Search

Abstract Background There is currently considerable interest in developing renewable sources of energy. One strategy is the biological conversion of plant biomass to liquid transportation fuel. Several technical hurdles impinge upon the economic feasibility of this strategy, including the development of energy crops amenable to facile deconstruction. Reliable assays to characterize feedstock quality are needed to measure the effects of pre-treatment and processing and of the plant and microbial genetic diversity that influence bioconversion efficiency. Results We used the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium phytofermentans to develop a robust assay for biomass digestibility and conversion to biofuels. The assay utilizes the ability of the microbe to convert biomass directly into ethanol with little or no pre-treatment. Plant samples were added to an anaerobic minimal medium and inoculated with C. phytofermentans, incubated for 3 days, after which the culture supernatant was analyzed for ethanol concentration. The assay detected significant differences in the supernatant ethanol from wild-type sorghum compared with brown midrib sorghum mutants previously shown to be highly digestible. Compositional analysis of the biomass before and after inoculation suggested that differences in xylan metabolism were partly responsible for the differences in ethanol yields. Additionally, we characterized the natural genetic variation for conversion efficiency in Brachypodium distachyon and shrub willow (Salix spp.). Conclusion Our results agree with those from previous studies of lignin mutants using enzymatic saccharification-based approaches. However, the use of C. phytofermentans takes into consideration specific organismal interactions, which will be crucial for simultaneous saccharification fermentation or consolidated bioprocessing. The ability to detect such phenotypic variation facilitates the genetic analysis of mechanisms underlying plant feedstock quality.

The nutating engine is a new type of internal combustion engine with distinct advantages over conventional piston engines and gas turbines in small power ranges. The engine's unique arrangement flexibility allows several alternative disk and shaft configurations, each selected for a different application. Variations in cycle temperature ratio and compression ratio during normal operation enable the engine to effectively become a variable-cycle engine, allowing significant flexibility for maximum efficiency or power or other optimizing function for on-ground stationary or for airborne applications. In its basic configuration the core of the engine is a nutating nonrotating disk, with the center of its hub mounted in the middle of a Z-shaped shaft. The two ends of the shaft rotate, while the disk "nutates, "performs a wobbling motion without rotating around its axis. The motion of the disk circumference prescribes a portion of a sphere. A portion of the area of the disk is used for intake and compression, a portion is used to seal against a center casing, and the remaining portion is used for expansion and exhaust. The compressed air is admitted to an external accumulator, and then into an external combustion chamber before it is admitted to the power side of the disk. A companion paper examines the performance potential of the one-disk engine. This paper examines alternative engine configurations. The external combustion chamber enables the engine to operate on a variable compression ratio cycle. In addition, separate disks of unequal size are used for intake and expansion, resulting in distinct and significant power, efficiency, fuel flexibility, and arrangement advantages over conventional piston engines, over gas turbines, and over the basic nutating-engine configuration. The performance of these arrangements is examined for: on-ground power, on-ground efficiency, (auxiliary power, automotive); and for small and light airframe applications ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new type of internal combustion engine and its thermodynamic cycle are introduced. The core of the engine is a nutating nonrotating disk, with the center of its hub mounted in the middle of a Z-shaped shaft. The two ends of the shaft rotate, while the disk nutates. The motion of the disk circumference prescribes a portion of a sphere. A portion of the area of the disk is used for intake and compression, a portion is used to seal against a center casing, and the remaining portion is used for expansion and exhaust. The compressed air is admitted to an external accumulator, and then into an external combustion chamber before it is admitted to the power side of the disk. The accumulator and combustion chamber are kept at constant pressures. The engine has a few analogies with piston-engine operation, but like a gas turbine it has dedicated spaces and devices for compression, burning, and expansion. The thermal efficiency is similar to that of comparably sized simple-cycle gas turbines and piston engines. For the same engine volume and weight, this engine produces less specific power than a simple-cycle gas turbine, but approximately twice the power of a two-stroke engine and four times the power of a four-stroke engine. The engine has advantages in the 10 kW to 200 kW power range. This paper introduces the geometry and thermodynamic model for the engine, presents typical performance curves, and discusses the relative advantages of this engine over its competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ocean ecosystems have been subjected to anthropogenic influences for centuries, but the scale of past ecosystem changes is often unknown. For centuries, the European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis), an ecosystem engineer providing biogenic reef habitats, was a culturally and economically significant source of food and trade. These reef habitats are now functionally extinct, and almost no memory of where or at what scales this ecosystem once existed, or its past form, remains. The described datasets present qualitative and quantitative extracts from written records published between 1524 and 2022. These show: (1) locations of past flat oyster fisheries and/or oyster reef habitat described across its biogeographical range, with associated levels of confidence; (2) reported extent of past oyster reef habitats, and; (3) species associated with these habitats. These datasets will be of use to inform accelerating flat oyster restoration activities, to establish reference models for anchoring adaptive management of restoration action, and in contributing to global efforts to recover records on the hidden history of anthropogenic-driven ocean ecosystem degradation., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

