Antioxidant potential of herbs and spices during deep frying of ghee

The present study was carried out to evaluate antioxidant potential of ashwagandha, clove, coriander, green tea, shatavari and vidarikand extracts as compared to BHA. Clove, coriander and green tea extracts showed significantly higher antioxidant activity than vidarikand, shatavari and ashwagandha extracts. Radical‐scavenging activity by DPPH model system revealed that clove and green tea extracts were superior to other extracts. All the natural antioxidants significantly reduced the formation of peroxides, FFA, thiobarbituric acid value and conjugated dienes. Ghee with added clove, green tea and coriander extracts showed higher induction period as compared to ghee containing vidarikand, ashwagandha, shatavari or BHA.     

Catalytic HTL-derived biochar and sol-gel synthesized (Mn,Ti)-oxides for asymmetric supercapacitors

In this study, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL)-derived biochar is investigated as electrode material with sol-gel-derived (Mn, Ti)-oxide electrode for asymmetric supercapacitor. To generate biochar, pinewood flour was used as an example biomass feedstock for HTL, which was carried out at 300°C and 1500 psi for 1 hour in the absence and presence of the Ni-nitrate (Ni[NO₃]₂.6H₂O) catalyst. After HTL, different products were analyzed by TOC analyzer, HPLC, and GCMS, and mass yield/carbon balance was determined. Solid residue recovered after HTL or catalytic HTL (CHTL) was thermally treated at 400°C for 2 hours to obtain biochar, which was characterized using BET surface area analyzer and SEM/EDX, and utilized as one of the electrodes. To fabricate asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC), (Mn,Ti)-oxide electrode material was synthesized using sol-gel technique with Mn:Ti precursor ratio of 30:70 wt%. As-synthesized gels were aged, dried, and calcined with a 2-step heating process (step-1: heating to 500°C and cooling to 50°C, and step-2: heating to 1000°C with soak time of 2 hours and cooling to 50°C), which were characterized by powdered X-ray diffraction and BET analysis. Asymmetric supercapacitors were fabricated with HTL/CHTL derived biochar/(Mn,Ti)-oxide electrodes and KOH electrolyte, and tested with cyclic voltammetry to determine specific capacitance. ASC fabricated with CHTL-derived biochar electrode showed a higher specific capacitance of 187 F/g.     

Meta-analysis of effects of inoculation with homofermentative and facultative heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria on silage fermentation,aerobic stability,and the performance of dairy cows

Forages are usually inoculated with homofermentative and facultative heterofermentative lactic acid bacteria (LAB) to enhance lactic acid fermentation of forages, but effects of such inoculants on silage quality and the performance of dairy cows are unclear. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effects of LAB inoculation on silage quality and preservation and the performance of dairy cows. A second objective was to examine the factors affecting the response to silage inoculation with LAB. The studies that met the selection criteria included 130 articles that examined the effects of LAB inoculation on silage quality and 31 articles that investigated dairy cow performance responses. The magnitude of the effect (effect size) was evaluated using raw mean differences (RMD) between inoculated and uninoculated treatments. Heterogeneity was explored by meta-regression and subgroup analysis using forage type, LAB species, LAB application rate, and silo scale (laboratory or farm-scale) as covariates for the silage quality response and forage type, LAB species, diet type [total mixed ration (TMR) or non-TMR], and the level of milk yield of the control cows as covariates for the performance responses. Inoculation with LAB (≥10⁵ cfu/g as fed) markedly increased silage fermentation and dry matter recovery in temperate and tropical grasses, alfalfa, and other legumes. However, inoculation did not improve the fermentation of corn, sorghum, or sugarcane silages. Inoculation with LAB reduced clostridia and mold growth, butyric acid production, and ammonia-nitrogen in all silages, but it had no effect on aerobic stability. Silage inoculation (≥10⁵ cfu/g as fed) increased milk yield and the response had low heterogeneity. However, inoculation had no effect on diet digestibility and feed efficiency. Inoculation with LAB improved the fermentation of grass and legume silages and the performance of dairy cows but did not affect the fermentation of corn, sorghum, and sugar cane silages or the aerobic stability of any silage. Further research is needed to elucidate how silage inoculated with homofermentative and facultative heterofermentative LAB improves the performance of dairy cows.     

Performance Analysis Integration in the Uintah Software Development Cycle

The increasing complexity of high-performance computing environments and programming methodologies presents challenges for empirical performance evaluation. Evolving parallel and distributed systems require performance technology that can be flexibly configured to observe different events and associated performance data of interest. It must also be possible to integrate performance evaluation techniques with the programming paradigms and software engineering methods. This is particularly important for tracking performance on parallel software projects involving many code teams over many stages of development. This paper describes the integration of the TAU and XPARE tools in the Uintah Computational Framework (UCF). Discussed is the use of performance mapping techniques to associate low-level performance data to higher levels of abstraction in UCF and the use of performance regression testing to provide a historical portfolio of the evolution of application performance. A scalability study shows the benefits of integrating performance technology in building large-scale parallel applications.     

