Raffinose in the Sugarbeet (\u3cem\u3eBeta vulgaris\u3c/em\u3e): I. Biosynthesis and Degradation in the Root; II. Hydrolysis in Molasses With Sweet Almond Emulsin

PART I The precursors for the biosynthesis of raffinose in sugarbeets were studied. An enzyme preparation was obtained from the sugarbeet (Beta vulgaris) root. Incubation of this enzyme with (X-galactose-1-phosphate, Uridine triphosphate (UTP), Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), Magnesium chloride (MgC12), and L- cysteine at pH 5, 10°c for 6 hours formed a compound which was identified as raffinose by a hydrolysis method and thin- layer chromatography. The same result was obtained when Uridinediphosphate (UDP)-galactose was incubated with sucrose, ATP , MgC12 , and L- cysteine in the presence of the beet enzyme preparation. These reactions suggested that the sugarbeet contained an enzyme system capable of transferring a galactose unit from X-galactose-1-phosphate or UDP-galactose to sucrose, forming raffinose. The galactosylation of sucrose via UDP- galactose was further confirmed using sucrose-UL-C14 as one of the substrates. Radioactive raffinose was identified on a radio-autograph. The involvement of UDP-galactose in the raffinose synthesis is believed to be of more significance in vivo. A preliminary study indicated there are at least five main categories of nucleotide compounds in beet root tissues. It is suggested that a sugar nucleotide pool is present in the sugarbeet for transglycosylation among various sugars. A reaction similar to the above using UDP-glucose-UL-c14 and Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide instead of UDP-galactose resulted in the formation of labeled raffinose. This suggested that an UDP-glucose-4-epimerase activity in beet tissues may be responsible for the conversion of UDP-glucose to UDP-galactose for the raffinose synthesis. The possible participation of galactinol in the raffinose synthesis in sugarbeets was investigated. An experiment using galactinol, sucrose-UL-c14 and ATP as reactants with the sugarbeet enzyme did not give positive results. The presence of X-galactosidase activity in the beet enzyme preparation was noted. Incubation of the enzyme at 37 C with raffinose and stachyose respectively liberated galactose as a common product. It is suggested that X-galactosidase is the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of raffinose in the sugarbeet. The turn-over of galactose liberated from raffinose by this hydrolytic enzyme is discussed. The separation of X-galactosidase from raffinose synthetase was attempted. Some difficulties involved are discussed. A study of the effects of pH and temperature on the enzyme activities showed that pH 5 and low temperatures (0-15°C) are favorable for the raffinose synthesis, while high temperatures (above 15°C) favored X-galactosidase activity. Raffinose was formed when UDP-galactose and sucrose were incubated with the enzyme preparation at 0C for 24 hours. This would account for the accumulation of raffinose during cold storage since at low temperatures X-galactosidase activity is retarded while raffinose synthetase seems to be unaffected. PART II Incubation of 30 milligrams commercial sweet almond emulsin (800 units/mg) with 2.5 BX molasses which contained 1. 5 mg raffinose in 3 milliliters 0.1 M acetate buffer at pH 6, 35C for one day resulted in a complete hydrolysis of raffinose in the digest. No sucrose inversion occurred under the above conditions

Combinatorial curvature flows for generalized hyperbolic circle packings

Generalized circle packings were introduced in \cite{Ba-Hu-Sun} as a generalization of tangential circle packings in hyperbolic background geometry. In this paper, we introduce the combinatorial Calabi flow, fractional combinatorial Calabi flow and combinatorial $p$-th Calabi flow for generalized hyperbolic circle packings. We establish several equivalent conditions regarding the longtime behaviors of these flows. This provides effective algorithms for finding the generalized circle packings with prescribed total geodesic curvatures

Coronary artery disease in dialysis patients: What is the optimal therapy?

AbstractCoronary artery disease (CAD) carries a high risk of mortality in dialysis patients. End-stage renal disease is considered to increase the vulnerability of patients with atherosclerosis superimposed on artery calcification. Recently, an increasing prevalence of CAD in dialysis patients has been attributed to a lack of effective prevention and treatment. Further studies have shown that optimal therapies for CAD in dialysis patients remain neglected and unclarified. These therapies include correction of anemia, control of blood pressure, and antiplatelet therapy. Because of bleeding tendencies in dialysis patients, the benefits of antiplatelet therapy and platelet glycoprotein IIb/IIIa inhibitors for treating CAD require more research. In addition, a meta-analysis of retrospective studies in 2012 showed that dialysis patients with CAD receiving coronary artery bypass surgery had a lower long-term mortality rate and fewer postoperative cardiac complications than those receiving percutaneous coronary angioplasty. A large randomized, long-term cohort study is necessary to confirm these issues

