In Vivo and In Vitro Assessment of Antinutritional Factors in Peanut and Soy

Raw and heat processed peanut flours were found to contain higher in vitro trypsin inhibitor activity and lectin content than similarly processed soy flour. When fed to weanling rats at a level of 10% protein, the response pattern in food consumption, growth, liver function, and serum chemistries was not consistent among or between the groups. It is concluded that the levels of antinutritional factors in legumes do not correlate with their overall biological impact in feeding studies with the rat.     

Siting park-and-ride facilities using a multi-objective spatial optimization model

Park-and-ride services are an important component of many public transportation systems in the United States. Locating park-and-ride facilities is an essential step when planning for these services. In this research we focus on three major siting/modeling concerns that need to be addressed when siting park-and-ride facilities: covering as much potential demand as possible, locating park-and-ride facilities as close as possible to major roadways, and siting such facilities in the context of an existing system. Unfortunately, existing models do not enable each of these concerns to be simultaneously addressed. This paper presents a multi-objective spatial optimization model for integrating these considerations. This model is applied for siting park-and-ride facilities in Columbus, Ohio. Application results show the usefulness of the developed model in supporting transit planning in an urban region.     

Giant Anomalous Hall and Nernst Conductivities in Magnetic All-d Metal Heusler Alloys

All-d Heuslers are a category of novel compounds combining versatile functionalities such as caloric responses and spintronics with enhanced mechanical properties. Despite the promising transport properties (anomalous Hall (AHC) and anomalous Nernst (ANC) conductivities) shown in the conventional Co₂XY Heuslers with p-d hybridization, the all-d Heuslers with only d-d hybridization open a new horizon to search for new candidates with outstanding transport properties. In this work, the AHC and ANC are evaluated for thermodynamically stable ferro/ferri-magnetic all-d-metal regular Heusler compounds based on high-throughput first-principles calculations. It is observed that quite a few materials exhibit giant AHCs and ANCs, such as cubic Re₂TaMn with an AHC of 2011 S cm^-1, and tetragonal Pt₂CrRh with an AHC of 1966 S cm^-1 and an ANC of 7.50 A m^-1K^-1. Comprehensive analysis on the electronic structure reveals that the high AHC can be attributed to the occurrence of the Weyl nodes or gapped nodal lines in the neighborhood of the Fermi level. The correlations between such transport properties and the number of valence electrons are also thoroughly investigated, which provides a practical guidance to tailor AHC and ANC via chemical doping for transverse thermoelectric applications.     

Electric-field induced fluctuations in laser generated plasma plume

The effect of an external electric field on laser-generated plasma has been studied. It is observed that the laser-generated plasma can be used for the ignition of a spark in the presence of a low voltage external electric field. An eight-fold emission intensity enhancement in Cu Ⅰ spectral lines are measured as compared to the signal intensity in the absence of an external electric field.The plasma parameters remain the same initially, up to a few microseconds after the generation of plasma, and this feature makes it more interesting for the quantitative analysis of any sample using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy(LIBS). In the presence of an external electric field,fluctuations(contraction and expansion) in the laser-generated plasma are observed which increase the plasma decay time and consequently result in enhanced signal intensity.     

Design and development of bioinspired calcium phosphate nanoparticles of MTX: pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic evaluation

The aim of this investigation is the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by developing methotrexate-loaded calcium phosphate nanoparticles (MTX-CAP-NP) and to evaluate pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic behavior in adjuvant induced arthritis model. The nanoparticles were synthesized by wet precipitation method and optimized by Box-Behnken experimental design. MTX-CAP-NPs were characterized by TEM, FTIR, DSC and XRD studies. The particle size, zeta potential and entrapment efficiency of the optimized nanoparticles were found to be 204.90?±?64?nm, ?11.58?±?4.80?mV, and 88.33?±?3.74%, respectively. TEM, FTIR, DSC and XRD studies revealed that the developed nanoparticles were nearly spherical in shape and the crystalline structure of CAP-NP was not changed after MTX loading. The pharmacokinetic studies revealed that MTX-CAP-NP enhanced bioavailability of MTX by 2.6-fold when compared to marketed formulation (FOLITRAX-10). Under pharmacodynamic evaluation, arthritic assessment, radiography and histopathology studies revealed that CAP has ability to regenerate cartilage and bone therefore, together with MTX, MTX-CAP-NPs have shown significant reduction in disease progression. The overall work demonstrated that the developed nanodelivery system was well tolerated and more effective than the marketed formulation.     

Design of dual‐band microstrip patch antenna with right‐angle triangular aperture slot for energy transfer application

This work focusing on the dual‐band antenna design with rectifying circuit for energy transfer system technology for enhancement gain performance. The air gap technique is applied on this microstrip antenna design work to enhance the antenna gain. The work begins with designing and analyzing the antenna via the CST Microwave Studio software. After validation on acceptable performance in simulation side is obtained, the return loss, S₁₁ of the antenna is measured using vector network analyzer equipment. The rectifier circuit is used to convert the captured signal to DC voltage. This projected dual‐band antenna has successfully accomplished the target on return loss of ?44.707 dB and ?32.163 dB at dual resonant frequencies for 1.8 GHz and 2.4 GHz, respectively. This proposed antenna design benefits in low cost fabrication and has achieved high gain of 6.31 dBi and 7.82 dBi for dual‐band functioning frequencies.     

