This study investigated the effects of three proteases (trypsin, pepsin and chymotrypsin) on the hydrolysis efficiency of porcine placenta and the molecular weight (Mw) distributions of the placental hydrolysates. Because placenta was made up of insoluble collagen, the placenta was gelatinized by applying thermal treatment at 90 ℃ for 1 h and used as the sample. The placental hydrolyzing activities of the enzymes at varying concentrations and incubation times were determined by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and gel permeation chromatography (GPC). Based on the SDS-PAGE, the best placental hydrolysis efficiency was observed in trypsin treatments where all peptide bands disappeared after 1 h of incubation as compared to 6 h of chymotrypsin. Pepsin hardly hydrolyzed the placenta as compared to the other two enzymes. The Mw distribution revealed that the trypsin produced placental peptides with Mw of 106 and 500 Da. Peptides produced by chymotrypsin exhibited broad ranges of Mw distribution (1-20 kDa), while the pepsin treatment showed Mw greater than 7 kDa. For comparisons of pre-treatments, the subcritical water processing (37.5 MPa and 200 ℃ of raw placenta improved the efficiency of tryptic digestions to a greater level than that of a preheating treatment (90 ℃ for 1 h). Consequently, subcritical water processing followed by enzymatic digestions has the potential of an advanced collagen hydrolysis technique.

The possibility that interference between motor responses contributes to dual-task costs has long been neglected, yet is supported by several recent studies. There are two competing hypotheses regarding this response-related interference. The motor-bottleneck hypothesis asserts that the motor stage of Task 1 triggers a refractory period that delays the motor stage of Task 2. The response-monitoring hypothesis asserts that monitoring of the Task-1 motor response delays the responseselection stage of Task 2. Both hypotheses predict lengthening of Task-2 response time (RT2) when Task 1 requires motor processing relative to when it does not. However, they assume different loci for the response-related bottleneck, and therefore make different predictions regarding (a) the interaction between Task-1 motor requirement and the Task-2 difficulty effect as measured by RT2 and (b) the premotoric durations and motoric durations of Task 2 as measured by lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs). To test these predictions, we conducted two experiments manipulating the Task-1 motor requirement (Go vs. NoGo) and Task-2 response-selection difficulty, as well as the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). Task-1 motor processing significantly lengthened RT2, suggesting response-related interference. Importantly, the Task-1 motor response reduced the Task-2 difficulty effect at the short SOA, indicating postponement of the Task-2 motor stage, consistent with the motor-bottleneck hypothesis. Further consistent with the motor-bottleneck hypothesis, the Task-2 LRP indicated a consistent premotoric duration of Task 2 regardless of Task-1 motor requirement. These results are difficult to reconcile with the response-monitoring hypotheses, which places the response-related bottleneck before the response-selection stage of Task 2. The results also have important implications regarding use of locus-of-slack logic in PRP studies.

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