Abstract:The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that the effect of a high-fat meal (HFm) on plasma lipid-soluble antioxidants and biomarkers of vascular oxidative stress and infl ammation would be attenuated by short-term lycopene supplementation in young healthy subjects. Following restriction of lycopene-containing foods for 1-wk (LYr), blood was collected in a fasting state and 3 h after a HFm and a low-fat meal (LFm) in N = 18 men aged 23 ± 2 years, and after a HFm only in N = 9 women aged 23 ± 1 years. Blood was also sampled pre-and post-meals following 1-wk of 80 mg/day lycopene supplementation (LYs) under continued dietary LYr. In the fasting state, LYs compared with LYr not only evoked a Ͼ2-fold increase in plasma lycopene but also increased plasma β-carotene and α-tocopherol (p Ͻ 0.01), though LYs did not affect plasma nitrate/nitrite (biomarker of nitric oxide), malondialdehyde (biomarker of lipid oxidative stress), vascular-and intercellular-adhesion molecules or C-reactive protein (biomarkers of infl ammation). Contrary to the hypothesis, the HFm-induced dyslipidemic state did not affect plasma malondialdehyde, C-reactive protein, or adhesion molecules in either LYr or LYs. Both the HFm and LFm were associated with decreases in the nitric oxide metabolites nitrate/nitrite and lipid-soluble antioxidants (p Ͻ 0.05). The data revealed that 1-wk of LYs increased plasma lycopene, β-carotene, and α-tocopherol yet despite these marked changes to the plasma lipid-soluble antioxidant pool, biomarkers of vascular oxidative stress and infl ammation were unaffected in the fasted state as well as during dyslipidemia induced by a HFm in young healthy subjects.

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and quantum information theory are interrelated research fields witnessing an increasing theoretical and experimental interest. This is mainly due to the broadness of these theories, which found applications in many different fields of science, ranging from biology to the foundations of physics. Here, by employing the orbital angular momentum of light, we propose a new platform for studying non-equilibrium properties of high dimensional quantum systems. Specifically, we use Laguerre-Gaussian beams to emulate the energy eigenstates of a two-dimension quantum harmonic oscillator having angular momentum. These light beams are subjected to a process realized by a spatial light modulator and the corresponding work distribution is experimentally reconstructed employing a two-point measurement scheme. The Jarzynski fluctuation relation is then verified. We also suggest the realization of Maxwell's demon with this platform.

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The study of non-equilibrium physics from the perspective of the quantum limits of thermodynamics and fluctuation relations can be experimentally addressed with linear optical systems. We discuss recent experimental investigations in this scenario and present new proposed schemes and the potential advances they could bring to the field.

Photon pairs produced in spontaneous parametric down-conversion are naturally entangled in their transverse spatial degrees of freedom including the orbital angular momentum. Pumping a non-linear crystal with a zero order Gaussian mode produces quantum correlated signal and idler photons with equal orbital angular momentum and opposite signs. Measurements performed on one of the photons prepares the state of the other remotely. We study the remote state preparation in this system from the perspective of its potential application to Quantum Thermodynamics.