THE CHANGE OF PRINTOUTS' QUALITY DEPENDING ON PRESSURE OF A BLANKET CYLINDER AGAINST AN IMPRESSION CYLINDER AND A PLATE CYLINDER IN OFFSET MACHINE

Abstract: According to lots of books, the pressure in offset printing affects the optical density and the quality of printouts. One of the quality parameters is a tone value increase. An advantage of our research method is obtaining printing effects for different pressures on one printout, thus meaning for identical printing conditions. We obtained the same printing conditions through using different amounts of underlay sheets fixed to the blanket cylinder, under a blanket. The pressure was increased from optimal settings -in accordance with the machine manufacturer's recommendation. The test printouts were printed using Adast Dominant 515, on a coated and an uncoated paper. The optical density value was measured on the tone value scale from 10% to 100% stepping regularly by 10%. For this scale the tone value increase was computed. The research shows that for both types of paper the optical density and the tone value increase changes not very much above the optimal pressure recommended by the machine manufacturer. A difference in the optical density and in the tone value increase is bigger for coated paper than for uncoated paper. Changes in these two parameters are negligible in places where used form 0 to 4 underlay sheets and are quite significant in the place where 5 underlay sheets were

Standardised workflow for mass spectrometry-based single-cell proteomics data processing and analysis using the scp package

Mass spectrometry (MS) based single-cell proteomics (SCP) explores cellular heterogeneity by focusing on the functional effectors of the cells - proteins. However, extracting meaningful biological information from MS data is far from trivial, especially with single cells. Currently, data analysis workflows are substantially different from one research team to another. Moreover,it is difficult to evaluate pipelines as ground truths are missing. Our team has developed the R/Bioconductor package called scp to provide a standardised framework for SCP data analysis. It relies on the widely used QFeatures and SingleCellExperiment data structures. In addition, we used a design containing cell lines mixed in known proportions to generate controlled variability for data analysis benchmarking. In this work, we provide a flexible data analysis protocol for SCP data using the scp package together with comprehensive explanations at each step of the processing. Our main steps are quality control on the feature and cell level, aggregation of the raw data into peptides and proteins, normalisation and batch correction. We validate our workflow using our ground truth data set. We illustrate how to use this modular, standardised framework and highlight some crucial steps

Biosorption potential of zinc by egeria densa macrophytes

In this paper, the removal potential on Zn ion by macrophyte Egeria densa has been studied. The influence of the metal solution pH, the plant drying and the metal solution temperature, and biosorbent grain size was previously studied in batch systems. Adsorption kinetic and equilibrium experiments of metals onto E. densa were performed under controlled temperature and permanent shaking. In adsorption kinetic tests for Zn (II) the equilibrium time was around 45 min. The biosorption kinetic data were well fitted by a pseudo-second order model. The equilibrium data at pH 5 were described a rather better by the Langmuir isotherm than the Freundlich one, with an adsorption rate and maximum metal content values of 0,829L g(-1)and 0,92 mequiv g(-1), respectively, for Langmuir model. The macrophytes E. densa could be used as biosorbent material in industrial effluent treatment system.14446547

Identification of autophosphorylation sites in eukaryotic elongation factor-2 kinase

