Preventive effects of rice bran oil on 1,2-dimethylhydrazine/dextran sodium sulphate-induced colon carcinogenesis in rats

This study included F344 rats which were fed AIN-93G-based 14% high-fat diets and were divided into the following six groups: Groups B and N, 14% soybean oil (SO); group P, 14% SO containing 0.04% piroxicam; group L, 5% rice bran oil (RBO) and 9% SO; group M, 9% RBO and 5% SO; and group H, 14% RBO. All the rats—except those in group B—were administered 1,2-dimethylhydrazine/dextran sodium sulphate to induce colitis-related colon carcinogenesis. The rats were sacrificed, and their colons were removed to examine aberrant crypt foci (ACF) and mucin-depleted foci (MDF). The results revealed that the rats from all the RBO group rats exhibited significantly reduced colon tumour formation, MDF, and ACF, especially sialomucin (SIM)-producing ACF. The hepatic antioxidant status, including the glutathione (GSH) and thiobarbituric acid reactive substance levels as well as superoxide dismutase and catalase activities, was superior among the RBO groups, which might contribute to the potential of RBO with respect to delaying colon carcinogenesis.     

Kinetics of fructose on the Maillard brown colour development,pH change and antioxidative activity development in model fructose/glycine systems

Model fructose/glycine systems with fructose concentration between 0.035 and 0.28 m were incubated at temperature 45–90 °C for investigating the effects of fructose and temperature on the brown colour development, pH change and the antioxidative activity developments of Maillard reaction. The result showed that effects of fructose followed logarithm‐order kinetics on brown colour and DPPH (2,2‐diphenyl‐1‐picrylhydrazyl) radical scavenging activity (S_DPPH) development, and first‐order kinetics on system pH decrease. However, the effect of fructose on ABTS·⁺ (2,2′‐azino‐bis[3‐ethylbenzthiazoline‐6‐sulphonic acid]) radical scavenging activity (S_ABTS) development was first order at 60–90 °C and logarithm order at 45 °C, which revealed the mutual synergistic interaction of concentration with temperature on S_ABTS development. Activation energy for S_DPPH development was lower than that for S_ABTS development, revealing that DPPH radical was more vulnerable than ABTS·⁺ radical to fructose/glycine MRPs at low temperature. But the relative vulnerability would invert at high temperature, as the Q₁₀ value for S_DPPH development was lower than that for S_ABTS development.     

Microstructure–thermal properties of Cu/Al2O3 bilayer prepared by direct bonding

The thermal conductivity of Cu/Al₂O₃ bilayers prepared by a direct-bonding technique was determined. The direct-bonding process started with the pre-oxidation treatment of a Cu plate at a temperature less than 600 °C. Though a thin oxide layer was located on the surface of the plate after treatment, the oxygen solutes began to diffuse into the interior of Cu plate prior to bonding. Bonding occurred by a eutectic liquid formed at 1075 °C. No reaction interphase was observed at the Cu–Al₂O₃ interface. The thermal resistance of the Cu/Al₂O₃ interface is very low. The extremely low thermal resistance can be related to the clean interface between the two materials.     

An adaptive hybrid dynamic power management algorithm for mobile devices

We propose a novel power efficient adaptive hybrid dynamic power management (AH-DPM) algorithm. To adapt well to bursty request arrival patterns with self-similarity and a service provider (SP, i.e., hard disk or WLAN NIC, in this paper) with multiple inactive states, the proposed AH-DPM first derives the average idle time of the SP in the bursty (ON) period and non-bursty (OFF) period separately. Then, to achieve better power saving, we use the average idle time in the ON period to adjust the timeout value more precisely and use the average idle time in the OFF period to decide which inactive state the SP should be switched to. Experimental results based on real traces show that, for the hard disk, the average power consumption of the proposed AH-DPM is better than that of the Adaptive Timeout (ATO), Machine Learning (ML), Predictive, Static Timeout (STO), and Stochastic algorithms. In addition, the average response time of the proposed AH-DPM algorithm is still lower than that specified in a typical hard disk specification. As to the WLAN NIC, experimental results show that the average power consumption of the proposed AH-DPM is comparable to that of the Oracle (theoretically optimal), ATO, and Predictive algorithms, and is better than that of the ML, STO, and Stochastic algorithms. However, the average packet transmission delay of the proposed AH-DPM is better than that of the ATO and Predictive algorithms. Therefore, by providing a better tradeoff between average power consumption and average response time (or average packet transmission delay), the proposed AH-DPM algorithm is very feasible for extending the battery lifetime of ever increasing mobile devices that are equipped with hard disks and WLAN NICs.     

