Benefits of multiple micronutrient supplementation in heart failure: A comprehensive review

Abstract

Background: Multiple micronutrient supplementation has been suggested to have a role on health outcomes in patients with heart failure (HF), but the evidence is inconclusive. Objective: To elucidate the role of multiple micronutrient supplementation in heart failure we performed a comprehensive review of the literature. Methods and results: The search in databases included PUBMED (until June 2018) to detect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analyzes that investigated the impact of micronutrient supplementation in HF. Results: With more than 2357 titles and abstracts reviewed, we included only the studies suitable for the final review. Whether alone or in combination, micronutrients have been found to improve the health outcomes of patients with HF by improving symptoms, work capacity and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), thus increasing the quality of life in these patients. Conclusion: Future studies are needed to document the effects of multiple micronutrient associations in order to include them in nutritional guidelines to increase survival and to improve quality of life in patients with heart failure.     

Human Cellular Retinol Binding Protein II Forms a Domain-Swapped Trimer Representing a Novel Fold and a New Template for Protein Engineering

Domain-swapping is a mechanism for evolving new protein structure from extant scaffolds, and has been an efficient protein-engineering strategy for tailoring functional diversity. However, domain swapping can only be exploited if it can be controlled, especially in cases where various folds can coexist. Herein, we describe the structure of a domain-swapped trimer of the iLBP family member hCRBPII, and suggest a mechanism for domain-swapped trimerization. It is further shown that domain-swapped trimerization can be favored by strategic installation of a disulfide bond, thus demonstrating a strategy for fold control. We further show the domain-swapped trimer to be a useful protein design template by installing a high-affinity metal binding site through the introduction of a single mutation, taking advantage of its threefold symmetry. Together, these studies show how nature can promote oligomerization, stabilize a specific oligomer, and generate new function with minimal changes to the protein sequence.     

Lactic fermentation of cooked navy beans by Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74 aimed at a potential production of functional legume-based foods

In recent years, scientific interest in the development of non-dairy-based functional foods is increasing progressively and the fermentation of cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetable-based foods is becoming an important scientific research topic for the production of new probiotic products. In particular, legumes represent a possible alternative to protein foods from animal origins and an adequate fermentation substrate as they contain high amount of nutrients, such as proteins, carbohydrates, fibres, vitamins, and minerals, which are all useful to the growth and metabolic activity of certain microorganisms. This work focuses on the feasibility of developing a dry legume-based functional product using a fermentation process carried out on a 10% w/v navy bean suspension, in a lab-scale stirred batch reactor. After soaking and cooking dried navy beans, the fermentation tests performed on the resulting medium using Lactobacillus paracasei CBA L74 showed a maximum bacterial count of 10⁹ CFU/mL after 20 hours and a maximum lactic acid concentration of 1.9 g/L after 16 hours of process time. A freeze-drying process was performed on the fermented bean suspension, showing a 2-log microbial reduction and a bacterial viability in the resulting probiotic powder of 3.7 × 10⁸ CFU/g.     

Towards sensible toxicity testing for nanomaterials: proposal for the specification of test design

During the last decade, nanomaterials (NM) were extensively tested for potential harmful effects towards humans and environmental organisms. However, a sound hazard assessment was so far hampered by uncertainties and a low comparability of test results. The reason for the low comparability is a high variation in the (1) type of NM tested with regard to raw material, size and shape and (2) procedures before and during the toxicity testing. This calls for tailored, nanomaterial-specific protocols. Here, a structured approach is proposed, intended to lead to test protocols not only tailored to specific types of nanomaterials, but also to respective test system for toxicity testing. There are existing standards on single procedures involving nanomaterials, however, not all relevant procedures are covered by standards. Hence, our approach offers a detailed way of weighting several plausible alternatives for e.g. sample preparation, in order to decide on the procedure most meaningful for a specific nanomaterial and toxicity test. A framework of several decision trees (DT) and flow charts to support testing of NM is proposed as a basis for further refinement and in-depth elaboration. DT and flow charts were drafted for (1) general procedure—physicochemical characterisation, (2) choice of test media, (3) decision on test scenario and application of NM to liquid media, (4) application of NM to the gas phase, (5) application of NM to soil and sediments, (6) dose metrics, (S1) definition of a nanomaterial, and (S2) dissolution. The applicability of the proposed approach was surveyed by using experimental data retrieved from studies on nanoscale CuO. This survey demonstrated the DT and flow charts to be a convenient tool to systematically decide upon test procedures and processes, and hence pose an important step towards harmonisation of NM testing.     

Dirichlet Priors for MAP Inference of Protein Conformation Abundances from SAXS

Estimation of mixture coefficients of protein conformations in solution find applications in understanding protein behavior. We describe a method for maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation of the mixture coefficients of ensemble of conformations in a protein mixture solution using measured small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) intensities. The proposed method builds upon a model for the measurements of crystallographically determined conformations. Assuming that a priori information on the protein mixture is available, and that priori information follows a Dirichlet distribution, we develop a method to estimate the relative abundances with MAP estimator. The Dirichlet distribution depends on concentration parameters which may not be known in practice and thus need to be estimated. To estimate these unknown concentration parameters we developed an expectation-maximization (EM) method. Adenylate kinase (ADK) protein was selected as the test bed due to its known conformations Beckstein et al. (Journal of Molecular Biology, 394(1), 160 1). Known conformations are assumed to form the full vector bases that span the measurement space. In Monte Carlo simulations, mixture coefficient estimation performances of MAP and maximum likelihood (ML) (which assumes a uniform prior on the mixture coefficients) estimators are compared. MAP estimators using known and unknown concentration parameters are also compared in terms of estimation performances. The results show that prior knowledge improves estimation accuracy, but performance is sensitive to perturbations in the Dirichlet distribution’s concentration parameters. Moreover, the estimation method based on EM algorithm shows comparable results to approximately known prior parameters.     

