Milk-derived anti-infectives and their potential to combat bacterial and viral infection

peer-reviewedBreastfeeding positively influences infant growth while providing protection against many diseases. Breast milk provides the ideal balance of nutrients for the infant and contains countless bioactive ingredients such as immunoglobulins (antibodies), fatty acids, oligosaccharides and others which function to protect against infection. Many of the anti-infective properties ascribed to breast-milk are not yet available to formula-fed infants. Infant milk formulas are predominantly based on bovine milk, which in some cases contain much lower concentrations of bioactives. However, bovine milk does contain a number of components which share homology with human milk bioactives which could imply common functionalities. Therefore, value may lie in extracting and concentrating select bovine milk components with a view to supplementing infant formula. This review will discuss the mechanisms of action of anti-infective milk components and their ability to decrease the risk of infection through their interactions with both bacteria and viruses

Colour Deconfinement and Quarkonium Binding

At high temperatures, strongly interacting matter becomes a plasma of deconfined quarks and gluons. In statistical QCD, deconfinement and the properties of the resulting quark-gluon plasma can be investigated by studying the in-medium behaviour of heavy quark bound states. In high energy nuclear interactions, quarkonia probe different aspects of the medium formed in the collision. We survey the results of recent charmonium production studies in SPS and RHIC experiments.Comment: 50 pages, 53 figures; revised section 6.

A limiting velocity for quarkonium propagation in a strongly coupled plasma via AdS/CFT

We study the dispersion relations of mesons in a particular hot strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theory plasma. We find that at large momentum k the dispersion relations become omega = v_0 k + a + b/k + ..., where the limiting velocity v_0 is the same for mesons with any quantum numbers and depends only on the ratio of the temperature to the quark mass T/m_q. We compute a and b in terms of the meson quantum numbers and T/m_q. The limiting meson velocity v_0 becomes much smaller than the speed of light at temperatures below but close to T_diss, the temperature above which no meson bound states at rest in the plasma are found. From our result for v_0, we find that the temperature above which no meson bound states with velocity v exist is T_diss(v) \simeq (1-v^2)^(1/4) T_diss, up to few percent corrections.We thus confirm by direct calculation of meson dispersion relations a result inferred indirectly in previous work via analysis of the screening length between a static quark and antiquark in a moving plasma. Although we do not do our calculations in QCD, we argue that the qualitative features of the dispersion relation we compute, including in particular the relation between dissociation temperature and meson velocity, may apply to bottomonium and charmonium mesons propagating in the strongly coupled plasma of QCD. We discuss how our results can contribute to understanding quarkonium physics in heavy ion collisions.Comment: 57 pages, 12 figures; references adde

ESGAR consensus statement on the imaging of fistula-in-ano and other causes of anal sepsis

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CT colonography reporting and data system: A consensus proposal

We have proposed a practical reporting scheme that includes recommendations for the follow-up of colonic polyps that are based on currently available published assessments of the clinical importance and expected growth potential of these lesions. © RSNA, 2005