Inhibition of Shigella sonnei and Shigella flexneri in Hummus Using Citric Acid and Garlic Extract

Hummus (chickpea dip) is a ready‐to‐eat product that may pose a significant risk to human if pathogens are present. Several organisms including Shigella spp. have been isolated from hummus. However, studies on the survival and inhibition of Shigella spp. in food are scarce. This study investigated the growth pattern of Sh. sonnei and Sh. flexneri in hummus at different temperatures (4, 10, and 24 °C). Additionally, the inhibitory activity of different concentrations of citric acid (CA) (0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.0%) and garlic extract (GE) (1.0%, 2.0%, and 3.0%) against Sh. sonnei and Sh. flexneri inoculated into hummus and stored at 4 and 10 °C was investigated. Both Shigella spp. survived well at 4 °C, while both grew to >7.0 log₁₀ after 4 d at 10 °C or 1 d at 24 °C. At 4 °C, CA at 0.5% and 1.0% resulted in a slight reduction in the count (approximately 1.0 log₁₀); a complete elimination of Sh. sonnei was attained by using 2.0% CA. However, approximately 3.0 log₁₀ reduction in Sh. sonnei was obtained at 10 °C. For Sh. flexneri, CA at 0.5% and 1.0% resulted in a bacteriostatic inhibition. GE at 1.0% and 2.0% resulted in approximately 1.0 to 2.0 log₁₀ reduction in Sh. sonnei count at 4 °C, while at 3.0% GE, approximately 4.0 and 3.0 log₁₀ reductions were obtained at 4 and 10 °C, respectively. In comparison, the 2.0% and 3.0% GE resulted in a bacteriostatic effect against Sh. flexneri at 4 and 10 °C.     

Active Carbon from Microwave Date Stones for Toxic Dye Removal: Setting the Design Capacity

The widely used toxic dye malachite green (MG) poses a significant risk to human health, having a mutagenic effect. Waste date stones were used to produce microwave-activated carbons and were applied to adsorb the highly toxic dye. The critically important task of selecting the correct design adsorption capacity for different effluent pollutant concentrations to meet effluent discharge limit standards is described and a novel design selection criteria approach is presented.     

A New Clean Air Delivery Rate Test Applied to Five Portable Indoor Air Cleaners

Air pollution has been recognised as one of the major risk factors for the global burden of disease. In modern society the majority of the exposure occurs indoors where people spend most of their time. Indoor air quality may be improved with portable air cleaners utilizing various cleaning techniques, such as filtration, electrostatic precipitation, and ionization. The objective of this study was to quantify air cleaner particle removal by particle size resolved clean air delivery rates (CADR). This was obtained by utilizing particle concentration measurements and indoor aerosol modeling. Our test protocol was applied to five air cleaners designed for household and office use. For particles with diameters above 100 nm and at the chosen settings, the CADR was around 40 m³/h for an ion generator, around 70 m³/h for an electrostatic precipitator, and ranging from 100 to almost 300 m³/h for the three filter-based air cleaners. Similar performances were obtained for ultrafine particles, except for the ion generator that performed better in this size range.

Copyright 2014 American Association for Aerosol Research     

Elimination of solidification shrinkage defects in the casting of aluminum alloy

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - In this study, the analysis is carried out to optimize in-gate position and size of riser for casting mold. The baseline size of riser for the casting...     

Characterization of pyrolytically deposited V2O3 thin films

V₂O₃ films were deposited using the pyrolysis technique. The surface composition and structure of the deposited V₂O₃ films were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED). Electronic conductivity measurements of the films were also carried out as a function of temperature from room temperature to about 430 K.The SEM analysis showed a smooth film surface which on exposure at high intensity showed some form of restructuring. The AES, however, indicated the presence of carbon in the deposited film while the RHEED showed a streaked pattern which could result from the restructing observed in the SEM analysis.The electrical conductivity measurements showed metallic-type behaviour in the region investigated. A smooth second-order transition was observed at about 400 K.     

Subsample-based image compression for capsule endoscopy

The key design challenge in capsule endoscopic system is to reduce the area and power consumption while maintaining acceptable video quality. In this paper, a subsample-based image compressor for such endoscopic application is presented. The algorithm is developed around some special features of endoscopic images. It consists of a differential pulse coded modulation followed by Golomb-rice coding. Based on the nature of endoscopic images, several subsampling schemes on the chrominance components are applied. This scheme is particularly suitable to work with any commercial low-power image sensors that outputs image pixels in a raster scan fashion, eliminating the need of memory buffer, as well as temporary storage (as needed in transform coding schemes). An image corner clipping algorithm is also presented. The reconstructed images have been verified by medical doctors for acceptability. The proposed algorithm has a very low complexity and is suitable for the VLSI implementation. Compared to other transform-based algorithms targeted to capsule endoscopy, the proposed raster-scan-based scheme performs very strongly with a compression ratio of 80% and a very high reconstruction PSNR (over 45 dB).     

面向未来基础架构支持任意设备间通信

尽管全球经济不景气,但这对移动产业的影响似乎微乎其微。截至2009年底,移动产业的全球用户数量已超过40亿,创造收入逾7000亿美元。另据移动设备供应商Ericsson预计,到2020年,全球将实现500亿个连接。     

Effects of Iron-Oxide Nanoparticle Surface Chemistry on Uptake Kinetics and Cytotoxicity in CHO-K1 Cells

Superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) show great promise for multiple applications in biomedicine. While a number of studies have examined their safety profile, the toxicity of these particles on reproductive organs remains uncertain. The goal of this study was to evaluate the cytotoxicity of starch-coated, aminated, and PEGylated SPIONs on a cell line derived from Chinese Hamster ovaries (CHO-K1 cells). We evaluated the effect of particle diameter (50 and 100 nm) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) chain length (2k, 5k and 20k Da) on the cytotoxicity of SPIONs by investigating cell viability using the tetrazolium dye 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) and sulforhodamine B (SRB) assays. The kinetics and extent of SPION uptake by CHO-K1 cells was also studied, as well as the resulting generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). Cell toxicity profiles of SPIONs correlated strongly with their cellular uptake kinetics, which was strongly dependent on surface properties of the particles. PEGylation caused a decrease in both uptake and cytotoxicity compared to aminated SPIONs. Interestingly, 2k Da PEG-modifed SPIONs displayed the lowest cellular uptake and cytotoxicity among all studied particles. These results emphasize the importance of surface coatings when engineering nanoparticles for biomedical applications.