Malicious Omissions and Errors in Answers to Membership Queries

We consider two issues in polynomial-time exact learning of concepts using membership and equivalence queries: (1) errors or omissions in answers to membership queries, and (2) learning finite variants of concepts drawn from a learnable class.To study (1), we introduce two new kinds of membership queries: limited membership queries and malicious membership queries. Each is allowed to give incorrect responses on a maliciously chosen set of strings in the domain. Instead of answering correctly about a string, a limited membership query may give a special I don't know answer, while a malicious membership query may give the wrong answer. A new parameter Lis used to bound the length of an encoding of the set of strings that receive such incorrect answers. Equivalence queries are answered correctly, and learning algorithms are allowed time polynomial in the usual parameters and L. Any class of concepts learnable in polynomial time using equivalence and malicious membership queries is learnable in polynomial time using equivalence and limited membership queries; the converse is an open problem. For the classes of monotone monomials and monotone k-term DNF formulas, we present polynomial-time learning algorithms using limited membership queries alone. We present polynomial-time learning algorithms for the class of monotone DNF formulas using equivalence and limited membership queries, and using equivalence and malicious membership queries.To study (2), we consider classes of concepts that are polynomially closed under finite exceptions and a natural operation to add exception tables to a class of concepts. Applying this operation, we obtain the class of monotone DNF formulas with finite exceptions. We give a polynomial-time algorithm to learn the class of monotone DNF formulas with finite exceptions using equivalence and membership queries. We also give a general transformation showing that any class of concepts that is polynomially closed under finite exceptions and is learnable in polynomial time using standard membership and equivalence queries is also polynomial-time learnable using malicious membership and equivalence queries. Corollaries include the polynomial-time learnability of the following classes using malicious membership and equivalence queries: deterministic finite acceptors, boolean decision trees, and monotone DNF formulas with finite exceptions.     

Correction to: Assessment of wastewater reuse potential for irrigation in rural semi-arid areas: the case study of Punitaqui,Chile

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - In this mentioned article, the Author names are mistakenly have been replaced with the family name of the authors, and so the family names with the names.     

Twinned Growth of Metal‐Free,Triazine‐Based Photocatalyst Films as Mixed‐Dimensional (2D/3D) van der Waals Heterostructures

Design and synthesis of ordered, metal‐free layered materials is intrinsically difficult due to the limitations of vapor deposition processes that are used in their making. Mixed‐dimensional (2D/3D) metal‐free van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures based on triazine (C₃N₃) linkers grow as large area, transparent yellow‐orange membranes on copper surfaces from solution. The membranes have an indirect band gap (E _g,opt = 1.91 eV, E _g,elec = 1.84 eV) and are moderately porous (124 m² g^?1). The material consists of a crystalline 2D phase that is fully sp² hybridized and provides structural stability, and an amorphous, porous phase with mixed sp²–sp hybridization. Interestingly, this 2D/3D vdW heterostructure grows in a twinned mechanism from a one‐pot reaction mixture: unprecedented for metal‐free frameworks and a direct consequence of on‐catalyst synthesis. Thanks to the efficient type I heterojunction, electron transfer processes are fundamentally improved and hence, the material is capable of metal‐free, light‐induced hydrogen evolution from water without the need for a noble metal cocatalyst (34 µmol h^?1 g^?1 without Pt). The results highlight that twinned growth mechanisms are observed in the realm of “wet” chemistry, and that they can be used to fabricate otherwise challenging 2D/3D vdW heterostructures with composite properties.     

A generative model of article citation networks of a subject from a large-scale citation database

Scientometrics - In this paper, we analyze the structure of the article citation network of a particular subject obtained from the Web of Science (WoS) database. In specific, we modify a model...     

A stochastic approach to shortcut bridging in programmable matter

In a self-organizing particle system, an abstraction of programmable matter, simple computational elements called particles with limited memory and communication self-organize to solve system-wide problems of movement, coordination, and configuration. In this paper, we consider a stochastic, distributed, local, asynchronous algorithm for “shortcut bridging”, in which particles self-assemble bridges over gaps that simultaneously balance minimizing the length and cost of the bridge. Army ants of the genus Eciton have been observed exhibiting a similar behavior in their foraging trails, dynamically adjusting their bridges to satisfy an efficiency trade-off using local interactions. Using techniques from Markov chain analysis, we rigorously analyze our algorithm, show it achieves a near-optimal balance between the competing factors of path length and bridge cost, and prove that it exhibits a dependence on the angle of the gap being “shortcut” similar to that of the ant bridges. We also present simulation results that qualitatively compare our algorithm with the army ant bridging behavior. Our work gives a plausible explanation of how convergence to globally optimal configurations can be achieved via local interactions by simple organisms (e.g., ants) with some limited computational power and access to random bits. The proposed algorithm also demonstrates the robustness of the stochastic approach to algorithms for programmable matter, as it is a surprisingly simple extension of our previous stochastic algorithm for compression.