Mississippi State University

About: Mississippi State University is a education organization based out in Starkville, Mississippi, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Catfish. The organization has 14115 authors who have published 28594 publications receiving 700030 citations. The organization is also known as: The Mississippi State University of Agriculture and Applied Science & Mississippi State University of Agriculture and Applied Science.

Dietary Oligofructose and Inulin Protect Mice from Enteric and Systemic Pathogens and Tumor Inducers

Abstract: Prebiotics induce changes in the population and metabolic characteristics of the gastrointestinal bacteria, modulate enteric and systemic immune functions, and provide laboratory rodents with resistance to carcinogens that promote colorectal cancer. There is less known about protection from other challenges. Therefore, mice of the B6C3F1 strain were fed for 6 wk a control diet with 100 g/kg cellulose or one of two experimental diets with the cellulose replaced entirely by the nondigestible oligosaccharides (NDO) oligofructose and inulin. From each diet, 25 mice were challenged by a promoter of colorectal cancer (1,2-dimethylhydrazine), B16F10 tumor cells, the enteric pathogen Candida albicans (enterically), or were infected systemically with Listeria monocytogenes or Salmonella typhimurium. The incidences of aberrant crypt foci in the distal colon after exposure to dimethylhdrazine for mice fed inulin (53%) and oligofructose (54%) were lower than in control mice (76%; P 80% for control mice), but fewer of the mice fed inulin died (60%; P < 0.05), with mice fed oligofructose again intermediate. The mechanistic basis for the increased resistance provided by dietary NDO was not elucidated, but the findings are consistent with enhanced immune functions in response to changes in the composition and metabolic characteristics of the bacteria resident in the gastrointestinal tract.

A Study on Breath Acetone in Diabetic Patients Using a Cavity Ringdown Breath Analyzer: Exploring Correlations of Breath Acetone With Blood Glucose and Glycohemoglobin A1C

Abstract: Acetone is qualitatively known as a biomarker of diabetes; however, the quantitative information on acetone concentration in diabetic breath is incomplete, and the knowledge of correlations of breath acetone with diabetic diagnostic parameters, namely, blood glucose (BG) and glycohemoglobin A1C (A1C), are unknown. We utilized a pilot-scale breath acetone analyzer based on the cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS) technique to conduct breath tests with 34 Type 1 diabetic (T1D), ten Type 2 diabetic (T2D) patients, and 15 apparently healthy individuals. Relations between breath acetone and BG, A1C, and several other bio indices, such as the type of diabetes, onset-time, gender, age, and weight were investigated. Our observations show that a linear correlation between the mean group acetone and the mean group BG level does exist (R = 0.98, P < 0.02) when all the T1D subjects tested are grouped by different BG levels, 40-100, 101-150, 151-200, and 201-419 mg/dL. Similarly, among the T1D subjects studied, when their A1C's are grouped by < 7, 7-9.9, and 10-13, a linear correlation between the mean group A1C and the mean group acetone concentration is observed (R = 0.98, P < 0.02). No strong correlations are observed when the BG and A1C numbers are not grouped. The mean breath acetone concentration in the T1D subjects studied in this work is determined to be 2.19 ppmv (parts per million by volume), which is higher than the mean breath acetone concentration, 0.48 ppmv, in the 15 healthy people tested.

Achieving Restoration Success: Myths in Bottomland Hardwood Forests

Abstract: Restoration of bottomland hardwood forests is the subject of considerable interest in the southern United States, but restoration success is elusive. Techniques for establishing bottomland tree species are well developed, yet problems have occurred in operational programs. Current plans for restoration on public and private land suggest that as many as 200,000 hectares could be restored in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley alone. The ideal of ecological restoration is to reestablish a completely functioning ecosystem. Although some argue that afforestation is incomplete restoration, it is a necessary and costly first step but not an easy task. The 1992 Wetlands Reserve Program in Mississippi, which failed on 90% of the area, illustrates the difficulty of broadly applying our knowledge of afforestation. In our view, the focus for ecological restoration should be to restore functions, rather than specifying some ambiguous natural state based on reference stands or pre-settlement forest conditions. We view restoration as one element in a continuum model of sustainable forest management, allowing us to prescribe restoration goals that incorporate landowner objectives. Enforcing the discipline of explicit objectives, with restoration expectations described in terms of predicted values of functions, causal mechanisms and temporal response trajectories, will hasten the development of meaningful criteria for restoration success. We present our observations about current efforts to restore bottomland hardwoods as nine myths, or statements of dubious origin, and at best partial truth.