Syngas production from glycerol-dry (CO2) reforming over La-promoted Ni/Al2O3 catalyst

A 3 wt% La-promoted Ni/Al2O3 catalyst was prepared via wet co-impregnation technique and physicochemically-characterized. Lanthanum was responsible for better metal dispersion; hence higher BET specific surface area (96.0 m2 g−1) as compared to the unpromoted Ni/Al2O3 catalyst (85.0 m2 g−1). In addition, the La-promoted catalyst possessed finer crystallite size (9.1 nm) whilst the unpromoted catalyst measured 12.8 nm. Subsequently, glycerol dry reforming was performed at atmospheric pressure and temperatures ranging from 923 to 1123 K employing CO2-to-glycerol ratio from zero to five. Significantly, the reaction results have yielded syngas as main gaseous products with H2:CO ratios always below than 2.0 with concomitant maximum 96% glycerol conversion obtained at the CO2-to-glycerol ratio of 1.67. In addition, the glycerol consumption rate can be adequately captured using power law modelling with the order of reactions equal 0.72 and 0.14 with respect to glycerol and CO2 whilst the activation energy was 35.0 kJ mol−1. A 72 h longevity run moreover revealed that the catalyst gave a stable catalytic performance

Small noncoding RNA modulates japanese encephalitis virus replication and translation in trans

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Sequence and structural elements in the 3'-untranslated region (UTR) of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) are known to regulate translation and replication. We previously reported an abundant accumulation of small subgenomic flaviviral RNA (sfRNA) which is collinear with the highly conserved regions of the 3'-UTR in JEV-infected cells. However, function of the sfRNA in JEV life cycle remains unknown.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Northern blot and real-time RT-PCR analyses indicated that the sfRNA becomes apparent at the time point at which minus-strand RNA (antigenome) reaches a plateau suggesting a role for sfRNA in the regulation of antigenome synthesis. Transfection of minus-sense sfRNA into JEV-infected cells, in order to counter the effects of plus-sense sfRNA, resulted in higher levels of antigenome suggesting that the presence of the sfRNA inhibits antigenome synthesis. <it>Trans</it>-acting effect of sfRNA on JEV translation was studied using a reporter mRNA containing the luciferase gene fused to partial coding regions of JEV and flanked by the respective JEV UTRs. <it>In vivo </it>and <it>in vitro </it>translation revealed that sfRNA inhibited JEV translation.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our results indicate that sfRNA modulates viral translation and replication <it>in trans</it>.</p

Syngas Production from Glycerol-dry(CO2) Reforming Over La-promoted Ni/Al2O3 Catalyst

A 3 wt% La-promoted Ni/Al2O3 catalyst was prepared via wet co-impregnation technique and physicochemically-characterized. Lanthanum was responsible for better metal dispersion; hence higher BET specific surface area (96.0 m2 g−1) as compared to the unpromoted Ni/Al2O3 catalyst (85.0 m2 g−1). In addition, the La-promoted catalyst possessed finer crystallite size (9.1 nm) whilst the unpromoted catalyst measured 12.8 nm. Subsequently, glycerol dry reforming was performed at atmospheric pressure and temperatures ranging from 923 to 1123 K employing CO2-to-glycerol ratio from zero to five. Significantly, the reaction results have yielded syngas as main gaseous products with H2:CO ratios always below than 2.0 with concomitant maximum 96% glycerol conversion obtained at the CO2-to-glycerol ratio of 1.67. In addition, the glycerol consumption rate can be adequately captured using power law modelling with the order of reactions equal 0.72 and 0.14 with respect to glycerol and CO2 whilst the activation energy was 35.0 kJ mol−1. A 72 h longevity run moreover revealed that the catalyst gave a stable catalytic performance

Abdominal Tuberculosis in Adult: 10-Year Experience in a Teaching Hospital in Central Taiwan

