ASU Scholarship Showcase

In spite of well-documented health benefits of vegetarian diets, less is known regarding the effects of these diets on athletic performance. In this cross-sectional study, we compared elite vegetarian and omnivore adult endurance athletes for maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max) and strength. Twenty-seven vegetarian (VEG) and 43 omnivore (OMN) athletes were evaluated using VO2 max testing on the treadmill, and strength assessment using a dynamometer to determine peak torque for leg extensions. Dietary data were assessed using detailed seven-day food logs. Although total protein intake was lower among vegetarians in comparison to omnivores, protein intake as a function of body mass did not differ by group (1.2 ± 0.3 and 1.4 ± 0.5 g/kg body mass for VEG and OMN respectively, p = 0.220). VO2 max differed for females by diet group (53.0 ± 6.9 and 47.1 ± 8.6 mL/kg/min for VEG and OMN respectively, p < 0.05) but not for males (62.6 ± 15.4 and 55.7 ± 8.4 mL/kg/min respectively). Peak torque did not differ significantly between diet groups. Results from this study indicate that vegetarian endurance athletes’ cardiorespiratory fitness was greater than that for their omnivorous counterparts, but that peak torque did not differ between diet groups. These data suggest that vegetarian diets do not compromise performance outcomes and may facilitate aerobic capacity in athletes.

Biomarkers encompass a wide range of different measurable indicators, representing a tangible link to physiological changes occurring within the body. Accessibility, sensitivity, and specificity are significant factors in biomarker suitability. New biomarkers continue to be discovered, and questions over appropriate selection and assessment of their usefulness remain. If traditional markers of inflammation are not sufficiently robust in their specificity, then perhaps alternative means of detection may provide more information. Epigenetic drift (epigenetic modifications as they occur as a direct function with age), and its ancillary elements, including platelets, secreted microvesicles (MVs), and microRNA (miRNA), may hold enormous predictive potential. The majority of epigenetic drift observed in blood is independent of variations in blood cell composition, addressing concerns affecting traditional blood-based biomarker efficacy. MVs are found in plasma and other biological fluids in healthy individuals. Altered MV/miRNA profiles may also be found in individuals with various diseases. Platelets are also highly reflective of physiological and lifestyle changes, making them extremely sensitive biomarkers of human health. Platelets release increased levels of MVs in response to various stimuli and under a plethora of disease states, which demonstrate a functional effect on other cell types.

Persistent currents (PCs), one of the most intriguing manifestations of the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, are known to vanish for Schrödinger particles in the presence of random scatterings, e.g., due to classical chaos. But would this still be the case for Dirac fermions? Addressing this question is of significant value due to the tremendous recent interest in two-dimensional Dirac materials. We investigate relativistic quantum AB rings threaded by a magnetic flux and find that PCs are extremely robust. Even for highly asymmetric rings that host fully developed classical chaos, the amplitudes of PCs are of the same order of magnitude as those for integrable rings, henceforth the term superpersistent currents (SPCs). A striking finding is that the SPCs can be attributed to a robust type of relativistic quantum states, i.e., Dirac whispering gallery modes (WGMs) that carry large angular momenta and travel along the boundaries. We propose an experimental scheme using topological insulators to observe and characterize Dirac WGMs and SPCs, and speculate that these features can potentially be the base for a new class of relativistic qubit systems. Our discovery of WGMs in relativistic quantum systems is remarkable because, although WGMs are common in photonic systems, they are relatively rare in electronic systems.

