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There are many kinds of anti-oxidant materials in natural plant resources. The Siberian ginseng and Eucommia are well known as anti-oxidant and medicinal plants. To investigate the effect of their anti-oxidant-like activity on telomere quantity and egg quality, diets containing Siberian ginseng leaf and Eucommia leaf at 0.5% and 1% were given Hyline Brown commercial laying hens during two periods of age: 20 to 30 wks and 60 to 70 wks. The amount of telomere in lymphocyte, liver, ovary, heart and lung was analyzed by quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization using telomeric DNA probe. Egg weight, albumin height, Haugh unit, egg yolk color, egg shell color, egg shell thickness, egg shell weight and egg shell density were measured to analyze egg quality. The chickens consuming diets Siberian ginseng and Eucommia had higher telomeric DNA in lymphocytes than control chickens in younger layers whereas no significant differences were detected in all target cells analyzed from older layers. Egg quality was increased in younger hens with dietary supplementation as determined by egg weight, albumin height and Haugh unit but there were no effects in older hens. These results imply that dietary supplementation of Siberian ginseng and Eucommia in layers improves bio-activity and egg quality at early laying stage.

The Siberian ginseng and Eucommia are a kind of medicinal plant with powerful anti-oxidant activity. An ex-periment was conducted to investigate the effect of Siberian ginseng leaf and Eucommia leaf at level of 0.5% and 1% per feed in Ross commercial broiler for 4 to 35 days of age on performance, organ weight, blood biochemical profiles and telomere quantity. Chickens consuming diets containing 1% Siberian ginseng had higher feed conversion ratio than the other treated chicken during experimental period whereas no significant differences were detected in body weight, weight gain and feed intake. The weight of bursa of fabricius was significantly increased in chickens with dietary supplementation compared with chickens fed control but this was not seen in liver, spleen and thymus. In blood biochemical profiles, chickens with dietary supplementation had higher con-centration than chickens fed control in triglyceride, cholesterol and glucose. The concentration of aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, albumin and total protein, however, was not significantly different between dietary supplemented chickens and control chickens. The relative amount of telomeric DNA of lymphocytes in chickens with dietary supplementation was significantly higher than that of control chickens but the difference was not found in liver, heart and testis tissues. In conclusion, dietary supplementation of Siberian ginseng and Eucommia in broiler improved immune activity and telomere length without decreasing chicken growth performance.(Key words : Siberian ginseng, Eucommia, anti-oxidant, telomere, growth performance, broiler)

The purpose of this study was to detect expression of genes related to egg production in Taiwan Country chickens by suppression subtractive hybridization. Liver samples of mRNA extraction from two Taiwan Country chicken strains (L2 and B), originated from the same population but with very distinct egg production rates after long-term selection for egg and meat production respectively. Two-way subtraction was performed. The hepatic cDNA from the low egg production chickens (B) was subtracted from the hepatic cDNA from the high egg production strain (L2). The reversed subtraction (L2 from B) was also performed. The resulting differentially expressed gene fragments were cloned and sequenced. We sequenced 288 clones from the forward subtraction and 96 clones from the reverse subtraction. These genes were subjected to further screening to confirm the differential expression between the two genetic breeds of chickens. The apolipoprotein B (apoB) was expressed to a greater extent in the liver of the L2 than in the B line chickens. The 5-aminoimidazole- 4-carboxamide ribonucleotide formyltransferase/IMP cyclohydrolase (PURH) was expressed to a greater extent in the liver of the B than in the L2 strain chickens. We demonstrated that both apoB and PURH were more highly expressed in the liver than that in other tissues (muscle, ovary, and oviduct) in laying Taiwan Country chickens. Taken together, these data suggest that after the selection for egg production, expression of apoB and PURH genes were also changed. Whether the changed expression of these genes is directly related to egg production is not known, but these two genes may be useful markers for egg laying performance in Taiwan Country chickens.

A total of twenty, 2-wk-old male broiler chickens were allotted into control diet(CON) or a diet supplemented with 1% ground grape seed(GGS). They had free access to feed and water for 3 wk. Growth performance and antioxidant markers in plasma, intestine and liver were determined. Dietary addition of 1% GGS did not affect weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion and organ weight in 35 day-old broiler chickens significantly. There was no difference in plasma levels of glucose, triglyceride, cholesterol, AST, ALT and LDH activity. However, total antioxidant status(TAS) in blood increased(P

Optimal mean displacements (such as the mean square displacements) of a loaded string funicular fixed at both ends are found for different classes of force distributions. Rearrangement inequalities and other related techniques are used to derive these optimal values.

