Wood Adhesive Fillers Used during the Manufacture of Wood Panel Products

During the manufacture of wood panel products, fillers are commonly added to wood adhesives to lower costs and give body to liquid adhesives and also reduce undesired flow or overpenetration into wood. The fillers used in wood adhesives are often neutral or weakly alkaline compounds that typically require no chemical reaction with curing agent, or other components. Fillers are mixed with other components prior to the application of resin on the surface of wood, wood veneer, or wood flakes. Fillers can be either organic (e.g., rye, wheat, walnut shell, and wood flours), or inorganic (e.g., calcium carbonate, calcium sulfate, aluminum oxide, or bentonites). Overall, fillers are low-cost materials for improving the properties of wood or even give it new functions

Impartial comparative analysis of measurement of leukocyte telomere length/DNA content by Southern blots and qPCR.

Telomere length/DNA content has been measured in epidemiological/clinical settings with the goal of testing a host of hypotheses related to the biology of human aging, but often the conclusions of these studies have been inconsistent. These inconsistencies may stem from various reasons, including the use of different telomere length measurement techniques. Here, we report the first impartial evaluation of measurements of leukocyte telomere length by Southern blot of the terminal restriction fragments and quantitative PCR (qPCR) of telomere DNA content, expressed as the ratio of telomeric product (T)/single copy gene (S) product. Blind measurements on the same samples from 50 donors were performed in two independent laboratories on two different occasions. Both the qPCR and Southern blots displayed highly reproducible results as shown by r values > 0.9 for the correlations between results obtained by either method on two occasions. The inter-assay CV measurement for the qPCR was 6.45%, while that of the Southern blots was 1.74%. The relation between the results generated by Southern blots versus those generated by qPCR deviated from linearity. We discuss the ramifications of these findings with regard to measurements of telomere length/DNA content in epidemiological/clinical circumstances

Quarter Magnetization Plateau of Triplet Spin Dimers in the Shastry-Sutherland Lattice

The Shastry-Sutherland lattice, 2-dimensional orthogonal arrangement of the spin dimers, has been realized in the magnetic semiconductor, BaNd2ZnS5. A signature feature of Shastry-Sutherland lattice materials is fractional magnetization plateaus, which often indicate novel quantum phases. Here we report the quarter magnetization plateau from a single crystal of BaNd2ZnS5 by neutron diffraction. A 2-Q antiferromagnetic order of the triplet spin dimers was determined at zero-field, which can be understood by the local Ising magnetic anisotropy of Nd spins that was revealed by local magnetic susceptibility method through polarized neutron diffraction. The quantized magnetization plateau was measured under field along (1-10). The two magnetic sublattices connected to each propagation vector of 2-Q respond to the field differently, the stripe phase with q1 = (0.5, 0.5, 0) disappears at ~1.7 T entering the quarter magnetization plateau. The other stripe phase with q2= (-0.5, 0.5, 0) remains nearly intact up to 6 T. Furthermore, microscopic magnetic model was used to provide insight into the formation of quarter magnetization plateau, that is unexpected in gapless dimer triplet system, contrast to the well-known dimer-singlet Shastry-Sutherland lattice.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Switching fractioned R-CHOP cycles to standard r-chop cycles guided by endoscopic ultrasonography in treating patients with primary gastric diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

© 2020 Liu et al. Background: Primary gastric diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (PG-DLBCL) is a common subtype of extranodal non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), with rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone (R-CHOP) as the commonly used treatment regimen. However, full cycles of standard R-CHOP present the risk of severe bleeding or perforation, even leading to emergency surgery, especially for those with deep lesions in their first 1–2 cycles of treatment. This study aims to explore the safety and efficacy of fractioned R-CHOP (rituximab d0, 50% dose of CHOP d1 and d5) followed by standard R-CHOP cycles in PG-DLBCL patients guided by endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS). Patients and Methods: Thirty-one PG-DLBCL patients were analyzed in this retrospective study. All patients had lesions infiltrated to at least the 3rd layer of the stomach under EUS at baseline. Patients switched to standard R-CHOP if they showed the reduced infiltrated layers and restricted lesions after fractioned R-CHOP cycles. Results: The overall response rate, 5-year progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients in our study were 93.5%, 75% and 84%, respectively. No treatment delay or dosage reduction from gastric adverse event was observed. None of the patients in our study suffered from severe bleeding or perforation during the treatment. Kaplan–Meier analyses showed that PG-DLBCL patients characterized by multiple localization, lesions ≥3cm, having B symptoms, lower serum albumin level, and elevated LDH level were associated with worse PFS and OS. Conclusion: Our data indicate that it might be an effective approach in treating deeply infiltrated PG-DLBCL patients by switching fractioned R-CHOP to standard R-CHOP cycles guided by EUS