeds, spinach, wheat germ and sunflower oil -- don't generally make the highlight list of an average American diet. One study found that people who are highly motivated to eat a proper diet consume almost enough vitamin E, but broader surveys show that 90 percent of men and 96 percent of women don't consume the amount currently recommended, 15 milligrams per day for adults.

In a review of multiple studies, published in Advances in Nutrition, Traber outlined some of the recent findings about vitamin E. Among the most important are the significance of vitamin E during fetal development and in the first years of life; the correlation between adequate intake and dementia later in life; and the difficulty of evaluating vitamin E adequacy through measurement of blood levels alone.

Findings include:

• Inadequate vitamin E is associated with increased infection, anemia, stunting of growth and poor outcomes during pregnancy for both the infant and mother.
• Overt deficiency, especially in children, can cause neurological disorders, muscle deterioration, and even cardiomyopathy.
• Studies with experimental animals indicate that vitamin E is critically important to the early development of the nervous system in embryos, in part because it protects the function of omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, which is important for brain health. The most sensitive organs include the head, eye and brain.
• One study showed that higher vitamin E concentrations at birth were associated with improved cognitive function in two-year-old children.
• Findings about diseases that are increasing in the developed world, such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and diabetes, suggest that obesity does not necessarily reflect adequate micronutrient intake.
• Measures of circulating vitamin E levels in the blood often rise with age as lipid levels also increase, but do not prove an adequate delivery of vitamin E to tissues and organs.
• Vitamin E supplements do not seem to prevent Alzheimer's disease occurrence, but have shown benefit in slowing its progression.
• A report in elderly humans showed that a lifelong dietary pattern that resulted in higher levels of vitamins B,C, D and E were associated with a larger brain size and higher cognitive function.
• Vitamin E protects critical fatty acids such as DHA throughout life, and one study showed that people in the top quartile of DHA concentrations had a 47 percent reduction in the risk of developing all-cause dementia.

"It's important all of your life, but the most compelling evidence about vitamin E is about a 1000-day window that begins at conception," Traber said. "Vitamin E is critical to neurologic and brain development that can only happen during that period. It's not something you can make up for later."

Traber said she recommends a supplement for all people with at least the estimated average requirement of vitamin E, but that it's particularly important for all children through about age two; for women who are pregnant, nursing or may become pregnant; and for the elderly.

The biomethane market needs clear frame conditions for further growth, experts urge

 

September 11, 2014

Helmholtz Centre For Environmental Research - UFZ

Biomethane as a substitute for the fossil energy carrier natural gas offers a variety of options and applications for a sustainable energy supply. Nevertheless, a consequent market penetration is still pending because of a lack of standardized and transnational frame conditions. Scientists have now summarized how the biomethane market developed in the IEA (International Energy Agency) member states and which factors are necessary for further growing.

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According to the report around 280 biogas upgrading plants in different countries with a production capacity of around 100,000 Nm³/h of biomethane are already in operation.

Biomethane as a substitute for the fossil energy carrier natural gas offers a variety of options and applications for a sustainable energy supply. Nevertheless, a consequent market penetration is still pending because of a lack of standardized and transnational frame conditions. Scientists of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the German Biomass Research Centre (DBFZ) and other Members of the IEA Task 37 (Energy from Biogas) and the Task 40 (Sustainable Bioenergy Trade) just summarized how the biomethane market developed in the IEA (International Energy Agency) member states and which factors are necessary for further growing.

In most of the IEA member states the fossil energy carrier natural gas still plays an important and increasing role in the national energy supply. This is due to a well-developed infrastructure of gas networks, gas stations, and various modes of transportation by e.g. vessels. However, mainly due to the significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, the energy security and the protection of finite resources, several countries initiated support programs for biomethane (methane from biomass). This is due to a well-developed infrastructure of gas networks, gas stations, and various modes of transport by tanker trucks or ships. Still have, mainly due to the significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, energy security and the protection of finite resources already several countries initiated the gradual transition from fossil natural gas resource on renewable energy sources biomethane (methane from biomass).

The newly published study "Biomethane -- status and factors affecting market development and trade," gives an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of the production technologies of biomethane (upgrading of biogas and Bio-SNG), the grid injection and the use in various IEA member states. Moreover, besides the description of the framework, the options and needs for the development of larger biomethane supply strategies are also illustrated. The authors finalize the study with concrete recommendations how the remaining barriers can be removed and the market development can be promoted step by step.

Greenhouse gas reduction potential of more than 80 percent

Due to the benefits (i) independence from natural gas imports, (ii) the strengthening of rural areas, (iii) and its promising application areas (fuel, cogeneration, heat), biomethane is considered as a promising alternative to fossil fuels. As far as the final composition of the biomethane is consistent with the various natural gas quality levels in the market it can serve as a substitute for natural gas. In addition, biomethane can also be transported and stored as natural gas. Last but not least, greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the plant design and operation as well as the accounting method, can be reduced in comparison to fossil fuels by more than 80 percent. The study already stated a transnational increasing interest in biomethane. According to the report around 280 biogas upgrading plants in different countries with a production capacity of around 100,000 Nm³/h of biomethane are already in operation.

Transnational frame conditions are required

A transnational biomethane market is, according to the study, still at the beginning. However, various strategies, investment programs, funding and utilization concepts have been adopted in the investigated countries. Due to the complex supply chain there are various ecological, economic, administrative and political barriers for a market implementation of biomethane. For a sustainable and international implementation appropriate technical standards, sustainability requirements and political as well as financial support (compensation / promotion / preference), in order to significantly advance the development of an international biomethane trade, are necessary.

Further information: http://www.bioenergytrade.org/downloads/t40-t37-biomethane-2014.pdf

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The above story is based on materials provided by Helmholtz Centre For Environmental Research - UFZ. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.