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The effect of particle size on physicochemical stability, bioaccessibility, and bioactivity of bioactive compounds is important in the design of delivery systems. It is challenging to control the size of delivery systems without altering chemical composition. In the present study, the re-assembly of dissociated egg yolk granules was modulated by Ca2+ to produce recombined granules with controlled hydrodynamic diameter (Dh). Quercetin was selected as a representative bioactive compound encapsulated within recombined granules (Gra-Que). Encapsulation efficiency and loading efficiency increased with an increase in Dh until phase separation occurred at 250 µg/mL Ca2+. The thermal and photochemical stability of Gra-Que increased as Dh increased, whereas samples with the smallest Dh demonstrated the highest storage stability. Gra-Que with an intermediate Dh had the highest bioaccessibility due to a balance between the protection of quercetin and susceptibility to digestion. Smaller samples had higher bioactivity due to higher cellular uptake and greater susceptibility to digestion.

This research focuses on data transfer from Sustainable Facility Management (SFM) to Building Information Modeling (BIM) applications—specifically BUILDER SMS to Autodesk Revit—where the BIM models are created for existing buildings. BIM models were created for ten existing buildings to support initial data transfer based on different object parameters: (a) alphanumeric identifier (five buildings); and (b) name (five buildings). The identifier is randomly assigned by BUILDER SMS. The name is derived from the cardinal direction for exterior components and room names for interior components. The comparison of the methods was accomplished by observing times to ensure data compatibility, complete Revit models, and transfer data from BUILDER SMS to Revit. The name method was faster regarding data compatibility, but no statistical evaluation could be made. The identifier method resulted in shorter model completion times, but the difference was not statistically significant. It was also faster for first-time data transfer, but, again, no statistical evaluation could be made. The difference in total effort required by the methods was not large. Furthermore, the first data transfer for either method can transfer the other parameter, i.e., a name-based data transfer can add the identifier to the Revit model and an identifier-based transfer can add the name. The name method may be slightly better than the identifier method because object names follow an intuitive and logical standard naming convention (specified in the SFM application). The process of ensuring data compatibility by manually entering object names may be less error-prone compared to manually entering alphanumeric identifiers; however, that was not demonstrated here as all of the resulting models were error-free regarding data transfer. The methods described provide useful insights for other SFM/BIM transfer scenarios, such as other applications and models generated during the design phase.

Pepsin-induced protein coagulation occurs in the gastric environment when the milk pH is above the isoelectric point of casein proteins. In this study, the effect of milk temperature (4–48 °C) on the hydrolysis of κ-casein by pepsin and the consequent protein coagulation was studied at pH 6.0 for 120 min. Quantitative determination of the released para-κ-casein showed that both the κ-casein hydrolysis reaction rate constant and the pepsin denaturation rate constant increased with an increase in temperature. The temperature coefficient (Q10) of the specific hydrolysis of κ-casein was calculated to be ∼1.95. The coagulation process was investigated by the evolution of the storage modulus (Gʹ). At higher temperature, the milk coagulated faster but had a lower firming rate and Gʹmax with larger aggregates and voids were observed. The digestion behavior of the milk ingested at 4 °C, 37 °C, or 50 °C was investigated for 240 min in a human gastric simulator, in which the milk temperature increased or decreased to 37 °C (body temperature) over ∼ 60 min. The coagulation of the 4 °C milk was slower than for the 37 °C and 50 °C milk. The curd obtained from the 4 °C milk had a looser and softer structure with a significantly higher moisture content at the initial stage of digestion (20 min) which, in turn, facilitated the breakdown and hydrolysis of the caseins by pepsin. During the digestion, the curd structure became more cohesive, along with a decrease in moisture content. The knowledge gained from this study provides insight into the effect of temperature on the kinetics of pepsin-induced milk coagulation and the consequent digestion behavior.

Dysregulation of intraocular pressure (IOP) is one of the main risk factors for glaucoma. γ-synuclein is a member of the synuclein family of widely expressed synaptic proteins within the central nervous system that are implicated in certain types of neurodegeneration. γ-synuclein expression and localization changes in the retina and optic nerve of patients with glaucoma. However, the mechanisms by which γ-synuclein could contribute to glaucoma are poorly understood. We assessed the presence of autoantibodies to γ-synuclein in the blood serum of patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) by immunoblotting. A positive reaction was detected for five out of 25 patients (20%) with POAG. Autoantibodies to γ-synuclein were not detected in a group of patients without glaucoma. We studied the dynamics of IOP in response to IOP regulators in knockout mice (γ-KO) to understand a possible link between γ-synuclein dysfunction and glaucoma-related pathophysiological changes. The most prominent decrease of IOP in γ-KO mice was observed after the instillation of 1% phenylephrine and 10% dopamine. The total protein concentration in tear fluid of γ-KO mice was approximately two times higher than that of wild-type mice, and the activity of neurodegeneration-linked protein α2-macroglobulin was reduced. Therefore, γ-synuclein dysfunction contributes to pathological processes in glaucoma, including dysregulation of IOP.

