EVOLUTIONARY DOUBLE ENTRY ACCOUNTING: BEFORE AND AFTER LUCA PIACIOLO'S SUMMA

Both as researchers and as ordinary people, we often go too easily over the history of human knowledge. Science constrains us to carefully analyze the past, an act that guides our steps in the present and future. We often rush to decree ideas and opinions present in our universe since several centuries ago as discoveries of the modern world. The truth is that Luca Paciolo is one of the most commented authors in the history of mankind, some assessing the number of scientists and not only who debated and criticized in writing his famous work at over 1700.                                                                                             Luca Paciolo was born in 1445 in Borgo San Sepolcro (nowadays Sansepolcro) in the Arezzo region of the Florentine Republic, becoming a well-known mathematician who worked and taught, including at the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza in Milan. His most famous work is "Summa de l'arithmetica, geometria, proportioni e proportionalita" published in 1494, a work of mathematics and geometry that presents, in Chapter XI, for the first time for that era, the double entry accounting method. This was a turning point in the history of accounting, marking its undisputed rise to the modern form in which we know it these days. This paper aims to show the essential role that Luca Paciolo played in the development of this science, to place into a context the evolution of accounting and of the double entry but also to clarify the historical status that Paciolo had: inventor or popularizer of the double entry

Sensors for Carbonization Control

Phase I of “Research on Intelligent Processing of Carbon-Carbon Composites” is a two year program to develop enabling technologies for real time control of the carbonization process for resin matrix composites. The research has three related foci: in situ material property sensors; process models; and intelligent control architecture. The research has, to date, 1) developed control strategies at three levels of sophistication that use sensors and models to complete carbonization more rapidly while still reducing losses; 2) developed a control architecture that integrates those sensors and models; 3) conducted successful in situ tests of chemical and physical property sensors; 4) developed a high temperature eddy current sensor (not yet tested in situ); 5) developed considerable kinetic data on the carbonization reactions, described the basic reaction paths and their relation to physical properties qualitatively, and developed a kinetic equation for the lowest temperature family of carbonization reactions, the production of water from hydroxyl groups; 6) defined the modeling strategy for calculating gas pressure and the experimental strategy for developing models for matrix strength. In the following, we describe the general problem and the issues in modeling and control to provide a context for the sensor results

Níveis de silagem de bagaço de citrus na engorda de bovinos.

Foram realizados dois estudos,. um de metabolismo com vacas mestiços fistuladas para determinar a cinetica da digitação ruminal, e outro de engorda, usando novilhos Nelores alimentados com 25, 35 e 45% da MS da dieta proveniente da silagem de bagaço de citrus

On the existence and structure of a mush at the inner core boundary of the Earth

It has been suggested about 20 years ago that the liquid close to the inner core boundary (ICB) is supercooled and that a sizable mushy layer has developed during the growth of the inner core. The morphological instability of the liquid-solid interface which usually results in the formation of a mushy zone has been intensively studied in metallurgy, but the freezing of the inner core occurs in very unusual conditions: the growth rate is very small, and the pressure gradient has a key role, the newly formed solid being hotter than the adjacent liquid. We investigate the linear stability of a solidification front under such conditions, pointing out the destabilizing role of the thermal and solutal fields, and the stabilizing role of the pressure gradient. The main consequence of the very small solidification rate is the importance of advective transport of solute in liquid, which tends to remove light solute from the vicinity of the ICB and to suppress supercooling, thus acting against the destabilization of the solidification front. For plausible phase diagrams of the core mixture, we nevertheless found that the ICB is likely to be morphologically unstable, and that a mushy zone might have developed at the ICB. The thermodynamic thickness of the resulting mushy zone can be significant, from $\sim100$ km to the entire inner core radius, depending on the phase diagram of the core mixture. However, such a thick mushy zone is predicted to collapse under its own weight, on a much smaller length scale ($\lesssim 1$ km). We estimate that the interdendritic spacing is probably smaller than a few tens of meter, and possibly only a few meters

Affinity purification of erythropoietin from cell culture supernatant combined with MALDI-TOF-MS analysis of erythropoietin N-glycosylation

Proteomic

In Vivo Expression of Interleukin-37 Reduces Local and Systemic Inflammation in Concanavalin A-Induced Hepatitis

