• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.26 no.12
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• pp.1732-1741
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• 2013

Two experiments were conducted to determine physical and chemical properties of vermicelli waste (VW) and effect of VW inclusion levels on growth performance of broilers. In experiment 1, VW samples were randomly collected from vermicelli industry in Thailand to analyze nutritional composition. Vermicelli waste contained 9.96% moisture, 12.06% CP, 32.30% crude fiber (CF), and 0.57% ether extract (EE), as DM basis. The ratio of insoluble:soluble non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) was 43.4:8.9. A total of 120 chicks (6 pens per treatment and 10 chicks per pen) were fed a corn-soybean meal-based diet or 20% VW substituted diet to determine the apparent metabolizable energy corrected for nitrogen retention ($AME_n$) of VW. The $AME_n$ of VW was $1,844.7{\pm}130.71$ kcal/kg. In experiment 2, a total of 1,200 chicks were randomly allotted to 1 of 4 dietary treatments for 42-d growth assay. There were 300 chicks with 6 pens per treatment and 50 chicks per pen. The dietary treatments contained 0%, 5%, 10%, or 15% VW, respectively. All diets were formulated to be isocaloric and isonitrogenous. From 0 to 18 d of age chicks fed VW diets had higher (p<0.001) feed conversion ratio (FCR) compared with those fed the control diet. No difference was observed during grower and finisher phase (19 to 42 d). Chicks fed VW diets had lower relative weight of abdominal fat (p<0.001) but higher relative weight of gizzard (p<0.05) than those of chicks fed the control diet. Increasing VW inclusion levels increased ileal digesta viscosity (p<0.05) and intestinal villus height of chicks (p<0.001). For apparent total tract digestibility assay, there were 4 metabolic cages of 6 chicks that were fed experimental treatment diets (the same as in the growth assay) in a 10-d total excreta collection. Increasing VW inclusion levels linearly decreased (p<0.05) apparent total tract digestibility of DM and CF.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.219-226
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• 2015

The anticancer activity of a methanolic extract from lemon leaves (MLL) was assessed in MCF-7-SC human breast cancer stem cells. MLL induced apoptosis in MCF-7-SC, as evidenced by increased apoptotic body formation, sub-G1 cell population, annexin V-positive cells, Bax/Bcl-2 ratio, as well as proteolytic activation of caspase-9 and caspase-3, and degradation of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) protein. Concomitantly, MLL induced the formation of acidic vesicular organelles, increased LC3-II accumulation, and reduced the activation of Akt, mTOR, and p70S6K, suggesting that MLL initiates an autophagic progression in MCF-7-SC via the Akt/mTOR pathway. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a critical step in the acquisition of the metastatic state, is an attractive target for therapeutic interventions directed against tumor metastasis. At low concentrations, MLL induced anti-metastatic effects on MCF-7-SC by inhibiting the EMT process. Exposure to MLL also led to an increase in the epithelial marker E-cadherin, but decreased protein levels of the mesenchymal markers Snail and Slug. Collectively, this study provides evidence that lemon leaves possess cytotoxicity and anti-metastatic properties. Therefore, MLL may prove to be beneficial as a medicinal plant for alternative novel anticancer drugs and nutraceutical products.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

This study investigated the structural, dielectric, ferroelectric, and strain properties of (0.98-x)Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3-0.02BiFeO3-xSrTiO3 (BNT-BF-100xST, x＝0.20, 0.22, 0.24, 0.26, and 0.28). All samples were successfully synthesized using the conventional solid-state reaction method and sintered at 1,175℃ for 2 h. The average grain size of the BNT-BF-100x ceramics decreased with increasing ST content. Furthermore, we observed that the ferroelectric- relaxor transition temperature (TF-R) decreased with increasing ST content, which eventually vanished in the BNT-BF-24ST ceramics. The results indicated that a ferroelectric to relaxor phase transition could be induced by ST modification. Consequently, a large electromechanical strain of 633 pm/V at 4 kV/mm was observed for the BNT-BF-26ST ceramics. These results imply that our materials have the competitive advantage of larger strain under lower operating field conditions compared with other BNT-based lead-free piezoelectric ceramics. We expect that BNT-BF-ST lead-free piezoelectric ceramics are promising candidates as a novel ternary BNT-based system and can find potential applications in actuators.