Quail egg yolk (Coturnix coturnix japonica) enriched with omega-3 fatty acids

This experiment was carried out with 58-week old laying quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica) assigned to four treatment groups with eight quails per replication in six repetitions in a completely randomized design. The treatments consisted of diets with different levels of flaxseed (0, 1.5, 3.0, and 5.0%). The amounts of cholesterol and total lipids and the fatty acid composition of quail egg yolk were determined in four 21-day cycles. No difference was found in cholesterol levels between the four treatments and the four cycles. The increased ingestion of linolenic acid (LNA) in diet reduced the formation of arachidonic acid (AA) significantly. The 3.0 and 5.0% treatment groups presented a reduction in total saturated fatty acids (TSFA) with the increase in percent flaxseed in feed comparatively to the control value. The n-3 fatty acid level was high in all treatments when compared to that of the control group. The n-6/n-3 ratio decreased from 21.30 (control) to 4.52 (5.0%), which is a better value from the nutritional viewpoint.     

Constellation Rearrangement: Enhancement for Multilevel Modulation Formats and Transmit Diversity

Radio link adaptivity will be a key feature of the air interfaces of future mobile communication systems. This adaptivity includes techniques such as fast scheduling, hybrid ARQ, transmit diversity and adaptive modulation and coding. The performance of adaptive modulation generally suffers from the power inefficiencies of multilevel modulation formats. This is due to the variations in bit reliabilities caused by the bit-mapping onto the signal constellation. This article presents a concept, called constellation rearrangement (CoRe), which improves the multilevel modulation power efficiency by the joint application with transmit diversity schemes. It is shown by a theoretical analysis for 16-QAM that the presented concept can equalize variations in bit reliabilities by employing different mapping rules for the transmission over the diversity branches. This significantly improves the receiver block error rate performance and, hence, the performance of the adaptive modulation and coding. This is proven by simulations at link-level in a multicarrier CDMA system for AWGN and fading channels employing turbo coded transmission.     

Reliable indirect competitive ELISA used for a survey of ochratoxin A in green coffee from the North of Paraná State, Brazil.

The performance of an indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ic-ELISA) based on a monoclonal antibody (mAb) for ochratoxin A (OTA) detection was evaluated in a comparative study with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis using 68 freshly harvested coffee samples from the North of Paraná State, Brazil. The anti-OTA mAb showed high specificity and low cross-reactivity with OTA analogues (OTB and OTalpha), but cross-reacted with OTC. This ic-ELISA showed a detection limit of 3.75 ngg-1 sample, when compared to 0.80 ngg-1 by HPLC, with an ic-ELISA/HPLC correlation coefficient of 0.90. As regards OTA analysis of these coffee samples, natural contamination was detected in 10 samples (14.7%) by both methods, where the ic-ELISA values (range 3.9-7.3 ngg-1) were 1.1 to 1.6-fold higher than HPLC data (2.7-4.7 ngg-1). Five samples (7.4%) were OTA positive (range 0.84-1.30 ngg-1) only by HPLC assay, probably due to the higher detection limit reached by ic-ELISA. OTA was undetectable in 53 samples (77.9%) by both methods, while all positive samples (range 0.84-7.30 ngg-1) showed OTA levels lower than 8 ngg-1 (maximum limit recommended by the European Union). The matrix interference of green coffee was minimized by dilution of sample extracts before carrying out the ELISA assay. This mAb-based ic-ELISA can be effectively applied for OTA screening in coffee, because it is simple, sensitive and sample preparation is easy.     

Evaluating opportunistic networks in disaster scenarios

Forwarding data in scenarios where devices have sporadic connectivity is a challenge. An example scenario is a disaster area, where forwarding information generated in the incident location, like victims' medical data, to a coordination point is critical for quick, accurate and coordinated intervention. New applications are being developed based on mobile devices and wireless opportunistic networks as a solution to destroyed or overused communication networks. But the performance of opportunistic routing methods applied to emergency scenarios is unknown today. In this paper, we compare and contrast the efficiency of the most significant opportunistic routing protocols through simulations in realistic disaster scenarios in order to show how the different characteristics of an emergency scenario impact in the behaviour of each one of them.     

