10,690 research outputs found
Investigation on the Metabolic Regulation of pgi gene knockout Escherichia coli by Enzyme Activities and Intracellular Metabolite Concentrations
An integrated analysis of the cell growth characteristics, enzyme activities, intracellular metabolite concentrations was made to investigate the metabolic regulation of pgi gene knockout Escherichia coli based on batch culture and continuous culture which was performed at the dilution rate of 0.2h-1. The enzymatic study identified that pathways of pentose phosphate, ED pathway and glyoxylate shunt were all active in pgi mutant. The glycolysis enzymes i.e glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, fructose diphosphatase, pyruvate kinase, triose phosphate isomerase were down regulated implying that the inactivation of pgi gene reduced the carbon flux through glycolytic pathway. Meanwhile, the pentose phosphate pathway was active as a major route for intermediary carbohydrate metabolism instead of glycolysis. The pentose phosphate pathway generates most of the major reducing co-factor NADPH as shown by the increased of NADPH/NADP+ ratio in the mutant when compared with the parent strain. The fermentative enzymes such as acetate kinase and lactate dehydrogenase were down regulated in the mutant. Knockout of pgi gene results in the significant increase in the intracellular concentration of glucose-6-phosphate and decrease in the concentration of oxaloacetate. The slow growth rate of the mutant was assumed to be affected by the accumulation of glucose-6-phosphate and imbalance of NADPH reoxidation
Point-of-care diagnostics of covid-19: From current work to future perspectives
Coronaviruses have received global concern since 2003, when an outbreak caused by SARSâCoV emerged in China. Later on, in 2012, the MiddleâEast respiratory syndrome spread in Saudi Arabia, caused by MERSâCoV. Currently, the global crisis is caused by the pandemic SARSâ CoVâ2, which belongs to the same lineage of SARSâCoV. In response to the urgent need of diagnostic tools, several labâbased and biosensing techniques have been proposed so far. Five main areas have been individuated and discussed in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. The cellâculture detection and the microneutralization tests are still considered highly reliable methods. The genetic screening, featuring the wellâestablished Realâtime polymerase chain reaction (RTâPCR), represents the gold standard for virus detection in nasopharyngeal swabs. On the other side, immunoassays were developed, either by screening/antigen recognition of IgM/IgG or by detecting the whole virus, in blood and sera. Next, proteomic massâspectrometry (MS)âbased methodologies have also been proposed for the analysis of swab samples. Finally, virus-biosensing devices were efficiently designed. Both electrochemical immunosensors and eyeâbased technologies have been described, showing detection times lower than 10 min after swab introduction. Alternative to swabâbased techniques, lateral flow pointâofâcare immunoassays are already commercially available for the analysis of blood samples. Such biosensing devices hold the advantage of being portable for onâsite testing in hospitals, airports, and hotspots, virtually without any sample treatment or complicated lab precautions
Co-Digestion of Palm Oil Mill Effluent and Refined Glycerin Wash Water for Chemical Oxygen Demand Removal and Methane Production
Problem statement: Refined Glycerin Wash Water (RGWW) from the oleochemical industry contains high Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and requires proper treatment before disposal. Unfortunately the wash water also contains high concentration of sodium chloride (NaCl) that could cause inhibition to the normal biological treatment process. However, there is feasibility of co-digesting the RGWW and Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) for its treatment and methane recovery.Approach: A large 500 m3 semi-commercial closed digester tank was used to study the effect of co-digesting POME and RGWW under mesophilic condition at different RGWW percentage. The digester performance in terms of COD removal efficiency and methane production rate and stability based on total Volatile Fatty Acids (VFA) accumulation, Mixed Liquor Volatile Suspended Solid (MLVSS) and pH were evaluated.Results: At 1.0% of RGWW co-digested, both COD removal efficiency and methane production rate showed satisfactory results with higher than 90% and 505 m3 day-1, respectively. However, once the percentage was increased to a maximum of 5.25%, COD removal efficiency remains high but the methane production rate reduced significantly down to 307 m3 day-1. At this stage, the digester was already unstable with high total VFA recorded of 913 mg L-1 and low cells concentration of 8.58 g L-1. This was probably due to the effect of plasmolysis on the methanogens at high concentration of NaCl in the digester of nearly 4000 mg L-1.Conclusion: Co-digesting of RGWW with high NaCl content and POME is satisfactory for COD removal but not for increasing the methane production
Competitive random sequential adsorption of point and fixed-sized particles: analytical results
We study the kinetics of competitive random sequential adsorption (RSA) of
particles of binary mixture of points and fixed-sized particles within the
mean-field approach. The present work is a generalization of the random car
parking problem in the sense that it considers the case when either a car of
fixed size is parked with probability q or the parking space is partitioned
into two smaller spaces with probability (1-q) at each time event. This allows
an interesting interplay between the classical RSA problem at one extreme
(q=1), and the kinetics of fragmentation processes at the other extreme (q=0).
