Properties and applications of β‐glycosidase from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron that specifically hydrolyses isoflavone glycosides

To modify the glycan part of glycosides, the gene encoding β‐glycosidase was cloned from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron VPI‐5482. The cloned gene, bt_1780, was expressed in Escherichia coli MC1061 and the expressed enzyme was purified using Ni‐NTA affinity chromatography. The purified enzyme, BTBG, showed optimal activity at 50 °C and pH 5.5. Interestingly, this enzyme did not have any hydrolysing activity on ordinary β‐linkage–containing substrates such as xylobiose, lactose and cello‐oligosaccharide, but specifically hydrolysed isoflavone glycosides such as daidzin, genistin and glycitin. Compared to a commercial beta glucosidase, BTBG selectively hydrolysed isoflavone glycosides in soybean extract mixture solution. These results suggest that BTBG may be a specialized enzyme for the hydrolysis of glycosides and that the substrate specificity of BTBG is applicable for the bioconversion of isoflavone glycosides in the food industry.     

EV-DO Rev.A在日本风头渐旺将盖过HSDPA

2006年8月31日,NTT DoCoMo开始在日本东京的中心地带提供HSDPA服务,NEC为该服务提供了惟一的一款终端,支持最高可达3.6Mbit/s的数据下载,这一速度10倍于以前FOMA手机可支持的速度。NTT DoCoMo的用户使用HSDPA服务,不需要支付额外的费用。这一举措使原本已经非常激烈的日本三大移动运营商之间的竞争又步入了一个新阶段。KDDI对此做出回应,宣布将在今年12月份推出世界上第一个商用的EV-DO Rev.A服务,KDDI目前已经推出了两款支持该服务的终端。K DDI过去所取得的成功在很大程度上归功于其采用了CDMA,这使得KDDI有效地将…     

Predicting Forest Age Classes from High Spatial Resolution Remotely Sensed Imagery Using Voronoi Polygon Aggregation

Efficient identification of forest age is useful for forest management and ecological applications. Here we propose a user-assisted method for determining forest age using high spatial resolution remotely sensed imagery. This method requires individual trees to be extracted from imagery and represented as points. We use a local maximum filter to generate points that are converted to Voronoi polygons. Properties of the Voronoi polygons are correlated with forest age and used to aggregate points (trees) into areas (stands) based on three forest age classes. Accuracy of the aggregation ranges from approximately 68% to 78% and identification of the mature class is more consistent and accurate than the younger classes.     

Disciplinary and linguistic considerations for academic Web linking: An exploratory hyperlink mediated study with Mainland China and Taiwan

The Web has become an important means of academic information exchange and can be used to give new insights into patterns of informal scholarly communication. This study develops new methods to examine patterns of university Web linking, focusing on Mainland China and Taiwan, and including language considerations. Multiple exploratory investigations into Web links were conducted between universities in these two places. Firstly, inlinks were counted to each university Web site from its national peers using four alternative Web document models. The results were shown to correlate significantly with research productivity in Taiwan but not in the Mainland, although in the latter case less reliable institutional data could have been the cause. For Taiwan, this is the first evidence of a scholarly association with academic linking for a non-English speaking region. It was then ascertained that the same link counts associated more strongly with scientific than social scientific research productivity in Taiwan. This confirms the general assumption of greater Web use by the hard sciences. We then investigated Taiwan-Mainland university cross-links, and found that although English is extensively used on the Web, there was no evidence that it was the language of preference for informal scholarly communication between the two areas. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

InGaN microring light-emitting diodes

The fabrication and performance of an InGaN light-emitting diode (LED) array based on a microring device geometry is reported. This design has been adopted in order to increase the surface area for light extraction and to minimize losses due to internal reflections and reabsorption. Electrical characteristics of these devices are similar to those of a conventional large-area LED, while the directed light extraction proves to be superior. In fact, these devices are found to be more efficient when operated at higher currents. This may be attributed to improved heat sinking due to the large surface area to volume ratio. The potential applications of these devices are also discussed.