The influence of cooking methods on the antioxidant status of Tetrapleura tetrapetra

Africa is blessed with a rich array of local spices such as Tetrapleura tetraptera. The culinary uses of T. tetraptera are many. The seed of Uhiokirihio is majorly used in the preparation of ‘Banga’ (palm fruit) soup, meat pepper soup and other types of soup in the southern part of Nigeria. It is also commonly used in soups of nursing mothers to prevent post-partum contractions. The rich antioxidant activity of this spice has been reported. There is, however, a dearth of information on the effect of different cooking methods on its antioxidant activity. This study, therefore, evaluated the effect of cooking methods on the antioxidant status of the seeds of Tetrapleura tetraptera. The raw seeds of the spice were both toasted and boiled separately for 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 minutes, respectively. The samples were analysed for anti-nutrients, vitamin contents and antioxidant properties. Anti-nutrient evaluation of the ethanolic (80% ethanol) extract revealed that both toasting and boiling time caused significant (p<0.05) variations in all the anti-nutrients studied. Total phenolics increased (p<0.05) from 20.80mg/100g to 28.53mg/100g for toasted samples and from 20.80mg/100g to 30.51mg/100g for boiled samples, respectively. Both cooking methods caused significant reduction in the phytate and tannin levels of the seeds. At the end of the cooking processes, tannin level was reduced by 62.07 % for boiling and 75.68 % for toasting treatment. The cooking methods led to significant reduction in both the vitamin C and β- carotene levels of the samples. Boiling for 20 min caused a 91.98% decrease in vitamin c and a 59.52 % decrease in β-carotene while toasting reduced these nutrients by 86.73 % and 39.88 %, respectively. Antioxidant activity as measured by DPPH scavenging activity and FRAP showed a significant rise with increase in cooking time. The DPPH activity of the toasted samples increased from 22.06μg/ml to 27.64 μg/ml while the boiled samples increased from 22.06μg/ml to 43.26μg/ml. It was observed that boiling led to a greater increase in total phenolics and antioxidant activity than toasting. It could, therefore, be concluded that cooking T. tetraptera seeds would improve its antioxidant properties

Procedures Manual (LAPM)

LPPs are Local Programs Procedures. These documents are used for the rapid deployment of new procedures and policies between updates of Local Assistance manuals, guidelines and programs. They are numbered according to calendar year and order in which released. This is the 7 th LPP issued in 2004; hence, it is LPP 04-07. PURPOSE The purpose of this LPP is to: • Cite the appropriate authority for EEO Contractor Compliance pursuant to the FHWA Order 4710.8, dated February 1, 1999; as well as to provide standard “EEO Contractor Compliance ” review report procedures based on the appropriate authority. • In addition, this LPP makes corrections to LPP 04-01 Chapter 15, “Advertise and Awar

On Heavy-Quark Free Energies, Entropies, Polyakov Loop, and AdS/QCD

In this paper we explore some of the features of a heavy quark-antiquark pair at finite temperature using a five-dimensional framework nowadays known as AdS/QCD. We shall show that the resulting behavior is consistent with our qualitative expectations of thermal gauge theory. Some of the results are in good agreement with the lattice data that provides additional evidence for the validity of the proposed model.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; v2: comments added, misprints correcte

Family Unification, Exotic States and Light Magnetic Monopoles

Models with fermions in bifundamental representations can lead naturally to family unification as opposed to family replication. Such models typically predict (exotic) color singlet states with fractional electric charge, and magnetic monopoles with multiple Dirac charge. The exotics may be at the TeV scale, and relatively light magnetic monopoles (greater than about 10^7 GeV) can be present in the galaxy with abundance near the Parker bound. We focus on three family SU(4)XSU(3)XSU(3) models.Comment: 37 page

Novel cyclic di-GMP effectors of the YajQ protein family control bacterial virulence

