Foam Properties and Detergent Abilities of the Saponins from Camellia oleifera

The defatted seed meal of Camellia oleifera has been used as a natural detergent and its extract is commercially utilized as a foam-stabilizing and emulsifying agent. The goal of this study was to investigate the foam properties and detergent ability of the saponins from the defatted seed meal of C. oleifera. The crude saponin content in the defatted seed meal of C. oleifera was 8.34 and the total saponins content in the crude saponins extract was 39.5% (w/w). The foaming power of the 0.5 crude saponins extract solution from defatted seed meal of C. oleifera was 37.1 of 0.5 SLS solution and 51.3% to that of 0.5% Tween 80 solution. The R5 value of 86.0% represents good foam stability of the crude saponins extracted from the defatted seed meal of the plant. With the reduction of water surface tension from 72 mN/m to 50.0 mN/m, the 0.5% crude saponins extract solution has wetting ability. The sebum-removal experiment indicated that the crude saponins extract has moderate detergency. The detergent abilities of the saponins from C. oleifera and Sapindus mukorossi were also compared

Nonlinear dynamic responses of shell structures using vector form intrinsic finite element method

In this paper, in order to compute nonlinear dynamic responses of shell structures, formulations of the internal forces of the shell element in vector form intrinsic finite element (VFIFE) method are developed. This novel shell element is named by VFIFE-DKT element. These elements are to compute internal forces from the deformations and the motion of the shell structures. The VFIFE method is a particle-based method. They have three key VFIFE processes such as the point value description, path element and convected material frame. Thus, the shell structure is represented by finite particles. Each particle is subjected to the external forces and internal forces. The particle satisfies the Newton’s Law. A fictitious reversed rigid body motion is used to remove the rigid body motion from the deformations of the element. The internal forces of the element in deformation coordinates satify the equilibrium equations. Through the numerical examples of the benchmark structures undergo extermly-large displacements, rotation and motion, the proposed procedures using the novel element demonstrates its accuracy and efficiency

Splint therapy for disc displacement with reduction of the temporomandibular joint. Part I: Modified mandibular splint therapy

AbstractThe aims of this preliminary study were to present a modified mandibular splint together with a treatment regimen and to evaluate their effects on the treatment of reciprocal joint sounds of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). The study participants were recruited from 312 consecutive patients in the temporomandibular disorder clinic of a medical center in Taiwan from January 2003 to December 2003. From among these, 59 cases with typical reciprocal clicking were selected for this study. All participants were treated with a modified mandibular splint and then followed up for 6 months. Successful treatment was defined as leading to the disappearance of the joint sounds of TMJ, as described by patients. Based on clinical evaluation, the overall success rate was 71.2% (42/59) with minimal temporary complications. Patients with clicking at less than 3.5cm of interincisal opening had a success rate of 92.5%, which was higher than the success rate of patients with clicking at a mouth opening of 3.5cm or more. This study showed that a modified mandibular splint can be used to treat reciprocal clicking of the TMJ effectively and encouraged us to conduct further study on the efficacy of this splint to treat disc displacement with reduction of TMJ using magnetic resonance imaging examination

Application of Highly Purified Electrolyzed Chlorine Dioxide for Tilapia Fillet Disinfection

This research aimed to develop an electrolysis method to generate high-concentration chlorine dioxide (ClO2) for tilapia fillet disinfection. The designed generator produced up to 3500 ppm of ClO2 at up to 99% purity. Tilapia fillets were soaked in a 400 ppm ClO2 solution for 5, 10, and 25 min. Results show that total plate counts of tilapia, respectively, decreased by 5.72 to 3.23, 2.10, and 1.09 log CFU/g. In addition, a 200 ppm ClO2 solution eliminated coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli in 5 min with shaking treatment. Furthermore, ClO2 and trihalomethanes (THMs) residuals on tilapia fillets were analyzed by GC/MS and were nondetectable (GC-MS detection limit was 0.12 ppb). The results conform to Taiwan’s environmental protection regulations and act governing food sanitation

Risk factors for poor outcomes of children with acute acalculous cholecystitis

BACKGROUND: Acute acalculous cholecystitis (AAC) is generally considered to be a mild disease in children; however, if left untreated or treated without caution, AAC can lead to severe outcomes, such as death. The objectives of this study were to present the clinical features and identify the predictors of mortality in pediatric AAC. METHODS: Patients diagnosed with AAC between 2005 and 2012 were enrolled. AAC was defined by the presence of fever and an echo-proven thickened gallbladder wall exceeding 4 mm. A poor health outcome was defined as death. Further information related to the demographics, clinical manifestations, laboratory results, ultrasound findings, and pathogens present in the AAC patients was also collected. Predictors of mortality were identified by association analyses and confirmed by multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS: A total of 147 pediatric AAC patients (male/female = 1.01, mean age = 5.2 years) were included in this retrospective study. The most common clinical presentation was an elevated C-reactive protein level (84%) followed by hepatomegaly (80%) and anorexia (78%). AAC in children was associated with various diseases, including infectious diseases (70%), systemic diseases (13%), and malignancy (11%). Fourteen of the 147 (9.25%) patients died during the study period. The presences of thrombocytopenia, anemia, gallbladder sludge, hepatitis, and/or sepsis plus hepatitis were found to be the important predictors of AAC mortality. CONCLUSIONS: The factors associated with AAC mortality were anemia, thrombocytopenia, gallbladder sludge, hepatitis, and sepsis plus hepatitis. These predictors are likely to help clinicians identify patients who are at a high risk of poor prognoses and make appropriate clinical decisions

Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? De novo assembly strategies for bacterial genomes based on paired-end sequencing