Milk fat globules (MFGs) are secreted from the mammalian gland and are composed of a triacylglycerol core surrounded by a triple membrane structure, the milk fat globule membrane (MFGM). The MFGM contains complex lipids and proteins reported to have nutritional, immunological, neurological and digestive functions. Human and ruminant milk are shown to share a similar MFG structure but with different size, profile and abundance of protein and polar lipids. This review summarizes the reported data on human, bovine, caprine and ovine MFG composition and concentration of bioactive components in different MFG-size fractions. A comprehensive understanding of compositional variations between milk from different species and MFG size fractions may help promote various milk sources as targeted supplements to improve human development and health. MFG size and MFGM composition are species-specific and affected by lactation, diet and breed (or maternal origin). Purification and enrichment methods for some bioactive proteins and lipids present in the MFGM have yet to be established or are not scaled sufficiently to be used to supplement human diets. To overcome this problem, MFG size selection through fractionation or herd selection may provide a convenient way to pre-enrich the MFG fraction with specific protein and lipid components to fulfill human dietary and health requirements.

Many veterinary medical colleges have undergone curricular changes that have moved away from traditional lecture-based teaching in favor of evidence-based, experiential methods of instruction. Such a curricular reinvention occurred in 2018 at Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, with individual courses using numerous instructional and learning methods. In the present study, three courses were assessed, two of which used a method of experiential learning, and the other utilizing a traditional lecture approach. The purpose of this study was to determine if the method of instruction impacted exam grades, content retention, and student perspective. Methods of teaching and learning were quantified for each course using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM. Following completion of each course, participants ( n = 27) retook the same final examination and participated in a survey to evaluate their perspective 5 weeks later. Mean scores on the initial examinations in the experiential learning courses were significantly higher than the mean score of the traditional lecture course ( p = .01). However, mean retake examination scores were similar for all courses ( p = .76). Students reported more confidence with course materials and examinations in courses that incorporated active learning strategies. Although true retention is difficult to assess in veterinary medicine, evaluation of student perspectives suggests the use of experiential learning methods primarily or in combination with lecture-based material to support student learning of pre-clinical concepts. Future controlled studies are needed to evaluate veterinary students’ short- and long-term learning and retention.

Summary Single-cell transcriptomic approaches have found molecular heterogeneities within populations of pluripotent stem cells (PSCs). A tool that tracks single-cell lineages and their phenotypes longitudinally would reveal whether heterogeneity extends beyond molecular identity. Hence, we generated a stable Cre-inducible rainbow reporter human PSC line that provides up to 18 unique membrane-targeted fluorescent barcodes. These barcodes enable repeated assessments of single cells as they clonally expand, change morphology, and migrate. Owing to the cellular resolution of this reporter, we identified subsets of PSCs with enhanced clonal expansion, synchronized cell divisions, and persistent localization to colony edges. Reporter expression was stably maintained throughout directed differentiation into cardiac myocytes, cortical neurons, and hepatoblasts. Repeated examination of neural differentiation revealed self-assembled cortical tissues derive from clonally dominant progenitors. Collectively, these findings demonstrate the broad utility and easy implementation of this reporter line for tracking single-cell behavior., Graphical Abstract, Highlights • Rainbow PSCs are uniquely barcoded with heritable fluorescent reporters • Rainbow PSCs demonstrate heterogeneous clonal expansion, morphology, and migration • Rainbow reporters have stable expression throughout differentiation • Self-assembled 3D cortical structures develop from clonally dominant progenitors, Davis and colleagues generated a fluorescent barcoding system to longitudinally track individual human pluripotent stem cells, their progeny, and dynamic cellular behaviors. This resource provides a framework to understand pluripotent stem cell morphogenesis during self-renewal and directed differentiation to all germ layers. The authors use this resource to demonstrate that iPSC-derived 3D cortical structures develop from clonally dominant progenitors.

