ABSTRACT. Objective: Previous meta-analyses of cohort studies indicate a J-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and allcause mortality, with reduced risk for low-volume drinkers. However, low-volume drinkers may appear healthy only because the "abstainers" with whom they are compared are biased toward ill health. The purpose of this study was to determine whether misclassifying former and occasional drinkers as abstainers and other potentially confounding study characteristics underlie observed positive health outcomes for lowvolume drinkers in prospective studies of all-cause mortality. Method: A systematic review and meta-regression analysis of studies investigating alcohol use and mortality risk after controlling for quality-related study characteristics was conducted in a population of 3,998,626 individuals, among whom 367,103 deaths were recorded. Results: Without adjustment, meta-analysis of all 87 included studies replicated the classic J-shaped curve, with low-volume drinkers (1.3-24.9 g ethanol per day) having reduced mortality risk (RR = 0.86, 95% CI [0.83, 0.90]).Occasional drinkers (<1.3 g per day) had similar mortality risk (RR = 0.84, 95% CI [0.79, 0.89]), and former drinkers had elevated risk (RR = 1.22, 95% CI [1.14, 1.31]). After adjustment for abstainer biases and quality-related study characteristics, no significant reduction in mortality risk was observed for low-volume drinkers (RR = 0.97, 95% CI [0.88, 1.07]). Analyses of higher-quality bias-free studies also failed to find reduced mortality risk for low-volume alcohol drinkers. Risk estimates for occasional drinkers were similar to those for low-and medium-volume drinkers. Conclusions: Estimates of mortality risk from alcohol are significantly altered by study design and characteristics. Meta-analyses adjusting for these factors find that low-volume alcohol consumption has no net mortality benefit compared with lifetime abstention or occasional drinking. These findings have implications for public policy, the formulation of low-risk drinking guidelines, and future research on alcohol and health. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 77, 185-198, 2016)

Increases in minimum prices of alcoholic beverages can substantially reduce alcohol consumption.

Significant health benefits were observed when minimum alcohol prices in British Columbia were increased. By contrast, adverse health outcomes were associated with an expansion of private liquor stores.

Selection biases may lead to systematic overestimate of protective effects from 'moderate' alcohol consumption. Overall, most sources of selection bias favor low-volume drinkers in relation to non-drinkers. Studies that attempt to address these types of bias generally find attenuated or non-significant relationships between low-volume alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease, which is the major source of possible protective effects on mortality from low-volume consumption. Furthermore, observed mortality effects among established low-volume consumers are of limited relevance to health-related decisions about whether to initiate consumption or to continue drinking purposefully into old age. Short of randomized trials with mortality end-points, there are a number of approaches that can minimize selection bias involving low-volume alcohol consumption.

Excessive anthropogenic CO2 emission in the atmosphere is considered as one of the main contributions to the serious climate changes. However, with the growth of global economics, more fossil fuels will be consumed to feed the global activity, especially in developing countries. Thus, CO2 needs to be captured for storage or converted to fuels or value-added chemicals. Herein, we propose and demonstrate a one-pot method synthesized dual functional materials (DFMs), which contain a sorbent coupled with a catalyst component, allowing the sorbent regeneration and CO2 conversion to CO to perform simultaneously in a single reactor. This process requires no additional thermal energy for the regeneration of sorbents. In addition, CeO2 is incorporated into the DFMs to largely enhance the stability of the materials for the process, and the influence of different Ce loadings on the performance of integrated CO2 capture and conversion is studied. It is found that the DFMs with a Ca/Ni/Ce molar ratio of 1:0.1:0.033 displays an excellent CO yield (7.24 mmol g -1 ) in the reverse water-gas shift (RWGS) reaction and a remarkable cyclic stability after 20 cycles of integrated CO2 capture and conversion. Therefore, the incorporation of Ce into DFMs has two profits, for one thing, the oxygen vacancies generated by CeO2 directly reduces the dissociated CO2 regenerated from the DFMs, demonstrating the high CO yield; for another, the well-dispersed CeO2, which could act as a physical barrier, effectively prevents the growth and agglomeration of CaO crystallite and NiO species.