Antibacterial activity and action target of phenyllactic acid against Staphylococcus aureus and its application in skim milk and cheese

Phenyllactic acid (PLA) has been demonstrated to possess antibacterial activity and capacity to prolong food shelf life. However, studies on the performance of PLA in inhibiting Staphylococcus aureus and its effectiveness when applied to dairy products are largely lacking. Here, antibacterial activity (planktonic and biofilm states) of PLA against S. aureus CICC10145 (S. aureus_45) were investigated. The results showed that PLA inhibited growth of S. aureus_45 and formation of S. aureus_45 biofilm. Next, the antibacterial action target of PLA was uncovered from both physiological and phenotypic perspectives. The results showed that PLA decreased cell metabolic activity and cell viability, damaged cell membrane integrity, triggered leakage of intracellular contents (DNA, proteins, and ATP), and caused oxidative stress damage and morphological deformation of S. aureus_45. In practical application, the antibacterial activity of PLA against S. aureus_45 cells was further confirmed in skim milk and cheese as dairy food models, and the antibacterial effects can be adequately maintained during storage for 21 d, at least at 4°C. These findings suggested that PLA could be a potential candidate for controlling S. aureus outgrowth in dairy foods.     

Output-relevant Variational autoencoder for Just-in-time soft sensor modeling with missing data

Main challenges for developing data-based models lie in the existence of high-dimensional and possibly missing observations that exist in stored data from industry process. Variational autoencoder (VAE) as one of the deep learning methods has been applied for extracting useful information or features from high-dimensional dataset. Considering that existing VAE is unsupervised, an output-relevant VAE is proposed for extracting output-relevant features in this work. By using correlation between process variables, different weight is correspondingly assigned to each input variable. With symmetric Kullback–Leibler (SKL) divergence, the similarity is evaluated between the stored samples and a query sample. According to the values of the SKL divergence, data relevant for modeling are selected. Subsequently, Gaussian process regression (GPR) is utilized to establish a model between the input and the corresponding output at the query sample. In addition, owing to the common existence of missing data in output data set, the parameters and missing data in the GPR are estimated simultaneously. A practical debutanizer industrial process is utilized to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Crystallization and spectroscopic properties in Er3+ doped oxyfluorogermanate glass ceramics containing Na

The Er³⁺ doped oxyfluorogermanate glasses, with a composition containing Na element, were synthesized by the conventional melting–quenching technique. When Na element was introduced into the composition of oxyfluorogermanate glass, the crystals behavior was investigated in details. Depending on the annealing procedure supplied, thermal annealing of precursor glasses in the system GeO₂/BaF₂/AlF₃/Na₂O/NaF/ZnO/GdF₃/ErF₃ led to the precipitation of different crystal phase nanocrystals. It was confirmed the nanocrystals in GC600 is orthorhombic NaBaAlF₆ which led to enhance obviously in the UC luminescence of Er³⁺. However, the nanocrystals in G585 led to decrease in the UC luminescence, which indicated few Er ions enter into the lattice of this nanocrystal phase. The reason of the decrease in UC emission intensity of GC585 was analyzed.     

APP软件性能效率研究

性能效率是APP软件的重要质量属性，但目前缺乏APP软件性能效率的通用模型。分析了APP软件的性能特征，基于ISO/IEC 25010标准提出了APP软件的性能效率模型，定义了APP软件性能效率的子特性和度量指标。基于提出的APP软件性能效率模型，通过实验对APP软件的性能效率进行了度量及相关分析。     

Co-precipitation of nano Mg–Y/ZrO2 ternary oxide eutectic system: Effects of calcination temperature

In the family of inorganic nanomaterials, zirconia is a highly promising functional ceramic with a high refractive index, hardness, and dielectric constant, as well as excellent chemical inertness and thermal stability. These properties are enhanced in nano-zirconia ceramics, because nanopowders have a small particle size, good morphology, and uniform and dispersive distribution. In this study, a co-precipitation process was proposed to synthesise highly dispersed MgO–Y₂O₃ co-stabilized ZrO₂ nanopowders. The effects of different calcination temperatures on the crystallisation degree and particle dispersion of zirconia nanopowders were characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetry-differential scanning calorimetry (TG-DSC), Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), nitrogen adsorption using the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The optimum synthesis conditions were obtained as follows: 6 h of high-energy planetary grinding and calcination at 800 °C in an electric furnace. Under these optimum conditions, the average particle size of the prepared powder was 28.7 nm. This process enriches the literature on the controllable preparation of Mg–Y/ZrO₂ nanopowders obtained by the co-precipitation method.     

Fabrication of BSCF-based mixed ionic-electronic conducting membrane by electrophoretic deposition for oxygen separation application

Ba_0.5Sr_0.5Co_0.8Fe_0.2O_3-δ (BSCF), which exhibits a high mixed oxide ionic-electronic conduction, was used for the fabrication of an oxygen separation membrane. An asymmetric structure, which was a thin and dense BSCF membrane layer supported on a porous BSCF substrate, was fabricated by the electrophoretic deposition method (EPD). Porous BSCF supports were prepared by the uniaxial pressing method using a powder mixture with BSCF and starch as the pore-forming agent (0–50 wt.%). The sintering behaviors of the porous support and the thin layer were separately characterized by dilatometry to determine the co-fired temperature at which cracking did not occur. A crack-free and thin dense membrane layer, which had about a 15 μm thickness and >95% relative density, was obtained after optimizing the processes of EPD and sintering. The dense/porous interface was well-bonded and the oxygen permeation flux was 2.5 ml (STP) min⁻¹ cm^-2 at 850 °C.     

microRNA在亨廷顿病中的研究进展

亨廷顿病(Huntington's disease, HD)是神经退行性疾病(neurodegenerative disorders)中一种单基因遗传病,由亨廷顿基因(the huntingtin gene, HTT)第一个外显子中的CAG三核苷酸序列重复扩增引起,尚无法治愈。HTT编码的蛋白产物被称为亨廷顿蛋白(Huntingtin protein, Htt)。突变亨廷顿蛋白(mutated huntingtin protein, mHtt)容易形成聚集体,具有毒性,导致一系列细胞学异常和神经元功能障碍。microRNA(miRNA)在基因转录后水平调控中起重要作用,其表达的改变与HD病理过程有关,成为治疗HD的潜在生物标志物。近年来,对一些特定miRNA在HD中调控机制及靶基因预测方面的研究可为HD提供潜在的治疗方法。本文就miRNA在HD中的相关研究进展进行综述。     

A design of a robust discrete-time controller

In this paper, we proposed a robust discrete-time controller. This control system, which is derived from the idea of the normalized plant, does not include plant parameters. Thus, we obtain a control system independent of plant parameters and that has the same structure as a conventional optimal servo control system. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method is fairly robust to plant parameter variations and external disturbances.     

一种基于Spark的不确定数据集频繁模式挖掘算法

如何在海量不确定数据集中提高频繁模式挖掘性能是目前研究的热点.传统算法大多是以期望、概率或者权重等单一指标为数据项集支持度，在大数据背景下，同时考虑概率和权重支持度的算法难以兼顾其执行效率.为此，本文提出一种基于Spark的不确定数据集频繁模式挖掘算法（UWEFP），首先，为了同时兼顾数据项的概率和权重，计算一项集的最大概率权重值并进行剪枝；然后，为了减少对数据集的多次扫描，结合Spark框架的优点，设计了一种具有FP-tree特征的新颖的UWEFP-tree结构进行模式树的构建及挖掘；最后在Spark环境下，以UCI数据集进行实验验证.实验结果表明本文的方法在保证挖掘结果的同时，提高了效率.