Retinal vessel dilatation and elongation precedes diabetic macular oedema

Rolandic discharge (RD), noted in the electroencephalography (EEG) of patients with benign epilepsy in childhood with centrotemporal spikes (BECCT) has several unique features. One feature is that the amount or frequency of RDs does not correlate well with the incidence of seizures in BECCT although it is a key finding in the diagnosis of this epileptic syndrome. In this study, we examined the efficacy of antiepileptic drugs focusing on the disappearance of RDs in relationship with seizure control. Forty patients with BECCT who were not medically treated prior to this study were randomly sorted into three groups. Twenty patients were assigned for clonazepam (CZP) treatment, 10 patients for valproate (VPA) and the remaining 10 patients for carbamazepine (CBZ). Each drug was administered for 4 consecutive weeks. EEGs were recorded twice during the study, before and 4 weeks after the medication trial. The effects of each treatment on RDs were assessed. RDs disappeared in 15 of the 20 cases treated with CZP (75%) within 4 weeks while the same was observed in only one of the 10 cases treated with VPA (10%). CBZ failed to demonstrate any effect on RD. In the group treated with CZP, there were no differences in seizure incidence, seizure type and blood concentration of CZP between the patients whose RDs disappeared and those whose RDs remained.     

Role of pH and Ionic Strength on Water Relationships in Washed Minced Chicken-breast Muscle Gels

ABSTRACT The relationship between pH, ionic strength, and water balance of chicken-breast muscle gels was investigated. An increase in gel pH (pH 6.4 to 7.4) without added NaCl led to dramatic increases in water-holding capacity and water uptake (P < 0.05). Gels at 150 mM NaCl exhibited less ability to adsorb water than salt-free gels (P < 0.05 at pH 6.8 to 7.4) and had lower water-holding capacities (P < 0.05) and fold scores at and below pH 7. Varying salt concentration of the gel-bathing solutions had dramatic effect on the water uptake of the gels. The results show that strong water-absorbing gels can be produced at low ionic strengths and suggest that the negative charge of the muscle proteins is the driving force for water uptake and retention.     

Flow and Flow Decay of Refractory Castables

Installation of refractory castables depend not only on flow,but also on how soon the flow is lost because of setting.The loss of flow(flow decay)has always been one of the main problems of refractory castable manufacturers,a problem that has not been too well described in literature.The flow decay has been studied for a castable system based on alumina,pointing out some general trends.The flow decay was found very temperature sensitive,being strongly accelerated by temperature increases.To compensate for excessive flow loss,a retarder like citric acid may be used.Thus flow decay was measured as a function of citric acid(retarder) addition at 35℃.     

A dual-affinity gene fusion system to express small recombinant proteins in a soluble form: expression and characterization of protein A deletion mutants

A novel gene fusion system to express and purify small recombinantproteins in Escherichia coli has been constructed. The conceptallows for affinity purification of soluble gene products bysequential albumin- and Zn²+-affinity chromatography. The dual-affinitysystem is well suited for expression of unstable proteins asonly full-length protein is obtained after purification andproteins gain proteolytic stability in the fusion protein. Herewe show that the dual-affinity approach can be used for theexpression of various unstable derivatives of a single IgG-bindingdomain based on staphylococcal protein A. Analysis of the proteolyticstabilities and the IgG-binding properties of the differentmutant proteins suggest that the model for the structure ofan IgG-binding domain must be re-evaluated.     

Microalgae growth for nutrient recovery from sludge liquor and production of renewable bioenergy

Proof-of-concept has been demonstrated for a process that will utilize nutrients from sludge liquor, natural light, and CO2 from biogas to grow microalgae at wastewater treatment plants. This process will reduce the impact of returning side-streams to the head of the plant. The produced algae will be fed to anaerobic digesters for increased biogas production. Dewatering of anaerobically digested sludge in centrifuges produces reject water with extremely low transmittance of light. A pretreatment procedure was developed that improved light transmittance for reject water from the FREVAR, Norway, wastewater treatment plant from 0.1% T to 77% T (670 nm, 1 cm path). Chlorella sp. microalgae were found to be suitable for growth in this pre-treated reject water. Typical nitrogen removal was 80-90 g N/kg TSS of produced microalgae. The microalgae were successfully harvested by chemically assisted flocculation followed by straining through a 33 microm sieve cloth, achieving up to 99% recovery. Harvested algae were anaerobically co-digested with wastewater sludge. The specific methane gas production (mL CH4/g VS fed) for the algae varied from less than 65% to 90% of the specific methane gas production for the wastewater sludge, depending on digester temperature, retention time and pre-treatment of the algae biomass.     

Kinetic study on the alkaline degradation of cotton hydrocellulose

The kinetics of alkaline degradation of cotton hydrocellulose were determined in 5% NaOH at various temperatures. An activation energy of 24 kcal./mole was found for the endwise degradation reaction, while that of termination to a stable m-saccharinic acid endunit is 32 kcal./mole. Consequently, the DP_n of the degradable chain length is highly dependent on the reaction temperature, being 1000 at 65°C. and 140 at 132°C. At lower temperatures, the majority of degrading chains terminate to a normal reducing endgroup at the crystalline–amorphous transition region. From the data, the D P_n of cellulose chain segments participating in the amorphous regions of the original cotton fibril was calculated to be 143. This result strongly supports the classical micellar fibril structure over the folded model proposed by Manley.     

Iterative voting for inference of structural saliency and characterization of subcellular events.

Saliency is an important perceptual cue that occurs at different levels of resolution. Important attributes of saliency are symmetry, continuity, and closure. Detection of these attributes is often hindered by noise, variation in scale, and incomplete information. This paper introduces the iterative voting method, which uses oriented kernels for inferring saliency as it relates to symmetry. A unique aspect of the technique is the kernel topography, which is refined and reoriented iteratively. The technique can cluster and group nonconvex perceptual circular symmetries along the radial line of an object's shape. It has an excellent noise immunity and is shown to be tolerant to perturbation in scale. The application of this technique to images obtained through various modes of microscopy is demonstrated. Furthermore, as a case example, the method has been applied to quantify kinetics of nuclear foci formation that are formed by phosphorylation of histone gammaH2AX following ionizing radiation. Iterative voting has been implemented in both 2-D and 3-D for multi image analysis.