While there are numerous publications on laser-assisted fabrication and characterization of Pt nanoelectrodes, the exact replication of those procedures is not as straightforward as following a single recipe across laboratories. Often, the working procedures vary by day, by laser puller, or by person. Only a handful of nanoelectrode fabrication papers record their parameters, and even fewer offer troubleshooting advice. Here, we provide a step-by-step guide for laser-assisted Pt nanoelectrode fabrication using low-cost equipment including a laser puller, voltammetry, and simple microscope images captured via cell phone. We also offer solutions for common failures experienced throughout the process to guide beginners as they troubleshoot their own fabrication procedures.

The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of parent training designed as a companion module to a bullying bystander intervention (STAC) for middle school students in rural communities. Parents ( N = 23) invited from three rural middle schools viewed a parent training and completed measures to assess limited efficacy through immediate program outcomes (e.g., knowledge, confidence, self-efficacy, attitudes, behavioral intentions) and program feasibility, as well as participated in focus groups to provide feedback about program acceptability, demand, practicality, and online delivery adaptation. Parents reported increases in knowledge and confidence in supporting their adolescents to intervene in bullying situations, confidence and comfort in managing bullying, bullying self-efficacy, communication self-efficacy, responsibility to actively engage in bullying prevention, and anti-bullying attitudes from pre-training to post-training. Parents also reported behavioral intentions to use strategies they learned to support their adolescents to intervene in bullying situations. Further, parents' responses suggested high levels of program acceptability, as well as interest in an interactive, self-paced online parent training. Themes from focus groups ( n = 12) revealed a need for bullying prevention training for both students and parents in rural communities and found the training to be useful, easy to understand, and relevant and appropriate for their community. Parents identified barriers including cost, time, program flexibility, and the importance of parent buy-in. Parents also provided feedback specific to an online training, including a preference for a smartphone application and design elements to increase engagement. Implications for program development for rural communities are discussed., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Nutrition interventions to support young adults are needed due to low diet quality. The aims were to explore the (1) circumstances and (2) barriers regarding dietary habits of the young adult users of the No Money No Time (NMNT) healthy eating website with the lowest diet quality scores. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted from August-September 2022 with a sample of NMNT users aged 18-35 years with low diet quality (defined as Healthy Eating Quiz score 0-38/73). The survey included demographics (e.g., gender), circumstances (6-item US Food Security Survey, Cooking and Food Skills Confidence Measures), and challenges and resources used in relation to healthy eating (open-responses). Theoretical thematic analysis was used to analyse open-response questions and derive main themes. The study sample ( n = 108; 71.3% female, median age 28; 28.7% food insecure) had a mean (standard deviation) Cooking Skills score 70.2 (17.5)/98, and median (interquartile range) Food Skills score 96.0 (83.5-107.5)/133. The main challenges regarding healthy eating were (1) time and (2) cost, and the main resources to support healthy eating were (1) online resources (e.g., websites, Google) and (2) recipes. Findings identify possible targets for future interventions to support healthy eating in this vulnerable group (e.g., supporting cooking and food skills).

