Effect of dietary crude protein degradability and corn processing on lactation performance and milk protein composition and stability

The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of crude protein degradability and corn processing on lactation performance, milk protein composition, milk ethanol stability (MES), heat coagulation time (HCT) at 140°C, and the efficiency of N utilization for dairy cows. Twenty Holstein cows with an average of 162 ± 70 d in milk, 666 ± 7 kg of body weight, and 36 ± 7.8 kg/d of milk yield (MY) were distributed in a Latin square design with 5 contemporaneous balanced squares, 4 periods of 21 d, and 4 treatments (factorial arrangement 2 × 2). Treatment factor 1 was corn processing [ground (GC) or steam-flaked corn (SFC)] and factor 2 was crude protein (CP) degradability (high = 10.7% rumen-degradable protein and 5.1% rumen-undegradable protein; low = 9.5% rumen-degradable protein and 6.3% rumen-undegradable protein; dry matter basis). A significant interaction was observed between CP degradability and corn processing on dry matter intake (DMI). When cows were fed GC with low CP degradability, DMI increased by 1.24 kg/d compared with cows fed GC with high CP degradability; however, CP degradability did not change DMI when cows were fed SFC. Similar interactions were observed for MY, HCT, and lactose content. When cows were fed GC diets, high CP degradability reduced MY by 2.3 kg/d, as well as HCT and lactose content, compared with low CP degradability. However, no effect of CP degradability was observed on those variables when cows were fed SFC diets. The SFC diets increased dry matter and starch total-tract digestibility and reduced β-casein (CN) content (% total milk protein) compared with GC diets. Cows fed low-CP degradability diets had higher glycosylated κ-CN content (% total κ-CN) and MES, as well as milk protein content, 3.5% fat-corrected milk, and efficiency of N for milk production, than cows fed high-CP degradability diets. Therefore, GC and high-CP degradability diets reduced milk production and protein stability. Overall, low CP degradability increased the efficiency of dietary N utilization and MES, probably due to changes in casein micelle composition, as CP degradability or corn processing did not change the milk concentration of ionic calcium. The GC diets increased β-CN content, which could contribute to reducing HTC when cows were fed GC and high-CP degradability diets.     

A novel bioactive vitroceramic presents similar biological responses as autogenous bone grafts

Bioactive glasses represent an interesting class of bone substitute's biomaterials. The present study investigated the repair of bone defects filled with a novel bioactive vitroceramic (Biosilicate(?)), alone or in association with particulate autogenous bone grafts in calvaria defects of rabbits. After 7, 14, and 30 days the specimens were retrieved for histological, histomorphometric and immunohistochemistry analysis. Satisfactory bone formation was observed in all groups, and direct bone-biomaterial surface was noted. Histomorphometric assessment did not show statistically significant differences in bone formation among the groups and periods, except for BG group at day 14. Immunoexpression of Runx-2 was similar among the groups containing the graft and the biomaterial, being more intense than in control group. Similar result was observed for VEGF expression, especially in the last experimental period. These results revealed that Biosilicate(?) presented a favorable behavior, comparable to autogenous bone graft.     

Characterization of neurotoxic effects of NMDA and the novel neuroprotection by phytopolyphenols in mice.

Excitotoxicity plays a major role in various neurological disorders. In this study, we explored the behavioral and neurotoxic effects of intraventricular NMDA administration in mice. After NMDA injection, acute seizures were followed by impairments in locomotor activity, motor performance on a rotarod, and climbing ability. Mice killed 1 day after NMDA administration showed increased synaptosomal reactive oxygen species ROS production and calcium concentration and decreased mitochondrial membrane potential, mitochondrial reductase activities, and neuronal membrane Na+, K+ -ATPase and mg2+ -ATPase activities. One and 3 days after excitotoxic injury, Golgi stains showed that dendritic length and spine density were significantly decreased in neurons of the hippocampal dentate gyrus. Some mice received honokiol, tea polyphenol plus memantine, and honokiol plus memantine prior to NMDA treatment; the occurrence of generalized seizures was attenuated, seizure scores were reduced, latency to generalized seizures was prolonged, and motor impairments were lessened. Moreover, all of the neurochemical changes of the synaptosomes were also ameliorated. In conclusion, the behavioral and neurotoxic effects of intracerebroventricular injection of NMDA were ameliorated by treatment with honokiol alone or combined treatment with either tea polyphenol plus memantine or honokiol plus memantine, but only partly by either tea polyphenol or memantine alone. The therapeutic potential of these neuroprotective regimens in treating excitotoxicity-related diseases merits for further investigation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics of large‐scale nanohole arrays for thin‐silicon photovoltaics

