Vincent Van Gogh\u27s Personal Possession

I am an amatuer artist, so when I was in Arles in southern France, it was nat­ural. for me to want to see all the places thereabouts that the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh had been concerned with when he lived there in 1888

The effects of zinc sulfate on ethyl glucuronide immunoassay urine testing

Published research in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology and the American Society for Clinical Pathology has confirmed that the presence of Zinc Sulfate in adulterated urine samples can influence the testing results using EMIT and ELISA immunoassay testing when testing for Cannabinoids (THC), Cocaine (Benzoylecgonine), Methamphetamines, Opiates (Morphine, Methadone, and Propoxyphene), Phencyclidine (PCP), and Ethanol (Alcohol Dehydrogenase). This research included adding Zinc Sulfate directly to urine samples. In 2006, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) released an advisory that the use of Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) as a new biomarker as an indicator for the past-use of alcohol was promising and warranted more research. Ethyl glucuronide is a direct metabolite of the biotransformation of ethanol in the human body. This compound is excreted in urine and can be used as a specific biomarker for the ingestion of alcohol. Because EtG is only produced when ethanol is metabolized, there are no false positives due to fermentation and a much longer detection window exists for its detection. Scientific literature states that EtG can be present in urine long after ethanol has been eliminated. Testing for EtG is commonly referred to as the “80 hour test” for the ability of EtG to be measured up to 80 hours after consuming alcohol. It was hypothesized that if the presence of Zinc Sulfate added to urine falsely reduced urine alcohol level when measuring for Alcohol Dehydrogenase enzyme, will the presence of Zinc Sulfate added to SurineTM falsely reduce the urine alcohol level when measuring for EtG? Since it is very likely that EtG would still be present in the body after ethanol has been eliminated, samples contained either no ethanol or 5% (5g/dL) of ethanol. Samples were spiked at 10mg/mL, 15mg/mL or contained 0mg/mL of Zinc Sulfate. Additionally, duration testing was conducted to see if there was any observed differences between testing the samples fresh and then after a one week duration in a refrigerator and brought to room temperature prior to testing. Two different immunoassay EtG tests were used to perform the analysis. It was concluded that Zinc Sulfate directly added to the sample affected one of the immunoassay test regardless of whether EtG or ethanol were present, by fading the Test and Control regions. Additionally, it is concluded that SurineTM samples containing Zinc Sulfate could easily be distinguished from samples free of Zinc Sulfate because of the presence of a white cloudy precipitate

β-Lactoglobulin-linoleate complexes: In vitro digestion and the role of protein in fatty acids uptake

peer-reviewedThe dairy protein β-lactoglobulin (BLG) is known to bind fatty acids such as the salt of the essential longchain fatty acid linoleic acid (cis,cis-9,12-octadecadienoic acid, n-6, 18:2). The aim of the current study was to investigate how bovine BLG-linoleate complexes, of various stoichiometry, affect the enzymatic digestion of BLG and the intracellular transport of linoleate into enterocyte-like monolayers. Duodenal and gastric digestions of the complexes indicated that BLG was hydrolyzed more rapidly when complexed with linoleate. Digested as well as undigested BLG-linoleate complexes reduced intracellular linoleate transport as compared with free linoleate. To investigate whether enteroendocrine cells perceive linoleate differently when part of a complex, the ability of linoleate to increase production or secretion of the enteroendocrine satiety hormone, cholecystokinin, was measured. Cholecystokinin mRNA levels were different when linoleate was presented to the cells alone or as part of a protein complex. In conclusion, understanding interactions between linoleate and BLG could help to formulate foods with targeted fatty acid bioaccessibility and, therefore, aid in the development of food matrices with optimal bioactive efficacyS. Le Maux is currently supported by a Teagasc Walsh Fellowship and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (FIRM project 08/RD/TMFRC/650). We also acknowledge funding from IRCSET-Ulysses Travel Grant

A resorcinarene for inhibition of Aβ fibrillation.

