The Possibility of Contamination of Deep Frozen Bull Semen During Long Periods of Storage in Containers with Liquid Nitrogen

Preservation of bull sperm by deep freeze is a technological process that allows you to store semen in theory for an unlimited period of time, national and international transport, without significant loss of quality and safety of semen. According to the literature, some microorganisms successfully survive the low temperatures during storage of semen in liquid nitrogen (-196 ° C), in deep-frozen semen, seeds, and in liquid nitrogen and ice sediment in the storage container for deep-frozen bull semen. The aim of this study was to do microbiological analysis of samples semen frozen bull and liquid nitrogen in containers for bull semen storage. 414 samples of frozen bull semen, and 53 samples of liquid nitrogen ice sediment were examined. From the deeply frozen semen were isolated Candida albicans, Citrobacter freundii and Pseudomonas stutzeri. Microorganisms isolated from the storage container of frozen semen are mostly members of the family Enterobacteriacae, and Citrobacter freundii was isolated from the largest number of samples. Considering the findings of microorganisms in the semen, and liquid nitrogen, there is the possibility of connection of contamination of the semen with microorganisms of the liquid nitrogen, and reversely, as would be the goal of our future investigations

Co-overexpression of bcl-2 and c-myc in uterine cervix carcinomas and premalignant lesions

To establish the role of co-overexpression of bcl-2 and c-myc protooncogenes in uterine cervix carcinogenesis, we examined 138 tissue samples of low grade cervical squamous intraepithelial lesions (SIL), high grade SIL, portio vaginalis uteri (PVU) carcinoma in situ and PVU invasive carcinoma, stage IA-IIA (study group) and 36 samples without SIL or malignancy (control group). The expression of bcl-2 and c-myc was detected immunohistochemically using a monoclonal antibody. Fisher's exact test (P<0.05) was used to assess statistical significance. Overexpression of bcl-2 was found to increase in direct relation to the grade of the cervical lesions. High sensitivity was of great diagnostic significance for the detection of these types of changes in the uterine cervix. On the basis of high predictive values it can be said that in patients with bcl-2 overexpression there is a great possibility that they have premalignant or malignant changes in the uterine cervix. Co-overexpression of bcl-2 and c-myc oncogenes was found only in patients with PVU invasive carcinoma (6/26-23.0%). Statistically significant difference was not found in the frequency of co-overexpression in patients with PVU invasive carcinoma in relation to the control group (Fisher's test; P=0.064). The method's sensitivity of determining these oncogenes with the aim of detecting PVU invasive carcinoma was 23%, while specificity was 72.2%. On the basis of high predictive values (100%), speaking in statistical terms, it can be concluded that all patients with co-overexpression of bcl-2 and c-myc oncogenes will have PVU invasive carcinoma. We confirmed in our research that co-overexpression of bcl-2 and c-myc oncogenes was increased only in PVU invasive carcinoma. However, a more extensive series of samples and additional tests are required to establish the prognostic significance of bcl-2 and c-myc co-overexpression in cervical carcinogenesis

Implementation of triticale in nutrition of non-ruminant animals

Cognition of chemical composition and nutritive values of triticale grain as well as the effect of its application in non-ruminant animal nutrition were pointed out in this paper. There is a high level of proteins in the grain of triticale (2 to 3% more than wheat and 4% more than rye), with very beneficial amino acid composition, and is the reason for its usage in domestic animals nutrition. Nowadays, people are of the opinion that triticale is one of potential plant species with the brightest perspective in the production of food for domestic animals. Considering the increased production of triticale, some detail researching of its nutritional value is necessary due to the required evaluation of the role and significance in domestic animal nutrition based on triticale. Due to intensive plant breeding programs, there are new varieties of triticale in the market, distinctive by the higher yield and wide range of desired traits. As a result of this, triticale is becoming very attractive and is occupying larger portions of arable land. These review will show if there are some advantages of triticale compared to other cereals and how large the frame of these advantages is, as well as how it will affect the further spreading of triticale on arable land.Key words: Triticale, chemical composition, nutritive capacity, nutrition

On the processing pf piecewise-constant signals by hierarchical models with application to single ion channel currents