Long-term shift work is widely believed to increase the risk of certain cancers, but conflicting findings between studies render this association unclear. Evidence of interplay between the circadian clock, cell cycle regulation, and DNA damage detection machinery suggests the possibility that circadian rhythm disruption consequent to shift work could alter the DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair pathway usage to favor mutagenic non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) repair. To test this hypothesis, we compared relative usage of NHEJ and single-strand annealing (SSA) repair of a complementary ended chromosomal double-stranded break using the Repair Reporter 3 (Rr3) system in Drosophila between flies reared on 12:12 and 8:8 (simulated shift work) light:dark schedules. Actimetric analysis showed that the 8:8 light:dark schedule effectively disrupted the rhythms in locomotor output. Inaccurate NHEJ repair was not a frequent outcome in this system overall, and no significant difference was seen in the usage of NHEJ or SSA repair between the control and simulated shift work schedules. We conclude that this circadian disruption regimen does not alter the usage of mutagenic NHEJ DSB repair in the Drosophila male pre-meiotic germline, in the context of the Rr3 system.

Fermentation has been applied to a multitude of food types for preservation and product enhancing characteristics. Interest in the microbiome and healthy foods makes it important to understand the microbial processes involved in fermentation. This is particularly the case for products such as fermented cashew ( Anacardium occidentale ). We hereby describe the characterisation of cashew samples throughout an entire fermentation production process, starting at the quinoa starter inoculum (rejuvelac). The viable bacterial count was 10 8 -10 9 colony forming units/g. The nutritional composition changed marginally with regards to fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. The rejuvelac starter culture was predominated by Pediococcus and Weis s ella genera. The 'brie' and 'blue' cashew products became dominated by Lactococcus , Pediococcus , and Wei s sella genera as the fermentation progressed. Cashew allergenicity was found to significantly decrease with fermentation of all the end-product types. For consumers concerned about allergic reactions to cashew nuts, these results suggested that a safer option is for products to be made by fermentation., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Background: Cytosine methylation is a stable epigenetic modification of DNA that plays an important role in both normal physiology and disease. Most diseases exhibit some degree of sexual dimorphism, but the extent to which epigenetic states are influenced by sex is understudied and poorly understood. To address this deficit we studied DNA methylation patterns across multiple reduced representation bisulphite sequencing datasets (from liver, heart, brain, muscle and spleen) derived from isogenic male and female mice., Results: DNA methylation patterns varied significantly from tissue to tissue, as expected, but they also varied between the sexes, with thousands of sexually dimorphic loci identified. The loci affected were largely autonomous to each tissue, even within tissues derived from the same germ layer. At most loci, differences between genders were driven by females exhibiting hypermethylation relative to males; a proportion of these differences were independent of the presence of testosterone in males. Loci harbouring gender differences were clustered in ontologies related to tissue function., Conclusions: Our findings suggest that gender is underwritten in the epigenome in a tissue-specific and potentially sex hormone-independent manner. Gender-specific epigenetic states are likely to have important implications for understanding sexually dimorphic phenotypes in health and disease.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to compare the incidence of acute renal injury (ARI) in patients on intermittent infusion to extended infusion piperacillin/tazobactam., Methods: Data was collected for the intermittent infusion group from November 2010 to December 2010 until 100 patients were enrolled. The data was then compared to 100 patients in the extended infusion group from November 2011 to December 2011. Patients who received at least three consecutive doses of piperacillin/tazobactam and were inpatient for at least 48 hours were included. Patients were excluded for any of the following: baseline serum creatinine (SCr) ≥4 mg/dL, age less than 18 years old, pregnancy, penicillin allergy, or concurrent use with any cephalosporin or penicillin. The primary endpoint was the incidence of ARI, defined as a SCr two times the baseline or 0.5 mg/dL increase within 24 hours. The secondary endpoint was patient length of stay, measured as actual inpatient days., Results: Eleven patients in the intermittent infusion group and nine patients in the extended infusion group developed ARI (11% vs. 9%, p = 0.637). The length of stay between the intermittent and extended infusion groups was 19 days vs. 14 days, respectively (p = 0.083)., Conclusion: The incidence of ARI in patients on piperacillin/tazobactam was similar between the intermittent and extended infusion groups. Larger studies should be considered to confirm that the incidence of ARI associated with piperacillin/tazobactam is not infusion-related., (Copyright © 2015 by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Inc. All rights reserved.)

