Preparation and analysis of dehydrated mixtures of vegetables and underutilized fish species flours: I. Dehydrated mixtures of cereal-fish

For the purpose of providing possible solutions to the malnutrition problems affecting those populations where cereals and tubers form an important portion of their daily intake, products were prepared from dehydrated mixtures of cereals and under-utilized fish, but which contain high-quality protein. Two cereals were selected for our experiments: rice and corn, and a marine under-utilized fish species (Macrodon ancyclodon). The minced fish muscle recovered by mechanical deboning was mixed with the cereal, obtaining mixtures with 5%, 10% and 15% fish on a dry basis. Feeding experiments using Wistar weaning rats were then carried out to evaluate the most important characteristics. An amino acid profile which reflected high-quality protein was obtained, as evidenced by the excellent PER, NPU, NPR and digestibility values determined. The dehydrated mixtures of fish/cereal flour prepared with 5% and up to 10% fish (dry basis), did not present any odour, but as of the 15% level, fish odour was perceived. Therefore, the use of dehydrated mixtures of fish/cereal flours with up to 10% fish in preparing food products, is recommended, since these would be of great help in solving the scarcity of good-quality protein, particularly in the developing countries.     

Damage of Neuroblastoma Cell SH-SY5Y Mediated by MPP+ Inhibits Proliferation of T-Cell Leukemia Jurkat by Co-Culture System

The adaptive immune system has implications in pathology of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Research data demonstrated that the peripheral CD4⁺ T-cell population decreased in pathogenesis of PD. The effect of damaged dopaminergic neurons on peripheral T cells of PD is still unknown. In this study, we constructed a neuronal and glial cells co-culture model by using human neuroblastoma cells SH-SY5Y and gliomas cells U87. After the co-culture cells were treated with neurotoxin 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP⁺) for 24 h, the conditioned media was harvested and used to cultivate T-cell leukemia Jurkat cells for another 24 h. We then analyzed the cell proliferation, cell cycle and necrosis effect of Jurkat cells. The results showed that co-culture medium of SH-SY5Y and U87 cells with MPP⁺ treatment inhibited the proliferation of Jurkat cells compared to control medium without MPP⁺, even though the same concentration of MPP⁺ had very little toxicity to the Jurkat cell. Furthermore, co-culture medium with low concentration of MPP⁺ (100 µM) arrested Jurkat cells cycle in G2/M phase through increasing cell cycle division 2 (CDC2) and CyclinB1 expression level, whereas co-culture medium with high concentration of MPP⁺ (500 µM) induced Jurkat cell necrosis through cellular swelling and membrane breakage. Our data implies that damaged dopamine neurons with glial cells can lead to the reduced number or inhibited proliferation activity of peripheral T cells.     

Biosurfactant-and-Bioemulsifier Produced by a Promising Cunninghamella echinulata Isolated from Caatinga Soil in the Northeast of Brazil

A Mucoralean fungus was isolated from Caatinga soil of Pernambuco, Northeast of Brazil, and was identified as Cunninghamella echinulata by morphological, physiological, and biochemical tests. This strain was evaluated for biosurfactant/bioemulsifier production using soybean oil waste (SOW) and corn steep liquor (CSL) as substrates, added to basic saline solution, by measuring surface tension and emulsifier index and activity. The best results showed the surface water tension was reduced from 72 to 36 mN/m, and an emulsification index (E₂₄) of 80% was obtained using engine oil and burnt engine oil, respectively. A new molecule of biosurfactant showed an anionic charge and a polymeric chemical composition consisting of lipids (40.0% w/w), carbohydrates (35.2% w/w) and protein (20.3% w/w). In addition, the biosurfactant solution (1%) demonstrated its ability for an oil displacement area (ODA) of 37.36 cm², which is quite similar to that for Triton X-100 (38.46 cm²). The stability of the reduction in the surface water tension as well as of the emulsifier index proved to be stable over a wide range of temperatures, in pH, and in salt concentration (4%–6% w/v). The biosurfactant showed an ability to reduce and increase the viscosity of hydrophobic substrates and their molecules, suggesting that it is a suitable candidate for mediated enhanced oil recovery. At the same time, these studies indicate that renewable, relatively inexpensive and easily available resources can be used for important biotechnological processes.     

