587 research outputs found
ALUMINUMDODECATUNGSTOPHOSPHATE (Al0.9H0.3PW12O40) NANOTUBE AS A SOLID ACID CATALYST ONE-POT PRODUCTION OF BIODIESEL FROM WASTE COOKING OIL
Solid nanocatalyst aluminum dodecatungstophosphate (Al0.9H0.3PW12O40, abbreviated as AlPW) with nanotube structure was synthesized through a natural cellulose fiber template. The AlPW nanotubes, which are highly water-tolerant and acid-tolerant, can be described as green double acids, as they combine both Brønsted and Lewis acid sites. They have been applied as an efficient nanoheterogeneous catalyst for the preparation of biodiesel from waste cooking oil containing 26.89 wt% high free fatty acids (FFAs) and 1% moisture via esterification of FFAs and transesterification of triglycerides in one pot under mild conditions
Metabolic responses of HeLa cells to silica nanoparticles by NMR-based metabolomic analyses
Silica nanoparticles are increasingly used in the biomedical fields due to their excellent solubility, high stability and favorable biocompatibility. However, despite being considered of low genotoxicity, their bio-related adverse effects have attracted particular concern from both the scientific field and the public. In this study, human cervical adenocarcinoma cells (HeLa line) were exposed to 0.01 or 1.0 mg/mL of hydrophilic silica nanoparticles. The H-1 NMR spectroscopy coupled with multivariate statistical analysis were used to characterize the metabolic variations of intracellular metabolites and the compositional changes of the corresponding culture media. At the early stage of silica nanoparticles-exposure, no obvious dose-effect of HeLa cell metabolome was observed, which implied that cellular stress-response regulated the metabolic variations of HeLa cell. Silica nanoparticles induced the increases of lipids including triglyceride, LDL, VLDL and lactate/alanine ratio and the decreases of alanine, ATP, choline, creatine, glycine, glycerol, isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and valine, which involved in membrane modification, catabolism of carbohydrate and protein, and stress-response. Subsequently, a complicated synergistic effect of stress-response and toxicological-effect dominated the biochemical process and metabolic response, which was demonstrated in the reverse changes of some metabolites including acetate, ADP, ATP, choline, creatine, glutamine, glycine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine and valine between 6 and 48 h post-treatment of silica nanoparticles. The toxicological-effects induced by high-dosage silica nanoparticles could be derived from the elevated levels of ATP and ADP, the utilization of glucose and amino acids and the production of metabolic end-products such as glutamate, glycine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, and valine. The results indicated that it is important and necessary to pursue further the physiological responses of silica nanoparticles in animal models and human before their practical use. NMR-based metabolomic analysis helps to understand the biological mechanisms of silica nanoparticles and their metabolic fate, and further, it offers an ideal platform for establishing the bio-safety of existing and new nanomaterials.Silica nanoparticles are increasingly used in the biomedical fields due to their excellent solubility, high stability and favorable biocompatibility. However, despite being considered of low genotoxicity, their bio-related adverse effects have attracted particular concern from both the scientific field and the public. In this study, human cervical adenocarcinoma cells (HeLa line) were exposed to 0.01 or 1.0 mg/mL of hydrophilic silica nanoparticles. The H-1 NMR spectroscopy coupled with multivariate statistical analysis were used to characterize the metabolic variations of intracellular metabolites and the compositional changes of the corresponding culture media. At the early stage of silica nanoparticles-exposure, no obvious dose-effect of HeLa cell metabolome was observed, which implied that cellular stress-response regulated the metabolic variations of HeLa cell. Silica nanoparticles induced the increases of lipids including triglyceride, LDL, VLDL and lactate/alanine ratio and the decreases of alanine, ATP, choline, creatine, glycine, glycerol, isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and valine, which involved in membrane modification, catabolism of carbohydrate and protein, and stress-response. Subsequently, a complicated synergistic effect of stress-response and toxicological-effect dominated the biochemical process and metabolic response, which was demonstrated in the reverse changes of some metabolites including acetate, ADP, ATP, choline, creatine, glutamine, glycine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine and valine between 6 and 48 h post-treatment of silica nanoparticles. The toxicological-effects induced by high-dosage silica nanoparticles could be derived from the elevated levels of ATP and ADP, the utilization of glucose and amino acids and the production of metabolic end-products such as glutamate, glycine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, and valine. The results indicated that it is important and necessary to pursue further the physiological responses of silica nanoparticles in animal models and human before their practical use. NMR-based metabolomic analysis helps to understand the biological mechanisms of silica nanoparticles and their metabolic fate, and further, it offers an ideal platform for establishing the bio-safety of existing and new nanomaterials
Determination of fundamental properties of an M31 globular cluster from main-sequence photometry
M31 globular cluster B379 is the first extragalactic cluster, the age of
which was determined by main-sequence photometry. In this method, the age of a
cluster is obtained by fitting its CMD with stellar evolutionary models.
