Josef Bro?ek: Friendship and History.

Presents reflections on the life and achievements of Josef Maria Bro?ek. The author notes that, in his way, Bro?ek turned psychology historiography into an international domain involving, in this construction, researchers from countries not only of Anglo Saxon languages but also those of Slavic and Latin languages, including Brazil. Quoting from Braque, he affirmed that "knowledge of the past enables the revelation of the present." However, he believed that "reality is not revealed if it is not sparkled by a poetic beam." The poetry of life illuminated Bro?ek and his actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mass spectrometry for detection of 4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal (HNE) adducts with peptides and proteins

Despite the great technical advancement of mass spectrometry, this technique has contributed in a limited way to the discovery and quantitation of specific/precocious markers linked to free radical-mediated diseases. Unsaturated aldehydes generated by free radical-induced lipid peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids, and in particular 4-hydroxy-trans-2 nonenal (HNE), are involved in the onset and progression of many pathologies such as cardiovascular (atherosclerosis, long-term complications of diabetes) and neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and cerebral ischemia). Most of the biological effects of HNE are attributed to the capacity of HNE to react with the nucleophilic sites of proteins and peptides (other than nucleic acids), to form covalently modified biomolecules that can disrupt important cellular functions and induce mutations. By considering the emerging role of HNE in several human diseases, an unequivocal analytical approach as mass spectrometry to detect/elucidate the structure of protein-HNE adducts in biological matrices is strictly needed not only to understand the reaction mechanism of HNE, but also to gain a deeper insight into the pathological role of HNE. This with the aim to provide intermediate diagnostic biomarkers for human diseases. This review sheds focus on the "state-of-the-art" of mass spectrometric applications in the field of HNE-protein adducts characterization, starting from the fundamental early studies and discussing the different MS-based approaches that can provide detailed information on the mechanistic aspects of HNE-protein interaction. In the last decade, the increases in the accessible mass ranges of modern instruments and advances in ionization methods have made possible a fundamental improvement in the analysis of protein-HNE adducts by mass spectrometry, and in particular by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) and electrospray ionization (ESI) tandem mass spectrometry. The recent developments and uses of combined analytical approaches to detect and characterize the type/site of interaction have been highlighted, and several other aspects, including sample preparation methodologies, structure elucidation, and data analysis have also been considered.     

Self-foaming diphenolic acid benzoxazine

This work concerns the investigation of porous polybenzoxazines based on the non-toxic renewable diphenolic acid. The approach described relies on the in situ generation of foaming agent (CO₂) during the thermal curing. For this purpose, the previously synthesized benzoxazine monomer from diphenolic acid was thermally polymerized at different temperatures. As the beginning of decarboxylation is about 200 °C, we selected five foaming temperatures (T_f) ranging from 190 to 230 °C. The influence of the foaming temperature on the cellular structure and its dependency on final properties is discussed.     

Discovery of an Allosteric Ligand Binding Site in SMYD3 Lysine Methyltransferase

SMYD3 is a multifunctional epigenetic enzyme with lysine methyltransferase activity and various interaction partners. It is implicated in the pathophysiology of cancers but with an unclear mechanism. To discover tool compounds for clarifying its biochemistry and potential as a therapeutic target, a set of drug-like compounds was screened in a biosensor-based competition assay. Diperodon was identified as an allosteric ligand; its R and S enantiomers were isolated, and their affinities to SMYD3 were determined (K_D=42 and 84 μM, respectively). Co-crystallization revealed that both enantiomers bind to a previously unidentified allosteric site in the C-terminal protein binding domain, consistent with its weak inhibitory effect. No competition between diperodon and HSP90 (a known SMYD3 interaction partner) was observed although SMYD3–HSP90 binding was confirmed (K_D=13 μM). Diperodon clearly represents a novel starting point for the design of tool compounds interacting with a druggable allosteric site, suitable for the exploration of noncatalytic SMYD3 functions and therapeutics with new mechanisms of action.     

