ApoA1 Deficiency Reshapes the Phenotypic and Molecular Characteristics of Bone Marrow Adipocytes in Mice

In the present study, we studied the effect of apolipoprotein A-1 (APOA1) on the spatial and molecular characteristics of bone marrow adipocytes, using well-characterized ApoA1 knockout mice. APOA1 is a central regulator of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) metabolism, and thus HDL; our recent work showed that deficiency of APOA1 increases bone marrow adiposity in mice. We found that ApoA1 deficient mice have greatly elevated adipocytes within their bone marrow compared to wild type counterparts. Morphologically, the increased adipocytes were similar to white adipocytes, and displayed proximal tibial-end localization. Marrow adipocytes from wild type mice were significantly fewer and did not display a bone-end distribution pattern. The mRNA levels of the brown/beige adipocyte-specific markers Ucp1, Dio2, Pat2, and Pgc1a; and the expression of leptin were greatly reduced in the ApoA1 knock-out in comparison to the wild-type mice. In the knock-out mice, adiponectin was remarkably elevated. In keeping with the close ties of hematopoietic stem cells and marrow adipocytes, using flow cytometry we found that the elevated adiposity in the ApoA1 knockout mice is associated with a significant reduction in the compartments of hematopoietic stem cells and common myeloid, but not of the common lymphoid, progenitors. Moreover, the ‘beiging’-related marker osteopontin and the angiogenic factor VEGF were also reduced in the ApoA1 knock-out mice, further supporting the notion that APOA1—and most probably HDL-C—regulate bone marrow microenvironment, favoring beige/brown adipocyte characteristics.     

In Situ Characterization of Internal Damage in TRIP‐Steel/Mg‐PSZ Composites under Compressive Stress Using X‐Ray Computed Tomography

An experimental setup for in situ investigations under compressive stress using laboratory X‐ray computed tomography (XCT) was developed and successfully tested. Complete deformation curves can be taken. It could be shown that XCT scans are possible during brakes of the stopped in situ experiments. In this way the deformation behavior of defined sample regions can be investigated. This kind of experiments is well suited to investigate the deformation behavior of foams and other samples which are transferable for the X‐rays used. The compression of metal matrix composite foams lead to the cooperative collapse of connected cells. We observed deformation bands arising in regions of smaller cell wall thicknesses. The deformation was dependent on size, shape, and orientation of the cells under consideration. Obviously deformation bands start at bigger cells with a small cell wall thickness and some extension perpendicular to the deformation direction. The rising of this kind of deformation bands can be explained by the dramatic change of the stress distribution in the neighbor cells after the first brake of a cell wall.     

Constructing <Emphasis Type=Italic>n</Emphasis>-gram rules for natural language models through exploring the limitation of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law

The Zipf–Mandelbrot law is widely used to model a power-law distribution on ranked data. One of the best known applications of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law is in the area of linguistic analysis of the distribution of words ranked by their frequency in a text corpus. By exploring known limitations of the Zipf–Mandelbrot law in modeling the actual linguistic data from different domains in both printed media and online content, a new algorithm is developed to effectively construct n-gram rules for building natural language (NL) models required for a human-to-computer interface. The construction of statistically-oriented n-gram rules is based on a new computing algorithm that identifies the area of divergence between Zipf–Mandelbrot curve and the actual frequency distribution of the ranked n-gram text tokens extracted from a large text corpus derived from the online electronic programming guide (EPG) for television shows and movies. Two empirical experiments were carried out to evaluate the EPG-specific language models created using the new algorithm in the context of NL-based information retrieval systems. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the algorithm for developing low-complexity concept models with high coverage for the user’s language models associated with both typed and spoken queries when interacting with a NL-based EPG search interface.     

Causal Effects of Aroma Compounds on Royal Gala Apple Flavours

Volatile flavour compounds produced by Royal Gala apple have been identified by GC-MS. Major components were 2-methylbutyl acetate, butyl acetate, hexyl acetate, butanol, 2-methylbutanol and hexanol. Odour-port evaluation of the components separated by GC indicated that the first four compounds were important contributors to the aroma and flavour. Use of analytical sensory panels revealed that 2-methylbutyl acetate, butanol and hexyl acetate had the greatest causal effect on those aroma and flavour attributes considered important for Royal Gala apples.