However, different stellar evolutionary models use different parameters of
stellar evolution, such as range of stellar masses, different opacities and
equations of state, and different recipes, and so on. So, it is interesting to
check whether different stellar evolutionary models can give consistent results
for the same cluster. Brown et al. (2004a) constrained the age of B379 by
comparing its CMD with isochrones of the 2006 VandenBerg models. Using SSP
models of BC03 and its multi-photometry, Ma et al. (2007) independently
determined the age of B379, which is in good agreement with the determination
of Brown et al. (2004a). The BC03 models are calculated based on the Padova
evolutionary tracks. It is necessary to check whether the age of B379 which,
being determined based on the Padova evolutionary tracks, is in agreement with
the determination of Brown et al. (2004a). So, in this paper, we re-determine
its age using isochrones of the Padova stellar evolutionary models. In
addition, the metal abundance, the distance modulus, and the reddening value
for B379 are also determined in this paper. The results obtained in this paper
are consistent with the previous determinations, which including the age
obtained by Brown et al. (2004a). So, this paper confirms the consistence of
the age scale of B379 between the Padova isochrones and the 2006 VandenBerg
isochrones, i.e. the results' comparison between Brown et al. (2004a) and Ma et
al. (2007) is meaningful. The results obtained in this paper are: the
metallicity [M/H]=-0.325, the age Gyr, the reddening value
E(B-V)=0.08, and the distance modulus .Comment: Accepted for Publication in PASP, 7 pages, 1 figure and 1 tabl
A Partially Feasible Distributed SQO Method for Two-block General Linearly Constrained Smooth Optimization
This paper discusses a class of two-block smooth large-scale optimization
problems with both linear equality and linear inequality constraints, which
have a wide range of applications, such as economic power dispatch, data
mining, signal processing, etc.Our goal is to develop a novel partially
feasible distributed (PFD) sequential quadratic optimization (SQO) method
(PFD-SQO method) for this kind of problems. The design of the method is based
on the ideas of SQO method and augmented Lagrangian Jacobian splitting scheme
as well as feasible direction method,which decomposes the quadratic
optimization (QO) subproblem into two small-scale QOs that can be solved
independently and parallelly. A novel disturbance contraction term that can be
suitably adjusted is introduced into the inequality constraints so that the
feasible step size along the search direction can be increased to 1. The new
iteration points are generated by the Armijo line search and the partially
augmented Lagrangian function that only contains equality constraints as the
merit function. The iteration points always satisfy all the inequality
constraints of the problem. The theoretical properties, such as global
convergence, iterative complexity, superlinear and quadratic rates of
convergence of the proposed PFD-SQO method are analyzed under appropriate
assumptions, respectively. Finally, the numerical effectiveness of the method
is tested on a class of academic examples and an economic power dispatch
problem, which shows that the proposed method is quite promising
Identificación de las poblaciones de pota saltadora (Ommastrephes bartramii) en el Pacífico Norte a partir de la morfología de estatolitos y mandíbulas
