Actual daily dietary intake of selenium in Belgium, using duplicate portion sampling

The dietary selenium (Se) intake in Belgium has been re-evaluated. Duplicate meal collection, wet acid destruction and flow injection hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry were used as techniques. The daily intake ranged from 28.4 g (Liège, Walloon part of the country) to 61.1 g (Vilvoorde, central part of the country). Compared with intakes recently published for other countries, the actual Belgian value corresponds to intermediate ranges of Se intake.

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Die aktuelle tägliche Selen-Aufnahme durch die Nahrung in Belgien, bestimmt durch doppelte Probenahme

Zusammenfassung Die Selen-Aufnahme durch die Nahrung in Belgien wurde neu bestimmt. Als Technik diente die doppelte Probenahme von Mahlzeiten, deren nasser Aufschluß und die Fließ-Injektions AAS mit Hydridgeneration. Die tägliche Aufnahme schwankt zwischen 28,4 und 61, 1 g. Im Vergleich zu Daten, die neuerdings aus anderen Ländern publiziert wurden, liegen die derzeitigen Werte aus Belgien im Mittelbereich.

     

Cray/Blitz—1984 chess champion

The chess program “Cray Blitz” is the current World Computer Chess Champion and North American Computer Chess Champion (ACM). The program has also played in human chess tournaments and is a chess master. At speed chess, where its ability to perform very accurate analysis is particularly important, it has maintained a performance rating of over 2600 for the past two years. This indicates that at speed chess, the program is one of the top players, electronic or human, in the world. It is currently running on a Cray XMP-48 computer system and has been designed around the parallelism that the XMP architecture provides.     

Noninvasive Determination of Central Blood Pressure by Impedance Plethysmography

A new algorithm based on impedance plethysmography provides reliable determinations, on an experimental basis, of arterial blood pressure. Signals over the brachial artery are picked up by four Velcro-type electrodes attached to the skinward side of a regular blood pressure cuff. Mathematical formulas are used to define those impedance pulses that correspond to systolic, diastolic, and mean arterial blood pressure values. The envelope of the impedance pulses recorded during cuff deflation can be defined by linear regressions, function of just one normalized independent variable, which is the ratio between the amplitude of the pulse with maximum amplitude and of the amplitude of the pulses with constant amplitude. These linear regressions are assumed to be universally applicable, the influence of individual anatomic variations having been eliminated by the use of a normalized variable. The results of this study prove that the variable pulse amplitude obtained during a cuff deflation is a quantifiable reaction of the circulatory system to arterial constriction.     

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.     

Prozeßidentifikation beim Plasmaspritzen temperatursensitiver Werkstoffe mit Hilfe einer Infrarot-Hochtemperatur-Thermokamera

Process-Identification at Plasma Spraying Thermally Sensitive Materials Using an Infra-red Thermal Imaging System Nowadays so called thermally sensitive materials are deposited by thermal spray techniques. Due to the high temperature process an undesired alteration (evaporation, chemical decomposition) of the material could occur. Therefore, optimisation of the deposition based only on empirical methods may be deremental with respect to the coating properties. This study shows the potential of an IR thermal imaging technique as a process control for evaluation and optimisation of the deposition through better understanding of the thermal spray process. The spray trials presented are based on preliminary examinations carried out with diagnostic tools. Therefore it was possible to achieve defined air plasma sprayed coatings of hydroxyapatite with different coating and component properties. This is particularly of interest, since there exists only a standard for hydroxyapatite as starting material but not for plasma sprayed coatings. Hence the coatings had either high or low contents of undesired phases, different degrees of cristallinity and bond strengths-varying from 5 to 42 MPa. Besides the power levels and the way to obtain the power the carrier gas flow significantly influences the properties of the coatings.     

A Toxoplasma gondii Oxopurine Transporter Binds Nucleobases and Nucleosides Using Different Binding Modes

Toxoplasma gondii is unable to synthesize purines de novo, instead salvages them from its environment, inside the host cell, for which they need high affinity carriers. Here, we report the expression of a T. gondii Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporter, Tg244440, in a Trypanosoma brucei strain from which nucleobase transporters have been deleted. Tg244440 transported hypoxanthine and guanine with similar affinity (K_m ~1 µM), while inosine and guanosine displayed K_i values of 4.05 and 3.30 µM, respectively. Low affinity was observed for adenosine, adenine, and pyrimidines, classifying Tg244440 as a high affinity oxopurine transporter. Purine analogues were used to probe the substrate-transporter binding interactions, culminating in quantitative models showing different binding modes for oxopurine bases, oxopurine nucleosides, and adenosine. Hypoxanthine and guanine interacted through protonated N1 and N9, and through unprotonated N3 and N7 of the purine ring, whereas inosine and guanosine mostly employed the ribose hydroxy groups for binding, in addition to N1H of the nucleobase. Conversely, the ribose moiety of adenosine barely made any contribution to binding. Tg244440 is the first gene identified to encode a high affinity oxopurine transporter in T. gondii and, to the best of our knowledge, the first purine transporter to employ different binding modes for nucleosides and nucleobases.     

Anti-obesity effects of the stem bark of Japanese horse chestnut (Aesculus turbinate) in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes

The inhibitory effects of lipid accumulation on ethanol extract from stem bark of Japanese horse chestnut (JHC) were evaluated. Exposure to JHC extract (10–100 μg/mL) for a 72 h incubation period did not alter cell viability compared to the untreated control. JHC extract, with concentrations of 25, 50, and 100 μg/mL, inhibited lipid accumulation in 3T3-L1 adipocytes in a dose dependent manner. The expression of PPARγ and C/EBPα, important adpogenic key markers was significantly reduced when JHC extract was added to cells for 8 days compared with the untreated control group. These results suggest that JHC extract might be a potential therapeutic agent as a natural anti-obesity material.     

Study of the reaction of cokes with KOH under nitrogen

Five cokes of increasing content of anisotropic carbon were prepared. Polished surfaces of these cokes were characterized by optical microscopy in terms of components of optical texture. These surfaces were reacted with KOH at 873, 1073 and 1273 K in an inert atmosphere for 2 h and the resultant topography monitored by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The extent of potassium take-up by coke particles was measured and the diffusion of potassium was detected by EDAX. Microstrength testing was made on the cokes before and after reaction with the alkali. Coke reactivity measurements were obtained for untreated and treated cokes. Results indicate that in an inert atmosphere the alkali reacts preferentially on the prismatic edges of anisotropic carbon and that the rates of reaction increase with increasing temperature. Potassium is able to diffuse into the interior of the more anisotropic coke particles and this casues weakening of the coke. The reactivity measurements indicate that for the more anisotropic cokes the effect of potassium as a catalyst in the solution-loss reaction is more pronounced than for the least anisotropic coke. These conclusions suggest that metallurgical coke in the blast furnace in the presence of alkali materials can lose strength by direct reaction over and above considerations of gasification processes.