Postprandial and short-term effects of dietary virgin olive oil on oxidant/antioxidant status

It is generally believed that virgin olive oil consumption has beneficial effects, but little is known about its effects postprandially on oxidant/antioxidant status. The aim of this study was to determine changes in oxidative stress biomarkers and lipid profile after a single dose of virgin olive oil and after 1 wk of daily consumption. Sixteen subjects (9 men, 7 women) ingested 50 mL of virgin olive oil in a single dose. Blood samples were collected from 0 to 24 h. Thereafter, 14 participants (8 men, 6 women) followed a 1-wk 25 mg/d virgin olive oil dietary intervention. Blood samples were collected at the end of this period. Serum TAG (P=0.016), plasma FA (P<0.001) and lipid peroxidation products in plasma (P<0.001) and VLDL (P=0.007) increased, reaching a peak at 4–6 h, and returning to baseline values at 24 h after oil ingestion. The opposite changes were observed in plasma glutathione peroxidase (P=0.001) and glutathione reductase (GR) (P=0.042). No changes in LDL lipid peroxidation or resistance to oxidation were observed postprandially. At 24 h, plasma oleic acid remained increased (P<0.05) and resistance of LDL to oxidation improved (P<0.05). After 1 wk of virgin olive oil consumption, plasma oleic acid (P=0.031), resistance of LDL to oxidation (P<0.05), and plasma GR activity (P=0.005) increased. These results indicate that changes in oxidant/antioxidant status occur after oral virgin olive oil. Virgin olive oil consumption could provide short-term benefits for LDL resistance to oxidation and in glutathione-related enzyme activities.     

Sodium reduction in foods: Challenges and strategies for technical solutions

In many parts of the world, sodium consumption is higher than recommended levels, representing one of the most important food-related health challenges and leading to considerable economical costs for society. Therefore, there is a need to find technical solutions for sodium reduction that can be implemented by food producers and within food services. The aims of this review are to discuss the barriers related to sodium reduction and to highlight a variety of technical solutions. The barriers relate to consumer perception, microbiology, processing, and physicochemistry. Existing technical solutions include inhomogeneous salt distribution, coated salt particles, changing particle sizes and forms, surface coating, multisensory combinations, sodium replacements, double emulsions, adapted serum release by microstructure design, and adapted brittleness by microstructure design. These solutions, their implementation and the associated challenges, and applicable product categories are described. Some of these solutions are ready for use or are in their early development stages. Many solutions are promising, but in most cases, some form of adaptation or optimization is needed before application in specific products, and care must always be taken to ensure food safety. For instance, further research and innovation are required in the dynamic evolution of saltiness perception, consumer acceptance, the binding and migration of sodium, juiciness, microbiological safety, and the timing of salt addition during processing. Once implemented, these solutions will undoubtedly support food producers and food services in reducing sodium content and extend the application of the solutions to different foods.     

Infection of Brain Pericytes Underlying Neuropathology of COVID-19 Patients

A wide range of neurological manifestations have been associated with the development of COVID-19 following SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, the etiology of the neurological symptomatology is still largely unexplored. Here, we used state-of-the-art multiplexed immunostaining of human brains (n = 6 COVID-19, median age = 69.5 years; n = 7 control, median age = 68 years) and demonstrated that expression of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 is restricted to a subset of neurovascular pericytes. Strikingly, neurological symptoms were exclusive to, and ubiquitous in, patients that exhibited moderate to high ACE2 expression in perivascular cells. Viral dsRNA was identified in the vascular wall and paralleled by perivascular inflammation, as signified by T cell and macrophage infiltration. Furthermore, fibrinogen leakage indicated compromised integrity of the blood–brain barrier. Notably, cerebrospinal fluid from additional 16 individuals (n = 8 COVID-19, median age = 67 years; n = 8 control, median age = 69.5 years) exhibited significantly lower levels of the pericyte marker PDGFRβ in SARS-CoV-2-infected cases, indicative of disrupted pericyte homeostasis. We conclude that pericyte infection by SARS-CoV-2 underlies virus entry into the privileged central nervous system space, as well as neurological symptomatology due to perivascular inflammation and a locally compromised blood–brain barrier.     

Automatic generation of PLC automation projects from component-based models

Industrial process measurement and control systems (IPMCS) are used in most of the industrial sectors to achieve production improvement, process optimization and time and cost reduction. Integration, reuse, flexibility and optimization are demanded to adapt to a rapidly changing and competitive market. In order to achieve these goals, the use of standards in the application field, methodologies for defining the application design and tools for supporting the development cycle are needed. This paper proposes a component-based model of the implementation of the control system under design (the hardware and software architectures). The software architecture is defined to follow the software model of the IEC 61131-3 standard for programming programmable logic controllers and the hardware architecture is composed by equipment characterised by vendor and range of product. The proposed modelling is implemented as a markup language that allows to describe models of industrial control systems (icsML). From the application model, described in the markup language, the automation project for every programmable logic controller (PLC) present in the application is automatically generated.     

