Behavior of Ceriporiopsis subvermispora during Pinus taeda biotreatment in soybean-oil-amended cultures

Pinus taeda wood chips were treated with the biopulping fungus Ceriporiopsis subvermispora in soybean-oil-amended cultures The secretion of oxalic acid and the accumulation of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances were significantly increased in soybean-oil-amended cultures By contrast the secretion of hydrolytic and oxidative enzymes was not altered in the cultures Biotreated wood samples were characterized for weight and component losses as well as by in-situ thioacidolysis Residual lignins were also extracted from biotreated wood using a mild-non-razing extraction procedure The lignins were characterized by (31)P nuclear magnetic resonance ((31)P-NMR) spectroscopy Soybean oil amendment in the cultures was found to affect lignin degradation routes however it inhibited depolymerization reactions detectable in the residual lignin that was retained in the biotreated wood As a consequence chemithermomechanical pulping of the biotreated samples was not improved by soybean oil amendment in the cultures Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

Registration of temporal sequences of coronal and sagittal MR images through respiratory patterns

This work discusses the determination of the breathing patterns in time sequence of images obtained from magnetic resonance (MR) and their use in the temporal registration of coronal and sagittal images. The registration is made without the use of any triggering information and any special gas to enhance the contrast. The temporal sequences of images are acquired in free breathing. The real movement of the lung has never been seen directly, as it is totally dependent on its surrounding muscles and collapses without them. The visualization of the lung in motion is an actual topic of research in medicine. The lung movement is not periodic and it is susceptible to variations in the degree of respiration. Compared to computerized tomography (CT), MR imaging involves longer acquisition times and it is preferable because it does not involve radiation. As coronal and sagittal sequences of images are orthogonal to each other, their intersection corresponds to a segment in the three-dimensional space. The registration is based on the analysis of this intersection segment. A time sequence of this intersection segment can be stacked, defining a two-dimension spatio-temporal (2DST) image. The algorithm proposed in this work can detect asynchronous movements of the internal lung structures and lung surrounding organs. It is assumed that the diaphragmatic movement is the principal movement and all the lung structures move almost synchronously. The synchronization is performed through a pattern named respiratory function. This pattern is obtained by processing a 2DST image. An interval Hough transform algorithm searches for synchronized movements with the respiratory function. A greedy active contour algorithm adjusts small discrepancies originated by asynchronous movements in the respiratory patterns. The output is a set of respiratory patterns. Finally, the composition of coronal and sagittal image pairs that are in the same breathing phase is realized by comparing of respiratory patterns originated from diaphragmatic and upper boundary surfaces. When available, the respiratory patterns associated to lung internal structures are also used. The results of the proposed method are compared with the pixel-by-pixel comparison method. The proposed method increases the number of registered pairs representing composed images and allows an easy check of the breathing phase. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cement stabilization of runoff residuals: A study of stabilization/solidification of urban rainfall-runoff residuals in type 1 Portland cement by XRD and Si-29 NMR analysis

Urban rainfall-runoff residuals contain metals such as Cr, Zn, Cu, As, Pb and Cd and are thus reasonable candidates for treatment using Portland cement-based solidification-stabilization (S/S). This research is a study of S/S of urban storm water runoff solid residuals in Portland cement with quicklime and sodium bentonite additives. The solidified residuals were analyzed after 28 days of hydration time using X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and solid-state Si-29 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results indicate that the main cement hydration products are ettringite, calcium hydroxide and hydrated calcium silicates. Zinc hydroxide and lead and zinc silicates are also present due to the reactions of the waste compounds with the cement and its hydration products. Si-29 NMR analysis shows that the coarse fraction of the waste apparently does not interfere with cement hydration, but the fine fraction retards silica polymerization.

