New Book: Cassell's concise Latin-English, English-Latin dictionary by D P Simpson

For fast, easy reference and comprehensive listings, Cassell's Concise Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary is unbeatable. It contains in concise form the words most frequently used in scholarly and academic usage.
Cassell's Concise Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary is easy to read and full of complete usage information that's simple to access. This invaluable volume, backed by the world's foremost language authority, is the most effective concise dictionary available to the Latin language.

You can find this book and more at the UNT Dallas Library.

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New Book: The development of Samuel Beckett's fiction by Rubin Rabinovitz

Rubin Rabinovitz's The Development of Samuel Beckett's Fiction is written in a more concise scholarly style that makes it the most entertaining study of early Beckett's early prose.

You can find this book and more at the UNT Dallas library. 

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Beetroot Juice: Can it Help You Perform Better?

It seems as though the newest trend in the exercise community is drinking beetroot juice as a supplement to improve exercise tolerance.

What are the benefits of drinking beetroot juice before competition?

Beetoot juice (and beets in general) are rich in nitrates, which are commonly found in many vegetables, fruits and grains. Nitrates can also be found in cured meats like salami, bacon, and hotdogs, as nitrate is added to preserve color and prevent growth of bacteria, but the danger in these cured meat nitrate sources are that the nitrate is more likely to be turned into nitrite and then nitrosamines, which are cancer-causing chemicals. (This is probably where you heard that nitrated are harmful!) The reason nitrate-rich fruits and vegetables are a better option is because most of them are also rich in Vitamin C, which is an inhibitor to the nitrosamine conversion.

Endurance athletes like runners, swimmers, divers, rowers, triathletes and cyclists are finding that drinking beetroot juice supplements as a form of nitrates may be able to give them a competitive edge. When we drink beetroot juice or take nitrate supplements, the nitrate is converted into nitrite and ultimately nitric oxide (NO) in the blood.

Nitric oxide plays an important role in blood flow regulation, mitochondrial efficiency, and other physiological functions, so beetroot supplementation can have positive effects on exercise performance through:

• Decreasing blood pressure
• Reducing workload of the heart
• Increasing oxygen delivery throughout the body (muscle oxygenation)
• Increasing power output
• Improving time to exhaustion and time trial performances

With this decrease in aerobic energy cost, athletes should be able to physically exert themselves longer before fatigue sets in, which is good news for athletes who want to gain a competitive edge in a safe way.

How to increase blood nitrate levels

Fruits and Vegetables that are High in Nitrate:

• Vegetables are much higher in nitrates than fruits, and include lettuce, beets, carrots, green beans, spinach, parsley, cabbage, radishes, celery, collard greens 
• Some fruits that contain higher levels of nitrates includes strawberries, currents, gooseberries, raspberries, cherries

Beetroot juice may be a better option for athletes to drink before performance rather than eating hundreds of grams of nitrate-rich vegetables (huge spinach, carrot, beet smoothie, anyone?), mostly because the juice doesn’t have all that dietary fiber that the whole vegetables do, so it decreases the chances of GI distress and feeling overfull before  a competition.

~300 mg of nitrates

When compared to other nitrate-containing foods, though, drinking beetroot juice seems like the way to go!

In order to maximize on the beetroot juice’s effects, it is recommended that 5-7 mmol of nitrates (500 mL or ~2 cups of beetroot juice) be consumed 3-4 hours before exercise to allow plasma nitrite to be at its peak during exercise performance. They also make 70 mL beetroot shots, which are condensed down to contain the same amount of nitrates as a larger portion of beetroot juice.

This high nitrate state lasts for the next 6-8 hours and blood levels return back to normal after about 24 hours. Many studies have shown that even short-term supplementation (around 5-6 days of drinking the juice) will give the results that athletes are looking for!

Written by: Ashley Beaner, SDSU Dietetics Student

Have you tasted beetroot juice? 

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New Book: Built on values by Ann Rhoades and Nancy Shepherdson

"Build on values to create a high-performing corporate culture Based on Ann Rhoades' years of experience with JetBlue, Southwest, and other companies known for their trailblazing corporate cultures, Built on Values reveals exactly how leaders can create winning environments that allow them to thrive. Companies that create or improve values-based cultures can become higher performers, both in customer and employee satisfaction and financial return. Features dynamic examples from Rhoades' work with JetBlue, Southwest, Disney, Loma Linda University Hospitals, Doubletree Hotels, Juniper Networks, P.F. Chang's China Bistros and more Shows leaders how to develop a unique Values Blueprint that is tailored to their organizations and goals Clearly maps out how to hire, fire, and reward according to values--the keys to finding and retaining top talent Built on Values presents a clear and proven method to generate positive corporate culture change and ultimately increase any companies) bottom line."


       You can find this book and more at the UNT Dallas Library.

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New Book: Critical Theory and the Novel: Mass society and cultural criticism in Dickens, Melville, and Kafka by David Suchoff

Using the methods of Frankfurt School theorists, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, Suchoff offers new readings of Dickens, Melville and Kafka that underscore the political and social critiques inherent in their novels. He also studies the historical origins of literary theory.


