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In the present study, we investigated the effect of melatonin on the preimplantation development of porcine parthenogenetic and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos. Parthenogenetic embryos were cultured in mNCSU-23 supplemented with various concentrations of melatonin for 7 days. The results revealed that 100 pM was the optimal concentration, which resulted in significantly increased cleavage and blastocyst formation rates. Additionally, 100 pM melatonin provided the highest increase in total cell number of blastocysts. Therefore, the subsequent experiments were performed with 100 pM melatonin. ROS level in 2-8 cell stage embryos in the presence or absence of melatonin was evaluated. Embryos cultured with melatonin showed significantly decreased ROS. Blastocysts cultured with melatonin for 7 days were analyzed by the TUNEL assay. It was observed that melatonin not only increased (P < 0.05) the total cell number but also decreased (P < 0.05) the rate of apoptotic nuclei. Blastocysts cultured with melatonin were assessed for the expression of apoptosis-related genes Bcl-xl and Bax, and of pluripotency marker gene Oct-4 by real-time quantitative PCR. Analysis of data showed that the expression of Bcl-xl was higher (1.7-fold) compared to the control while the expression of Bax was significantly decreased relative to the control (0.7-fold) (P < 0.05). Moreover, the expression of Oct-4 was 1.7-fold higher than the control. These results indicated that melatonin had beneficial effects on the development of porcine parthenogenetic embryos. Based on the findings of parthenogenetic embryos, we investigated the effect of melatonin on the development of porcine SCNT embryos. The results also demonstrated increased cleavage and blastocyst formation rates, and the total cell numbers in blastocysts were significantly higher when the embryos were cultured with melatonin. Therefore, these data suggested that melatonin may have important implications for improving porcine preimplantation SCNT embryo development.

The interaction of a dilute dispersion of small heavy particles with homogeneous and isotropic air turbulence has been investigated. Stationary turbulence (at Taylor micro-scale Reynolds number of 230) with small mean flow was created in a nearly spherical sealed chamber by means of eight synthetic jet actuators. Two-dimensional particle image velocimetry was used to measure global turbulence statistics in the presence of spherical glass particles that had a diameter of 165 $\umu$m, which was similar to the Kolmogorov length scale of the flow. Experiments were conducted at two different turbulence levels and particle mass loadings up to 0.3. The particles attenuated the fluid turbulence kinetic energy and viscous dissipation rate with increasing mass loadings. Attenuation levels reached 35–40% for the kinetic energy (which was significantly greater than previous numerical studies) and 40–50% for the dissipation rate at the highest mass loadings. The main source of fluid turbulence kinetic energy production in the chamber was the speakers, but the loss of potential energy of the settling particles also resulted in a significant amount of production of extra energy. The sink of fluid energy in the chamber was due to the ordinary viscous dissipation and extra dissipation caused by particles. The extra dissipation was greatly underestimated by conventional models.