Increasing Fiber and Protein Contents of Baked Products Using Local Produce

Consumers are increasingly opting for healthier food products, and two current trends are high fiber and high protein options. Using locally available produce or their manufacturing by-products may lower ingredient cost when making these products. Durian rind, which is generally thrown away, comprises 60% of a durian fruit and has about 27% crude fiber. Mung bean has about 23% protein and is relatively inexpensive. In this study, durian rind was cleaned, dried, ground, and added to muffins while mung beans were oven-roasted, ground, and added to crackers. Quality and acceptability of the products were evaluated. Among the ratios tested, the most preferred formulation for muffins had 10% durian rind powder, while that of crackers had 50% mung bean flour. Consumer acceptability of the products was tested using a 9-point hedonic scale. The control and fiber-fortified muffins had similar mean consumer acceptability scores of 8 (liked highly) for color, texture, taste, and overall acceptability. Crackers with mung bean flour had significantly higher mean scores than the control (7.5–8.0 vs. 6.8–7.4) for appearance, texture, flavor, and overall acceptability. The fiber-fortified muffin had 6.26% crude fiber while the mung bean crackers had 9.98% crude protein. The addition of durian rind powder and mung bean flour to baked products may adversely affect some quality parameters like texture, but there are ways to lessen these effects. The improvement in nutrition profile of the products shows the market potential of durian rind powder and mung bean flour

Communication networks, externalities and the price of information

Information goods (or information for short) play an essential role in modern economies. We consider a trading framework where information has some idiosyncratic value for each consumer, exerts externalities and can be freely replicated and transmitted through links in a communication network. Prices paid for information are determined via the (asymmetric) Nash Bargaining Solution with endogenous disagreement points. This decentralized approach leads to unique prices and payoffs in any exogenous network. We use these payoffs to find connection structures that emerge under different externality regimes in pre-trade network formation stage. An application to citation graphs results in eigenvector-like measures of intellectual influence

Transient and intensive pharmacological immunosuppression fails to improve AAV-based liver gene transfer in non-human primates

BACKGROUND: Adeno-associated vectors (rAAV) have been used to attain long-term liver gene expression. In humans, the cellular immune response poses a serious obstacle for transgene persistence while neutralizing humoral immunity curtails re-administration. Porphobilinogen deaminase (PBGD) haploinsufficiency (acute intermittent porphyria) benefits from liver gene transfer in mouse models and clinical trials are about to begin. In this study, we sought to study in non-human primates the feasibility of repeated gene-transfer with intravenous administration of rAAV5 vectors under the effects of an intensive immunosuppressive regimen and to analyze its ability to circumvent T-cell immunity and thereby prolong transgene expression. METHODS: Three female Macaca fascicularis were intravenously injected with 1x1013 genome copies/kg of rAAV5 encoding the human PBGD. Mycophenolate mofetil (MMF), anti-thymocyte immunoglobulin, methylprednisolone, tacrolimus and rituximab were given in combination during 12 weeks to block T- and B-cell mediated adaptive immune responses in two macaques. Immunodeficient and immunocompetent mice were intravenously injected with 5x1012 genome copies/kg of rAAV5-encoding luciferase protein. Forty days later MMF, tacrolimus and rituximab were daily administrated to ascertain whether the immunosuppressants or their metabolites could interfere with transgene expression. RESULTS: Macaques given a rAAV5 vector encoding human PBGD developed cellular and humoral immunity against viral capsids but not towards the transgene. Anti-AAV humoral responses were attenuated during 12 weeks but intensely rebounded following cessation of the immunosuppressants. Accordingly, subsequent gene transfer with a rAAV5 vector encoding green fluorescent protein was impossible. One macaque showed enhanced PBGD expression 25 weeks after rAAV5-pbgd administration but overexpression had not been detected while the animal was under immunosuppression. As a potential explanation, MMF decreases transgene expression in mouse livers that had been successfully transduced by a rAAV5 several weeks before MMF onset. Such a silencing effect was independent of AAV complementary strand synthesis and requires an adaptive immune system. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that our transient and intensive pharmacological immunosuppression fails to improve AAV5-based liver gene transfer in non-human primates. The reasons include an incomplete restraint of humoral immune responses to viral capsids that interfere with repeated gene transfer in addition to an intriguing MMF-dependent drug-mediated interference with liver transgene expression

The diastereoselective Meth-Cohn epoxidation of camphor-derived vinyl sulfones

Some camphor-derived vinyl sulfones bearing oxygen functionality at the allylic position have been synthesized and their nucleophilic epoxidation reactions under Meth-Cohn conditions have been explored. The γ-oxygenated camphor-derived vinyl sulfones underwent mildly diastereoselective nucleophilic epoxidation reactions, affording the derived sulfonyloxiranes in up to 5.8:1 dr. The observed diastereoselectivities were sensitive to the reaction conditions employed. In contrast, no stereoselectivity was observed in the nucleophilic epoxidation of the corresponding γ-oxygenated isobornyl vinyl sulfone. A tentative mechanism has been proposed to explain the origins of the diastereoselectivit

