Evaluating Relationship between Surface Water Quality and Zooplankton Diversity in Coastal Areas of Tien Giang Province, Vietnam

The zooplankton diversity is the most important ecological parameter for water quality assessment, as these small creatures are sensitive to any changes in water quality, hence the objective of this study as to evaluate the relationship between surface water quality and zooplankton diversity in the coastal areas of Tien Giang province, Vietnam using appropriate standard methods. The results showed that the coastal water quality had high concentrations of suspended solids, ammonium and coliforms. A total of 71 zooplankton species with a total density ranging from 3,219,383 to 24,993,634 individuals/m3 were identified. Among the zooplankton species, Copepoda nauplius appeared at all monitoring stations, predominating with a density ranging from 740,800 to 7,555,250 individuals/m3. The values of the Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H') ranged from 1.54 to 2.37, reflecting the coastal water quality in the study area from polluted to mildly polluted. The coastal water variables of pH, salinity, DO, NH4+-N and coliform were closely correlated with the density of zooplankton species. The relationship between surface water quality and zooplankton diversity could be a basis for selecting biological indicators to monitor coastal water quality

Electrophysiological correlates of high-level perception during spatial navigation

We studied the electrophysiological basis of object recognition by recording scalp\ud electroencephalograms while participants played a virtual-reality taxi driver game.\ud Participants searched for passengers and stores during virtual navigation in simulated\ud towns. We compared oscillatory brain activity in response to store views that were targets or\ud nontargets (during store search) or neutral (during passenger search). Even though store\ud category was solely defined by task context (rather than by sensory cues), frontal ...\ud \u

Including metabolite concentrations into flux balance analysis: thermodynamic realizability as a constraint on flux distributions in metabolic networks

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In recent years, constrained optimization – usually referred to as flux balance analysis (FBA) – has become a widely applied method for the computation of stationary fluxes in large-scale metabolic networks. The striking advantage of FBA as compared to kinetic modeling is that it basically requires only knowledge of the stoichiometry of the network. On the other hand, results of FBA are to a large degree hypothetical because the method relies on plausible but hardly provable optimality principles that are thought to govern metabolic flux distributions.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To augment the reliability of FBA-based flux calculations we propose an additional side constraint which assures thermodynamic realizability, i.e. that the flux directions are consistent with the corresponding changes of Gibb's free energies. The latter depend on metabolite levels for which plausible ranges can be inferred from experimental data. Computationally, our method results in the solution of a mixed integer linear optimization problem with quadratic scoring function. An optimal flux distribution together with a metabolite profile is determined which assures thermodynamic realizability with minimal deviations of metabolite levels from their expected values. We applied our novel approach to two exemplary metabolic networks of different complexity, the metabolic core network of erythrocytes (30 reactions) and the metabolic network iJR904 of <it>Escherichia coli </it>(931 reactions). Our calculations show that increasing network complexity entails increasing sensitivity of predicted flux distributions to variations of standard Gibb's free energy changes and metabolite concentration ranges. We demonstrate the usefulness of our method for assessing critical concentrations of external metabolites preventing attainment of a metabolic steady state.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our method incorporates the thermodynamic link between flux directions and metabolite concentrations into a practical computational algorithm. The weakness of conventional FBA to rely on intuitive assumptions about the reversibility of biochemical reactions is overcome. This enables the computation of reliable flux distributions even under extreme conditions of the network (e.g. enzyme inhibition, depletion of substrates or accumulation of end products) where metabolite concentrations may be drastically altered.</p

Microarray evidence of glutaminyl cyclase gene expression in melanoma: implications for tumor antigen specific immunotherapy

BACKGROUND: In recent years encouraging progress has been made in developing vaccine treatments for cancer, particularly with melanoma. However, the overall rate of clinically significant results has remained low. The present research used microarray datasets from previous investigations to examine gene expression patterns in cancer cell lines with the goal of better understanding the tumor microenvironment. METHODS: Principal Components Analyses with Promax rotational transformations were carried out with 90 cancer cell lines from 3 microarray datasets, which had been made available on the internet as supplementary information from prior publications. RESULTS: In each of the analyses a well defined melanoma component was identified that contained a gene coding for the enzyme, glutaminyl cyclase, which was as highly expressed as genes from a variety of well established biomarkers for melanoma, such as MAGE-3 and MART-1, which have frequently been used in clinical trials of melanoma vaccines. CONCLUSION: Since glutaminyl cyclase converts glutamine and glutamic acid into a pyroglutamic form, it may interfere with the tumor destructive process of vaccines using peptides having glutamine or glutamic acid at their N-terminals. Finding ways of inhibiting the activity of glutaminyl cyclase in the tumor microenvironment may help to increase the effectiveness of some melanoma vaccines

