Formation of a carcinogenic aromatic amine from an azo dye by human skin bacteria in vitro

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Azo dyes represent the major class of dyestuffs. They are metabolised to the corresponding amines by liver enzymes and the intestinal microflora following incorporation by both experimental animals and humans. For safety evaluation of the dermal exposure of consumers to azo dyes from wearing coloured textiles, a possible cleavage of azo dyes by the skin microflora should be considered since, in contrast to many dyes, aromatic amines are easily absorbed by the skin. A method for measuring the ability of human skin flora to reduce azo dyes was established. In a standard experiment, 361011 cells of a culture of Staphylococcus aureus wereincubatedinsyntheticsweat (pH 6.8, final volume 20 mL) at 288C for 24 h with Direct Blue 14 (C.I. 23850, DB 14). The reaction products were extracted and analysed using HPLC. The reduction product o-tolidine (3,3'-dimethylbenzidine, OT) could indeed be detected showing that the strain used was able to metabolise DB 14 to the corresponding aromatic amine. In addition to OT, two further metabolites of DB 14 were detected. Using mass spectrometry they were identified as 3,3'-dimethyl-4-amino-4'-hydroxybiphenyl and 3,3'-di methyl-4-aminobiphenyl. The ability to cleave azo dyes seems to be widely distributed among human skin bacteria, as, under these in vitro conditions, bacteria isolated from healthy human skin and human skin bacteria from strain collections also exhibited azo reductase activity. Further studies are in progress in order to include additional azo dyes and coloured textiles. At the moment, the meaning of the results with regard to consumer health cannot be finally assessed

A research on determining the friction losses formed in the small diameter floppy polythene pipe lines

In pressured irrigation systems, water flowing in pipes is stable from the point of view of the hydraulic and it gradually decrease through the pipe lines. In sprinkler irrigation systems, sprinkler head pressure through the pipe line is different due to friction and local losses formed in parts of the pipes between sequent sprinkler heads and the differences resulting from slope. Generally, sprinkler head pressure has a maximum level in the beginning of lateral pipe lines and a minimum level in the end of lateral pipe lines. The velocity of water flow in the pipe line, the diameter and length of the pipe and the friction loses formed as a result of roughness inside the pipe should be known for a good design. The easiest andfastest way is to make use of the values given in the tables or diagrams determined by the equation of Hazen-Williams. However, no data related to floppy polythene (PE) pipes with small diameter is available in the tables and diagrams mentioned. In this study, values relating to friction losses and pressures formed in 10, 20, 30,…, 100 m through the pipe for the without slope in different velocity (0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 m s-1) and water flow have been measured and it was found that connection between them using floppy PE pipes (6 bar) with small diameter (Ø20, 25, 32, 40 and 50) have been produced by some plastic companies in Turkey and particularly used in the irrigation systems in landscape areas. Inconclusion, it was stated by the people who worked on the experiment that the parameters obtained could be used

Zoom-SVD: Fast and Memory Efficient Method for Extracting Key Patterns in an Arbitrary Time Range

Given multiple time series data, how can we efficiently find latent patterns in an arbitrary time range? Singular value decomposition (SVD) is a crucial tool to discover hidden factors in multiple time series data, and has been used in many data mining applications including dimensionality reduction, principal component analysis, recommender systems, etc. Along with its static version, incremental SVD has been used to deal with multiple semi infinite time series data and to identify patterns of the data. However, existing SVD methods for the multiple time series data analysis do not provide functionality for detecting patterns of data in an arbitrary time range: standard SVD requires data for all intervals corresponding to a time range query, and incremental SVD does not consider an arbitrary time range. In this paper, we propose Zoom-SVD, a fast and memory efficient method for finding latent factors of time series data in an arbitrary time range. Zoom-SVD incrementally compresses multiple time series data block by block to reduce the space cost in storage phase, and efficiently computes singular value decomposition (SVD) for a given time range query in query phase by carefully stitching stored SVD results. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that Zoom-SVD is up to 15x faster, and requires 15x less space than existing methods. Our case study shows that Zoom-SVD is useful for capturing past time ranges whose patterns are similar to a query time range.Comment: 10 pages, 2018 ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2018

Fast and Accurate Dual-Way Streaming PARAFAC2 for Irregular Tensors -- Algorithm and Application