The phenomenon of Fano resonance is ubiquitous in a large variety of wave scattering systems, where the resonance profile is typically asymmetric. Whether the parameter characterizing the asymmetry should be complex or real is an issue of great experimental interest. Using coherent quantum transport as a paradigm and taking into account of the collective contribution from all available scattering channels, we derive a universal formula for the Fano-resonance profile. We show that our formula bridges naturally the traditional Fano formulas with complex and real asymmetry parameters, indicating that the two types of formulas are fundamentally equivalent (except for an offset). The connection also reveals a clear footprint for the conductance resonance during a dephasing process. Therefore, the emergence of complex asymmetric parameter when fitting with experimental data needs to be properly interpreted. Furthermore, we have provided a theory for the width of the resonance, which relates explicitly the width to the degree of localization of the close-by eigenstates and the corresponding coupling matrices or the self-energies caused by the leads. Our work not only resolves the issue about the nature of the asymmetry parameter, but also provides deeper physical insights into the origin of Fano resonance. Since the only assumption in our treatment is that the transport can be described by the Green’s function formalism, our results are also valid for broad disciplines including scattering problems of electromagnetic waves, acoustics, and seismology.

The early indications of vitamin C deficiency are unremarkable (fatigue, malaise, depression) and may manifest as a reduced desire to be physically active; moreover, hypovitaminosis C may be associated with increased cold duration and severity. This study examined the impact of vitamin C on physical activity and respiratory tract infections during the peak of the cold season. Healthy non-smoking adult men (18–35 years; BMI <34 kg/m²; plasma vitamin C<45 µmol/L) received either 1000 mg of vitamin C daily (n = 15) or placebo (n = 13) in a randomized, double-blind, eight-week trial. All participants completed the Wisconsin Upper Respiratory Symptom Survey-21 daily and the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire weekly. In the final two weeks of the trial, the physical activity score rose modestly for the vitamin C group vs. placebo after adjusting for baseline values: +39.6% (95% CI [−4.5,83.7]; p = 0.10). The number of participants reporting cold episodes was 7 and 11 for the vitamin C and placebo groups respectively during the eight-week trial (RR = 0.55; 95% CI [0.33,0.94]; p = 0.04) and cold duration was reduced 59% in the vitamin C versus placebo groups (−3.2 days; 95% CI [−7.0,0.6]; p = 0.06). These data suggest measurable health advantages associated with vitamin C supplementation in a population with adequate-to-low vitamin C status.

Background: Omnivorous diets are high in arachidonic acid (AA) compared to vegetarian diets. Research shows that high intakes of AA promote changes in brain that can disturb mood. Omnivores who eat fish regularly increase their intakes of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), fats that oppose the negative effects of AA in vivo. In a recent cross-sectional study, omnivores reported significantly worse mood than vegetarians despite higher intakes of EPA and DHA. This study investigated the impact of restricting meat, fish, and poultry on mood.

Findings: Thirty-nine omnivores were randomly assigned to a control group consuming meat, fish, and poultry daily (OMN); a group consuming fish 3-4 times weekly but avoiding meat and poultry (FISH), or a vegetarian group avoiding meat, fish, and poultry (VEG). At baseline and after two weeks, participants completed a food frequency questionnaire, the Profile of Mood States questionnaire and the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales. After the diet intervention, VEG participants reduced their EPA, DHA, and AA intakes, while FISH participants increased their EPA and DHA intakes. Mood scores were unchanged for OMN or FISH participants, but several mood scores for VEG participants improved significantly after two weeks.

Conclusions: Restricting meat, fish, and poultry improved some domains of short-term mood state in modern omnivores. To our knowledge, this is the first trial to examine the impact of restricting meat, fish, and poultry on mood state in omnivores.

Background: The physical health status of vegetarians has been extensively reported, but there is limited research regarding the mental health status of vegetarians, particularly with regard to mood. Vegetarian diets exclude fish, the major dietary source of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), critical regulators of brain cell structure and function. Omnivorous diets low in EPA and DHA are linked to impaired mood states in observational and experimental studies.

Methods: We examined associations between mood state and polyunsaturated fatty acid intake as a result of adherence to a vegetarian or omnivorous diet in a cross-sectional study of 138 healthy Seventh Day Adventist men and women residing in the Southwest. Participants completed a quantitative food frequency questionnaire, Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS), and Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaires.

