Involvement of SNP marker located on the Calcium binding protein gene in adaptive traits and organoleptic performances of the olive tree

Olive trees importance is mainly due to the economic and health benefits, especially in the Mediterranean basin. Unfortunately, to enhance productivity and quality of olive oil, the study of both molecular and phenotypic characterizations of olive cultivars is crucial. We consider the analysis of 14 Tunisian olive cultivars of known origin sampled from different areas of the country based on SNP marker (CALC) located in calcium binding protein gene. Accordingly, we assessed the potential genotype-phenotypes links between the SNP, on the one hand, and the quantitative and qualitative parameters, on the other. The statistical analysis based on bivariate analysis for the CALC marker suggests that Chemlali varieties with CG genotypes have better capacity to produce fruit, fruit oil, oil content in carotene, cholesterol and linoleic acid than homozygote GG genotypes varieties. These results are confirmed by a multivariate logistic regression.Keywords: Olea europaea L; CALC; calcium binding protein; bivariate analysis; multivariate logistic regression

Iron deficiency anemia among kindergarten children living in the marginalized areas of Gaza Strip Palestine

ABSTRACTBackgroundiron deficiency anemia is the most common type of nutritional anemia; it has been recognized as an important health problem in Palestine. This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence and to identify possible risk factors of iron deficiency anemia among kindergarten children living in the marginalized areas of the Gaza Strip and to evaluate the effectiveness of supplementing oral iron formula in the anemic children.Methodsthe study included 735 (384 male and 351 female) kindergarten children. Data was collected by questionnaire interviews, anthropometric measurements, and complete blood count analysis. All iron deficient anemic children were treated using an oral iron formula (50mg ferrous carbonate+100mg vitamin C /5mL) and the complete blood count was reassessed after three months. A univariate analysis and a multiple logistic regression model were constructed; crude and adjusted odds ratios (OR), and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated.Resultsthe overall prevalence of iron deficiency anemia was 33.5% with no significant differences between boys and girls. Significantly different prevalences of iron deficiency anemia were reported between different governorates of the Gaza Strip. Governorate, low education level of the parents and smoking are significant risk factors for children developing anemia. Significantly lower complete blood count parameters, except for WBC, were reported in anemic children. The oral iron treatment significantly improved hemoglobin concentrations, and normalized the iron deficiency marker.Conclusionsiron deficiency anemia is a serious health problem among children living in the marginalized areas of the Gaza Strip, which justifies the necessity for national intervention programs to improve the health status for the less fortunate development areas

Effect of temperature, oxygen and light on the degradation of β-carotene, lutein and α-tocopherol in spray-dried spinach juice powder during storage

© 2019 The aim of this study was to evaluate the interaction between packaging parameters (transmission of light and oxygen) and storage temperatures (4, 20, 40 °C) on nutrient retention of Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) juice, spray-dried in the absence of an added encapsulant. β-Carotene was more susceptible to degradation compared with lutein and α-tocopherol. Under our experimental conditions, it was observed that excluding low fluorescent light intensity and air by vacuum packaging at 20 °C did not seem to improve nutrient retention loss over time (p > 0.05). The rate of β-carotene, lutein and α-tocopherol loss displayed first order reaction kinetic with low activation energy of 0.665, 2.650 and 13.893 kJ/mol for vacuum, and 1.089, 4.923 and 14.142 kJ/mol for non-vacuum, respectively. The reaction kinetics and half-life for β-carotene, lutein and α-tocopherol at 4 °C and non-vacuumed were 2.2 × 10 −2 , 1.2 × 10 −2 , and 0.8 × 10 −2 day −1 , and 32.08, 58.25 and 85.37 day, respectively

Molecular characterization of γ gliadin from durum wheat (Triticum turgidum L. Subsp. Durum ((Desf.) Husn.)

The gluten quality is one of the main factors affecting the quality of durum wheat. It depends primarily on its storage proteins composition (glutenins and gliadins). In order to set up and initiate a technological quality improvement program of durum wheat we have conducted a prospection of the different protein sequences of gliadin in different databases for Triticum, then the filtration steps and assembly by appropriate software have been conducted to reduce the number of redundant sequences. On the other hand, we have isolated a gene from Iride "Gli-A1" encoding a γ-gliadin protein associated with gluten strength and viscoelasticity of the dough, we performed an in silico molecular and structural analysis in order to define its putative functional properties. The latter could be a valuable candidate as molecular marker for selecting high nutritive value of durum wheat and/or for genetic improvement of durum wheat quality.Keywords: in silico; Storage Proteins; Gliadin; Triticum ; wheat; technological qualit

Unbiased Shape Compactness for Segmentation

We propose to constrain segmentation functionals with a dimensionless, unbiased and position-independent shape compactness prior, which we solve efficiently with an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Involving a squared sum of pairwise potentials, our prior results in a challenging high-order optimization problem, which involves dense (fully connected) graphs. We split the problem into a sequence of easier sub-problems, each performed efficiently at each iteration: (i) a sparse-matrix inversion based on Woodbury identity, (ii) a closed-form solution of a cubic equation and (iii) a graph-cut update of a sub-modular pairwise sub-problem with a sparse graph. We deploy our prior in an energy minimization, in conjunction with a supervised classifier term based on CNNs and standard regularization constraints. We demonstrate the usefulness of our energy in several medical applications. In particular, we report comprehensive evaluations of our fully automated algorithm over 40 subjects, showing a competitive performance for the challenging task of abdominal aorta segmentation in MRI.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 201

Single-crystal-to-single-crystal transformation and catalytic properties of new hybrid perhalidometallates

Two new organic–inorganic salts of perhalidometallates with protonated organic amine cations have been synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffraction and thermal analysis. (CHBMAH2) ZnBr4·3/2H2O 1 and (CHBMAH2 )ZnCl4 4 [(CHBMAH2 )2+: 1, 3-cyclohexanebis(methylammonium)] were obtained in single-crystal form. The crystal packing in all of the obtained compounds is governed by the formation of various non-covalent intermolecular forces between tetrahalidometallate anions and organic cations, assisted by water molecules in the hydrates. Hirshfeld surface analysis denotes that the most important contributions to the crystal packing are X···H/H···X (X: Cl, Br, I) and H···H interactions. Interestingly, the compound 1, 3-cyclohexanebis(methylammonium)tetrachlorido-zincate (II) dihydrate, (CHBMAH2 )ZnCl4·2H2O 2, undergoes thermally-triggered single-crystal-to-single-crystal (SCSC) transformation upon dehydration to produce a supramolecular solid compound, 1, 3-cyclohexanebis(methylammonium) tetrachloridozincate (II), (CHBMAH2 )ZnCl4 4. The SCSC transformation causes changes in the lattice parameters and a structural rearrangement. Furthermore, the catalytic properties of (CHBMAH2 )ZnCl4·2H2O 2 and (CHBMAH2 )CdI4·2H2O 3 have been explored in the acetalization process using various uncommon alcohols, beyond methanol or ethanol, for the first time in the literature, with outstanding results, and opening the door to the formation of alternative acetals. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Bi-directional Alfv\'en Cyclotron Instabilities in the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak

Alfv\'en cyclotron instabilities excited by velocity gradients of energetic beam ions were investigated in MAST experiments with super-Alfv\'enic NBI over a wide range of toroidal magnetic fields from ~0.34 T to ~0.585 T. In MAST discharges with high magnetic field, a discrete spectrum of modes in the sub-cyclotron frequency range is excited toroidally propagating counter to the beam and plasma current (toroidal mode numbers n < 0).Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures. This article has been submitted to Physics of Plasmas. After it is published, it will be found at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/pop/brows