Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds in meat and meat products

Dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are persistent organic pollutants that received considerable attention in recent years due to their high potential toxicity, wide distribution and extreme stability. Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) mainly occur in the environment as a result of several human activities including combustion, incineration and many other industrial activities, whereas polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) congeners were intentionally manufactured and widely used in various fields. Since dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are found in various environmental compartments (air, water, soil, sludge, sediment, food, feed, blood, animal and human tissues), humans could be exposed to them via inhalation, dermal contact or food ingestion. However, 90% of human exposure to dioxin is through food ingestion particularly foods from animals and foods that are rich in fat. In contrast, only low levels have been found in food items of plant origin. Exposure to dioxin compounds is associated with various adverse health problems. However, their toxicity varies dramatically according to the type of dioxin, species of exposed organism, as well as exposure frequency and duration. Dioxins are mainly determined by instrumental chromatographic methods such as GC-HRMS and GC–MS/MS. Many efforts have been made to remove, reduce and prevent these hazardous substances from the environment. However, the best method for reducing human exposure to dioxins and dioxin-like compounds is controlling and minimizing their production. In this article, structures, sources, exposure, toxicity and analysis methods of dioxin and dioxin-like compounds in meat and other foods were reviewed.Dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are persistent organic pollutants that received considerable attention in recent years due to their high potential toxicity, wide distribution and extreme stability. Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) mainly occur in the environment as a result of several human activities including combustion, incineration and many other industrial activities, whereas polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) congeners were intentionally manufactured and widely used in various fields. Since dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are found in various environmental compartments (air, water, soil, sludge, sediment, food, feed, blood, animal and human tissues), humans could be exposed to them via inhalation, dermal contact or food ingestion. However, 90% of human exposure to dioxin is through food ingestion particularly foods from animals and foods that are rich in fat. In contrast, only low levels have been found in food items of plant origin. Exposure to dioxin compounds is associated with various adverse health problems. However, their toxicity varies dramatically according to the type of dioxin, species of exposed organism, as well as exposure frequency and duration. Dioxins are mainly determined by instrumental chromatographic methods such as GC-HRMS and GC–MS/MS. Many efforts have been made to remove, reduce and prevent these hazardous substances from the environment. However, the best method for reducing human exposure to dioxins and dioxin-like compounds is controlling and minimizing their production. In this article, structures, sources, exposure, toxicity and analysis methods of dioxin and dioxin-like compounds in meat and other foods were reviewed

Microarray Analysis of Late Response to Boron Toxicity in Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Leaves

DNA microarrays, being high-density and high-throughput, allow quantitative analyses of thousands of genes and their expression patterns in parallel. In this study, Barley1 GereChip was used to investigate transcriptome changes associated with boron (B) toxicity in a sensitive barley cultivar (Hordeum vulgare L. cv. Hamidye). Eight-day-old aseptically grown seedlings were subjected to 5 or 10 mM boric acid (B(OH)(3)) treatments for 5 days and expression profiles were determined with DNA microarrays using total RNA from leaf tissues. Among the 22,840 transcripts - each represented with a probe set on the GeneChip - 19,424 probe sets showed intensity values greater than 20(th) percentile in at least one of the hybridizations. Compared to control (10 mu M B(OH)(3)), 5 mM B(OH)(3) treatment resulted in differential expression of 168 genes at least by twofold. Moreover, 10 mM B(OH)(3) treatment resulted in at least twofold induction or reduction in expression of 312 transcripts. Among these genes, 37 and 61 exhibited significantly (P <0.05) altered levels of expression under 5 and 10 mM B(OH)(3) treatments, respectively. Differentially expressed genes were characterized using expression-based clustering and HarvEST:Barley. Investigations of expression profiles revealed that B toxicity results in global changes in the barley transcriptome and networks of signaling or molecular responses. A noticeable feature of response to 8 was that it is highly interconnected with responses to various environmental stresses. Additionally, induction of jasmonic acid related genes was found to be an important late response to B toxicity. Determination of responsive genes will shed light on successive studies aiming to elucidate molecular mechanism of B toxicity or tolerance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on global expression analysis of barley seedlings under B toxicity