Results: Vegetarians (VEG:n = 60) reported significantly less negative emotion than omnivores (OMN:n = 78) as measured by both mean total DASS and POMS scores (8.32 ± 0.88 vs 17.51 ± 1.88, p = .000 and 0.10 ± 1.99 vs 15.33 ± 3.10, p = .007, respectively). VEG reported significantly lower mean intakes of EPA (p < .001), DHA (p < .001), as well as the omega-6 fatty acid, arachidonic acid (AA; p < .001), and reported higher mean intakes of shorter-chain α-linolenic acid (p < .001) and linoleic acid (p < .001) than OMN. Mean total DASS and POMS scores were positively related to mean intakes of EPA (p < 0.05), DHA (p < 0.05), and AA (p < 0.05), and inversely related to intakes of ALA (p < 0.05), and LA (p < 0.05), indicating that participants with low intakes of EPA, DHA, and AA and high intakes of ALA and LA had better mood.

Conclusions: The vegetarian diet profile does not appear to adversely affect mood despite low intake of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.

Vegetarian diets are associated with factors that may not support bone health, such as low body mass and low intakes of protein; yet, these diets are alkaline, a factor that favors bone mineral density (BMD). This study compared the correlates of BMD in young, non-obese adults consuming meat-based (n = 27), lacto-ovo vegetarian (n = 27), or vegan (n = 28) diets for ≥1 year. A 24 h diet recall, whole body DXA scan, 24 h urine specimen, and fasting blood sample were collected from participants. BMD did not differ significantly between groups. Protein intake was reduced ~30% in individuals consuming lacto-ovo and vegan diets as compared to those consuming meat-based diets (68 ± 24, 69 ± 29, and 97 ± 47 g/day respectively, p = 0.006); yet dietary protein was only associated with BMD for those following vegan diets. Urinary pH was more alkaline in the lacto-ovo and vegan groups versus omnivores (6.5 ± 0.4, 6.7 ± 0.4, and 6.2 ± 0.4 respectively, p = 0.003); yet urinary pH was associated with BMD in omnivores only. These data suggest that plant-based diets are not detrimental to bone in young adults. Moreover, diet prescriptions for bone health may vary among diet groups: increased fruit and vegetable intake for individuals with high meat intakes and increased plant protein intake for individuals who follow a vegetarian diet plan.

Network reconstruction is a fundamental problem for understanding many complex systems with unknown interaction structures. In many complex systems, there are indirect interactions between two individuals without immediate connection but with common neighbors. Despite recent advances in network reconstruction, we continue to lack an approach for reconstructing complex networks with indirect interactions. Here we introduce a two-step strategy to resolve the reconstruction problem, where in the first step, we recover both direct and indirect interactions by employing the Lasso to solve a sparse signal reconstruction problem, and in the second step, we use matrix transformation and optimization to distinguish between direct and indirect interactions. The network structure corresponding to direct interactions can be fully uncovered. We exploit the public goods game occurring on complex networks as a paradigm for characterizing indirect interactions and test our reconstruction approach. We find that high reconstruction accuracy can be achieved for both homogeneous and heterogeneous networks, and a number of empirical networks in spite of insufficient data measurement contaminated by noise. Although a general framework for reconstructing complex networks with arbitrary types of indirect interactions is yet lacking, our approach opens new routes to separate direct and indirect interactions in a representative complex system.

Recently, the phenomenon of quantum-classical correspondence breakdown was uncovered in optomechanics, where in the classical regime the system exhibits chaos but in the corresponding quantum regime the motion is regular - there appears to be no signature of classical chaos whatsoever in the corresponding quantum system, generating a paradox. We find that transient chaos, besides being a physically meaningful phenomenon by itself, provides a resolution. Using the method of quantum state diffusion to simulate the system dynamics subject to continuous homodyne detection, we uncover transient chaos associated with quantum trajectories. The transient behavior is consistent with chaos in the classical limit, while the long term evolution of the quantum system is regular. Transient chaos thus serves as a bridge for the quantum-classical transition (QCT). Strikingly, as the system transitions from the quantum to the classical regime, the average chaotic transient lifetime increases dramatically (faster than the Ehrenfest time characterizing the QCT for isolated quantum systems). We develop a physical theory to explain the scaling law.