Effect of heating on the distribution of transforming growth factor-��2 in bovine milk

The objective of this study was to characterize the impact of heat treatments on the distribution of transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-??2) between cream and skim milk and between the casein and whey fractions of skim milk. Skimming removed 45% and 62% of the TGF-??2 from raw and pasteurized milks and only 8% of the total TGF-??2 in skimmed pasteurized milk was found in whey, compared to 37% in whey from raw skimmed milk. The TGF-??2 content of whey decreased as the heat treatment of the milk increased in intensity (thermization > pasteurization > UHT sterilization). Using milk held for 1 or 2 min at temperatures ranging from 57 to 84 °C, it was shown that TGF-??2 in the whey portion decreases at temperatures above 66 °C and becomes undetectable at temperatures higher than 76 °C. Altogether, these data on the heat-induced changes in TGF-??2 content of cream, skim milk, casein and whey reveal a potentially negative impact of certain heat treatments in developing TGF-??2-enriched fractions from milk.     

Topography of brain sodium accumulation in progressive multiple sclerosis

Object

Sodium accumulation is involved in neuronal injury occurring in multiple sclerosis (MS). We aimed to assess sodium accumulation in progressive MS, known to suffer from severe neuronal injury.

Materials and methods

3D-²³Na-MRI was obtained on a 3T-MR-scanner in 20 progressive MS patients [11 primary-progressive (PPMS) and nine secondary-progressive (SPMS)] and 15 controls. Total sodium concentrations (TSC) within grey matter (GM), normal-appearing white matter (WM) and lesions were extracted. Statistical mapping analyses of TSC abnormalities were also performed.

Results

Progressive MS patients presented higher GM–TSC values (48.8 ± 3.1 mmol/l wet tissue vol, p < 0.001) and T₂lesions-TSC values (50.9 ± 2.2 mmol/l wet tissue vol, p = 0.01) compared to GM and WM of controls. Statistical mapping analysis showed TSC increases in PPMS patients confined to motor and somatosensory cortices, prefrontal cortices, pons and cerebellum. In SPMS, TSC increases were associated with areas involving: primary motor, premotor and somatosensory cortices; prefrontal, cingulate and visual cortices; the corpus callosum, thalami, brainstem and cerebellum. Anterior prefrontal and premotor cortices TSC were correlated with disability.

Conclusion

Sodium accumulation is present in progressive MS patients, more restricted to the motor system in PPMS and more widespread in SPMS. Local brain sodium accumulation appears as a promising marker to monitor patients with progressive MS.     

Perpendicular to grain and shear mechanical properties of veneer-based elements glued from single veneer sheets recovered from three species of juvenile subtropical hardwood plantation logs

This paper quantifies the mechanical properties perpendicular to the grain and in shear of glued rotary peeled veneers, as would be encountered in veneer-based structural products (i.e. by including both the effects of hot pressing the veneers and the glue used during the manufacturing process), of three species recovered from juvenile (early to mid-rotation) subtropical hardwood plantation logs. This underutilised resource has currently little to no commercial value in Australia but proven potential to produce attractive veneer-based structural products. Determining these unknown properties is important as they constitute essential input data to ultimately predict the behaviour and design properties of veneer-based structural products in cost-effective numerical simulations. Two species planted for solid timber end-products (Gympie messmate—Eucalyptus cloeziana and spotted gum—Corymbia citriodora) and one species traditionally grown for pulpwood (southern blue gum—Eucalyptus globulus) are considered in the paper. The dynamic modulus of elasticity, compressive and tensile strengths perpendicular to the grain of veneer-based elements, each manufactured from single veneer sheets, were experimentally measured and are analysed herein. These properties are found to have no to weak correlation to the parent veneer sheet dynamic modulus of elasticity parallel to the grain, a value which is commonly measured in line to grade veneers. The shear modulus (in the longitudinal-tangential plane), also referred to as “modulus of rigidity”, through-the-thickness and rolling shear strengths were also experimentally measured, and the results are discussed in the paper. Little to no correlation to the veneer sheet dynamic modulus of elasticity parallel to the grain was found for these properties. Weibull distributions are fitted to all test results and presented to probabilistically consider the investigated properties in numerical simulations of veneer-based structural products.     

Imidazolium-substituted ionic (co)polythiophenes: Compositional influence on solution behavior and thermal properties

A series of ionic polythiophenes, in homopolymer and random copolymer configurations, is prepared via the Grignard metathesis (GRIM) polymerization protocol and subsequent substitution on the bromohexyl side chains with N-methylimidazole. The introduced structural variations – comonomer ratio, side chain composition, counter ions – allow tuning of the thermal properties and solution behavior of the resulting conjugated polymers. As expected, the solubility depends majorly on the number of ionic groups and the counter ions. The most peculiar behavior is observed for the P3HT-P3(MIM)HT-Br 50/50 random copolymer, which shows organization of the polymer chains in solution and thin film dependent on the preparation conditions. Dynamic light scattering studies confirm that the ordered solid-state structure is somewhat maintained when the copolymer is dissolved in a bad solvent mixture. The ionic (co)polythiophenes are generally more resistant to thermal degradation than their precursors. The precursor polymers all show a clear semi-crystalline behavior, with a decrease in crystallinity upon decreasing the number of regular 3-hexylthiophene units. On the other hand, the studied ionic (co)polythiophenes are fully amorphous. Changes in the counter ions have dramatic effects on the thermal properties. Bromine counter ions render the polymers strongly hygroscopic. The novel materials are of particular appeal in the field of organic photovoltaics, in which the imidazolium-substituted (co)polythiophenes can be beneficially applied as constituents of either active layers or electron transport layers. Their processability from green solvents is also of major importance for the field.     

