The extraction of vegetable oils by means of screw pressing is considered a cold extraction method. However, this type of machinery needs the nozzle to be pre-heated, during which separation of the ...oil occurs so that it is produced in a satisfactory manner. In this study, the screw press extraction of almond, pistachio and walnut oil has been evaluated, analysing the effect of the temperature applied in the barrel and the selected rotational speed on the oils obtained. When applying low temperatures in the heating ring, the friction of the raw material led almond and pistachio oils to reach temperatures of approximately 60 °C, with somewhat lower temperatures reached in walnut oil. However, at higher temperatures (up to 200 °C), the oil temperature was not increased above 84 °C due to the cooling produced by the continuous supply of raw material. Increasing the rotational speed decreased the contact time of the material with the heater ring, decreasing the output temperature. Generally, the rotational speed had a larger effect on oil temperature than did the temperature applied in the heating ring. The results show that the contents of fatty acids and sterols are not affected by the nut oil extraction temperature; however, the physicochemical parameters of regulated quality are affected.
•Effect of screw press extraction temperature on nut oil quality was analysed.•Temperature was measured at five different points using thermocouples.•Even when using low extraction Ta, the temperature of extracted oil can reach 50 °C.•Increasing the screw speed contributes to the cooling of the system.•Oil temperature extraction affects oil quality parameters.
While we previously revealed RSK4 as a therapeutic target in lung and bladder cancers, the wider role of this kinase in other cancers remains controversial. Indeed, other reports instead proposed ...RSK4 as a tumour suppressor in colorectal and gastric cancers and are contradictory in breast malignancies. One explanation for these discrepancies may be the expression of different RSK4 isoforms across cancers. Four RNAs are produced from the RSK4 gene, with two being protein-coding. Here, we analysed the expression of the latter across 30 normal and 33 cancer tissue types from the combined GTEx/TCGA dataset and correlated it with clinical features. This revealed the expression of RSK4 isoforms 1 and 2 to be independent prognostic factors for patient survival, pathological stage, cancer metastasis, recurrence, and immune infiltration in brain, stomach, cervical, and kidney cancers. However, we found that upregulation of either isoform can equally be associated with good or bad prognosis depending on the cancer type, and changes in the expression ratio of isoforms fail to predict clinical outcome. Hence, differential isoform expression alone cannot explain the contradictory roles of RSK4 in cancers, and further research is needed to highlight the underlying mechanisms for the context-dependent function of this kinase.
Robust identification and tracking of the pupil provides key information that can be used in several applications such as controlling gaze-based HMIs (human machine interfaces), designing new ...diagnostic tools for brain diseases, improving driver safety, detecting drowsiness, performing cognitive research, among others. We propose a deep convolutional neural network for eye-tracking based on atrous convolutions and spatial pyramids. DeepEye is able to handle real world problems such as varying illumination, blurring and reflections. The proposed network was trained and evaluated on 94,000 images taken from 24 data sets recorded in real world scenarios. DeepEye outperforms previous eye-tracking methods tested with these data sets. It improves the results of the current state of the art in a 26%, achieving an accuracy of more than 70% in almost every data set in terms of percentage of pupils detected with a distance error lower than 5 pixels. DeepEye can be downloaded at: https://github.com/Fjaviervera/DeepEye.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In order to treat and evaluate the available data of water quality and fully exploit monitoring results (e.g. characterize regional patterns, optimize monitoring networks, infer conditions at ...unmonitored locations, etc.), it is crucial to develop improved and efficient methodologies. Accordingly, estimation of water quality along fluvial ecosystems is a frequent task in environment studies. In this work, a particular case of this problem is examined, namely, the estimation of water quality along a main stem of a large basin (where most anthropic activity takes place), from observational data measured along this river channel. We adapted topological kriging to this case, where each watershed contains all the watersheds of the upstream observed data (“nested support effect”). Data analysis was additionally extended by taking into account the upstream distance to the closest contamination hotspot as an external drift. We propose choosing the best estimation method by cross-validation. The methodological approach in spatial variability modeling may be used for optimizing the water quality monitoring of a given watercourse. The methodology presented is applied to 28 water quality variables measured along the Santiago River in Western Mexico.
