Phenolic composition,antioxidant and cytoprotective effects of aqueous-methanol extract from Anneslea fragrans leaves as affected by drying methods

The present study is aimed to evaluate the effect of three different drying methods, including shade drying (SD), freeze drying (FD) and hot air dying (HAD), on the chemical components, antioxidant and cytoprotective activities of aqueous-methanol extracts from A. fragrans leaves. The total phenolic and flavonoid content were determined by spectroscopic methods, whereas the chemical profile of different extracts was determined by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with a tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS). A total of thirteen compounds were characterised and 9 phenolic compounds have been quantified. Two dihydrochalcone glycosides named confusoside and vacciniifolin were found to be the most abundant phenolic compounds in the SD extract of A. fragrans leaves, which also showed the strongest antioxidant and cytoprotective activities. The results showed that shade drying is an efficient method for preserving the chemical constituents and maintaining the antioxidant and cytoprotective activities of A. fragrans leaves.     

Anomalous line broading of donor transitions in high-purity InP in high magnetic fields

New lines shapes, not predicted by Stark broadening, are reported for 1s→2p (m=?1, 0) for a single hydrogenlike donor in InP. Stark-effect inhomogeneous broadening is suppressed by a magnetic field in GaAs according to both theory and experiment but the characteristic low frequency tail is enhanced by the high magnetic field for both 1s→2p (m=?1, 0) in InP.     

THERMOELASTICITY SOLUTION OF A LAYER USING THE GREEN–NAGHDI MODEL

The Green–Naghdi (GN) linear theory of thermoelasticity of types II (without energy dissipation) and III (with energy dissipation) for homogeneous and isotropic materials is employed to study thermal and mechanical waves in a layer. The disturbances are generated by sudden application of temperature to the boundary. The dimensionless forms of the governing equations are solved utilizing the Laplace transform method. Closed-form solutions are obtained for a layer in the Laplace domain, and a numerical inversion of the Laplace transform method is used to obtain the temperature, displacement, and stress fields in the physical time domain. Thermomechanical wave propagation and reflection from the boundary layer are investigated and the influence of the damping parameter on the temperature, displacement, and stress fields in the GN type III theory is discussed.     

THERMAL BUCKLING OF FUNCTIONALLY GRADED PLATES BASED ON HIGHER ORDER THEORY

Equilibrium and stability equations of a rectangular plate made of functionally graded material (FGM) under thermal loads are derived, based on the higher order shear deformation plate theory. Assuming that the material properties vary as a power form of the thickness coordinate variable z and using the variational method, the system of fundamental partial differential equations is established. The derived equilibrium and stability equations for functionally graded plates (FGPs) are identical to the equations for laminated composite plates. A buckling analysis of a functionally graded plate under four types of thermal loads is carried out and results in closed-form solutions. The critical buckling temperature relations are reduced to the respective relations for functionally graded plates with a linear composition of constituent materials and homogeneous plates. The results are compared with the critical buckling temperatures obtained for functionally graded plates based on classical plate theory given in the literature. The study concludes that higher order shear deformation theory accurately predicts the behavior of functionally graded plates, whereas the classical plate theory overestimates buckling temperatures.     

Understanding Humidity-Enhanced Adhesion of Geckos: Deep Neural Network-Assisted Multi-Scale Molecular Modeling

A higher relative humidity leads to an increased sticking power of gecko feet to surfaces. The molecular mechanism responsible for this increase, however, is not clear. Capillary forces, water mediating keratin-surface contacts and water-induced softening of the keratin are proposed as candidates. In previous work, strong evidence for water mediation is found but indirect effects via increased flexibility are not completely ruled out. This article studies the latter hypothesis by a bottom-up coarse-grained mesoscale model of an entire gecko spatula designed without explicit water particles, so that capillary action and water-mediation are excluded. The elasticity of this model is adjusted with a deep neural network to atomistic elastic constants, including water at different concentrations. Our results show clearly that on nanoscopic flat surfaces, the softening of keratin by water uptake cannot nearly account for the experimentally observed increase in gecko sticking power. Here, the dominant mechanism is the mediation of keratin-surface contacts by intervening water molecules. This mechanism remains important on nanostructured surfaces. Here, however, a water-induced increase of the keratin flexibility may enable the spatula to follow surface features smaller than itself and thereby increase the number of contacts with the surface. This leads to an appreciable but not dominant contribution to the humidity-increased adhesion. Recently, by atomistic grand-canonical molecular dynamics simulation, the room-temperature isotherm is obtained for the sorption of water into gecko keratin, to the authors’ knowledge, the first such relation for any beta-keratin. In this work, it relates the equilibrium water content of the keratin to the ambient relative humidity.     