Compartmentalizing anaerobic zone improves sludge settling property of enhanced biological phosphorus removal system under low sludge retention time

Abstract

The study investigated the effect of compartmentalization of anaerobic zone on sludge settling property in an enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) system. Continuous‐flow pilot‐plant experiments with synthetic influent were performed at varied anaerobic‐oxic volume ratios (V_an : V_o , 1 : 9 and 2 : 8), involving 5, 10 and 15 days of sludge retention times (SRTs). Experimental results indicated that, regardless of V_an : V_o and SRT, satisfactory removal of COD and phosphate were achieved during all test runs. However, extremely high sludge volume index (SVI) values were observed when there were 5 days of SRT. Further experiments with compartmentalization of anaerobic zone were therefore conducted to confirm the necessity of incorporating the kinetic selection mechanism of bulking control into an EBPR process operated at a low SRT. These results revealed that the two factors, V_an : V_o and anaerobic compartmentalization, had interaction with respect to sludge settling property in terms of SVI. When anaerobic retention time increased from 0.72hr to 1.36hr, compartmentalizing anaerobic zone significantly decreased the SVI value because of generating high COD concentration gradient and phosphate release in the anaerobic zone. This result implies that supplementing kinetic selection pressure of bulking control exhibits a critical influence on sludge settling when the EBPR process operates at a lower SRT.     

Research and trends in the field of e-learning from 2001 to 2005: A content analysis of cognitive studies in selected journals

This paper provided a content analysis of studies in the field of cognition in e-learning that were published in five Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) journals (i.e. Computers and Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, Educational Technology Research & Development, and Journal of Computer Assisted Learning) from 2001 to 2005. Among the 1027 articles published in these journals from 2001 to 2005, 444 articles were identified as being related to the topic of cognition in e-learning. These articles were cross analyzed by published years, journal, research topic, and citation count. Furthermore, 16 highly-cited articles across different topics were chosen for further analysis according to their research settings, participants, research design types, and research methods. It was found from the analysis of the 444 articles that “Instructional Approaches,” “Learning Environment,” and “Metacognition” were the three most popular research topics, but the analysis of the citation counts suggested that the studies related to “Instructional Approaches,” “Information Processing” and “Motivation” might have a greater impact on subsequent research. Although the use of questionnaires might still be the main method of gathering research data in e-learning cognitive studies, a clear trend was observed that more and more studies were utilizing learners’ log files or online messages as data sources for analysis. The results of the analysis provided insights for educators and researchers into research trends and patterns of cognition in e-learning.     

Novel sequence design for low-PMEPR and high-code-rate OFDM systems

In this paper, we propose a new family of 64- QAM based sequences for achieving the lowest PMEPR and the highest code rate compared to all other 64-QAM based schemes, which can be applied for OFDM systems. The construction of the proposed sequences is simple and the theoretical analysis is presented.     

A multi-expert approach for developing testing and diagnostic systems based on the concept-effect model

With the popularization of computer and communication technologies, researchers have attempted to develop computer-assisted testing and diagnostic systems to help students improve their learning performance on the Internet. In developing a diagnostic system for detecting students’ learning problems, it is difficult for individual teachers to address the exact relationships between the test items and the concepts. To cope with this problem, this study proposes an innovative approach to eliciting and integrating the weightings of test item-concept relationships from multiple experts. Based on the proposed approach, a testing and diagnostic system has been implemented; moreover, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of our approach. By analyzing the results from four groups of students using learning suggestions provided by different models, it was found that the learning performance of the students who received learning suggestions by applying the innovative approach was significantly better than for those who received guidance based on the original model.     

Noise Reduction of Electrical Impedance Tomography via Movable Electrodes

Abstract

In this paper, a movable electrical impedance tomography (MEIT) system is introduced to reduce the noise of electrical impedance tomography. This moving scheme could yield more independent measurements and reconstruct improved impedance images. After averaging the entire reconstructed image, we could improve the image quality substantially. The experiment result shows a quality improvement compared with the measuring systems without moving scheme. This preliminary work provides a feasibility to reduce the noise of electrical impedance tomography by a moving electrode scheme.     

Strong Menger connectivity with conditional faults on the class of hypercube-like networks

In this paper, we study the Menger property on a class of hypercube-like networks. We show that in all n-dimensional hypercube-like networks with n−2 vertices removed, every pair of unremoved vertices u and v are connected by min{deg(u),deg(v)} vertex-disjoint paths, where deg(u) and deg(v) are the remaining degree of vertices u and v, respectively. Furthermore, under the restricted condition that each vertex has at least two fault-free adjacent vertices, all hypercube-like networks still have the strong Menger property, even if there are up to 2n−5 vertex faults.