Apolipoprotein AIV gene variant S347 is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease and lower plasma apolipoprotein AIV levels

The impact of common variants in the apolipoprotein gene cluster (APOC3-A4-A5) on prospective coronary heart disease (CHD) risk was examined in healthy UK men. Of the 2808 men followed over 9 years, 187 had a clinically defined CHD event. Examination of 9 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in this group revealed that homozygotes for APOA4 S347 had significantly increased risk of CHD [hazard ratio (HR) of 2.07 (95%CI 1.04 to 4.12)], whereas men homozygous for APOC3 1100T were protected [HR 0.28 (95%CI 0.09 to 0.87)]. In stepwise multiple regression analysis, after entering all the variants and adjusting for established risk factors APOA4 T347S alone remained in the model. Using all nine SNPs, the highest risk-estimate haplotypes carried APOA4 S347 and rare alleles of the two flanking intergenic markers. The protective effect of APOC3 1100T could be explained by negative linkage disequilibrium with these alleles. To determine the association of APOA4 T347S with apoAIV levels, the relationship was examined in 1600 healthy young European men and women. S347 homozygotes had significantly lower apoAIV plasma levels (13.64±0.59 mg/dL) compared with carriers of the T347 allele (14.90±0.12 mg/dL) (P=0.035). These results demonstrate that genetic variation in and around APOA4, independent of the effects of triglyceride, is associated with risk of CHD and apoAIV levels, supporting an antiatherogenic role for apoAIV

Effects of Different Substrates on the Growth and Nutritional Composition of Pleurotus ostreatus: A Review

Mushrooms are a popular food source as they are highly nutritious and flavorful with a high content of proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Mushrooms could be an alternative solution to the world’s food crisis as they are inexpensive to grow on different types of substrates including waste materials. Pleurotus ostreatus, frequently known as oyster mushrooms, are the second most cultivated mushroom in the world. This species is known for its high protein content and easy cultivation. Oyster mushrooms have the potential to produce protein-rich biomass when grown on various substrates. There is a need to identify substrates that are cost-effective for the commercial production of nutritious oyster mushrooms as the substrates used currently are either costly or inadequate to produce oyster mushrooms in the required quantity or quality. Thus, the effects of 6 different lignocellulosic substrates on the growth and nutritional composition of P. ostreatus were reviewed and analyzed in this article. The substrates included in this review were wheat straw, sugarcane bagasse, corncob, softwood sawdust, hardwood sawdust, and general sawdust. Based on the analyzed data, sugarcane bagasse was concluded as the most suitable substrate to grow P. ostreatus. These substrates contain a high amount of nutrients and are also likely to produce a significantly high yield of oyster mushrooms in addition to enhancing the nutritional quality of the mushroom. However, these findings must be evaluated and confirmed through further research in this field

Antimicrobial and anti-biofilm activities of plant extracts against Pseudomonas aeruginosa – a review

Antimicrobial resistance among bacterial pathogens, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is a global problem that has led to research on naturally occurring compounds as an alternative source of antibacterial and anti-biofilm agents. This review focuses on determining plant extracts' antimicrobial and anti-biofilm activities against P. aeruginosa, an opportunistic pathogen contributing to microbial and biofilm-associated infections in humans. Medicinal plants are being widely researched as they are rich sources of phytochemicals, including flavonoids, alkaloids, tannins and terpenoids. These phytochemicals have been well known for their antibacterial activity, which contributes to the effectiveness of certain plants, including Punica granatum and Triumfetta welwitschia, against P. aeruginosa. Hypericum perforatum and Berginia ciliata contains phytochemicals that directly inhibit the quorum sensing mechanism, inhibiting the direct cell-to-cell communication, thereby preventing or reducing biofilm formation by P. aeruginosa. Plant extracts also inhibit bacterial growth and should be considered an alternative to antibiotics. Furthermore, plant extracts can be used with antibiotics for better efficacy against P. aeruginosa. However, more research must be carried out to select plants with a broad spectrum of activity against not only P. aeruginosa infections but other gram-negative bacteria in general. It would be economically viable to develop as a therapeutic drug. This would align with the third United Nations sustainable development goals on good health and well-being and is a significant step forward in the battle against antibiotic resistance

A strong pair correlation bound implies the CLT for Sinai Billiards

For Dynamical Systems, a strong bound on multiple correlations implies the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) [ChMa]. In Chernov's paper [Ch2], such a bound is derived for dynamically Holder continuous observables of dispersing Billiards. Here we weaken the regularity assumption and subsequently show that the bound on multiple correlations follows directly from the bound on pair correlations. Thus, a strong bound on pair correlations alone implies the CLT, for a wider class of observables. The result is extended to Anosov diffeomorphisms in any dimension.Comment: 13 page

Filamented Light (FLight) Biofabrication of Highly Aligned Tissue-Engineered Constructs.