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•An approach for estimation of water quality variables along a river is proposed.•Each river sub-basin area is relevant to predict water-quality variables downstream.•Different interpolation methods of water-quality variables are assessed along a river.
Tanshinone IIA (T2A) is a bioactive compound that provides promise in the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), with a range of molecular mechanisms including the inhibition of the mechanistic ...target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) and the induction of autophagy. Recently, T2A has been demonstrated to function through sestrin 2 (SESN) to inhibit mTORC1 activity, but its possible impact on autophagy through this pathway has not been investigated. Here, the model system Dictyostelium discoideum and GBM cell lines were employed to investigate the cellular role of T2A in regulating SESN to inhibit mTORC1 and activate autophagy through a GATOR2 component MIOS. In D. discoideum, T2A treatment induced autophagy and inhibited mTORC1 activity, with both effects lost upon the ablation of SESN (sesn-) or MIOS (mios-). We further investigated the targeting of MIOS to reproduce this effect of T2A, where computational analysis identified 25 novel compounds predicted to strongly bind the human MIOS protein, with one compound (MIOS inhibitor 3; Mi3) reducing cell proliferation in two GBM cells. Furthermore, Mi3 specificity was demonstrated through the loss of potency in the D. discoideum mios- cells regarding cell proliferation and the induction of autophagy. In GBM cells, Mi3 treatment also reduced mTORC1 activity and induced autophagy. Thus, a potential T2A mimetic showing the inhibition of mTORC1 and induction of autophagy in GBM cells was identified.
La presencia de As en las aguas subterráneas es un problema prioritario de salud pública e impone serias restricciones en el agua de consumo. Los mapas de probabilidad de superar el umbral permitido ...por la Organización Mundial de la Salud, OMS (10 μg/L) permiten delimitar las áreas que más riesgo presentan en relación con este parámetro. Las técnicas geoestadísticas constituyen una herramienta de uso común para elaborar estos mapas, aunque lamentablemente no hay un acuerdo sobre qué técnica es la más adecuada. El presente estudio recopila distintos criterios para decidir qué método presenta resultados más robustos. Se utilizan siete métodos de kriging no paramétrico en la estimación del mapa de probabilidad de que la concentración de As en manantiales de la provincia de Ávila supere el límite de 10 μg/L. La validación revela que uno de los mejores resultados es del simplicial indicator kriging, nunca antes tenido en cuenta en estudios sobre presencia de As geogénico en aguas subterráneas.
The differences in walnut cultivars related to their chemical composition have been widely reported. These chemical differences result in the differences in the physical parameters of the walnut oils ...and walnut defatted flours (DF) obtained from cold pressing. In this study, the physical parameters of walnut kernels, walnut oils and DF obtained from nine different cultivars are analysed. Additionally, the effect of the genotype, the crop year and the interaction between both on the colour parameters of walnut oil and DF is studied. The obtained results show that oil colour is mainly determined by the crop year, while the colour of DF is determined by the genotype, the crop year and the interaction of between them. L* is the most useful parameter for cultivar discrimination if two crop years are considered. Among the physical parameters of walnut products, oil viscosity can be considered a parameter of oil quality because it shows strong correlations with the oil fatty acid profile and the concentration of specific triglycerides (LLL, OLO and POO). Physical parameters have been reported to be crucial for consumers and for the food industry and should be considered as quality parameters of walnut by-products.
•Physical parameters are useful for cultivar discrimination in walnuts.•Viscosity is related with fatty acids and triglycerides profiles.•Colour parameters are useful for cultivar discrimination in oil, flour and DF.•Walnut oil colour is mainly determined by the cultivar.•DF colour is determined by the genotype, the crop year and the interaction of both.
