Effect of Plant-Based Filtration and Bio-Treatment on Toxicity of Bio-Oil Process Water

This study evaluated physical and biological treatments of bio-oil process water to decrease organic contaminants. A three-sequential-column filtration system compared four treatments: three columns filled with kenaf only; three columns filled with wood shavings only; first column filled with wood shavings and two with kenaf; and first column filled with kenaf and two with wood shavings. The kenaf and wood shavings were composted after filtration. The filtrate water underwent further bio-treatment by adding aeration and selected bacteria. After filtration and bio-treatment, oil and grease concentrations were reduced over 80 percent and toxicity reduced over 90 percent. There were no significant differences among filtration treatments. Most of the oil and grease was removed by the first column. Aeration significantly decreased the concentration of oil and grease and toxicity in the filtrate water. Composting of the bioiltration matrices significantly reduced the oil and grease concentrations at day 45 by 80 percent

Cancer Stem Cell Markers in Esophageal Cancer

Esophageal carcinoma is one of the most malignant of all tumors, and affected patients have low survival rates. The lack of good prognostic and therapeutic targets indicate the mysterious biology of this cancer. Recently, studies with cancer stem cells (CSCs) revealed some clues for better understanding of cancer biology and development. CSCs are derived from normal stem cells and have essential roles in tumor initiation and development of malignancies, such as esophageal carcinoma. Self-renewal studies in CSCs have improved our understanding of the factors that regulate CSCs behaviour and may result in improved prognostic markers and new therapeutic targets. Abnormal activity of major cell signaling pathways such as Shh, Notch, and Wnt play important roles in converting stem cells from normal to cancerous. This manuscript reviews the importance of several processes in the maintenance of esophageal CSCs and introduces probable useful markers for CSC based ESCC therapy

Art as a Master Narrative in Paul Auster’s City of Glass

The present essay investigates the status of art as a master narrative in City of Glass (1985) by the contemporary American novelist Paul Auster. The study is mainly done on the basis of Lyotard’s philosophical ideology that defines postmodernism as “incredulity towards meta-narratives”. He defines master narrative as a totalizing framework that plays the role of authorizing and legitimizing human knowledge and experience. He asserts that in the absence of meta-narratives of the past, the postmodern world is ruled by mini-narratives or little narratives that create a world of indeterminacy, meaninglessness, and disclosure. Due to the lack of transcendental ideologies of the past, all accepted ideas of the western civilization such as reality, human knowledge, and identity are called into question. Accordingly, the idea of art as a master narrative and as a source of absolute truth is taken into consideration in the current essay. The study is done on the basis of the role of literature and architecture as two significant branches of art in the context of City of Glass as a true representation of postmodern individual with all his worries, beliefs and disbeliefs, his fragmented self, and multiplicity of his philosophical, social, political concerns. Accordingly, the current essay traces the root of fragmentation, pluralism, and loss of contemporary subject to the loss of metaphysical certainties in the contemporary world

The relationship of depression, distress tolerance and difficulty in emotional regulation with addiction to cell-phone use in students of Kashan University

Background: Cell phone plays an essential role in communications throughout the world. This question has been raised whether the over use of the cell-phone could lead to addiction. Addiction to cell phone use is characterized by the overuse and preoccupation with the mobile phone. So, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of depression, distress tolerance and difficulty in emotional regulation with addiction to cell-phone use in students of Kashan University. Materials and Methods: In this analytical-descriptive study, 200 students of Kashan University in the academic year 2016-2017 were selected by the cluster sampling method. The research tools included the cell-phone over-use scale (COS, 2007(, Beck depression inventory (BDI), difficulty in emotion regulation scale (DERS), and distress tolerance scale (DTS). Results: The results of the regression analysis showed that depression, distress tolerance and difficulty in emotional regulation explained more than 33 of the changes in addiction to cell-phone use. Also, there was a significant correlation between depression and addiction to cell-phone use (r=0.22, P<0.05). In addition, there was a significant correlation between distress tolerance (r=-0.47, P<0.05) and difficulty in emotion regulation (r=0.50, P<0.05) with cell-phone addiction in Kashan University students. Conclusion: According to the results of this study, addiction to cell-phone use can be predicted by three variables of depression, distress tolerance, and difficulty in emotion regulation. The difficulty in emotion regulation played a stronger role in this prediction

Resolving the titer of murine cytomegalovirus by plaque assay using the M2-10B4 cell line and a low viscosity overlay.

BACKGROUND: Murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) is increasingly used as an infectious model to investigate host-pathogen interactions in mice. Detailed methods have been published for using primary murine embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) for preparing stocks and determining viral titers of MCMV. For determining the titer of MCMV by plaque assay, these methods rely on a high viscosity media that restricts viral spreading through the supernatant of the culture, but is also usually too viscous to pipet. Moreover, MEFs must be repeatedly generated and can vary widely from batch-to-batch in purity, proliferation rates, and the development of senescence. In contrast, the M2-10B4 bone marrow stromal cell line (ATCC # CRL-1972), which is also permissive for MCMV, has been reported to produce high-titer stocks of MCMV and has the considerable advantages of growing rapidly and consistently. However, detailed methods using these cells have not been published. METHODS: We modified existing protocols to use M2-10B4 cells for measuring MCMV titers by plaque assay. RESULTS: We found that MCMV plaques could be easily resolved on monolayers of M2-10B4 cells. Moreover, plaques formed normally even when cultures of M2-10B4 cells were less than 50% confluent on the day of infection, as long as we also used a reduced viscosity overlay. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our protocol enabled us to use a consistent cell line to assess viral titers, rather than repeatedly producing primary MEFs. It also allowed us to start the assay with 4-fold fewer cells than would be required to generate a confluent monolayer, reducing the lead-time prior to the start of the assay. Finally, the reduced viscosity CMC could be handled by pipet and did not need to be pre-mixed with media, thus increasing its shelf-life and ease-of-use. We describe our results here, along with detailed protocols for the use of the M2-10B4 cell lines to determine the titer and grow stocks of MCMV

A coarse-grain force field based on quantum mechanics (CGq FF) for molecular dynamics simulation of poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PEG-b-PCL) micelles

In order to provide the means to predict from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations the structures of copolymer-based micelles in solution, we developed coarse grain force field (CGq FF) parameters for poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and for poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL). A key advance here is the use of quantum mechanics to train the parameters describing the non-bonded (NB) interactions between the CG beads. The functional forms are the same as the MARTINI CG FF so standard MD codes can be used. Our CGq FF describes well the experimentally observed properties for the polymer–air and polymer–water interfaces, indicating the accuracy of the NB interactions. The structural properties (density, radius of gyration (R_g), and end-to-end distance (h)) match both experiment and all atom (AA) simulations. We illustrate the application of this CGq FF by following the formation of a spherical micelle from 250 chains of PEG₂₃-b-PCL₉ diblock copolymer, each block with molecular weight of 1000 Daltons (10 500 beads, corresponding to 123 250 atoms), in a water box with 119 139 water beads (426 553 water molecules)