Gene Regulation in Ruminants: A Nutritional Perspective

This chapter will focus on cellular regulatory programs implemented by the ruminant physiology in order to respond to external stimuli such as nutrition as well as important physiological events such as parturition. The increasing adoption of “omics” technologies and bioinformatics in nutrition and physiology in ruminant research have allowed us to delineate a clearer picture on what regulates major biological process at a molecular level such as milk synthesis and meat quality and fatty acid composition as well as pathological conditions such as ketosis, mastitis, and heat stress. The assembly of such plethora of information in a blend among nutritional research, molecular biology, and novel tools to study the response of the genome to nutrition has led to emerging disciplines such as nutritional genomics or “nutrigenomics.

Heavy Metal Ions Cu (II), Co (II) and Cr (III) Bifunctionally Improved with Hydroxamic and Amidoxime Groups Chelating Ion Exchangers

Two new types of bifunctional chelating ion exchangers on the basis of ethylacrylate acrylonitrile: divinylbenzene copolymers with hydroxamic acid and amidoxime groups have been evaluated for Cu(II), Co(II) and Cr(III)ions sorption from unbuffered diluted aqueous solutions. To model the retention and to compare the sorption capacity of bifunctional acrylic chelating sorbents for the tested cations the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm equations have been used. The Langmuir maximum sorption capacities for the sorbent of type A were determined to be 2.081, 1.423 and 1.384 mmole/g for Cu (II), Co (II) and Cr (III), respectively. The increase of cross- linking degree for the bifunctional chelating ion exchanger of type B resulted in the decrease of its sorption capacity toward heavy metal ions under study. The negative values of ΔG in all cases point to the spontaneous character of the sorption process. The kinetics of the Cu (II), Co (II) and Cr (III) sorption follows the Lagergren pseudo – first order model. The results are significant for the future development of the tested sorbents into beneficial materials for industrial and environmental applications

Economic Implications of Additive Manufacturing and the Contribution of MIS

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12599-015-0374-4

Occipital transcranial direct current stimulation in episodic migraine patients: effect on cerebral perfusion

Cerebral blood flow differs between migraine patients and healthy controls during attack and the interictal period. This study compares the brain perfusion of episodic migraine patients and healthy controls and investigates the influence of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the occipital cortex. We included healthy adult controls and episodic migraineurs. After a 28-day baseline period and the baseline visit, migraine patients received daily active or sham anodal tDCS over the occipital lobe for 28 days. All participants underwent a MRI scan at baseline; migraineurs were also scanned shortly after the stimulation period and about five months later. At baseline, brain perfusion of migraine patients and controls differed in several areas; among the stimulated areas, perfusion was increased in the cuneus of healthy controls. At the first visit, the active tDCS group had an increased blood flow in regions processing visual stimuli and a decreased perfusion in other areas. Perfusion did not differ at the second follow-up visit. The lower perfusion level in migraineurs in the cuneus indicates a lower preactivation level. Anodal tDCS over the occipital cortex increases perfusion of several areas shortly after the stimulation period, but not 5 months later. An increase in the cortical preactivation level could mediate the transient reduction of the migraine frequency.Trial registration: NCT03237754 (registered at clincicaltrials.gov; full date of first trial registration: 03/08/2017)

Interfacial growth of HfOxNy gate dielectrics deposited using [(C2H5)2N]4Hf with O2 and NO

The interfacegrowth by oxygen diffusion has been investigated for 5 nm thick HfOxNy gate-quality dielectric films deposited on Si(100) by low-pressure pulsed metalorganic chemical vapor deposition.Analysis by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of the films deposited using the precursor tetrakis (diethylamido) hafnium with O2 showed that the films contained 4 at.\u200a% nitrogen. This increased to 11 at.\u200a% N when NO was used as the oxidant. Significant growth of the interface layer was observed for films exposed to air at ambient temperature and lower rates of growth were observed for vacuum annealedfilms and those with the higher N content. For filmsannealed in O2 at temperatures in the range 600\u2013900\u200a\ub0C, the activation energies of the interfacial growth were 0.36 and 0.25 eV for N concentrations of 11 and 4 at.\u200a%, respectively. The results were interpreted in terms of atomic oxygen formation in the bulk and reaction at the interface. The increase in N incorporation from 4 to 11 at.\u200a% increases the crystallization temperature from between 500 and 600\u200a\ub0C to between 600 and 700\u200a\ub0C.NRC publication: Ye

Mass and charge identification of fragments detected with the Chimera Silicon-CsI(Tl) telescopes

Mass and charge identification of charged products detected with Silicon-CsI(Tl) telescopes of the Chimera apparatus is presented. An identification function, based on the Bethe-Bloch formula, is used to fit empirical correlation between Delta E and E ADC readings, in order to determine, event by event, the atomic and mass numbers of the detected charged reaction products prior to energy calibration.Comment: 24 pages, 7 .jpg figures, submitted to Nucl.Instr.

Isospin-tracing: A probe of non-equilibrium in central heavy-ion collisions

Four different combinations of $^{96}_{44}$Ru and $^{96}_{40}$Zr nuclei, both as projectile and target, were investigated at the same bombarding energy of 400$A$ MeV using a $4 \pi$ detector. The degree of isospin mixing between projectile and target nucleons is mapped across a large portion of the phase space using two different isospin-tracer observables, the number of measured protons and the ${\rm t}/^{3}{\rm He}$ yield ratio. The experimental results show that the global equilibrium is not reached even in the most central collisions. Quantitative measures of stopping and mixing are extracted from the data. They are found to exhibit a quite strong sensitivity to the in-medium (n,n) cross section used in microscopic transport calculations.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, 3 figures (ps files), submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Identification of baryon resonances in central heavy-ion collisions at energies between 1 and 2 AGeV

The mass distributions of baryon resonances populated in near-central collisions of Au on Au and Ni on Ni are deduced by defolding the $p_t$ spectra of charged pions by a method which does not depend on a specific resonance shape. In addition the mass distributions of resonances are obtained from the invariant masses of $(p, \pi^{\pm})$ pairs. With both methods the deduced mass distributions are shifted by an average value of -60 MeV/c$^2$ relative to the mass distribution of the free $\Delta(1232)$ resonance, the distributions descent almost exponentially towards mass values of 2000 MeV/c^2. The observed differences between $(p, \pi^-)$ and $(p, \pi^+)$ pairs indicate a contribution of isospin $I = 1/2$ resonances. The attempt to consistently describe the deduced mass distributions and the reconstructed kinetic energy spectra of the resonances leads to new insights about the freeze out conditions, i.e. to rather low temperatures and large expansion velocities.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, Latex using documentstyle[12pt,a4,epsfig], to appear in Eur. Phys. J.

Direct comparison of phase-space distributions of K- and K+ mesons in heavy-ion collisions at SIS energies - evidence for in-medium modifications of kaons ?

The ratio of K- to K+ meson yields has been measured in the systems RuRu at 1.69 A GeV, Ru+Zr at 1.69 A GeV, and Ni+Ni at 1.93 A GeV incident beam kinetic energy. The yield ratio is observed to vary across the measured phase space. Relativistic transport-model calculations indicate that the data are best understood if in-medium modifications of the kaons are taken into account.Comment: 14 pages including 3 figure