Kesan kaedah pemendakan berbeza terhadap ciri fizikokimia dan aktiviti antioksidan alginat daripada Sargassum sp.

Alginat merupakan polisakarida berstruktur anionik yang terdapat dalam matriks alga perang dan lazimnya digunakan sebagai agen penggelan, pengemulsi dan penstabil dalam industri makanan. Objektif utama kajian dijalankan adalah untuk mengenal pasti kesan kaedah pemendakan berbeza terhadap ciri fizikokimia alginat. Dalam kajian ini, alginat telah diekstrak daripada Sargassum sp. dengan menggunakan dua kaedah pemendakan yang berbeza iaitu melalui pemendakan dengan garam kalsium dan asid (sampel A) dan juga pemendakan dengan asid dan etanol (sampel B). Analisis ATR-FTIR telah mengesahkan kehadiran alginat dalam kedua-dua ekstrak Sargassum sp. Hasil pengekstrakan alginat bagi sampel A dan sampel B masing-masing adalah 28.16% dan 18.24%. Ciri fizikokimia yang diuji ialah warna, kelikatan, aktiviti penggelan dan kuasa pemerangkapan radikal bebas DPPH dan dibandingkan dengan alginat komersial (Sigma-Aldrich). Alginat yang terhasil adalah berwarna kuning kecoklatan dan mempunyai kelikatan pseudoplastik dengan penipisan ricih. Aktiviti penggelan kedua-dua sampel (A & B) adalah berbeza secara signifikan, (p<0.05) dengan alginat komersial. Kuasa pemerangkapan radikal bebas DPPH sampel A adalah lebih tinggi berbanding alginat komersial (20.10 ±3.84 & 11.89 ±3.12). Secara keseluruhan, kaedah pemendakan sampel A adalah lebih baik berbanding sampel B disebabkan oleh hasil alginat yang tinggi, aktiviti antioksidan yang tinggi dan ciri fizikokimia yang hampir setanding dengan alginat komersial

Does an educational video for aneuploidy screening improve informed choice among pregnant women? A randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Poor knowledge and the lack of deliberation have been cited as reasons for women making uninformed choices about aneuploidy screening. Adequate pre-test counselling is of particular importance where non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) is being increasingly offered as a primary screening test. DESIGN: Women attending the antenatal clinic with a singleton pregnancy below 14 weeks were randomised to receive routine counselling or the intervention-a 16-min educational video on aneuploidy screening before their consult. The primary outcome, rate of informed choice, was assessed using an adapted multidimensional measure of informed choice questionnaire, where informed choice was defined as good knowledge and value-consistent behaviour. Secondary outcomes included informed choice with deliberation, decisional conflict and anxiety. RESULTS: Two hundred and eighty-six women were recruited. 69.8% of women in the intervention group made an informed choice compared with 53.6% in the control group (Risk Ratio [RR] 1.30, p = 0.014). A significantly higher number of women in the intervention group had good knowledge compared to controls (81% vs. 60.9%; RR 1.33, p = 0.001). Decisional conflict did not differ between groups, but women in the intervention group had higher anxiety scores (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The study intervention was effective in helping women make informed choice. Qualitative studies to determine the reason for increased anxiety are needed. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Trial registry: ClinicalTrials.gov; Identifier: NCT05492981

Kinetic retention of sialic acid and antioxidants in Malaysian edible bird's nest during low-temperature drying

Drying is one of the essential processing steps for dried edible bird’s nest; however, sialic acid and antioxidant can be highly thermosensitive and unstable. Therefore, aim of this study was to determine the degradation kinetics of sialic acid and antioxidants during low-temperature drying at 25–40°C as compared to conventional hot air-drying at 70°C. These compounds’ degradation exhibited first-order kinetics. Sialic acid and antioxidant retentions were 83.9 and 96.6%, respectively, at 25°C, and 78.7 and 91.5% at 40°C, respectively, by low-temperature drying; while, 42.5 and 38.7%, respectively, at 70°C by conventional hot air-drying. Finally, empirical models were significantly fitted to predict sialic acid and antioxidant retention as edible bird’s nest reached a certain level of drying, which may be useful from the processing standpoint and validate the usage of low-temperature drying as a process tool for retention of sialic acid and antioxidant in edible bird’s nest

A comparative quality study and energy saving on intermittent heat pump drying of Malaysian edible bird's nest

This paper aims to study the influence of temperature and relative humidity (RH) during intermittent heat pump drying at 28.6–40.6°C, 16.2–26.7% RH, α = 0.2–1.0, and the comparison was made against fan drying (27°C, 39.7% RH, α = 1.00). It was observed that the effects of temperature and RH on drying rate were significant when moisture content was high. Experimental results showed that intermittent heat pump drying at 28.6°C, 26.7% RH, α = 0.2 of edible bird’s nest greatly reduced effective drying time by 84.2% and color change compared to fan drying, and retained the good energy efficiency

Retention of sialic acid content in Malaysian edible bird's nest by heat pump drying

This paper presents the results of an experimental attempt to improve the drying kinetics for the retention of colour and sialic acid in edible bird’s nest through heat pump drying. Kinetics of hot air drying and heat pump drying were studied by performing various drying trials on edible bird’s nest. Isothermal drying trials were conducted in hot air drying and heat pump drying at a temperature range of 40 °C-90 °C and 28.6 °C-40.6 °C, respectively. Intermittent drying trials were carried out in heat pump drying with two different modes, which are periodic air flow supply and step-up air temperature. Experimental results showed that heat pump drying with low temperature dehumidified air not only enhanced the drying kinetics but also produced a stable final product of edible bird’s nest. Heat pump-dried edible bird’s samples retained a high concentration of sialic acid when an appropriate drying mode was selected

