Water as carrier of information of heat shock and drug effect between two groups of Adhatoda vasica plants

Adhatoda vasica Nees plants were grown in 50 earthen pots, which were divided into 5 batches A, B, C, D, and E. Of these A, B and C, D were arranged into two separate parallel pairs. One leaf of each plant of an adjacent pair was immersed in sterile tap water in a beaker. Adjacent beakers in each pair A B or C D were connected by polythene tubes containing wet cotton threads. One leaf of each plant of A was given heat shock by immersing a leaf in hot water for 5 min. One leaf of each plant of C was treated with Cantharis vesicatoria 200c. Batch E served as the unstressed and untreated control. One hour after heat shock or drug treatment all the leaves were harvested and their proteins were extracted by chilled protein extraction buffer. Proteins were separated by Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography (FPLC). Protein profiles of A, B and C, D showed marked similarity with respect to expression and repression of some proteins. It is concluded that the effect of heat shock and drug treatment is transmitted through water in the capillaries of cotton threads connecting the pairs of plants. It is assumed that heat shock or drug treatment altered locally the water structure in the leaves which was propagated through global network of water structure over the protein network in the whole plants, and from there to the interfacial water in the beakers and cotton threads. A homeopathic potency is thought to be specifically structured water which influences the water structure in the treated organism.

Appendix to Chapter 14

In the Forced March Sorites, there is no deductive path to a formal contradiction. Rather, a hapless subject is required to return a verdict in point of F-ness about each successive element in a soritical series for F. Competence requires the appropriate verdicts concerning the clear cases at the poles. Hence, since the verdicts required at the poles are different, the subject must at some point give some kind of differential responses to an adjacent pair of elements between which—for so the series is constructed—she can discern no relevant difference. Since it is a form of incompetence to purport to discriminate cases between which one discerns no relevant difference, it appears to follow that consistently competent use of F throughout the series is metaphysically impossible. It is argued that the intuitionist conception of vagueness provides the means to explain nicely why a differential response need not implicate discrimination.

INCREASING THE RIGIDITY OF THE SELF-CENTERING DEVICES OF LATHES

Increasing the rigidity of universal self-centering devices is one of the topical trends in the design of machine tooling. Calculation of the load distribution between the turns and teeth of a spiral rack and pinion mechanism is a complex engineering problem. When working on the article, it was revealed that an adjacent pair of turns and teeth that are in engagement does not always coincide with a geometrical adjacent pair due to the error in the execution of turns and teeth along the pitch and profile. This is based on experimental data and the proposition that errors in the pitch and profile of the spiral determine the nature of the working pressures in the engagement of the turns and teeth. The article discusses technical solutions in which the rigidity of self-centering devices increases without significant structural changes due to the establishment of the correspondence of the algorithm for changing the elastic properties of parts of the spiral-rack mechanism to the algorithm for changing the load between the bearing elements. Constructive solutions based on the implementation of elastic displacement of the first most loaded turn are proposed, which allows to reduce the interference between the tooth of the cam rack and the turn of the disk spiral. This circumstance contributes to the redistribution of the load in the engagement of the bearing elements of the spiral-rack mechanism. The tests of the developed structures were carried out, which gave positive results.

AMP Chain Graphs: Minimal Separators and Structure Learning Algorithms

This paper deals with chain graphs (CGs) under the Andersson–Madigan–Perlman (AMP) interpretation. We address the problem of finding a minimal separator in an AMP CG, namely, finding a set Z of nodes that separates a given non-adjacent pair of nodes such that no proper subset of Z separates that pair. We analyze several versions of this problem and offer polynomial time algorithms for each. These include finding a minimal separator from a restricted set of nodes, finding a minimal separator for two given disjoint sets, and testing whether a given separator is minimal. To address the problem of learning the structure of AMP CGs from data, we show that the PC-like algorithm is order dependent, in the sense that the output can depend on the order in which the variables are given. We propose several modifications of the PC-like algorithm that remove part or all of this order-dependence. We also extend the decomposition-based approach for learning Bayesian networks (BNs) to learn AMP CGs, which include BNs as a special case, under the faithfulness assumption. We prove the correctness of our extension using the minimal separator results. Using standard benchmarks and synthetically generated models and data in our experiments demonstrate the competitive performance of our decomposition-based method, called LCD-AMP, in comparison with the (modified versions of) PC-like algorithm. The LCD-AMP algorithm usually outperforms the PC-like algorithm, and our modifications of the PC-like algorithm learn structures that are more similar to the underlying ground truth graphs than the original PC-like algorithm, especially in high-dimensional settings. In particular, we empirically show that the results of both algorithms are more accurate and stabler when the sample size is reasonably large and the underlying graph is sparse

Pre-Processing and Surface Reconstruction of Points Cloud Based on Chord Angle Algorithm Technique

Although the rapid development in reverse engineering techniques, 3D laser scanners can be considered the modern technology used to digitize the 3D objects, but some troubles may be associate this process due to the environmental noises and limitation of the used scanners. So, in the present paper a data pre-processing algorithm has been proposed to obtain the necessary geometric features and mathematical representation of scanned object from its point cloud which obtained using 3D laser scanner (Matter and Form) through isolating the noised points. The proposed algorithm based on continuous calculations of chord angle between each adjacent pair of points in point cloud. A MATLAB program has been built to perform the proposed algorithm which implemented using a suggested case studies with cylinder and dome shape. The resulted point cloud from application the proposed algorithm and result of surface fitting for the case studies has been proved the proficiency of the proposed chord angle algorithm in pre-processing of data points and clean the point cloud, where the percent of data which was ignored as noisy data points according to proposed chord angle algorithm was arrived to (81.52%) and (75.01%)of total number of data points in point cloud for first and second case study respectively.

