High pressure processing (HPP) is currently being developed to increase the shelf-life of sliced dry-cured ham in convenience package without detrimental effects on texture and sensorial ...characteristics. This study is focused on protein degradation under pressure conditions and its contribution to taste and aroma. Samples of sliced dry-cured ham undergone HPP (600 Pa, 0–35 °C) were analyzed from different approaches including proteomic and chemical analysis (amino acids and volatile compounds).
Proteomic analysis revealed that high-pressure conditions caused a higher level of proteolysis, displaying that actin (ACTC1) was differentially degraded, unlike myosin. Furthermore, main Strecker metabolites-isoleucine and leucine-were more abundant at lower temperatures as opposed to 2-methyl butanal and 3-methyl butanal under HPP. Moreover, this study confirmed that HPP affected positively linear aldehydes (pentanal, hexanal, heptanal and nonanal) because of produce a decrease of them, which could improve flavor and taste of dry-cured ham.
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•Proteolysis under pressure conditions and its possible sensory consequences were assessed.•Proteomic analysis showed that high-pressure conditions led to a higher level of proteolysis.•Actin (ACTC1) is a candidate biomarker to control high pressure processing.•High-pressure conditions at low temperatures produced an increase of Strecker metabolites.•Branched and linear aldehydes affected in different ways by high pressure processing.
Tetracaine (TTC) is a local anesthetic broadly used for topical and spinal blockade, despite its systemic toxicity. Encapsulation in nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) may prolong TTC delivery at ...the site of injection, reducing such toxicity. This work reports the development of NLC loading 4% TTC. Structural properties and encapsulation efficiency (%EE > 63%) guided the selection of three pre-formulations of different lipid composition, through a 2
factorial design of experiments (DOE). DLS and TEM analyses revealed average sizes (193-220 nm), polydispersity (< 0.2), zeta potential |- 21.8 to - 30.1 mV| and spherical shape of the nanoparticles, while FTIR-ATR, NTA, DSC, XRD and SANS provided details on their structure and physicochemical stability over time. Interestingly, one optimized pre-formulation (CP-TRANS/TTC) showed phase-separation after 4 months, as predicted by Raman imaging that detected lack of miscibility between its solid (cetyl palmitate) and liquid (Transcutol) lipids. SANS analyses identified lamellar arrangements inside such nanoparticles, the thickness of the lamellae been decreased by TTC. As a result of this combined approach (DOE and biophysical techniques) two optimized pre-formulations were rationally selected, both with great potential as drug delivery systems, extending the release of the anesthetic (> 48 h) and reducing TTC cytotoxicity against Balb/c 3T3 cells.
•Instrumental adhesiveness was assessed for the first time in dry-cured ham.•The proteolysis index is a reliable indicator of proteome degradation.•Differential adhesiveness is dependent on the ...proteolysis index.•Myosin-1, myosin-4 and actin underwent the strongest response to proteolysis.•Novel candidate biomarkers for proteolysis and adhesiveness.
Excessive proteolysis during dry-cured ham processing may lead to high adhesiveness and consumer dissatisfaction. The aim of this research is to identify biomarkers for proteolysis and adhesiveness. Two hundred biceps femoris porcine muscle samples from Spanish dry-cured ham were firstly evaluated for various physicochemical parameters, including their proteolysis indices and instrumental adhesiveness. Proteins of samples with extreme proteolysis indices were separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis and identified by tandem mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF/TOF). We found that hams of higher proteolysis index had statistically significant increased adhesiveness. Proteomic analysis revealed statistically significant qualitative and quantitative differences between sample groups. Thus, protein fragments increased remarkably in samples with higher proteolysis index scores. In addition, higher proteolysis index hams showed increased degradation for a total of five non-redundant myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic proteins. However, myosin-1, α-actin and myosin-4 proteins were the biomarkers that underwent the most intense response to proteolysis and adhesiveness.
Personality disorders are psychological ailments with a major negative impact on patients, their families, and society in general, especially those of the dramatic and emotional type. Despite all the ...research, there is still no consensus on the best way to assess and treat them. Traditional assessment of personality disorders has focused on a limited number of psychological constructs or behaviors using structured interviews and questionnaires, without an integrated and holistic approach. We present a novel methodology for the study and assessment of personality disorders consisting in the development of a Bayesian network, whose parameters have been obtained by the Delphi method of consensus from a group of experts in the diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders. The result is a probabilistic graphical model that represents the psychological variables related to the personality disorders along with their relations and conditional probabilities, which allow identifying the symptoms with the highest diagnostic potential. This model can be used, among other applications, as a decision support system for the assessment and treatment of personality disorders of the dramatic or emotional cluster. In this paper, we discuss the need to validate this model in the clinical population along with its strengths and limitations.
Chloride (Cl
) and nitrate (
) are closely related anions involved in plant growth. Their similar physical and chemical properties make them to interact in cellular processes like electrical balance ...and osmoregulation. Since both anions share transport mechanisms, Cl
has been considered to antagonize
uptake and accumulation in plants. However, we have recently demonstrated that Cl
provided at beneficial macronutrient levels improves nitrogen (N) use efficiency (NUE). Biochemical mechanisms by which beneficial Cl
nutrition improves NUE in plants are poorly understood. First, we determined that Cl
nutrition at beneficial macronutrient levels did not impair the
uptake efficiency, maintaining similar
content in the root and in the xylem sap. Second, leaf
content was significantly reduced by the treatment of 6 mM Cl
in parallel with an increase in
utilization and NUE. To verify whether Cl
nutrition reduces leaf
accumulation by inducing its assimilation, we analysed the content of N forms and the activity of different enzymes and genes involved in N metabolism. Chloride supply increased transcript accumulation and activity of most enzymes involved in
assimilation into amino acids, along with a greater accumulation of organic N (mostly proteins). A reduced glycine/serine ratio and a greater ammonium accumulation pointed to a higher activity of the photorespiration pathway in leaves of Cl
-treated plants. Chloride, in turn, promoted higher transcript levels of genes encoding enzymes of the photorespiration pathway. Accordingly, microscopy observations suggested strong interactions between different cellular organelles involved in photorespiration. Therefore, in this work we demonstrate for the first time that the greater
utilization and NUE induced by beneficial Cl
nutrition is mainly due to the stimulation of
assimilation and photorespiration, possibly favouring the production of ammonia, reductants and intermediates that optimize C-N re-utilization and plant growth. This work demonstrates new Cl
functions and remarks on its relevance as a potential tool to manipulate NUE in plants.
