Effect of oil treatments on the levels of antinutritional factors in Callosobruchus chinensis (L.) infested stored pulses

Coconut, groundnut and mustard oil treated whole red gram, green gram and bengal gram were infested with Callosobruchus chinensis (L.), stored for 6 months, and observed at monthly intervals for antinutritional factors (phytic acid, trypsin inhibitor activity (TIA) and saponins). The values of phytic acid and TIA of treated and untreated pulses were similar at month one. The saponin content of green gram and Bengal gram were, however, higher in control than the oil treated pulses at month one. From month two to six the untreated controls had progressively more antinutrients than their oil treated counterparts. In mustard and groundnut oil treated pulses, the antinutrients remained static for 6 months, however, coconut oil treated pulse had increased antinutrients from end of month four onwards. The storage period was associated with the level of insect infestation which in turn influenced the antinutrient contents of pulses.     

Extraction paper chromatography technique for the radionuclidic purity evaluation of 90Y for clinical use

Yttrium-90 used for therapy should be of very high radionuclidic (RN) purity (>99.998%) as the most probable contaminant, strontium-90, is a bone seeker with a maximum permissible body burden of 74 kBq (2 microCi) only. None of the current known methods of RN purity estimations is adequate to reliably measure the 90Sr RN impurity at such low levels. Our aim was to develop a reliable technique to accurately determine the amount of 90Sr in 90Y used for therapy. This new technique combines chelate-based extraction with paper chromatography using paper impregnated with 2-ethylhexyl, 2-ethylhexylphosphonic acid (KSM-17), which is a 90Y-specific chelator. A PC strip impregnated with KSM-17 at the point of spotting is used for chromatography. Upon development with normal saline, 90Sr moves to the solvent front leaving 90Y completely chelated and retained at the point of spotting. The activity at the solvent front (90Sr) is quantified by liquid scintillation counting, and the data are compared with the total applied activity to provide the RN purity of the test solution. The method has a sensitivity of > or =74 kBq (2 microCi) of 90Sr per 37 GBq (1 Ci) of 90Y. This novel, innovative, and simple technique offers a reliable solution to the unanswered problem of estimation of 90Sr content in 90Y used for cancer therapy.     

A Comparative Study of Corrosion Resistance in Ringer Solution of Nitrogen-Implanted Alumina at Different Energies for Orthopedic Implants

Commercially available polycrystalline alumina is implanted at different energies and various ion doses. Microstructural changes, elemental analysis, and evidence of compound formation of AlN and AlON are observed using scanning electron microscopy, electron dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and GXRD techniques, respectively. Nanohardness increases due to the formation of the hard phase of nitrides. It increases with the increase in ion dose but decreases at higher ion dose. A similar trend is also observed in the corrosion resistance studied in Ringer solution. Corrosion resistance also improves with the increase in ion dose and decreases with the further increasing ion dose.     

Effect of Operating Parameters on Oil and Phenolic Extraction Using Supercritical CO<Subscript>2</Subscript>

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) with carbon dioxide was used to extract oil from canola press cake. Different operating conditions, e.g. pressure, temperature, and co-solvent % were investigated to optimize extraction parameters to yield canola meal with <4% oil. The residual oil content in the extracted canola meal reduced to 2.1–2.9% in our experimental trials. Residues of the optimum conditions based on oil yield were compared for the total phenolic content and the main phenolic compounds. Sinapine (the choline ester of sinapic acid) was the major phenolic constituent in both the SFE and n-hexane extracted canola meals and press cakes. n-Hexane extracted residues showed the retention of the highest sinapic acid, sinapine, sinapoyl glucose and total phenolic contents (mg/g) while the SF-extracted residues showed the lowest values for these compounds.     

Determination of Sinapic Acid Derivatives in Canola Extracts Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography

A high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method with diode array detection (DAD) was used to determine the total phenolics, including sinapic acid derivatives in canola. Ten Western Canadian canola seeds, six other commodity canola seeds, their corresponding press cakes and meals were analyzed. Seeds of European 00 rapeseed and Brassica Juncea (Indian mustard) were included for comparison. Phenolic compounds were separated using a gradient elution system of water–methanol-ο-phosphoric acid solution with a flow rate of 0.8 ml/min. In addition to sinapine (SP) and sinapic acid (SA), sinapoyl glucose (SG) is reported in the methanolic extracts. The detection and quantification limits of these compounds were 0.20–0.40 and 0.50–0.80 μg/ml, respectively with recovery values over 98.0%. The content of total phenolics, SP, SA and SG in canola extracts ranged from 9.16 to 16.13, 6.39 to 12.28, 0.11 to 0.59 and 1.36 to 7.50 mg/g, respectively with significant differences among varieties.     

