Depression effect of the cold filter plugging point by blending of palm oil, palm stearin, and palm olein biodiesels in petrodiesels

The cold filter plugging point (CFPP) has been widely used to evaluate the low-temperature operability of neat biodiesel and biodiesel–petrodiesel blends in many European and Asian countries. In this study, six kinds of palm biodiesels (palm oil, palm stearin, and palm olein methyl esters in undistilled and distilled forms) in two Taiwanese major petrodiesels (CPC and FPCC) were adopted to examine their CFPP from 100 vol% biodiesel (B100) to 100 vol% diesel (D100 or B0). The results showed that the CFPPs of B2–B12 for CPC and B10–B12 for FPCC were consistently lower than the initial CFPP of D100 from all the palm biodiesel. The most significant depression effect of CFPP was found in B10, where the CFPP of B10 was substantially reduced to about 3–7°C as compared with those of D100 in both petrodiesels. The CFPP of B10 was from −7 to −8°C in CPC and −10 to −13°C in FPCC, where CFPPs of CPC and FPCC neat fuels were −4 and −6°C, respectively. Undistilled palm oil and palm olein biodiesels exhibited stronger depression effect than distilled palm biodiesels at the same level of biodiesel–petrodiesel blends and covered a wider range for the depression effect. Even though the CFPP of palm biodiesels falls outside the limit of Taiwanese B100, the finding revealed that a low blending of B2–B12 of palm biodiesels can result in a better and satisfactory CFPP of biodiesel–petrodiesel admixture that meets the diesel standard CNS 1471

Open MS/MS spectral library search to identify unanticipated post-translational modifications and increase spectral identification rate

Motivation: Identification of post-translationally modified proteins has become one of the central issues of current proteomics. Spectral library search is a new and promising computational approach to mass spectrometry-based protein identification. However, its potential in identification of unanticipated post-translational modifications has rarely been explored. The existing spectral library search tools are designed to match the query spectrum to the reference library spectra with the same peptide mass. Thus, spectra of peptides with unanticipated modifications cannot be identified

The Prognostic Value of Non-Linear Analysis of Heart Rate Variability in Patients with Congestive Heart Failure—A Pilot Study of Multiscale Entropy

AIMS: The influences of nonstationarity and nonlinearity on heart rate time series can be mathematically qualified or quantified by multiscale entropy (MSE). The aim of this study is to investigate the prognostic value of parameters derived from MSE in the patients with systolic heart failure. METHODS AND RESULTS: Patients with systolic heart failure were enrolled in this study. One month after clinical condition being stable, 24-hour Holter electrocardiogram was recording. MSE as well as other standard parameters of heart rate variability (HRV) and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) were assessed. A total of 40 heart failure patients with a mea age of 56±16 years were enrolled and followed-up for 684±441 days. There were 25 patients receiving β-blockers treatment. During follow-up period, 6 patients died or received urgent heart transplantation. The short-term exponent of DFA and the slope of MSE between scale 1 to 5 were significantly different between patients with or without β-blockers (p = 0.014 and p = 0.028). Only the area under the MSE curve for scale 6 to 20 (Area(6-20)) showed the strongest predictive power between survival (n = 34) and mortality (n = 6) groups among all the parameters. The value of Area(6-20)21.2 served as a significant predictor of mortality or heart transplant (p = 0.0014). CONCLUSION: The area under the MSE curve for scale 6 to 20 is not relevant to β-blockers and could further warrant independent risk stratification for the prognosis of CHF patients

Cross-National Differences in Victimization : Disentangling the Impact of Composition and Context

Varying rates of criminal victimization across countries are assumed to be the outcome of countrylevel structural constraints that determine the supply ofmotivated o¡enders, as well as the differential composition within countries of suitable targets and capable guardianship. However, previous empirical tests of these ‘compositional’ and ‘contextual’ explanations of cross-national di¡erences have been performed upon macro-level crime data due to the unavailability of comparable individual-level data across countries. This limitation has had two important consequences for cross-national crime research. First, micro-/meso-level mechanisms underlying cross-national differences cannot be truly inferred from macro-level data. Secondly, the e¡ects of contextual measures (e.g. income inequality) on crime are uncontrolled for compositional heterogeneity. In this paper, these limitations are overcome by analysing individual-level victimization data across 18 countries from the International CrimeVictims Survey. Results from multi-level analyses on theft and violent victimization indicate that the national level of income inequality is positively related to risk, independent of compositional (i.e. micro- and meso-level) di¡erences. Furthermore, crossnational variation in victimization rates is not only shaped by di¡erences in national context, but also by varying composition. More speci¢cally, countries had higher crime rates the more they consisted of urban residents and regions with lowaverage social cohesion.

