Structural properties and Raman spectroscopy of lipid Langmuir monolayers at the air-water interface

Spectra of octadecylamine (ODA) Langmuir monolayers and egg phosphatidylcholine (PC)/ODA-mixed monolayers at the air-water interface have been acquired. The organization of the monolayers has been characterized by surface pressure-area isotherms. Application of polarized optical microscopy provides further insight in the domain structures and interactions of the film components. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) data indicate that enhancement in Raman spectra can be obtained by strong interaction between headgroups of the surfactants and silver particles in subphase. By mixing ODA with phospholipid molecules and spreading the mixture at the air-water interface, we acquired vibrational information of phospholipid molecules with surfactant-aided SERS effect.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Hydrophobically associating polymers for enhanced oil recovery – Part B: A review of modelling approach to flow in porous media

Polymer flow in porous media represents an entirely different scenario compared to bulk flow analysis using viscometers. This is due to the geometry and configuration of the medium which is made up of converging-diverging flow paths. In this article, a review of the single-phase flow of hydrophobically associating polymers in porous media is presented. Hydrophobic association between these polymer chains have been reported to occur and vary under reservoir conditions (temperature, salinity, and ion concentration). However, under these conditions, the critical aggregation concentration of associating polymers has been observed to change and the extent of change is a function of the hydrophobe make-up of the polymer. The outcome of this would indicate that polymer injectivity and its oil recovery efficiency are affected. As such, an understanding of the mechanism, propagation and sustainability of these hydrophobic interactions in reservoirs remains a critical focus of research. This becomes even imperative as the in-situ rheological profile associated with the different flow regimes may be affected. A numerical approach to investigating the real-time hydrophobic interactions between associating polymer chains during flow in porous media remains the viable option. However, this would require modifying existing time-independent models to accurately predict the various flow regimes and the dispersion of associating polymers to account for hydrophobic interactions

Cytoplasmic Skp2 Expression Is Increased in Human Melanoma and Correlated with Patient Survival

BACKGROUND: S-phase kinase protein 2 (Skp2), an F-box protein, targets cell cycle regulators via ubiquitin-mediated degradation. Skp2 is frequently overexpressed in a variety of cancers and associated with patient survival. In melanoma, however, the prognostic significance of subcellular Skp2 expression remains controversial. METHODS: To investigate the role of Skp2 in melanoma development, we constructed tissue microarrays and examined Skp2 expression in melanocytic lesions at different stages, including 30 normal nevi, 61 dysplastic nevi, 290 primary melanomas and 146 metastatic melanomas. The TMA was assessed for cytoplasmic and nuclear Skp2 expression by immunohistochemistry. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to evaluate the patient survival. The univariate and multivariate Cox regression models were performed to estimate the hazard ratios (HR) at five-year follow-up. RESULTS: Cytoplasmic but not nuclear Skp2 expression was gradually increased from normal nevi, dysplastic nevi, primary melanomas to metastatic melanomas. Cytoplasmic Skp2 expression correlated with AJCC stages (I vs II-IV, P<0.001), tumor thickness (≤2.00 vs >2.00 mm, P<0.001) and ulceration (P = 0.005). Increased cytoplasmic Skp2 expression was associated with a poor five-year disease-specific survival of patients with primary melanoma (P = 0.018) but not metastatic melanoma (P>0.05). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that cytoplasmic Skp2 plays an important role in melanoma pathogenesis and its expression correlates with patient survival. Our data indicate that cytoplasmic Skp2 may serve as a potential biomarker for melanoma progression and a therapeutic target for this disease

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Synthesis and Characterization of 1-(1-chlorocyclopropyl)-2-(1,2,4-triazol-1-yl)ethan-1-one

