Preparation and characterization of chitosan‐based dispersions

Complexation of chitosan in aqueous solutions by low molecular weight electrolytes is one of the simplest methods for the preparation of aqueous chitosan dispersions. In this work, the influence of storage time, sulfate concentration, method of preparation and surfactant content on some properties of the resultant chitosan dispersions (turbidity, viscosity and zeta potential) was analyzed. Turbidimetry was adequate to monitor the formation of particles, while viscometry was suitable to monitor changes in the dispersing phase. An analysis of the properties of these systems, mainly in terms of particle–particle and macromolecule–macromolecule interactions was carried out. Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

Oxidation and mineralisation of substituted phenols by Fenton's reagent and catalytic wet oxidation.

Catalytic abatement of solutions of 1,000 mg/L in phenol, ortho and para nitrophenol and ortho and para cresols was acomplished by using two catalytic systems. Fenton's reagent was used at 50 degrees C by adding 10 mg/L of ferrous cation and different dosages of H2O2. The mixture was reacting isothermically in a batch way during 3 hours. Catalytic wet oxidation (CWO) was carried out by using a commercial Activated Carbon, Industrial React FE01606A, CWO runs were carried out in a fixed bed reactor (FBR) with concurrent upflow. Temperature and oxygen pressure of the reactor were set to 160 degrees C and 16 bar, respectively. While phenols are quicky oxidised by the Fenton reagent higher mineralisation was obtained in the CWO process.     

Yeast exo-β-glucanases can be used as efficient and readily detectable reporter genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Yeast exo-1,3-β-glucanases are secretable proteins whose function is basically trophic and may also be involved in cell wall glucan hydrolytic processes. Since fluorescein di(β-D -glucopyranoside) is a fluorogenic substrate detectable and quantifiable by flow cytometry, it was used for testing the ability of the EXG1 gene product of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its homologous gene in Candida albicans to function as reporter genes. These open reading frames were coupled to different promoters in multicopy plasmids, and exoglucanase activity quantified at flow cytometry. Exoglucanases were found to be useful tools for the study of promoter regions in S. cerevisiae. This technique has the advantage over other reporter gene systems—such as β-galactosidase fusions—that it does not require permeabilization of yeast cells and therefore it allows the recovery of viable cells—by sorting—after flow cytometry analysis.     

Genotoxic effect of Physalis angulata L. (Solanaceae) extract on human lymphocytes treated in vitro

Physalis angulata L (Solanaceae) is a medicinal plant from North of Brazil, whose different extracts and infusions are commonly used in the popular medicine for the treatment of malaria, asthma, hepatitis, dermatitis and rheumatism. However, the genotoxic effects of P. angulata on human cells is not well known. The main purpose of the present study was to evaluate the in vitro genotoxic effects of aqueous extract of P. angulata using the comet assay and the micronucleus assay in human lymphocytes provided from 6 healthy donors. Treatments with P. angulata extracts were performed in vitro in order to access the extent of DNA damage. The comet assay has shown that treatments with P. angulata at 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 6.0 microg/mL in culture medium were genotoxic. Lymphocytes treated with P. angulata at the concentrations of 3.0 and 6.0 microg/mL in culture medium showed a statistically significant increase in the frequency of micronucleus (p<0.05), however, the cytokinesis blocked proliferation index (CBPI) was not decreased after P. angulata treatment. In conclusion, the present work demonstrated the genotoxic effects of P. angulata extract on human lymphocytes in vitro.     

Progressive ladder network topology combining interferometric and intensity fiber-optic-based sensors

Progressive ladder topology is studied by consideration of its properties of power budget and coupler tailoring. Optimization criteria are addressed for lossless and real systems, and their basic characteristics are compared with other topologies. Numerical results are presented, and an experiment is described for the case in which the network supports interferometric and intensity (with referentiation) fiber-optic-based sensors.     

Satellite-based estimates of groundwater storage variations in large drainage basins with extensive floodplains

This study presents monthly estimates of groundwater anomalies in a large river basin dominated by extensive floodplains, the Negro River Basin, based on the synergistic analysis using multisatellite observations and hydrological models. For the period 2003-2004, changes in water stored in the aquifer is isolated from the total water storage measured by GRACE by removing contributions of both the surface reservoir, derived from satellite imagery and radar altimetry, and the root zone reservoir simulated by WGHM and LaD hydrological models. The groundwater anomalies show a realistic spatial pattern compared with the hydrogeological map of the basin, and similar temporal variations to local in situ groundwater observations and altimetry-derived level height measurements. Results highlight the potential of combining multiple satellite techniques with hydrological modeling to estimate the evolution of groundwater storage.     

Digital Image Analysis to Standardize a Photometric Method in Colorimetric Quantification

Abstract

Techniques applying digital images increasingly have been used in biology, medicine, physics, and other research areas. The image coordinates can represent light intensities values to be detected by a CCD. Based on this concept, a photometric system composed of a LED source and a digital camera as a detector was used for optical density measurements. Standards for permanganate, glucose, and protein solutions were determined by colorimetric methods using our device. Samples of protein of Pasteurella mutocida bacteria membrane and, also, fractions of rabbit kidney membrane, rich in Na, K‐ATPase, with unknown concentrations were dosed through the Hartree method using our photometric system.     

Least squares support vector machines with tuning based on chaotic differential evolution approach applied to the identification of a thermal process

In the past decade, support vector machines (SVMs) have gained the attention of many researchers. SVMs are non-parametric supervised learning schemes that rely on statistical learning theory which enables learning machines to generalize well to unseen data. SVMs refer to kernel-based methods that have been introduced as a robust approach to classification and regression problems, lately has handled nonlinear identification problems, the so called support vector regression. In SVMs designs for nonlinear identification, a nonlinear model is represented by an expansion in terms of nonlinear mappings of the model input. The nonlinear mappings define a feature space, which may have infinite dimension. In this context, a relevant identification approach is the least squares support vector machines (LS-SVMs). Compared to the other identification method, LS-SVMs possess prominent advantages: its generalization performance (i.e. error rates on test sets) either matches or is significantly better than that of the competing methods, and more importantly, the performance does not depend on the dimensionality of the input data. Consider a constrained optimization problem of quadratic programing with a regularized cost function, the training process of LS-SVM involves the selection of kernel parameters and the regularization parameter of the objective function. A good choice of these parameters is crucial for the performance of the estimator. In this paper, the LS-SVMs design proposed is the combination of LS-SVM and a new chaotic differential evolution optimization approach based on Ikeda map (CDEK). The CDEK is adopted in tuning of regularization parameter and the radial basis function bandwith. Simulations using LS-SVMs on NARX (Nonlinear AutoRegressive with eXogenous inputs) for the identification of a thermal process show the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed CDEK algorithm when compared with the classical DE approach.