Retarding effects of DNA on the autoxidation of liposomal suspensions

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is associated with the cell membrane of prokaryotes and the inner nuclear membrane of eukaryotes. The unsaturated fatty acids of phospholipids, which constitute the bilaminar structure of membranes, undergo autoxidation in the presence of O₂. Calf thymus DNA was incubated with methyl archidonate-enriched phosphatidyl choline liposomes in order to study the effect of DNA upon the oxidation of phospholipids while present in their natural in vivo bilayer configuration. DNA retarded the rate of lipid oxidation and the TBA test, but it did not alter the induction period. These results suggest that DNA is scavenging free radicals produced within the phospholipid bilayer.     

The co-carbonization of oxidized coals with pitches and decacyclene

Coals of rank (NCB) 701, 401 and 204 were oxidized in air at 371 K for up to 15 days. The changes in optical texture of cokes from these coals were monitored by optical microscopy and point counting. The oxidized coals were cocarbonized to 1273 K with up to 30% of A240 petroleum pitch, a hydrogenated coal extract and decacyclene, and the resultant cokes were reassessed. The increase in isotropy in cokes caused by the oxidation treatment was never completely removed by use of the additives, but significant improvements existed for the less extensively oxidized coals. The possibility exists of using co-carbonization of oxidized coals with additives in coke making. Additives with good hydrogen donor ability, as with the coal extract, appear to be the most suitable.     

Thermogravimetric Analysis and Defect Models of the Oxygen Nonstoichiometry in La2–xSrxCuO4–y

The oxygen nonstoichiometry, y, of La_{2– x} Sr _x CuO_{4– y} (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) was determined as a function of temperature (800–1050°C) and oxygen partial pressure (10^–4 to 1 atm) by a thermogravimetric technique. The results were interpreted in terms of a number of defect models. It was found that a model based on the defect reaction 4Cu^×_Cu+ 2 V ^¨_o+ O_2(g)= 4Cu^._Cu+ 2O^×_o described the results well when the x and y dependences of the partial molar enthalpy of oxygen in the solid were considered. The large defect concentrations observed in this system lead to defect interactions, possibly ordering on the oxygen sublattice.     

Carbonization and liquid crystal (mesophase) development. 14. Co-carbonization of coals with A240 Ashland petroleum pitch: effects of conditions of carbonization upon optical textures of resultant cokes

This study examines the effect of pitch concentration, rate of heating, soak temperature and time of soak upon the optical texture of cokes prepared from the co-carbonizations of a coal (Oxcroft-Clowne, NCB Rank 802) and three vitrains of NCB Rank 204, 801, 902 with Ashland A240 petroleum pitch. Using the coal (Rank 802) with 10 wt % and 25 wt % additions of pitch caused progressive penetration of the pitch into the coal with a resultant development of a mozaic anisotropy in the coke to replace partially the original coke isotropy. With 50 wt % addition of pitch almost all of the coal particles, 600 to 1100 μm in size, were modified during carbonization. Some pitch coke was formed. For the coal and three vitrains with increasing rates of co-carbonization from 0.5–10 K min^?1 to 1200 K, using 25 wt % of A240 pitch, resultant cokes showed progressively increased extents of modification. For the two vitrains (Rank 801, 902) soaking at temperatures of 650–690 K caused a decrease in the extent of modification of isotropic coke when compared with the coke of HTT 1200 K. Evidently fast heating rates create the conditions of fluidity necessary for the pitch to modify the coal leading to growth of mesophase and anisotropic coke.     

Context effects and decompositional choice modeling

This paper describes the application of the extended or universal logit model to decompositional or "stated" choice modeling in order to increase the scope and validity of such choice models. In this approach, choice experiments are designed that permit the estimation of utility functions that include the effects of context variables like choice set composition and decision background. The approach is illustrated with some simple calculated examples concerning consumer choice of shopping center, housing, and transportation mode.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 30th European Congress, Istanbul, August 1990.     

