Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In 2015, about 282,000 tons of pomegranate fruit were grown in California, with an economic value of $115.4 million . Pomegranate consists of three major parts , namely pomegranate peel , pomegranate seed , and pomegranate aril that is the flesh part for pomegranate juice production. Teh studied the different fruit part distribution of 5 pomegranate cultivars grown…

A third use of PMN is in genome annotation. Gupta et al. used RNA-seq data from blueberry to annotate a draft genome sequence for the plant. Gene models were BLASTed against metabolic genes from AraCyc and other species-specific pathway genome databases, and the results were used to improve the annotations. The annotations were then used to examine…

Differences in the relative strength and role of the stream wise and cross-stream turbulent eddies in fire spread and the relative importance of some terms of the TKE budget over others at each of the measurement heights have been discussed, based on fire intensity and the surface-fire environment. Shear production and buoyancy production in sub-canopy surface…

Crew members could taste the food before making their selections. As mentioned before, taste testing the food ahead of time could promote greater food satisfaction by getting crew members accustomed to the food. However, they should be reminded that in the spacecraft, they may experience digestive discomfort and they may therefore want to select foods that would…

Targeting these mediators may be a novel therapeutic strategy for anti-fibrosis and anti-tumor treatment. Many small molecules suppress EMT by targeting these mediators, including commercial drugs and compounds derived from natural products. In addition, these compounds that target EMT have shown anticancer effects on multiple types of cancer. For example, luteolin not only attenuated gastric…

The other pesticides tested caused only low rates of acute mortality in H. convergens and were considered harmless. However, in addition to direct effects on mortality, it is also important to test for potential sublethal effects of pesticide exposure, such as effects on development time, sex ratio, fecundity, or fertility, before concluding whether a particular…

We specifically highlight studies that address assembly processes during seed development and maturation, as these stages are understudied compared to seed dormancy and germination, and they are likely the source of microbes that persist between plant generations . Lastly, we suggest future lines of research to gain a more mechanistic, scale-explicit understanding of seed microbiome…

There is no known effective regimen for this rare malignancy. Several case reports describe treatment regimens involving surgical resection with adjuvant chemotherapy or radiation treatment; however, survival rates are exceedingly low. The presence of disseminated metastases, present in many patients at diagnosis, precludes surgical resection, and in most cases no treatment is able to be…

In comparison with synthetic chemicals, natural ingredients are generally considered to be cheaper and more widely available, but still exhibit comparable benefits. Among natural ingredients, bio-flavonoids, including hesperidin, apigenin, epigallocatechin gallate, and resveratrol, exhibit a wide spectrum of biological activities, including antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antiaging, and UV protection, while improving cutaneous functions. In this article, we…

We have selected to characterize the micro-biota of 15 meals that exemplify the typical meals consumed as part of three different dietary patterns in order to determine the average total amount of daily microbes ingested via food and beverages and their composition in the average American adult consuming these typical foods/diets: the Average American dietary pattern focused on…