Associations of maternal inflammatory states with human milk composition in mothers of preterm infants.

Introduction: Overweight/obesity (ow/ob) is increasing in prevalence in pregnant women, and it is associated with other pro-inflammatory states, such as pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, and preterm labor. Data are lacking if mothers experiencing inflammatory states who deliver preterm have mother's own milk (MOM) with differing inflammatory markers or pro-inflammatory fatty acid (FA) profiles.

Methods: The aim was to explore associations of maternal pre- and perinatal inflammatory states with levels of inflammatory markers and/or FAs in longitudinal samples of MOM from mothers of preterm infants born <1,250 g.

Inflammatory Markers in Mother's Own Milk and Infant Stool of Very Low Birthweight Infants.

Background: Mother's breastmilk is the gold standard for feeding preterm infants. Preterm delivery may be precipitated by inflammatory maternal states, but little is known about milk cytokine profiles and how they correlate with markers of infant gut inflammation (i.e.

Automated circuit fabrication and direct characterization of carbon nanotube vibrations.

Since their discovery, carbon nanotubes have fascinated many researchers due to their unprecedented properties. However, a major drawback in utilizing carbon nanotubes for practical applications is the difficulty in positioning or growing them at specific locations. Here we present a simple, rapid, non-invasive and scalable technique that enables optical imaging of carbon nanotubes.

Effect of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on amphotericin-B induced acute renal failure in rats.

Aim: Acute renal injury may occur after amphotericin B (AmB) administration. The hypothesized injury mechanism is renal vasoconstriction and direct toxic damage. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO) is indicated for treatment of many ischemic events but not for acute renal failure (ARF).

Formation of bimetallic Ag-Au nanowires by metallization of artificial DNA duplexes.

Uniform bimetallic nanowires, tunable in size, have been grown on artificial DNA templates via a two-step metallization process. Alkyne-modified cytosines were incorporated into 900-base-pair polymerase-chain-reaction fragments. The alkyne modifications serve as addressable metal-binding sites after conversion to a sugar triazole derivative via click chemistry.

Directed DNA metallization.

Genes of interest can be selectively metallized via the incorporation of modified triphosphates. These triphosphates bear functions that can be further derivatized with aldehyde groups via the use of click chemistry. Treatment of the aldehyde-labeled gene mixture with the Tollens reagent, followed by a development process, results in the selective metallization of the gene of interest in the presence of natural DNA strands.

The construction of DNA molecules of figure-eight structure.

Using DNA molecules to construct a structural scaffold for nanotechnology is largely accepted. In this article, we report on two methods for constructing a figure-eight structure of DNA molecules having a relatively high yield that could be used further as a scaffold for nanotechnology applications. In the first method, two plasmids were constructed that, on digestion with a restriction endonuclease producing nicks in the corresponding sites and after heating, produced complementary single-stranded sequences, enabling the plasmids to hybridize to each other and forming a figure-eight structure.