Isolation and identification of root-inhibiting compounds from corn gluten meal

Public awareness and concern for environmental protection and human safety has led to the search for naturally occurring compounds that are able to inhibit growth and development of weed plants. It has been reported that corn gluten meal is useful as a natural preemergence herbicide and fertilizer material for various plant production systems. The active components responsible for the herbicidal activity of corn gluten meal could potentially be used as natural herbicides;Based on the results from greenhouse and growth chamber bioassays using three species of grass plants, it was found that samples of hydrolyzed protein from corn gluten meal were more herbicidally active than the corn gluten itself and were highly water-soluble. Gluten hydrolysate prepared with bacterial proteinase had the highest inhibitory activity. This material was chosen for isolation and identification of the bioactive compounds. The response of roots was more sensitive than that of shoots to the inhibitory compounds;Five dipeptides were isolated from an aqueous solution of the corn gluten hydrolysate and their inhibitory effects on roots of test grass plants were demonstrated in petri dish bioassays. The five dipeptides were glutaminyl-glutamine, alaninyl-asparagine, alaninyl-glutamine, glycinyl-alanine, and alaninyl-alanine. These 5 dipeptides showed no synergistic effect on the root-inhibiting activity. However, the bioactivity was increased as increasing the proportion of the more active dipeptides in the mixture. In a soil bioassay, alaninyl-asparagine and glycinyl-alanine were demonstrated to inhibit rooting of creeping bentgrass;Eight other synthetically produced dipeptides were tested for their inhibitory activity using the perennial ryegrass petri dish bioassays. Of those tested, alaninyl-glycine was found to be the most inhibitory and glycinyl-glutamic acid the least. The constituent amino acids of the dipeptide were found to be more important than their sequence for bioactivity. Of the 6 amino acids, L-asparagine was the most potent root inhibitor, followed by L-alanine, L-glutamine, and glycine

Learning from the past: uncovering design process models using an enriched process mining

Design documents and design project footprints accumulated by corporate IT systems have increasingly become valuable sources of evidence for design information and knowledge management. Identification and extraction of such embedded information and knowledge into a clear and usable format will greatly accelerate continuous learning from past design efforts for competitive product innovation and efficient design process management in future design projects. Different from existing systems, this paper proposes a methodology of learning and extracting useful knowledge using past design project documents from design process perspective based on process mining techniques. A new process mining approach that is able to directly handle textual data is proposed at the first stage of the proposed methodology. The outcome is a hierarchical process model that reveals the actual design process hidden behind a large amount of design documents and enables the connection of various design information from different perspectives. At the second stage, the discovered process model is further refined to learn multi-faceted knowledge patterns by applying a number of statistical analysis methods. The outcomes range from task dependency study from workflow analysis, identification of irregular task execution from performance analysis, cooperation pattern discovery from social net analysis, to evaluation of personal contribution based on role analysis. Relying on the knowledge patterns extracted, lessons and best practices can be uncovered which offer great support to decision makers in managing any future design initiatives. The proposed methodology was tested using an email dataset from a university-hosted multi-year multidisciplinary design project

Acute exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms during influenza treatment with oseltamivir in chronic schizophrenia

AbstractInfluenza treatment and prophylaxis with oseltamivir are critically important in reducing the morbidity and mortality of patients in chronic psychiatric facilities. Abnormal behavior, delusions, perceptual disturbances, mania, and depression have all been reported as oseltamivir-related psychiatric side effects. We hereby report two chronic schizophrenia patients in Taiwan manifesting psychiatric instability who were being treated with oseltamivir for suspected influenza infection, and further discuss other potential contributing factors. The possibility that oseltamivir can cause psychotic or affective symptoms suggests that additional caution is necessary for its use in patients with an established psychiatric diagnosis