Cephalopods are becoming increasingly important in global fisheries as a result of increased landings and are playing an important ecological role in the trophic dynamics of marine ecosystems. Ommastrephes bartramii is a pelagic cephalopod species with two widely distributed spawning stocks in the North Pacific Ocean. It is also a major fishing target for the Chinese squid jigging fleets. Successful separation of these two spawning stocks is critical to fisheries management, but tends to be challenging because of their similar morphology. In this study we attempted to identify the stocks based on discriminant analyses of 9 morphological variables of statolith and 12 variables of beaks measured for O. bartramii samples in the North Pacific. A significant difference was revealed in the standardized beak and statolith variables between sexes in the northeast (NE) stock (P 0.05), whereas the NW stock showed no significant difference in either sex for the statolith variables (P > 0.05). The same sex also revealed different patterns with different hard structures between the two stocks. In t-tests females showed significant differences between stocks in statolith morphology (P 0.05), but showed no difference between cohorts (P > 0.05) in beak morphometric variables. With the combination of two standardized hard parts, correct classification of stepwise discriminant analysis (SDA) was raised by nearly 20% compared with using only one structure, although overlaps of the NW stock were still found in the scatter-plots. It is concluded that adding more appropriate hard structure variables will effectively increase the success of separating geographic stocks by the SDA method.Los cefalópodos son cada vez más importantes en las pesquerías mundiales como consecuencia de su volumen de capturas, jugando un importante rol en la red trófica de los ecosistemas marinos. Ommastrephes bartramii es una especie de cefalópodo pelágico con dos poblaciones de desove de amplia distribución en el Pacífico Norte. Asímismo, es un importante objetivo de las flotas pesqueras chinas de potera automática. La adecuada identificación de sus dos poblaciones de desove es fundamental para la gestión de esta pesquería, siendo una difícil tarea debido a su morfología similar. En este estudio se pretende identificar los stocks en función de los análisis discriminantes de nueve variables morfológicas del estatolito y doce variables de las mandíbulas, obtenidas en muestras de O. bartramii del Pacífico Norte. Se hallaron diferencias significativas entre sexos en las variables mandíbula y estatolito para el stock del noreste (stock NE) (P 0.05), las medidas del estatolito no mostraron diferencias significativas en ambos sexos para el stock NO (P > 0.05). Para cada sexo, también se hallaron diferencias entre las estructuras duras de ambos stocks. Los tests T-Student mostraron diferencias entre las hembras de ambos stocks en relación a la morfología del estatolito (P 0.05), no observándose diferencias entre las cohortes de machos (P > 0.05) en las variables morfométricas de la mandíbula entre los dos stocks. En comparación con el uso de una sola estructura dura, el estudio conjunto de ambas estructuras mediante análisis discriminante incrementó en cerca de un 20% la correcta asignación a los diferentes stocks, a pesar de algunos solapamientos observados en los diagramas de dispersión del stock NO. Se puede considerar que el empleo adicional de estructuras duras adecuadas aumentará la probabilidad de identificar los stocks mediante análisis discriminante
Heterologous expression, biochemical characterization, and overproduction of alkaline α-amylase from Bacillus alcalophilus in Bacillus subtilis
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Alkaline α-amylases have potential applications for hydrolyzing starch under high pH conditions in the starch and textile industries and as ingredients in detergents for automatic dishwashers and laundries. While the alkaline α-amylase gains increased industrial interest, the yield of alkaline α-amylases from wild-type microbes is low, and the combination of genetic engineering and process optimization is necessary to achieve the overproduction of alkaline α-amylase.