Anthocyanin and colour changes during processing of pomegranate (Punica granatum L., cv. Hicaznar) juice from sacs and whole fruit

The effects of clarification and pasteurisation on anthocyanins (ACNs) and the colour of pomegranate juice (PJ) produced from sacs and whole fruits were investigated. Clarification caused a loss of 4% of ACNs in juice from sacs (JFS) and a loss of 19% in juice from whole fruit (JFWF). After pasteurisation, there was an 8–14% and 13–9% loss of ACNs from unclarified and clarified JFS and JFWF samples, respectively. Polymeric colour was very high even in unclarified samples (25–29%). Compared to JFS, higher polymeric colour was formed in JFWF. HPLC analyses of PJ revealed that cyanidin-3,5-diglucoside was the major ACN, followed by cyanidin-3-glucoside and delphinidin-3-glucoside. Cyanidin-3,5-diglucoside showed higher stability to clarification and pasteurisation than cyanidin-3-glucoside in both PJ samples. Cold clarification with only gelatin is recommended for PJ. To prevent excessive ACN loss and the formation of brown colouring, PJ should be subjected to minimal heating.     

Improvement of Silver Extraction by Ultrafine Grinding Prior to Cyanide Leaching of the Plant Tailings of a Refractory Silver Ore

Ultrafine grinding (UFG) was proposed as a pretreatment method prior to cyanide leaching of old plant tailings of a refractory silver ore. Direct cyanidation of the as-received tailings (d₈₀: 100 µm) led to a low silver extraction of only ≤43% over 24 h. A size-based diagnostic study has demonstrated that the refractoriness of the tailings is essentially physical in character. Therefore, effects of particle size/UFG (d₉₉: 5–75 µm), concentrations of NaCN (0.75–2.25 g/L) and Pb(NO₃)₂ (0–500 g/t) on the extraction of silver were investigated using a Box–Behnken design. The statistical analysis of the experimental data (%Ag extraction at 1 h) revealed that particle size/UFG was the most significant parameter for the extraction of silver, which was substantially improved after UFG. A positive effect of increasing the concentration of NaCN was also observed particularly at finer particle sizes while the effect of concentration of Pb(NO₃)₂ was insignificant. Almost complete extraction for silver (i.e., ≥99%) was demonstrated to be possible at even higher concentrations of cyanide (>2.25 g/L NaCN) when using the finest material (d₉₉: 5 µm) over only 1 h of leaching. Albeit, the consumption of cyanide tended to increase with UFG or increasing the initial concentration of cyanide. The findings showed that UFG can be used as a suitable and environmentally sound pretreatment method to improve the extraction of silver from the refractory silver ore tailings. The diagnostic approach adopted in the current study has proved to be a useful analytical tool to determine the amenability of the ore to ultrafine-grinding as a pretreatment process.     

Grayanotoxin-III Detection and Antioxidant Activity of Mad Honey

“Mad honey” is a complex mixture of numerous chemicals produced by honeybees from Rhododendron flowers. Consumption of mad honey leads to diarrhea, perspiration, dizziness, changes in consciousness, syncope, diplopia, as well as blurred vision, hypotension, and bradycardia due to the presence of grayanotoxins (GTXs). Therefore, it is important to detect the level grayanotoxins in mad honey. Besides its toxicity, mad honey also has antioxidant activity. This study was designed to determine the level of grayanotoxin-III toxin and antioxidant activity of ten different mad honey samples collected from the Black Sea region of Turkey. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was used for the quantitation of grayanotoxin-III. Antioxidant activity was evaluated using total phenolic contents, total ferric reducing antioxidant power, scavenging of 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl and 3-(2-pyridyl)-5, 6-diphenyl-1,2,4-triazine-4’,4’’-disulfonic acid radicals. Quantities of grayanotoxin-III levels ranged from 68.754 to 0.701 µg grayanotoxin-III/g honey. Mad honey MH7 from Artvin/Hopa had the highest grayanotoxin-III level. Although there were varying levels of grayanotoxin-III, mad honey samples were outstanding in terms of antioxidant activity. MH₃ had the highest antioxidant potential. Although toxicity effect comprises, a metered dose of mad honey might also be explored as a potential source in clinical trials due to high bioactivity levels.     

One pot synthesis of (La,Sr)CoO3/(La,Sr)2CoO4 for IT-SOFCs cathodes

It is well known that hetero-interfaces in (La,Sr)CoO₃/(La,Sr)₂CoO₄ (LSC_113/214) are beneficial in catalyzing ORR for SOFC cathodes. This can be achieved by synthesizing the individual phases and mixing them together. In this study, so as to maximize the hetero interfaces, an alternative method was used in which one pot Pechini method was employed to synthesize a two-phase structure. LSC_113/214 two phase structures from one precursors solution were successfully synthesized without the formation of any undesired third phase for the first time. It was found that a minimum temperature of 800 °C was necessary so as to obtain the fully crystallized dual phase powder. Two phase structures of molar fractions from 0.40 to 0.60 was targeted and were successfully obtained with some deviations. Impedance measurements were carried out on porous conventional symmetric cells fabricated with the synthesized dual phase powders between 400 and 700 °C. The dual phase powders had improved electrode performance as compared to single phase and physically mixed powders, but this was limited down to 500 °C.     

