Soluble soybean polysaccharide/TiO2 nanocomposites: Biological activity,release behavior,biodegradability, and biosafety

This study aimed to produce and characterize eco-friendly SSPS nanocomposites incorporated with various concentrations of TiO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) (1%, 3%, and 7%). The antimicrobial activity of the nanocomposite films against five strains of pathogenic bacteria was examined. Salmonella typhi PTCC 1609 was the most sensitive species to TiO₂ NPs at concentrations equal to the synthetic antibiotic. The migration of TiO₂ to ethanol and acetic acid, as two food simulants increased when the initial nano-TiO₂ content increased. The release profiles for TiO₂ in two simulants of ethanol and acetic acid indicated a non-Fickian release, and the release kinetics were concentration-dependent. SSPS/TiO₂ nanocomposites degraded easily and thus have the potential to be applied as an eco-friendly packaging system. Oral administration of doses of 1, 12.5, 25, 50, and 75 mg/kg TiO₂ revealed that the dose of 50 and 75 mg/kg increased malondialdehyde (p < .001) concentration in the liver tissue. In addition, it decreased glutathione (p < .001) concentration in the liver tissue.     

Evaluation of Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Activities of Essential Oils from Carum copticum Seed and Ferula assafoetida Latex

Carum copticum and Ferula assafoetida have several medicinal properties including antispasmodic, carminative, sedative, analgesic, and antiseptic. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), reactive nitrogen species (RNS), hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) scavenging activities of Carum and Ferula oils along with their antibacterial and antifungal activities were examined. Thymol (40.25%), γ‐terpinene (38.7%) and p‐cymene (15.8%) were detected as the main components of Carum oil while, β‐pinene (47.1%), α‐pinene (21.36%), and 1, 2‐dithiolane (18.6%) were the main components of Ferula oil. Inhibitory concentrations (IC50) for total radical scavenging were between 40 and 60 and 130 and 160 μg/mL of Carum and Ferula oil, respectively. Minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) for Salmonella typhi, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Aspergillus niger, and Candida albicans were 78 ± 8, 65 ± 7, 14 ± 3, 5 ± 2, 5.6 ± 1.3, and 8.8 ± 2.2 μg/mL of Carum oil, respectively. MIC for S. typhi, E. coli, S. aureus, B. subtilis, A. niger, and C. albicans were >200, >200, 125 ± 17, 80 ± 12, 85 ± 5, and 90 ± 11 μg/mL of Ferula oil, respectively. Accordingly, Carum and Ferula oils could be used as safe and effective natural antioxidants to improve the oxidative stability of fatty foods during storage and to preserve foods against food burn pathogens. Practical Application : This study clearly demonstrates the potential of Carum and Ferula oil especially Carum oil as natural antioxidant and antimicrobial agent. The chemical composition of essential oils was identified. Thus, identification of such compounds also helps to discover of new antioxidant, antibacterial and antifungal agents for potential applications in food safety and food preservation.     

The Effect of Methylcellulose,Temperature, and Microwave Pretreatment on Kinetic of Mass Transfer During Deep Fat Frying of Chicken Nuggets

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of microwave pretreatment, usage of methylcellulose, oil temperature, and frying time on mass transfer during deep fat frying of chicken nuggets. Methylcellulose was used in batter and as a coating on product. Microwave with two power densities namely 3.7 and 7.4 W/g was used for reduction of initial moisture content of samples before frying. Frying was performed at three temperatures (150 °C, 170 °C, and 190 °C) and five intervals (0.5, 1, 2, 3, and 4 min) in the sunflower oil. The least oil content was observed when MC was used as a coating layer on non-precooked samples fried at 190 °C. Oil absorption of samples with MC in batter was partially higher compared to control samples. This could be attributed to the rheology of batters. The first-order kinetic model was fitted to moisture and oil content. For determining the correlation between temperature and moisture diffusivity, Arrhenius equation was used. The constant rate for moisture and oil transfer was in the range of 2.2–5 and 0.023–2.67 s^?1, respectively. Effective moisture diffusivity values were between 1.43?×?10^?8 and 3.24?×?10^?8 m²/s. Activation energy ranged between 0.71 and 1.71 kJ/mol.     

