Abstract: After some 170 years of Foucault pendulum experiments, the linear theory fails to quantitatively explain the results of any honest meticulous experiment. The pendulum motion usually degenerates into elliptical orbits after a few minutes. Moreover, unexplained discrepancies up to ± 20% in precession velocity are not uncommon. They are mostly regarded as a consequence of the elliptic motion of the bob associated with suspension anisotropy or as a lack of care in starting the pendulum motion. Over some 130 years, an impressive amount of talented physicists, engineers and mathematicians have contributed to a better partial understanding of the pendulum behaviour.…In this work, the concept of biresonance is introduced to represent the motion of the spherical pendulum. It is shown that biresonance can be represented graphically by the isomorphism of the Poincaré sphere. This new representation of the pendulum motion greatly clarifies its natural response to various anisotropic situations, including Airy precession. Anomalous observations in pendulum experiments by Allais are analyzed. These findings suggest that a pendulum placed within a mass distribution such as the earth, the moon and the sun should be treated as an interior problem, which can better be addressed by Santilli's new theory of gravitation than by those of Newton and Einstein.
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Abstract: It has been suggested that the dietary intake of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids could be inversely related to the risk of dementia and cognitive decline. This analysis examined the association between plasma concentration of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and prevalence and incidence of cognitive impairment and dementia. Data are reported on subjects 65 years or older who had a complete clinical evaluation at the first two waves (1991–1992 and 1996–1997) of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging. Main outcome measures were cognitive impairment and dementia by mean relative plasma concentrations of fatty acids in the phospholipid fraction at baseline.…Results were adjusted for age, sex, education, smoking, alcohol intake, body mass index, history of cardiovascular disease, and apolipoprotein E e4 genotype. In the cross-sectional analysis, no significant difference in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid concentrations was observed between controls and both prevalent cases of cognitive impairment and dementia. In the prospective analysis, a higher eicosapentaenoic acid (p < 0.01) concentration was found in cognitively impaired cases compared to controls while higher docosahexaenoic acid (p < 0.07), omega-3 (p < 0.04) and total polyunsaturated fatty acid (p < 0.03) concentrations were found in dementia cases. These findings do not support the hypothesis that omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids play a protective role in cognitive function and dementia.
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