Comparison of Peroxynitrite-Scavenging Capacities of Several Citrus Fruit Peels

Citrus fruit peels contain a large variety of bioactive components and are considered as potential sources of functional components. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the peroxynitrite-scavenging activities of different citrus fruit peels. The peroxynitrite-scavenging activities of methanolic extracts of nine dried citrus fruit peels were evaluated as determined by their ability to attenuate the peroxynitrite-mediated nitrotyrosine formation in albumin. The results showed that all of the tested citrus fruit peels had the ability to attenuate the formation of nitrotyrosine. The total phenolics contents highly correlated with the peroxynitrite-scavenging activities. The results also indicated that the peroxynitrite-scavenging activity of citrus fruit peels was mainly attributed to the total phenolics.     

Construction of General (k, n) Probabilistic Visual Cryptography Scheme

Visual cryptography scheme (VCS) is a secure method that encrypts a secret image by subdividing it into shadow images. Due to the nature of encryption VCS is categorized into two types: the deterministic VCS (DVCS) and the probabilistic VCS (PVCS). For the DVCS, we use m (known as the pixel expansion) subpixels to represent a secret pixel. The PVCS uses only one subpixel to represent a secret pixel, while the quality of reconstructed image is degraded. A well-known construction of (k, n)-PVCS is obtained from the (k, n)-DVCS. In this paper, we show another construction of (k, n)-PVCS by extending the (k, k)-PVCS.     

Multiple costs based decision making with back-propagation neural networks

The current research investigates a single cost for cost-sensitive neural networks (CNN) for decision making. This may not be feasible for real cost-sensitive decisions which involve multiple costs. We propose to modify the existing model, the traditional back-propagation neural networks (TNN), by extending the back-propagation error equation for multiple cost decisions. In this multiple-cost extension, all costs are normalized to be in the same interval (i.e. between 0 and 1) as the error estimation generated in the TNN. A comparative analysis of accuracy dependent on three outcomes for constant costs was performed: (1) TNN and CNN with one constant cost (CNN-1C), (2) TNN and CNN with two constant costs (CNN-2C), and (3) CNN-1C and CNN-2C. A similar analysis for accuracy was also made for non-constant costs; (1) TNN and CNN with one non-constant cost (CNN-1NC), (2) TNN and CNN with two non-constant costs (CNN-2NC), and (3) CNN-1NC and CNN-2NC. Furthermore, we compared the misclassification cost for CNNs for both constant and non-constant costs (CNN-1C vs. CNN-2C and CNN-1NC vs. CNN-2NC). Our findings demonstrate that there is a competitive behavior between the accuracy and misclassification cost in the proposed CNN model. To obtain a higher accuracy and lower misclassification cost, our results suggest merging all constant cost matrices into one constant cost matrix for decision making. For multiple non-constant cost matrices, our results suggest maintaining separate matrices to enhance the accuracy and reduce the misclassification cost.     

UTAUT模型在医疗健康领域信息技术采纳行为研究述评

UTAUT模型是信息技术接受使用模型中较为成熟的理论模型.目前,医疗、健康领域信息技术接受采纳行为的研究中广泛使用了这一基础理论.文章从研究数量、研究对象、核心自变量、扩展因素四个方面展开,探讨此类研究的趋势性和局限性.     

mwKAT: A meta-tool-generated knowledge acquisition tool for multimedia workstations development

mwKAT is an interactive knowledge acquisition tool for acquiring domain knowledge about multimedia components. It constructs knowledge bases for a consulting system that produces the design specification for a multimedia workstation according to the user requirements.mwKAT is generated from and executed inGAS, a primitives-based generic knowledge acquisition meta-tool. It contains three acquisition primitives, namely, parameter proposing, constraint proposing, and fix proposing to construct an intermediate knowledge base represented by a dependency model. These primitives identify necessary domain knowledge and guide users to propose significant components, constraints, and fix methods into the dependency model.mwKAT also invokes knowledge verification and validation primitives to verify the completeness, consistency, compilability, and correctness of the intermediate knowledge base.     

Investigation of undoped ZnO@SiO2 core–shell phosphors with green luminescence

Microsystem Technologies - In this study, ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) with the structure of hexagonal prisms and different diameters (20–45 nm) and lengths (80–320 nm)...     

Microwave characteristics of liquid-crystal tunable capacitors

This letter investigates the microwave characteristics of the liquid crystal tunable capacitors for the first time. With the dielectric anisotropy properties, the liquid crystal capacitors present very different characteristics compared to the semiconductor or MEMS tunable capacitors. A quality factor of 310 with a control voltage of 5 V was achieved at 4 GHz. A tuning range of 25.3% for the control voltages from 0 to 5 V was obtained at 5 GHz. The results demonstrate the potential applications of liquid crystals as dielectric materials for capacitors with high quality factors and wide tuning ranges at high frequencies, particularly suitable for the future flexible electronics with transparent substrates.     

Exploring factors that influence information resources sharing intention via the perspective of consensus perception of blockchain

Information Technology and Management - With the rapid development of information technology (IT) and information systems (IS), the emergence of information silos has become a severe impediment to...     

Enhancement of fermentative biohydrogen production from textile desizing wastewater via coagulation-pretreatment

A real textile desizing wastewater (TDW) was coagulation-pretreated to enhance its potential of biohydrogen production. Batch fermentation showed that the hydrogen production was efficiently enhanced (550 and 120% increments for hydrogen production rate and hydrogen yield, respectively) and the production performance was substrate-concentration dependent. A peak hydrogen production rate of 3.9 L/L-d and hydrogen yield of 1.52 mol/mol hexose were obtained while using coagulant GGEFloc-653 at a dosage of 1 g/L to pretreat TDW with the concentration of 15 g total sugar/L. The coagulation-pretreatment could have butyrate-type fermentation with high biohydrogen production and the removed some toxic materials that might drive the metabolic pathways to those not favoring biohydrogen production. Based on the data obtained, strategies to operate the coagulation and biohydogen fermentation are suggested. Moreover, fermentation effluent utilization such as for two-stage biogas production and further biohythane (a mixture of H₂ and CH₄) generation are also elucidated.