Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of fresh garlic and aged garlic by-products extracted with different solvents

Food Science and Biotechnology - This study aims to investigate antioxidative and antibacterial properties of fresh garlic (non-aged, NG) and aged garlic (AG) by-products extracted with distilled...     

Lowering the sintering temperature of Gd-doped ceria by mechanochemical activation

Two kinds of Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_2?δ pellets were synthesized by a solid-state reaction using two types of commercial CeO₂ and Gd₂O₃. In contrast to previous reports, pellets with a sintered density of 99% at 1300 °C were obtained regardless the powder used. Mechanochemical activation of the starting materials by 7 h of high energy milling, which resulted in particles several tens of nanometer in size, was effective in reducing the sintering temperature. Ce_0.8Gd_0.2O_2?δ pellets could be synthesized by direct sintering without calcination due to the homogeneous distribution of fine starting materials. The final phase was confirmed by the ionic conductivity, X-ray diffraction patterns and lattice parameters.     

Robust formation control of electrically driven nonholonomic mobile robots via sliding mode technique

This paper proposes a sliding mode formation control method for electrically driven nonholonomic mobile robots in the presence of model uncertainties and disturbances. We use the kinematic model based on the leader-following approach for the formation control of multiple robots. Unlike many researches considering only the kinematic model, we also consider the dynamic model including actuator dynamics to obtain the voltage input because it is more realistic to use the voltage as input than the velocity. Then, the sliding mode control method is used to deal with model uncertainties and disturbances acting on the mobile robots. The stability of the proposed control system is proven using Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, we perform computer simulations to demonstrate the performance of the proposed control system.     

Antioxidant activities and contents of phytochemicals in methanolic extracts of specialty rice cultivars in Korea

Rice is an important agricultural commodity and a major staple food in Asian diets. The aims of this study were to investigate the antioxidant activities and phytochemical contents of methanolic extracts from specialty rice cultivars and to determine if there is any correlation between antioxidant activity and phytochemical content. Our results indicate that methanolic extracts from different rice cultivars contain different levels of phenolics, anthocyanin, carotenoids, γ-oryzanol, and vitamin E. Black rice cultivars such as ‘Heugkwang’, ‘Heugseol’, and ‘Heugjinju’ contained higher phytochemical contents compared to other cultivars. In contrast, the cultivars ‘Segyejinmi’, ‘Cheonseok’, ‘Hanareum’, and ‘Dasan 1’ contained significantly higher levels of γ-tocotrienol compared with other cultivars. The black rice cultivars also showed higher antioxidant activities. Phenolic content was positively correlated with DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activities and reducing power. The results could have a direct impact on rice consumption by enhancing consumer awareness of health benefits of the rice.     

基于BD/GPS的智能交通监控系统

随着我国交通运输业的迅猛发展和车辆的快速增多,车辆监控、指挥和合理调度已成为交通系统中的一个重要问题。本文从BD/GPS的基本情况和发展现状出发,阐述了通过GPS精确定位实现定位和导航功能;通过北斗短报文通信功能实现车辆位置信息的上报和指挥中心指挥、调度信息的下发,实现无盲区的车辆调度;并且系统突破了C/S架构的网络、数据库技术和卫星数据融合等关键技术,实现车辆信息的动态存储和实时查询。理论分析和试验结果证明利用BD/GPS双模系统能够满足智能交通中的车辆监控和指挥调度。     

Shape-controlled fabrication of polypyrrole microstructures by replicating organic crystals through electrostatic interactions

Polypyrrole (PPy) microstructures with diverse shapes were synthesized in an aqueous inorganic salt medium including organic crystals and pyrrole (Py). A series of sulfobenzoic acid salt forms with various cations (K⁺, Na⁺, Li⁺, NH₄⁺) in different positions (para, meta, ortho) of the sulfonate group on the benzene ring were used to form organic crystals as sacrificial templates. Using these crystals, we produced five different shapes of PPy microstructures (hexagonal microplates, curled nanofibers, lozenge-shaped microplates, rigid rods, parallelogram microplates), which replicated the shapes of the organic crystal templates through electrostatic interaction between the anionic crystal surfaces and the cationic PPy chains. In contrast, PPy that was polymerized without crystals showed bulky agglomerates of 200-500 nm size. The electrical properties were dictated by the molecular structures of the organic salt molecules used. While the highest conductivity (200.3 Scm⁻¹) was observed in PPy using crystals of para-linked 4-sulfobenzoic acid monopotassium salt, the lowest conductivity (0.8 Scm⁻¹) was observed in PPy prepared in the presence of crystals of ortho-linked 2-sulfobenzoic acid monoammonium salt.     

Effects of annealing on performances of 1.3-μm InAs-InGaAs-GaAs quantum dot electroabsorption modulators

In this work, we investigated the effects of quantum dot (QD) annealing (as-grown, 600°C-annealed, and 750°C-annealed) on the preliminary performances of 1.3-μm InAs-InGaAs-GaAs quantum dot electroabsorption modulators (QD-EAMs). Both extinction ratio and insertion loss were found to vary inversely with the annealing temperature. Most importantly, the 3-dB response of the 750°C-annealed lumped-element QD-EAM was found to be 1.6 GHz at zero reverse bias voltage - the lowest reverse bias voltage reported. We believe that this work will be beneficial to researchers working on on-chip integration of QD-EAMs with other devices since energy consumption will be an important consideration.     

Enhanced hydrogen storage capacity of Pt-loaded CNT@MOF-5 hybrid composites

We report on an easy synthesis method for the preparation of a hybrid composite of Pt-loaded MWCNTs@MOF-5 [Zn₄O(benzene-1,4-dicarboxylate)₃] that greatly enhanced hydrogen storage capacity at room temperature. To prepare the composite, we first prepared Pt-loaded MWCNTs, which were then incorporated in-situ into the MOF-5 crystals. The obtained composite was characterized by various techniques such as powder X-ray diffractometry, optical microscopy, porosimetry by nitrogen adsorption, and hydrogen adsorption. The analyses confirmed that the product has a highly crystalline structure with a Langmuir specific surface area of over 2000 m²/g. The hybrid composite was shown to have a hydrogen storage capacity of 1.25 wt% at room temperature and 100 bar, and 1.89 wt% at cryogenic temperature and 1 bar. These H₂ storage capacities represent significant increases over those of virgin MOF-5s and Pt-loaded MWCNTs.     

Improved Emotion Recognition With a Novel Speaker-Independent Feature

Emotion recognition is one of the latest challenges in human-robot interaction. This paper describes the realization of emotional interaction for a Thinking Robot, focusing on speech emotion recognition. In general, speaker-independent systems show a lower accuracy rate compared with speaker-dependent systems, as emotional feature values depend on the speaker and their gender. However, speaker-independent systems are required for commercial applications. In this paper, a novel speaker-independent feature, the ratio of a spectral flatness measure to a spectral center (RSS), with a small variation in speakers when constructing a speaker-independent system is proposed. Gender and emotion are hierarchically classified by using the proposed feature (RSS), pitch, energy, and the mel frequency cepstral coefficients. An average recognition rate of 57.2% (plusmn 5.7%) at a 90% confidence interval is achieved with the proposed system in the speaker-independent mode.