eEF2K [eEF2 (eukaryotic elongation factor 2) kinase] phosphorylates and inactivates the translation elongation factor eEF2. eEF2K is not a member of the main eukaryotic protein kinase superfamily, but instead belongs to a small group of so-called α-kinases. The activity of eEF2K is normally dependent upon Ca2+ and calmodulin. eEF2K has previously been shown to undergo autophosphorylation, the stoichiometry of which suggested the existence of multiple sites. In the present study we have identified several autophosphorylation sites, including Thr348, Thr353, Ser366 and Ser445, all of which are highly conserved among vertebrate eEF2Ks. We also identified a number of other sites, including Ser78, a known site of phosphorylation, and others, some of which are less well conserved. None of the sites lies in the catalytic domain, but three affect eEF2K activity. Mutation of Ser78, Thr348 and Ser366 to a non-phosphorylatable alanine residue decreased eEF2K activity. Phosphorylation of Thr348 was detected by immunoblotting after transfecting wild-type eEF2K into HEK (human embryonic kidney)-293 cells, but not after transfection with a kinase-inactive construct, confirming that this is indeed a site of autophosphorylation. Thr348 appears to be constitutively autophosphorylated in vitro. Interestingly, other recent data suggest that the corresponding residue in other α-kinases is also autophosphorylated and contributes to the activation of these enzymes [Crawley, Gharaei, Ye, Yang, Raveh, London, Schueler-Furman, Jia and Cote (2011) J. Biol. Chem. 286, 2607–2616]. Ser366 phosphorylation was also detected in intact cells, but was still observed in the kinase-inactive construct, demonstrating that this site is phosphorylated not only autocatalytically but also in trans by other kinases

An Example For Mappings Related To Semi-Confluence

. A semi-confluence of a mapping between topological spaces can be defined in several ways. J.J. Charatonik asked if two definitions of the semi-confluence, using components and quasi-components respectively, are equivalent for surjective mappings with compact point inverses. We give a negative answer to this question in Example 2.1. 1. Introduction. We recall from [1] the notation. All mappings considered in this paper are continuous. A mapping f : X ! Y between metric continua X and Y is called semi-confluent provided for each subcontinuum Q of Y and for any two components C 1 and C 2 of the inverse image f \Gamma1 (Q) either f(C 1 ) ae f(C 2 ) or f(C 2 ) ae f(C 1 ). A general topological space admits several definitions of semi-confluent mappings. We recall from [1] three definitions using connectedness. A topological space X is said to be connected between two its subsets A and B provided there is no closed and open subset in X that contains A and is disjoint from B. Clearly, c..

Benchmarking of protein carbonylation analysis in Caenorhabditis elegans specific considerations and general advice

International audienceOxidative stress has been extensively studied due to its correlation with cellular disorders and aging. In proteins, one biomarker of oxidative stress is the presence of carbonyl groups, such as aldehyde and ketone, in specific amino acid side chains such as lysine, proline, arginine and threonine, so-called protein carbonylation (PC). PC study is now a growing field in general and medical science since PC accumulation is associated with various pathologies and disorders. At present, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) seem to be the most robust method of quantifying the presence of carbonyl groups in proteins, despite having some recognised caveats. In parallel, gel-based approaches present cross-comparison difficulties, along with other technical problems. As generic PC analyses still suffer from poor homogeneity, leading to cross-data analysis difficulties and poor results overlap, the need for harmonisation in the field of carbonyl detection is now widely accepted. This study aims to highlight some of the technical challenges in proteomic gel-based multiplexing experiments when dealing with PC in difficult samples like those from Caenorhabditis elegans, from protein extraction to carbonyl detection. We demonstrate that some critical technical parameters, such as labelling time, probe concentration, and total and carbonylated protein recovery rates, should be re-addressed in a sample-specific way. We also defined a procedure to cost-effectively adapt CyDye™-hydrazide-based protocols to specific samples, especially when the experimental interest is focused on studying differences between stimulating conditions with a maximised signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, we have improved an already-existing powerful solubilisation buffer, making it potentially useful for hard-to-solubilise protein pellets. Lastly, the depicted methodology exemplifies a simple way of normalising carbonyl-related signal to total protein in SDS-PAGE multiplexing experiments. Within that scope, we also proposed a simple way to quantify carbonyl groups by on-gel spotting diluted dye-containing labelling buffer. Proof of the robustness of the procedure was also highlighted by the high linear correlation between the level of carbonyls and the ultraviolet exposure duration of whole worms (R2=0.993). Altogether, these results will help to standardise existing protocols in the growing field of proteomic carbonylation studies. © 2016 Elsevier Inc