Dietary mycotoxins binders: a strategy to reduce aflatoxin m1 residues and improve milk quality of lactating Beetal goats

Aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) is a metabolite of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) and secreted in milk of animals that are kept on a moldy diet. AFB1 is produced by several toxigenic species of fungi. In this study, the comparative efficacy of two mycotoxin binders was evaluated in terms of reducing excretion of AFM1, total viable bacterial count and somatic cell count in milk obtained from goats fed with AFB1 contaminated diet. A total of 32 lactating Beetal goats were reared and divided into 4 equal groups: Animals of group A were kept as control, while those in groups B, C, and D were individually fed with AFB1 at 40 µg alone, 40 µg AFB1 along with mycotoxin binder Toxfin^® at 3 g kg^?1 of cotton seed cake, and 40 µg AFB1 along with mycotoxin binder Elitox^® at a dose rate of 1 g kg^?1 of cotton seed cake, respectively. Toxfin^® significantly decreased the excretion of AFM1 in goats’ milk by 49.57 % while Elitox^® non-significantly reduced the excretion of AFM1 in goats’ milk by 19.49 %. Total viable bacterial count in milk samples of group C and D, and somatic cell count in milk samples of group C did not reduce significantly. However, somatic cell count in milk samples of group D reduced significantly. We conclude that the addition of Toxfin^® in the moldy diet significantly reduce the excretion of AFM1 in animals’ milk and minimize the risk of mycotoxin toxicity to public health.     

A multi-faceted approach to analyzing glucose heat-degradants and evaluating impact to a CHO cell culture process

Glucose solutions are commonly heated before use in medical and biotech applications to maintain cleanliness, however the resulting degradants can be toxic. This study examines two approaches to evaluating the heat degradants resulting from holding a 40% glucose solution at 55°C for 5 weeks: first, chemical changes to the solution were identified and quantified via analytical testing, and second the toxicity of the heat-degraded 40% glucose solution was evaluated empirically by using it as a feed stock for a fed-batch CHO-cell-based protein therapeutic manufacturing process. Colorimetric analysis quantified a color change during heating, and liquid chromatography assays measured an increase in the concentrations of two unknown degradants along with the commonly identified glucose impurity 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF). Solution pH decreased over time, corresponding with an increase in formic acid concentration as measured via GC–MS. Despite this, cell culture toxicity was not observed, and protein productivity and product quality were maintained.     

A simple process to remove boron from metallurgical grade silicon

It is necessary to develop solar grade (SoG) silicon for the photovoltaic industry. A desirable approach is to upgrade metallurgical grade (MG) silicon. The most problematic impurities to remove from MG silicon are B and P. A simple process to remove B from MG silicon has been developed by refining MG silicon in the molten state followed by directional solidification. With this approach, B has been reduced to 0.3 ppma, P to <10 ppma and all other impurities to <0.1 ppma using commercially available, as-received MG silicon. It remains to develop a similar P reduction process so that SoG silicon production from MG silicon can be commercialized. The B-removal process was applied to B overdoped electronic grade silicon, and the resulting material was used for crystal growth. Test solar cells of 12.5–13.4% (1 cm²) efficiency were produced.     

Motor vehicle drivers’ injuries in train–motor vehicle crashes

The objectives of this research were to: (1) identify a more suitable model for modeling injury severity of motor vehicle drivers involved in train–motor vehicle crashes at highway–rail grade crossings from among three commonly used injury severity models and (2) to investigate factors associated with injury severity levels of motor vehicle drivers involved in train–motor vehicle crashes at such crossings. The 2009–2013 highway–rail grade crossing crash data and the national highway–rail crossing inventory data were combined to produce the analysis dataset. Four-year (2009–2012) data were used for model estimation while 2013 data were used for model validation. The three injury severity levels—fatal, injury and no injury—were based on the reported intensity of motor-vehicle drivers’ injuries at highway–rail grade crossings.     

International roughness index models for HMA overlay treatment of flexible and composite pavements

Timely rehabilitation and preservation of pavement systems are imperative to minimising agency's costs and maximising benefits. Reasonable estimates of treatment life and pavement life extension can be made possible by developing reliable treatment performance models. Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development initiated a three-phased study to develop pavement treatment performance models in support of cost-effective selection of pavement treatment type and the time of treatment. As a result of the study, international roughness index (IRI) models for overlay treatment of composite and flexible pavements were developed. Various factors affecting the IRI of overlay treatment were identified. Climatic indices pertaining to Louisiana were developed which exhibited strong statistical significance along with the other variables as used in the IRI models. The developed IRI models provided good agreement between the measured and predicted IRI values with the majority of data within 5% of prediction error. The models could be used as a good pavement management tool for pavement maintenance and rehabilitation actions.     

Study of valence states of copper in copper-phosphate glasses

Phosphate glasses containing CuO with composition, [(CuO) _x (P₂O₅)_1–x ], x=0.10, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30, 0.40 and 0.50, were studied by magnetization, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS). It was observed that compositional changes take place in going from batch to glass and these changes are more pronounced for low copper concentration. The ratio [Cu²⁺/Cu_total] as a function of x was determined from XPS and magnetization combined with RBS. The magnetization measurements suggest that more than 90% of the copper ions exist in the Cu²⁺ state in the glasses, while the XPS data show that less than 50% of the copper ions may be in the Cu²⁺ state. The low Cu²⁺ states detected by XPS may have resulted form reduction of copper ions upon exposure of the samples to X-ray radiation during measurement.Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed.     

Socialized healthcare service recommendation using deep learning

Socialized recommender system recommends reliable healthcare services for users. Ratings are predicted on the healthcare services by merging recommendations given by users who has social relations with the active users. However, existing works did not consider the influence of distrust between users. They recommend items only based on the trust relations between users. We therefore propose a novel deep learning-based socialized healthcare service recommender model, which recommends healthcare services with recommendations given by recommenders with both trust relations and distrust relations with the active users. The influences of recommenders, considering both the node information and the structure information, are merged via the deep learning model. Experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the existing works on prediction accuracy and prediction coverage simultaneously, even for cold start users or users with very sparse trust relations. It is also computational less expensive.

     

Automatic detection and severity classification of diabetic retinopathy

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a leading cause of preventable blindness caused by damaged blood vessels in the eye, if not treated early on. The aim of this...     

Wide angle crystal spectrometer for angularly and spectrally resolved X-ray scattering experiments

A novel wide angle spectrometer has been implemented with a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite crystal coupled to an image plate. This spectrometer has allowed us to look at the energy resolved spectrum of scattered x rays from a dense plasma over a wide range of angles (approximately 30 degrees ) in a single shot. Using this spectrometer we were able to observe the temporal evolution of the angular scatter cross section from a laser shocked foil. A spectrometer of this type may also be useful in investigations of x-ray line transfer from laser-plasmas experiments.     

Multiple color space channel fusion for skin detection

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Skin detection is used in applications ranging from face detection, tracking body parts and hand gesture analysis, to retrieval and blocking of objectionable...