Influence of Vitamin E on the Utilization of Carotene from Oils

IN a previous communication1, it was indicated that the variations in growth response of vitamin A-deficient rats to carotene dissolved in different oils may be due to the difference in vitamin E contents of the oils. The effect of equalizing the level of tocopherol in the supplements has since been studied and the results found to support the explanation.

Rhythmic activity of utilization of mevalonate for biogenesis of cholesterol

The utilization of mevalonate for biogenesis of cholesterol shows rhythmic activity with a peak at midnight and the step responsible is likely to be between mevalonate and isopentenyl pyrophosphate.

Chloromycetin in the nutrition of the silkworm Bombyx mori L.-II. Influence on digestion and utilization of protein, fat, and minerals

The nature and extent of the influence of chloromycetin on larval digestion and utilization of the principal dietary constituents-the proteins, fats, and minerals-was studied. The antibiotic was shown to influence favourably the utilization of all the constituents studied. The results have been discussed in the light of these and other findings.

Simultaneous Utilization of Glucose and Sucrose by Thermophilic Fungi

The utilization of mixtures of glucose and sucrose at nonlimiting concentrations was studied in batch cultures of two common thermophilic fungi, Thermomyces lanuginosus and Penicilium duponti. The sucrose-utilizing enzymes (sucrose permease and invertase) in both fungi were inducible. Both sugars were used concurrently,regardless of their relative proportion in the mixture. At the optimal growth temperature (50C), T.lanuginosus utilized sucrose earlier than it did glucose, but at a suboptimal growth temperature (30°C) the two sugars were utilized at nearly comparable rates. The coutilization of the two sugars was most likely possible because (i) invertase was insensitive to catabolite repression by glucose, (ii) the activity and affinity of the glucose transport system were lowered when sucrose was included in the growth medium, and (iii) the activity of the glucose uptake system was also subject to repression by high concentrations of glucose itself. The concurrent utilization of the available carbon sources by thermophilic fungi might be an adaptive strategy for opportunistic growth in nature under conditions of low nutrient availability and thermal fluctuations in the environment.

Unique Utilization of a Phosphoprotein Phosphatase Fold by a Mammalian Phosphodiesterase Associated with WAGR Syndrome

Metallophosphoesterase-domain-containing protein 2 (MPPED2) is a highly evolutionarily conserved protein with orthologs found from worms to humans. The human MPPED2 gene is found in a region of chromosome 11 that is deleted in patients with WAGR (Wilms tumor, aniridia, genitourinary anomalies, and mental retardation) syndrome, and MPPED2 may function as a tumor suppressor. However, the precise cellular roles of MPPED2 are unknown, and its low phosphodiesterase activity suggests that substrate hydrolysis may not be its prime function. We present here the structures of MPPED2 and two mutants, which show that the poor activity of MPPED2 is not only a consequence of the substitution of an active-site histidine residue by glycine but also due to binding of AMP or GMP to the active site. This feature, enhanced by structural elements of the protein, allows MPPED2 to utilize the conserved phosphoprotein-phosphatase-like fold in a unique manner, ensuring that its enzymatic activity can be combined with a possible role as a scaffolding or adaptor protein. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Is land really a constraint for the utilization of solar energy in India?

This article compares the land use in solar energy technologies with conventional energy sources. This has been done by introducing two parameters called land transformation and land occupation. It has been shown that the land area transformed by solar energy power generation is small compared to hydroelectric power generation, and is comparable with coal and nuclear energy power generation when life-cycle transformations are considered. We estimate that 0.97% of total land area or 3.1% of the total uncultivable land area of India would be required to generate 3400 TWh/yr from solar energy power systems in conjunction with other renewable energy sources.

A framework for post-silicon realization of arbitrary instruction extensions on reconfigurable data-paths

In this paper we present a framework for realizing arbitrary instruction set extensions (IE) that are identified post-silicon. The proposed framework has two components viz., an IE synthesis methodology and the architecture of a reconfigurable data-path for realization of the such IEs. The IE synthesis methodology ensures maximal utilization of resources on the reconfigurable data-path. In this context we present the techniques used to realize IEs for applications that demand high throughput or those that must process data streams. The reconfigurable hardware called HyperCell comprises a reconfigurable execution fabric. The fabric is a collection of interconnected compute units. A typical use case of HyperCell is where it acts as a co-processor with a host and accelerates execution of IEs that are defined post-silicon. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by evaluating the performance of some well-known integer kernels that are realized as IEs on HyperCell. Our methodology for realizing IEs through HyperCells permits overlapping of potentially all memory transactions with computations. We show significant improvement in performance for streaming applications over general purpose processor based solutions, by fully pipelining the data-path. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Operations research applications in the plywood industry

There are several areas in the plywood industry where Operations Research techniques have greatly assisted in better decision-making. These have resulted in improved profits, reduction of wood losses and better utilization of resources. Realizing these, some of the plywood manufacturing firms in the developed countries have established separate Operations Research departments or divisions. In the face of limited raw-material resources, raising costs and a competitive environment, the benefits attributable to the use of these techniques are becoming more and more significant.

Cooperative Profit Sharing in Coalition-Based Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks

We consider a network in which several service providers offer wireless access to their respective subscribed customers through potentially multihop routes. If providers cooperate by jointly deploying and pooling their resources, such as spectrum and infrastructure (e.g., base stations) and agree to serve each others' customers, their aggregate payoffs, and individual shares, may substantially increase through opportunistic utilization of resources. The potential of such cooperation can, however, be realized only if each provider intelligently determines with whom it would cooperate, when it would cooperate, and how it would deploy and share its resources during such cooperation. Also, developing a rational basis for sharing the aggregate payoffs is imperative for the stability of the coalitions. We model such cooperation using the theory of transferable payoff coalitional games. We show that the optimum cooperation strategy, which involves the acquisition, deployment, and allocation of the channels and base stations (to customers), can be computed as the solution of a concave or an integer optimization. We next show that the grand coalition is stable in many different settings, i.e., if all providers cooperate, there is always an operating point that maximizes the providers' aggregate payoff, while offering each a share that removes any incentive to split from the coalition. The optimal cooperation strategy and the stabilizing payoff shares can be obtained in polynomial time by respectively solving the primals and the duals of the above optimizations, using distributed computations and limited exchange of confidential information among the providers. Numerical evaluations reveal that cooperation substantially enhances individual providers' payoffs under the optimal cooperation strategy and several different payoff sharing rules.