Hybrid particle swarm optimization for rule discovery in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the major causes of mortality worldwide. Knowledge about risk factors that increase the probability of developing CAD can help to understand the disease better and assist in its treatment. Recently, modern computer‐aided approaches have been used for the prediction and diagnosis of diseases. Swarm intelligence algorithms like particle swarm optimization (PSO) have demonstrated great performance in solving different optimization problems. As rule discovery can be modelled as an optimization problem, it can be mapped to an optimization problem and solved by means of an evolutionary algorithm like PSO. An approach for discovering classification rules of CAD is proposed. The work is based on the real‐world CAD data set and aims at the detection of this disease by producing the accurate and effective rules. The proposed algorithm is a hybrid binary‐real PSO, which includes the combination of categorical and numerical encoding of a particle and a different approach for calculating the velocity of particles. The rules were developed from randomly generated particles, which take random values in the range of each attribute in the rule. Two different feature selection methods based on multi‐objective evolutionary search and PSO were applied on the data set, and the most relevant features were selected by the algorithms. The accuracy of two different rule sets were evaluated. The rule set with 11 features obtained more accurate results than the rule set with 13 features. Our results show that the proposed approach has the ability to produce effective rules with highest accuracy for the detection of CAD.     

Technological evaluation of reactive cyclodextrin in cotton printing with reactive and natural dyes

The chemical modification of cotton fabric with reactive cyclodextrin (R‐CD) at different concentrations was carried out to enhance the printability of cotton fabric. The extent of the modification reaction was expressed as %N. Reactive and natural dyes were used to print cotton fabric before and after modification. Printing pastes were applied immediately after preparation or after 24 h of storage. Printing fixation was performed through either steaming or thermal treatment. The effect of the incorporation of R‐CD in the printing paste of unmodified cotton was also studied. The results reveal that the extent of the modification reaction increased with increasing R‐CD concentration and so did the color strength (K/S) of the printed sample regardless of the dye used. The results also revealed that K/S of the R‐CD modified cottons were higher than that of the corresponding unmodified samples regardless of the method of fixation or the time elapsed before printing. On the other hand, the incorporation of R‐CD in the printing pastes of reactive dyes, namely, Cibacron Brown 6R‐P or Remazol Brilliant Red GG, had adverse effects, most probability due to the (a) increasing viscosity of the paste and/or (b) interaction of the reactive dye with R‐CD hydroxyls. The opposite held true when a natural dye was used. Further, the incorporation of R‐CD in the printing pastes had no effect on the rheological type of the pastes or the on overall fastness properties of the prints. Nevertheless, such an incorporation of R‐CD was accompanied by a remarkable increase in the magnitude of the apparent viscosity. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 102: 338–347, 2006     

Factors Affecting the Technological Properties of Starch Carbamate

Starches having different molecular sizes were obtained by subjecting rice starch and maize starch, independently, to oxidation with aqueous sodium hypochlorite solutions of different concentrations. These starches were then reacted with urea in a dry state to yield mainly starch carbamate. The latter was isolated from the reaction products by treatment of the latter with either water or 4% aqueous NaOH solution. It was observed that regardless of the kind and molecular size of starch, treatment with water brings about starch carbamate which swells but does not dissolve completely in water. Against this was water soluble starch carbamate isolated by ethyl alcohol precipitation from NaOH solution (after neutralization). Studies of the rheological properties of the water soluble starch carbamates revealed that starch carbamates derived from rice starches are characterized by either thixotropic or pseudoplastic character depending on the molecular structure of starch. On the other hand, starch carbamates derived from maize starch exhibit pseudoplastic behaviour by virtue of their relatively lower molecular weight and higher carboxyl content. It was also found that the apparent viscosity of starch carbamates is determined by the kind of starch, the degree of oxidation and the storing time.     

Behaviour of Oxidized Starches Towards Cyanoethylation

Starch of different molecular sizes brought about by oxidation of maize and rice starches were cyanoethylated under identical conditions. The degree of cyanoethylation, expressed as % N, was found to depend mainly on the molecular size of starch irrespective of its kind. As the molecular size decreases the degree of cyanoethylation increases. Cyanoethyl starches are water soluble and can be precipitated by ethanol. It was also found that the rheological properties are determined by the nitrogen content of cyanoethyl starch. When the latter acquires low nitrogen content, it exhibits non-Newtonian pseudoplastic behaviour. On the other hand, cyanoethyl starches with higher nitrogen content are characterized by non-Newtonian thixotropic. At constant rate of shear, the apparent viscosity of cyanoethyl starches is directly related to its molecular size. Storing of pastes prepared from these cyanoethyl starches for 7 d exerts considerable influence on rheological properties and apparent viscosity of these derivatives.     

