A lot of food will be eaten this holiday season, and much of it will contain trans fat. Eater beware, though, because high trans fat consumption is linked to a decline in memory in working-age men, according to recent researched unveiled last month at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2014.

“Trans fats were most strongly linked to worse memory, in young and middle-aged men, during their working and career-building years,” said Beatrice A. Golomb, M.D., PhD, lead author and professor of medicine at the University of California-San Diego. “From a health standpoint, trans fat consumption has been linked to higher body weight, more aggression, and heart disease. As I tell patients, while trans fats increase the shelf life of foods, they reduce the shelf life of people.”

Golomb and her colleagues studied 1,000 healthy men 20-years-old or older. They had the participants fill out dietary questionnaires, from which they estimated trans fat consumption. The researchers then had the participants take memory tests involving words on cards.

They discovered that men under age 45 who ate more trans fat showed notably the worse performances on the memory tests. This finding remained even after accounting for age, education, ethnicity, and depression. They also discovered that approximately 0.76 fewer words were correctly recalled for each additional gram a day of trans fat consumed.

“Foods have different effects on oxidative stress and cell energy,” Golomb said. “In a previous study, we found chocolate, which is rich in antioxidants and positively impacts cell energy, is linked to better word memory in young to middle-aged adults. In this study, we looked at whether trans fats, which are prooxidant and linked adversely to cell energy, might show the opposite effect. And they did.”

So, for the record, “chocolate…is linked to better word memory.” Duly noted.

(Image: American Heart Association) 

Please welcome our newest members who joined IAVM in August through November—a total of 344 new members. Our network of professionals is growing and we are reaching record numbers. Thank you for being a part of the association!

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The beacon life cycle has evolved. That’s right, technology moves fast, and what’s next is uBeacons. Whereas iBeacons speak at you (or more specifically, your phone), uBeacons converse with you. Consider it the Web. 2.0 of beacons.

VentureBeat writer Barry Levine offers a good, informative article on the new development. Here’s a taste:

Unlike standard beacons, Ubudu’s uBeacons — which also support the iBeacon standard — can receive a few kilobits per second of data back from customers’ smartphones without pairing, and they can each talk via Bluetooth to other mesh beacons. If one of the mesh beacons is connected to the Internet, the mesh network can communicate with the cloud.

This means, for instance, that a customer standing in an aisle could send a very brief message via her smartphone app to the store, asking for assistance. Customer phones would need to have Bluetooth 4.0, which is supported by a majority of phones.

uBeacons aren’t relegated to retail; they can be implemented in large venues, too.

“uBeacon Mesh can also power large venues,” Ubudu said in the video below. “In a stadium, you could broadcast a hot dog flash promotion to all fans at once.”

For more information about uBeacons, please read VentureBeat’s article.

(Image: Ubudu)

Our long, 160-year nightmare of rope-dependent elevators is now over, claims a German elevator company.

“Now, the long-pursued dream of operating multiple cabins in the same elevator shaft is made possible by applying the linear motor technology of the magnetic levitation train Transrapid to the elevator industry,” the company, ThyssenKrupp, said in a statement. “MULTI will transform how people move inside buildings.”

The MULTI design can include different self-propelled elevator cabins per shaft running in a loop. Through this, a 50 percent reduction in the elevator footprint in a building can be achieved.

“Using no cables at all, a multi-level brake system, and inductive power transfers from shaft to cabin, MULTI requires smaller shafts than conventional elevators, and can increase a building’s usable area by up to 25 percent,” the company said. “The overall increase in efficiency also translates into a lower requirement for escalators and additional elevator shafts, resulting in significant construction cost savings as well as a multiplication of rent revenues from increased usable space.”

A test tower will be completed in Rottweil, Germany, in 2016.

“As the nature of building constructions evolve, it is also necessary to adapt elevator systems to better suit the requirements of buildings and high volumes of passengers,” said Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO of ThyssenKrupp Elevator AG. “From the one-dimensional vertical arrangement to a two-dimensional horizontal/vertical arrangement with more than one or two cabins operating in each shaft, MULTI represents a proud moment in ThyssenKrupp’s history of presenting cutting-edge transport technologies that best serve current mobility needs.”

(Image: ThyssenKrupp)

Congratulations to the Saint Paul RiverCentre and the Xcel Energy Center Complex in Minnesota for achieving LEED, Green Globes, and APEX/ASTM certifications.

Each certification requires a comprehensive auditing of organizational environmental practices and procedures and compliance with a stringent set of preset standards. The Xcel Energy Center is the only National Hockey League arena in the U.S. (second in league) that is LEED Certified as an existing building. It’s the first in the world to be certified Green Globes and APEX/ASTM. The Saint Paul RiverCentre is one of less than 20 U.S. convention centers to be LEED Certified as an existing building. It’s the world’s first to be certified Green Globes, and 11th worldwide to receive APEX/ASTM certification.

“To have all of these venues certified by three respected, independent environmental organizations feels truly incredible,” said IAVM member Jim Ibister, vice president of administration for the Minnesota Wild and general manager of the Saint Paul RiverCentre. “It’s certainly not the finish line; we want to continue making progress and share what we’ve learned to help others.”

The achievements are the result of an overall goal originally set in 2009 by the Saint Paul RiverCentre to become a regional leader in sustainability. When the program began, the annual recycling rate was 15 percent. Today, the entire complex is recycling 60 percent of the two million pounds of waste generated on average each year.

“This is an amazing accomplishment for the Saint Paul RiverCentre and Xcel Energy Center,” said Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. “These changes are not only conserving water and energy and reducing waste—they are setting an example for the millions of visitors that experience this sustainability firsthand.”

(Images: From Facebook—Saint Paul RiverCentre and Xcel Energy Center)