A new approach for processing of piecewise-constant signals is proposed. It is based on modeling the observed data as a sum of a random signal and noise. The random signal has a Gibbs distribution, and the noise is Gaussian. A MAP criterion in derived for joint estimation of the number of signal levels and reconstruction of signal. The criterion comprises of three terms, one corresponding to the likelihood of the data and two to penalties. One penalty term penalizes for unnecessary transitions, and the other, for unnecessary levels. The method has been tested on synthesized data and applied to single ion channel recording

A population Monte Carlo scheme with transformed weights and its application to stochastic kinetic models

This paper addresses the problem of Monte Carlo approximation of posterior probability distributions. In particular, we have considered a recently proposed technique known as population Monte Carlo (PMC), which is based on an iterative importance sampling approach. An important drawback of this methodology is the degeneracy of the importance weights when the dimension of either the observations or the variables of interest is high. To alleviate this difficulty, we propose a novel method that performs a nonlinear transformation on the importance weights. This operation reduces the weight variation, hence it avoids their degeneracy and increases the efficiency of the importance sampling scheme, specially when drawing from a proposal functions which are poorly adapted to the true posterior. For the sake of illustration, we have applied the proposed algorithm to the estimation of the parameters of a Gaussian mixture model. This is a very simple problem that enables us to clearly show and discuss the main features of the proposed technique. As a practical application, we have also considered the popular (and challenging) problem of estimating the rate parameters of stochastic kinetic models (SKM). SKMs are highly multivariate systems that model molecular interactions in biological and chemical problems. We introduce a particularization of the proposed algorithm to SKMs and present numerical results.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figure

Occurrence of Escherichia coli in mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) from farms in Boka Kotorska Bay, Southern Adriatic Sea

This study reports the occurrence of Escherichia coli in 243 mussel samples collected along the Boka Kotorska Bay (six harvesting areas), which is located in the Southern Adriatic Sea. Bivalve molluscs can concentrate contaminants from their water environment, so because of that, determination of E. coli levels is an important parameter for microbial pollution assessment in the investigated areas. The number of E. coli ranged between 4600 MPN E. coli/100 g. Statistical analysis of the number of E. coli in mussels established that the mussel farm vl. Duško Vlahović (M5) had the highest mean E. coli levels (949.00 ± 2541 MPN E. coli/100 g), while the lowest mean level was recorded in Boka mussels (M1) (149.20 ± 258.80 MPN E. coli/100 g). Boka Kotorska bay is classified as a Class B mussel production area because it has 32.9% of samples with E. coli MPN values between the 20-230 MPN/100g

Development of exchange lists for M editerranean and H ealthy E ating D iets: implementation in an intervention trial

Background There has been little research published on the adaptation of diabetic exchange list diet approaches for the design of intervention diets in health research despite their clinical utility. The exchange list approach can provide clear and precise guidance on multiple dietary changes simultaneously. The present study aimed to develop exchange list diets for M editerranean and H ealthy E ating, and to evaluate adherence, dietary intakes and markers of health risks with each counselling approach in 120 subjects at increased risk for developing colon cancer. Methods A randomised clinical trial was implemented in the USA involving telephone counselling. The M editerranean diet had 10 dietary goals targeting increases in mono‐unsaturated fats, n ‐3 fats, whole grains and the amount and variety of fruits and vegetables. The Healthy Eating diet had five dietary goals that were based on the US H ealthy P eople 2010 recommendations. Results Dietary compliance was similar in both diet arms, with 82–88% of goals being met at 6 months, although subjects took more time to achieve the M editerranean goals than the H ealthy E ating goals. The relatively modest fruit and vegetable goals in the Healthy Eating arm were exceeded, resulting in fruit and vegetable intakes of approximately eight servings per day in each arm after 6 months. A significant ( P  < 0.05) weight loss and a decrease in serum C ‐reactive protein concentrations were observed in the overweight/obese subgroup of subjects in the M editerranean arm in the absence of weight loss goals. Conclusions Counselling for the M editerranean diet may be useful for both improving diet quality and for achieving a modest weight loss in overweight or obese individuals.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108685/1/jhn12158.pd