We have obtained 17 O nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of magnetically aligned PrBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−δ at 300 K. The electric field gradient tensors for the bridging and plane oxygens were determined and compared with those in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7−δ and YBa 2 Cu 3 O 6.6 The results show that the electronic structure in one of the plane oxygens is mostly affected by Pr substitution for Y, suggesting that the enhanced interaction between the Pr atom and one of the plane oxygens is responsible for the suppression of superconductivity in this compound.

BACKGROUND The incidence and risk factors of central nervous system (CNS) invasion is still unclear in extranodal natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type. PATIENTS AND METHODS We analyzed 208 patients to study the clinical features and outcomes of CNS disease in extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma. RESULTS Twelve patients (5.76%, 12/208) experienced CNS disease during treatment or follow-up period (median 11.62 months, range 0.2-123.2 months). The clinical variables associated with CNS disease were Ann Arbor stage III/IV (15.87%, P

The new organogermyllithium Mes 3 GeLi has been prepared in good yield by hydrogermolysis reaction of t-butyllithium in THF. The bulky group favours stabilization in the form of the THF complex. Mes 3 GeLi has been characterized by alkylation reaction with MeI. Some metalation reactions are reported. They lead to the formation of unsymmetrical or symmetrical organogermylmercuric compounds and also of new dissymetrical digermanes by a classic nucleophilic reaction. In contrast, the reaction of Mes 3 GeLi with benzoyl chloride is more complex and apparently proceeds by a single electron transfer process.

Reactions between organogermyllithiums R 3 GeLi and 3,5-di-t-butylorthoquinone mainly give digermanes but also O -germylcatechol and germadioxolanes. It appears that these reactions start after an initial single electron transfer (SET) which is supported by an ESR study of the reaction. ESR analysis shows the transient formation of an O -semiquinonic species and also germanium centered radicals R 3 Ge · (stable at 20°C for R = Mes). The digermane formation can occur through germanium centered radicals duplication. But it appears that other by-reactions lead also to digermane as O -germylcatechol lithiogermolysis and unexpected successive SET reactions. All these reactions which work to form digermanes are highly dependent on the nature of the R group linked to germanium and specially on their steric hindrance.

We present a new approach for designing the continuous phase frequency shift keying (CPFSK) system which is a nonlinear mapping of the M-ary symbols into the N-ary CPFSK. In this approach we can design a M-ary symbol nonlinear CPFSK (NCPFSK) system of simple structure. The proposed M-ary NCPFSK is a modification of multi-h CPM (MHCPM) scheme. The proposed modulation improves the performance relatively over the conventional modulation schemes.

Background The majority of gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs) express gain-of-function mutations in the tyrosine kinase receptor KIT, and less often in platelet derived growth factor receptor α (PDGFRα). Imatinib mesylate is an effective therapy for GISTs, especially in patients with Exon 11 mutations, but has less response in Exon 9 mutation patients. Imatinib is least effective in patients expressing wild-type (WT) KIT and PDGFRα mutations. When used in the neoadjuvant setting, patients typically experience maximal tumor response within a year of initiation and surgical resection is required for potential cure. In this study, we characterized the mutational status in paired samples before and after neoadjuvant imatinib therapy. Methods All patients receiving neoadjuvant imatinib (at a single academic institution), to improve surgical resectability were reviewed retrospectively. Patients were treated with imatinib until deemed to be appropriate surgical candidates at a multidisciplinary case conference. All tumours were sent for molecular analysis before and after resection when possible. Results 17 patients were identified from 2007 to 2012. The time on neoadjuvant imatinib therapy ranged from 31-135 weeks, with a median time of 57 weeks. At time of diagnosis, mutational analysis was possible on 7 samples, all of which were found to have a mutation: 5 in Exon 11, 2 in Exon 9. Of the 6 patients where mutational analysis was possible both prior to imatinib therapy and following surgical resection, 5 retained identical mutations. 1 patient with a jejunal GIST found to express an Exon 9 mutation at diagnosis was found to have WT KIT following imatinib therapy. The greatest median reduction in maximum tumour dimension (MR-MTD) was in the patient with the Exon 9 mutation (54.55%) compared to 9 patients with Exon 11 mutations (39.2%) and 2 patients with WT KIT/PDGFRα (38.0%). Patients with Exon 11 mutations showed the greatest variation in MR-MTD, one growing by 6.7% to another shrinking by 79.4%. Conclusions Most tumors retain the same mutations after neaoadjuvant therapy with imatinib. We identified one patient who had a different non-imatinib sensitive mutation after treatment. In the neoadjuvant setting, the duration of imatinib therapy may be too short for imatinib resistant clones to appear. Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.