Effects of cereals and culture filtrate ofTrichoderma viride on lipid metabolism of swine

Swine were fed corn-or barley-based diets with, or without, culture filtrate (CF) ofTrichoderma viride for 21 days. Weight gains were nonsignificantly but slightly increased by CF. The activities of β-hydroxy-β-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase, cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase, acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACX), fatty acid synthetase (FAS) and other lipogenic enzymes in several tissues were determined. Significant decreases in the activities of HMG-CoA reductase and cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase in all tissues of swine fed the CF-diets were observed. The major site for the regulation of cholesterol biosynthesis was adipose tissue followed by the intestine, liver, lung and muscle in order of activity The concentrations of cholesterol in serum and muscle were decreased 27% and 23%, respectively, by CF. ACX and FAS activities increased ca. 2-fold when CF was fed with either of the cereal-based diets. The major sites for fatty acid synthesis was the adipose tissue and, to a lesser extent, the liver. Very low rates of synthesis were detected in intestine, lung and muscle. Similar distributions of activities were found for related lipogenic enzymes. Cooperative investigation between the Science and Education Administration, US Department of Agriculture, and College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Mention of a trademark or proprietary product does not constitute a guarantee or warranty of the product by the US Department of Agriculture and does not imply its approval to the exclusion of other products that may also be suitable.     

Approximating the Degree-Bounded Minimum Diameter Spanning Tree Problem

We consider the problem of finding a minimum diameter spanning tree with maximum node degree $B$ in a complete undirected edge-weighted graph. We provide an $O(\sqrt{\log_Bn})$-approximation algorithm for the problem. Our algorithm is purely combinatorial, and relies on a combination of filtering and divide and conquer.     

Cell migration between graft and host--an analysis with monoclonal antibodies after allogeneic rat kidney transplantation

In order to analyse migration patterns of donor MHC class II cells out of transplanted kidney and accumulation of host cells within the graft, immunomorphological studies were performed using monoclonal antibodies in rat allogeneic kidney transplantation model. To answer the question of how many donor cells migrate out of the renal cortex MRC 0 x 3 monoclonal antibody (MoAb) against LEW MHC class II antigens was used. In the grafts explanted after 4,24 48 and 73 h, a slow reduction of donor class II cells was observed and some areas in cortex showed only very few, if any, donor cells. At the same time, starting from day 2 after transplantation accumulation of donor cells was found in perivascular spaces. Spleen sections stained at 24, 48, 72 and 96 h after transplantation revealed donor cells present in recipient's spleen. They were detected up to day 3 after surgery. Their numbers, however, decreased after day 2. After 2 and 3 days, accumulations of recipient's cells between tubules were detected. It was found that many cells in infiltrations were stained with anti-T lymphocyte MoAb. Expression of class II antigen on rat kidney cells increases significantly from the day 4 after transplantation.     

Influence of culture filtrate ofTrichoderma viride and barley on lipid metabolism of laying hens

The suppression of hepatic 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG CoA) reductase and cholesterol 7 α-hydroxylase, previously noted in studies of the influences of barley and the filtrate ofTrichoderma viride culture (CF) on cholesterol metabolism in sexually immature birds, is shown in sexually mature birds. Barley, CF or both were fed in one study from the day of hatching, in another during the period of sexual maturation and, in a third study, CF was fed to mature layers. CF suppressed HMG CoA reductase by 30–50% and cholesterol 7 α-hydroxylase by 32–45% when added to the control diet. In birds fed barley rather than corn, the respective activities were 25–36% and 24–31% lower. These effects were expressed in the lowering of plasma cholesterol by 11–36%. Lipogenic activity based on the assays of 4 enzymes was increased 2–3 times by the treatments and plasma triglyceride elevated by 12–86%. The start of egg production by birds fed CF preceded the controls by 17 days. Birds fed barley trailed controls by 11–14 days. CF countered the barley-conditioned delay. Egg yolk cholesterol concentrations were lowered by both treatments. Eggs produced by hens fed barley were lower in weight; CF increased egg and yolk weights. Tissues from birds fed CF or barley for up to 30 weeks appeared to be normal. Cooperative investigation between the Science and Education Administration, USDA, and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Univesity of Wisconsin-Madison. A preliminary report of this work was presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Chicago, IL, April 10–15, 1983. Mention of a trademark or proprietary product does not constitute a guarantee or warranty of the product by the USDA and does not imply its approval to the exclusion of other products that may also be suitable.     

