The hypoglycaemic effect of pumpkins as anti-diabetic and functional medicines

Diabetes mellitus is considered as a common, growing, serious, costly, and potentially preventable public health problem. In 2030, the number of people with diabetes is estimated to increase from 117 million in 2000 to 366 million. The prevalence of diabetes has and will continue to have burden on the health and finances of economic climates, which in turn, will impact on individuals, families and nations. There are many different types of insulins available to treat diabetes, but there are still physiological consequences for such use. Alternatives are, therefore, required and this includes herbal preparations as well as dietary plants in the form of curcubitaceae (pumpkin).Pumpkin is widely considered to have active hypoglycaemic properties. Pumpkin is a plant, which has been used frequently as functional food or medicine and belongs to the family Cucubitaceae, and consists of succulent stem with numerous seeds. Based on previous evidence of its fruit pulp, it is reported to have anti-diabetic effects.This review has focused on the main medicinal properties of pumpkin and how this has been used in animal models, and point out areas for future research to further elucidate mechanisms whereby this compound may reduce disease risk.     

Experimental performance assessment of an online energy management strategy for varying renewable power production suppression

Lately, interest in renewable sources, especially wind and solar energy, has shown a significant increase in all over the world that mostly depends on climate-threatening conventional fossil fuels. Besides, hybrid use of these power sources with suitable back-up units provides many advantages compared to sole use of these sources. In this regard, a hybrid system consisting of a wind turbine for utilizing the wind energy, photovoltaic panels for solar energy, fuel cell for providing back-up power and a battery unit for storing the possible excess energy production and supplying the transient load is considered in this study. Experimental assessment of this system in different case studies including the real time measured dynamic power demand of an office block is realized. The collaborative actions of the proposed hybrid system with a fuzzy logic based energy management strategy during fluctuations of renewable-based power production are investigated. Thus, results of this study may be valuable for evaluating the feasibility of stand-alone hybrid renewable energy units for future power systems.     

Textural fabric defect detection using statistical texture transformations and gradient search

The inspection of the fabric defects is an important problem, which highly affects both the quality and the cost in the textile industry. Because of consistency and accuracy problems, the inspection of the fabric defect by human experts is neither feasible nor efficient. This requires development and use of automated inspection techniques. Thus, in this study, a texture analysis method, which uses sum and difference histograms (SDH) conjointly with co-occurrence matrices, is proposed to introduce an objective criterion for defect detection. To accomplish the detection task with high accuracy, several features were extracted from SDH and then, a defect search technique, which was developed in the context of this study, was applied. Moreover, several experiments and parameter analysis were performed to carry out detection at feasible computation time and memory storage. The developed method was applied to 28 kinds of raw woven fabric defects and 27 of them (i.e. 93.1%) were successfully recognized by the proposed detection system. The quantitative results and qualitative discussions show the effectiveness of the developed strategy.     

New perylene derivative dyes for dye-sensitized solar cells

We have studied the influence of the spacer alkyl chain length of perylenemonoimide (PMI) dyes on the device performance in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). We observed that the dyes with longer and brunched alkyl chains exhibit higher efficiencies in DSSCs. In line with these statements we now report the highest efficiency obtained under standard conditions for a perylene imide derivative with PMI-DA1 that performs 300 mV open circuit voltage, 9.79 mA/cm² short-circuit current and 1.61% overall conversion efficiency.     

