While They Were Dancing Around

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/3432/thumbnail.jp

What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/2650/thumbnail.jp

Permittivity of Meat Fish and their Components at UHF RFID Frequencies and Industry Relevant Temperatures

Permittivity values of lean beef, pork, fish, poultry, and values for other components from these sources (i.e. fat, marrow and bone) were measured at selected                                                                                                                                                                                                                              industry-relevant temperatures – 18 oC, - 12  oC, - 5 oC, 0 oC, 7 oC, 25 oC, 40 oC and UHF RFID relevant frequencies of 868 MHz, 915 MHZ, 950 MHz and 2450 MHz. Muscle fibre orientation in relation to probe placement was also investigated. Increases in temperature generally led to increases in the dielectric constant (e’) and loss factor (e’’) of all test samples while the opposite trend was observed with increases in frequency (i.e. e’ and e’’ decreased). These trends were clearly evident for samples of lean beef, pork, poultry and fish. The dielectric properties of other non-lean components also varied with temperature and frequency. e’ and e’’ values of fat and marrow were significantly lower than those of lean while for fibrous tissues muscle fibre orientation only had a significant influence in the case of poultry (p≤0.05) and not in the case of beef or pork (p≥0.05). Results of this study can serve as basic data for the design and/or application of RFID inlays

Coffee and tomato share common gene repertoires as revealed by deep sequencing of seed and cherry transcripts

An EST database has been generated for coffee based on sequences from approximately 47,000 cDNA clones derived from five different stages/tissues, with a special focus on developing seeds. When computationally assembled, these sequences correspond to 13,175 unigenes, which were analyzed with respect to functional annotation, expression profile and evolution. Compared with Arabidopsis, the coffee unigenes encode a higher proportion of proteins related to protein modification/turnover and metabolism—an observation that may explain the high diversity of metabolites found in coffee and related species. Several gene families were found to be either expanded or unique to coffee when compared with Arabidopsis. A high proportion of these families encode proteins assigned to functions related to disease resistance. Such families may have expanded and evolved rapidly under the intense pathogen pressure experienced by a tropical, perennial species like coffee. Finally, the coffee gene repertoire was compared with that of Arabidopsis and Solanaceous species (e.g. tomato). Unlike Arabidopsis, tomato has a nearly perfect gene-for-gene match with coffee. These results are consistent with the facts that coffee and tomato have a similar genome size, chromosome karyotype (tomato, n=12; coffee n=11) and chromosome architecture. Moreover, both belong to the Asterid I clade of dicot plant families. Thus, the biology of coffee (family Rubiacaeae) and tomato (family Solanaceae) may be united into one common network of shared discoveries, resources and information

A real-time, quantitative PCR method using hydrolysis probes for the monitoring of Plasmodium falciparum load in experimentally infected human volunteers

Background: The accurate quantification of Plasmodium falciparum parasite numbers by PCR is an important tool for monitoring growth kinetics in subjects infected and subsequently treated with anti-malarial agents