Gamebirds: A sustainable food source in Southern Africa?

In order to alleviate the current food security situation the world is faced with, it is essential to investigate meat sources which have the potential to be used in a sustainable manner. This review provides substantial arguments to prove the viability of sport hunted wildfowl as a food source in Southern Africa. However, before the use of wildfowl meat can be realised, there are certain challenges to overcome in order to ensure meat of the best possible quality reaches the consumer. Important aspects to consider regarding the eating quality of wildfowl meat are identified and include the physical activity of the different portions and muscle fibre types, diet, breeding, age and gender as well as the post mortem handling/ageing of the meat. The safety issues involved in producing gamebird meat i.e. shot contamination (microbial or lead), are also discussed. Other areas that warrant scientific research include investigating the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that may have an influence on the ultimate meat quality and exploring possible techniques of improving the eating quality of wildfowl meat. The insights these investigations will provide have the potential to increase the commercial viability, directly or indirectly, of African wildfowl meat and thus contribute to food security.     

Accelerating math development in Head Start classrooms.

Teachers implemented a 6-week classroom intervention designed to promote emergent math skills and math interest in preschool-aged children. Teachers in experimental classrooms incorporated math-relevant activities into their daily routine during circle time, transitions, mealtime, and small-group activities. Control classrooms engaged in their typical activities. After the program, experimental children scored significantly higher than control children on a standardized test of math ability and enjoyed math activities more than the control children, as measured by both teacher and self-report. Teachers rated the program as highly satisfactory and reported that they increased their own enjoyment and skill in implementing math activities in their classrooms. The intervention effects were largely accounted for by substantial gains by boys, whereas girls showed much smaller program response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Radiation dose from 3D rotational X-ray imaging: organ and effective dose with conversion factors

The purpose of this study was to measure organ doses and the effective dose (ED) using a three-dimensional rotational X-ray (3D-RX) system and to determine the ED conversion factor from the dose area product (DAP) for skull, spine and biliary protocols. A commercial 3D-RX imaging system was used to simulate the protocols with the adult female anthropomorphic phantom. Twenty MOSFET detectors were used to measure the absorbed doses at various organ locations. The ED was calculated for each protocol and the corresponding DAP was obtained. The skin dose was the highest for all the protocols. The second highest organ doses were those of the brain for the skull, the intestine for the spine and the kidney for the biliary protocol. The ED was 0.4-0.9, 4.2-8.4 and 3.2-4.6 mSv, and the ED conversion factor was 0.06-0.09, 0.18-0.31 and 0.13-0.23 mSv Gy(-1) cm(-2) for each protocol, respectively. This data may be used to estimate the patient ED for those protocols in the 3D-RX.     

Co-Aggregation of S100A9 with DOPA and Cyclen-Based Compounds Manifested in Amyloid Fibril Thickening without Altering Rates of Self-Assembly

The amyloid cascade is central for the neurodegeneration disease pathology, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and remains the focus of much current research. S100A9 protein drives the amyloid-neuroinflammatory cascade in these diseases. DOPA and cyclen-based compounds were used as amyloid modifiers and inhibitors previously, and DOPA is also used as a precursor of dopamine in Parkinson’s treatment. Here, by using fluorescence titration experiments we showed that five selected ligands: DOPA-D-H-DOPA, DOPA-H-H-DOPA, DOPA-D-H, DOPA-cyclen, and H-E-cyclen, bind to S100A9 with apparent K_d in the sub-micromolar range. Ligand docking and molecular dynamic simulation showed that all compounds bind to S100A9 in more than one binding site and with different ligand mobility and H-bonds involved in each site, which all together is consistent with the apparent binding determined in fluorescence experiments. By using amyloid kinetic analysis, monitored by thioflavin-T fluorescence, and AFM imaging, we found that S100A9 co-aggregation with these compounds does not hinder amyloid formation but leads to morphological changes in the amyloid fibrils, manifested in fibril thickening. Thicker fibrils were not observed upon fibrillation of S100A9 alone and may influence the amyloid tissue propagation and modulate S100A9 amyloid assembly as part of the amyloid-neuroinflammatory cascade in neurodegenerative diseases.     

Prenatal exposure to environmental toxin: A test of the multiple effects model.

