High versus low energy administration in the early phase of acute pancreatitis (GOULASH trial): protocol of a multicentre randomised double-blind clinical trial.

Introduction: Acute pancreatitis (AP) is an inflammatory disease with no specific treatment. Mitochondrial injury followed by ATP depletion in both acinar and ductal cells is a recently discovered early event in its pathogenesis. Importantly, preclinical research has shown that intracellular ATP delivery restores the physiological function of the cells and protects from cell injury, suggesting that restoration of energy levels in the pancreas is therapeutically beneficial.

Continuous Synthesis and Purification by Coupling a Multistep Flow Reaction with Centrifugal Partition Chromatography.

Continuous-flow multistep synthesis is combined with quasi-continuous final-product purification to produce pure products from crude reaction mixtures. In the nucleophilic aromatic substitution of 2,4-difluoronitrobenzene with morpholine followed by a heterogeneous catalytic hydrogenation, the desired monosubstituted product can be continuously separated from the co- and by-products in a purity of over 99 % by coupling a flow reactor sequence to a multiple dual-mode (MDM) centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC) device. This purification technique has many advantages over HPLC, such as higher resolution and no need for column replacement or silica recycling, and it does not suffer from irreversible adsorption.

Chronic stress-induced mechanical hyperalgesia is controlled by capsaicin-sensitive neurones in the mouse.

Background: Clinical studies demonstrated peripheral nociceptor deficit in stress-related chronic pain states, such as fibromyalgia. The interactions of stress and nociceptive systems have special relevance in chronic pain, but the underlying mechanisms including the role of specific nociceptor populations remain unknown. We investigated the role of capsaicin-sensitive neurones in chronic stress-related nociceptive changes.

Six hydrophobins are involved in hydrophobin rodlet formation in Aspergillus nidulans and contribute to hydrophobicity of the spore surface.

Hydrophobins are amphiphilic proteins able to self-assemble at water-air interphases and are only found in filamentous fungi. In Aspergillus nidulans two hydrophobins, RodA and DewA, have been characterized, which both localize on the conidiospore surface and contribute to its hydrophobicity. RodA is the constituent protein of very regularly arranged rodlets, 10 nm in diameter.

Surface plasmon polariton absorption modulator.

An electrically controlled ultra-compact surface plasmon polariton absorption modulator (SPPAM) is proposed. The device can be as small as a few micrometers depending on the required extinction ratio and the acceptable loss. The device allows for operation far beyond 100 Gbit/s, being only limited by RC time constants.