Cell-laden hydrogels used in tissue engineering generally lack sufficient 3D topographical guidance for cells to mature into aligned tissues. A new strategy called filamented light (FLight) biofabrication rapidly creates hydrogels composed of unidirectional microfilament networks, with diameters on the length scale of single cells. Due to optical modulation instability, a light beam is divided optically into FLight beams. Local polymerization of a photoactive resin is triggered, leading to local increase in refractive index, which itself creates self-focusing waveguides and further polymerization of photoresin into long hydrogel microfilaments. Diameter and spacing of the microfilaments can be tuned from 2 to 30 µm by changing the coherence length of the light beam. Microfilaments show outstanding cell instructive properties with fibroblasts, tenocytes, endothelial cells, and myoblasts, influencing cell alignment, nuclear deformation, and extracellular matrix deposition. FLight is compatible with multiple types of photoresins and allows for biofabrication of centimeter-scale hydrogel constructs with excellent cell viability within seconds (<10 s per construct). Multidirectional microfilaments are achievable within a single hydrogel construct by changing the direction of FLight projection, and complex multimaterial/multicellular tissue-engineered constructs are possible by sequentially exchanging the cell-laden photoresin. FLight offers a transformational approach to developing anisotropic tissues using photo-crosslinkable biomaterials

Phylogeny of Amorphophallus (Araceae) on Borneo with notes on the floral biology of three species

This study was undertaken on Amorphophallus of Borneo to address two questions: (1) to determine the phylogenetic relations among taxa of Bornean Amorphophallus and (2) to investigate the floral biology and floral visitors of three Amorphophallus species. Phylogenetic analyses were carried out by using one plastid region: matK, and two nuclear regions: ITS and PhyC, with a total of 98 accessions representing 56 taxa of Amorphophallus. Floral biology of three Amorphophallus species (A. hewittii, A. eburneus, and A. julaihii) were investigated. Bornean Amorphophallus is separated into three groups within subgen. Amorphophallus: A. angulatus and A. pendulus of the Paeoniifolius-Manta clade, A. ranchanensis as sister taxon to clade A, clade Pusillus II, and clade B. The anthesis of A. hewittii and A. eburneus lasted for ca. 49 hours and ca. 64 hours respectively. The pistillate anthesis was much longer in A. hewitti (36 hours) than A. eburneus (24 hours) but the staminate anthesis was much shorter in A. hewittii (13 hours) than A. eburneus (40 hours). Floral visitors to A. hewittii are different to those visiting A. eburneus and A. julaihii; the latter two species attract less visitors and belong to clade A where hitherto no species has been investigated

Text Line Segmentation of Historical Documents: a Survey

There is a huge amount of historical documents in libraries and in various National Archives that have not been exploited electronically. Although automatic reading of complete pages remains, in most cases, a long-term objective, tasks such as word spotting, text/image alignment, authentication and extraction of specific fields are in use today. For all these tasks, a major step is document segmentation into text lines. Because of the low quality and the complexity of these documents (background noise, artifacts due to aging, interfering lines),automatic text line segmentation remains an open research field. The objective of this paper is to present a survey of existing methods, developed during the last decade, and dedicated to documents of historical interest.Comment: 25 pages, submitted version, To appear in International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition, On line version available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/k2813176280456k3

Single- and multi-walled carbon nanotubes viewed as elastic tubes with Young's moduli dependent on layer number

The complete energy expression of a deformed single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) is derived in the continuum limit from the local density approximation model proposed by Lenosky {\it et al.} \lbrack Nature (London) {\bf 355}, 333 (1992)\rbrack and shows to be content with the classic shell theory by which the Young's modulus, the Poisson ratio and the effective wall thickness of SWNTs are obtained as $Y=4.70$TPa, $\nu=0.34$, $h=0.75{\rm \AA}$, respectively. The elasticity of a multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWNT) is investigated as the combination of the above SWNTs of layer distance $d=3.4 {\rm \AA}$ and the Young's modulus of the MWNT is found to be an apparent function of the number of layers, $N$, varying from 4.70TPa to 1.04TPa for N=1 to $\infty$.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Approximate Solution of the effective mass Klein-Gordon Equation for the Hulthen Potential with any Angular Momentum

The radial part of the effective mass Klein-Gordon equation for the Hulthen potential is solved by making an approximation to the centrifugal potential. The Nikiforov-Uvarov method is used in the calculations. Energy spectra and the corresponding eigenfunctions are computed. Results are also given for the case of constant mass.Comment: 12 page