Cellular DNA breakage by soy isoflavone genistein and its methylated structural analogue biochanin A

Epidemiological studies have indicated that populations with high isoflavone intake through soy consumption have lower rates of breast, prostate, and colon cancer. The isoflavone polyphenol genistein in soybean is considered to be a potent chemopreventive agent against cancer. In order to explore the chemical basis of chemopreventive activity of genistein, in this paper we have examined the structure–activity relationship between genistein and its structural analogue biochanin A. We show that both genistein and its methylated derivative biochanin A are able to mobilize nuclear copper in human lymphocyte, leading to degradation of cellular DNA. However, the relative rate of DNA breakage was greater in the case of genistein. Further, the cellular DNA degradation was inhibited by copper chelator (neocuproine/bathocuproine) but not by compounds that specifically bind iron and zinc (desferrioxamine mesylate and histidine, respectively). We also compared the antioxidant activity of the two isoflavones against tert‐butylhydroperoxide‐induced oxidative breakage in lymphocytes. Again genistein was found to be more effective than biochanin A in providing protection against oxidative stress induced by tert‐butylhydroperoxide. It would therefore appear that the structural features of isoflavones that are important for antioxidant properties are also the ones that contribute to their pro‐oxidant action through a mechanism that involves redox cycling of chromatin‐bound nuclear copper.     

A case study for influence of building thermal insulation on cooling load and air-conditioning system in the hot and humid regions

Ensuring the effective thermal insulation in regions, where the cooling requirement of building with respect to heating requirement is dominant, is very important from the aspect of energy economy. In this study, the influence of thermal insulation on the building cooling load and the cooling system in case of air-conditioning by an all-air central air-conditioning system was evaluated for a sample building located in Adana, based on the results of three different types of insulation (A, B and C-type buildings) according to the energy efficiency index defined in the Thermal Insulation Regulation used in Turkey. The operating costs of the air-conditioning system were calculated using cooling bin numbers. Life-cycle cost analysis was carried out utilizing the present-worth cost method. Results showed that both the initial and the operating costs of the air-conditioning system were reduced considerably for all three insulation thicknesses. However, the optimum results in view of economic measurements were obtained for a C-type building. The thickness of thermal insulation for the buildings in the southern Turkey should be determined according to the guidelines for a C-type building.     

Optimal Design of Constructal T-Shaped Fin Under Partially Wet Condition for Enhanced Thermal Performance: An Analytical Approach

Abstract

In refrigeration and air conditioning systems, the fin surface may become dry, fully wet or partially wet depending upon the psychometric, thermo-physical and geometric parameters. The current work is intended to determine the length of the dry portion, temperature distribution, performance and optimum design parameters of a T-shaped fin under partially wet condition. Temperature dependent thermal conductivity of the fin material is taken and the humidity ratio of saturated air is considered to vary linearly with the corresponding fin surface temperature. Considering these the governing equation of T-shaped fin becomes nonlinear and it has been solved analytically by using Homotopy Perturbation Method. The point of separation between the dry and wet portions of a T-shaped fin may be located either in the stem or flange part and hence, two cases having different governing equations and boundary conditions are analyzed in the current study. For the optimization study, Lagrange multiplier technique is employed and the results are obtained by maximizing the heat transfer rate for a constant fin volume. Further, a comparative study is presented between insulated and convective fin tip conditions.     

CRWSNP: cooperative range-free wireless sensor network positioning algorithm

Sensing events occur in an area without knowing the events locations, is meaningless. Since there is no priorly knowledge about the locations of most of the sensors which scattered randomly in an area, wireless sensor network localization methods try to find out where sensors are located. A new cooperative and distributed range-free localization algorithm, based on only connectivity information is proposed in this paper. The method first uses convex optimization techniques to find primitive target nodes locations estimation, then nodes cooperate with each other in several iterations to improve the whole network location estimation. CRWSNP converges after a finite number of iterations because of applying two novel heuristic location correction techniques. As well as, results of the algorithm have been compared with six range-free based methods like CPE, DV-hop, APIT; and CRWSNP algorithm provides more accurate results over 50 random topologies for the network, in mean error and maximum error metrics.     