Background/PurposeTuberculosis (TB) is an important communicable disease worldwide. The clinical presentation of abdominal TB often mimics various gastrointestinal disorders and may delay accurate diagnosis. In this study, we conducted a 10-year retrospective study to investigate the clinical manifestations, treatment responses and outcomes of abdominal TB.MethodsThis retrospective study recruited patients presenting between January 1998 and December 2007; all patients ≥ 18 years of age with a diagnosis of abdominal TB were enrolled. Patient charts were thoroughly reviewed and clinical specimens were processed in the laboratory using the BBL MycoPrep System and BACTEC MGIT 960 Mycobacterial Detection System. Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex was confirmed by acid fast stain and the BD ProbeTec ET System.ResultsDuring the study period, 34 patients were diagnosed with abdominal TB. The mean age was 55+18 years. Fourteen patients (41%) had no risk factors; however, 20 patients (59%) had at least one risk factor. Abdominal pain (94.1%), abdominal fullness (91.2%), anorexia (88.2%) and ascites (76.5%) were the most common presenting symptoms. The peritoneum (88%) was the most commonly involved site. Patients with risk factors such as liver cirrhosis, end-stage renal disease and diabetes mellitus had a higher positive rate of acid-fast stain and mycobacterial culture from abdominal specimens (p = 0.02 and 0.05, respectively). The crude mortality rate was 9% and the attributed mortality rate was 3%.ConclusionIn an endemic area like Taiwan, regardless of whether a patient has risk factors for TB, abdominal TB should be seriously considered as a differential diagnosis when a patient presents with gastrointestinal symptoms and unexplained ascites

Tau PET With 18F-THK-5351 Taiwan Patients With Familial Alzheimer's Disease With the APP p.D678H Mutation

Background: Brain 18F-AV-45 amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) in Taiwanese patients with familial Alzheimer's disease with the amyloid precursor protein (APP) p.D678H mutation tends to involve occipital and cerebellar cortical areas. However, tau pathology in patients with this specific Taiwan mutation remains unknown. In this study, we aimed to study the Tau PET images in these patients.Methods: Clinical features, brain magnetic resonance imaging/computed tomography (MRI/CT), and brain 18F-THK-5351 PET were recorded in five patients with the APP p.D678H mutation and correlated with brain 18F-AV-45 PET images. We also compared the tau deposition patterns among five patients with familial mild cognitive impairment (fMCI), six patients with sporadic amnestic mild cognitive impairment (sMCI), nine patients with mild to moderate dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD), and 12 healthy controls (HCs). All of the subjects also received brain 18F-AV-45 PET.Results: The nine patients with sAD and six patients with sMCI had a positive brain AV-45 PET scans, while the 12 HCs had negative brain AV-45 PET scans. All five patients with fMCI received a tau PET scan with the age at onset ranging from 46 to 53 years, in whom increased standard uptake value ratio (SUVR) of 18F-THK-5351 was noted in all seven brain cortical areas compared with the HCs. In addition, the SUVRs of 18F-THK-5351 were increased in the frontal, medial parietal, lateral parietal, lateral temporal, and occipital areas (P &lt; 0.001) in the patients with sAD compared with the HCs. The patients with fMCI had a significant higher SUVR of 18F-THK-5351 in the cerebellar cortex compared to the patients with sMCI. The correlations between regional SUVR and Mini-Mental State Examination score and between regional SUVR and clinical dementia rating (sum box) scores within volumes of interest of Braak stage were statistically significant.Conclusion: Tau deposition was increased in the patients with fMCI compared to the HCs. Increased regional SUVR in the cerebellar cortical area was a characteristic finding in the patients with fMCI. As compared between amyloid and tau PET, the amyloid deposition is diffuse, but tau deposition is limited to the temporal lobe in the patients with fMCI

UPF1, a Conserved Nonsense-Mediated mRNA Decay Factor, Regulates Cyst Wall Protein Transcripts in Giardia lamblia

