Effects of vitamin B6 and tryptophan on pork quality and amount of lean meat in gilts of 70–100 kg bodyweight

Supplementary tryptophan in pig diets has shown improvement in carcass traits and pork quality by reducing the animals' response to stress at slaughter. Vitamin B6 could enhance this response since it acts as an enzymatic cofactor of many tryptophan pathways. The present experiment was designed to evaluate dietary vitamin B6 supplementation and tryptophan levels on carcass traits, organ weights, abdominal fat, and pork quality of 70–100 kg gilts. Sixty-four crossbred gilts (initial bodyweight (BW) 70.52 ± 2.95 kg) were distributed in a 2 x 4 factorial scheme, consisting of two supplementary vitamin B6 levels (1 and 5 mg kg-1) and four dietary standardized ileal digestible (SID) tryptophan (Trp) levels (0.140%, 0.167%, 0.194%, and 0.221%). No significant interactions between the dietary SID Trp levels and B6 supplementation were observed on these variables. Vitamin B6 supplementation (5 mg kg-1) showed a minor reduction in meat pH measured 24 hours after slaughter and resulted in a ham yield higher than B6 basal level (1 mg kg-1). The lean meat yield increased linearly as the SID Trp levels increased in the diet. These findings suggested that vitamin B6 supplementation enhanced the pork quality and the increasing levels of SID tryptophan enhanced the lean meat yield of 70–100 kg gilts.Keywords: Carcass yield, meat colour, organ weigh

Higher-Dimensional Twistor Transforms using Pure Spinors

Hughston has shown that projective pure spinors can be used to construct massless solutions in higher dimensions, generalizing the four-dimensional twistor transform of Penrose. In any even (Euclidean) dimension d=2n, projective pure spinors parameterize the coset space SO(2n)/U(n), which is the space of all complex structures on R^{2n}. For d=4 and d=6, these spaces are CP^1 and CP^3, and the appropriate twistor transforms can easily be constructed. In this paper, we show how to construct the twistor transform for d>6 when the pure spinor satisfies nonlinear constraints, and present explicit formulas for solutions of the massless field equations.Comment: 17 pages harvmac tex. Modified title, abstract, introduction and references to acknowledge earlier papers by Hughston and other

Dimensional Crossover of Localisation and Delocalisation in a Quantum Hall Bar

The 2-- to 1--dimensional crossover of the localisation length of electrons confined to a disordered quantum wire of finite width $L_y$ is studied in a model of electrons moving in the potential of uncorrelated impurities. An analytical formula for the localisation length is derived, describing the dimensional crossover as function of width $L_y$, conductance $g$ and perpendicular magnetic field $B$ . On the basis of these results, the scaling analysis of the quantum Hall effect in high Landau levels, and the delocalisation transition in a quantum Hall wire are reconsidered.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Lectures on conformal field theory and Kac-Moody algebras

This is an introduction to the basic ideas and to a few further selected topics in conformal quantum field theory and in the theory of Kac-Moody algebras.Comment: 59 pages, LaTeX2e, extended version of lectures given at the Graduate Course on Conformal Field Theory and Integrable Models (Budapest, August 1996), to appear in Springer Lecture Notes in Physic

Physical activity attenuates the influence of FTO variants on obesity risk: A meta-analysis of 218,166 adults and 19,268 children

Background: The FTO gene harbors the strongest known susceptibility locus for obesity. While many individual studies have suggested that physical activity (PA) may attenuate the effect of FTO on obesity risk, other studies have not been able to confirm this interaction. To confirm or refute unambiguously whether PA attenuates the association of FTO with obesity risk, we meta-analyzed data from 45 studies of adults (n = 218,166) and nine studies of children and adolescents (n = 19,268). Methods and Findings: All studies identified to have data on the FTO rs9939609 variant (or any proxy [r2>0.8]) and PA were invited to participate, regardless of ethnicity or age of the participants. PA was standardized by categorizing it into a dichotomous variable (physically inactive versus active) in each study. Overall, 25% of adults and 13% of children were categorized as inactive. Interaction analyses were performed within each study by including the FTO×PA interaction term in an additive model, adjusting for age and sex. Subsequently, random effects meta-analysis was used to pool the interaction terms. In adults, the minor (A-) allele of rs9939609 increased the odds of obesity by 1.23-fold/allele (95% CI 1.20-1.26), but PA attenuated this effect (pinteraction= 0.001). More specifically, the minor allele of rs9939609 increased the odds of obesity less in the physically active group (odds ratio = 1.22/allele, 95% CI 1.19-1.25) than in the inactive group (odds ratio = 1.30/allele, 95% CI 1.24-1.36). No such interaction was found in children and adolescents. Concl

Genetic loci associated with prevalent and incident myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease in the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium

Background Genome-wide association studies have identified multiple genomic loci associated with coronary artery disease, but most are common variants in non-coding regions that provide limited information on causal genes and etiology of the disease. To overcome the limited scope that common variants provide, we focused our investigation on low-frequency and rare sequence variations primarily residing in coding regions of the genome. Methods and results Using samples of individuals of European ancestry from ten cohorts within the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, both crosssectional and prospective analyses were conducted to examine associations between genetic variants and myocardial infarction (MI), coronary heart disease (CHD), and allcause mortality following these events. For prevalent events, a total of 27,349 participants of European ancestry, including 1831 prevalent MI cases and 2518 prevalent CHD cases were used. For incident cases, a total of 55,736 participants of European ancestry were included (3,031 incident MI cases and 5,425 incident CHD cases). There were 1,860 all-cause deaths among the 3,751 MI and CHD cases from six cohorts that contributed to the analysis of all-cause mortality. Single variant and gene-based analyses were performed separately in each cohort and then meta-analyzed for each outcome. A low-frequency intronic variant (rs988583) in PLCL1 was significantly associated with prevalent MI (OR = 1.80, 95% confidence interval: 1.43, 2.27; P = 7.12