Timeout Period Analysis to Detect Black Hole Attack in Multihop Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

A novel approach is proposed to estimate the timeout period used in wireless ad hoc networks in order to detect misbehaving nodes that make black hole attacks. Timeout period is an acceptable time frame for a node to forward a packet and is used to judge if the node is behaving properly. To avoid misjudgment and false alarms, the accuracy of the estimate of the timeout period is very important. Our method is based on the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol and Dynamic Source Routing protocol. The main contribution of this paper is proposing a queuing analysis to calculate the mean and maximum delay per hop implementing the 95-percentile of medium access waiting time. In addition, a new technique is introduced that can be applied to determine the mean number of hops in flooding-based ad hoc networks, taking into account edge effects. For each proposed model, analytical results are compared with results obtained from simulations and the validity of the models is confirmed by observing the close relationship between the results.     

Blind motion image deblurring using an effective blur kernel prior

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Blind image deblurring, i.e., reconstructing a sharp version of a blurred image, is generally an ill-posed problem, as both the blur kernel and the sharp image...     

Parametric topology optimization with multiresolution finite element models

We present a methodical procedure for topology optimization under uncertainty with multiresolution finite element (FE) models. We use our framework in a bifidelity setting where a coarse and a fine mesh corresponding to low- and high-resolution models are available. The inexpensive low-resolution model is used to explore the parameter space and approximate the parameterized high-resolution model and its sensitivity, where parameters are considered in both structural load and stiffness. We provide error bounds for bifidelity FE approximations and their sensitivities and conduct numerical studies to verify these theoretical estimates. We demonstrate our approach on benchmark compliance minimization problems, where we show significant reduction in computational cost for expensive problems such as topology optimization under manufacturing variability, reliability-based topology optimization, and three-dimensional topology optimization while generating almost identical designs to those obtained with a single-resolution mesh. We also compute the parametric von Mises stress for the generated designs via our bifidelity FE approximation and compare them with standard Monte Carlo simulations. The implementation of our algorithm, which extends the well-known 88-line topology optimization code in MATLAB, is provided.     

Pricing and location decisions in multi-objective facility location problem with M/M/m/k queuing systems

This article presents a new multi-objective model for a facility location problem with congestion and pricing policies. This model considers situations in which immobile service facilities are congested by a stochastic demand following M/M/m/k queues. The presented model belongs to the class of mixed-integer nonlinear programming models and NP-hard problems. To solve such a hard model, a new multi-objective optimization algorithm based on a vibration theory, namely multi-objective vibration damping optimization (MOVDO), is developed. In order to tune the algorithms parameters, the Taguchi approach using a response metric is implemented. The computational results are compared with those of the non-dominated ranking genetic algorithm and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm. The outputs demonstrate the robustness of the proposed MOVDO in large-sized problems.     

Coordination of gene expression noise with cell size: analytical results for agent-based models of growing cell populations

The chemical master equation and the Gillespie algorithm are widely used to model the reaction kinetics inside living cells. It is thereby assumed that cell growth and division can be modelled through effective dilution reactions and extrinsic noise sources. We here re-examine these paradigms through developing an analytical agent-based framework of growing and dividing cells accompanied by an exact simulation algorithm, which allows us to quantify the dynamics of virtually any intracellular reaction network affected by stochastic cell size control and division noise. We find that the solution of the chemical master equation—including static extrinsic noise—exactly agrees with the agent-based formulation when the network under study exhibits stochastic concentration homeostasis, a novel condition that generalizes concentration homeostasis in deterministic systems to higher order moments and distributions. We illustrate stochastic concentration homeostasis for a range of common gene expression networks. When this condition is not met, we demonstrate by extending the linear noise approximation to agent-based models that the dependence of gene expression noise on cell size can qualitatively deviate from the chemical master equation. Surprisingly, the total noise of the agent-based approach can still be well approximated by extrinsic noise models.