Empirical rheology and pasting properties of soft-textured durum wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. durum) and hard-textured common wheat (T. aestivum)

Puroindoline (PIN) proteins are the molecular basis for wheat kernel texture classification and affect flour milling performance. This study investigated the effect of PINs on empirical rheology and pasting properties in Triticum turgidum ssp. durum and Triticum aestivum. Soft wheat (cv. Alpowa), durum wheat (cv. Svevo) and their derivatives in which PINs were deleted (Hard Alpowa) or expressed (cv. Soft Svevo). Presence of PINs affected flour particle size and damaged starch. PINs increased the pasting temperature and breakdown viscosity, while the effect on peak viscosity and setback were not consistent. Presence of PINs was negatively associated with GlutoPeak gluten aggregation energy and farinograph dough stability, suggesting a weakening of the gluten matrix. As regards dough extensibility, the role of PINs was evident only in common wheat: 5DS distal end deletion increased the resistance to extension, without affecting the dough extensibility. This study showed PINs to have different impact on pasting and rheological properties of T. aestivum and T. turgidum ssp. durum flours

Structural modification of gluten proteins in strong and weak wheat dough as affected by mixing temperature

The effects of temperature ( 6525\ub0C) on dough rheological properties and gluten functionality have been investigated for decades, but no study has addressed the effect of low temperature (<30\ub0C) on gluten network attributes in flours with strong and weak dough characteristics. This study monitored changes in protein extractability in the presence and absence of reducing agents, the contents of readily accessible and SDS-accessible thiols, and the secondary structural features of proteins in doughs from commercial hard wheat flour (HWF) and soft wheat flour (SWF) mixed at 4, 15, and 30\ub0C. SWF mixed at 4 and 15\ub0C showed similar mixing properties as HWF mixed at 30\ub0C (which is the standard temperature). The effect of mixing temperature is different at the molecular level between the two flours studied. Protein features of HWF did not change as mixing temperature decreased, with the only exception being an increase in SDS-accessible thiols. Decreasing mixing temperature for SWF caused an increase in SDS protein solubility and SDS-accessible thiols as well as an increase in \u3b2-turn structures at the expense of \u3b2-sheet structures. Thus, noncovalent interactions appear to drive protein network at low temperatures (4 and 15\ub0C), whereas covalent interactions dominate at standard mixing temperature (30\ub0C) in doughs from both flours

Case ReportsVulvar Lipoma: Is it so Rare?

Vulvar lipoma is said to be so rare that only a few cases have been reported. We present two cases of vulvar lipoma that were diagnosed within six months in our centre in a 28 year-old para 2 and 35 year-old para 1 woman both of whom presented with slow-growing masses in the vulva. A detailed discussion of the clinical features and current management options are outlined, with emphasis on the need to subject all excised lesions to histopathological evaluation; to ensure accurate diagnosis and differentiate this benign swelling from cystic swellings and malignant neoplasms in the vulva.Keywords: Vulva, lipoma, benign neoplasm, surgical excisionGhana Medical Journal, September 2011, Volume 45, Number

Structural consequences of the interaction of puroindolines with gluten proteins

The effect of puroindolines (PINs) on structural characteristics of wheat proteins was investigated in Triticum turgidum ssp. durum (cv. Svevo) and Triticum aestivum (cv. Alpowa) and in their respective derivatives in which PIN genes were expressed (Soft Svevo) or the distal end of the short arm of chromosome 5D was deleted and PINs were not expressed (Hard Alpowa). The presence of PINs decreased the amount of cold-SDS extractable proteins and the accessibility of protein thiols to specific reagents, but resulted in facilitated solvation of gluten proteins, as detected by tryptophan fluorescence measurements carried out on minimally mixed flour/water mixtures. We propose that PINs and gluten proteins are interacting in the grain or flour prior to mixing. Hydrophobic interactions between PINs and some of the gluten proteins modify the pattern of interactions among gluten proteins, thus providing an additional mechanistic rationale for the effects of PINs on kernel hardness

Expression of aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 as a marker of mammary stem cells in benign and malignant breast lesions of Ghanaian women