THERMOELASTIC STABILITY OF ORTHOTROPIC CIRCULAR PLATES

In this article the thermoelastic buckling of a circular orthotropic composite plate is discussed. The plate is assumed to be geometrically perfect. The equilibrium and stability equations, derived via variational formulations, are used to determine the prebuckling forces and the buckling temperatures. The equations are based on the Love-Kirchhoff hypothesis and Sanders' nonlinear strain-displacement relation. Critical buckling temperatures associated with the uniform temperature rise, gradient through-the-thickness temperature, and linear temperature variation along the radius are obtained. The results are validated for the first type of loading with the known data in literature.     

Right and left returns to scales in data envelopment analysis: Determining type and measuring value

This study identifies types and values of right and left returns to scales (RTSs) of efficient decision making units (DMUs) in data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this research, we first introduce a new approach to estimate types of right and left returns to scales of efficient DMUs and then, values of right and left returns to scales of these DMUs are measured by presenting two new DEA models.     

Power system stabilizer design using hybrid multi-objective particle swarm optimization with chaos

novel technique for the optimal tuning of power system stabilizer (PSS) was proposed, by integrating the modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO) with the chaos (MPSOC). Firstly, a modification in the particle swarm optimization (PSO) was made by introducing passive congregation (PC). It helps each swarm member in receiving a multitude of information from other members and thus decreases the possibility of a failed attempt at detection or a meaningless search. Secondly, the MPSO and chaos were hybridized (MPSOC) to improve the global searching capability and prevent the premature convergence due to local minima. The robustness of the proposed PSS tuning technique was verified on a multi-machine power system under different operating conditions. The performance of the proposed MPSOC was compared to the MPSO, PSO and GA through eigenvalue analysis, nonlinear time-domain simulation and statistical tests. Eigenvalue analysis shows acceptable damping of the low-frequency modes and time domain simulations also show that the oscillations of synchronous machines can be rapidly damped for power systems with the proposed PSSs. The results show that the presented algorithm has a faster convergence rate with higher degree of accuracy than the GA, PSO and MPSO.     

Occurrence mechanism of silicate and aluminosilicate minerals in Sarcheshmeh copper flotation concentrate

The Sarcheshmeh copper flotation circuit is producing 5×104 t copper concentrate per month with an averaging grade of 28% Cu in rougher,cleaner and recleaner stages.In recent years,with the increase in the open pit depth,the content of aluminosilicate minerals increased in plant feed and subsequently in flotation concentrate.It can motivate some problems,such as unwanted consumption of reagents,decreasing of the copper concentrate grade,increasing of Al2O3 and SiO2 in the copper concentrate,and needing a hi...     

Emulsion atom transfer radical polymerization of 2-ethylhexyl methacrylate

The emulsion atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of 2-ethylhexyl methacrylate (EHMA) was carried out with ethyl 2-bromoisobutyrate (EBiB) as an initiator and copper bromide (CuBr)/4,4′-dinonyl-2,2′-bipyridyl (dNbpy) as a catalyst system. The effects of surfactant type and concentration, temperature, monomer/initiator ratio, and CuBr₂ addition on the system livingness, polymer molecular weight control, and latex stability were examined in detail. It was found that the polymerization systems with Tween 80 and Brij 98 as surfactants at 30 °C gave the best latex stability. The polymer samples prepared under these conditions had narrow molecular weight distributions (M_w/M_n=1.1-1.2) and linear relationships of number-average molecular weight versus monomer conversion.