A 15-year-old female presented to physical therapy 2 months after a traumatic injury with severe low back pain, referred unilateral leg pain below the knee, and a lumbar lateral shift. A classification-based approach, mechanical diagnosis and therapy, was utilized to identify the patient with respect to a particular subgroup, and interventions were applied according to symptomatic response to loading strategies, sustained and repeated movements. Outcome measures included the Modified Oswestry Disability Questionnaire (MODQ) and a visual analog scale (VAS) for pain rating. After nine visits (4 weeks), there was a 60% improvement in MODQ score, 0/10 pain on the VAS, and the patient resumed participation in recreational activities. At the 1-year follow-up, there was a 78% overall improvement in MODQ score with continued 0/10 rated pain. Improvements after nine visits and at the 1-year follow-up both exceeded the minimal clinically important difference for the MODQ.

Purpose: The effects of a low-fat diet or a low-fat diet with the addition of a soy supplement were investigated in a pilot Phase II study for asymptomatic, hormonally naive prostate cancer patients with rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels., Experimental Design: A two-step intervention was implemented. During step 1 patients were begun on a low-fat diet with a goal to reduce fat intake to 15% of total daily calories. On PSA progression, a soy protein supplement was added to the diet (step 2). The primary end point was PSA reduction by 50%. Secondary end points were PSA doubling time and time to progression (TTP). Serum was analyzed for changes in the sex hormone and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) axes., Results: Among 18 evaluable patients, (median follow-up on study 10.5 months), no patient on either step had a PSA reduction by 50% at any time. There was a trend toward a longer PSA doubling time (P = 0.06) and a prolongation in estimated median TTP of approximately 3 months (P = 0.018) during step 2 compared with step 1 of the study. During step 1, free testosterone levels decreased by 5% (P < 0.01), and during step 2, IGF-I levels increased by 22% (P = 0.02)., Conclusions: A low-fat diet with the subsequent addition of a soy supplement did not result in a significant decline in PSA levels. The addition of soy protein had a modest effect on TTP. A potentially undesirable effect associated with the administration of soy was an increase in IGF-I serum levels.

Florida sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis pratensis) were conditioned to confinement in an enclosure for 7 days, 6 hr a day. On day 8, cranes were catheterized and then confined in an enclosure. Venous blood (2 ml) was collected through the catheter and an attached IV line immediately before (-60 min) and 60 min after (0 min) confinement. Using a randomization table and a restricted cross-over experimental design, cranes were injected intravenously with either saline (control) or adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH; cosyntropin, Cortrosyn; 0.25 mg). At 30, 60, 120, 180, 240 and 300 min after injection, blood samples were collected and assayed for corticosterone. The cranes receiving ACTH increased their serum corticosterone concentrations as much as fivefold above baseline concentrations. Serum corticosterone concentrations remained significantly elevated for approximately 60 min after ACTH stimulation. Physical restraint and catheterization caused an increase in serum corticosterone almost comparable to that induced by ACTH stimulation. In cranes injected with saline, serum corticosterone decreased within 1 hr after physical restraint and catheterization, and remained at lower levels throughout the remaining 5 hr of confinement.

In New Zealand, routine infant health surveillance is carried out by the nurses of the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society. The full scheduled number of contacts for the first year of life was 15. The pattern of these nurse contacts was examined during the first year of life for babies born between 1979 to 1984. Data was available for 492 randomly selected infants. There was no record of any Plunket contact in 102 (20.7%). Of those infants who had some Plunket contact, only 71 (19.4%) had the full number of contacts or more, and 51 (13.9%) had only seven or fewer contacts. Infants with a high Christchurch-Invercargill-Dunedin (CID) birthscore were more likely not to have any contacts, and when contact was made these infants were seen less often than compared to the low risk group, during this period. More stringent efforts are needed to engage those infants who are at present not being seen, as they appear to be the infants who are most at risk.

A card-sort methodology was found to be a rapid and systematic approach for the identification of stressors for a baccalaureate nursing faculty. It would seem that multiple stressors exist within the role of nursing faculty. These may be categorized into four main sections: stressors related to Academia, Administration, Clinical and Classroom. The methodology provided assistance with prioritizing such stressors for problem solving by the faculty. An issue in conducting this type of research is confidentiality as demonstrated in faculty reluctance to reveal demographic data that might serve to connect responses with the source.