Bis-(3 ',5 ') cyclic di-guanylate (cyclic di-GMP) is a key bacterial second messenger that is implicated in the regulation of many critical processes that include motility, biofilm formation and virulence. Cyclic di-GMP influences diverse functions through interaction with a range of effectors. Our knowledge of these effectors and their different regulatory actions is far from complete, however. Here we have used an affinity pull-down assay using cyclic di-GMP-coupled magnetic beads to identify cyclic di-GMP binding proteins in the plant pathogen Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris (Xcc). This analysis identified XC_3703, a protein of the YajQ family, as a potential cyclic di-GMP receptor. Isothermal titration calorimetry showed that the purified XC_3703 protein bound cyclic di-GMP with a high affinity (K-d similar to 2 mu M). Mutation of XC_3703 led to reduced virulence of Xcc to plants and alteration in biofilm formation. Yeast two-hybrid and far-western analyses showed that XC_3703 was able to interact with XC_2801, a transcription factor of the LysR family. Mutation of XC_2801 and XC_3703 had partially overlapping effects on the transcriptome of Xcc, and both affected virulence. Electromobility shift assays showed that XC_3703 positively affected the binding of XC_2801 to the promoters of target virulence genes, an effect that was reversed by cyclic di-GMP. Genetic and functional analysis of YajQ family members from the human pathogens Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia showed that they also specifically bound cyclic di-GMP and contributed to virulence in model systems. The findings thus identify a new class of cyclic di-GMP effector that regulates bacterial virulence

Large and Almost Maximal Neutrino Mixing within the Type II See-Saw Mechanism

Within the type II see-saw mechanism the light neutrino mass matrix is given by a sum of a direct (or triplet) mass term and the conventional (type I) see-saw term. Both versions of the see-saw mechanism explain naturally small neutrino masses, but the type II scenario offers interesting additional possibilities to explain large or almost maximal or vanishing mixings which are discussed in this paper. We first introduce ``type II enhancement'' of neutrino mixing, where moderate cancellations between the two terms can lead to large neutrino mixing even if all individual mass matrices and terms generate small mixing. However, nearly maximal or vanishing mixings are not naturally explained in this way, unless there is a certain initial structure (symmetry) which enforces certain elements of the matrices to be identical or related in a special way. We therefore assume that the leading structure of the neutrino mass matrix is the triplet term and corresponds to zero U_{e3} and maximal theta_{23}. Small but necessary corrections are generated by the conventional see-saw term. Then we assume that one of the two terms corresponds to an extreme mixing scenario, such as bimaximal or tri-bimaximal mixing. Deviations from this scheme are introduced by the second term. One can mimic Quark-Lepton Complementarity in this way. Finally, we note that the neutrino mass matrix for tri-bimaximal mixing can be -- depending on the mass hierarchy -- written as a sum of two terms with simple structure. Their origin could be the two terms of type II see-saw.Comment: 25 pages. Comments and references added, to appear in JHE

Noncommutative Dipole Field Theories And Unitarity

We extend the argument of Gomis and Mehen for violation of unitarity in field theories with space-time noncommutativity to dipole field theories. In dipole field theories with a timelike dipole vector, we present 1-loop amplitudes that violate the optical theorem. A quantum mechanical system with nonlocal potential of finite extent in time also shows violation of unitarity.Comment: typos corrected, more details added in Sec 5, version to appear in JHE

Probing the fuzzy sphere regularisation in simulations of the 3d \lambda \phi^4 model

We regularise the 3d \lambda \phi^4 model by discretising the Euclidean time and representing the spatial part on a fuzzy sphere. The latter involves a truncated expansion of the field in spherical harmonics. This yields a numerically tractable formulation, which constitutes an unconventional alternative to the lattice. In contrast to the 2d version, the radius R plays an independent r\^{o}le. We explore the phase diagram in terms of R and the cutoff, as well as the parameters m^2 and \lambda. Thus we identify the phases of disorder, uniform order and non-uniform order. We compare the result to the phase diagrams of the 3d model on a non-commutative torus, and of the 2d model on a fuzzy sphere. Our data at strong coupling reproduce accurately the behaviour of a matrix chain, which corresponds to the c=1-model in string theory. This observation enables a conjecture about the thermodynamic limit.Comment: 31 pages, 15 figure

Bacterial genotoxins induce T cell senescence

Several types of pathogenic bacteria produce genotoxins that induce DNA damage in host cells. Accumulating evidence suggests that a central function of these genotoxins is to dysregulate the host's immune response, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. To address this issue, we investigated the effects of the most widely expressed bacterial genotoxin, the cytolethal distending toxin (CDT), on T cells—the key mediators of adaptive immunity. We show that CDT induces premature senescence in activated CD4 T cells in vitro and provide evidence suggesting that infection with genotoxin-producing bacteria promotes T cell senescence in vivo. Moreover, we demonstrate that genotoxin-induced senescent CD4 T cells assume a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) which, at least partly, is orchestrated by the ATM-p38 signaling axis. These findings provide insight into the immunomodulatory properties of bacterial genotoxins and uncover a putative link between bacterial infections and T cell senescence