Automatic Morphological Subtyping Reveals New Roles of Caspases in Mitochondrial Dynamics

Morphological dynamics of mitochondria is associated with key cellular processes related to aging and neuronal degenerative diseases, but the lack of standard quantification of mitochondrial morphology impedes systematic investigation. This paper presents an automated system for the quantification and classification of mitochondrial morphology. We discovered six morphological subtypes of mitochondria for objective quantification of mitochondrial morphology. These six subtypes are small globules, swollen globules, straight tubules, twisted tubules, branched tubules and loops. The subtyping was derived by applying consensus clustering to a huge collection of more than 200 thousand mitochondrial images extracted from 1422 micrographs of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells treated with different drugs, and was validated by evidence of functional similarity reported in the literature. Quantitative statistics of subtype compositions in cells is useful for correlating drug response and mitochondrial dynamics. Combining the quantitative results with our biochemical studies about the effects of squamocin on CHO cells reveals new roles of Caspases in the regulatory mechanisms of mitochondrial dynamics. This system is not only of value to the mitochondrial field, but also applicable to the investigation of other subcellular organelle morphology

A novel role of CPEB3 in regulating EGFR gene transcription via association with Stat5b in neurons

CPEB3 is a sequence-specific RNA-binding protein and represses translation of its target mRNAs in neurons. Here, we have identified a novel function of CPEB3 as to interact with Stat5b and inhibit its transcription activity in the nucleus without disrupting dimerization, DNA binding and nuclear localization of Stat5b. Moreover, CPEB3 is a nucleocytoplasm-shuttling protein with predominant residence in the cytoplasm; whereas activation of NMDA receptors accumulates CPEB3 in the nucleus. Using the knockdown approach, we have found the receptor tyrosine kinase, EGFR, is a target gene transcriptionally activated by Stat5b and downregulated by CPEB3 in neurons. The increased EGFR expression in CPEB3 knockdown neurons, when stimulated with EGF, alters the kinetics of downstream signaling. Taken together, CPEB3 has a novel function in the nucleus as to suppress Stat5b-dependent EGFR gene transcription. Consequently, EGFR signaling is negatively regulated by CPEB3 in neurons

Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Pilot Scale Production of Highly Efficacious and Stable Enterovirus 71 Vaccine Candidates

BACKGROUND: Enterovirus 71 (EV71) has caused several epidemics of hand, foot and mouth diseases (HFMD) in Asia and now is being recognized as an important neurotropic virus. Effective medications and prophylactic vaccine against EV71 infection are urgently needed. Based on the success of inactivated poliovirus vaccine, a prototype chemically inactivated EV71 vaccine candidate has been developed and currently in human phase 1 clinical trial. PRINCIPAL FINDING: In this report, we present the development of a serum-free cell-based EV71 vaccine. The optimization at each step of the manufacturing process was investigated, characterized and quantified. In the up-stream process development, different commercially available cell culture media either containing serum or serum-free was screened for cell growth and virus yield using the roller-bottle technology. VP-SFM serum-free medium was selected based on the Vero cell growth profile and EV71 virus production. After the up-stream processes (virus harvest, diafiltration and concentration), a combination of gel-filtration liquid chromatography and/or sucrose-gradient ultracentrifugation down-stream purification processes were investigated at a pilot scale of 40 liters each. Although the combination of chromatography and sucrose-gradient ultracentrifugation produced extremely pure EV71 infectious virus particles, the overall yield of vaccine was 7-10% as determined by a VP2-based quantitative ELISA. Using chromatography as the downstream purification, the virus yield was 30-43%. To retain the integrity of virus neutralization epitopes and the stability of the vaccine product, the best virus inactivation was found to be 0.025% formalin-treatment at 37 °C for 3 to 6 days. Furthermore, the formalin-inactivated virion vaccine candidate was found to be stable for >18 months at 4 °C and a microgram of viral proteins formulated with alum adjuvant could induce strong virus-neutralizing antibody responses in mice, rats, rabbits, and non-human primates. CONCLUSION: These results provide valuable information supporting the current cell-based serum-free EV71 vaccine candidate going into human Phase I clinical trials