Photodegradation of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate)

The effect of ultraviolet radiation on the properties of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) was studied. The PHB investigated is produced from microbial fermentation using saccharose from sugarcane as the carbon source to the bacteria. The material was exposed to artificial UV-A radiation for 3, 6, 9 and 12 weeks. The photodegradation effect was followed by changes of molecular weight, of chemical and crystalline structures, of thermal, morphological, optical and mechanical properties, as well as of biodegradability. The experimental results showed that PHB undergoes both chain scission and cross-linking reactions, but the continuous decrease in its mechanical properties and the low amount of gel content upon UV exposure indicated that the scission reactions were predominant. Molar mass, melting temperature and crystallinity measurements for two layers of PHB samples with different depth suggested that the material has a strong degradation profile, which was attributed to its dark colour that restricted the transmission of light. Previous photodegradation initially delayed PHB biodegradability, due to the superficial increase in crystallinity seen with UV exposure. The possible reactions taking place during PHB photodegradation were presented and discussed in terms of the infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectra. A reference peak (internal standard) in the infrared spectra was proposed for PHB photodegradation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Influence of cerium (IV) ions on the mechanism of organosilane polymerization and on the improvement of its barrier properties

In this work, the effect of cerium (IV) ammonium nitrate (CAN) addition on the polymerization of bis-[triethoxysilyl]ethane (BTSE) film applied on carbon steel was studied. The electrochemical characterization of the films was carried out in 0.1 mol L(-1) NaCl solution by open-circuit potential measurements, anodic and cathodic polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Morphological and chemical characterization were performed by atomic force microscopy (AFM), contact angle measurements, infrared-spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance and thermogravimetric analysis. The results have clearly shown the improvement on the protective properties of the Ce(4+) modified film as a consequence of the formation of a more uniform and densely reticulated silane film. A mechanism is proposed to explain the accelerating role of Ce(4+) ions on the cross-linking of the silane layer. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Synthesis and characterization of semiconductor polymers having different phenylene-vinylene conjugation lengths

We have synthesized phenylene-vinylene (PV) polymers containing segments with different conjugation lengths interspaced by random distributed aliphatic segments. Infrared (IR) and ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectroscopies, hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H NMR) spectrometry and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were used to characterize the prepared copolymers` structures. Polymers molecular weights were determined by gel permeation chromatography (GPC). The effect of polymer structure and composition on emission properties was studied by fluorescence (PL) spectroscopy under different irradiation wavelength. The emission energy shift due to segments with longer conjugation lengths was minor owed to the low polymerization degree achieved.

AUTOMATIC CORONARY WALL SEGMENTATION IN INTRAVASCULAR ULTRASOUND IMAGES USING BINARY MORPHOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) image segmentation can provide more detailed vessel and plaque information, resulting in better diagnostics, evaluation and therapy planning. A novel automatic segmentation proposal is described herein; the method relies on a binary morphological object reconstruction to segment the coronary wall in IVUS images. First, a preprocessing followed by a feature extraction block are performed, allowing for the desired information to be extracted. Afterward, binary versions of the desired objects are reconstructed, and their contours are extracted to segment the image. The effectiveness is demonstrated by segmenting 1300 images, in which the outcomes had a strong correlation to their corresponding gold standard. Moreover, the results were also corroborated statistically by having as high as 92.72% and 91.9% of true positive area fraction for the lumen and media adventitia border, respectively. In addition, this approach can be adapted easily and applied to other related modalities, such as intravascular optical coherence tomography and intravascular magnetic resonance imaging. (E-mail: matheuscardosomg@hotmail.com) (C) 2011 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology.

Frequency Domain Connectivity Identification: An Application of Partial Directed Coherence in fMRI

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become an important tool in Neuroscience due to its noninvasive and high spatial resolution properties compared to other methods like PET or EEG. Characterization of the neural connectivity has been the aim of several cognitive researches, as the interactions among cortical areas lie at the heart of many brain dysfunctions and mental disorders. Several methods like correlation analysis, structural equation modeling, and dynamic causal models have been proposed to quantify connectivity strength. An important concept related to connectivity modeling is Granger causality, which is one of the most popular definitions for the measure of directional dependence between time series. In this article, we propose the application of the partial directed coherence (PDC) for the connectivity analysis of multisubject fMRI data using multivariate bootstrap. PDC is a frequency domain counterpart of Granger causality and has become a very prominent tool in EEG studies. The achieved frequency decomposition of connectivity is useful in separating interactions from neural modules from those originating in scanner noise, breath, and heart beating. Real fMRI dataset of six subjects executing a language processing protocol was used for the analysis of connectivity. Hum Brain Mapp 30:452-461, 2009. (C) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Animated solid model of the lung constructed from unsynchronized MR sequential images

