Performance and microbial community structure of a full-scale ANITAMox bioreactor for treating reject water located in Finland.

The aim of this work was to study the operational performance and the microbial community dynamics during the start-up of ANITAMox technology implemented at full-scale wastewater treatment plant in Finland to treat reject water from anaerobic digesters. The average ammonium removal in the studied setup reached around 90%, withstanding ammonium loads up to 0.13 g N mh.

Assessing in vitro digestibility of food biopreservative AS-48.

AS-48 is a bacteriocin with potential application as food biopreservative. In order to optimize its use for oral consumption, we assess the impact of gastrointestinal digestion, both in bulk and adsorbed at the air-water interface. Analysis of AS-48 digestion fragments in bulk by SDS-PAGE, RP-HPLC, and MALDI-TOF proves that the previous pepsin exposition promotes digestion by trypsin/chymotrypsin by exposing new cleavage sites.

A Spherical Brain Mapping of MR Images for the Detection of Alzheimer's Disease.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is of fundamental importance in neuroscience, providing good contrast and resolution, as well as not being considered invasive. Despite the development of newer techniques involving radiopharmaceuticals, it is still a recommended tool in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) neurological practice to assess neurodegeneration, and recent research suggests that it could reveal changes in the brain even before the symptomatology appears. In this paper we propose a method that performs a Spherical Brain Mapping, using different measures to project the three-dimensional MR brain images onto two-dimensional maps revealing statistical characteristics of the tissue.

Projecting MRI brain images for the detection of Alzheimer's Disease.

Recent advances in the process of diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's Disease, rely on the use of molecular imaging that allow the interpretation of different metabolic biomarkers in the brain. However these procedures are considered of invasive nature, as they involve the injection of radioactive markers. On the other hand, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is perhaps the most widely used and less invasive medical imaging technique, although its ability to detect Alzheimer's Disease has revealed limited.

Functional activity maps based on significance measures and Independent Component Analysis.

The use of functional imaging has been proven very helpful for the process of diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). In many cases, the analysis of these images is performed by manual reorientation and visual interpretation. Therefore, new statistical techniques to perform a more quantitative analysis are needed.

Fish oil supplementation reverses the effect of cholesterol on apoptotic gene expression in smooth muscle cells.

Background: Nutritional control of gene regulation guides the transformation of smooth muscle cells (SMC) into foam cells in atherosclerosis. Oxidative stress has been reported in areas of lipid accumulation, activating proliferation genes. Suppression of oxidative stress by antioxidant administration reduces this activation and the progression of lesions.

Curcumin ameliorates rabbits's steatohepatitis via respiratory chain, oxidative stress, and TNF-alpha.

The pathophysiology of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is still not fully understood, and available treatments are not entirely satisfactory. Steatosis progression to NASH is associated with deleterious action of reactive oxygen species, mitochondrial dysfunction, and inflammatory cytokines. We investigated the use of curcumin (compared to vitamin E) in the treatment of NASH.