Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Oat Beta-Glucans in a Crohn’s Disease Model: Time- and Molar Mass-Dependent Effects

Background: The incidence of Crohn’s disease (CD) is increasing worldwide, and it has currently become a serious public health issue in society. The treatment of CD continues throughout a patient’s lifetime, and therefore, it is necessary to develop new, effective treatment methods, including dietotherapy. The present study aimed to determine the effects of consumption of oat beta-glucans with different molar mass on colon inflammation (colitis) in the early stages of 2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced CD in an animal model. Methods: Sprague–Dawley rats (control and TNBS-induced CD) were divided into three dietary groups and fed for 3 days (reflecting acute inflammation) or 7 days (reflecting remission) with a feed containing 1% low (βGl) or high (βGh) molar mass oat beta-glucan or a feed without this polysaccharide. The level of colon inflammatory markers and the expression of cytokines and their receptor genes were measured by ELISA and RT-PCR methods, respectively. Results: Acute inflammation or remission (3 or 7 days after TNBS administration, respectively) stages of experimentally induced CD were characterized by an increase in the level of inflammatory markers (IL-1, IL-6, IL-10, IL-12, TNF-α, CRP, MPO, COX, and PGE2) and the disruption of some cytokine signaling pathways as well as macro- and microscopic changes of colon tissue. The consumption of oat beta-glucans reduced the level of inflammatory markers and recovered the signaling pathways and histological changes, with stronger effects of βGl after 7 days of colitis. Conclusions: Dietary oat beta-glucans can reduce colitis at the molecular and organ level and accelerate CD remission.     

Novel pyridinium photoinitiators and their applications for the ultraviolet crosslinking of acrylic pressure‐sensitive adhesives

The demand for ultraviolet (UV)‐crosslinkable pressure‐sensitive adhesives (PSAs) has rapidly been increasing. A variety of different PSAs containing new photoreactive pyridinium derivatives have been evaluated for their effectiveness in improving adhesion and cohesion in UV‐crosslinkable PSAs. PSAs have been evaluated with respect to the tack, peel adhesion, and shear strength. This article summarizes the breakthrough technology used to achieve better performances in UV‐crosslinkable acrylic PSAs. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007     

Efficient and Generic Algorithm for Rigorous Integration Forward in Time of dPDEs: Part I

We propose an efficient and generic algorithm for rigorous integration forward in time of partial differential equations written in the Fourier basis. By rigorous integration we mean a procedure which operates on sets and return sets which are guaranteed to contain the exact solution. The presented algorithm generates, in an efficient way, normalized derivatives which are used by the Lohner algorithm to produce a rigorous bound. The algorithm has been successfully tested on several partial differential equations (PDEs) including the Burgers equation, the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation, and the Swift-Hohenberg equation. The problem of rigorous integration in time of partial differential equations is a problem of large computational complexity and efficient algorithms are required to deal with PDEs on higher dimensional domains, like the Navier-Stokes equation. Technicalities regarding the various optimization techniques implemented in the software used in this paper will be reported elsewhere.     

Partial oxidation of methane to methanol-comparison of heterogeneous catalyst and homogeneous gas phase reactions

Potential catalysts for the partial oxidation of methane to methanol have been synthesised and tested in high pressure annular reactors. Uranium oxide and molybdenum oxide catalysts and iron sodalite catalyst have been tested under the conditions reported in the patents and under conditions which allow comparison with reactions carried out in the gas phase. None of the catalysts tested showed an improvement on the gas phase results. It was found that the oxidative nature of the metal oxide catalysts is an inherent feature which reduces the selectivity to methanol.     

Device-Independent Architecture for ubiquitous applications

The part of the Internet of Things composed of devices that directly interact with users has grown considerably in the past years. With new smartphones, tablets and other Internet-enabled devices that appear on the market, this trend is still increasing. However, existing application development processes and tools, designed for single device applications, do not allow developers to fully and efficiently address this opportunity. Applications are developed for a particular type of devices or a particular programming platform. This limits the number of potential users and makes it difficult to seamlessly use an application on multiple devices owned by users. To take full advantage of the Internet of Things, applications should be able to run on any device—they should be ubiquitous. In this paper, we present a concept of Device-Independent Architecture, which provides separation of applications from devices and facilitates development of device-independent applications. Additionally, the separation introduced by the Device-Independent Architecture enables implementation of multi-device scenarios where a single application employs multiple devices at the same time. The experiment described in the paper proves that such device-independent applications indeed may be used on any suitable device—they have a chance to become ubiquitous.     

INSIGMA: an intelligent transportation system for urban mobility enhancement

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) aim to improve safety, mobility and environmental performance of road transport. The INSIGMA project provides a fresh look at the possible innovations in this field, by enhancing the functionality and accuracy of ITS in urban environments. This paper describes the architecture, sensors, processing algorithms, output modules and advantages of the developed system. A comparison of existing ITS systems has been provided as background. Special attention has been given to performance and privacy issues, as the system includes social aspects such as location monitoring.     

Path Loss Modelling for Location Service Applications

The aim of this paper is the path loss modelling for the radiolocation services in radio communication networks, particularly in cellular networks. The main results of the measurements obtained in the physical layer of the UMTS are introduced. A new method for the utilization of the multipath propagation phenomenon to improve the estimation of the distance between the MS （mobile station） and the BS （base station） is outlined. This method significantly increases the quality of location services in systems which use a radio interface with DS （direct sequence） CDMA （code division multiple access）.     

Deterministic convergence of conjugate gradient method for feedforward neural networks

Conjugate gradient methods have many advantages in real numerical experiments, such as fast convergence and low memory requirements. This paper considers a class of conjugate gradient learning methods for backpropagation neural networks with three layers. We propose a new learning algorithm for almost cyclic learning of neural networks based on PRP conjugate gradient method. We then establish the deterministic convergence properties for three different learning modes, i.e., batch mode, cyclic and almost cyclic learning. The two deterministic convergence properties are weak and strong convergence that indicate that the gradient of the error function goes to zero and the weight sequence goes to a fixed point, respectively. It is shown that the deterministic convergence results are based on different learning modes and dependent on different selection strategies of learning rate. Illustrative numerical examples are given to support the theoretical analysis.