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The alkaline α-amylase gene from <it>Bacillus alcalophilus </it>JN21 (CCTCC NO. M 2011229) was cloned and expressed in <it>Bacillus subtilis </it>strain WB600 with vector pMA5. The recombinant alkaline α-amylase was stable at pH from 7.0 to 11.0 and temperature below 40°C. The optimum pH and temperature of alkaline α-amylase was 9.0 and 50°C, respectively. Using soluble starch as the substrate, the <it>K</it><sub>m </sub>and <it>V</it><sub>max </sub>of alkaline α-amylase were 9.64 g/L and 0.80 g/(L·min), respectively. The effects of medium compositions (starch, peptone, and soybean meal) and temperature on the recombinant production of alkaline α-amylase in <it>B. subtilis </it>were investigated. Under the optimal conditions (starch concentration 0.6% (w/v), peptone concentration 1.45% (w/v), soybean meal concentration 1.3% (w/v), and temperature 37°C), the highest yield of alkaline α-amylase reached 415 U/mL. The yield of alkaline α-amylase in a 3-L fermentor reached 441 U/mL, which was 79 times that of native alkaline α-amylase from <it>B. alcalophilus </it>JN21.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This is the first report concerning the heterologous expression of alkaline α-amylase in <it>B. subtilis</it>, and the obtained results make it feasible to achieve the industrial production of alkaline α-amylase with the recombinant <it>B. subtilis</it>.</p
Microbial production of hyaluronic acid: current state, challenges, and perspectives
Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a natural and linear polymer composed of repeating disaccharide units of β-1, 3-N-acetyl glucosamine and β-1, 4-glucuronic acid with a molecular weight up to 6 million Daltons. With excellent viscoelasticity, high moisture retention capacity, and high biocompatibility, HA finds a wide-range of applications in medicine, cosmetics, and nutraceuticals
Spectral Energy Distributions of M81 Globular Clusters in BATC Multicolor Survey
In this paper, we give the spectral energy distributions of 42 M81 globular
clusters in 13 intermediate-band filters from 4000 to 10000 A, using the CCD
images of M81 observed as part of the BATC multicolor survey of the Sky. The
BATC multicolor filter system is specifically designed to exclude most of the
bright and variable night-sky emission lines including the OH forest. Hence, it
can present accurate SEDs of the observed objects. These spectral energy
distributions are low-resolution spectra, and can reflect the stellar
populations of the globular clusters. This paper confirms the conclusions of
Schroder et al. that, M81 contains clusters as young as a few Gyrs, which also
were observed in both M31 and M33Comment: Accepted for Publication in PASP, 10 pages, 3 figure
Incidence of biliary atresia associated congenital malformations: A retrospective multicenter study in China
SummaryBackgroundSome patients with biliary atresia (BA) have associated anomalies. Our study aimed to investigate the incidence of BA-associated malformations in mainland China, and compare the results with those reported in the Western literature.MethodsClinical data were collected retrospectively from five medical centers in mainland China. BA patients were diagnosed and confirmed by laparotomy with intraoperative cholangiography and liver biopsy. Cases were divided into isolated type BA and BA with associated anomalies, including polysplenia, situs inversus, intestinal malrotation, and cardiovascular anomalies.ResultsA total of 851 BA patients were recruited from Tianjin, Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Patients were grouped as follows: Type I, 13 cases (1.5%); Type II, five cases (0.6%); Type III, 833 cases (97.9%). Forty-two (4.94%) patients had 54 associated congenital abnormalities. The intra-abdominal anomalies included polysplenia (n = 4, 1 fusion between liver and spleen), situs inversus (n = 2), and intestinal malrotation (n = 3). The cardiovascular anomalies included atrial septal defect and ventricular septal defect (n = 29), patent foramen ovale (n = 1), patent ductus arteriosus (n = 4), and other cardiac malformations (n = 3, including coronary sinus dilation, left superior vena cava, Tetralogy of Fallot).ConclusionOur data showed that spleen anomaly is not as common as reported in the Western literature. The difference may suggests different genetic and environmental risk factors for BA
- …