Impact of sensor characteristics on source characterization for dispersion modeling

An accidental or intentional release of hazardous chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material into the atmosphere obligates responsible agencies to model its transport and dispersion in order to mitigate the effects. This modeling requires input parameters that may not be known and must therefore be estimated from sensor measurements of the resulting concentration field. The genetic algorithm (GA) method used here has been successful at back-calculating not only these source characteristics but also the meteorological parameters necessary to predict the contaminants subsequent transport and dispersion. This study assesses the impact of sensor thresholds, i.e. the sensor minimum detection limit and saturation level, on the ability of the algorithm to back-calculate modeling variables. The sensitivity of the back-calculation to these sensor constraints is analyzed in the context of an identical twin approach, where the data is simulated using the same Gaussian Puff model that is used in the back-calculation algorithm in order to analyze sensitivity in a controlled environment. The solution is optimized by the GA and further tuned with the Nelder-Mead downhill simplex algorithm. For this back-calculation to be successful, it is important that the sensor capture the maximum concentrations.     

Variant of the anastigmatic telescope with three mirrors for back focal length

In this paper, an optical design is presented for an anastigmatic telescope with back focal length corrected with exact ray tracing to eliminate spherical, coma, and astigmatism aberrations. The telescope is formed of three conical mirrors, two of them polished on the same substratum. The optical design is divided into three stages: we began the design obtaining the Gaussian parameters in a first-order solution; posteriorly, were obtained analytically the three mirrors' asphericity in a third-order design. The final design stage consists of the implementation of the Fermat's principle, the Abbe sine condition, and the Coddington equations for the exact correction for the three aforementioned aberrations.     

Athlete''s heart in elite disabled athletes

Nineteen children with congenital upper alimentary tract malformation were studied prospectively at the Department of Paediatrics, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, over a period of 12 months. There were 20 cases, grouped into six types comprising congenital hypertrophic pyloric stenosis, seven; cleft lip and/or cleft palate, five; oesophagal atresia with or without tracheo-oesophageal fistula, four; jejunal atresia two and a case each of achalasia and annular pancreas. One patient had oesophageal atresia and congenital hypertrophic pyloric stenosis. The mortality rate was 31.51% (six out of nineteen). Low mortality was recorded in cases of cleft lip and/or palate, while mortalities of over 70% were recorded among cases of jejunal atresia, and oesophageal atresia with or without tracheo-oesophageal fistul. The common causes of death were milk feed aspiration (28.6%-two cases), purulent peritonitis (14.3%-one case), and probable septicaemia (14.3%-one case). The cause of death in two cases could not be determined.     

Improving TCP performance over wireless networks at the link layer

We present the transport unaware link improvement protocol (TULIP), which dramatically improves the performance of TCP over lossy wireless links, without competing with or modifying the transport- or network-layer protocols. TULIP is tailored for the half-duplex radio links available with today's commercial radios and provides a MAC acceleration feature applicable to collision-avoidance MAC protocols (e.g., IEEE 802.11) to improve throughput. TULIP's timers rely on a maximum propagation delay over the link, rather than performing a round-trip time estimate of the channel delay. The protocol does not require a base station and keeps no TCP state. TULIP is exceptionally robust when bit error rates are high; it maintains high goodput, i.e., only those packets which are in fact dropped on the wireless link are retransmitted and then only when necessary. The performance of TULIP is compared against the performance of the Snoop protocol (a TCP-aware approach) and TCP without link-level retransmission support. The results of simulation experiments using the actual code of the Snoop protocol show that TULIP achieves higher throughput, lower packet delay, and smaller delay variance. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Methimazole-induced aplastic anemia in third exposure: successful treatment with recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor

Treatments for diabetes in Ethiopia are at present only available in hospitals so many patients must travel great distances to obtain insulin, tablets, and diabetes education. We reviewed all 496 people with diabetes attending the diabetic clinic at Gondar Hospital (281 with Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus (DM) and 215 with Type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) DM. Half of the patients came from rural areas, all but 3 of them travelling more than 20 km, one-quarter of them more than 100 km and 33 patients (13%) more than 180 km. It is likely that many patients who fail to attend from the more distant areas have died. We are developing a scheme which would enable diabetic patients to be treated at rural health centres by nurses trained in the principles of diabetes care which could greatly improve the outlook for diabetic patients in Ethiopia.     

Multi-Objective Optimization using Grid Computing

This paper analyzes some technical and practical issues concerning the use of parallel systems to solve multi-objective optimization problems using enumerative search. This technique constitutes a conceptually simple search strategy, and it is based on evaluating each possible solution from a given finite search space. The results obtained by enumeration are impractical for most computer platforms and researchers, but they exhibit a great interest because they can be used to be compared against the values obtained by stochastic techniques. We analyze here the use of a grid computing system to cope with the limits of enumerative search. After evaluating the performance of the sequential algorithm, we present, first, a parallel algorithm targeted to multiprocessor systems. Then, we design a distributed version prepared to be executed on a federation of geographically distributed computers known as a computational grid. Our conclusion is that this kind of systems can provide to the community with a large and precise set of Pareto fronts that would be otherwise unknown.