Effects of processing parameters on chemical and physical properties of enzymatically interesterified beef tallow–corn oil blends

The purpose of this study was to improve some physical and chemical characteristics of tallow through enzymatic interesterification process with corn oil and to investigate effects of process parameters on chemical and physical properties of obtained products. Full factorial design was constructed using blend ratio and reaction time as process parameters. Enzymatic interesterification was catalyzed with sn-1,3-specific lipase. Interesterified lipids have higher free fatty acid content and lower oxidative stability compared to initial blends. Interesterification did not cause trans-fatty acid formation and products mostly contained \u3b2 crystals. Solid fat content and slip melting point decreased up to 6 hr of interesterification; however, longer reaction times have negative effects on these parameters. Statistical analyses\u2019 results confirmed that reaction time is highly important for enzymatic interesterification. Practical applications: Some of interesterified lipids can be utilized as alternatives to margarines or butterfat due to their lower trans-fatty acid content and crystal morphology

Patients With Kidney Cancer

To develop a preoperative prognostic model in order to predict recurrence-free survival in patients with nonmetastatic kidney cancer.A multi-institutional data base of 1889 patients who underwent surgical resection between 1987 and 2007 for kidney cancer was retrospectively analyzed. Preoperative variables were defined as age, gender, presentation, size, presence of radiological lymph nodes and clinical stage. Univariate and multivariate analyses of the variables were performed using the Cox proportional hazards regression model. A model was developed with preoperative variables as predictors of recurrence after nephrectomy. Internal validation was performed by Harrells concordance index.The median follow-up was 23.6 months (1222 months). During the follow-up, 258 patients (13.7) developed cancer recurrence. The median follow-up for patients who did not develop recurrence was 25 months. The median time from surgery to recurrence was 13 months. The 5-year freedom from recurrence probability was 78.6. All variables except age were associated with freedom from recurrence in multivariate analyses (P 0.05). Age was marginally significant in the univariate analysis. All variables were included in the predictive model. The calculated c-index was 0.747.This preoperative model utilizes easy to obtain clinical variables and predicts the likelihood of development of recurrent disease in patients with kidney tumors

Microstructural defect properties of InGaN/GaN blue light emitting diode structures

Cataloged from PDF version of article.In this paper, we study structural and morphological properties of metal-organic chemical vapour deposition-grown InGaN/GaN light emitting diode (LED) structures with different indium (In) content by means of high-resolution X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy (AFM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), photoluminescence (PL) and current-voltage characteristic (I-V). We have found out that the tilt and twist angles, lateral and vertical coherence lengths of mosaic blocks, grain size, screw and edge dislocation densities of GaN and InGaN layers, and surface roughness monotonically vary with In content. Mosaic defects obtained due to temperature using reciprocal lattice space map has revealed optimized growth temperature for active InGaN layer of MQW LED. It has been observed in this growth temperature that according to AFM result, LED structure has high crystal dimension, and is rough whereas according to PL and FTIR results, bandgap energy shifted to blue, and energy peak half-width decreased at high values. According to I-V measurements, it was observed that LED reacted against light at optimized temperature. In conclusion, we have seen that InGaN MQW structure's structural, optical and electrical results supported one another

Improved cryptanalysis of skein

The hash function Skein is the submission of Ferguson et al. to the NIST Hash Competition, and is arguably a serious candidate for selection as SHA-3. This paper presents the rst third-party analysis of Skein, with an extensive study of its main component: the block cipher Three sh. We notably investigate near collisions, distinguishers, impossible di erentials, key recovery using related-key di erential and boomerang attacks. In particular, we present near collisions on up to 17 rounds, an impossible di erential on 21 rounds, a related-key boomerang distinguisher on 34 rounds, a known-related-key boomerang distinguisher on 35 rounds, and key recovery attacks on up to 32 rounds, out of 72 in total for Threefish-512. None of our attacks directly extends to the full Skein hash. However, the pseudorandomness of Threefish is required to validate the security proofs on Skein, and our results conclude that at least 3

Bronchodilation induced by PGE2 is impaired in Group-III pulmonary hypertension

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: In patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH) associated with lung disease and/or hypoxia (Group III), a reduction of pulmonary vascular tone and tissue hypoxia are considered therapeutically beneficial. Prostaglandin (PG) E2 and PGI2 induce potent relaxation of human bronchi from non-PH (control) patients via EP4 and IP receptors, respectively. However, the effects of PGE2 /PGI2 and their mimetics on human bronchi from PH-patients are unknown. Our aim was to compare the relaxant effects of several PGI2 -mimetics approved for treating PH-Group I with several PGE2 -mimetics in bronchial preparations derived from PH-Group III and control patients. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH: Using an organ bath system, the tone of bronchial muscle was investigated in tissue from either control or PH-Group III patients. Expression of prostanoid receptors were analyzed by Western blot and real-time PCR and endogenous PGE2 , PGI2 and cAMP levels were determined by ELISA. KEY RESULTS: Maximal relaxations induced by different EP4 agonists (PGE2 , L-902688, ONO-AE1-329) were significantly decreased in human bronchi from PH-patients versus controls. In contrast, the maximal relaxations produced by PGI2 -mimetics (iloprost, treprostinil, beraprost) were similar for both groups of patients. Both EP4 and IP receptor protein and mRNA expressions were significantly lower in human bronchi from PH-patients. cAMP levels significantly correlated with PGI2 but not with PGE2 levels. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: This study shows that PGI2 -mimetics have preserved maximal bronchodilation in PH-Group III patients. The decreased bronchodilation induced by EP4 agonists suggests that restoration of EP4 expression in airways of PH-patients with respiratory diseases could bring additional therapeutic benefit