FC/UC hybridization for dynamic loads with a novel double input DC–DC converter topology

Due to the fact that the environmental issues have become more serious recently, interest in renewable energy systems, such as, fuel-cells (FCs) has increased steadfastly. Among many types of FCs, proton exchange membrane FC (PEMFC) is one of the most promising power sources due to its advantages, such as, low operation temperature, high power density and low emission. However, using sole PEMFC for dynamic loads may not be feasible to satisfy the peak demand changes. Therefore, hybridizing PEMFC and an energy storage system (ESS) decreases the FC cost and improves its performance and life. Ultra-capacitor (UC) is the most powerful candidate to hybridize with PEMFC for dynamic loads. The DC–DC converter is the key enabling technology for hybridization of PEMFC and UC. Generally, the efficiency and performance of hybridization is largely limited by the converter topology employed for the mentioned hybridization. Integrating each source (PEMFC and UC) with a DC–DC converter is not feasible in terms of cost, performance, and control. Due to the above mentioned reasons, an attractive converter topology which can combine PEMFC and UC is strongly required. In this regard, the objective of this study is to design and simulate a novel double input DC–DC converter based on current additivity concept, in order to combine two different types of energy systems (PEMFCs and UCs).     

One size fits all? Policy instruments should fit the segments of target groups

In order to meet the Kyoto CO₂ reduction targets, technical innovations in the field of energy-efficiency must diffuse more rapidly into a larger market. However, markets develop gradually, especially if innovations are involved. Diffusion starts with the early market (innovators and early adopters), followed by the mainstream market (the early and late majority), and ends with the laggards. The actors in these markets differ in their willingness to adopt innovations; the early market actors have a visionary attitude, and the mainstream market actors are more pragmatic. In order to choose policy instruments that will most effectively influence these two markets within the target group of housing association, we addressed the following two questions. (1) What are the differences between the early and mainstream market actors from a behavioural-change point of view? (2) In what way do existing policy instruments differ in influencing the behaviour of these actors? We analyzed early market and mainstream decision-making behaviours, and how the active ingredients in policy instruments specifically target the characteristics of the two markets. Mainstream instruments should intervene as early as possible in the decision-making process and emphasize communication about advantages such as comfort and quality in addition to money and energy savings. Furthermore, they should present energy conservation as a solution to an actual problem. Instead of bureaucratic subsidy systems for the mainstream, the motto should be “cash on the barrel-head”. Early market actors are highly internally motivated, implying that early market interventions have to be challenging and facilitating.     

Combustion characteristics and kinetics of diesel and canola oil samples

In this study, combustion and pyrolysis behavior of diesel and canola oil is investigated using thermal analysis techniques known as thermogravimetry (TG–DTG) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) at different heating rates. Reaction regions, peak temperatures, mass loss, heat flow rates, ignition temperatures, and specific heat of diesel and canola oil samples are determined using TG–DTG and DSC data. It was observed that as the heating rate of the reactions increased, peak temperatures of the reactions shift higher; implying that as the heating rate of the reactions increases the reactions lose their sensitivity. Five different kinetic methods were applied to determine combustion reaction parameters of the reactions. It was observed that averages of the activation energies of the samples are in the order of canola oil and diesel for different heating rates.     

Techno-economic performance analysis of bio-oil based Fischer-Tropsch and CHP synthesis platform

The techno-economic potential of the UK poplar wood and imported oil palm empty fruit bunch derived bio-oil integrated gasification and Fischer-Tropsch (BOIG-FT) systems for the generation of transportation fuels and combined heat and power (CHP) was investigated. The bio-oil was represented in terms of main chemical constituents, i.e. acetic acid, acetol and guaiacol. The compositional model of bio-oil was validated based on its performance through a gasification process. Given the availability of large scale gasification and FT technologies and logistic constraints in transporting biomass in large quantities, distributed bio-oil generations using biomass pyrolysis and centralised bio-oil processing in BOIG-FT system are technically more feasible. Heat integration heuristics and composite curve analysis were employed for once-through and full conversion configurations, and for a range of economies of scale, 1 MW, 675 MW and 1350 MW LHV of bio-oil. The economic competitiveness increases with increasing scale. A cost of production of FT liquids of 78.7 Euro/MWh was obtained based on 80.12 Euro/MWh of electricity, 75 Euro/t of bio-oil and 116.3 million Euro/y of annualised capital cost.