An investigation into the possible occurrence of peptide-bound lanthionine in locust muscle

The amino acid composition of the protein of the wing muscle of the African migratory locust (Locusta migratoria migratorioides) was examined by qualitative and quantitative methods. the possible presence of lanthionine was investigated. Lanthionine could not be detected by two-dimensional paper chromatography nor by ion-exchange chromatography operated under three different conditions of temperature and pH. the analysis of hydrolysates prepared after a preliminary oxidation revealed no changes in composition that would arise had lanthionine been present together with other acids.     

Fractionation of plant material II.—Amino acid composition of some fractions obtained from the broad bean plant (Vicia faba L.) and chromatographic differentiation of hydroxyproline isomers

The amino acid compositions of three protein fractions obtained from broad bean leaves were estimated by ion exchange chromatography. Hydroxyproline was found present in the TCA-soluble, non-diffusible fraction and in the final residue after the further extraction with phenol-acetic acid-water (2: 1 : 1, w/v/v), but not in the extract itself. By comparison with the behaviour of four authentic isomers of hydroxyproline, under two standard conditions of chromatographic analysis, the isomer found was trans-4-hydroxy-proline. These results are discussed in relation to other reports of hydroxyproline occurring in plant material.     

Are trophic and diversity indices based on macrophyte communities pertinent tools to monitor water quality?

Diversity and trophic indices based on macrophyte communities were calculated to test their pertinence to monitoring water quality in the Northern Vosges (NE of France). Highly significant correlations were found between the four tested chemical variables (bicarbonate, calcium, phosphorus and ammonium nitrogen) and trophic indices and between them and abundance and richness. Trophic indices and McIntosh's index appeared to be more effective in predicting water quality than diversity indices. Diversity indices do not necessarily provide any direct information on the quality or degree of degradation of the environment from which the sample was taken, whereas trophic indices do.     

A survey on data fusion: what for? in what form? what is next?

Journal of Intelligent Information Systems - Data fusion is the process of merging records from multiple sources which represent the same real-world object into a single representation. This review...     

Increasing secondary and renewable material use: a chance constrained modeling approach to manage feedstock quality variation

The increased use of secondary (i.e., recycled) and renewable resources will likely be key toward achieving sustainable materials use. Unfortunately, these strategies share a common barrier to economical implementation - increased quality variation compared to their primary and synthetic counterparts. Current deterministic process-planning models overestimate the economic impact of this increased variation. This paper shows that for a range of industries from biomaterials to inorganics, managing variation through a chance-constrained (CC) model enables increased use of such variable raw materials, or heterogeneous feedstocks (hF), over conventional, deterministic models. An abstract, analytical model and a quantitative model applied to an industrial case of aluminum recycling were used to explore the limits and benefits of the CC formulation. The results indicate that the CC solution can reduce cost and increase potential hF use across a broad range of production conditions through raw materials diversification. These benefits increase where the hFs exhibit mean quality performance close to that of the more homogeneous feedstocks (often the primary and synthetic materials) or have large quality variability. In terms of operational context, the relative performance grows as intolerance for batch error increases and as the opportunity to diversify the raw material portfolio increases.     

Age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory during early childhood.

In the present experiment, age-related changes in verbal and nonverbal memory performance by 2- to 4-year-old children were assessed. All children participated in the same unique event, and their memory of that event was assessed after a 24-hr delay. Overall, children's performance on each memory measure increased as a function of age. Furthermore, children's performance on both the verbal and nonverbal memory tests was related to their language ability; children with more advanced language skills reported more during the verbal interview and exhibited superior nonverbal memory relative to children with less advanced language skills. Finally, children's verbal recall of the event lagged behind both their nonverbal recall and their general verbal skill. It is hypothesized that despite large strides in language acquisition, preschool-age children continue to rely primarily on nonverbal representations of past events. The findings have important implications for the phenomenon of childhood amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Covariation of alternative measures of responding in rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) eyeblink conditioning during acquisition training and tone generalization.

The likelihood, size, and speed of eyelid movements are thought to covary during the acquisition and expression of conditioning in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and are generally accepted as interchangeable measures of the associative strength activated by the conditioned stimulus (CS). To test this assumption, the authors examined the patterns of covariation in these eyelid movement measures in acquisition and stimulus generalization in the upper eyelid and nictitating membrane. Rather than the expected covariation among these measures, eyelid movement magnitudes during the CS were distributed in approximately a bimodal manner. That is, eyelid activity consisted largely of a mixture of very small ( 1 mm) movements. The results are discussed with respect to their implications for real-time models of eyelid conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cavitation Contributes Substantially to Tensile Creep in Silicon Nitride

During tensile creep of a hot isostatically pressed (HIPed) silicon nitride, the volume fraction of cavities increases linearly with strain; these cavities produce nearly all of the measured strain. In contrast, compressive creep in the same stress and temperature range produces very little cavitation. A stress exponent that increases with stress (ε∞σ ⁿ , 2 < n < 7) characterizes the tensile creep response, while the compressive creep response exhibits a stress dependence of unity. Furthermore, under the same stress and temperature, the material creeps nearly 100 times faster in tension than in compression. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) indicates that the cavities formed during tensile creep occur in pockets of residual crystalline silicate phase located at silicon nitride multigrain junctions. Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) from crept material quantifies the size distribution of cavities observed in TEM and demonstrates that cavity addition, rather than cavity growth, dominates the cavitation process. These observations are in accord with a model for creep based on the deformation of granular materials in which the microstructure must dilate for individual grains to slide past one another. During tensile creep the silicon nitride grains remain rigid; cavitation in the multigrain junctions allows the silicate to flow from cavities to surrounding silicate pockets, allowing the dilatation of the microstructure and deformation of the material. Silicon nitride grain boundary sliding accommodates this expansion and leads to extension of the specimen. In compression, where cavitation is suppressed, deformation occurs by solution—reprecipitation of silicon nitride.     

GridLab—a grid application toolkit and testbed

In this paper we present the new project called GridLab which is funded by the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Programme. The GridLab project, made up of computer scientists, astrophysicists and other scientists from various application areas, will develop and implement the grid application toolkit (GAT) together with a set of services to enable easy and efficient use of Grid resources in a real and production grid environment. GAT will provide core, easy to use functionality through a carefully constructed set of generic higher level grid APIs through which an application will be able to call the grid services laying beneath in order to perform efficiently in the Grid environment using various, dramatically wild application scenarios.