Discrepancy on the flavor compound affect the quality of Taiping Houkui tea from different production regions.

Taiping Houkui (TPHK) is prevalent green tea in China, its flavor quality is significantly influenced by different production regions. However, the key flavor compounds responsible for these discrepancies remain unclearly. Here, TPHK samples were produced from fresh leaves of 'Shidacha 2' cultivar planted in 14 distinct production regions. In 14 TPHK samples, a total of 33 non-volatile compounds were identified and quantified. Partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) reveal that theanine and glutamate were the main umami compounds, caffeine imparted with bitterness, which collectively contributed to the variation in the taste flavor of TPHK across different production regions. Furthermore, the profiles of 51 volatile compounds were determined, integrated PLS-DA with odor activity values of volatiles indicated that linalool (165.7-888.5) and geraniol (11.9-141.4) affecting the floral aroma of TPHK among different production regions. Our findings revealed the critical compounds that contributed to the effect of production regions on flavor quality of TPHK.

Cultivation of Encapsulated Primary Human B Lymphocytes: A First Step toward a Bioartificial Germinal Center.

Polyelectrolyte microcapsules based on sodium cellulose sulfate (SCS) and poly-diallyl-dimethyl-ammonium chloride (PDADMAC) have previously been proposed as a suitable ex vivo microenvironment for the cultivation and differentiation of primary human T lymphocytes. Here, the same system is investigated for the cultivation of human primary B cells derived from adult tonsillar tissue. Proliferation and differentiation into subtypes are followed and compared to suspension cultures of B cells from the same pool performed in parallel. Total cell expansion is somewhat lower in the capsules than in the suspension cultures. More importantly, however, the differentiation of the initially mainly memory B cells into various subtypes, in particular into plasma cell (PC), shows significant differences. Clearly, the microenvironment provided by the microcapsules is beneficial for an accelerated induction of a germinal center-like B cell phenotype and afterward supports the long-term survival of the PC cells. Then, varying the encapsulation conditions (i.e., presence of human serum and dedicated cytokines in the capsule core) provides a tool for finetuning the B cell response. Hence, this methodology is suggested to pave the way toward ex vivo development of human immune organoids.

Distributed Jointly Sparse Multitask Learning Over Networks.

Distributed data processing over networks has received a lot of attention due to its wide applicability. In this paper, we consider the multitask problem of in-network distributed estimation. For the multitask problem, the unknown parameter vectors (tasks) for different nodes can be different. Moreover, considering some real application scenarios, it is also assumed that there are some similarities among the tasks. Thus, the intertask cooperation is helpful to enhance the estimation performance. In this paper, we exploit an additional special characteristic of the vectors of interest, namely, joint sparsity, aiming to further enhance the estimation performance. A distributed jointly sparse multitask algorithm for the collaborative sparse estimation problem is derived. In addition, an adaptive intertask cooperation strategy is adopted to improve the robustness against the degree of difference among the tasks. The performance of the proposed algorithm is analyzed theoretically, and its effectiveness is verified by some simulations.

Complex-valued filtering based on the minimization of complex-error entropy.

In this paper, we consider the training of complex-valued filter based on the information theoretic method. We first generalize the error entropy criterion to complex domain to present the complex error entropy criterion (CEEC). Due to the difficulty in estimating the entropy of complex-valued error directly, the entropy bound minimization (EBM) method is used to compute the upper bounds of the entropy of the complex-valued error, and the tightest bound selected by the EBM algorithm is used as the estimator of the complex-error entropy. Then, based on the minimization of complex-error entropy (MCEE) and the complex gradient descent approach, complex-valued learning algorithms for both the (linear) transverse filter and the (nonlinear) neural network are derived. The algorithms are applied to complex-valued linear filtering and complex-valued nonlinear channel equalization to demonstrate their effectiveness and advantages.

A thermostable recombinant transaldolase with high activity over a broad pH range.

Thermophilic enzymes are in high demand for various applications due to their prolonged lifetimes and high reaction rates at elevated temperatures. In this work, an open reading frame TM0295, which encodes a putative transaldolase (TAL) from a hyper-thermophilic microorganism, Thermotoga maritima, was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. The enzyme activity of transaldolase at high temperatures (e.g., at 80 °C) was reported here for the first time. The recombinant T. maritima transaldolase was extremely thermostable, with a half-life time of 198 and 13.0 h at 60 °C and 80 °C, respectively. The estimated total turn-over number was 1.5 × 10(6) mol of product per mol of enzyme at 80 °C. This enzyme also exhibited high activities within a broad pH range of 6.0-9.0. This ultra-thermostable TAL with high activity shows great potential for use in such applications as the production of enzymatic biofuels production and the synthesis of high-value carbohydrates by cell-free synthetic pathway biotransformation.