Effect of Kraft Cooking Conditions on the Chemical Composition of the Surface and Bulk of Spruce Fibers

By varying cooking temperature, alkali charge, ionic strength, and cooking time in Kraft pulping of spruce chips, pulps ranging between kappa numbers 20–80 were obtained. The unbleached Kraft pulp fibers were subjected to mechanical peeling in order to separate the surface material from the bulk of the fibers and the carbohydrate composition and lignin content of the two fractions were analyzed. As expected, the lignin and xylan contents were higher on the fiber surface than in the fiber wall. The percentage of xylan on the fiber surface was fairly constant, independent of different pulping conditions or degree of delignification. The lignin proportion on the fiber surface gradually decreased with decreasing kappa number. At a given kappa number, pulping at a higher temperature resulted in less lignin on the fiber surface, probably because of the higher solubility of lignin at higher temperature. Cooking at lower alkali charge also resulted in lower lignin content on the fiber surface at a given kappa number. In this case, there was more time available for degradation of the surface lignin since the lower alkali charge resulted in longer cooking time needed to reach a certain kappa number.     

Characterization of BCMA Expression in Circulating Rare Single Cells of Patients with Plasma Cell Neoplasms

B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA), a key regulator of B-cell proliferation and survival, is highly expressed in almost all cases of plasma cell neoplasms and B-lymphoproliferative malignancies. BCMA is a robust biomarker of plasma cells and a therapeutic target with substantial clinical significance. However, the expression of BCMA in circulating tumor cells of patients with hematological malignancies has not been validated for the detection of circulating plasma and B cells. The application of BCMA as a biomarker in single-cell detection and profiling of circulating tumor cells in patients’ blood could enable early disease profiling and therapy response monitoring. Here, we report the development and validation of a slide-based immunofluorescence assay (i.e., CD138, BCMA, CD45, DAPI) for enrichment-free detection, quantification, and morphogenomic characterization of BCMA-expressing cells in patients (N = 9) with plasma cell neoplasms. Varying morphological subtypes of circulating BCMA-expressing cells were detected across the CD138(+/−) and CD45(+/−) compartments, representing candidate clonotypic post-germinal center B cells, plasmablasts, and both normal and malignant plasma cells. Genomic analysis by single-cell sequencing and correlation to clinical FISH cytogenetics provides validation, with data showing that patients across the different neoplastic states carry both normal and altered BCMA-expressing cells. Furthermore, altered cells harbor cytogenetic events detected by clinical FISH. The reported enrichment-free liquid biopsy approach has potential applications as a single-cell methodology for the early detection of BCMA+ B-lymphoid malignancies and in monitoring therapy response for patients undergoing anti-BCMA treatments.     

An energy preserving/decaying scheme for nonlinearly constrained multibody systems

Several numerical time integration methods for multibody system dynamics are described: an energy preserving scheme and three energy decaying ones, which introduce high-frequency numerical dissipation in order to annihilate the nondesired high-frequency oscillations. An exhaustive analysis of these four schemes is done, including their formulation, and energy preserving and decaying properties by taking into account the presence of nonlinear algebraic constraints and the incrementation of finite rotations. A new energy preserving/decaying scheme is developed, which is well suited for either stiff or nonstiff nonlinearly constrained multibody systems. Examples on a series of test cases show the performance of the algorithms.     

Multiobjective evolutionary optimization of batch process scheduling under environmental and economic concerns

The simultaneous consideration of economic and environmental objectives in batch production scheduling is today a subject of major concern. However, it constitutes a complex problem whose solution necessarily entails production trade‐offs. Unfortunately, a rigorous multiobjective optimization approach to solve this kind of problem often implies high computational effort and time, which seriously undermine its applicability to day‐to‐day operation in industrial practice. Hence, this work presents a hybrid optimization strategy based on rigorous local search and genetic algorithm to efficiently deal with industrial scale batch scheduling problems. Thus, a deeper insight into the combined environmental and economic issues when considering the trade‐offs of adopting a particular schedule is provided. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study concerning a multiproduct acrylic fiber production plant, where product changeovers influence the problem results. The proposed strategy stands for a marked improvement in effectively incorporating multiobjective optimization in short‐term plant operation. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 429–444, 2013