Set optimization - a rather short introduction

Recent developments in set optimization are surveyed and extended including various set relations as well as fundamental constructions of a convex analysis for set- and vector-valued functions, and duality for set optimization problems. Extensive sections with bibliographical comments summarize the state of the art. Applications to vector optimization and financial risk measures are discussed along with algorithmic approaches to set optimization problems

Islamic legal methodologies and Shariah screening standards: application in the Indonesian stock market

This article provides a framework for applying the principles of Islamic legal methodology to determine the optimal Shariah screening standards for Islamic equity markets. It is argued that using maslahah mursalah (unrestricted benefit) is an appropriate method for identifying appropriate financial standards and its principles stipulate that the benchmark that yields the best economic returns to investors should be chosen. The methodological framework is applied to the Indonesia equity market where the economic implications of the Islamic stock screening standards of the Indonesian Islamic Shariah Stock Index and four global indices are assessed. Portfolios are constructed by applying Islamic stock screening standards for each of the indices by using data on 377 stocks listed in the Indonesian stock market for 5 years. The performances measured by the Sharpe ratio, Treynor index, and Jensen alpha reveal that the Dow Jones Islamic Index screening criteria performs the best. Based on the method of maslahah mursalah, the article recommends using the screening standard of this index in the Indonesian stock market to maximize benefits to investors. While the approach used in this article is applied to Islamic equity markets, the methodological framework can also be used for other similar cases in Islamic finance

Understanding the mechanisms of cooperative physico-chemical treatment and mechanical disintegration of biomass as a route for enhancing enzyme saccharification

A novel chemico-kinetic disintegration model has been applied to study the cooperative relationship between physico-chemical treatment and supplementary wet-state milling of biomass, as an efficient process route to achieve high enzyme accessibility. Wheat straw, Miscanthus and short-rotation willow were studied as three contrasting biomass species, which were subjected to controlled hydrothermal pretreatment using a microwave reactor, followed by controlled wet-state ball-milling. Comparative particle disintegration behaviour and related enzyme digestibilities have been interpreted on the basis of model parameters and with evaluation of textural and chemical differences in tissue structures, aided by the application of specific material characterisation techniques. Supplementary milling led to a 1.3×, 1.6× and 3× enhancement in glucose saccharification yield after 24 h for straw, Miscanthus and willow, respectively, following a standardised 10-min hydrothermal treatment, with corresponding milling energy savings of 98, 97 and 91% predicted from the model, compared to the unmilled case. The results confirm the viability of pretreatment combined with supplementary wet-milling as an efficient process route. The results will be valuable in understanding the key parameters for process design and optimisation and also the key phenotypical parameters for feedstock breeding and selection for highest saccharification yield

Downregulation of Cinnamyl-Alcohol Dehydrogenase in Switchgrass by RNA Silencing Results in Enhanced Glucose Release after Cellulase Treatment

Cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD) catalyzes the last step in monolignol biosynthesis and genetic evidence indicates CAD deficiency in grasses both decreases overall lignin, alters lignin structure and increases enzymatic recovery of sugars. To ascertain the effect of CAD downregulation in switchgrass, RNA mediated silencing of CAD was induced through Agrobacterium mediated transformation of cv. “Alamo” with an inverted repeat construct containing a fragment derived from the coding sequence of PviCAD2. The resulting primary transformants accumulated less CAD RNA transcript and protein than control transformants and were demonstrated to be stably transformed with between 1 and 5 copies of the T-DNA. CAD activity against coniferaldehyde, and sinapaldehyde in stems of silenced lines was significantly reduced as was overall lignin and cutin. Glucose release from ground samples pretreated with ammonium hydroxide and digested with cellulases was greater than in control transformants. When stained with the lignin and cutin specific stain phloroglucinol-HCl the staining intensity of one line indicated greater incorporation of hydroxycinnamyl aldehydes in the lignin