We recently reported that after LPS stimulation, IL-37 translocates to the nucleus and reduces the expression of proinflammatory cytokines. The aim of this study was to investigate whether transiently expressed IL-37 in mice reduces inflammation in concanavalin A (ConA)-induced hepatitis and LPS-induced sepsis. Transgene IL-37 expression was detected in the liver lysate of mice injected with IL-37 plasmid-DNA after hydrodynamic tail vein injection. All mice developed severe acute hepatitis after ConA injection. No difference in the histological score and serum ALT was observed between the two groups that might be explained by patchy expression of IL-37 protein in the liver. However, 2 hrs after ConA injection, serum levels for IL-1α, IL-6, IL-5, and IL-9 were significantly reduced in IL-37-expressing mice as seen for the LPS model. In conclusion, in vivo expression of human IL-37 in mice reduces local and systemic inflammation in ConA-induced hepatitis and LPS challenge

Dimethylarginine metabolism during acute and chronic rejection of rat renal allografts

Background. Dimethylarginines are inhibitors of NO synthesis and are involved in the pathogenesis of vascular diseases. In this study, we ask the question if asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and symmetric dimethylarginine (SDMA) levels change during fatal and reversible acute rejection, and contribute to the pathogenesis of chronic vasculopathy

Serum methylarginines and spirometry-measured lung function in older adults

Rationale: Methylarginines are endogenous nitric oxide synthase inhibitors that have been implicated in animal models of lung disease but have not previously been examined for their association with spirometric measures of lung function in humans. Objectives: This study measured serum concentrations of asymmetric and symmetric dimethylarginine in a representative sample of older community-dwelling adults and determined their association with spirometric lung function measures. Methods: Data on clinical, lifestyle, and demographic characteristics, methylated arginines, and L-arginine (measured using LC-MS/MS) were collected from a population-based sample of older Australian adults from the Hunter Community Study. The five key lung function measures included as outcomes were Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second, Forced Vital Capacity, Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second to Forced Vital Capacity ratio, Percent Predicted Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second, and Percent Predicted Forced Vital Capacity. Measurements and Main Results: In adjusted analyses there were statistically significant independent associations between a) higher asymmetric dimethylarginine, lower Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second and lower Forced Vital Capacity; and b) lower L-arginine/asymmetric dimethylarginine ratio, lower Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second, lower Percent Predicted Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second and lower Percent Predicted Forced Vital Capacity. By contrast, no significant associations were observed between symmetric dimethylarginine and lung function. Conclusions: After adjusting for clinical, demographic, biochemical, and pharmacological confounders, higher serum asymmetric dimethylarginine was independently associated with a reduction in key measures of lung function. Further research is needed to determine if methylarginines predict the decline in lung function

Identification of Potential Sites for Tryptophan Oxidation in Recombinant Antibodies Using tert-Butylhydroperoxide and Quantitative LC-MS

Amino acid oxidation is known to affect the structure, activity, and rate of degradation of proteins. Methionine oxidation is one of the several chemical degradation pathways for recombinant antibodies. In this study, we have identified for the first time a solvent accessible tryptophan residue (Trp-32) in the complementary-determining region (CDR) of a recombinant IgG1 antibody susceptible to oxidation under real-time storage and elevated temperature conditions. The degree of light chain Trp-32 oxidation was found to be higher than the oxidation level of the conserved heavy chain Met-429 and the heavy chain Met-107 of the recombinant IgG1 antibody HER2, which have already been identified as being solvent accessible and sensitive to chemical oxidation. In order to reduce the time for simultaneous identification and functional evaluation of potential methionine and tryptophan oxidation sites, a test system employing tert-butylhydroperoxide (TBHP) and quantitative LC-MS was developed. The optimized oxidizing conditions allowed us to specifically oxidize the solvent accessible methionine and tryptophan residues that displayed significant oxidation in the real-time stability and elevated temperature study. The achieved degree of tryptophan oxidation was adequate to identify the functional consequence of the tryptophan oxidation by binding studies. In summary, the here presented approach of employing TBHP as oxidizing reagent combined with quantitative LC-MS and binding studies greatly facilitates the efficient identification and functional evaluation of methionine and tryptophan oxidation sites in the CDR of recombinant antibodies