How to allocate review tasks for robust ranking

In the process of reviewing and ranking projects by a group of reviewers, the allocation of the subset of projects to each reviewer has major impact on the robustness of the outcome ranking. We address here this problem where each reviewer is assigned, out of the list of all projects, a subset of up to k projects. Each individual reviewer then ranks and compares all pairs of k projects. The k-allocation problem is to determine an allocation of up to k projects to each reviewer, that lie within the expertise set of the reviewer, so that the resulting union of reviewed projects has certain desirable properties. The k-complete problem is a k-allocation with the property that all pairs of projects have been compared by at least one reviewer. A k-complete allocation is desirable as otherwise there may be projects that were not compared by any reviewer, leading to possible adverse properties in the outcome ranking. When a k-complete allocation cannot be achieved, one might settle for other properties. One basic requirement is that each pair of projects is comparable via a ranking path which is a sequence of pairwise rankings of projects implying a comparison of all pairs on the path. A k-allocation with a ranking path between each pair is the connectivity-k-aloc. Since the robustness of relative comparisons deteriorates with increased length of the ranking path, another goal is that between each pair of projects there will be at least one ranking path that has at most two hops or q hops for fixed values of q. An alternative means for increasing the robustness of the ranking is to use a k-allocation with at least p disjoint ranking paths between each pair. We model all these problems as graph problems. We demonstrate that the connectivity-k-aloc problem is polynomially solvable, using matroid intersection; we prove that the k-complete problem is NP-hard unless k = 2; and we provide approximation algorithms for a related optimization problem. All other variants are shown to be NP-complete for all values of k ≥ 2.     

Variable Sized Online Interval Coloring with Bandwidth

We consider online coloring of intervals with bandwidth in a setting where colors have variable capacities. Whenever the algorithm opens a new color, it must choose the capacity for that color and cannot change it later. A set of intervals can be assigned the same color a of capacity C _a if the sum of bandwidths of intervals at each point does not exceed C _a . The goal is to minimize the total capacity of all the colors used. We consider the bounded model, where all capacities must be chosen in the range (0,1], and the unbounded model, where the algorithm may use colors of any positive capacity. For the absolute competitive ratio, we give an upper bound of 14 and a lower bound of 4.59 for the bounded model, and an upper bound of 4 and a matching lower bound of 4 for the unbounded model. We also consider the offline version of these problems and show that whereas the unbounded model is polynomially solvable, the bounded model is NP-hard in the strong sense and admits a 3.6-approximation algorithm. A preliminary version of this paper has appeared in the Proceedings of the 10th Scandinavian Workshop on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2006), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4059, pp. 29–40, Springer, 2006.     

Infiltration and dimensional scaling of inkjet droplets on thick isotropic porous materials

We study the imbibition of picoliter (pL)-sized inkjet droplets on controlled pore glass membranes (CPG), as a suitable model for isotropic three-dimensional porous materials. We do so using a variety of liquids, i.e., water, formamide and diiodomethane, and measure the evolution of the imbibition process using high-speed digital imaging. Here, experiments were conducted on 2–280 nm CPG membranes with drops with initial volumes ranging from 100 to 600 pL. We derive scaling laws for imbibition through dimensional analysis and advance the argument that the rate of absorption is related to two-dimensionless groups \(V = v(t) \epsilon /v_{\text{tot}} ;\,T = tkp_{\text{c}} /\mu \,\left( { \epsilon /v_{\text{tot}} } \right)^{2/3} ,\) where v(t) is the imbibed volume, as determined from experiments, t is the time, v _tot the total liquid volume, \( \epsilon \) the porosity, μ the liquid viscosity, k the permeability, and p _c the Laplace capillary pressure. We show this scaling to well describe the system at intermediate T values and report that \(V \propto T^{0.8} .\)      

Minimization of SONET ADMs in ring networks revisited

We design improved approximation algorithms for two variants of the ADM minimization problem. SONET add-drop multiplexers (ADMs) are the dominant cost factor in SONET/WDM rings. The number of SONET ADMs required by a set of traffic streams (lightpaths) in a ring is determined by the routing and the wavelength assignment of the traffic streams. We consider both the arc version where the route of each traffic stream is given as input, and the chord version, where the routing is to be decided by the algorithm. The goal in both cases is to assign wavelengths so as to minimize the total number of used SONET ADMs.