Based in Basel Switzerland, the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, or MDPI, publishes hundreds of peer reviewed scientific journals encompassing a multitude of fields. Most of the stuff is highly technical in nature, catering to niches that appeal to only the hard core faithful. Typical of their offerings is "Agronomy," which focuses on all thing related to crops and planting, and includes such page turners as "Elucidation of the Genetic Diversity within Some In Situ Shea Germplasm in Ghana." And no, other than the reference to an African country, I have no idea what that all means.
That's just one example of their bread and butter. In the "Journal of Nanotheranostics" they focus on "exploring nano-enabled theranostics for personalized health care" (your guess is as good as mine). "Photonics," which is dedicated to optics and light, has an article this month on "Slightly Off-Axis Digital Holography Using a Transmission Grating and GPU-Accelerated Parallel Phase Reconstruction." And in "Urban Science" you can catch up the "Current Plastic Waste Status and Its Leakage at Tam Giang–Cau Hai Lagoon System in Central Vietnam." Keep that in mind when you plan your next guided tour.
However, there are also occasional articles that seem more understandable (at least on the surface) to a lay audience. For instance, with all the focus on social media, the yearlong study in "Youth" titled "'She's Pretty in Her Pictures but in Real Life She's Ugly': School Pupils Negotiating the Blurred Boundaries between Online and Offline Social Contexts" is of interest. Speaking to our Amazon fixation, the journal "Economics" has one called "Buy Now Pay Later—A Fad or a Reality? A Perspective on Electronic Commerce." And the journal "Sport" was somewhat prescient, publishing just before the finals of the FIFA Women's World Cup a piece entitled "Emotional Intelligence in Spanish Elite Athletes: Is There a Differential Factor between Sports?" Perhaps the head of the Spanish Federation should have read that before he "celebrated" with the team.
Occasionally you find one that speaks directly to you. As I get older, my component parts are hitting their half-lives and not working as smoothly as they should. To combat that I try and get enough rest and regular exercise. And yes, I watch what I eat, trying to balance what I enjoy with what is good for me, not always an easy equation. Enter Dr. Roberta De Vito, the Thomas J. and Alice M. Tisch Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Data Science at Brown University. Dr. De Vito and academic colleagues in her native Italy took to the pages of "Nutrients" to give me hope. Their article? "Does Pizza Consumption Favor an Improved Disease Activity in Rheumatoid Arthritis?"
Let me be clear: I don't profess to be able to follow all the science. They write about how "multiple robust linear and logistic regression models were fitted with the tertile consumption categories," and for each available pizza-related food item/group how "stratified analyses were carried out according to the disease severity or duration." But I did understand the conclusion: "Participants eating half a pizza >1 time/week (vs. ≤2 times/month) reported beneficial effects on disease activity, with the significant reductions of ~70%." My takeaway: pizza is good for your joints.
To be fair, the study focused on fresh, simple pizza, the classic Pizza Margherita. And they admit they don't factor in toppings, especially if they are fried or highly processed, such as eggplant or pepperoni. But they are unequivocal that within the given parameters of the study that the ingredients in pizza contribute to reducing inflammation in the sampled population. Wrote Dr De Vito, "These beneficial effects were likely driven by mozzarella cheese and, to a lesser extent, by olive oil, even though we were unable to assess the possible contribution of tomato sauce." She also notes, "larger and longer-duration intervention studies are still needed." I take that to mean that the jury is still out on hot peppers.
The rallying cry these days is "follow the science." And so feel free to debate vaccines or climate change or the efficacy of masks. I for one will put my faith in Dr. De Vito and her colleagues. And I can only hope that their next study validates my contention regarding the rumored mental boost one gets from chunky peanut butter. If so, I'm good till at least 100.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to look at trade journals. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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