Activity

Homology-based sequence analysis revealed that the protein-contained functional domains are similar to sugar transport regulation and had a high sequence homology with other Solanaceae species. The sucrose metabolism-related enzyme’s activity varied significantly from ambient to eCO2 in 90-day and 120-day samples along with sugars. This study provides fundamental information on sugar metabolism genes to eCO2 in goji berry to enhance fruit quality to climate change.CO2 enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) technology is a competitive strategy to improve oil field economic returns and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the arbitrary emissions or combustion of the associated gas, which mainly consists of CO2 and CH4, will cause the aggravation of the greenhouse effect and a huge waste of resources. In this paper, the high-performance facilitated transport multilayer composite membrane for CO2/CH4 separation was prepared by individually adjusting the membrane structure of each layer. The effect of test conditions on the CO2/CH4 separation performance was systematically investigated. The membrane exhibits high CO2 permeance of 3.451 × 10-7 mol·m-2·s-1·Pa-1 and CO2/CH4 selectivity of 62 at 298 K and 0.15 MPa feed gas pressure. The cost analysis was investigated by simulating the two-stage system. When the recovery rate and purity of CH4 are 98%, the minimum specific cost of separating CO2/CH4 (45/55 vol%) can be reduced to 0.046 $·Nm-3 CH4. The excellent short-to-mid-term stability indicates the great potential of large industrial application in the CH4 recovery and CO2 reinjection from oilfield associated gas.A breathing crack is a typical form of structural damage attributed to long-term dynamic loads acting on engineering structures. Traditional linear damage identification methods suffer from the loss of valuable information when structural responses are essentially non-linear. To deal with this issue, bispectrum analysis is employed to study the non-linear dynamic characteristics of a beam structure containing a breathing crack, from the perspective of numerical simulation and experimental validation. A finite element model of a cantilever beam is built with contact elements to simulate a breathing crack. The effects of crack depth and location, excitation frequency and magnitude, and measurement noise on the non-linear behavior of the beam are studied systematically. The result demonstrates that bispectral analysis can effectively identify non-linear damage in different states with strong noise immunity. Compared with existing methods, the bispectral non-linear analysis can efficiently extract non-linear features of a breathing crack, and it can overcome the limitations of existing linear damage detection methods used for non-linear damage detection. This study’s outcome provides a theoretical basis and a paradigm for damage identification in cracked structures.The dysregulation of cellular metabolism is a hallmark of ageing. To understand the metabolic changes that occur as a consequence of the ageing process and to find biomarkers for age-related diseases, we conducted metabolomic analyses of the brain, heart, kidney, liver, lung and spleen in young (9-10 weeks) and old (96-104 weeks) wild-type mice [mixed genetic background of 129/J and C57BL/6] using NMR spectroscopy. We found differences in the metabolic fingerprints of all tissues and distinguished several metabolites to be altered in most tissues, suggesting that they may be universal biomarkers of ageing. In addition, we found distinct tissue-clustered sets of metabolites throughout the organism. The associated metabolic changes may reveal novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of ageing and age-related diseases. Moreover, the identified metabolite biomarkers could provide a sensitive molecular read-out to determine the age of biologic tissues and organs and to validate the effectiveness and potential off-target effects of senolytic drug candidates on both a systemic and tissue-specific level.Corn fiber gum (CFG) -soy protein isolate (SPI) double-network (DN) hydrogels were fabricated using laccase and a heat treatment process, in which CFG solution formed the first gel network via laccase oxidation, while SPI formed the second network through heating, as described in our previous research. The aim of this study was to investigate the influences of CFG/SPI constituents (CFG concentration 0-3%, w/v; SPI concentration 8-10%, w/v) and pH values (5.0-7.5) on the textural properties, microstructures and water-holding capacities (WHC) of the CFG-SPI DN hydrogels. Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM) results showed an apparent phase separation when the CFG concentration was above 1% (w/v). The textural characteristics and WHC of most DN hydrogels were enhanced with increasing concentrations of CFG and SPI. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) observations revealed that the microstructures of DN hydrogels were converted from coarse and irregular to smooth and ordered as pH values increased from 5.0 to 7.5. Excellent textural properties and WHC were observed at pH 7.0. This study developed various CFG-SPI DN hydrogels with diverse textures and structures, governed by the concentrations of protein/polysaccharide and pH values, and also contributes to the understanding of gum-protein interactions in DN hydrogels obtained under different conditions.The use of High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) coupled with the use of DPPH* (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) as a derivatisation reagent is a novel approach to the analysis of antioxidant activity of honeys. check details The method facilitates the visualisation of individual constituents that contribute to the overall antioxidant activity of the honey, even if they are not yet chemically identified, and allows for the quantification of their antioxidant activity as gallic acid equivalents. The method supports a more in-depth study of the antioxidant activity of honey as it allows for a comparative analysis of the antioxidant fingerprints of honeys of different floral origin and is able to capture differences in their individual bioactive constituents. Further, it supports the tracking of changes in antioxidant activity of individual honey constituents over time upon exposure to different temperature conditions, which demonstrates the potential value of the method for in-process quality control.