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Metals and metalloids are integral to biological processes and play key roles in physiology and metabolism.Nonetheless, overexposure to some metals or lack of others can lead to serious health consequences. In this study,eight zebrafish facilities collaborated to generate a multielement analysis of their centralized recirculating watersystems. We report a first set of average concentrations for 46 elements detected in zebrafish facilities. Our resultshelp to establish an initial baseline for trouble-shooting purposes, and in general for safe ranges of metalconcentrations in recirculating water systems, supporting reproducible scientific research outcomes with zebrafish.

Vehicle doors have barely changed in recent decades, and nor has the car. Since autonomous driving will lead to changes in vehicles and how they are used, their doors will also have to be rethought. In the project UNICARagil, researchers from several universities in Germany design and build four prototypes of driverless and autonomous vehicles, which are developed based on a new and modular architecture. As part of this, we developed a concept including a prototype of an automated door system. In this paper, we present our concept development process adapted for door systems of autonomous vehicles. Based on the vehicle concept development process, it should help researchers and engineers to select and design new door concepts in an early phase. At the end, by means of an example, we present the prototype of our door concept as well as a boarding user study we carried out. This study helps evaluate and improve the boarding comfort of future door concepts.

While proteomic techniques allow the identification and relative quantification of thousands of proteins in a single run, methods for absolute quantification remain laborious. In this study, a newly developed multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) method using liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) that enables the simultaneous quantification of twenty key milk proteins is presented. The selected proteins comprise all individual caseins, the major whey proteins and most well-known milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) proteins. For validation, the twenty milk proteins in raw milk, raw cream, raw milk Emmental cheese and whey, were quantified as well as in eighteen commercial heat-treated dairy products. The method presented is ideally suited for various applications, for example, the comparison of the protein patterns in raw milk of cows at different stages of lactation or of different breeds.

Impact of herbage proportion, breed, average days in lactation (ADiL), and season on bulk milk composition of 12 dairy farms were investigated over a year using a mixed effect model approach. A 10%-points higher proportion of herbage led to higher contents of omega 3 (n-3) fatty acids (FAs), conjugated linoleic acids (CLA), vaccenic acid, and branched chain FAs (+0.08, +0.08, +0.19, +0.05 g 100 g−1 fat, respectively). Breed influenced n-3 FAs and CLA (+0.31, +0.17 g 100 g−1 fat, respectively), κ-casein, lipoprotein lipase, β-lactoglobulin, total whey protein, fatty acid synthase, and glycoprotein-2, resulting in +0.96, −0.019, −0.83, −1.12, +0.009, and +0.01 g 100 g−1 measured proteins, respectively, in Brown Swiss milk. ADiL influenced lactoferrin and crude protein; season affected all FAs and proteins examined. The identification of these quantitative relationships allow predictions that provide new insights for the production, processing and commercialisation of grassland-based dairy products.

The Zika virus (ZIKV) arrival in Brazilian territory brought to light the need for preparedness regarding arboviruses in Brazil. Compound screening is a cumbersome process dependent upon in vitro testing and validation. Recently, virtual screening methods have improved precision and reliability providing a framework for in silico testing of lead compound candidates. Here we have applied these methods on compounds that were previously shown to be active against Dengue virus in vitro, taking the structural information of such compounds and applying docking methods to identify putative binding sites. A molecular dynamics approach was also used to refine the docking results. The computational experiments ran here suggests that compounds such as Epigallocatechin Gallate, Ergotamine and Avermectin-B1a bind to active sites on the viral enzymes NS5 and NS3, as well as on its Envelope protein. Refinement shows that such bindings were not lost during the production run and key regions on both enzymes were structurally displaced on average over the simulation time. Interestingly there is no documented drug interactions among these candidates, raising the possibility of drug combinations during treatments. Moreover, the candidate compounds have been extensively studied, thus providing important information regarding intracellular interactions caused by them, which are also associated with pathways exploited by the virus, suggesting possible side interactions hindering the replication process.

Aus dem Programm „Vernetzte und transparente Verwaltung“ der letzten Bundesregierung (BMI 2010) lasst sich im Sinne einer Optimierung der Rechnungslegung Folgendes ableiten: Die Verwaltung muss die Voraussetzungen zur Nutzung digitaler Verfahren schaffen, um ihren Beschaftigten effizienteres, schnelleres und ein vernetzteres Arbeiten zu ermoglichen.