BACKGROUND: Breast cancers that are negative for the estrogen receptor (ER), the progesterone receptor (PR), and the HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) marker are more prevalent among African women, and the biologically aggressive nature of these triple‐negative breast cancers (TNBCs) may be attributed to their mammary stem cell features. Little is known about expression of the mammary stem cell marker aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) in African women. Novel data are reported regarding ALDH1 expression in benign and cancerous breast tissue of Ghanaian women. METHODS: Formalin‐fixed, paraffin‐embedded specimens were transported from the Komfo Anoyke Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana to the University of Michigan for centralized histopathology study. Expression of ER, PR, HER2, and ALDH1 was assessed by immunohistochemistry. ALDH1 staining was further characterized by its presence in stromal versus epithelial and/or tumor components of tissue. RESULTS: A total of 173 women contributed to this study: 69 with benign breast conditions, mean age 24 years, and 104 with breast cancer, mean age 49 years. The proportion of benign breast conditions expressing stromal ALDH1 (n = 40, 58%) was significantly higher than those with cancer (n = 44, 42.3%) ( P = .043). Among the cancers, TNBC had the highest prevalence of ALDH1 expression, either in stroma or in epithelial cells. More than 2‐fold higher likelihood of ALDH1 expression was observed in TNBC cases compared with other breast cancer subtypes (odds ratio = 2.38, 95% confidence interval 1.03‐5.52, P = .042). CONCLUSIONS: ALDH1 expression was higher in stromal components of benign compared with cancerous lesions. Of the ER‐, PR‐, and HER2‐defined subtypes of breast cancer, expression of ALDH1 was highest in TNBC. Cancer 2013. © 2012 American Cancer Society. Mammary stem cells, as identified by cells expressing the marker aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1), appear to be correlated with malignant transformation and progression of breast tissue into biologically aggressive phenotypes. This study reveals increased expression of ALDH1 in benign and malignant tissue of women from the western sub‐Saharan African nation of Ghana, a population known to have higher frequency of triple‐negative breast cancer, and ALDH1 expression in the malignant specimens was found to be associated with risk of triple‐negative breast cancer.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96403/1/27737_ftp.pd

The Unseeing Eye: Disability and the hauntology of Derrida’s ghost. A story in three parts

Through the employment of the three stanzas of Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘The Self-Unseeing’ this paper seeks to tremble the picture of disability located in the pedagogical materials in English Schools. By mobilising, and then reversing, Derrida’s concept of the visor and the ghost, as well as Bentham’s Panopticon, this story reveals the power of the Them, the Their and the They. In materialising the ghost of the real of disability within a utopia of hope this story deconstructs the power of Their transparent house by revealing disabled people as magnificent beings

Colonization, disability, and the intranet: the ethnic cleansing of space?

The article analyzes teacher’s emplacement of the image of disability within school’s intranet sites in England. The image unearthed within such sites was problematic as it did not display a positive or realistic image of disability or disabled people. Within the article historical archaeology and colonialism are employed as theoretic framework to interpret this artifact of disability. The article also provides an ethnographic subscript to the creation of a space of possibilities and how this became striated by missionary teachers who colonized this brave new intranet world. Deciphering of the organization and representation of the disabled indigene, through this theoretical framework, unearthed a cartography inscribed by the scalpel of old world geometry

Orientalising deafness: race and disability in imperial Britain

This article explores the conflations and connections that postcolonial and disability scholars have drawn between ‘race’, ‘colonialism’ and ‘disability’ from a historical perspective. By looking at the connections drawn between ‘race’ and ‘disability’ in the context of nineteenth-century imperial Britain, I hope to probe beyond them to examine the origins and implications of their interplay. I do so by focusing on ideas about deafness, an impairment radically reconfigured in the colonial period, and inflected with concerns about degeneration, belonging, heredity and difference. Disability, I argue, not only operated as an additional ‘category of difference’ alongside ‘race’ as a way of categorising and subjugating the various ‘others’ of Empire, but intersected with it. The ‘colonisation’ of disabled people in Britain and the ‘racial other’ by the British were not simply simultaneous processes or even analogous ones, but were part and parcel of the same cultural and discursive system. The colonising context of the nineteenth century, a period when British political, economic and cultural expansion over areas of South Asia, Australasia and Africa increased markedly, structured the way in which all forms of difference were recognised and expressed, including the difference of deafness. So too did the shifts in the raced and gendered thinking that accompanied it, as new forms of knowledge were developed to justify, explain and contest Britain's global position and new languages were developed through which to articulate otherness. Such developments reconfigured the meaning of disability. Disability was, in effect, ‘orientalised’. ‘Race’ I argue was formative in shaping what we have come to understand as ‘disability’ and vice versa; they were related fantasies of difference