Hydrophobic effects on protein/nucleic acid interaction: enhancement of substrate binding by mutating tyrosine 45 to tryptophan in ribonuclease Tl

Hydrophobic effects on binding of ribonuclease Tl to guaninebases of several ribonucleotides have been proved by mutatinga hydrophobic residue at the recognition site and by measuringthe effect on binding. Mutation of a hydrophobic surface residueto a more hydrophobic residue (Tyr45 – Trp) enhances thebinding to ribonucleotides, including mononucleotide inhibitorand product, and a synthetic substrate-analog trinudeotide aswell as the binding to dinucleotide substrates and RNA. Enhancementson binding to non-substrate ribonucleotides by the mutationhave been observed with free energy changes ranging from –2.2 to – 3 .9 kJ/mol. These changes are in good agreementwith that of substrate binding, –2.3 kJ/mol, which iscalculated from Michaelis constants obtained from kinetic studies.It is shown, by comparing the observed and calculated changesin binding free energy with differences in the observed transferfree energy changes of the amino acid side chains from organicsolvents to water, that the enhancement observed on guaninebinding comes from the difference in the hydrophobic effectsof the side chains of tyrosine and tryptophan. Furthermore,a linear relationship between nucleolytic activities and hydrophobicityof the residues (Ala, Phe, Tyr, Trp) at position 45 is observed.The mutation could not change substantially the base specificityof RNase Tl, which exhibits a prime requirement for guaninebases of substrates.     

Changes in physical properties of polycarbonate by absorbed water

In this paper, we report the changes in physical properties of polycarbonate caused by absorbed water and supply basic data for the application of this effect. Absorbed water increases monotonously with increase in relative humidity. Along with the increase in absorbed water, the relaxation time of the β process increases, the glass transition temperature rises, the area of the endothermic peak at the glass transition temperature increases, and the dynamic Young's modulus decreases. We conclude that the absorbed water fills holes but does not function as a crosslinking agent.     

Conformational properties of the guanine-binding site of ribonuclease T1 inferred from the X-ray structure and protein engineering

Recognition by ribonuclease T₁ of guanine bases via multidentatehydrogen bonding and stacking interactions appears to be mediatedmainly by a short peptide segment formed by one stretch of aheptapeptide, Tyr⁴²-Asn⁴³-Asn⁴⁴-Tyr⁴⁵-Gly⁴⁶-Gly⁴⁷-Phe⁴⁸. Thesegment displays a unique folding of the polypeptide chain—consistingof a reverse turn, Asn⁴⁴-Tyr⁴⁵-Glu⁴⁶-Gly⁴⁷, stabilized by ahydrogen-bond network involving the side chain of Asn⁴⁴, themain-chain atoms of Asn⁴⁴, Gly⁴⁷ and Phe⁴⁸ and one water molecule.The segment is connected to the C terminus of a ß-strandand expands into a loop region between Asn⁴³ and Ser⁵⁴. Lowvalues for the crystallographic thermal parameters of the segmentindicate that the structure has a rigidity comparable to thatof a ß-pleated sheet. Replacement of Asn⁴⁴ with alanineleads to a far lower enzymatic activity and demonstrates thatthe side chain of Asn⁴⁴ plays a key role in polypeptide foldingin addition to a role in maintaining the segment structure.Substitution of Asn⁴³ by alanine to remove a weak hydrogen bondto the guanine base destabilized the transition state of thecomplex by 6.3 kJ/mol at 37°C. In contrast, mutation ofGlu⁴⁶ to alanine to remove a strong hydrogen bond to the guaninebase caused a destabilization of the complex by 14.0 kJ/mol.A double-mutant enzyme with substitutions of Asn⁴³ by a histidineand Asn⁴⁴ by an aspartic acid, to reproduce the natural substitutionsfound in ribonuclease M_s, showed an activity and base specificitysimilar to that of the wild-type ribonuclease M_s. The segmenttherefore appears to be well conserved in several fungal ribonucleases.     

SEM observation of wet biological specimens pretreated with room-temperature ionic liquid

A facile pretreatment process for SEM: The use of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) provides an interesting method for SEM of biological specimens. We used a novel and concise method of pretreatment, excluding fixation or Au sputtering steps. Fine and smooth-textured SEM images of a wide variety of biological specimens treated in this way were observed without artefacts.