Assessment of subacute genotoxic and histopathological effects of a food flavour ingredient, 4-ethylbenzaldehyde (EBA) on zebrafish (Danio rerio) model

Modern food industry widely uses a variety of flavour and fragrance materials. One of the most used compound groups is the aldehydes. The benzaldehyde, also known as artificial almond oil, is one of the most commonly used flavouring in food industry nowadays. The effects of this compound on different species are well known, a lot of toxicological information can be found in the literature. 4-ethylbenzaldehyde is also a member of aldehyde group, the physical properties are similar to benzaldehyde and also has almond scent. Unlike benzaldehyde, it has no chemical safety assessment according to its chemical safety sheet, and only one experiment can be found on its effects on vertebrates. This compound can also be found at the group of flavours and fragrances. The aim of this study was to examine the subacute DNA and tissue damaging effects of EBA. The genotoxic effects of EBA in zebrafish were evaluated by using micronucleus assay. Significant increase in the micronucleus frequency had been described for all tested concentrations. Alterations were found in the liver of the fish group treated with 11 mg l–1 EBA for 21 days

Ovarian inseminated sperm impacts spawning success in zebrafish, Danio rerio (Hamilton, 1822) even in the absence of a male stimulus

Abstract Reproductive obstacles have led scientists to develop novel techniques/technologies for artificial reproduction. We aimed to investigate the possibility of propagating zebrafish females using sperm ovarian lavage with and without presence of male stimulus. This experiment consisted of several treatments: traditional spawning approaches with females and wild-type males (AB♀ × AB♂); no males present with non-manipulated females (AB♀); no males present with females inseminated with NaCl into ovarian lobes [AB♀(inj.NaCl)]; no males present with females inseminated with sperm from transgenic males into ovarian lobes [AB♀(inj.Tg♂)]; non-manipulated females kept separately from wild-type males (AB♀|AB♂); females kept separately from wild-type males and inseminated with NaCl into ovarian lobes [AB♀(inj.NaCl)|AB♂]; and females kept separately from wild-type males and inseminated with sperm from transgenic males into ovarian lobes [AB♀(inj.Tg♂)|AB♂]. There were no released eggs in both negative control treatments (AB♀ and AB♀|AB♂). Egg production increased (ranged from 0 to 28.5 eggs/female) when females were injected in the presence [AB♀ (inj.NaCl) |AB♂] or absence of male stimulus [AB♀ (inj.NaCl) and (AB♀(inj.Tg♂)]. A further increase in egg production [relative to AB♀, AB♀ (inj.NaCl), and AB♀|AB♂] was detected when females were inseminated with pooled sperm from transgenic males in the presence of male stimulus [AB♀(inj.Tg♂)|AB♂; ranged from 2.5 to 55 eggs/female] or when using traditional spawning approaches (AB♀ × AB♂; ranged from 25 to 131 eggs/female). Females inseminated with sperm produced embryos, although no differences were detected when females were inseminated with pooled sperm from transgenic males in presence (11.8 ± 16.3%) or absence (average = 12.6 ± 9.2%) of male stimulus. Traditional spawning approaches produced the most eggs (81.2 ± 42.3 per female) and highest fertilization rate (81.3 ± 10.4)

aus Vittorio Veneto, Italien

Summary In this thesis the theory and implementation of a digital bang-bang frequency synthesizer for application in the field of high speed serial data communications systems is presented. The target application is the generation of a precise clock signal with 3 different frequencies in the GHz range (up to 4.8 GHz) to be used by the Clock and Data Recovery circuits in the Advanced Memory Buffer for Fully Buffered DIMMs memory architectures. The challenges in the design of the synthesizer are: full integration on silicon (no off-chip components), low-jitter (lower than 2.4ps), high-bandwidth (from 11MHz to 33MHz), low-peaking (smaller than 3dB), tracking of input Spread Spectrum Clock, robustness against noise on the supplies and in the substrate, small area, small power consumption. After a short overview of the state of the art of analog and digital PLLs, and a motivation why the existing solutions do not fulfill at best the requirements of the application, the digital architecture chosen for this synthesizer is presented