Effect of Popcorn ( var. ) Popping Mode (Microwave, Hot Oil, and Hot Air) on Fumonisins and Deoxynivalenol Contamination Levels.

Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites that are produced by molds during their development. According to fungal physiological particularities, mycotoxins can contaminate crops before harvest or during storage. Among toxins that represent a real public health issue, those produced by genus in cereals before harvest are of great importance since they are the most frequent in European productions.

Attention in schizophrenia: Impaired inhibitory control, faulty attentional resources, or both?

While the literature regarding the existence of difficulties in inhibition in schizophrenia is relatively consistent, it is not clear whether these difficulties reflect any specific deficit in an inhibitory control process or whether they are the result of deficits in the systems that regulate inhibitory control, such as attentional resources. This also raises the issue of attentional resources in schizophrenia, which offers a somewhat puzzling and sometimes contradictory picture. In this study, these issues were investigated by means of a paradigm in which the need for inhibitory control and the need for correct allocation of attentional resources varied parametrically.

Behavioral and psychological symptoms in Lewy body disease: a review.

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a common neurodegenerative disease, second in terms of prevalence after Alzheimer's disease (AD). DLB may be suspected according to three core features which are cognitive and motor fluctuations, early visual hallucinations and parkinsonism; and more recently, according to the new criteria, REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD). Behavorial and psychological symptoms associated with DLB are more frequent, more severe and appear earlier than those found in other neurodegenerative diseases.

Influence of film composition on the morphology, mechanical properties, and surfactant recovery of phase-separated phospholipid-perfluorinated fatty acid mixed monolayers.

Monolayer surfactant films composed of a mixture of phospholipids and perfluorinated (or partially fluorinated) surfactants are of potential utility for applications in pulmonary lung surfactant-based therapies. As a simple, minimal model of such a lung surfactant system, binary mixed monolayer films composed of 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) and perfluorooctadecanoic acid (C18F) prepared on a simplified lung fluid mimic subphase (pH 7.4, 150 mM NaCl) have been characterized in terms of mixing thermodynamics and compressibility (measured through π–A compression isotherms), film morphology (via atomic force, fluorescence, and Brewster angle microscopy), as well as spreading rate and hysteresis response to repeated expansion–contraction cycles for a variety of compositions of mixed films.

Thermodynamic and structural characterization of a mixed perfluorocarbon-phospholipid ternary monolayer surfactant system.

Pulmonary lung surfactant is a mixture of surfactants that reduces surface tension during respiration. Perfluorinated surfactants have potential applications for artificial lung surfactant formulations, but the interactions that exist between these compounds and phospholipids in surfactant monolayer mixtures are poorly understood. We report here, for the first time, a detailed thermodynamic and structural characterization of a minimal pulmonary lung surfactant model system that is based on a ternary phospholipid-perfluorocarbon mixture.

The origin and dynamics of soft X-ray-excited optical luminescence of ZnO.

The distinct optical emission from ZnO materials, nanoneedles and microcrystallites synthesized with different sizes and morphologies by a flow deposition technique, is investigated with X-ray excited optical luminescence (XEOL) and time-resolved X-ray excited optical luminescence (TR-XEOL) from a synchrotron light source at the O K and Zn L(3,2) edges. The innovative use of XEOL, allowing site-specific chemical information and luminescence information at the same time, is fundamental to provide direct evidence for the different behaviour and the crucial role of bulk and surface defects in the origin of ZnO optical emission, including dynamics. XEOL from highly crystalline ZnO nanoneedles is characterized by a sharp band-gap emission (~380 nm) and a broad red luminescence (~680 nm) related to surface defects.

Mechanisms of low-power noncoherent photon upconversion in metalloporphyrin-organic blue emitter systems in solution.

The mechanisms of noncoherent photon upconversion that involve triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA) in solution have been investigated for two model systems. ZnTPP (meso-tetraphenylporphine zinc) is used as the model visible light-absorbing metalloporphyrin because its S(1) fluorescence intensity can be used to monitor the initial rate of porphyrin triplet state production and because its S(2) fluorescence intensity can be used as a direct measure of the rate of porphyrin TTA. When perylene, which has a triplet energy lower than that of ZnTPP, is added as a signaling blue emitter (BE), the mechanism of photon upconversion involves triplet energy transfer from the porphyrin to the BE followed by TTA in the BE to form the fluorescent perylene S(1) state.

Phase separation of palmitic acid and perfluorooctadecanoic acid in mixed Langmuir-Blodgett monolayer films.

Deposition of mixtures of palmitic acid (C15H31COOH) and perfluorooctadecanoic acid (C17F35COOH) onto solid substrates gives rise to irregularly shaped, phase-separated domains under a variety of deposition conditions. The morphology and chemical composition of these phase-separated domains have been investigated using a combination of surface pressure-area isotherms, atomic force microscopy, X-ray photoemission electron microscopy, and confocal fluorescence microscopy imaging. While domain morphology and composition in 2D phase-separated mixed monolayer systems can typically be rationalized in terms of an interplay between line tension and dipole-dipole repulsion effects, it was found that for this system additional kinetic factors, including domain growth rates and the rate of dissolution of the fatty acid component into the aqueous subphase, also play a major role in controlling film properties.