The effect of whey proteins and heat treatment (90 °C, 5 min) on pepsin-induced hydrolysis of κ-casein, and subsequent coagulation of casein micelles, was investigated at pH 6.3 and 6.0 using reverse-phase HPLC, oscillatory rheology, and confocal laser scanning microscopy. Whey proteins did not affect the hydrolysis of κ-casein but retarded the coagulation process. Heat treatment did not affect the hydrolysis kinetics in whey protein (WP)-free samples, but slightly impaired the hydrolysis rate in WP-containing samples. The coagulation process of WP-free samples was little affected by heat-treatment. However, compared with unheated WP-contained sample at the same pH, the coagulation process of the heated sample was retarded at pH 6.3 but enhanced at pH 6.0. The curd in heated samples with smaller pores had higher water holding capacity. This knowledge provides further understanding on the role of whey proteins and heat treatment on the coagulation mechanisms of milk under gastric conditions.

We perform the first simultaneous Bayesian parameter inference and optimal reconstruction of the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), using 100 deg2 of polarization observations from the SPTpol receiver on the South Pole Telescope. These data reach noise levels as low as 5.8 μK arcmin in polarization, which are low enough that the typically used quadratic estimator (QE) technique for analyzing CMB lensing is significantly suboptimal. Conversely, the Bayesian procedure extracts all lensing information from the data and is optimal at any noise level. We infer the amplitude of the gravitational lensing potential to be A ϕ = 0.949 ± 0.122 using the Bayesian pipeline, consistent with our QE pipeline result, but with 17% smaller error bars. The Bayesian analysis also provides a simple way to account for systematic uncertainties, performing a similar job as frequentist “bias hardening” or linear bias correction, and reducing the systematic uncertainty on A ϕ due to polarization calibration from almost half of the statistical error to effectively zero. Finally, we jointly constrain A ϕ along with A L, the amplitude of lensing-like effects on the CMB power spectra, demonstrating that the Bayesian method can be used to easily infer parameters both from an optimal lensing reconstruction and from the delensed CMB, while exactly accounting for the correlation between the two. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the Bayesian approach on real data, and pave the way for future analysis of deep CMB polarization measurements with SPT-3G, Simons Observatory, and CMB-S4, where improvements relative to the QE can reach 1.5 times tighter constraints on A ϕ and seven times lower effective lensing reconstruction noise.

We present the first measurements of asteroids in millimeter wavelength (mm) data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT), which is used primarily to study the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We analyze maps of two $\sim270$ deg$^2$ sky regions near the ecliptic plane, each observed with the SPTpol camera $\sim100$ times over one month. We subtract the mean of all maps of a given field, removing static sky signal, and then average the mean-subtracted maps at known asteroid locations. We detect three asteroids$\text{ -- }$(324) Bamberga, (13) Egeria, and (22) Kalliope$\text{ -- }$with signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) of 11.2, 10.4, and 6.1, respectively, at 2.0 mm (150 GHz); we also detect (324) Bamberga with S/N of 4.1 at 3.2 mm (95 GHz). We place constraints on these asteroids' effective emissivities, brightness temperatures, and light curve modulation amplitude. Our flux density measurements of (324) Bamberga and (13) Egeria roughly agree with predictions, while our measurements of (22) Kalliope suggest lower flux, corresponding to effective emissivities of $0.66 \pm 0.11$ at 2.0 mm and $, 21 pages, 9 figures

SPT-3G is the third survey receiver operating on the South Pole Telescope dedicated to high-resolution observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Sensitive measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the CMB provide a powerful dataset for constraining cosmology. Additionally, CMB surveys with arcminute-scale resolution are capable of detecting galaxy clusters, millimeter-wave bright galaxies, and a variety of transient phenomena. The SPT-3G instrument provides a significant improvement in mapping speed over its predecessors, SPT-SZ and SPTpol. The broadband optics design of the instrument achieves a 430 mm diameter image plane across observing bands of 95 GHz, 150 GHz, and 220 GHz, with 1.2 arcmin FWHM beam response at 150 GHz. In the receiver, this image plane is populated with 2690 dual-polarization, tri-chroic pixels (~16000 detectors) read out using a 68X digital frequency-domain multiplexing readout system. In 2018, SPT-3G began a multiyear survey of 1500 deg$^{2}$ of the southern sky. We summarize the unique optical, cryogenic, detector, and readout technologies employed in SPT-3G, and we report on the integrated performance of the instrument., Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJS

Subsurface elevated temperatures (SETs) often occur in landfills and pose great threats to their structural and environmental integrity. Current landfill gas monitoring practices only recommend maintaining certain soil gases percentages, with no integrated strategy for predicting subsurface temperature. As a solution, this paper proposes a comprehensive risk assessment framework specific to SET mitigation. The risk model (RSET) was constructed by incorporating independent gas variables (methane, carbon dioxide, oxygen, residual nitrogen, and temperature) identified in the existing literature as SET indicators, and analyzing gas-well data from the Bridgeton Landfill. Upon identifying these gas indictors and their safety thresholds, we found a significant association (p-value < 0.05) between safe-unsafe ranges of gas variables and subsurface temperature. Temperatures above 80 °C were found to be associated with 100%, 92.3%, and only 4% of the unsafe ranges of methane, residual nitrogen, and oxygen, respectively. As the correlation between gases and temperature seemed to vary for different gas combinations, we developed the RSET by incorporating into these correlation coefficients event intensities specific to certain gas combinations, and then normalizing the RSET scale over a 0-10 range. Over the study period, we identified 22.29% of cases as medium risk at the Bridgeton Landfill and 17.7% as high risk. SETs are governed by different combinations of safe-unsafe ranges of parameters rather than any individual parameters alone. Subsequently, we used a decision tree algorithm to assess the risk types associated with RSET values. The proposed RSET can serve as a monitoring and decision-making tool for landfill authorities for managing and preventing SET incidents.

Subsurface temperature is a critical indicator for the identification of the risk associated with subsurface fire hazards in landfills. Most operational landfills in the United States (US) have experienced exothermic reactions in their subsurface. The subsurface landfill area is composed of various gases generated from chemical reactions inside the landfills. Federal laws in the US mandate the monitoring of gases in landfills to prevent hazardous events such as landfill fire breakouts. There are insufficient investigations conducted to identify the causes of landfill fire hazards. The objective of this research is to develop a methodological approach to this issue. In this study, the relationship was investigated between the subsurface elevated temperature (SET) and soil gases (i.e., methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, and oxygen) with the greatest influence in landfills. The significance level of the effect of soil gases on the SET was assessed using a decision tree approach. A na&iuml, ve Bayes technique for conditional probability was implemented to investigate how different gas combinations can affect different temperature ranges with respect to the safe and unsafe states of these gases. The results indicate that methane and carbon dioxide gases are strongly associated with SETs. Among sixteen possible gas combinations, three were identified as the most probable predictors of SETs. A three-step risk assessment framework is proposed to identify the risk of landfill fire incidents. The key findings of this research could be beneficial to landfill authorities and better ensure the safety of the community health and environment.

Milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) fractions were isolated from fresh raw cream at different temperatures and pH values. The polar lipid (PL) composition of these fractions, and of commercially produced α-serum, β-serum, and buttermilk powder samples, was determined. Lower temperature and pH during churning increased the total level of PLs in the MFGM fractions. Phosphatidylethanolamine (31–36% of total PLs), phosphatidylcholine (31–39%), and sphingomyelin (13–24%) were the major PLs in all MFGM fractions; phosphatidylserine (2–7%) and phosphatidylinositol (2–4%) were the minor ones. The β-serum fraction had the highest total PL content of the commercial samples (2.9 mg g−1 fat); buttermilk powder contained the least amount of total PL amongst all fractions (0.99 mg g−1). Processing temperature and pH can therefore influence the PL composition, likely due to how the treatments impact on the different PLs that are located within different regions within the MFGM trilayer structure.

Sphingomyelin (SM) and cholesterol complexation gives rise to detergent-resistant liquid-ordered domains. The persistence of these domains and subsequent mixed micelle formation was examined in the presence of bile under physiological digestive in vitro conditions for vesicles comprising either SM/cholesterol, porcine brain phosphatidylcholine (BPC)/cholesterol, or soy phosphatidylcholine (SPC)/cholesterol bilayers, the latter two systems having no liquid-ordered domains. Micellization of these digested phospholipid multilamellar vesicle systems was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. Bovine bile was found to consist of large multilamellar sheets which subsumed phospholipid vesicles to form aggregated superstructures. Budding off from these superstructures were vesicle-to-micelle transition intermediates: unilamellar vesicles and cylindrical micelles. The presence of cholesterol (60/40 phospholipid/cholesterol mol/mol) delayed the initial rapid onset of digestion, but not for BPC and SPC vesicle systems. Acyl chain order/disorder before and after vesicle-to-micelle transition of all three phospholipid/cholesterol systems was examined using Raman spectroscopy. The addition of bovine bile to both PC/cholesterol vesicle systems reduced the overall ratio of acyl chain disorder to order. In SM/cholesterol vesicles with ≤ 20% mol cholesterol, only the lateral inter-acyl chain packing was reduced, whereas for SM/cholesterol vesicles with ≥ 30% mol cholesterol, a higher proportion of gauche-to-trans isomerization was apparent, demonstrating that SM/cholesterol complexes modify the acyl chain structure of micelles.