Fidelity for displaced squeezed states and the oscillator semigroup

The fidelity for two displaced squeezed thermal states is computed using the fact that the corresponding density operators belong to the oscillator semigroup.Comment: 3 pages, REVTEX, no figures, submitted to Journal of Physics A, May 5, 199

The Infrared Einstein Ring in the Gravitational Lens MG1131+0456 and the Death of the Dusty Lens Hypothesis

We have obtained and modeled new NICMOS images of the lens system MG1131+0456, which show that its lens galaxy is an H=18.6 mag, transparent, early-type galaxy at a redshift of about z_l = 0.85; it has a major axis effective radius R_e=0.68+/-0.05 arcsec, projected axis ratio b/a=0.77+/-0.02, and major axis PA=60+/-2 degrees. The lens is the brightest member of a group of seven galaxies with similar R-I and I-H colors, and the two closest group members produce sufficient tidal perturbations to explain the ring morphology. The host galaxy of the MG1131+0456 source is a z_s > 2 ERO (``extremely red object'') which is lensed into optical and infrared rings of dramatically different morphologies. These differences imply a strongly wavelength-dependent source morphology that could be explained by embedding the host in a larger, dusty disk. At 1.6 micron (H), the ring is spectacularly luminous, with a total observed flux of H=17.4 mag and a de-magnified flux of 19.3 mag, corresponding to a 1-2L_* galaxy at the probable source redshift of z_s > 2. Thus, it is primarily the stellar emission of the radio source host galaxy that produces the overall colors of two of the reddest radio lenses, MG1131+0456 and B~1938+666, aided by the suppression of optical AGN emission by dust in the source galaxy. The dusty lens hypothesis -- that many massive early-type galaxies with 0.2 < z_l < 1.0 have large, uniform dust opacities -- is ruled out.Comment: 27 pages, 8 COLOR figures, submitted to ApJ. Black and white version available at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/castle

Perturbative Computation of Glueball Superpotentials for SO(N) and USp(N)

We use the superspace method of hep-th/0211017 to prove the matrix model conjecture for N=1 USp(N) and SO(N) gauge theories in four dimensions. We derive the prescription to relate the matrix model to the field theory computations. We perform an explicit calculation of glueball superpotentials. The result is consistent with field theory expectations.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure

Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds in meat and meat products

Dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are persistent organic pollutants that received considerable attention in recent years due to their high potential toxicity, wide distribution and extreme stability. Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) mainly occur in the environment as a result of several human activities including combustion, incineration and many other industrial activities, whereas polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) congeners were intentionally manufactured and widely used in various fields. Since dioxin and dioxin-like compounds are found in various environmental compartments (air, water, soil, sludge, sediment, food, feed, blood, animal and human tissues), humans could be exposed to them via inhalation, dermal contact or food ingestion. However, 90% of human exposure to dioxin is through food ingestion particularly foods from animals and foods that are rich in fat. In contrast, only low levels have been found in food items of plant origin. Exposure to dioxin compounds is associated with various adverse health problems. However, their toxicity varies dramatically according to the type of dioxin, species of exposed organism, as well as exposure frequency and duration. Dioxins are mainly determined by instrumental chromatographic methods such as GC-HRMS and GC–MS/MS. Many efforts have been made to remove, reduce and prevent these hazardous substances from the environment. However, the best method for reducing human exposure to dioxins and dioxin-like compounds is controlling and minimizing their production. In this article, structures, sources, exposure, toxicity and analysis methods of dioxin and dioxin-like compounds in meat and other foods were reviewed

Gravitational F-terms of N=1 Supersymmetric SU(N) Gauge Theories

We use the generalized Konishi anomaly equations and R-symmetry anomaly to compute the exact perturbative and non-perturbative gravitational F-terms of four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories. We formulate the general procedure for computation and consider chiral and non-chiral SU(N) gauge theories.Comment: 25 pages, v2: minor changes in section 4, references adde