The multiple effects model of teratological exposure predicts that neonatal deficits associated with intrauterine exposure to small doses of a potentially teratogenic agent will vary considerably across individuals. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of 242 newborns exposed prenatally to low levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from maternal consumption of contaminated lake fish and 71 control infants whose mothers did not eat these fish. Behavioral outcomes were assessed using the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NABS). Contaminated fish consumption predicted motoric immaturity, poorer lability of states, a greater amount of startle, and more abnormally weak (hypoactive) reflexes. The most highly exposed Ss were more likely than controls to be classified as "worrisome" on 3 NBAS clusters. Results from a stepwise regression analysis are consistent with the multiple effects model, indicating that some affected Ss were born small and/or early, whereas others exhibited one or another of the behavioral deficits. The analysis indicated that 12.2% of the variance in contaminated fish consumption was associated with measurable neonatal deficits. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring impact by a full option method and the notion of bibliometric spectra

A full option method for determining impact takes into account citations to all cited publications, instead of limiting the analysis to ISI-publications only, as usually done in the standard method. The method was tested for the 258 early Ghent professors, teaching in 6 different faculties. The impact of monographs is, in general, much larger than the impact of articles (whether of ISI-type or not). This result remains valid for all six faculties separately. Limiting the bibliometric visibility to ISI-publications reduces the number of citations to only 16%. Bibliometric spectra are presented, in which citations, cited publications and their impact are shown in function of the year of publication. The number of cited publications is always important to expose the influence of activity (production) upon bibliometric scores. For the faculty of Arts, the citations to early professors are compared with those obtained for the presentday generation: the bibliometric spectrum for the former group is rather discontinuous (showing a large erosion in the number of citations by year), whereas that of the latter is continuous. The Ghent citation data are also compared with those given internationally in the same period.     

Do infant rats cry?

In the current revival of interest in the emotional and mental lives of animals, many investigators have focused attention on mammalian infants that emit distress vocalizations when separated from the home environment. Perhaps the most intensively studied distress vocalization is the ultrasonic vocalization of infant rats. Since its discovery, this vocalization has been interpreted both as a communicatory signal for the elicitation of maternal retrieval and as the manifestation of emotional distress. In contrast, the authors examined the cardiovascular causes and consequences' of the vocalization, and on the basis of this work, they hypothesized that the vocalization is the acoustic by-product of the abdominal compression reaction (ACR), a maneuver that results in increased venous return to the heart. Therefore, the vocalization may be analogous to a sneeze, serving a physiological function while incidentally producing sound. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characterization and optimization of peptide arrays for the study of epitope-antibody interactions using surface plasmon resonance imaging

The characterization of peptide arrays on gold surfaces designed for the study of peptide-antibody interactions using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) imaging is described. A two-step process was used to prepare the peptide arrays: (i) a set of parallel microchannels was used to deliver chemical reagents to covalently attach peptide probes to the surface by a thiol-disulfide exchange reaction; (ii) a second microchannel with a wraparound design was used as a small-volume flow cell (5 microL) to introduce antibody solutions to the peptide surface. As a demonstration, the interactions of the FLAG epitope tag and monoclonal anti-FLAG M2 were monitored by SPR imaging using a peptide array. This peptide-antibody pair was studied because of its importance as a means to purify fusion proteins. The surface coverage of the FLAG peptide was precisely controlled by creating the peptide arrays on mixed monolayers of alkanethiols containing an amine-terminated surface and an inert alkanethiol. The mole fraction of peptide epitopes was also controlled by reacting solutions containing FLAG peptide and the non-interacting peptide HA or cysteine. By studying variants based on the FLAG binding motif, it was possible to distinguish peptides differing by a single amino acid substitution using SPR imaging. In addition, quantitative analysis of the signal was accomplished using the peptide array to simultaneously determine the binding constants of the antibody-peptide interactions for four peptides. The binding constant, K(ads), for the FLAG peptide was measured and found to be 1.5 x 10(8) M(-1) while variants made by the substitution of alanine for residues based on the binding motif had binding constants of 2.8 x 10(7), 5.0 x 10(6), and 2.0 x 10(6) M(-1).     

A logic of reachable patterns in linked data-structures

We define a new decidable logic for expressing and checking invariants of programs that manipulate dynamically-allocated objects via pointers and destructive pointer updates. The main feature of this logic is the ability to limit the neighborhood of a node that is reachable via a regular expression from a designated node. The logic is closed under boolean operations (entailment, negation) and has a finite model property. The key technical result is the proof of decidability.We show how to express preconditions, postconditions, and loop invariants for some interesting programs. It is also possible to express properties such as disjointness of data-structures, and low-level heap mutations. Moreover, our logic can express properties of arbitrary data-structures and of an arbitrary number of pointer fields. The latter provides a way to naturally specify postconditions that relate the fields on the entry of a procedure to the field on the exit of a procedure. Therefore, it is possible to use the logic to automatically prove partial correctness of programs performing low-level heap mutations.