Extraction of left ventricle borders with local and global priors from echocardiograms

This paper presents a novel technique for the extraction of the left ventricle borders from echocardiograms with prior information. Although the literature includes many successful prior based methods, priors that include both image and non-image related features are rare for the contour extraction. We classify these features as local and global priors where the local priors refer to the locally definable features of the target borders and global priors refer to the geometric shape properties. The local priors, which include image, motion, and local shape information, are learned with AdaBoost. The scores produced by AdaBoost for the target images are combined with the global shape prior under a level set framework. The main contributions of this paper are to learn different types of local features efficiently with machine learning and to combine these features with the geometric shape information for the contour extraction task. The system is validated on the real echocardiograms and synthetic images. The results indicate that using local and global priors together produces better extraction results and the contours extracted by the proposed system are in accord with the expert delineated borders.     

Formalizing and appling compliance patterns for business process compliance

Today’s enterprises demand a high degree of compliance of business processes to meet diverse regulations and legislations. Several industrial studies have shown that compliance management is a daunting task, and organizations are still struggling and spending billions of dollars annually to ensure and prove their compliance. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive compliance management framework with a main focus on design-time compliance management as a first step towards a preventive lifetime compliance support. The framework enables the automation of compliance-related activities that are amenable to automation, and therefore can significantly reduce the expenditures spent on compliance. It can help experts to carry out their work more efficiently, cut the time spent on tedious manual activities, and reduce potential human errors. An evident candidate compliance activity for automation is the compliance checking, which can be achieved by utilizing formal reasoning and verification techniques. However, formal languages are well known of their complexity as only versed users in mathematical theories and formal logics are able to use and understand them. However, this is generally not the case with business and compliance practitioners. Therefore, in the heart of the compliance management framework, we introduce the Compliance Request Language (CRL), which is formally grounded on temporal logic and enables the abstract pattern-based specification of compliance requirements. CRL constitutes a series of compliance patterns that spans three structural facets of business processes; control flow, employed resources and temporal perspectives. Furthermore, CRL supports the specification of compensations and non-monotonic requirements, which permit the relaxation of some compliance requirements to handle exceptional situations. An integrated tool suite has been developed as an instantiation artefact, and the validation of the approach is undertaken in several directions, which includes internal validity, controlled experiments, and functional testing.     

Chlorophyll and colour changes in grapevine leaves preserved by passive modification

Grapevine leaves are used to prepare the dish called as “dolma,” i.e., a Turkish term for stuffed vegetable. Our study was undertaken to monitor the desirable colour changes from bright-green to olive-yellow in grapevine leaves stored under modified atmosphere (passive modification). We also determined whether microbial growth occurred after a prolonged storage (9 mo) at 20 °C. For this purpose, grapevine leaves from two common varieties grown in Turkey were placed in hermetically-sealed glass jars and stored at 20 °C for 9 mo. Since the colour is the most important quality criteria for grapevine leaves, the changes in chlorophyll-a and chlorophyll-b, and colour variables were monitored during storage. Chlorophyll-a and -b were identified and quantified by HPLC. Chlorophyll-b was more stable than chlorophyll-a in both varieties studied. Compared to varieties, chlorophylls in Narince variety were less stable than those in Sultani variety. Since consumers expect olive-yellow colour in grapevine leaves, Narince variety is more suitable for this technique. Excellent correlation was found between −a^*/b^* colour variable and chlorophyll-a concentration (r=0.9829–0.9832). Mesophilic bacteria were found to be low level (3.2×10¹ cfu/g), whereas yeast and molds, lactic acid bacteria and Enterobacteriaceae were below the lowest detection limit (<10 cfu/g) in the leaves stored at 20 °C for 9 mo. The results suggest that passive modification is very effective to achieve the desirable colour transformation of grapevine leaves in a very short period of time (2–6 days) depending on the variety. Moreover, this simple technique gives rise to a product with good microbial quality.     

Inhibition kinetics of polyphenol oxidase by glutamic acid

The inhibition of polyphenol oxidase (PPO) by glutamic acid was investigated. Application of different concentrations of glutamic acid to mushroom solution and Ocimum basilicum L. extract showed that glutamic acid appeared to be an effective browning inhibitor. Glutamic acid showed uncompetitive inhibition for mushroom and Ocimum basilicum L. polyphenol oxidases using 4-methylcatechol as a substrate, for mushroom PPO using catechol as a substrate and for Ocimum basilicum L. polyphenol oxidase using pyrogallol as a substrate; mixed-type inhibition for mushroom polyphenol oxidase using pyrogallol as a substrate; and non-competitive inhibition for Ocimum basilicum L. polyphenol oxidase using catechol as a substrate. Furthermore, sodium azide was used as an inhibitor for comparison with the inhibition potency of glutamic acid. It was found that glutamic acid was a more power inhibitor than sodium azide. The type of inhibition observed depended on the substrate, inhibitor and enzyme source used.