Multi-temporal analysis is one of the main applications of remote sensing, and Landsat imagery has been one of the main resources for many years. However, the moderate spatial resolution (30 m) ...restricts their use for high precision applications. In this paper, we simulate Landsat scenes to evaluate, by means of an exhaustive number of tests, a subpixel registration process based on phase correlation and the upsampling of the Fourier transform. From a high resolution image (0.5 m), two sets of 121 synthetic images of fixed translations are created to simulate Landsat scenes (30 m). In this sense, the use of the point spread function (PSF) of the Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) sensor in the downsampling process improves the results compared to those obtained by simple averaging. In the process of obtaining sub-pixel accuracy by upsampling the cross correlation matrix by a certain factor, the limit of improvement is achieved at 0.1 pixels. We show that image size affects the cross correlation results, but for images equal or larger than 100 × 100 pixels similar accuracies are expected. The large dataset used in the tests allows us to describe the intra-pixel distribution of the errors obtained in the registration process and how they follow a waveform instead of random/stochastic behavior. The amplitude of this waveform, representing the highest expected error, is estimated at 1.88 m. Finally, a validation test is performed over a set of sub-pixel shorelines obtained from actual Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-7 ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus) and Landsat-8 OLI (Operation Land Imager) scenes. The evaluation of the shoreline accuracy with respect to permanent seawalls, before and after the registration, shows the importance of the registering process and serves as a non-synthetic validation test that reinforce previous results.
Protein S (PROS1) is a vitamin K-dependent anticoagulant factor, which also acts as an agonist for the TYRO3, AXL, and MERTK (TAM) tyrosine kinase receptors. PROS1 is produced by the endothelium ...which also expresses TAM receptors, but little is known about its effects on vascular function and permeability. Transwell permeability assays as well as Western blotting and immunostaining analysis were used to monitor the possible effects of PROS1 on both endothelial cell permeability and on the phosphorylation state of specific signaling proteins. We show that human PROS1, at its circulating concentrations, substantially increases both the basal and VEGFA-induced permeability of endothelial cell (EC) monolayers. PROS1 induces p38 MAPK (Mitogen Activated Protein Kinase), Rho/ROCK (Rho-associated protein kinase) pathway activation, and actin filament remodeling, as well as substantial changes in Vascular Endothelial Cadherin (VEC) distribution and its phosphorylation on Ser
and Tyr
. It also mediates c-Src and PAK-1 (p21-activated kinase 1) phosphorylation on Tyr
and Ser
, respectively. Exposure of EC to human PROS1 induces VEC internalization as well as its cleavage into a released fragment of 100 kDa and an intracellular fragment of 35 kDa. Using anti-TAM neutralizing antibodies, we demonstrate that PROS1-induced VEC and c-Src phosphorylation are mediated by both the MERTK and TYRO3 receptors but do not involve the AXL receptor. MERTK and TYRO3 receptors are also responsible for mediating PROS1-induced MLC (Myosin Light Chain) phosphorylation on a site targeted by the Rho/ROCK pathway. Our report provides evidence for the activation of the c-Src/VEC and Rho/ROCK/MLC pathways by PROS1 for the first time and points to a new role for PROS1 as an endogenous vascular permeabilizing factor.
Deep second and third degree burns treatment requires fibroblasts, keratinocytes and other skin cells in order to grow new dermis and epidermis. Cells can proliferate, secrete growth factors and ...extracellular matrix required to repair the damaged tissue. Radiosterilized human amnion and radiosterilized pig skin have been used as natural origin skin dressings for burned patients. Adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells can differentiate into fibroblasts and keratinocytes and improve wound-healing progress. These cells can stimulate vascular tissue formation, release growth factors, synthetize new extracellular matrix and immunoregulate other cells. In this study, we developed mesenchymal stem cells-cellularized skin substitutes based from radiosterilized human amnion or pig skin. Third-degree burns were induced in mice animal models to evaluate the effect of cellularized skin substitutes on burn wound healing. Mesenchymal phenotype was immunophenotypically confirmed by flow cytometry and cell viability was close to 100%. Skin recovery was evaluated in burned mice after seven and fourteen days post-coverage with cellularized and non-cellularized sustitutes. Histological techniques and immunofluorescence were used to evaluate re-epithelization and type I collagen deposition. We determined that cellularized-human amnion or cellularized-pig skin in combination with mesenchymal stem cells improve extracellular matrix deposition. Both cellularized constructs increase detection of type I collagen in newly formed mouse skin and can be potentially used as skin coverage for further clinical treatment of burned patients.
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