This work discusses a 4D lung reconstruction method from unsynchronized MR sequential images. The lung, differently from the heart, does not have its own muscles, turning impossible to see its real movements. The visualization of the lung in motion is an actual topic of research in medicine. CT (Computerized Tomography) can obtain spatio-temporal images of the heart by synchronizing with electrocardiographic waves. The FOV of the heart is small when compared to the lung`s FOV. The lung`s movement is not periodic and is susceptible to variations in the degree of respiration. Compared to CT, MR (Magnetic Resonance) imaging involves longer acquisition times and it is not possible to obtain instantaneous 3D images of the lung. For each slice, only one temporal sequence of 2D images can be obtained. However, methods using MR are preferable because they do not involve radiation. In this paper, based on unsynchronized MR images of the lung an animated B-Repsolid model of the lung is created. The 3D animation represents the lung`s motion associated to one selected sequence of MR images. The proposed method can be divided in two parts. First, the lung`s silhouettes moving in time are extracted by detecting the presence of a respiratory pattern on 2D spatio-temporal MR images. This approach enables us to determine the lung`s silhouette for every frame, even on frames with obscure edges. The sequence of extracted lung`s silhouettes are unsynchronized sagittal and coronal silhouettes. Using our algorithm it is possible to reconstruct a 3D lung starting from a silhouette of any type (coronal or sagittal) selected from any instant in time. A wire-frame model of the lung is created by composing coronal and sagittal planar silhouettes representing cross-sections. The silhouette composition is severely underconstrained. Many wire-frame models can be created from the observed sequences of silhouettes in time. Finally, a B-Rep solid model is created using a meshing algorithm. Using the B-Rep solid model the volume in time for the right and left lungs were calculated. It was possible to recognize several characteristics of the 3D real right and left lungs in the shaded model. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Memory with emotional content, brain amygdala and Alzheimer`s disease

Objectives - A highly adaptive aspect of human memory is the enhancement of explicit, consciously accessible memory by emotional stimuli. We studied the performance of Alzheimer`s disease (AD) patients and elderly controls using a memory battery with emotional content, and we correlated these results with the amygdala and hippocampus volume. Methods - Twenty controls and 20 early AD patients were subjected to the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) and to magnetic resonance imaging-based volumetric measurements of the medial temporal lobe structures. Results - The results show that excluding control group subjects with 5 or more years of schooling, both groups showed improvement with pleasant or unpleasant figures for the IAPS in an immediate free recall test. Likewise, in a delayed free recall test, both the controls and the AD group showed improvement for pleasant pictures, when education factor was not controlled. The AD group showed improvement in the immediate and delayed free recall test proportional to the medial temporal lobe structures, with no significant clinical correlation between affective valence and amygdala volume. Conclusion - AD patients can correctly identify emotions, at least at this early stage, but this does not improve their memory performance.

NMR imaging of fluid pathways during drainage of softwood in a pressure membrane chamber

An experiment was implemented to study fluid flow in a pressure media. This procedure successfully combines nuclear magnetic resonance imaging with a pressure membrane chamber in order to visualize the non-wetting and wetting fluid flows with controlled boundary conditions. A specially designed pressure membrane chamber, made of non-magnetic materials and able to withstand 4 MPa, was designed and built for this purpose. These two techniques were applied to the drainage of Douglas fir sapwood. In the study of the longitudinal flow, narrow drainage fingers are formed in the latewood zones. They follow the longitudinal direction of wood and spread throughout the sample length. These fingers then enlarge in the cross-section plane and coalesce until drainage reaches the whole latewood part. At the end of the experiments, when the drainage of liquid water in latewood is completed, just a few sites of percolation appear in earlywood zones. This difference is a result of the wood anatomical structure, where pits, the apertures that allow the sap to flow between wood cells, are more easily aspirated in earlywood than in latewood. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cu and Fe metallic ions-mediated oxidation of low-density lipoproteins studied by NMR, TEM and Z-scan technique