Characterizing the amount and variability of intramuscular fat deposition throughout pork loins using barrows and gilts from two sire lines

The objective was to determine the amount and variability of intramuscular fat (IMF) in a pork loin attributable to anatomical chop location, sex, and sire line. Pigs were sired by commercially available terminal Duroc boars selected for meat quality (MQ; n = 96) or lean growth (LG; n = 96) and equally split between barrows and gilts. After slaughter and fabrication, bone-in chops were removed from four locations of each left-side loin (A = 6th rib, B = 10th rib, C = last rib, and D = 4th lumbar vertebrae). An adjacent pair of chops from each location was collected and evaluated for visual color and marbling, subjective firmness, moisture and extractable lipid (IMF) (anterior chop), and Warner–Bratzler shear force (posterior chop). Data were analyzed using the MIXED procedure of SAS as a split-plot design. Homogeneity of variances was tested on raw data using Levene’s test of the GLM procedure and found to be heterogeneous. Thus, a two-variance model was fit using the REPEATED statement of the MIXED procedure, grouped by pig. The mivque(0) option of the VARCOMP procedure was used to calculate the proportion of variability that each factor contributed to the total variance. Barrows (3.64%) produced chops with greater (P < 0.01) IMF content than gilts (3.20%), and barrows (2.14) had greater (P < 0.01) IMF variability than gilts (1.23). Chops from MQ pigs (4.02%) exhibited greater (P < 0.01) IMF content than LG (2.82%), and MQ (1.76) had greater IMF variability (P < 0.01) than LG pigs (0.97). Chops from locations A (3.80%) and D (3.77%) had greater IMF than B (3.34%; P < 0.01), and A, B, and D had greater IMF than C (2.77%; P < 0.01). Variances of IMF also differed (A = 1.44, B = 1.59, C = 1.05, and D = 2.18; P = 0.01) across chop locations. Of the variability in IMF, 33.0% was attributed to sire line, 10.16% to chop location, and 4.01% to sex, with 52.83% not accounted for by these three factors. Location A chops were the most (P < 0.01) tender (2.57 kg) and C chops the least (P < 0.01) tender (2.93 kg), while B and D chops were intermediate and not different from each other. No differences in variability (P = 0.40) of tenderness were observed among chop locations (A = 0.31, kg B = 0.24 kg, C = 0.24 kg, and D = 0.23 kg). These results demonstrated that variability in tenderness values did not reflect the variability of IMF. In conclusion, chop location, sex, and sire line all contribute to the amount and variability of pork loin marbling.

Single-Site Binding of Pyrene to Poly(ester-Imide)s Incorporating Long Spacer Units: Prediction of NMR Resonance-Patterns from a Fractal Model

Co-polycondensation of the diimide-based diols<i> N</i>,<i>N</i>'-bis(2-hydroxyethyl)hexafluoro-isopropylidene-diphthalimide, (HFDI), and <i>N</i>,<i>N</i>'-bis(2-hydroxy-ethyl)naphthalene-1,4,5,8-tetracarboxylic-diimide, (NDI), with aliphatic diacyl chlorides ClOC(CH₂)<i>_x</i>COCl (<i>x</i> = 5 to 8) affords linear copoly(ester-imide)s. Such copolymers interact with pyrene via supramolecular binding of the polycyclic aromatic molecule at NDI residues. This results in upfield complexation shifts and sequence-related splittings of the NDI ¹H NMR resonances, but gives a very different resonance-pattern from the corresponding copolymer where <i>x</i> = 2. Computational modelling of the polymer with <i>x</i> = 5 suggests that, in this system, each pyrene molecule binds to just a single NDI residue rather than to an adjacent pair of NDI's in a tight chain-fold ("dual-site" binding) as found for <i>x</i> = 2. The new single-site binding model enables the pattern of ¹H NMR resonances for copolymers with longer spacers (<i>x</i> = 5 to 8) to be reproduced and assigned by simulation from sequence-specific shielding factors based on the fractal known as the fourth-quarter Cantor set. As this set also enables an understanding of dual-site binding systems, it evidently provides a general numerical framework for supramolecular sequence-analysis in binary copolymers.

Single-Site Binding of Pyrene to Poly(ester-Imide)s Incorporating Long Spacer Units: Prediction of NMR Resonance-Patterns from a Fractal Model

Co-polycondensation of the diimide-based diols<i> N</i>,<i>N</i>'-bis(2-hydroxyethyl)hexafluoro-isopropylidene-diphthalimide, (HFDI), and <i>N</i>,<i>N</i>'-bis(2-hydroxy-ethyl)naphthalene-1,4,5,8-tetracarboxylic-diimide, (NDI), with aliphatic diacyl chlorides ClOC(CH₂)<i>_x</i>COCl (<i>x</i> = 5 to 8) affords linear copoly(ester-imide)s. Such copolymers interact with pyrene via supramolecular binding of the polycyclic aromatic molecule at NDI residues. This results in upfield complexation shifts and sequence-related splittings of the NDI ¹H NMR resonances, but gives a very different resonance-pattern from the corresponding copolymer where <i>x</i> = 2. Computational modelling of the polymer with <i>x</i> = 5 suggests that, in this system, each pyrene molecule binds to just a single NDI residue rather than to an adjacent pair of NDI's in a tight chain-fold ("dual-site" binding) as found for <i>x</i> = 2. The new single-site binding model enables the pattern of ¹H NMR resonances for copolymers with longer spacers (<i>x</i> = 5 to 8) to be reproduced and assigned by simulation from sequence-specific shielding factors based on the fractal known as the fourth-quarter Cantor set. As this set also enables an understanding of dual-site binding systems, it evidently provides a general numerical framework for supramolecular sequence-analysis in binary copolymers.