On preconditioning for a parallel solution of the Richards equation

In this paper, we present a class of preconditioning methods for a parallel solution of the three-dimensional Richards equation. The preconditioning methods Jacobi scaling, block-Jacobi, incomplete lower–upper, incomplete Cholesky and algebraic multigrid were applied in combination with a parallel conjugate gradient solver and tested for robustness and convergence using two model scenarios. The first scenario was an infiltration into initially dry, sandy soil discretised in 500,000 nodes. The second scenario comprised spatially distributed soil properties using 275,706 numerical nodes and atmospheric boundary conditions. Computational results showed a high efficiency of the nonlinear parallel solution procedure for both scenarios using up to 64 processors. Using 32 processors for the first scenario reduced the wall clock time to slightly more than 1% of the single processor run. For scenario 2 the use of 64 processors reduces the wall clock time to slightly more than 20% of the 8 processors wall clock time. The difference in the efficiency of the various preconditioning methods is moderate but not negligible. The use of the multigrid preconditioning algorithm is recommended, since on average it performed best for both scenarios.     

From MPEG-7 user interaction tools to hanging basket models: bridging the gap

The content–user gap is the difference between the limited range of content-relevant preferences that may be expressed using the MPEG-7 user interaction tools and the much wider range of metadata that may be represented using the MPEG-7 content tools. One approach for closing this gap is to make the user and content metadata isomorphic by using the existing MPEG-7 content tools to represent user (as well as content) metadata (Agius and Angelides 2006, 2007). Subsequently, user preferences may be specified for all content, without omission. Since there is a wealth of user preference and history metadata within the MPEG-7 user interaction tools that can usefully complement these specific content preferences, in this paper we develop a method by which all user and content metadata may be bridged.

Actual daily dietary intake of selenium in Belgium, using duplicate portion sampling

The dietary selenium (Se) intake in Belgium has been re-evaluated. Duplicate meal collection, wet acid destruction and flow injection hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry were used as techniques. The daily intake ranged from 28.4 g (Liège, Walloon part of the country) to 61.1 g (Vilvoorde, central part of the country). Compared with intakes recently published for other countries, the actual Belgian value corresponds to intermediate ranges of Se intake.

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Die aktuelle tägliche Selen-Aufnahme durch die Nahrung in Belgien, bestimmt durch doppelte Probenahme

Zusammenfassung Die Selen-Aufnahme durch die Nahrung in Belgien wurde neu bestimmt. Als Technik diente die doppelte Probenahme von Mahlzeiten, deren nasser Aufschluß und die Fließ-Injektions AAS mit Hydridgeneration. Die tägliche Aufnahme schwankt zwischen 28,4 und 61, 1 g. Im Vergleich zu Daten, die neuerdings aus anderen Ländern publiziert wurden, liegen die derzeitigen Werte aus Belgien im Mittelbereich.

     

Benchmarking and learning garbage collection delays for resource-restricted graphical user interfaces

Tablets, smartphones, and wearables have limited resources. Applications on these devices employ a graphical user interface (GUI) for interaction with users. Language runtimes for GUIs employ dynamic memory management using garbage collection (GC). However, GC policies and algorithms are designed for data centers and cloud computing, but they are not necessarily ideal for resource-constrained embedded devices. In this article, we present GUI GC, a JavaFX GUI benchmark, which we use to compare the performance of the four GC policies of the Eclipse OpenJ9 Java runtime on a resource-constrained environment. Overall, our experiments suggest that the default policy Gencon registered significantly lower execution times than its counterparts. The region-based policy, Balanced, did not fully utilize blocking times; thus, using GUI GC, we conducted experiments with explicit GC invocations that measured significant improvements of up to 13.22% when multiple CPUs were available. Furthermore, we created a second version of GUI GC that expands on the number of controllable load-stressing dimensions; we conducted a large number of randomly configured experiments to quantify the performance effect that each knob has. Finally, we analyzed our dataset to derive suitable knob configurations for desired runtime, GC, and hardware stress levels.