In this work we report on a study of the morphological changes of LDL induced in vitro by metallic ions (Cu(2+) and Fe(3+)). These modifications were characterized by transmission electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance and the Z-scan technique. The degree of oxidative modification of LDL was determined by the TBARS and lipid hydroperoxides assays. It is shown that distinct pathways for modifying lipoproteins lead to different morphological transformations of the particles characterized by changes in size and/or shape of the resulting particles, and by the tendency to induce aggregation of the particles. There were no evidence of melting of particles promoted by oxidative processes with Cu and Fe. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

(1)H NMR determination of beta-N-methylamino-L-alanine (L-BMAA) in environmental and biological samples

A nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H NMR) method for the determination of beta-N-methylamino-L-alanine (L-BMAA) in environmental aqueous samples was developed and validated. L-BMAA is a neurotoxic modified amino acid that can be produced by cyanobacteria in aqueous environments. This toxin was extracted from samples by means of solid-phase extraction (SPE) and identified and quantified by (1)H NMR without further derivatization steps. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was 5 mu g/mL Good inter and intra-assay precision was also observed (relative standard deviation <8.5%) with the use of 4-nitro-DL-phenylalanine as an internal standard (IS). This method of 1H NMR analysis is not time consuming and can be readily utilized to monitor L-BMAA and confirm its presence in environmental and biological samples. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Study of the interaction between hydroxymethylnitrofurazone and 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin

Chagas disease is a serious health problem in Latin America. Hidroxymethylnitrofurazone (NFOH) is a nitrofurazone prodrug more active than nitrofurazone against Trypanosoma cruzi. However, NFOH presents low aqueous solubility, high photodecomposition and high toxicity. The present work is focused on the characterization of an inclusion complex of NFOH in 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HP-beta-CD). The complexation with HP-beta-CD was investigated using reversed-phase liquid chromatography, solubility isotherms and nuclear magnetic resonance. The retention behavior was analyzed on a reversed-phase C-18 column, using acetonitrile-water (20/80, v/v) as the mobile phase, in which HP-beta-CD was incorporated as a mobile phase additive. The decrease in the retention times with increasing concentrations of HP-beta-CD enables the determination of the apparent stability constant of the complex (K = 6.2 +/- 0.3 M-1) by HPLC. The solubility isotherm was studied and the value for the apparent stability constant (K = 7.9 +/- 0.2 M-1) was calculated. The application of continuous variation method indicated the presence of a complex with 1:1 NFOH:HP-beta-CD stoichiometry. The photostability study showed that the formation of an inclusion complex had a destabilizing effect on the photodecomposition of NFOH when compared to that of the ""free"" molecule in solution. The mobility investigation (by NMR longitudinal relaxation time) gives information about the complexation of NFOH with HP-beta-CD. In preliminary toxicity studies, cell viability tests revealed that inclusion complexes were able to decrease the toxic effect (p < 0.01) caused by NFOH. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

qNMR: An applicable method for the determination of dimethyltryptamine in ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant preparation

Ayahuasca is an Amazonian plant beverage obtained by infusing the pounded stems of Banisteriopsis caapi in combination with the leaves of Psychotria viridis. P. viridis contains the psychedelic indole N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). This association has a wide range of use in religious rituals around the world. In the present work, an easy, fast and non-destructive method by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of proton ((1)H NMR) for quantification of DMT in ayahuasca samples was developed and validated. 2,5-Dimethoxybenzaldehyde (DMBO) was used as internal standard (IS). For this purpose, the area ratios produced by protons of DMT (N(CH(3))(2)) at 2.70 ppm, singlet, (6H) and for DMBO (Ar(OCH(3))(2)) at 3.80 and 3.89 ppm, doublet, (6H) were used for quantification. The lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) was 12.5 mu g/mL and a good intra-assay precision was also obtained (relative standard deviation < 5.1%). The present (1)H NMR method is not time consuming and can be readily applied to monitor this tryptamine in plant preparations. We believe that qNMR can be used for identification and quantification of many plant-based products and metabolites with important advantages, while comparing with other analytical techniques. (C) 2010 Phytochemical Society of Europe. Published by Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.