Periodically driven Taylor-Couette turbulence

We study periodically driven Taylor-Couette turbulence, i.e. the flow confined between two concentric, independently rotating cylinders. Here, the inner cylinder is driven sinusoidally while the outer cylinder is kept at rest (time-averaged Reynolds number is $Re_i = 5 \times 10^5$). Using particle image velocimetry (PIV), we measure the velocity over a wide range of modulation periods, corresponding to a change in Womersley number in the range $15 \leq Wo \leq 114$. To understand how the flow responds to a given modulation, we calculate the phase delay and amplitude response of the azimuthal velocity. In agreement with earlier theoretical and numerical work, we find that for large modulation periods the system follows the given modulation of the driving, i.e. the system behaves quasi-stationary. For smaller modulation periods, the flow cannot follow the modulation, and the flow velocity responds with a phase delay and a smaller amplitude response to the given modulation. If we compare our results with numerical and theoretical results for the laminar case, we find that the scalings of the phase delay and the amplitude response are similar. However, the local response in the bulk of the flow is independent of the distance to the modulated boundary. Apparently, the turbulent mixing is strong enough to prevent the flow from having radius-dependent responses to the given modulation.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Society Exchange Characteristics, Service Quality, and Relationship Quality between Hospital and Its Suppliers

Successful supply chain management provides an enterprise with a new competitive advantage. However, successful supply chain performance is based on a high level of trust and strong commitment among supply chain partners. Studies have indicated that communication, partner’s reputation, perceived benefits, fairness, and relationship tenure that are within the context of social exchange theory have an effect on trust. In the current study, we attempted to integrate two types of theories of social exchange and service quality by proposing an integrated model that influences the factor to trust and commitment. We then applied structural equation modeling to test the model. The study results indicated that a hospital’s trust in its supply chain partner is highly associated with commitment. The study included respondents comprising medical device procurement staff working in hospitals within Taiwan. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed; 316 completed questionnaires were received. The results revealed that communication, partner’s reputation, and perceived benefits had a positive effect on trust. Service quality was also determined to have a positive effect on trust and commitment. This result should provide reference for a hospital and its relationship with suppliers, which helps monitor decision variables in the supply chain management of medical devices

An Integrated Dataflow Based Model for Digital Investigation

This study developed a highly adaptive digital forensic model, applicable to various situations, which clearly describes the digital forensic process and their purposes as well as ensuring the exactness and effectiveness of digital forensic results. It examined the viewpoint of the digital evidence process flow throughout an entire forensic process, and it hoped to provide a complete explanation of the digital forensic procedure and the details of execution. In addition, it proposed three new forensic concepts: primary, supported and comprehensive forensic procedures. The structural hierarchy constructed in the model can be expanded, then divided into its simplest forms, allowing independent task assignments. It further proposed several innovative digital forensic concepts, such as a new feedback mechanism. Finally, this model could provide a detailed list of the resources necessary for an entire forensic activity, applicable to management planning. This model provided a practical description approach and established a comprehensive and uniform digital expression form. The aim is to accumulate and to share experience and knowledge, hoping to create more mature and practical digital forensic science and to provide a reference for the practitioners of digital forensics

Treatment Learning Causal Transformer for Noisy Image Classification

Current top-notch deep learning (DL) based vision models are primarily based on exploring and exploiting the inherent correlations between training data samples and their associated labels. However, a known practical challenge is their degraded performance against "noisy" data, induced by different circumstances such as spurious correlations, irrelevant contexts, domain shift, and adversarial attacks. In this work, we incorporate this binary information of "existence of noise" as treatment into image classification tasks to improve prediction accuracy by jointly estimating their treatment effects. Motivated from causal variational inference, we propose a transformer-based architecture, Treatment Learning Causal Transformer (TLT), that uses a latent generative model to estimate robust feature representations from current observational input for noise image classification. Depending on the estimated noise level (modeled as a binary treatment factor), TLT assigns the corresponding inference network trained by the designed causal loss for prediction. We also create new noisy image datasets incorporating a wide range of noise factors (e.g., object masking, style transfer, and adversarial perturbation) for performance benchmarking. The superior performance of TLT in noisy image classification is further validated by several refutation evaluation metrics. As a by-product, TLT also improves visual salience methods for perceiving noisy images.Comment: Accepted to IEEE WACV 2023. The first version was finished in May 201

The Immunomodulatory Effect of You-Gui-Wan on Dermatogoides-pteronyssinus-Induced Asthma

The traditional Chinese medicine You-Gui-Wan (YGW) contains ten species of medicinal plants and has been used to improve health in remissive states of asthma for hundreds of years in Asia. However, little is known about the immunomodulatory mechanisms in vivo. Therefore, this study investigated the pathologic and immunologic responses to YGW in mice that had been repeatedly exposed to Dermatogoides-pteronyssinus (Der p). YGW reduced Der-p-induced airway hyperresponsiveness and total IgE in serum. It also inhibited eosinophil infiltration by downregulating the protein expression of IL-5 in serum and changed the Th2-bios in BALF by upregulating IL-12. Results of the collagen assay and histopathologic examination showed that YGW reduced airway remodeling in the lung. In addition, after YGW treatment there was a relative decrease in mRNA expression of TGF-β1, IL-13, eotaxin, RANTES, and MCP-1 in lung in the YGW group. The results of EMSA and immunohistochemistry revealed that YGW inhibited NF-κB expression in epithelial lung cells. YGW exerts its regulative effects in chronic allergic asthmatic mice via its anti-inflammatory activity and by inhibiting the progression of airway remodeling