We present exact analytical results for coverage for a whole range of q values,
and physical explanations are given for different aspects of the problem. In
addition, a comprehensive account of the scaling theory, emphasizing on
dimensional analysis, is presented, and the exact expression for the scaling
function and exponents are obtained.Comment: 7 pages, latex, 3 figure
Charging Interacting Rotating Black Holes in Heterotic String Theory
We present a formulation of the stationary bosonic string sector of the whole
toroidally compactified effective field theory of the heterotic string as a
double Ernst system which, in the framework of General Relativity describes, in
particular, a pair of interacting spinning black holes; however, in the
framework of low--energy string theory the double Ernst system can be
particularly interpreted as the rotating field configuration of two interacting
sources of black hole type coupled to dilaton and Kalb--Ramond fields. We
clarify the rotating character of the --component of the
antisymmetric tensor field of Kalb--Ramond and discuss on its possible torsion
nature. We also recall the fact that the double Ernst system possesses a
discrete symmetry which is used to relate physically different string vacua.
Therefore we apply the normalized Harrison transformation (a charging symmetry
which acts on the target space of the low--energy heterotic string theory
preserving the asymptotics of the transformed fields and endowing them with
multiple electromagnetic charges) on a generic solution of the double Ernst
system and compute the generated field configurations for the 4D effective
field theory of the heterotic string. This transformation generates the
vector field content of the whole low--energy heterotic string
spectrum and gives rise to a pair of interacting rotating black holes endowed
with dilaton, Kalb--Ramond and multiple electromagnetic fields where the charge
vectors are orthogonal to each other.Comment: 15 pages in latex, revised versio
Fractal dimension and degree of order in sequential deposition of mixture
We present a number models describing the sequential deposition of a mixture
of particles whose size distribution is determined by the power-law , . We explicitly obtain the scaling function in
the case of random sequential adsorption (RSA) and show that the pattern
created in the long time limit becomes scale invariant. This pattern can be
described by an unique exponent, the fractal dimension. In addition, we
introduce an external tuning parameter beta to describe the correlated
sequential deposition of a mixture of particles where the degree of correlation
is determined by beta, while beta=0 corresponds to random sequential deposition
of mixture. We show that the fractal dimension of the resulting pattern
increases as beta increases and reaches a constant non-zero value in the limit
when the pattern becomes perfectly ordered or non-random
fractals.Comment: 16 pages Latex, Submitted to Phys. Rev.
An analytic model for a cooperative ballistic deposition in one dimension
We formulate a model for a cooperative ballistic deposition (CBD) process
whereby the incoming particles are correlated with the ones already adsorbed
via attractive force. The strength of the correlation is controlled by a
tunable parameter that interpolates the classical car parking problem at
, the ballistic deposition at and the CBD model at . The
effects of the correlation in the CBD model are as follows. The jamming
coverage increases with the strength of attraction due to an ever
increasing tendency of cluster formation. The system almost reaches the closest
packing structure as but never forms a percolating cluster which
is typical to 1D system. In the large regime, the mean cluster size
increases as . Furthermore, the asymptotic approach towards the
closest packing is purely algebraic both with as and with as where .Comment: 9 pages (in Revtex4), 9 eps figures; Submitted to publicatio
Epidemiological Characteristics and Survival Studies of Rhabdomyosarcoma in East Egypt: A Five-Year Multicenter Study
Background. Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is the most common soft tissue sarcoma in children, it represents 5â8% of childhood malignancies. Aim of the Work. To evaluate the epidemiological characteristics and treatment outcome in two pediatric oncology centers. Patients and Method. A retrospective analysis was performed on 41 medical records of children with RMS during 6 years period. Results. The median age of patients was 6 years with 80.4% below 10 years. Head and neck was the most common primary site. Embryonal RMS was the most frequent histopathologic subtype. Stage IV was the most frequent stage. According to IRS postsurgical grouping classification, group 4 was the most frequent group. There was a significant relationship between histopathologic subtypes of tumor and metastasis, primary site of tumor and histopathologic subtype, age, metastasis, IRS presurgical stage and IRS postsurgical group and outcome. The overall survival rate was 56.9%â±â8.4 and the failure free survival rate was 68.3%â±â7.6. Conclusion. The epidemiological characteristics of our patients are quite near to the worldwide data, apart from the higher prevalence of stage IV and group 4 with most of the primary tumor site in the extremities. CWS2002 protocol of therapy had led to improvement in the curability of the disease
Monte Carlo Eikonal Scattering
Monte Carlo evaluation is used to calculate heavy-ion elastic scattering
including the center-of-mass correction and the Coulomb interaction.Angular
distributions are presented for a number of nuclear pairs over a wide energy
range using nucleon-nucleon scattering parameters taken from phase-shift
analyses and densities from independent sources. A technique for the efficient
expansion of the Glauber amplitude in partial waves is developed
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