Non-equilibrium Condensation Process in a Holographic Superconductor

We study the non-equilibrium condensation process in a holographic superconductor. When the temperature T is smaller than a critical temperature T_c, there are two black hole solutions, the Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black hole and a black hole with a scalar hair. In the boundary theory, they can be regarded as the supercooled normal phase and the superconducting phase, respectively. We consider perturbations on supercooled Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black holes and study their non-linear time evolution to know about physical phenomena associated with rapidly-cooled superconductors. We find that, for T<T_c, the initial perturbations grow exponentially and, eventually, spacetimes approach the hairy black holes. We also clarify how the relaxation process from a far-from-equilibrium state proceeds in the boundary theory by observing the time dependence of the superconducting order parameter. Finally, we study the time evolution of event and apparent horizons and discuss their correspondence with the entropy of the boundary theory. Our result gives a first step toward the holographic understanding of the non-equilibrium process in superconductors.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Renal amyloidosis in children

Renal amyloidosis is a detrimental disease caused by the deposition of amyloid fibrils. A child with renal amyloidosis may present with proteinuria or nephrotic syndrome. Chronic renal failure may follow. Amyloid fibrils may deposit in other organs as well. The diagnosis is through the typical appearance on histopathology. Although chronic infections and chronic inflammatory diseases used to be the causes of secondary amyloidosis in children, the most frequent cause is now autoinflammatory diseases. Among this group of diseases, the most frequent one throughout the world is familial Mediterranean fever (FMF). FMF is typically characterized by attacks of clinical inflammation in the form of fever and serositis and high acute-phase reactants. Persisting inflammation in inadequately treated disease is associated with the development of secondary amyloidosis. The main treatment is colchicine. A number of other monogenic autoinflammatory diseases have also been identified. Among them cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome (CAPS) is outstanding with its clinical features and the predilection to develop secondary amyloidosis in untreated cases. The treatment of secondary amyloidosis mainly depends on the treatment of the disease. However, a number of new treatments for amyloid per se are in the pipeline

Comparative evaluation of in vitro cytotoxic effects among parent abietyl alcohol and novel fatty acid ester derivatives against MCF7 and hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines

Synthesis of twelve hitherto unreported esters of abietyl alcohol and screening of these esters against four cancer cell lines including one breast cancer line MCF7 and four hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines (HCC) Huh7, Hep3B, Snu449 and Plc has been determined using SRB assay. The Cell cycle progression showed changes in cellular behaviour after 48 and 72 hours in MCF7 and Huh7 cell lines. Abietyl alcohol was obtained from the reduction of abietic acid, a tricyclic diterpene, isolated from oleoresin of Pinus longifolia Roxberghii

Time to focus on outcome assessment tools for childhood vasculitis

Childhood systemic vasculitides are a group of rare diseases with multi-organ involvement and potentially devastating consequences. After establishment of new classification criteria (Ankara consensus conference in 2008), it is now time to establish measures for proper definition of activity and damage in childhood primary vasculitis. By comparison to adult vasculitis, there is no consensus for indices of activity and damage assessment in childhood vasculitis. Assessment of disease activity is likely to become a major area of interest in pediatric rheumatology in the near future. After defining the classification criteria for primary systemic childhood vasculitis, the next step was to perform a validation study using the original Birmingham vasculitis activity score as well as the disease extent index to measure disease activity in childhood vasculitis. Presently, there are efforts in place to develop a pediatric vasculitis activity score. This paper reviews the current understanding about the assessment tools (i.e., clinical features, laboratory tests, radiologic assessments, etc.) widely used for evaluation of the disease activity and damage status of the children with vasculitis

Benzothiazole derivatives as human DNA topoisomerase IIα inhibitors

Benzothiazole derivatives resembling the structure of DNA purine bases were tested to determine their topoisomerase inhibition activities. Based on DNA topoisomerase I and II relaxation assay results, all 12 derivatives acted as human topoisomerase IIα inhibitors, whereas only two compounds inhibited Calf thymus topoisomerase I. 3-amino-2-(2-bromobenzyl)-1,3-benzothiazol-3-ium 4-methylbenzensulfonate (BM3) was observed to be the most effective human topoisomerase IIα inhibitor with the lowest IC50 value of 39 nM. The mechanistic studies suggested that BM3 was neither a DNA intercalator nor a topoisomerase poison, it was only a DNA minor groove-binding agent. BM3 initially bound to the DNA topoisomerase IIα enzyme, then to DNA. As a result, the tested benzothiazole derivatives were obtained as strong topoisomerase IIα inhibitors. The benzothiazole tosylated salt form BM3 was found as the most effective topoisomerase IIα inhibitor. BM3's mechanisms of action might be its direct interaction with the enzyme. BM3's minor groove-binding property might also contribute to this action. Hence, BM3 could be a good candidate as a new anticancer agent. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York