Postnatal Protein Intake as a Determinant of Skeletal Muscle Structure and Function in Mice—A Pilot Study

Sarcopenia is characterised by an age-related decrease in the number of muscle fibres and additional weakening of the remaining fibres, resulting in a reduction in muscle mass and function. Many studies associate poor maternal nutrition during gestation and/or lactation with altered skeletal muscle homeostasis in the offspring and the development of sarcopenia. The aim of this study was to determine whether the musculoskeletal physiology in offspring born to mouse dams fed a low-protein diet during pregnancy was altered and whether any physiological changes could be modulated by the nutritional protein content in early postnatal stages. Thy1-YFP female mice were fed ad libitum on either a normal (20%) or a low-protein (5%) diet. Newborn pups were cross-fostered to different lactating dams (maintained on a 20% or 5% diet) to generate three groups analysed at weaning (21 days): Normal-to-Normal (NN), Normal-to-Low (NL) and Low-to-Normal (LN). Further offspring were maintained ad libitum on the same diet as during lactation until 12 weeks of age, creating another three groups (NNN, NLL, LNN). Mice on a low protein diet postnatally (NL, NLL) exhibited a significant reduction in body and muscle weight persisting up to 12 weeks, unlike mice on a low protein diet only prenatally (LN, LNN). Muscle fibre size was reduced in mice from the NL but not LN group, showing recovery at 12 weeks of age. Muscle force was reduced in NLL mice, concomitant with changes in the NMJ site and changes in atrophy-related and myosin genes. In addition, μCT scans of mouse tibiae at 12 weeks of age revealed changes in bone mass and morphology, resulting in a higher bone mass in the NLL group than the control NNN group. Finally, changes in the expression of miR-133 in the muscle of NLL mice suggest a regulatory role for this microRNA in muscle development in response to postnatal diet changes. Overall, this data shows that a low maternal protein diet and early postnatal life low-protein intake in mice can impact skeletal muscle physiology and function in early life while postnatal low protein diet favours bone integrity in adulthood.     

Effect of liquid nitrogen pretreatments on osmotic dehydration of blueberries

Fresh blueberries are highly perishable and must be preserved by either freezing or drying technologies. However, moisture impermeability of their skin is a barrier against the moisture diffusion slowing down the drying process. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of liquid nitrogen pretreatments on osmotic dehydration kinetics of two blueberry species, Vaccinium corymbosum L. and Vaccinium angustifolium Ait, and on the physicochemical quality of dehydrated fruits.     

Optimization of submerged Aspergillus oryzae S2 α-amylase production

Food Science and Biotechnology - Use of 4 agro-industrial by products and organic materials as nitrogen sources for production of Aspergillus oryzae S2 α-amylase in liquid culture was...     

Numerical analysis of an integrated storage solar heater

This work aims to evaluate the performance of an integrated phase change material (PCM) solar collector. The dynamic behavior of the system is investigated via a theoretical model based on the first law of thermodynamics and oriented to deliver a maximum outlet water temperature. A parametric study is used to assess the effects of the inlet water temperature, the PCM thicknesses and properties and the mass flow rates on the outlet water temperature and the melt fraction. A comparison with a conventional solar water heater without heat storage is made. Results indicate that charging and discharging processes of PCM offer six stages. It is observed that the complete solidification time is longer than the melting one. The latent heat storage system increases the heating requirements at night. The rise is most enhanced for higher inlet water temperature, melting PCM temperature and PCM thickness and for lower mass flow rate.     

Effect of Al doping and deposition runs on structural and optical properties of In<Subscript>2</Subscript>S<Subscript>3</Subscript> thin films grown by CBD

β-In_2−x Al _x S₃ thin films have been grown on glass substrate by chemical bath deposition for different value of Al concentration y = (([Al])/([In]))_sol (0 ≤ y ≤ 5 at.%). Samples have been characterized using X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy and by spectrophotometric measurements. The influence of the increase of y ratio in the structural and optical properties are described and discussed in terms of crystallinity improvement. In order to increase film thickness of β-In_2−x Al _x S₃, we have been realized multi-deposition system. The structural, the surface morphology as well as the optical properties seem to be improved as the film thickness is of about 1200 nm.     