The Giardia lamblia cyst wall is required for survival outside the host and infection. Three cyst wall protein (cwp) genes identified to date are highly up-regulated during encystation. However, little is known of the molecular mechanisms governing their gene regulation. Messenger RNAs containing premature stop codons are rapidly degraded by a nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) system to avoid production of non-functional proteins. In addition to RNA surveillance, NMD also regulates thousands of naturally occurring transcripts through a variety of mechanisms. It is interesting to know the NMD pathway in the primitive eukaryotes. Previously, we have found that the giardial homologue of a conserved NMD factor, UPF1, may be functionally conserved and involved in NMD and in preventing nonsense suppression. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that NMD factors can regulate some naturally occurring transcripts in G. lamblia. We found that overexpression of UPF1 resulted in a significant decrease of the levels of CWP1 and cyst formation and of the endogenous cwp1-3, and myb2 mRNA levels and stability. This indicates that NMD could contribute to the regulation of the cwp1-3 and myb2 transcripts, which are key to G. lamblia differentiation into cyst. Interestingly, we also found that UPF1 may be involved in regulation of eight other endogenous genes, including up-regulation of the translation elongation factor gene, whose product increases translation which is required for NMD. Our results indicate that NMD factor could contribute to the regulation of not only nonsense containing mRNAs, but also mRNAs of the key encystation-induced genes and other endogenous genes in the early-diverging eukaryote, G. lamblia

Knowledge, attitude and practice on food higiene among the homemakers in Bukit Aup, Sibu, Sarawak from 8th July 2013 to 20th September 2013

Background: Foodborne diseases are a potential threat to the public health. Despite all the Food Act and Regulation, the problem of foodbome diseases is still not uncommon in Malaysia. Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) with regards to food hygiene among homemakers of Bukit Aup in Sibu, Sarawak. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study done among 101 homemakers in Bukit Aup, Sibu, Sarawak. A Non-probability sampling method was adopted to select at least one homemaker from each household in the village. An interviewer-guided style of data collection was used. The data was analysed for descriptive data of mean and median, frequencies and standard deviation using SPSS. Results: Among the respondents, the level of good KAP are 53.5%, 39.6% and 58.4% respectively. A significant positive correlation is noted between attitude score and practice score (r=0.203, p<0.05) using Pearson correlation analysis. Out of a total number of 457 villagers, 33 of them (7.2%) had gastrointestinal health complaints in the past six months. There were 36 episodes (7.9%) of abdominal cramp or pain, followed by 18 episodes (3.9%) of diarrhoea and three episodes (0.7%) of vomiting. Conclusion: Generally, it was observed that the respondents had a satisfactory level of knowledge and practices of food hygiene. However some of the respondents had some lapses in their responses to queries on food hygiene attitude

Real-time Monitoring for the Next Core-Collapse Supernova in JUNO

Core-collapse supernova (CCSN) is one of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. The early and prompt detection of neutrinos before (pre-SN) and during the SN burst is a unique opportunity to realize the multi-messenger observation of the CCSN events. In this work, we describe the monitoring concept and present the sensitivity of the system to the pre-SN and SN neutrinos at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), which is a 20 kton liquid scintillator detector under construction in South China. The real-time monitoring system is designed with both the prompt monitors on the electronic board and online monitors at the data acquisition stage, in order to ensure both the alert speed and alert coverage of progenitor stars. By assuming a false alert rate of 1 per year, this monitoring system can be sensitive to the pre-SN neutrinos up to the distance of about 1.6 (0.9) kpc and SN neutrinos up to about 370 (360) kpc for a progenitor mass of 30$M_{\odot}$ for the case of normal (inverted) mass ordering. The pointing ability of the CCSN is evaluated by using the accumulated event anisotropy of the inverse beta decay interactions from pre-SN or SN neutrinos, which, along with the early alert, can play important roles for the followup multi-messenger observations of the next Galactic or nearby extragalactic CCSN.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Exploration and Showcase of FSMs and HFSMs Traffic in Low-Cost Educational Driving Simulator

Finite state machine (FSM) is a model of computation that executes an exact finite number of states at any given time where Hierarchical Finite State Machines (HFSM) can group multiple FSMs and execute as one state. Given these techniques can be used to exclusively execute certain states, it is widely used in games. In this paper we will explore and showcase the implementation of FSMs and HFSMs to create traffic non-playing characters (NPC) in our low-cost educational driving simulators. We will also discuss possible techniques that can be use. It is also in the interest to push for more understanding in any gap for traffic NPCs in similar low-cost educational driving sims in the future