8,463 research outputs found
Survivability of probiotics in symbiotic low fat buffalo milk yogurt
In present study, symbiotic low fat buffalo milk yogurt prototypes (plain and blueberry) were developed using a commercial starter containing probiotics. Samples were analyzed for physicochemical and microbiological properties, and the survivability of probiotics during 10 weeks of storage. Gross composition results were: total solids 11.60 ± 0.58 and 17.12 ± 0.36%, ash 0.82 ± 0.06 and 0.78 ± 0.02%, protein 4.49 ± 0.31 and 4.16 ± 0.11%, fat 0.68 ± 0.03 and 0.55 ± 0.05%, carbohydrates 5.68 ± 0.18 and 11.38 ± 0.18% for plain and blueberry flavored samples, respectively. Mineral contents (mg/g) were: Calcium 1.97 ± 0.20 and 1.72 ± 0.06, magnesium 1.63 ± 0.02 and 1.69 ± 0.01, zinc 0.07 ± 0.01 and 0.07 ± 0.00, sodium 0.87 ± 0.15 and 0.94 ± 0.12 for the plain and blueberry flavored yogurt respectively. The values of pH, titratable acidity and viscosity ranged from 4.34 to 4.01 and 4.42 to 3.70, 0.96 to 1.13% and 0.94 to 1.30%, 1.40 to 1.67 and 2.15 to 1.56 Pa.s for the plain and blueberry flavored yogurts respectively. The initial population of Bifidobacterium spp. and Lactobacillus casei were above 108 CFU/g for both the plain and blueberry flavored yogurts. Lactobacillus acidophilus was viable only for the first two weeks; however, Bifidobacterium spp and L. casei remained viable (>106 CFU/g) during the storage. The results indicate that the low fat buffalo milk yogurt is a good vehicle for developing symbiotic yogurt.Key words: Buffalo milk, symbiotic yogurt, refrigerated storage, probiotic survivability, physicochemical properties
Optimization of Brownian ratchets for the manipulation of charged components within supported lipid bilayers
In probability theory, there is a counter-intuitive result that it is possible to construct a winning strategy from two individually losing (or at most breaking-even) "games" by alternating between them. The work presented here demonstrates the application of this principle to supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) in order to create directed motion of charged lipid components in the membrane, which was achieved through the use of "Brownian ratchets" in patterned SLBs. Both a finite element analysis model and an experimental setup have been used to investigate the role of key parameters for the operation of these ratchets: (1) the asymmetry of the ratchet teeth and (2) the relation of the ratchet height to the period of the applied electric field. Importantly, we find that the efficiency of the ratchet for a given charged species is dependent on the diffusion coefficient. This opens the possibility for separation of membrane species according to their size or viscous drag coefficient within the membrane
Application of Deep Learning Long Short-Term Memory in Energy Demand Forecasting
The smart metering infrastructure has changed how electricity is measured in
both residential and industrial application. The large amount of data collected
by smart meter per day provides a huge potential for analytics to support the
operation of a smart grid, an example of which is energy demand forecasting.
Short term energy forecasting can be used by utilities to assess if any
forecasted peak energy demand would have an adverse effect on the power system
transmission and distribution infrastructure. It can also help in load
scheduling and demand side management. Many techniques have been proposed to
forecast time series including Support Vector Machine, Artificial Neural
Network and Deep Learning. In this work we use Long Short Term Memory
architecture to forecast 3-day ahead energy demand across each month in the
year. The results show that 3-day ahead demand can be accurately forecasted
with a Mean Absolute Percentage Error of 3.15%. In addition to that, the paper
proposes way to quantify the time as a feature to be used in the training phase
which is shown to affect the network performance
Spin and Chirality Effects in Antler-Topology Processes at High Energy Colliders
We perform a model-independent investigation of spin and chirality
correlation effects in the antler-topology processes
at high energy colliders with polarized
beams. Generally the production process
can occur not only through the -channel exchange of vector bosons,
, including the neutral Standard Model (SM) gauge bosons,
and , but also through the - and -channel exchanges of new
neutral states, and , and the -channel
exchange of new doubly-charged states, . The general set of
(non-chiral) three-point couplings of the new particles and leptons allowed in
a renormalizable quantum field theory is considered. The general spin and
chirality analysis is based on the threshold behavior of the excitation curves
for pair production in collisions with
longitudinal and transverse polarized beams, the angular distributions in the
production process and also the production-decay angular correlations. In the
first step, we present the observables in the helicity formalism. Subsequently,