The influence of intrathecal fentanyl on the characteristics of subarachnoid block for caesarean section

Forty healthy parturients scheduled for elective Caesarean section were randomly allocated to receive either 0.3 ml 0.9% saline (control group, n = 20), or 15 micrograms (0.3 ml) fentanyl (treatment group, n = 20) added to 2.5 ml 0.5% hyperbaric bupivacaine given intrathecally in the sitting position. A sensory block to T4 was achieved after 6.5 min in those who received fentanyl compared to 8.0 min in the control group; this was not significantly different. The highest level of sensory block achieved in both groups was similar. Ephedrine was required earlier (p < 0.05) in those who received fentanyl but the total requirement of ephedrine intra-operatively was similar. Fentanyl significantly improved the quality of intra-operative surgical anaesthesia as none of the patients in the treatment group complained of discomfort compared with seven in the control group (p < 0.05). Similarly those in the treatment group had better comfort scores as evaluated by visual analogue score (p < 0.01). Regression of anaesthesia to T12 took longer (184 vs 156 min, p < 0.05) in those who received fentanyl but this did not affect the total requirement of morphine in the first 24 h after operation. There was no difference in the incidence of side effects in the mother and no adverse effects were detected in the baby. The results indicate that adding 15 micrograms fentanyl to hyperbaric bupivacaine for spinal anaesthesia markedly improves intra-operative anaesthesia for Caesarean section.     

Design and Prototype of a Performance Tool Interface for OpenMP

This paper proposes a performance tools interface for OpenMP, similar in spirit to the MPI profiling interface in its intent to define a clear and portable API that makes OpenMP execution events visible to runtime performance tools. We present our design using a source-level instrumentation approach based on OpenMP directive rewriting. Rules to instrument each directive and their combination are applied to generate calls to the interface consistent with directive semantics and to pass context information (e.g., source code locations) in a portable and efficient way. Our proposed OpenMP performance API further allows user functions and arbitrary code regions to be marked and performance measurement to be controlled using new OpenMP directives. To prototype the proposed OpenMP performance interface, we have developed compatible performance libraries for the Expert automatic event trace analyzer [17, 18] and the TAU performance analysis framework [13]. The directive instrumentation transformations we define are implemented in a source-to-source translation tool called OPARI. Application examples are presented for both Expert and TAU to show the OpenMP performance interface and OPARI instrumentation tool in operation. When used together with the MPI profiling interface (as the examples also demonstrate), our proposed approach provides a portable and robust solution to performance analysis of OpenMP and mixed-mode (OpenMP+MPI) applications.     

Binary BAT algorithm and RBFN based hybrid credit scoring model

Credit scoring is a process of calculating the risk associated with an applicant on the basis of applicant’s credentials such as social status, financial status, etc. and it plays a vital role to improve cash flow for financial industry. However, the credit scoring dataset may have a large number of irrelevant or redundant features which leads to poorer classification performances and higher complexity. So, by removing redundant and irrelevant features may overcome the problem with huge number of features. This work emphasized on the role of feature selection and proposed a hybrid model by combining feature selection by utilizing Binary BAT optimization technique with a novel fitness function and aggregated with for Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFN) for credit score classification. Further, proposed feature selection approach is aggregated with Support Vector Machine (SVM) & Random Forest (RF), and other optimization approaches namely: Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization and Gravitational Search Algorithm (PSOGSA), Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization and Genetic Algorithm (PSOGA), Improved Krill Herd (IKH), Improved Cuckoo Search (ICS), Firefly Algorithm (FF) and Differential Evolution (DE) are also applied for comparative analysis.

     

Effect of aluminum nanoparticles on rheological behavior of HTPB-based composite rocket propellant

The aim of this article was to understand the rheology of composite propellant containing aluminum nanoparticles, as it is a highly filled mixture of solids and is difficult to process. Aluminum nanoparticles utilized as a filler were characterized using X-ray diffraction spectroscopy, scanning and transmission electron microscopy. It was confirmed that the material was pure aluminum, spherical in shape and nano-sized (96.8 nm). The effects of shear stress, shear rate, strain, aluminum nanoparticles concentration, and shear time on rheology were investigated thoroughly, which confirmed a non-Newtonian, time-dependent, shear-thinning, and viscoplastic flow behavior. The composition which had 0% nanoparticles showed the lowest thixotropy index of 50.86 Pa/s, and the difference was almost minimal for compositions containing 0% and 6% nanoparticles. The propellant containing 6% nanoparticles did not yield, as compared to the compositions. The results indicate that nanoparticles have a considerable effect on the rheology of the composite propellant.