Optimum Structural and Manufacturing Design of a Braided Hollow Composite Part

Simultaneous material consolidation and shaping, as performed in manufacturing of composite materials, causes a strong interconnection between structural and manufacturing parameters which makes the design process complicated. In this paper, the design of a carbon fiber bicycle stem is examined through the application of a multi-objective optimization method to illustrate the interconnection between structural and manufacturing objectives. To demonstrate the proposed method, a test case dealing with the design of composite part with complex geometry, small size and hollow structure is described. Bladder-assisted Resin Transfer Molding is chosen as the manufacturing method. A finite element model of the stem is created to evaluate the objectives of the structural design, while a simplified 2D model is used to simulate the flow inside the preform during the injection process. Both models are formulated to take into account the variation of fiber orientation, thickness and fiber volume fraction as a function of braid diameters, injection pressure and bladder pressure. Finally, a multiobjective optimization method, called Normalized Normal Constraint Method, is used to find a set of solutions that simultaneously optimizes weight, filling time and strength. The solution to the problem is a set of optimum designs which represent the Pareto frontier of the problem. Pareto frontier helps to gain insight into the trade-off among objectives, whose presence and importance is confirmed by the numerical results presented in this paper.     

High Throughput‐Per‐Footprint Inertial Focusing

Matching the scale of microfluidic flow systems with that of microelectronic chips for realizing monolithically integrated systems still needs to be accomplished. However, this is appealing only if such re‐scaling does not compromise the fluidic throughput. This is related to the fact that the cost of microelectronic circuits primarily depends on the layout footprint, while the performance of many microfluidic systems, like flow cytometers, is measured by the throughput. The simple operation of inertial particle focusing makes it a promising technique for use in such integrated flow cytometer applications, however, microfluidic footprints demonstrated so far preclude monolithic integration. Here, the scaling limits of throughput‐per‐footprint (TPFP) in using inertial focusing are explored by studying the interplay between theory, the effect of channel Reynolds numbers up to 1500 on focusing, the entry length for the laminar flow to develop, and pressure resistance of the microchannels. Inertial particle focusing is demonstrated with a TPFP up to 0.3 L/(min cm²) in high aspect‐ratio rectangular microfluidic channels that are readily fabricated with a post‐CMOS integratable process, suggesting at least a 100‐fold improvement compared to previously demonstrated techniques. Not only can this be an enabling technology for realizing cost‐effective monolithically integrated flow cytometry devices, but the methodology represented here can also open perspectives for miniaturization of many biomedical microfluidic applications requiring monolithic integration with microelectronics without compromising the throughput.     

Charge reduction experimental investigation of CO2 single-phase flow in a horizontal micro-channel with constant heat flux conditions

The use of carbon dioxide as alternative refrigerant in refrigeration plants and heat pumps has been focused recently. Through the specific properties of CO₂, the use of very compact heat exchangers is relevant and the technology of micro-channel heat exchangers rises as a suitable solution. The experimental investigation of CO₂ flow in a single micro-channel with an inner diameter of 529 μm is planned with an original test section. This test section is initially dedicated for further CO₂ two-phase flow analysis. The local heat transfer coefficients are estimated with micro-thermocouples stuck on the micro-channel wall. The pressure drop is also measured. This paper presents the first results in single-phase pressure drop and heat transfer and exhibits promising coming data in two-phase flow pressure drop and heat transfer for mass velocity between 200 kg/m²/s and 1400 kg/m²/s and working saturation temperature between −10 °C and 5 °C. The results stress on the good accuracy of suitable classical laws to predict pressure drop and heat transfer in single-phase flow in micro-channel.     

The Use of Pro-Angiogenic and/or Pro-Hypoxic miRNAs as Tools to Monitor Patients with Diffuse Gliomas

IDH (isocitrate dehydrogenase) mutation, hypoxia, and neo-angiogenesis, three hallmarks of diffuse gliomas, modulate the expression of small non-coding RNAs (miRNA). In this paper, we tested whether pro-angiogenic and/or pro-hypoxic miRNAs could be used to monitor patients with glioma. The miRNAs were extracted from tumoral surgical specimens embedded in the paraffin of 97 patients with diffuse gliomas and, for 7 patients, from a blood sample too. The expression of 10 pro-angiogenic and/or pro-hypoxic miRNAs was assayed by qRT-PCR and normalized to the miRNA expression of non-tumoral brain tissues. We confirmed in vitro that IDH in hypoxia (1% O₂, 24 h) alters pro-angiogenic and/or pro-hypoxic miRNA expression in HBT-14 (U-87 MG) cells. Then, we reported that the expression of these miRNAs is (i) strongly affected in patients with glioma compared to that in a non-tumoral brain; (ii) correlated with the histology/grade of glioma according to the 2016 WHO classification; and (iii) predicts the overall and/or progression-free survival of patients with glioma in univariate but not in a multivariate analysis after adjusting for sex, age at diagnosis, and WHO classification. Finally, the expression of miRNAs was found to be the same between the plasma and glial tumor of the same patient. This study highlights a panel of seven pro-angiogenic and/or pro-hypoxic miRNAs as a potential tool for monitoring patients with glioma.     

A fast and practical bit-vector algorithm for the Longest Common Subsequence problem

This paper presents a new practical bit-vector algorithm for solving the well-known Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) problem. Given two strings of length m and n, nm, we present an algorithm which determines the length p of an LCS in O(nm/w) time and O(m/w) space, where w is the number of bits in a machine word. This algorithm can be thought of as column-wise “parallelization” of the classical dynamic programming approach. Our algorithm is very efficient in practice, where computing the length of an LCS of two strings can be done in linear time and constant (additional/working) space by assuming that mw.