Interpositus lesion abolition of the eyeblink conditioned response is not due to effects on performance.

Classical conditioning of the rabbit eyeblink response was used to study the effects of cerebellar lesions on performance in animals trained with low-intensity unconditioned stimuli (UCS). Animals were trained with 1 or 2 low-intensity corneal-airpuff UCSs paired with a tone-conditioned stimulus. This study confirms earlier findings demonstrating the differential effects of lesions of deep cerebellar nuclei on the conditioned and unconditioned responses (CRs and UCRs). Lesions of the anterior interpositus nucleus of the cerebellum in animals that were successfully conditioned abolished CRs without affecting UCR performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characterization of proteins from kernel of different soybean varieties

BACKGROUND: Total soybean proteins, storage proteins, glycinin (11S) and β‐conglycinin (7S) fractions and their respective subunits in seven soybean varieties were analyzed. In this work we also present the correlation between concentration and activity of bioactive proteins, lipoxygenase and proteinase inhibitors. RESULTS: Glycinin and β‐conglycinin comprise about 750 g kg^?1 of the bean storage protein and as such account for both quantity and quality of the kernel protein. The 11S concentration of the varieties studied ranged from 503.4 to 602.9 g kg^?1 and those of 7S varied from 178.2 to 230.6 g kg^?1 of total extractable proteins. The ratio of 11S/7S proteins varied from 2.43 to 3.29 among the varieties. A very strong positive correlation was found between the concentration of Kunitz trypsin inhibitor and activity of total trypsin inhibitor (r = 0.96). However, lipoxygenase concentration did not show a strong correlation with lipoxygenase activity. CONCLUSION: It appears that among the seven ZP soybean genotypes there are genotypes with different amounts of subunits that should be bred in the future for a desired level of protein components. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry     

The Role of Dietary Phenolic Compounds in Protein Digestion and Processing Technologies to Improve Their Antinutritive Properties

Digestion is the key step for delivering nutrients and bioactive substances to the body. The way different food components interact with each other and with digestive enzymes can modify the digestion process and affect human health. Understanding how food components interact during digestion is essential for the rational design of functional food products. Plant polyphenols have gained much attention for the bioactive roles they play in the human body. However, their strong beneficial effects on human health have also been associated with a negative impact on the digestion process. Due to the generally low absorption of phenolic compounds after food intake, most of the consumed polyphenols remain in the gastrointestinal tract, where they then can exert inhibitory effects on enzymes involved in the degradation of saccharides, lipids, and proteins. While the inhibitory effects of phenolics on the digestion of energy‐rich food components (saccharides and lipids) may be regarded as beneficial, primarily in weight‐control diets, their inhibitory effects on the digestion of proteins are not desirable for the reason of reduced utilization of amino acids. The effect of polyphenols on protein digestion is reviewed in this article, with an emphasis on food processing methods to improve the antinutritive properties of polyphenols.     

Architecture of the Mobile Environment for Intelligent Genetic Search and Proxy Caching

As the number of documents and servers on Internet grows with the enormous speed, it becomes necessary to design efficient algorithms and tools for search and retrieval of documents. Also, the number of accesses to servers on Internet constantly grows. Congestion of servers and links can be alleviated using proxy caches. Latency on Web can be reduced using prefetching and caching. Efficient search of documents can be done with improved genetic algorithm that exploits the principles of temporal and spatial locality. Mobile agents can be used to optimize network traffic for distributed applications. This paper describes several existing solutions to the problem and discusses the implementation of Java distributed object application for experimenting with genetic search and proxy caching algorithms for Internet.     

In Vitro Assessment of Poly-N-Vinylpyrrolidone/Acrylic Acid Nanoparticles Biocompatibility in a Microvascular Endothelium Model

An amphiphilic copolymer of N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone and acrylic acid—namely, p(VP-AA)-OD6000 (p(VP-AA))—was synthesized to prepare p(VP-AA) nanoparticles (NPs). Furthermore, the copolymer was linked with CFSE, and the so-prepared nanoparticles were loaded with the DiI dye to form D nanoparticles (DNPs). In this study, as demonstrated by immunofluorescence microscopy, immunofluorescence, and confocal microscopy, DNPs were readily taken up by human microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC-1) cells in a concentration-dependent manner. Upon uptake, both the CFSE dye (green stain) and the DiI dye (red stain) were localized to the cytoplasm of treated cells. Treatment with p(VP-AA) did not affect the viability of normal and challenged with LPS, HMEC-1 cells at 0.010 mg/mL and induced a dose-dependent decrease of these cells’ viability at the higher concentrations of 0.033 and 0.066 mg/mL (p ≤ 0.01; p ≤ 0.001, respectively). Furthermore, we focused on the potential immunological activation of HMEC-1 endothelial cells upon p(VP-AA) NPs treatment by assessing the expression of adhesion molecules (E-Selectin, ICAM-1, and V-CAM). NPs treatments at concentrations utilized (p = NS) did not affect individual adhesion molecules’ expression. p(VP-AA) NPs do not activate the endothelium and do not affect its viability at pharmacologically relevant concentrations.     

Mesenchymal Stem Cells Based Treatment in Dental Medicine: A Narrative Review

Application of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) in regenerative therapeutic procedures is becoming an increasingly important topic in medicine. Since the first isolation of dental tissue-derived MSC, there has been an intense investigation on the characteristics and potentials of these cells in regenerative dentistry. Their multidifferentiation potential, self-renewal capacity, and easy accessibility give them a key role in stem cell-based therapy. So far, several different dental stem cell types have been discovered and their potential usage is found in most of the major dental medicine branches. These cells are also researched in multiple fields of medicine for the treatment of degenerative and inflammatory diseases. In this review, we summarized dental MSC sources and analyzed their treatment modalities with particular emphasis on temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis (TMJ OA).     

Electrochemical and structural study on cycling performance of γ-LiV2O5 cathode

Electrochemical and structural properties of LiV₂O₅ cathode were investigated. Obtained by solid state reaction at high temperature the material crystallized as gamma polymorph phase, γ-LiV₂O₅. The gamma structure provides two crystallographic sites to accommodate lithium ions, Li1 and Li2 position. Lithium insertion at these two sites occurs at two respective voltages versus lithium metal: ~3.6 V (Li1) and ~2.4 V (Li2). Intercalation at Li1 position is reversible in both organic and aqueous electrolyte and provides stable cycling performance at the high voltage. On the contrary, sluggish insertion/removal of Li⁺ at Li2 sites causes unstable performance and significant storage capacity fade at lower voltages. Lithium diffusion 3d landscape was determined by bond valence calculations applied on the γ-LiV₂O₅ phase, as well as on the metastable phases of γ′-V₂O₅ and ζ-Li₂V₂O₅ that exist at high and low voltages respectively. The model was proposed based on inactivity of Li2 position of the metastable ζ-Li₂V₂O₅ phase which provides explanation for the observed storage capacity loss at low voltages.