We present an improved measurement of the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) solar neutrino interaction rate at Earth obtained with the complete Borexino Phase-III dataset. The measured rate, ...R_{CNO}=6.7_{-0.8}^{+2.0} counts/(day×100 tonnes), allows us to exclude the absence of the CNO signal with about 7σ C.L. The correspondent CNO neutrino flux is 6.6_{-0.9}^{+2.0}×10^{8} cm^{-2} s^{-1}, taking into account the neutrino flavor conversion. We use the new CNO measurement to evaluate the C and N abundances in the Sun with respect to the H abundance for the first time with solar neutrinos. Our result of N_{CN}=(5.78_{-1.00}^{+1.86})×10^{-4} displays a ∼2σ tension with the "low-metallicity" spectroscopic photospheric measurements. Furthermore, our result used together with the ^{7}Be and ^{8}B solar neutrino fluxes, also measured by Borexino, permits us to disfavor at 3.1σ C.L. the "low-metallicity" standard solar model B16-AGSS09met as an alternative to the "high-metallicity" standard solar model B16-GS98.
Strawberry plants showing symptoms of lethal redness disease were found in production fields located in Tucumán province, Argentina. The presence of phytoplasmas was confirmed by PCR of 16S rDNA gene ...using phytoplasma universal primers. According to the 16S rDNA gene sequence identity, the four isolates analysed are related to the X-disease group (16SrIII) (identity ~99 %). These results were confirmed by in silico RFLP, actual RFLP and also by phylogenetic analyses of the 16S rDNA gene. This new phytoplasma was named as Strawberry X-Redness (StrawXR). The results from virtual and actual RFLP analyses of 16S rDNA gene revealed the presence of subgroup 16SrIII-J and three new 16SrIII subgroups. This is the first record of phytoplasmas from X-disease group associated strawberry in Argentina. These results confirm the prevalence of X-disease group and also contribute to the knowledge of diversity of phytoplasmas in this region.
Objectives
To compare the efficacy of photobiomodulation to that of topical clobetasol 0.05% in patients with symptomatic oral lichen planus (OLP).
Subjects
Thirty‐four patients with symptomatic OLP ...were randomly allocated into two groups: (a) the Control group (n = 17), application of topical clobetasol propionate 0.05% three times a day for 30 consecutive days with laser placebo applied twice a week to mask the treatment, and (b) the photobiomodulation group (n = 17), laser application twice a week, totalling 8 sessions, and gel placebo for 30 consecutive days to mask the treatment. Evaluations were performed once a week during treatment and 30, 60 and 90 days after treatment. The following parameters were evaluated: pain, clinical scores, clinical resolution and recurrence rate.
Results
Photobiomodulation and propionate clobetasol 0.05% were able to significantly decrease pain in oral lichen planus patients and improve clinical scores during treatment and follow‐up. Both the Control and photobiomodulation groups presented similar clinical resolution and recurrence rates. Most importantly, no difference was observed between treatments during treatment and follow‐up.
Conclusions
These findings indicate that photobiomodulation twice a week is as effective as corticoid therapy in treating oral lichen planus. Moreover, photobiomodulation is a safe and non‐invasive therapy with the remarkable advantage of no adverse effects.
This article investigates Classic Maya understandings of two particular animal species: the (gray) fox and the armadillo. We use these species as a point of entry into Classic Maya categorizations of ...the non-human animal world, examining the salient biological and physical characteristics of those animals that Classic-period artists and scribes chose to highlight. Rather than accepting the creatures depicted on painted pottery or referenced in hieroglyphic texts as generalized examples of particular kinds (i.e., simply “a fox” or “an armadillo”), however, we show how the evidence from ancient art, historical accounts, and contemporary ethnography points to an emphasis on specific beings, often named individuals, who engage in particular behaviors and relate to other entities (both human and non-human) in distinctive ways. Although this article focuses exclusively on the fox and the armadillo, those species serve as examples through which we consider the limitations of applying Western taxonomic categories to other systems of knowledge, as well as the possibilities for how we might catch glimpses of radically different ways of organizing the world.
We study the possible effects of classical gravitational backgrounds on the Higgs field through the modifications induced in the one-loop effective potential and the vacuum expectation value of the ...energy-momentum tensor. We concentrate our study on the Higgs self-interaction contribution in a perturbed FRW metric. For weak and slowly varying gravitational fields, a complete set of mode solutions for the Klein-Gordon equation is obtained to leading order in the adiabatic approximation. Dimensional regularization has been used in the integral evaluation, and a detailed study of the integration of nonrational functions in this formalism has been presented. As expected, the regularized effective potential contains the same divergences as in flat spacetime, which can be renormalized without the need of additional counterterms. We find that, in contrast with other regularization methods, even though metric perturbations affect the mode solutions, they do not contribute to the leading adiabatic order of the potential. We also obtain explicit expressions of the complete energy-momentum tensor for general nonminimal coupling in terms of the perturbed modes. The corresponding leading adiabatic contributions are also obtained.
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