Number of misassemblies for different assembly strategies. Number of misassemblies for the de novo assembly results for E. coli DH1 and S. Parasanguinis FW213 are shown together with their standard errors of the mean. Group A [PE] and Group A [SE] represent all reads assembled as paired-end reads and single end reads, respectively. Group A [PE + SE] represents all the non-overlapped paired-end reads assembled together with merged reads. Group M [PE] and Group M [SE] represent Group M reads assembled as paired-end reads and single end reads, respectively. The numbers of misassemblies fluctuate a lot when depths of read number are low and gradually decreases until they reach a steady number. The paired-end reads (Group A [PE] and Group M [PE]) in S. Parasanguinis FW213 gave the lowest number of misassemblies when depths of read number are high. (TIFF 669 kb

Highly reliable GIGA-sized synthetic human therapeutic antibody library construction

BackgroundMonoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and their derivatives are the fastest expanding category of pharmaceuticals. Efficient screening and generation of appropriate therapeutic human antibodies are important and urgent issues in the field of medicine. The successful in vitro biopanning method for antibody screening largely depends on the highly diverse, reliable and humanized CDR library. To rapidly obtain potent human antibodies, we designed and constructed a highly diverse synthetic human single-chain variable fragment (scFv) antibody library greater than a giga in size by phage display. Herein, the novel TIM-3-neutralizing antibodies with immunomodulatory functions derived from this library serve as an example to demonstrate the library’s potential for biomedical applications.MethodsThe library was designed with high stability scaffolds and six complementarity determining regions (CDRs) tailored to mimic human composition. The engineered antibody sequences were optimized for codon usage and subjected to synthesis. The six CDRs with variable length CDR-H3s were individually subjected to β-lactamase selection and then recombined for library construction. Five therapeutic target antigens were used for human antibody generation via phage library biopanning. TIM-3 antibody activity was verified by immunoactivity assays.ResultsWe have designed and constructed a highly diverse synthetic human scFv library named DSyn-1 (DCB Synthetic-1) containing 2.5 × 1010 phage clones. Three selected TIM-3-recognizing antibodies DCBT3-4, DCBT3-19, and DCBT3-22 showed significant inhibition activity by TIM-3 reporter assays at nanomolar ranges and binding affinities in sub-nanomolar ranges. Furthermore, clone DCBT3-22 was exceptionally superior with good physicochemical property and a purity of more than 98% without aggregation.ConclusionThe promising results illustrate not only the potential of the DSyn-1 library for biomedical research applications, but also the therapeutic potential of the three novel fully human TIM-3-neutralizing antibodies

Constitutive Expression of Thermobifida fusca Thermostable Acetylxylan Esterase Gene in Pichia pastoris

A gene encoding the thermostable acetylxylan esterase (AXE) in Thermobifida fusca NTU22 was amplified by PCR, sequenced and cloned into the Pichia pastoris X-33 host strain using the vector pGAPZαA, allowing constitutive expression and secretion of the protein. Recombinant expression resulted in high levels of extracellular AXE production, as high as 526 U/mL in the Hinton flask culture broth. The purified enzyme showed a single band at about 28 kDa by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis after being treated with endo-β-N-acetylglycosaminidase H; this agrees with the predicted size based on the nucleotide sequence. About 70% of the original activity remained after heat treatment at 60 °C for three hours. The optimal pH and temperature of the purified enzyme were 8.0 and 60 °C, respectively. The properties of the purified AXE from the P. pastoris transformant are similar to those of the AXE from an E. coli transformant

Transcriptome Changes in Relation to Manic Episode

Bipolar disorder (BD) is highly heritable and well known for its recurrent manic and depressive episodes. The present study focused on manic episode in BD patients and aimed to investigate state-specific transcriptome alterations between acute episode and remission, including messenger RNAs (mRNAs), long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), and micro-RNAs (miRNAs), using microarray and RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) platforms. BD patients were enrolled with clinical information, and peripheral blood samples collected at both acute and remission status spanning for at least 2 months were confirmed by follow-ups. Symptom severity was assessed by Young Mania Rating Scale. We enrolled six BD patients as the discovery samples and used the Affymetrix Human Transcriptome Array 2.0 to capture transcriptome data at the two time points. For replication, expression data from Gene Expression Omnibus that consisted of 11 BD patients were downloaded, and we performed a mega-analysis for microarray data of 17 patients. Moreover, we conducted RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) in additional samples of 7 BD patients. To identify intraindividual differentially expressed genes (DEGs), we analyzed data using a linear model controlling for symptom severity. We found that noncoding genes were of majority among the top DEGs in microarray data. The expression fold change of coding genes among DEGs showed moderate to high correlations (∼0.5) across platforms. A number of lncRNAs and two miRNAs (MIR181B1 and MIR103A1) exhibited high levels of gene expression in the manic state. For coding genes, we reported that the taste function-related genes, including TAS2R5 and TAS2R3, may be mania state-specific markers. Additionally, four genes showed a nominal p-value of less than 0.05 in all our microarray data, mega-analysis, and RNA-Seq analysis. They were upregulated in the manic state and consisted of MS4A14, PYHIN1, UTRN, and DMXL2, and their gene expression patterns were further validated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (qRT-PCR). We also performed weight gene coexpression network analysis to identify gene modules for manic episode. Genes in the mania-related modules were different from the susceptible loci of BD obtained from genome-wide association studies, and biological pathways in relation to these modules were mainly related to immune function, especially cytokine–cytokine receptor interaction. Results of the present study elucidated potential molecular targets and genomic networks that are involved in manic episode. Future studies are needed to further validate these biomarkers for their roles in the etiology of bipolar illness