Amanda Martin

The production of broccoli and cauliflower generates large amounts of vegetable by-products that often accumulate in the environment; however, these residues have nutritional value for ruminants. This study evaluated the effects of including industrial broccoli and cauliflower waste in the diet of dairy ewes on feed intake, metabolic health and milk production and composition. Thirty Assaf dairy ewes in mid-lactation were divided into three groups, with 10 animals per group. The control group (CON) received a total mixed ratio (TMR) ad libitum, the broccoli group (BRO) received the same TMR plus 1.5 kg FM/d of fresh chopped broccoli, and the cauliflower (CAU) group received the TMR plus 1.5 kg/d of fresh chopped cauliflower. The trial lasted 42 d, divided into 21 d for adaptation and 21 d of measurements, where feed intake and milk yield were recorded daily. Milk samples were taken once a week. At the end of the experiment, fresh cheese was prepared, using the milk from each feeding group. A sensory analysis was carried out, to detect eventual differences in flavour among treatments. Blood samples were taken to analyse the biochemical profile and acid-base status. The animals of the BRO and the CAU groups ate all the vegetal offered without decreasing the daily intake of TMR or affecting milk production. No differences were observed between groups in the biochemical profile or the blood acid-base status, with the exception of the urea concentration, which was higher in the BRO group compared to the control (55.2, 61.8, 57.2 mg/dL for CON, BRO and CAU; P= 0.022). Regarding milk composition, the most relevant differences were observed in protein content, being higher in the BRO group (P=0.006) than in the CON and CAU groups, and in the fatty acids profile, which showed an increase in the saturated fatty acids content (P=0.012) and a decrease in the monounsaturated fatty acids content (P=0.005) in the groups supplemented with broccoli and cauliflower. In conclusion, supplementation with 1.5 kg of broccoli or cauliflower in lactating sheep did not affect feed intake, milk production or health status of the animals and had little impact on the quality of milk.

© 2016 American Chemical Society.High quality WSe2 films have been grown on bilayer graphene with layer-by-layer control of thickness using molecular beam epitaxy. The combination of angle-resolved photoemission, scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy, and optical absorption measurements reveal the atomic and electronic structures evolution and optical response of WSe2/BLG. We observe that a bilayer of WSe2 is a direct bandgap semiconductor, when integrated in a BLG-based heterostructure, thus shifting the direct-indirect band gap crossover to trilayer WSe2. In the monolayer limit, WSe2 shows a spin-splitting of 475 meV in the valence band at the K point, the largest value observed among all the MX2 materials. The exciton binding energy of monolayer-WSe2/BLG is found to be 0.21 eV, a value that is orders of magnitude larger than that of conventional three-dimensional semiconductors, yet small as compared to other two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogennides semiconductors. Finally, our finding regarding the overall modification of the electronic structure by an alkali metal surface electron doping opens a route to further control the electronic properties of TMDCs.

© 2015 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. The AAA+ ATPase Vps4 disassembles ESCRT-III and is essential for HIV-1 budding and other pathways. Vps4 is a paradigmatic member of a class of hexameric AAA+ ATPases that disassemble protein complexes without degradation. To distinguish between local displacement versus global unfolding mechanisms for complex disassembly, we carried out hydrogen/deuterium exchange during Saccharomyces cerevisiae Vps4 disassembly of a chimeric Vps24-2 ESCRT-III filament. EX1 exchange behavior shows that Vps4 completely unfolds ESCRT-III substrates on a time scale consistent with the disassembly reaction. The established unfoldase ClpX showed the same pattern, thus demonstrating a common unfolding mechanism. Vps4 hexamers containing a single cysteine residue in the pore loops were cross-linked to ESCRT-III subunits containing unique cysteines within the folded core domain. These data support a mechanism in which Vps4 disassembles its substrates by completely unfolding them and threading them through the central pore.

Initially developed for tasks related to computer graphics, graphics processing units are increasingly being used for general purpose processing, including scientific and engineering applications. In this contribution, we have compared the performance of two graphics cards that belong to the parallel computing Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform with two C++ and Java multi-threading implementations, using as an example of computation a brute-force attack on Hitag2, a well-known remote keyless entry application. The results allow us to provide valuable information regarding the compared capabilities of the tested platforms and to confirm that such a weak encryption system could be broken in less than a day with medium cost equipment.

The distinctive security features of the Spanish electronic national identity card, known as Documento Nacional de Identidad electrónico, allow us to propose the usage of this cryptographic smart card in an authentication framework that can be used during the registration and login phases of internet services where the validation of the user’s age and real identity are key elements, as it is the case for example of the so-called social networks. Using this mechanism with NFC-capable devices, the identity and age of the potential user can be determined, allowing or denying the access to the service based on that information.