Modified Selective Huffman Coding for Optimization of Test Data Compression,Test Application Time and Area Overhead

A compression-decompression scheme, Modified Selective Huffman (MS-Huffman) scheme based on Huffman code is proposed in this paper. This scheme aims at optimization of the parameters that influence the test cost reduction: the compression ratio, on-chip decoder area overhead and overall test application time. Theoretically, it is proved that the proposed scheme gives the better test data compression compared to very recently proposed encoding schemes for any test set. It is clearly demonstrated with a large number of experimental results that the proposed scheme improves the test data compression, reduces overall test application time and on-chip area overhead compared to other Huffman code based schemes.     

Distribution, enrichment and principal component analysis for possible sources of naturally occurring and anthropogenic radionuclides in the agricultural soil of Punjab state, India

Enrichment factor (EF) of elements including geo-accumulation indices for soil quality and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to identify the contributions of the origin of sources in the studied area. Results of (40)K, (137)Cs, (238)U and (232)Th including their decay series isotopes in the agricultural soil of Mansa and Bathinda districts in the state of Punjab were presented and discussed. The measured mean radioactivity concentrations for (238)U, (232)Th and (40)K in the agricultural soil of the studied area differed from nationwide average crustal abundances by 51, 17 and 43 %, respectively. The sequence of the EFs of radionuclides in soil from the greatest to the least was found to be (238)U > (40)K > (226)Ra > (137)Cs > (232)Th > (228)Ra. Even though the enrichment of naturally occurring radionuclides was found to be higher, they remained to be in I(geo) class of '0', indicating that the soil is uncontaminated with respect to these radionuclides. Among non-metals, N showed the highest EF and belonged to I(geo) class of '2', indicating that soil is moderately contaminated due to intrusion of fertiliser. The resulting data set of elemental contents in soil was also interpreted by PCA, which facilitates identification of the different groups of correlated elements. The levels of the (40)K, (238)U and (232)Th radionuclides showed a significant positive correlation with each other, suggesting a similar origin of their geochemical sources and identical behaviour during transport in the soil system.     

Transient analysis of solar air heaters using a finite difference technique

The transient heat transfer model of a solar air heater is developed and the resulting system is solved by using an explicit finite difference technique. the solar radiation data and the ambient temperature have been represented by a Fourier series in the numerical calculation. the effects of various design parameters of the heater on its performance are studied.     

Nutritional evaluation of a cauliflower leaf protein concentrate by rat feeding

A leaf protein concentrate (LPC) prepared from cauliflower leaves was analysed for crude protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, β-carotene and some of the amino acids. Lysine and tryptophan were present in nutritionally adequate amounts, but cystine and methionine were not: Cauliflower LPC was evaluated for its nutritional qualities in respect of growth rate, protein efficiency ratio (PER), liver nitrogen, and plasma protein content by feeding rats. The growth rate of rats and PER values of leaf protein supplemented diets were better than that of the wheat flour fed group. Hence, cauliflower LPC might be used for improving nutritionally poor diets.     

Construction of Storage-Performance-Yield Relationships for a Reservoir Using Stochastic Simulation

In the past, many researchers have used stochastic streamflow models along with sequent peak algorithm or sim ulation to obtain storage-reliability-yield (S-R-Y) relationships for a reservoir. These S-R-Y relationships con sider only the probability of failure, but not the likely consequences of the failure (vulnerability). In this paper, separate contours of reservoir performance, n amely reliability and vulnerability (eventbased), have been developed on the storage-yield plane, using stochastic reservoir sim ulation. These contours of performance, when superposed, give rise to the storageperformance-yield (S-P-Y) relationships, the construction of which is illustrated in this paper through a case example. These relationships provide more com prehensive information to the reservoir planner regarding perform ance than the S-R-Y relationships.