Amyloid-β peptides (Aβ) fibrillation is the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, it has been challenging to discover potent agents in order to inhibit Aβ fibrillation. Herein, we demonstrated the effect of resorcinarene on inhibiting Aβ fibrillation in vitro via experimental and computational methods. Aβ were incubated with different concentrations of resorcinarene so as to monitor the kinetics by using thioflavin T binding assay. The results, which were further confirmed by far-UV CD spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy, strongly indicated that the higher concentration of resorcinarene, the more effective the inhibition of Aβ fibrillation. A cytotoxicity study showed that when sea urchin embryos were exposed to the resorcinarene, the majority survived due to the resorcinarene low toxicity. In addition, when the resorcinarene was added, the formation of toxic Aβ 42 species was delayed. Computational studies of Aβ fibrillation, including docking simulations and MD simulations, illustrated that the interaction between inhibitor resorcinarene and Aβ is driven by the non-polar interactions. These studies display a novel strategy for the exploration of promising antiamyloiddogenic agents for AD treatments

The detection of intentional contingencies in simple animations in patients with delusions of persecution

Background. It has been proposed that delusions of persecution are caused by the tendency to over-attribute malevolent intentions to other people's actions. One aspect of intention attribution is detecting contingencies between an agent's actions and intentions. Here, we used simplified stimuli to test the hypothesis that patients with persecutory delusions over-attribute contingency to agents' movements. Method. Short animations were presented to three groups of subjects: (1) schizophrenic patients; (2) patients with affective disorders; and (3) normal control subjects. Patients were divided on the basis of the presence or absence of delusions of persecution. Participants watched four types of film featuring two shapes. In half the films one shape's movement was contingent on the other shape. Contingency was either ‘intentional’: one shape moved when it ‘saw’ another shape; or ‘mechanical’: one shape was launched by the other shape. Subjects were asked to rate the strength of the relationship between the movement of the shapes. Results. Normal control subjects and patients without delusions of persecution rated the relationship between the movement of the shapes as stronger in both mechanical and intentional contingent conditions than in non-contingent conditions. In contrast, there was no significant difference between the ratings of patients with delusions of persecution for the conditions in which movement was animate. Patients with delusions of persecution perceived contingency when there was none in the animate non-contingent condition. Conclusions. The results suggest that delusions of persecution may be associated with the over-attribution of contingency to the actions of agents

Tributes to Professor Robert Berkley Harper

In 1977, I began teaching at The University of Pittsburgh Law School and in short order one of my closest friends during my tenure there was Professor Robert “Bob” Harper. I wondered when I was hired whether I was selected because I looked strikingly similar to Bob, and perhaps the faculty thought my favoring Professor Harper would make my assimilation into the law school faculty that much easier. Students constantly called me Professor Harper and, indeed, many on the faculty called me Bob for several years; I never bothered to correct them. I thought if they paid that little attention to detail in law school, I would just let them go through life missing some of the finer points their education, and life for that matter, has to offer

Physical explanations of the destabilizing effect of damping in rotating parts

The destabilizing effect of rotating damping was investigated. When the rotation was faster than the whirl, rotating damping drags the orbiting particle forward. When stationary damping was also present, the stability borderline was readily determined by balancing the backward and forward drags. A key notion was that a forward whirl at rate omega a sub n with respect to stationary axes appears to be a backward whirl at rate Omega - omega sub n with respect to a system rotating supercritically at rate Omega. The growth rate of unstable whirls (or the decay rate of stable whirls was readily estimated by a simple energy balance

Noise reduction in coarse bifurcation analysis of stochastic agent-based models: an example of consumer lock-in

We investigate coarse equilibrium states of a fine-scale, stochastic agent-based model of consumer lock-in in a duopolistic market. In the model, agents decide on their next purchase based on a combination of their personal preference and their neighbours' opinions. For agents with independent identically-distributed parameters and all-to-all coupling, we derive an analytic approximate coarse evolution-map for the expected average purchase. We then study the emergence of coarse fronts when spatial segregation is present in the relative perceived quality of products. We develop a novel Newton-Krylov method that is able to compute accurately and efficiently coarse fixed points when the underlying fine-scale dynamics is stochastic. The main novelty of the algorithm is in the elimination of the noise that is generated when estimating Jacobian-vector products using time-integration of perturbed initial conditions. We present numerical results that demonstrate the convergence properties of the numerical method, and use the method to show that macroscopic fronts in this model destabilise at a coarse symmetry-breaking bifurcation.Comment: This version of the manuscript was accepted for publication on SIAD

Thermoreversible gelation in poly(ethylene oxide)/carbon black hybrid melts

The study focuses on the structure and viscoelasticity of poly(ethylene oxide)/carbon black fluids. The hybrids when subjected to extreme thermal annealing (at temperatures far above the melting point of the matrix) exhibit a 3-4 orders of magnitude increase in viscosity. Surprisingly, the effect is reversible and the viscosity reverts back to its initial value upon subsequent cooling. This rather unique sol-gel transition in terms of strength, steepness and thermal reversibility points to major structural rearrangements via extensive particle clustering, in agreement with microscopy observations. In related systems it was found that when matrix-particle electrostatic interactions are present the gelation is essentially diminished