Field Instruction Multiple Data

Fully homomorphic encryption~(FHE) has flourished since it was first constructed by Gentry~(STOC 2009). Single instruction multiple data~(SIMD) gave rise to efficient homomorphic operations on vectors in $(\mathbb{F}_{t^d})^\ell$, for prime $t$. RLWE instantiated with cyclotomic polynomials of the form $X^{2^N}+1$ dominate implementations of FHE due to highly efficient fast Fourier transformations. However, this choice yields very short SIMD plaintext vectors and high degree extension fields, e.g. $\ell 100$ for small primes~($t = 3, 5, \dots$). In this work, we describe a method to encode more data on top of SIMD, \emph{Field Instruction Multiple Data}, applying reverse multiplication friendly embedding~(RMFE) to FHE. With RMFE, length-$k$ $\mathbb{F}_{t}$ vectors can be encoded into $\mathbb{F}_{t^d}$ and multiplied once. The results have to be recoded~(decoded and then re-encoded) before further multiplications can be done. We introduce an FHE-specific technique to additionally evaluate arbitrary linear transformations on encoded vectors for free during the FHE recode operation. On top of that, we present two optimizations to unlock high degree extension fields with small $t$ for homomorphic computation: $r$-fold RMFE, which allows products of up to $2^r$ encoded vectors before recoding, and a three-stage recode process for RMFEs obtained by composing two smaller RMFEs. Experiments were performed to evaluate the effectiveness of FIMD from various RMFEs compared to standard SIMD operations. Overall, we found that FIMD generally had $>2\times$ better (amortized) multiplication times compared to FHE for the same amount of data, while using almost $k/2 \times$ fewer ciphertexts required

Maritime threat response

This report was prepared by Systems Engineering and Analysis Cohort Nine (SEA-9) Maritime Threat Response, (MTR) team members.Background: The 2006 Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Cross-Campus Integrated Study, titled “Maritime Threat Response” involved the combined effort of 7 NPS Systems Engineering students, 7 Singaporean Temasek Defense Systems Institute (TDSI) students, 12 students from the Total Ship Systems Engineering (TSSE) curriculum, and numerous NPS faculty members from different NPS departments. After receiving tasking provided by the Wayne E. Meyer Institute of Systems Engineering at NPS in support of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, the study examined ways to validate intelligence and respond to maritime terrorist attacks against United States coastal harbors and ports. Through assessment of likely harbors and waterways to base the study upon, the San Francisco Bay was selected as a representative test-bed for the integrated study. The NPS Systems Engineering and Analysis Cohort 9 (SEA-9) Maritime Threat Response (MTR) team, in conjunction with the TDSI students, used the Systems Engineering Lifecycle Process (SELP) [shown in Figure ES-1, p. xxiii ] as a systems engineering framework to conduct the multi-disciplinary study. While not actually fabricating any hardware, such a process was well-suited for tailoring to the team’s research efforts and project focus. The SELP was an iterative process used to bound and scope the MTR problem, determine needs, requirements, functions, and to design architecture alternatives to satisfy stakeholder needs and desires. The SoS approach taken [shown in Figure ES-2, p. xxiv ]enabled the team to apply a systematic approach to problem definition, needs analysis, requirements, analysis, functional analysis, and then architecture development and assessment.In the twenty-first century, the threat of asymmetric warfare in the form of terrorism is one of the most likely direct threats to the United States homeland. It has been recognized that perhaps the key element in protecting the continental United States from terrorist threats is obtaining intelligence of impending attacks in advance. Enormous amounts of resources are currently allocated to obtaining and parsing such intelligence. However, it remains a difficult problem to deal with such attacks once intelligence is obtained. In this context, the Maritime Threat Response Project has applied Systems Engineering processes to propose different cost-effective System of Systems (SoS) architecture solutions to surface-based terrorist threats emanating from the maritime domain. The project applied a five-year time horizon to provide near-term solutions to the prospective decision makers and take maximum advantage of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions and emphasize new Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) for existing systems. Results provided insight into requirements for interagency interactions in support of Maritime Security and demonstrated the criticality of timely and accurate intelligence in support of counterterror operations.This report was prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland DefenseApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Jerantinine A induces tumor-specific cell death through modulation of splicing factor 3b subunit 1 (SF3B1)

Precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) splicing is catalyzed by a large ribonucleoprotein complex known as the spliceosome. Numerous studies have indicated that aberrant splicing patterns or mutations in spliceosome components, including the splicing factor 3b subunit 1 (SF3B1), are associated with hallmark cancer phenotypes. This has led to the identification and development of small molecules with spliceosome-modulating activity as potential anticancer agents. Jerantinine A (JA) is a novel indole alkaloid which displays potent anti-proliferative activities against human cancer cell lines by inhibiting tubulin polymerization and inducing G2/M cell cycle arrest. Using a combined pooled-genome wide shRNA library screen and global proteomic profiling, we showed that JA targets the spliceosome by up-regulating SF3B1 and SF3B3 protein in breast cancer cells. Notably, JA induced significant tumor-specific cell death and a significant increase in unspliced pre-mRNAs. In contrast, depletion of endogenous SF3B1 abrogated the apoptotic effects, but not the G2/M cell cycle arrest induced by JA. Further analyses showed that JA stabilizes endogenous SF3B1 protein in breast cancer cells and induced dissociation of the protein from the nucleosome complex. Together, these results demonstrate that JA exerts its antitumor activity by targeting SF3B1 and SF3B3 in addition to its reported targeting of tubulin polymerization