A simple and efficient method to prepare 1-(1-chlorocyclopropyl)-2-(1,2,4-triazol-1-yl)ethan-1-one via nucleophilic substitution of 2-chloro-1-(1-chlorocyclopropyl)ethanone and 1,2,4-triazole is described. The title compound is the key intermediate required for the synthesis of prothioconazole, a promising agricultural fungicide. By exploring changes in the reaction time, temperature, ratio of starting reagents, acid binding agent, and the nature of phase transfer catalyst, the reaction conditions could be optimized to afford the desired N-alkylated material in near-quantitative yield. The ultimate yield of the product after recrystallization was 93%, with a purity of 99% based on its characterization by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS), Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (IR), Proton Magnetic Resonance (1H NMR), and Carbon-13 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (13C NMR). The synthetic process is suitable for industrial application, with the advantages of high yield and facile preparation under mild operating conditions

The Life Cycle and Pathogenicity of Eimeria fulva Farr, 1953 in Domestic Goslings

Summary. The life cycle and pathogenicity of Eimeria fulva were studied. Eighteen, 10-day-old, artificially-reared coccidia-free goslings (Anser cygnoides var. domestica) were inoculated orally with 7.0×10 5 -1.5×10 6 sporulated oocysts of Eimeria fulva and killed at intervals from 24 to 288 h post-inoculation (PI). Parts of the visceral organs including intestines, kidney, liver, gallbladder, and spleen from inoculated goslings were fixed, sectioned, and observed microscopically. The results revealed that at least 2 generations of meronts occurred in the life cycle of E. fulva. The first generation completed maturation at about 72 h PI, and the second at about 144 h PI. Each meront contained about 15 merozoites. Development of gamonts began at about 144 h PI. The prepatent period was 7.5 days and patency continued for 2.5 days. Sporulation of oocysts occurred in 60-84 h at 25°C. Developmental stages were present in the epithelial cells of the villi and crypts, and in the lamina propria of the whole intestine and cloaca, resulting in local desquamation and necrosis of the epithelium (including crypt epithelium), edema, hemorrhages, and infiltration of inflammatory cells. Histological lesions were pronounced in the jejunum and the ileum. The infected goslings mainly showed diarrhoea, slight bloody feces, but no death. The results suggest that E. fulva may be mildly pathogenic for goslings

Effect of Different Levels of Maternally Derived Genotype VII Newcastle Disease Virus-Specific Hemagglutination Inhibition Antibodies on Protection against Virulent Challenge in Chicks

Newcastle disease (ND), caused by the virulent Newcastle disease virus (NDV), is an acute, highly contagious, and economically significant avian disease worldwide. Vaccination is the most effective measure for controlling ND. In recent years, vaccines matched with the prevalent strains of genotype VII have been developed and are now commercially available. These vaccines can provide full protection for chickens against clinical disease and mortality after challenges with genotype VII viruses and significantly decrease virus shedding compared to conventional vaccines belonging to genotypes I and II. Vaccinated hens can transfer antibodies to their offspring through the egg yolk. Maternally derived antibodies can provide passive protection against diseases but can also interfere with vaccination efficacy early in life. This study was conducted on chicks hatched from hens vaccinated with a commercial genotype VII NDV-matched vaccine to investigate the correlation between hemagglutination inhibition (HI) antibody levels in chicks and hens and the decaying pattern of maternally derived HI antibodies, and to evaluate the protective efficacy of different levels of maternally derived HI antibodies against challenge with a virulent NDV strain of genotype VII based on survivability and virus shedding. The HI antibody titers in chicks at hatching were about 1.3 log2 lower than those in hens, indicating an antibody transfer rate of approximately 41.52%. The estimated half-life of these antibodies was about 3.2 days. The protective efficacy of maternally derived HI antibodies was positively correlated with the titer. These antibodies could effectively protect chicks against mortality when the titer was 7 log2 or higher, but they were unable to prevent virus shedding or infection even at a high titer of 11 log2. The obtained results will greatly assist producers in determining the immune status of chicks and formulating appropriate vaccination schedules against ND

Stiff micelle-crosslinked hyaluronate hydrogels with low swelling for potential cartilage repair

Stiff micelle-crosslinked hyaluronate hydrogels with low swelling for potential cartilage repai