An investigation of the drivers,barriers, and incentives for environmental management systems in the Malaysian food and beverage industry

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Food production and consumption is one of the major causes of global environmental degradation. One way to address environmental impacts in the food...     

Toxoplasma gondii GRA9 Regulates the Activation of NLRP3 Inflammasome to Exert Anti-Septic Effects in Mice

Dense granule proteins (GRAs) are essential components in Toxoplasma gondii, which are suggested to be promising serodiagnostic markers in toxoplasmosis. In this study, we investigated the function of GRA9 in host response and the associated regulatory mechanism, which were unknown. We found that GRA9 interacts with NLR family pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) involved in inflammation by forming the NLRP3 inflammasome. The C-terminal of GRA9 (GRA9C) is essential for GRA9–NLRP3 interaction by disrupting the NLRP3 inflammasome through blocking the binding of apoptotic speck-containing (ASC)-NLRP3. Notably, Q200 of GRA9C is essential for the interaction of NLRP3 and blocking the conjugation of ASC. Recombinant GRA9C (rGRA9C) showed an anti-inflammatory effect and the elimination of bacteria by converting M1 to M2 macrophages. In vivo, rGRA9C increased the anti-inflammatory and bactericidal effects and subsequent anti-septic activity in CLP- and E. coli- or P. aeruginosa-induced sepsis model mice by increasing M2 polarization. Taken together, our findings defined a role of T. gondii GRA9 associated with NLRP3 in host macrophages, suggesting its potential as a new candidate therapeutic agent for sepsis.     

Condition monitoring scheme via one-class support vector machine and multivariate control charts

A condition-based maintenance (CBM) has been widely employed to reduce maintenance cost by predicting the health status of many complex systems in prognostics and health management (PHM) framework. Recently, multivariate control charts used in statistical process control (SPC) have been actively introduced as monitoring technology. In this paper, we propose a condition monitoring scheme to monitor the health status of the system of interest. In our condition monitoring scheme, we first define reference data set using one-class support vector machine (OC-SVM) to construct the control limit of multivariate control charts in phase I. Then, parametric control chart or non-parametric control chart is selected according to the results from multivariate normality tests. The proposed condition monitoring scheme is applied to sensor data of two anemometers to evaluate the performance of fault detection power.

     

Mesh-offset-based method to generate a delta volume to support the maintenance of partially damaged parts through 3D printing

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology is an excellent tool for implementing multi item, small scale production or for manufacturing objects of...     

Structural decomposition of technological domain using patent co-classification and classification hierarchy

Scientometrics - This paper proposes a new method for decomposing a technological domain (TD). Specifically, the method identifies sub-TDs at the different levels of technological hierarchy within...     

Influences of added surfactants on the water solubility and antibacterial activity of rosemary extract

Food Science and Biotechnology - Rosemary extract (RE) has significant antioxidant and antibacterial properties; however, the application of RE to areas with an aqueous solution is limited due to...     

Modified harmony search optimization for constrained design problems

Constrained optimization is a major real-world problem. Constrained optimization problems consist of an objective function subjected to both linear and nonlinear constraints. Here a constraint handling procedure based on the fitness priority-based ranking method (FPBRM) is proposed. It is embedded into a harmony search (HS) algorithm that allows it to satisfy constraints. The HS algorithm is conceptualized using the musical process of searching for a perfect state of harmony. Here, the original heuristic HS was improved by combining both improved and global-best methods along with the FPBRM. The resulting modified harmony search (MHS) was then compared with the original HS technique and other optimization methods for several test problems.