Trianthema portulacastrum (common farm weed in tropical countries) contains 21.5 ± 1.2% crude protein, similar to Lucerne with relatively low structural carbohydrate (neutral detergent fibre: 43.6 ± 3.1%). The mineral profile of T. portulacastrum was well above the critical level as far as calcium (0.3%), magnesium (0.2%), iron (50 ppm), copper (8 ppm), zinc (30.0 ppm) and manganese (50 ppm), w...

Consider a system consisting of a sender that wants to send a value to certain receivers. Byzantine agreement protocols [2, 7, 8] have been proposed to achieve this in the presence of arbitrary failures. The imposed requirement typically is that the fault-free receivers must all agree on the same value [7, 8]. (Dolev [2] analyzes a somewhat weaker form of agreement). It has been shown that such...

In this study, calcium carbonate crystals were obtained by mixing of calcium chloride and sodium carbonate in the presence of biopolymer, carboxymethyl inulin (CMI). The effect of the feed rate of reactant and the initial [Ca] concentration was investigated. The produced calcium carbonate (CaCO3) crystals were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spect...

A hallmark of biopolymer networks is their sensitivity to stress, reflected by pronounced nonlinear elastic stiffening. Here, we demonstrate a distinct dynamical nonlinearity in biopolymer networks consisting of filamentous actin cross-linked by α-actinin-4. Applied stress delays the onset of relaxation and flow, markedly enhancing gelation and extending the regime of solidlike behavior to much...

Titanium is widely used as a bone implant material due to its biocompatibility and high resilience. Since its Young's modulus differs from bone tissue, the resulting "stress shielding" could lead to scaffold loosening. However, by using a scaffold-shaped geometry, the Young's modulus can be adjusted. Also, a porous geometry enables vascularisation and bone ingrowth inside the implant itself. Ad...

The development of protein-based vaccines remains a major challenge in the fields of immunology and drug delivery. Although numerous protein antigens have been identified that can generate immunity to infectious pathogens, the development of vaccines based on protein antigens has had limited success because of delivery issues. In this article, an acid-sensitive microgel material is synthesized ...

Crosslinked polyethylenimines (PEIs) have been frequently examined over the past decade since they can maintain the transfection efficiency of commercially available, 25k branched PEI, but exhibit less cytotoxicity. The argument is often made that the degradability of such polymers, generally synthesized with either disulfide or hydrolytically degradable crosslinkers, is critical to the high ef...