Removal of CO from process gas with Sn–activated carbon in pressure swing adsorption

A pressure swing adsorption (PSA) system using activated carbon impregnated with SnCl ₂·2H ₂ O and pure activated carbon was used to remove CO from a model H ₂/CO mixture representing the steam reformer process gas. On comparing PSA results for both carbons, the CO adsorptive capacity of impregnated carbon was found to be superior to that of the pure carbon. This was confirmed by the fact that the concentration of CO, initially at 1000 ppm, was successfully reduced to 4.02% and 1.04% of its initial concentration by the pure and the impregnated activated carbons respectively in the PSA system. The species in the impregnated carbon responsible for the improved gas phase CO adsorption was found to be SnO ₂. Simulation results at a cyclic time of 600 s in the PSA operating at 10 atmospheres gave a product recovery and purity of 99.99% and 57.48%, respectively. At 6 atmospheres, the product recovery and purity were 92.17% and 77.12%, respectively. © 2000 Society of Chemical Industry     

Tool wear prediction models during end milling of glass fibre-reinforced polymer composites

Composite products are often subjected to secondary machining processes as integral part of component manufacture. However, rapid tool wear becomes the limiting factor in maintaining consistent machining quality of the composite materials. Hence, this study demonstrates the development of an indirect approach in predicting and monitoring the wear on carbide tool during end milling using multiple regression analysis (MRA) and neuro-fuzzy modelling. Although the results have indicated that acceptable predictive capability can be well achieved using MRA, the application of neuro-fuzzy yields a significant improvement in the prediction accuracy. It is apparent that the accuracies are pronounced as a result of nonlinear membership function and hybrid learning algorithms. Using the developed models, a timely decision for tool re-conditioning or tool replacement can be achieved effectively.     

Deep underwater image enhancement through colour cast removal and optimization algorithm

ABSTRACT

Blue–green colour cast effect and low contrast are common problems suffered by deep underwater images. This paper introduces a new method which consists of two major steps: red channel correction based on green and blue channels (RCCGB), and simultaneous contrast stretching and mean pixel enhancement (SCSMPE). The RCCGB is designed to minimize the effect of blue–green illumination. This step considers the differences between the red channel and other channels in terms of total pixel values. The second major step, SCSMPE is specifically designed to perform contrast stretching and improve the mean pixel value simultaneously through particle swarm optimization (PSO). Based on the visual observation, the proposed method significantly reduces the effect of the blue–green colour cast and improves the image contrast. Furthermore, the average quantitative values for 300 underwater images also demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method.     

An Iterative Multiuser Detector for Overloaded LDPC Coded CDMA Systems

Maximum number of users in a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system, disregarding the type of used signature sequences, is equal to the processing gain; but in overloaded CDMA systems, it is tried to use some special methods of applying signature sequences so that the number of users exceeds the processing gain of the system. This growth in capacity is gain at the cost of decrease in performance of the conventional systems; and usually it is tried to use channel coding methods or multi-user detectors to compensate this decrease. Because of advantages of using coding methods joined with multiuser detectors in achieving better performance and also because of some benefits of using (Low Density Parity Check) LDPC method in comparison with similar capacity achieving coding methods, in this article, an iterative multi-user detector for an overloaded LDPC Coded CDMA system is proposed. This receiver consists of a combination of matched filters in the first stage and a linear (Minimum Mean Square Error) MMSE detector and an Interference Cancellation (IC) scheme in the successive stages. In the suggested method, a bank of LDPC decoders gives the soft information to the IC blocks, which help for the better interference cancellation. Comparing the performance of the proposed system with that of Turbo coded system shows that the proposed system, in addition to advantages of using LDPC codes instead of Turbo codes, has better bit error rate performance.     

Application of MIKE SHE modelling system to set up a detailed water balance computation

Estimation of total water balance is a substantial issue for watershed modelling in order to simulate the major components of the hydrological cycle to determine the stress of different anthropogenic activities on the available water resources within a catchment. In this context, the fully distributed physically based MIKE SHE modelling system was used to simulate the individual hydrological components of the total water balance for the Paya Indah Wetlands (PIW) watershed in the west of Peninsular Malaysia. Results reveal that the overall water balance is predominantly controlled by climate variables. Application of the model to the PIW watershed provides detailed estimation of the total water balance for a first‐order catchment in which actual evapotranspiration (ET) represents approximately 65 and 58%, while overland flow (OL) to the PIW lake system represents 12.38 and 12.3% of the total rainfall during the calibration and validation periods, respectively. The difference of the inflow and outflow was taken as storage in depth. Overall, the model gives a reasonable output of total error of less than 1% of the total rainfall, which in turn indicates that the interaction among components is satisfactorily sustained.