SAMPLE TEMPERATURE DURING CORROSION REMOVAL BY LOW PRESSURE LOW-TEMPERATURE HYDROGEN RF PLASMA

Abstract. The plasma chemical reduction of corrosion layers from archaeological metallic objects is developing since the late 70 th . Contemporary, it is used in some museums, but the optimal treatment conditions are not fully known yet. Treated object temperature is one of the most critical points because metallographic changes can be initiated by elevated temperatures and thus the unique historical information can be lost. Temperature increases due to the direct inductive heating in the discharge as well as by the interaction of the surface with plasma active particles. In the case of samples prepared in acidic corrosion environment, the maximal temperature of the samples with the incrustation was lower than of samples without incrustation treated under the same conditions because the incrustation layers decrease the direct interaction of plasma active particles with the corrosion layers. In contrary, in the case of brass samples prepared in the ammonia atmosphere, the incrustation had an opposite effect due to intense heating of the sample during the reaction with oxygen presented in the outer corrosion layers. The maximal sample temperature was directly proportional to the linear size (or the third root of weight) of the treated sample

Primary Central Nervous System Burkitt Lymphoma With Non-Immunoglobulin Heavy Chain Translocation in Right Ventricle: Case Report

Primary central nervous system Burkitt lymphoma (PCNSBL) is rare. Few cases of primary central nervous system involvement with sporadic Burkitt lymphoma have been reported and its treatment is now controversial. Here, the authors report a case of a 14-year-old boy suffering from non-immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) translocation PCNSBL. To the authors' knowledge, this is the second case report describing primary Burkitt lymphoma involving cerebral ventricles. After receiving combination treatment with surgery, stereotacticradiosurgery, and a chemotherapy regimen including high-dose methotrexate, the patient had a disease-free survival of 18 months

Heat-Induced Structural Changes Affect OVA-Antigen Processing and Reduce Allergic Response in Mouse Model of Food Allergy

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The egg protein ovalbumin (OVA) belongs to six most frequent food allergens. We investigated how thermal processing influences its ability to induce allergic symptoms and immune responses in mouse model of food allergy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Effect of increased temperature (70°C and 95°C) on OVA secondary structure was characterized by circular dichroism and by the kinetics of pepsin digestion with subsequent HPLC. BALB/c mice were sensitized intraperitoneally and challenged with repeated gavages of OVA or OVA heated to 70°C (h-OVA). Levels of allergen-specific serum antibodies were determined by ELISA (IgA and IgGs) or by β-hexosaminidase release test (IgE). Specific activities of digestive enzymes were determined in brush border membrane vesicles of jejunal enterocytes. Cytokine production and changes in regulatory T cells in mesenteric lymph nodes and spleen were assessed by ELISA and FACS. Heating of OVA to 70°C caused mild irreversible changes in secondary structure compared to boiling to 95°C (b-OVA), but both OVA treatments led to markedly different digestion kinetics and Tregs induction ability in vitro, compared to native OVA. Heating of OVA significantly decreased clinical symptoms (allergic diarrhea) and immune allergic response on the level of IgE, IL-4, IL-5, IL-13. Furthermore, h-OVA induced lower activities of serum mast cell protease-1 and enterocyte brush border membrane alkaline phosphatase as compared to native OVA. On the other hand h-OVA stimulated higher IgG2a in sera and IFN-γ secretion by splenocytes. CONCLUSIONS: Minor irreversible changes in OVA secondary structure caused by thermal processing changes both its digestion and antigenic epitopes formation, which leads to activation of different T cell subpopulations, induces shift towards Th1 response and ultimately reduces its allergenicity

Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic

The Black Death (1347–1352 CE) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.The authors acknowledge the following funding sources: Max Planck Independent Research Group, Palaeo-Science and History Group (A.I., A.M. and C.V.); Estonian Research Council #PRG323, PUT1173 (A.Pos., T.R., N.S. and S.V.); European Research Council #FP7 263735 (A.Bro. and A.Plu.), #MSC 655659 (A.E.); Georgetown Environmental Initiative (T.N.); Latvian Council of Science #LZP-2020/2-0060 (N.S. and N.J.); LLNL-JRNL-820941 (I.T.); NSF award #GSS-1228126 (S.M.); Polish-Swiss Research Programme #013/2010 CLIMPEAT (M.Lam.), #086/2010 CLIMPOL (A.W.); Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education #N N306 275635 (M.K.); Polish National Science Centre #2019/03/X/ST10/00849 (M.Lam.), #2015/17/B/ST10/01656 (M.Lam.), #2015/17/B/ST10/03430 (M.Sło.), #2018/31/B/ST10/02498 (M.Sło.), #N N304 319636 (A.W.); SCIEX #12.286 (K.Mar.); Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness #REDISCO-HAR2017-88035-P (J.A.L.S.); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports #FPU16/00676 (R.L.L.); Swedish Research Council #421-2010-1570 (P.L.), #2018-01272 (F.C.L. and A.S.); Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist Fellowship Dantean Anomaly (M.B.), Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation #RTI2018-101714-B-I00 (F.A.S. and D.A.S.), OP RDE, MEYS project #CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000728 (P.P.)Peer reviewe

The Sine Wave Tuning method: Robust PID controller design in the frequency domain

The paper presents a novel robust PID controller design method for nominal performance specified in terms of maximum overshoot and settling time. The PID controller design provides guaranteed gain margin GM. The parameter of the tuning rules is a suitably chosen point of the plant frequency response obtained by a sine-wave signal with excitation frequency ωn. Then, the designed controller moves this point into the phase crossover with the required gain margin GM. The couple (ωn;GM) is specified with respect to closed-loop performance requirements in terms of ηmax (maximum overshoot) and ts (settling time) according to developed parabolic dependences. The new approach has been verified on a vast batch of benchmark examples; subsequently, the developed algorithm has been extended to robust PID controller design for plants with unstable zero and unstructured uncertainties

The risk element uptake by chamomile (Matricaria recutita (L.) Rauschert) growing in four different soils

German chamomile (Matricaria recutita (L.) Rauschert) belongs to the plants with a high tolerance to toxic elements. The ability of chamomile to accumulate risk elements was tested in a pot experiment in which four soils contaminated by different levels of arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and zinc (Zn), differing in their physicochemical parameters, were used. The element mobility in the soils was affected predominantly by the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the soils. Whereas As, Pb, and Zn were retained in roots, Cd showed good ability to translocate to the shoots, including anthodia, even in extremely Cd-contaminated soil without symptoms of phytotoxicity. The bioaccumulation factor for Cd calculated as the ratio of element content in the plant and the soil was the highest among the investigated elements. Between 5.5 and 35% of the total Cd was released to infusion, and its extractability decreased with increasing Cd content in anthodia. The essential oil composition suggested an alteration of the abundance of the individual compounds. However, no detectable contents of risk elements were found in the oil. Chamomile can be recommended as a suitable alternative crop for risk element-contaminated soils tested within this experiment, but only for production of essential oil

Cisplatin induced gamma-glutamyltransferase up-regulation, hypertrophy and differentiation in astrocytic glioma cells in culture

Gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT) hydrolyses gamma-glutamylated peptides, including glutathione and transports amino acids into the cells. The enzyme is up-regulated in some tumors, especially those with a higher degree of malignancy and resistance to cytostatics. In this study we examined the effects of Cisplatin (1.6 x 10-5M) on the activity of GGT in astrocytic C6 glioma cells in cultures monitored for growth, morphology and differentiation. Initially (24 h), the drug inhibited cell division and later (96 h), it caused apoptotic death of about half of the population. The more resistant and surviving cells became hypertrophic and more differentiated, as indicated by their larger size and higher protein content, including the maturationspecific GFAP. In addition, the activity of GGT was significantly elevated in these cells at 48 h and onwards. At 96 h, the biochemically determined enzyme activity was between 230% and 330% above the controls. Compared to the protein content, the GGT activity started to increase later (48 h) but it grew steeper towards 72-96 h. Similarly, histochemical analysis revealed a manifold increase in the number of GGT+ cells in the population and higher intensity of staining per cell from at 48 h and onwards. The study showed that the transformed astrocytic cells can up-regulate GGT activity as part of an adaptation and/or, survivalenhancing reaction triggered by Cisplatin