Unveiling the ISCAS-85 benchmarks: a case study in reverseengineering

Designing at higher levels of abstraction is key to managing the complexity of today's VLSI chips. The authors show how they reverse-engineered the ISCAS-85 benchmarks to add a useful, new high-level tool to the designer's arsenal     

Progress in modification of sunflower oil to expand its industrial value

Increasing the sunflower seed oil content as well as improving its quality makes it compatible for industrial demands. This is an important breeding objective of sunflower which increases its market value and ensures high returns for the producers. The present review focuses on determining the progress of improving sunflower seed oil content and modifying its quality by empirical and advanced molecular breeding methods. It is known that the sunflower oil content and quality have been altered through empirical selection methods and mutation breeding programmes in various parts of the world. Further improvement in seed oil content and its components (such as phytosterols, tocopherols and modified fatty acid profile) has been slowed down due to low genetic variation in elite germplasm and complex of hereditary traits. Introgression from wild species can be carried out to modify the fatty acids profile and tocopherol contents with linkage drags. Different transgenes introduced through biotechnological methods may produce novel long‐chain fatty acids within sunflower oil. Bio‐engineering of sunflower oil could allow it to be used in diverse industrial products such as bio‐diesel or bio‐plastics. These results showed that past and current trends of modifying sunflower oil quality are essential for its further expansion as an oilseed crop. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry     

Effect of γ-irradiation on bioactivity, fatty acid compositions and volatile compounds of clary sage seed (Salvia sclarea L.)

Clary sage seeds (Salvia sclarea L.) were obtained from plants cultivated, and 2.5, 4.0, 5.5, and 7.0 kGy doses of γ-irradiation were applied to the clary sage seeds. They were then analyzed for their protein, ash, oil and dry matter contents, and fatty acid composition. Additionally, the total phenolic contents, antiradical, antioxidant activities, and volatile compounds of the clary sage seed extract were determined. There was no significant difference in protein content. However, the moisture, oil, and ash contents of the samples were affected by irradiation. While the 7 kGy dose had a positive effect on the total phenolic content and antiradical activity of the sage seed extract, all doses have negative effects on the antioxidant activity of the sage seed. The main fatty acid of the sage seed was remarkably found as α-linolenic acid. The four irradiation levels caused significant differences in fatty acid composition by affecting all fatty acids except palmitic, palmitoleic, and eicosenoic acids. The dominant volatile compounds of control sage seed were found as β-pinene (18.81%) and limonene (15.60%). Higher doses of the irradiation decreased volatile components of sage seed. Clary sage seed including high omega-3 can be irradiated with low doses (≤ 2.5 kGy) of γ-irradiation. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Clary sage is one of the most popular Salvia species in Turkey and many countries. Clary sage seed has approximately 29% oil content and this oil contains >50% of α-linolenic acid. γ-Irradiation is widely applied in the preservation of spice quality. The present study shows that the antioxidant activity of the clary sage seed is decreased by γ-irradiation. Additionally, higher doses of irradiation also decreased the volatile components of sage seed. Therefore, we suggest that clary sage seed which includes high levels of omega-3 should be irradiated with low doses (≤ 2.5 kGy) of γ-irradiation.     

Functional properties of microwave-treated wheat gluten

In this study, the effects of microwave treatments on solubility, foaming and emulsifying properties of gluten were investigated. The solubility of microwave-heated gluten proteins gradually decreased as the treatment time increased, at all power levels applied. The highest solubility values were obtained for gluten samples microwave treated at 50% power level. The lowest emulsifying capacity values were obtained with the samples heated at 100% power level at all treatment times. The emulsifying stability values of microwave-heated gluten samples were found to be slightly higher than those of the control sample. However, there were no significant differences among the microwave power levels at all treatment times in terms of the emulsifying stability values. The foam volumes of the samples treated at 80 and 100% energy levels were slightly higher than those of the control gluten. The foam stability values of microwave-heated gluten samples gradually increased with treatment time at all power levels, which were more pronounced at 100% power level. Generally, microwave treatment did not cause major changes on the protein electrophoretic patterns of gluten samples at the power levels used.     

Drift compensation of a holonomic mobile robot using recurrent neural networks

Intelligent Service Robotics - Mecanum wheeled robots can exhibit serious slippage problems because of the discontinuous contact between the wheels and the ground which negatively influences the...     

Role of chromium in Cr–Fe oxide catalysts for high temperature water-gas shift reaction – A DFT study

Carcinogenic hexavalent Cr in the current iron oxide-based catalysts of high temperature water-gas shift (HT-WGS) reaction is great environmental concern. Interpreting the role of the Cr in this important industrial catalyst system is required. In the present study, we investigated substitution of Cr atoms into the most stable termination of Fe₃O₄ (111) slab surface by spin-polarized periodic DFT approach to comprehend the role of Cr. We applied the projector augmented-wave (PAW) method within the Perdew-Wang 1991 (PW91) form of the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) on the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package (VASP). The calculations point out that Cr atoms choose being below the surface FeO₆ sites. Cr slightly affects the dissociative H₂O adsorption. There is no effect on the CO adsorption. Oxygen vacancy is favored to form on the topmost layer with less vacancy formation energy. Substitution of Cr into the structure increases the oxygen vacancy formation energy. This indicates that Cr does not act as a chemical promoter and does not affect the catalytic activity positively, which is experimentally confirmed by the previous studies.