we show how a set of observables can be designed for determining the spins and
chiral structures of the new particles without any model assumptions. Finally,
taking into account a typical set of approximately chiral invariant scenarios,
we demonstrate how the spin and chirality effects can be probed experimentally
at a high energy collider.Comment: 50 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, matches version published in EPJ
Renal impairment in a rural African antiretroviral programme
Background:
There is little knowledge regarding the prevalence and nature of renal impairment in African populations initiating antiretroviral treatment, nor evidence to inform the most cost effective methods of screening for renal impairment. With the increasing availability of the potentially nephrotixic drug, tenofovir, such information is important for the planning of antiretroviral programmes
Methods:
(i) Retrospective review of the prevalence and risk factors for impaired renal function in 2189 individuals initiating antiretroviral treatment in a rural African setting between 2004 and 2007 (ii) A prospective study of 149 consecutive patients initiating antiretrovirals to assess the utility of urine analysis for the detection of impaired renal function. Severe renal and moderately impaired renal function were defined as an estimated GFR of ≤ 30 mls/min/1.73 m2 and 30–60 mls/min/1.73 m2 respectively. Logistic regression was used to determine odds ratio (OR) of significantly impaired renal function (combining severe and moderate impairment). Co-variates for analysis were age, sex and CD4 count at initiation.
Results:
(i) There was a low prevalence of severe renal impairment (29/2189, 1.3% 95% C.I. 0.8–1.8) whereas moderate renal impairment was more frequent (287/2189, 13.1% 95% C.I. 11.6–14.5) with many patients having advanced immunosuppression at treatment initiation (median CD4 120 cells/μl). In multivariable logistic regression age over 40 (aOR 4.65, 95% C.I. 3.54–6.1), male gender (aOR 1.89, 95% C.I. 1.39–2.56) and CD4<100 cells/ul (aOR 1.4, 95% C.I. 1.07–1.82) were associated with risk of significant renal impairment (ii) In 149 consecutive patients, urine analysis had poor sensitivity and specificity for detecting impaired renal function.
Conclusion:
In this rural African setting, significant renal impairment is uncommon in patients initiating antiretrovirals. Urine analysis alone may be inadequate for identification of those with impaired renal function where resources for biochemistry are limited
Generation and quality control of lipidomics data for the alzheimers disease neuroimaging initiative cohort.
Alzheimers disease (AD) is a major public health priority with a large socioeconomic burden and complex etiology. The Alzheimer Disease Metabolomics Consortium (ADMC) and the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) aim to gain new biological insights in the disease etiology. We report here an untargeted lipidomics of serum specimens of 806 subjects within the ADNI1 cohort (188 AD, 392 mild cognitive impairment and 226 cognitively normal subjects) along with 83 quality control samples. Lipids were detected and measured using an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography quadruple/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF MS) instrument operated in both negative and positive electrospray ionization modes. The dataset includes a total 513 unique lipid species out of which 341 are known lipids. For over 95% of the detected lipids, a relative standard deviation of better than 20% was achieved in the quality control samples, indicating high technical reproducibility. Association modeling of this dataset and available clinical, metabolomics and drug-use data will provide novel insights into the AD etiology. These datasets are available at the ADNI repository at http://adni.loni.usc.edu/
Anomalous coupling effects in exclusive radiative B-meson decays
The top-quark FCNC processes will be searched for at the CERN LHC, which are
correlated with the B-meson decays. In this paper, we study the effects of
top-quark anomalous interactions in the exclusive radiative and decays. With the current experimental data of
the branching ratios, the direct CP and the isospin asymmetries, bounds on the
coupling from and
from decays are derived,
respectively. The bound on from is generally compatible with that from . However, the isospin asymmetry further
restrict the phase of , and the combined bound results
in the upper limit, , which is lower than the
CDF result. For real , the upper bound on is about of the same order as the discovery
potential of ATLAS with an integrated luminosity of . For
decays, the NP contribution is enhanced by a large CKM factor
, and the constraint on coupling is rather
restrictive, . With refined
measurements to be available at the LHCb and the future super-B factories, we
can get close correlations between and the rare
decays, which will be studied directly at the LHC ATLAS and CMS.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, pdflate
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