Treatment of beverage-processing wastewater in a three-phase fluidised bed biological reactor

This paper presents a study on treatment of beverage‐processing wastewater (BPWW) in a three‐phase fluidised bed bioreactor (TPFBB). Wastewater samples were introduced in the TPFBB and aerated at optimum liquid and gas flow rates while measuring wastewater parameters [pH, chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solids (TSS), total Kjehldahl nitrogen (TKN) and ammonia‐nitrogen (NH₃‐N)]. Two different initial pH levels were studied, i.e. 9.0 and 11.5. The pH of the wastewater was observed to level off at 9.3 after 1 day. The TSS dropped by 95% after 5 days, for both initial pH levels. The NH₃‐N and TKN dropped to similar final concentration independent of initial pH. The COD removal efficiency was observed to depend on the initial pH level. A highest efficiency of 98% and lowest efficiency of 50% were observed at initial pH of 9.0 and 11.5, respectively. The study results show that TPFBB is capable of treating food‐processing wastewater under suitable conditions.     

Electromagnetic scattering from a coaxial dielectric circularcylinder loading a semicircular gap in a ground plane

An exact dual series solution of a plane wave incident on a coaxial dielectric circular cylinder imbedded in a semicircular gap of a ground plane is presented. Both TM and TE cases are considered here. The scattered field is represented in terms of an infinite series of cylindrical waves with unknown coefficients. By applying the boundary conditions and employing the partial orthogonality of the trigonometric functions the scattering coefficients are obtained. The resulting infinite series is then truncated to a finite number of terms to produce numerical results. For the sake of comparison with the published data some special cases are introduced first. The comparisons showed excellent agreement in all cases     

Nanopore/electrode structures for single-molecule biosensing

Biological and solid-state nanopores have recently attracted much interest as ultrafast DNA fragment sizing and sequencing devices. Their potential however goes far beyond DNA sequencing. In particular, nanopores offer perspectives of single-molecule (bio)sensing at physiologically relevant concentrations, which is key for studying protein/protein or protein/DNA interactions. Integration of electrode structures into solid-state nanopore devices moreover enables control and fast switching of the pore properties, e.g. for active control of biopolymer transport through the nanopore. We present some of recent work in this area, namely the fabrication and characterization of nanopore/electrode architectures for single-(bio)molecule sensing. Specifically, we introduce a new technique to fabricate ultra-small metal nanopores with diameters smaller than 20 nm based on ion current feedback (ICF) controlled electrodeposition. It offers precise control of the pore conductance, is easily multiplexed, and can be extended to a wide range of different metals.     

Fabrication of superhydrophobic unplasticized poly(vinyl chloride)/nanosilica sheets using Taguchi design methodology

This study introduces a relatively simple technique for the manufacture of superhydrophobic coatings on polymeric surfaces. Plastics such as unplasticized poly(vinyl chloride) (UPVC ) do not have a strong hydrophobic nature that is characterized by their low contact angles. Techniques of both increasing surface roughness and lowering surface energy are required to change their hydrophilicity to superhydrophobicity. In the present study, a coating of a low‐surface‐energy thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU ) was spin‐coated with chemically treated nanosilica to reduce the surface energy of UPVC . Nanosilica particles were embedded on the surface using a hot‐press. Taguchi design was used to optimize multiple processing parameters. Samples spin‐coated with 10 g L^?1 nanosilica suspension in ethanol at a rate of 400 rpm for 5 s and then hot‐pressed at 155 °C under 2 atm (203 kPa ) for 4 min had a contact angle of ca 157° and sliding angle of ca 6°, which are characteristic of superhydrophobic surfaces. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM ) imaging showed that these superhydrophobic surfaces were highly rough with nanoscale features. Peel test and SEM analysis showed that silica nanoparticles embedded in the TPU coating were more stable than particles immobilized on UPVC sheet without TPU coating, proving that a layer of more flexible coating can improve the longevity of superhydrophobic surfaces manufactured using this facile method. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry     

Complete mineralization of the antibiotic amoxicillin by electro-Fenton with a BDD anode

On April 30, 2014, the World Health Organization’s first global report on the presence of antibiotics in waters focused on their negative consequences, which may include the growth of microorganisms with antimicrobial resistance. The β-lactam antibiotic amoxicillin (AMX) is widely used in human and veterinary medicine, and it has been recently detected in sewage treatment plants and effluents. In this paper, the degradation of acidic aqueous solutions of AMX by electro-Fenton process has been studied at constant current. Experiments have been performed in an undivided cell equipped with a carbon-felt cathode and a Pt or boron-doped diamond (BDD) anode. In such systems, the organic molecules are mainly oxidized by hydroxyl radical (^?OH) simultaneously formed on the anode surface from water oxidation as well as in the bulk from Fenton’s reaction between Fe²⁺ catalyst and electrogenerated H₂O₂. The decay and mineralization of AMX was monitored by means of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and TOC measurements. The evolution of the concentration of the final aliphatic carboxylic acids and inorganic ions like ammonium, nitrate and sulfate was assessed by HPLC and ion chromatography, respectively. The effect of the anode material, initial AMX concentration and current density was thoroughly studied. The AMX decay always followed a pseudo-first-order kinetics using either Pt or BDD, and the apparent rate constant increased with applied current. A quicker mineralization was reached with BDD because of the larger production of active ^?OH. The absolute rate constant between hydroxyl radical and AMX determined by the competition kinetics method using p-hydroxybenzoic acid as the reference compound was found to be (2.02 ± 0.01) × 10⁹ M^?1 s^?1.