You can find this book and more at the UNT Dallas Library. 

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Guest Post: Coffee’s Place in the Workout Regimen...Yes, Has a Place!

Coffee drinkers in the US are averaging about 2 cups of coffee a day (~200 mg caffeine), with 10% of the population consuming more than 1000 mg of caffeine per day.

Coffee, and caffeine in general, has had a bad reputation in the past...but research shows that it can have many benefits during exercise, such as:  

•  Ability to train at a higher power output (train harder)
•  Increased speed
•  Ability to train for a longer period of time (more endurance)
• Ability to resist muscle fatigue

Common coffee-alternative forms of caffeine ingestion are pre-workout formulas or caffeine pills. Many of the ingredients in the pre-workout supplements are used to increase blood flow, heart rate, and focus, which is intended to help athletes feel energized before going into a workout. Unfortunately, the claims made on the supplement label are often times just a bunch of hype: 

• There are no direct energy sources coming from the B-vitamins packed into a pre-workout formula and the excess that is being consumed is excreted from the body. 
• All of the amino acids, vitamins, and minerals in these supplements can be obtained naturally through the diet and will prove to be an inexpensive way to get the same results. 
• If you are trying to supercharge your workout, the safest and best option is always to choose natural sources first!

Another downside to excessive caffeine intake is that it can cause gastrointestinal issues, nausea, tremors, and over-stimulation that affects sleep cycles, and can cause anxiety. Therefore, some things to carefully consider for optimal performance results are: timing, form, and amount of caffeine consumed.

In addition, for student athletes, it's important to know that caffeine is actually a banned substance by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and consuming it in great amounts (if amounts in urine exceed 15 micrograms/mL) can result in a positive drug test. Many of those pre-workout supplements contain the same amount of caffeine in 4 cups of coffee, so it's important to be aware of how much athletes use. 

Some nutrition supplements do not disclose the amount of caffeine in their product or may contain other illegal/detrimental stimulants that you are not aware of, so make sure to do you research on what you put into your body.

This is the general rule for ALL dietary supplements - there is no government regulation on supplemental facts like there are on a food product's nutritional facts, so it is important to do research on any dietary supplements.

If you choose to drink coffee/caffeine to impact performance, be smart and use these helpful hints:

·         Consume about 1-3 mg of caffeine per pound of body weight

·         Consume caffeine 1 hour before cardiovascular endurance training

·         Caffeine can be consumed up to 20 minutes before high-intensity training

·         Find natural caffeine sources first!

                     Photo by SCAN/CPSDA Registered Dietitians

Thank you!

Ashley Beaner

Dietetics Student at SDSU

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New Book: Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. literary institution 1850-1910 by Nancy Glazener

Reading for Realism presents a new approach to U.S. literary history that is based on the analysis of dominant reading practices rather than on the production of texts. Nancy Glazener's focus is the realist novel, the most influential literary form of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - a form she contends was only made possible by changes in the expectations of readers about pleasure and literary value. By tracing readers' collaborations in the production of literary forms, Reading for Realism turns nineteenth-century controversies about the realist, romance, and sentimental novels into episodes in the history of readership. It also shows how works of fiction by Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others participated in the debates about literary classification and reading that, in turn, created and shaped their audiences. Combining reception theory with a materialist analysis of the social formations in which realist reading practices circulated, Glazener's study reveals the elitist underpinnings of literary realism. At the book's center is the Atlantic group of magazines, whose influence was part of the cultural machinery of the Northeastern urban bourgeoisie and crucial to the development of literary realism in America. Glazener shows how the promotion of realism by this group of publications also meant a consolidation of privilege - primarily in terms of class, gender, race, and region - for the audience it served. Thus American realism, so often portrayed as a quintessentially populist form, actually served to enforce existing structures of class and power.

You can find this book and more at the UNT Dallas Library. 

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New Book:The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, Second Edition by Antonio Benitez- Rojo Translated by James E. Maraniss

In this second edition of The Repeating Island, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, a master of the historical novel, short story, and critical essay, continues to confront the legacy and myths of colonialism. This co-winner of the 1993 MLA Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize has been expanded to include three entirely new chapters that add a Lacanian perspective and a view of the carnivalesque to an already brilliant interpretive study of Caribbean culture. As he did in the first edition, Benítez-Rojo redefines the Caribbean by drawing on history, economics, sociology, cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, and nonlinear mathematics. His point of departure is chaos theory, which holds that order and disorder are not the antithesis of each other in nature but function as mutually generative phenomena. Benítez-Rojo argues that within the apparent disorder of the Caribbean—the area’s discontinuous landmasses, its different colonial histories, ethnic groups, languages, traditions, and politics—there emerges an “island” of paradoxes that repeats itself and gives shape to an unexpected and complex sociocultural archipelago. Benítez-Rojo illustrates this unique form of identity with powerful readings of texts by Las Casas, Guillén, Carpentier, García Márquez, Walcott, Harris, Buitrago, and Rodríguez Juliá.

You can find this book and more at the UNT Dallas Library. 

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