Nanostructured crystalline silicon is promising for thin‐silicon photovoltaic devices because of reduced material usage and wafer quality constraint. This paper presents the optical and photovoltaic characteristics of silicon nanohole (SiNH) arrays fabricated using polystyrene nanosphere lithography and reactive‐ion etching (RIE) techniques for large‐area processes. A post‐RIE damage removal etching is subsequently introduced to mitigate the surface recombination issues and also suppress the surface reflection due to modifications in the nanohole sidewall profile, resulting in a 19% increase in the power conversion efficiency. We show that the damage removal etching treatment can effectively recover the carrier lifetime and dark current–voltage characteristics of SiNH solar cells to resemble the planar counterpart without RIE damages. Furthermore, the reflectance spectra exhibit broadband and omnidirectional anti‐reflective properties, where an AM1.5 G spectrum‐weighted reflectance achieves 4.7% for SiNH arrays. Finally, a three‐dimensional optical modeling has also been established to investigate the dimension and wafer thickness dependence of light absorption. We conclude that the SiNH arrays reveal great potential for efficient light harvesting in thin‐silicon photovoltaics with a 95% material reduction compared to a typical cell thickness of 200 µm. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modulation by Melatonin of the Pathogenesis of Inflammatory Autoimmune Diseases

Melatonin is the major secretory product of the pineal gland during the night and has multiple activities including the regulation of circadian and seasonal rhythms, and antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. It also possesses the ability to modulate immune responses by regulation of the T helper 1/2 balance and cytokine production. Autoimmune diseases, which result from the activation of immune cells by autoantigens released from normal tissues, affect around 5% of the population. Activation of autoantigen-specific immune cells leads to subsequent damage of target tissues by these activated cells. Melatonin therapy has been investigated in several animal models of autoimmune disease, where it has a beneficial effect in a number of models excepting rheumatoid arthritis, and has been evaluated in clinical autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis. This review summarizes and highlights the role and the modulatory effects of melatonin in several inflammatory autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes mellitus, and inflammatory bowel disease.     

Single molecule microscopy: peak-frequency trajectories and linewidth distribution

Fluorescence microscopy has been adapted to cryogenic temperatures and combined with efficient image processing and analysis to observe many single molecules in parallel. The capabilities of this setup are demonstrated with the parallel recording of peak-frequency trajectories for 62 terrylene-molecules in n-hexadecane and with the measurement of 918 single molecule linewidths for terrylene in dodecane in 200 s.     

Selective harvesting over networks

Active search on graphs focuses on collecting certain labeled nodes (targets) given global knowledge of the network topology and its edge weights (encoding pairwise similarities) under a query budget constraint. However, in most current networks, nodes, network topology, network size, and edge weights are all initially unknown. In this work we introduce selective harvesting, a variant of active search where the next node to be queried must be chosen among the neighbors of the current queried node set; the available training data for deciding which node to query is restricted to the subgraph induced by the queried set (and their node attributes) and their neighbors (without any node or edge attributes). Therefore, selective harvesting is a sequential decision problem, where we must decide which node to query at each step. A classifier trained in this scenario can suffer from what we call a tunnel vision effect: without any recourse to independent sampling, the urge to only query promising nodes forces classifiers to gather increasingly biased training data, which we show significantly hurts the performance of active search methods and standard classifiers. We demonstrate that it is possible to collect a much larger set of targets by using multiple classifiers, not by combining their predictions as a weighted ensemble, but switching between classifiers used at each step, as a way to ease the tunnel vision effect. We discover that switching classifiers collects more targets by (a) diversifying the training data and (b) broadening the choices of nodes that can be queried in the future. This highlights an exploration, exploitation, and diversification trade-off in our problem that goes beyond the exploration and exploitation duality found in classic sequential decision problems. Based on these observations we propose D\(^3\)TS, a method based on multi-armed bandits for non-stationary stochastic processes that enforces classifier diversity, which outperforms all competing methods on five real network datasets in our evaluation and exhibits comparable performance on the other two.     

Energy-Saving Design for Hydraulic Tube Bender

Generally speaking, hydraulic control systems can be divided into two different driving concepts. The first one is the well-known hydraulic valve-controlled system and the second one is the pump-controlled system. The former possesses the feature of fast dynamic response. However, the poor energy-saving performance is its major fault. On the contrary, the hydraulic pump-controlled system has the significant advantage of energy-saving which meets the current demand in modem machine design. In this paper, the simulation analysis using MatLab/SimuLink and DSHplus software for a newly developed energy-saving hydraulic tube bender is conducted. Instead of the conventional fixed displacement hydraulic pump, the new hydraulic tube bender utilizes an internal gear pump with AC servomotor as its driving power source. In the new energy-saving hydraulic circuit, the use of conventional pressure relief valve and unloading valve are no longer necessary since the demanded flow-rate and pressure output can be precisely obtained by continuously changing the speed of the AC servomotor. In addition, two closed-loop control schemes using fuzzy sliding-mode controller are adopted and compared. To compare the energy-saving control systems, such as load-sensing control system, constant supply pressure control scheme and conventional hydraulic control scheme. Furthermore, the simulation results also show that the newly developed hydraulic tube bender can save up to 43% of energy consumption in a working cycle as compared to the conventional hydraulic tube bender.