Antimicrobial and SEM Studies of Sophorolipids Synthesized Using Lauryl Alcohol

In recent years, researchers have developed biosurfactants for industrial, pharmaceutical and medical applications revealing the promising biological activities of these biomolecules. One of the best studied microbial surfactants are glycolipids, especially sophorolipids (SLs) produced by selected non-pathogenic yeast species of Candida. They are biodegradable, non-toxic and are environmentally friendly. Sophorolipid production was carried out using glucose as the hydrophilic source and lauryl alcohol C_12–14, as the hydrophobic source using Candida bombicola ATCC 22214. Primary characterization of the SL obtained using lauryl alcohol (SLLA) was done by FTIR which depicted the presence of alkyl sophorosides/SLs. Antimicrobial activity testing revealed that SLLA showed complete inhibition against gram negative bacteria, Escherichia coli (ATCC 8739) Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 9027) at 30 and 1 μg/ml at a contact time of 2 and 4 h respectively. Whereas for gram positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 6358), Bacillus subtilis (ATCC 6633), complete inhibition was observed at 6 and 1 μg/ml respectively at a contact time of 4 h. The formed SLLA showed noteworthy inhibition against the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans (ATCC 2091) at 50 μg/ml with a contact time of 4 h. These values are remarkably low compared to reported values of oleic acid SLs and linolenic acid SLs which were studied for antimicrobial properties. Scanning electron microscopy analysis of the treated cells revealed the changes in morphology and topography of the microorganisms.     

Consumer Attention to an Over‐the‐counter Warning in Four Different Styles of Design

The study consisted of three objectives: (a) to test the relative prominence and conspicuousness of a warning required by US law to be conspicuous; (b) to explore whether or not the conspicuousness of the said warning can be enhanced graphically; and (c) to develop preliminary data for power analysis that would guide decisions related to sample size in future studies. Seventeen subjects viewed four over‐the‐counter drug packages (each with a different style of warning) along with five other products while wearing an eye tracking device. Four styles of warning were used on the over‐the‐counter drug packages: no outline and no fill, outline and no fill, no outline and fill, and outline and fill. The surface area and the placement of the warnings were held constant across all four designs and were consistent with those on commercially available products. Collected data were broken into five zones: warning, brand name, strength, product benefit and net weight. Despite the fact that US law requires it to be conspicuous, the tested warning was significantly less noticeable than the brand name (objective one) for all dependent variables analyzed (α = 0.05). No significant difference was indicated for the varied warning designs (objective two). This could be because not much can be done to enhance prominence when constrained to the limited space that is typically used for such warnings or because of the limited sample size. Power calculations suggest that a sample size of nearly 200 subjects would be required to detect a 2.5 s mean difference at 80% confidence (objective three). Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

英国国家电网公司在电力系统状态估计器及安全分析方面的经验

本文叙述了由安装在英国国家电网公司新国调中心的新型能量管理系统所提供的实时网络分析的应用，并介绍了第一年的运行经验．对经常出现的某些状态估计问题的解决方法和作者所作的尝试的结论进行了讨论，以对安全估计器的结果与现有的离线研究方法的结果进行比较．文章还对应用实时网络分析时遇到的一些原始缺陷的观察结果和在短时段及较长时段内解决这些问题的方法进行了讨论．     

A Large Deformation Model for the Elastic Moduli of Two-dimensional Cellular Materials

1Introduction Themechanicalbehaviorofcellularmaterialsde pendsontheirrelativedensity,cellgeometryandthema terialpropertiesofthesolidfromwhichtheyaremade.Theelasticmoduliofcellularmaterialscanbederived fromananalysisofthedeformationmechanismofthecell members.Thesimplegeometryofanidealizedunitcell allowsthederivationofrelationsbetweenmicro structural featuresandeffectivemechanicalproperties.Manytheoreticalmodelshavebeendevelopedtopre dicttheelasticmoduliofcellularmaterials[14].AbdEl Sayedetal[…