Spatial consistency of dense features within interest regions for efficient landmark recognition

Recently, feature grouping has been proposed as a method for improving retrieval results for logos and web images. This relies on the idea that a group of features matching over a local region in an image is more discriminative than a single feature match. In this paper, we evolve this concept further and apply it to the more challenging task of landmark recognition. We propose a novel combination of dense sampling of SIFT features with interest regions which represent the more salient parts of the image in greater detail. In place of conventional dense sampling used in category recognition that computes features on a regular grid at a number of fixed scales, we allow the sampling density and scale to vary based on the scale of the interest region. We develop new techniques for exploring stronger geometric constraints inside the feature groups and computing the match score. The spatial information is stored efficiently in an inverted index structure. The proposed approach considers part-based matching of interest regions instead of matching entire images using a histogram under bag-of-words. This helps reducing the influence of background clutter and works better under occlusion. Experiments reveal that directing more attention to the salient regions of the image and applying proposed geometric constraints helps in vastly improving recognition rates for reasonable vocabulary sizes.     

Validation of a Method for Analysis of Aroma Compounds in Red Wine using Liquid–Liquid Extraction and GC–MS

An analytical method for determination of volatile composition of wines using sample preparation by liquid–liquid extraction and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry for separation and detection has been developed and validated. Extraction of volatile compounds was performed in dichloromethane, and 1-octanol was added as an internal standard. Kékfrankos red wine produced in Villány wine region in Hungary was used as a model wine for testing and validation of the method. The developed method allowed satisfactory determination of 33 volatile compounds in the wines. Compounds analyzed include alcohols, esters, lactones, fatty acids, furans, and nitrogen compounds. The calibration curves of the four reference compounds used (2-phenyl ethanol, ethyl nonanoate, butyrolactone, and tyrosol) were linear in all cases with correlation coefficients (R ²) ranging from 0.9951 to 0.9992. The accuracy of the method was checked with a standard addition method (recovery 92.2–103 %), showing good repeatability and reproducibility (RSD?<?10 %).     

Using Twitter® as source of information for dietary market research: a study on veganism and plant-based diets

Social media has experienced rapid growth in recent years and has been subjected of discussions on a wide range of topics including new lifestyles and eating habits, providing a great opportunity to obtain spontaneous consumer information. In this sense, the present work aimed to understand the perception of Twitter^® users about themes of veganism and plant-based diets. The social networking data mining methodology was applied to measure the relationship between both terms. The significant differences found were analysed using the global chi-square (χ²) test, and their sources of variation were investigated by the chi-square per cell. The results indicate that the vegan group's posts are more related to the categories of recipes, trends, criticism and negative comments about veganism, being more often citing sources when compared to the other group. The results of the plant-based diet group are more significantly related to the impacts of nutrition, physical activity and consumer health. In conclusion, Twitter^® has proved to be an interesting tool for obtaining data on (re) produced food publications on social media and their results can guide the market and the academic environment in creating new products, services and marketing strategies to answer the needs of specific consumers.     

Fatigue Failure of a Drive Shaft

The drive shaft in the propulsion system of a boat broke, while the vessel was sailing along the Western Canadian coast. This part was made from a low-alloy steel grade 4340 quenched and tempered. Fractographic investigation at macro scale revealed that the shaft failed under low rotating-bending variable stress. Fatigue propagation occurred on about 95% of the total cross section of the shaft, under both low-cycle and high-cycle fatigue mechanisms. It was found that the fillet radius present at the fracture’s origin was smaller than the one provisioned by design. This situation has raised the stress level at this location higher than the one taken into consideration at the moment of the design calculations and caused the initiation of the cracking. Moreover, although the shaft has been quenched and tempered, its actual hardness did not have the optimal value for long-life fatigue strength.     

Indoor emissions of total and fluorescent supermicron particles during HOMEChem

Inhalation of particulate matter is associated with adverse health outcomes. The fluorescent portion of supermicron particulate matter has been used as a proxy for bioaerosols. The sources and emission rates of fluorescent particles in residential environments are not well-understood. Using an ultraviolet aerodynamic particle sizer (UVAPS), emissions of total and fluorescent supermicron particles from common human activities were investigated during the HOMEChem campaign, a test-house investigation of the chemistry of indoor environments. Human occupancy and activities, including cooking and mopping, were found to be considerable sources of indoor supermicron fluorescent particles, which enhanced the indoor particle concentrations by two orders of magnitude above baseline levels. The estimated total (fluorescent) mass emission rates for the activities tested were in the range of 4-30 (1-11) mg per person meal for cooking and 0.1-4.9 (0.05-4.7) mg/h for occupancy and mopping. Model calculations indicate that, once released, the dominant fate of coarse particles (2.5-10 micrometer in diameter) was deposition onto indoor surfaces, allowing for the possibility of subsequent resuspension and consequent exposures over durations much longer than the ventilation time scale. Indoor coarse particle deposition would also contribute to soiling of indoor surfaces.