Technical Note Photointerpretation of Pleistocene Mediterranean ridges south-west of Alexandria

Abstract

The Pleistocene ridges south-west of Alexandria are of marine origin and represent the ancient shoreline of the former sea levels. Several authors have described the nature, origin and geomorphology of the Pleistocene ridges. The objective is to delineate these ridges using aerial photomosaics at 1:100000 scale and a Landsat image at 1:250000 scale.

The area is covered by beach sands in the northern part and consolidated limestone forming coastal ridges southwards. The lowlands between the ridges are occupied by marshes, lagoons or mixtures of clay and lime materials. Plant cover occurs in the central part. The different ridges recognized photogeologically are eight ridges and the foreshore ridges are more distinct than those of the backshore. Owing to the presence of plant cover, some ridges appear as faint lines. The ridges and lowlands appear on photomosaics with tonal contrast where successive light and dark toned areas can be easily identified. The interpreted ridges were correlated with those in the topographic map with the same scale and covering the same area. It was found that a number of these ridges follow the configuration of the relief where they are represented by high peaks. Ridges appear as elongated alignments nearly parallel with the Mediterranean Sea shore with a general trend NE-SW. The presence of some minerals such as augite and the size of their grains indicate that the sea currents and prevailing wind directions were coming mainly from the east or north-east whereas the reverse case occurs nowadays. Photointerpretation indicated the presence of a number of fractures trending NW-SE, dissecting the ridges in the northern part of the area.     

A framework for mining interesting high utility patterns with a strong frequency affinity

High utility pattern (HUP) mining is one of the most important research issues in data mining. Although HUP mining extracts important knowledge from databases, it requires long calculations and multiple database scans. Therefore, HUP mining is often unsuitable for real-time data processing schemes such as data streams. Furthermore, many HUPs may be unimportant due to the poor correlations among the items inside of them. Hence,the fast discovery of fewer but more important HUPs would be very useful in many practical domains. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to introduce a very useful measure, called frequency affinity, among the items in a HUP and the concept of interesting HUP with a strong frequency affinity for the fast discovery of more applicable knowledge. Moreover, we propose a new tree structure, utility tree based on frequency affinity (UTFA), and a novel algorithm, high utility interesting pattern mining (HUIPM), for single-pass mining of HUIPs from a database. Our approach mines fewer but more valuable HUPs, significantly reduces the overall runtime of existing HUP mining algorithms and is applicable to real-time data processing. Extensive performance analyses show that the proposed HUIPM algorithm is very efficient and scalable for interesting HUP mining with a strong frequency affinity.     

USE OF OZONE TO INACTIVATE MICROORGANISMS ON LETTUCE

When ozone (1.3 mM) was bubbled for 3 min in a mixture of shredded lettuce and water, counts ofmesophilic andpsychrotrophic bacteria decreased 1.4 and 1.8 log₁₀ cfu/g, respectively. Counts of these microorganisms on lettuce, from a different batch, decreased 3.9 and 4.6 log, respectively, during 5 min of ozone treatment. Shredded lettuce was treated with gaseous ozone, or mixed with aqueous solution of ozone (1:20 w/w) with or without bubbles. For effective delivery of ozone, stirring (low and high speed), sonication or stomaching was applied during the ozonation. Washing the lettuce with water only decreased total count on shredded lettuce by 0.74–1.0 log cfu/g. When lettuce in a treatment chamber was flushed with gaseous ozone, the total count decreased 0.85 log cfu/g, but when vacuum was applied before the ozone flush, the total count decreased 0.96 log cfu/g. Bubbling ozone in water-lettuce mixture while sonicating, high-speed stirring, or before stomaching inactivated 1.4, 1.9 and 1.9 log cfu/g, respectively. In conclusion, bubbling gaseous ozone in water is the most effective ozonation method. Efficient ozone delivery to microorganisms on lettuce requires a combination of ozone bubbling and high-speed stir.     

Optical Absorption Characteristics of Ni2+ in Mixed-Alkali Borate Glasses

Nickel-containing mixed-alkali borate glasses were prepared and their spectral absorption in the visible and near-ir were measured and used to determine the ligand field strength, Racah parameter, and state of coordination of Ni²⁺ ions. The change in these parameters with alkali content is discussed in terms of mixed-alkali effect. Nickel ions were found to occupy octahedral sites in the 20 mol% (Li₂O+Na₂O) glasses, whereas in the 30 mol% (Na₂O+K₂O) glasses Ni^Z+ ions are believed to occupy both octahedral and tetrahedral sites. In most cases slight deviations were observed which increased with increasing alkali content. The results obtained suggest that the substitution of one alkali for another in alkali borate glasses did not produce gross alterations of the glass network sufficient to induce deviations from linearity in property-composition relations.