Confined growth and dispersion of FeP nanoparticles in highly mesoporous carbons as efficient electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction

We report the performance of a series of iron monophosphide (FeP) catalysts supported on highly mesoporous carbons (HMCs) with distinct mesopore size (6–17 nm) and mesopore volume (2–3 cm³ g^?1) for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Our findings suggest that the mesopore size of the carbon is a key design parameter. The mesopores serve as nanoreactors and control the growth and the dispersion of FeP nanoparticles, which, in turn, determine the HER performance of the electrode. Carbons with smaller mesopore sizes confine and control the size of FeP leading to finely dispersed and fairly small (<5 nm) FeP nanocrystals, while carbons with larger mesopore size result in agglomerated, larger nanoparticles (>10 nm) and, thus, less active electrocatalysts. Electrocatalysts based on FeP immobilized on the mesoporous carbons show lower overpotential and lower Tafel slope and outperform those based on FeP immobilized on commercial activated carbon. This study establishes for the first time some correlations between HER performance and mesopore size and pore volume of the carbon. The findings provide further understanding and might pave the way towards a rational design of highly active electrocatalysts by delineating key design parameters for materials development.     

Structural,optical and electrical properties of Ag doped PbS thin films: role of Ag concentration

The present work reports on the chemical synthesizes of (0–8 at.%) silver (Ag)-doped PbS thin films with tunable opto-electrical properties. From the X-ray diffraction analyses, it was understood that the preferred growth orientation of Ag:PbS films was dependent on the Ag doping concentration. The variation in the Ag:PbS films orientation was reflected in the film morphology as observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). SEM studies revealed that the variation in Ag concentration lead to different grain shapes for different grain orientations. The AFM study showed that the RMS roughness of the undoped PbS film has been reduced considerably due to silver doping. From the optical studies, a widening in the optical band gap was revealed after Ag-doping due to the quantum confinement effect. It was obtained that 4 at.% Ag-doped PbS thin films display an optimum band gap value of 1.45 eV. As for electrical characterization result, the resistivity reduces and the carrier density improved with 4 at.% Ag concentration. Based on all the data, it was concluded that the 4 at.% Ag-doped PbS thin film showed the best morphological, optical and electrical behavior, which recommend it as an active layer for solar cell devices.     

Coverage study for broadband wireless systems using link adaptation and diversity combining techniques

A broadband wireless access system is a bi-directional broadband wireless system to fixed networks at millimeter-wave frequencies. The propagation environment at millimeter-wave frequencies is one of the major challenges in delivering broadband services to fixed subscribers. At such high frequencies the signal is attenuated by the obstacles in the radio path between the subscriber and the hub, such as buildings, trees and vehicles in the radio path between the subscriber and the hub.Link adaptation techniques such as adaptive modulation and error control coding have been applied to wireless communication systems to overcome the multipath fading experienced by the transmitted signal. Diversity has long been recognized as an effective technique for combating the effect of channel multipath fading. In this study, we investigate the outage probability improvements due to the employments of various combinations of adaptive modulation, adaptive coding, and diversity techniques in a broadband wireless access system. The results indicate that using adaptive modulation, coding, and maximal ratio combining (MRC) yields significant enhancements in outage probability of the system.     

A Secure Hardware Implementation for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm

Since the end of the 1990s, cryptosystems implemented on smart cards have had to deal with two main categories of attacks: side-channel attacks and fault injection attacks. Countermeasures have been developed and validated against these two types of attacks, taking into account a well-defined attacker model. This work focuses on small vulnerabilities and countermeasures related to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) algorithm. The work done in this paper focuses on protecting the ECDSA algorithm against fault-injection attacks. More precisely, we are interested in the countermeasures of scalar multiplication in the body of the elliptic curves to protect against attacks concerning only a few bits of secret may be sufficient to recover the private key. ECDSA can be implemented in different ways, in software or via dedicated hardware or a mix of both. Many different architectures are therefore possible to implement an ECDSA-based system. For this reason, this work focuses mainly on the hardware implementation of the digital signature ECDSA. In addition, the proposed ECDSA architecture with and without fault detection for the scalar multiplication have been implemented on Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) platform (Virtex-5). Our implementation results have been compared and discussed. Our area, frequency, area overhead and frequency degradation have been compared and it is shown that the proposed architecture of ECDSA with fault detection for the scalar multiplication allows a trade-off between the hardware overhead and the security of the ECDSA.     

Insights into the use of landfill leachate to grow Chlorella sp. for lipid and fatty acids production

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Microalgae provide a potential alternative for high-value products. Integrating microalgae into the landfill leachate valorization process gives the...