The "Ram Effect": A "Non-Classical" Mechanism for Inducing LH Surges in Sheep

During spring sheep do not normally ovulate but exposure to a ram can induce ovulation. In some ewes an LH surge is induced immediately after exposure to a ram thus raising questions about the control of this precocious LH surge. Our first aim was to determine the plasma concentrations of oestradiol (E2) E2 in anoestrous ewes before and after the "ram effect" in ewes that had a "precocious" LH surge (starting within 6 hours), a "normal" surge (between 6 and 28h) and "late» surge (not detected by 56h). In another experiment we tested if a small increase in circulating E2 could induce an LH surge in anoestrus ewes. The concentration of E2 significantly was not different at the time of ram introduction among ewes with the three types of LH surge. "Precocious" LH surges were not preceded by a large increase in E2 unlike "normal" surges and small elevations of circulating E2 alone were unable to induce LH surges. These results show that the "precocious" LH surge was not the result of E2 positive feedback. Our second aim was to test if noradrenaline (NA) is involved in the LH response to the "ram effect". Using double labelling for Fos and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) we showed that exposure of anoestrous ewes to a ram induced a higher density of cells positive for both in the A1 nucleus and the Locus Coeruleus complex compared to unstimulated controls. Finally, the administration by retrodialysis into the preoptic area, of NA increased the proportion of ewes with an LH response to ram odor whereas treatment with the α1 antagonist Prazosin decreased the LH pulse frequency and amplitude induced by a sexually active ram. Collectively these results suggest that in anoestrous ewes NA is involved in ram-induced LH secretion as observed in other induced ovulators

Employee share ownership in a unionised duopoly

Profit sharing schemes have been analysed assuming Cournot competition and decentralised wage negotiations, and it has been found that firms share profits in equilibrium. This paper analyses a different remuneration system: employee share ownership. We find that whether firms choose to share ownership or not depends on both the type of competition in the product market and the way in which workers organise to negotiate wages. If wage setting is decentralised, under duopolistic Cournot competition both firms share ownership. If wage setting is centralised, only one firm shares ownership if the degree to which goods are substitutes takes an intermediate value; otherwise, the two firms share ownership. In this case, if the union sets the same wage for all workers neither firm shares ownership. Therefore, centralised wage setting discourages share ownership. Fi- nally, under Bertrand competition neither firm shares ownership regardless of how workers are organised to negotiate wages.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Environmental Response and Genomic Regions Correlated with Rice Root Growth and Yield under Drought in the OryzaSNP Panel across Multiple Study Systems

Funding: This research was funded by the Generation Challenge Program (GCP) project G3008.06, “Targeting Drought-Avoidance Root Traits to Enhance Rice Productivity under Water-Limited Environments". The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Isocitrate Dehydrogenase of Helicobacter pylori Potentially Induces Humoral Immune Response in Subjects with Peptic Ulcer Disease and Gastritis

Background. H. pylori causes gastritis and peptic ulcers and is a risk factor for the development of gastric carcinoma. Many of the proteins such as urease, porins, flagellins and toxins such as lipo-polysaccharides have been identified as potential virulence factors which induce proinflammatory reaction. We report immunogenic potentials of isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICD), an important house keeping protein of H. pylori. Methodology/Principal Findings. Amino acid sequences of H. pylori ICD were subjected to in silico analysis for regions with predictably high antigenic indexes. Also, computational modelling of the H. pylori ICD as juxtaposed to the E. coli ICD was carried out to determine levels of structure similarity and the availability of surface exposed motifs, if any. The icd gene was cloned, expressed and purified to a very high homogeneity. Humoral response directed against H. pylori ICD was detected through an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 82 human subjects comprising of 58 patients with H. pylori associated gastritis or ulcer disease and 24 asymptomatic healthy controls. The H. pylori ICD elicited potentially high humoral immune response and revealed high antibody titers in sera corresponding to endoscopically-confirmed gastritis and ulcer disease subjects. However, urea-breath-test negative healthy control samples and asymptomatic control samples did not reveal any detectable immune responses. The ELISA for proinflammatory cytokine IL-8 did not exhibit any significant proinflammatory activity of ICD. Conclusions/Significance. ICD of H. pylori is an immunogen which interacts with the host immune system subsequent to a possible autolytic-release and thereby significantly elicits humoral responses in individuals with invasive H. pylori infection. However, ICD could not significantly stimulate IL8 induction in a cultured macrophage cell line (THP1) and therefore, may not be a notable proinflammatory agent