Directed interesterification as a new processing tool for lard

The directed interesterification process has been put into successful factory use on lard shortenings. This process increases the fraction of high melting solids (trisaturated glycerides) and decreases the fraction of intermediate melting glycerides (disaturated glycerides) in lard. This change in glyceride composition allows the following advantages to be realized in lard shortenings:

1. an improved plastic range for any given level of oxidative stability, meaning less variation in softness and creaming properties from cold to warm temperatures, achieved without the use of relatively expensive hardstock (completely hydrogenated fat);
2. an improved uniformity from a variable raw material, and a flexibility that makes possible a wider selection of raw materials; and
3. an overall performance equivalent to the premium vegetable shortenings.

     

Highly unsaturated fatty acids. II. Fractionation by urea inclusion compounds

Summary 1. Urea segregation has been found to be a useful tool in concentration of highly unsaturated acids and esters. Fatty acids and esters derived from fish oils and methyl esters of hog adrenal fatty acids have been fractionated, and the polyunsaturated acids have been enriched. 2. The tendency for fatty acids and esters to combine with urea decreases with increasing unsaturation. Combination is favored by lowered temperature. Polyunsaturated acids are concentrated in the final filtrate whereas esters of these acids appear in the final inclusion compound fractions. Fatty acid concentrates have been obtained with iodine values ranging from 294 to 356. Bound esters exhibited iodine values as high as 338. 3. The increased chain length brought about by esterification has a minor role in increasing the yield of inclusion compounds. Likewise, shifting of the terminal polar group in an acid toward the center of the molecule by esterification does not explain the higher yield of inclusion compound from esters. 4. The improved tendency of esterified acids to form urea inclusion compounds is probably due to blocking of association of acid groups. This effect is found in unsaturated acids and in short chain saturated acids. In long chain saturated acids and esters this effect is not noticed. Both give high yields of inclusion compounds because the effect of the carboxyl group is overshadowed by the high energy of formation contributed by the long carbon chain. Taken from a dissertation presented by A. M. Abu-Nasr to the Graduate School of Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment for the requirements of the Ph.D. degree, May, 1953. Supported in part by contract N8onr-66218 of the Office of Naval Research. Hormel Institute publication No. 93.     

Regional myocardial blood flow during hyperemia induced by contrast agent in patients with coronary artery disease

Regional myocardial specific blood flow (regional specific flow) was measured at rest and during contrast hyperemia after the intracoronary injection of xenon-133. The changes in regional specific flow were transient, resulting in some compromise in one of the underlying restraints of the inert gas washout method, namely, the presence of a steady state. Therefore, to determine the clinical utility of this technique, regional specific flow values obtained with this method were correlated with the presence and severity of coronary artery disease as assessed from the coronary arteriogram and left ventriculogram. Regional specific flow during contrast hyperemia was 186+/- 11 (mean +/- 1 standard error of the mean) ml/min per 100 g in control patients and 115+/-5 in patients with coronary artery disease. There was an inverse relation between regional specific flow during contrast hyperemia and the percent coronary stenosis when the stenosis was 40 percent or greater (r = 0.70, P less than 0.001). Regional specific flow was significantly less in patients with asynergy (77 +/- 10 ml/min per 100 g) than in patients with normal ventricular function (105 +/- 5) distal to coronary stenoses of greater than 75 percent. Thus regional specific flow measured during contrast hyperemia using the xenon washout technique and the Anger camera differentiated patients with normal coronary arteriograms from those with coronary artery disease. With this technique, good correlation was shown between regional specific flow and the percent coronary stenosis and presence of ventricular wall abnormalities. The information obtained with this method may provide prognostic information concerning suitability for surgical intervention.     

Pheromone production by axenically rearedDendroctonus ponderosae andIps paraconfusus (Coleoptera: Scolytidae)

Mountain pine beetles,Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, and California five-spined ips,Ips paraconfusus Lanier, were reared axenically from surface-sterilized eggs on aseptic pine phloem. After 24 hr in host logs, axenip femaleD. ponderosae and maleI. paraconfusus produced the aggregation pheromones,trans-verbenol (D. ponderosae), and ipsenol and ipsdienol (I. paraconfusus). Emergent, axenically reared maleD. ponderosae contained normal amounts of the pheromoneexo-brevicomin. Axenic femaleD. ponderosae treated with juvenile hormone or exposed to vapors of -pinene, produced the pheromonetrans-verbenol. By 25–35 days after eclosion, axenic females exposed to -pinene vapors produced over six times as muchtrans-verbenol as wild females, suggesting that while microorganisms in wild females may producetrans-verbenol, they may also inhibit production of the pheromone or use it as a substrate.Research supported in part by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canada, Operating Grants A3881 and A3706, and H.R. MacMillan Family Fund Fellowships to J.E. Conn and D.W.A. Hunt.     

Watermarking ICs for IP protection

Watermarking, the embedding of data in a medium for tracking and ownership protection, has been well studied in digital audio, image, and video media. In this work, watermarking is brought into the realm of the physical design of integrated circuits (ICs) to protect and facilitate reuse of intellectual property (IP) circuitry blocks     

Characterization of protein cross-links via mass spectrometry and an open-modification search strategy

Protein-protein interactions are key to function and regulation of many biological pathways. To facilitate characterization of protein-protein interactions using mass spectrometry, a new data acquisition/analysis pipeline was designed. The goal for this pipeline was to provide a generic strategy for identifying cross-linked peptides from single LC/MS/MS data sets, without using specialized cross-linkers or custom-written software. To achieve this, each peptide in the pair of cross-linked peptides was considered to be "post-translationally" modified with an unknown mass at an unknown amino acid. This allowed use of an open-modification search engine, Popitam, to interpret the tandem mass spectra of cross-linked peptides. False positives were reduced and database selectivity increased by acquiring precursors and fragments at high mass accuracy. Additionally, a high-charge-state-driven data acquisition scheme was utilized to enrich data sets for cross-linked peptides. This open-modification search based pipeline was shown to be useful for characterizing both chemical as well as native cross-links in proteins. The pipeline was validated by characterizing the known interactions in the chemically cross-linked CYP2E1-b5 complex. Utility of this method in identifying native cross-links was demonstrated by mapping disulfide bridges in RcsF, an outer membrane lipoprotein involved in Rcs phosphorelay.     

Evaluating the effects of climate change on the water resources for the city of Birmingham,UK

Climate change is expected to affect precipitation patterns and may therefore impact upon water resource availability. The city of Birmingham in central England receives its public water supply from a catchment in the Elan Valley, mid‐Wales. Baseline and future climate projections generated from a stochastic weather generator within the United Kingdom Climate Projections 2009 and a daily soil water balance model (WaSim) were used to determine the potential impacts of climate change on hydrologically effective rainfall (HER). Annual HER is likely to decrease from baseline conditions (> 90% likelihood that HER will be reduced), with more frequent and persistent very dry spells and increasing seasonality. It is concluded that climate change will put additional stress on water resources for the city of Birmingham so that, coupled with expected increases in demand, adaptation measures to increase supply and/or reduce demand are likely to be needed.     

On-Chip Characterization of Single-Event Transient Pulsewidths

A new on-chip single-event transient (SET) test structure has been developed to autonomously characterize the widths of random SET pulses. Simulation results show measurement granularity of 900 ps for a 1.5 mum technology and also indicate that the measurement granularity rapidly scales down with technology. Laser tests were used to demonstrate circuit operation on test chips fabricated using a 1.5 mum process. The experimental results indicate pulsewidths varying from about 900 ps to over 3 ns as the laser energy was increased