How can we efficiently and accurately analyze an irregular tensor in a dual-way streaming setting where the sizes of two dimensions of the tensor increase over time? What types of anomalies are there in the dual-way streaming setting? An irregular tensor is a collection of matrices whose column lengths are the same while their row lengths are different. In a dual-way streaming setting, both new rows of existing matrices and new matrices arrive over time. PARAFAC2 decomposition is a crucial tool for analyzing irregular tensors. Although real-time analysis is necessary in the dual-way streaming, static PARAFAC2 decomposition methods fail to efficiently work in this setting since they perform PARAFAC2 decomposition for accumulated tensors whenever new data arrive. Existing streaming PARAFAC2 decomposition methods work in a limited setting and fail to handle new rows of matrices efficiently. In this paper, we propose Dash, an efficient and accurate PARAFAC2 decomposition method working in the dual-way streaming setting. When new data are given, Dash efficiently performs PARAFAC2 decomposition by carefully dividing the terms related to old and new data and avoiding naive computations involved with old data. Furthermore, applying a forgetting factor makes Dash follow recent movements. Extensive experiments show that Dash achieves up to 14.0x faster speed than existing PARAFAC2 decomposition methods for newly arrived data. We also provide discoveries for detecting anomalies in real-world datasets, including Subprime Mortgage Crisis and COVID-19.Comment: 12 pages, accept to The 29th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) 202

T-cell cytotoxicity in the absence of viral protein synthesis in target cells

CYTOTOXIC T cells lyse only those virus infected target cells in vitro which express, in addition to the viral antigen(s), those K or D region products of the major histocompati-bility complex (MHC) which were present during anti-viral sensitisation in vivo. This 'associative recogniton' by cytotoxic T cells could reflect the interaction of two T-cell receptors with specificity for target K or D gene products and independently for the viral antigen, or one receptor with specificity for virally altered K or D region products (see ref. 1 and refs therein). There are various ways that the MHC antigens could be altered, including 'modification from within', where the virus modifies host protein synthesis by interfering with transcription2, translation or post-translational glycosylation; or 'modification from without' where enzymic or chemical alteration of cell membrane proteins are induced by virus activity at the cell surface. In this report we show that inactivated Sendai virus or isolated Sendai virus envelopes can serve to modify a cell and make it a specific target for Sendai-immune T-cell killing, thus excluding the possibility of 'modification from within' in this system

Macroscopic effects of the spectral structure in turbulent flows

Two aspects of turbulent flows have been the subject of extensive, split research efforts: macroscopic properties, such as the frictional drag experienced by a flow past a wall, and the turbulent spectrum. The turbulent spectrum may be said to represent the fabric of a turbulent state; in practice it is a power law of exponent \alpha (the "spectral exponent") that gives the revolving velocity of a turbulent fluctuation (or "eddy") of size s as a function of s. The link, if any, between macroscopic properties and the turbulent spectrum remains missing. Might it be found by contrasting the frictional drag in flows with differing types of spectra? Here we perform unprecedented measurements of the frictional drag in soap-film flows, where the spectral exponent \alpha = 3 and compare the results with the frictional drag in pipe flows, where the spectral exponent \alpha = 5/3. For moderate values of the Reynolds number Re (a measure of the strength of the turbulence), we find that in soap-film flows the frictional drag scales as Re^{-1/2}, whereas in pipe flows the frictional drag scales as Re^{-1/4} . Each of these scalings may be predicted from the attendant value of \alpha by using a new theory, in which the frictional drag is explicitly linked to the turbulent spectrum. Our work indicates that in turbulence, as in continuous phase transitions, macroscopic properties are governed by the spectral structure of the fluctuations.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

S.A.G.NET: Rete GPS dell'Appennino meridionale.

The Matese carbonatic massive occupies the northernmost part of the campanian Apennine while Sannio mounts, located to the East of massive, consists primarily of quaternary deposits and represent the area of Apennine chain degrading to East towards the Bradanica foredeep. The area was affected in historical time by several destructive earthquakes. The first ground deformation studies in this area started from 1990-2000 with the definition of geodetic networks, covering all or part of the massive Matese, with the aim of evaluating seismogenic sources responsible for the seismicity of the area. In 2002, a careful inspection of the existing GPS benchmarks was carried out; those which had a good state of preservation and a good level of reliability were included into a new geodetic Matese network, consisting of 38 3D benchmarks. Several surveys were conducted in 2000, 2002 and 2004,with the aim of defining the strain field, defined by plano-altimetric components. In 2005, an intensive work of gathering and validating available data started, integrating data collected by previous surveys with those collected during the new survey carried out in 2006. This work describes in detail the various stages of implementing the final network S.A.G.NET, whose geometry was also bound to the distribution of the known seismogenic sources present in the area. We also show the first results obtained from data collected from2000 to 2006 and the resulting kinematic model for this area