The effect of steaming on the free amino acid contents and antioxidant activity of Panax ginseng

This study was carried out to investigate changes in the free amino acid contents and antioxidant activity of Panax ginseng induced by steaming at different temperatures. For this purpose, white ginseng (WG), red ginseng (RG, ginseng steamed at 100 °C) and ginseng steamed at 120 °C (SG) were prepared using an autoclave. Most free amino acids were decreased significantly by steam treatment, with the greatest reduction observed in SG. Total content of free amino acids, 17.9 mg/g in WG was reduced to 12.2 mg/g in RG and 2.79 mg/g in SG. As for Arg which is the most predominant amino acid in ginseng, the content, 10.4 mg/g in WG, decreased significantly to 1.38 mg/g in SG. In particular, β-N-oxalyl-L-α,β-diaminopropionic acid (β-ODAP), a well-known neurotoxin, was reduced by 92.9% in SG. In contrast, the level of Maillard reaction products (MRPs) increased with steam treatment, which indicates that the reduction of most amino acids is attributed to the extent of the Maillard reaction. Based on MRPs being useful antioxidants, we assayed the scavenging activity against free radicals produced by 2,2′-azobis-(2-amidinopropane) dihydrochloride (AAPH). The radical scavenging activity of a ginseng extract increased with steam treatment, with the most potent activity in SG. Further, MRPs-rich fraction in SG showed powerful antioxidant activity, which indicates MRPs are major contributors to antioxidant activity enhanced by steam treatment.     

A new methodology for identification of critical lines using damping sensitivity analysis

When an inter-area mode dominates a low-frequency oscillation in a stressed condition, control of the active power flow of interface lines, with compensating devices, can effectively reduce the electromechanical power oscillations. In general, interface lines in which inter-area oscillations are large are considered to be good locations for installation of compensating devices. A sensitivity analysis with respect to change in active power flow can provide an important factor in electric power system operation. This paper proposes a new methodology to calculate the damping sensitivity with respect to change in active power flow, which can be useful for accurate selection of critical lines from the viewpoint of small-signal stability. In the proposed methodology, a damping sensitivity index is used to select the critical lines to damp power system oscillations. This paper describes how to derive the damping sensitivity for the selected mode and illustrates an example applying the proposed algorithm to a simple two-area system and the New England 39-bus test system.     

An Enhanced Jacobi Precoder for Downlink Massive MIMO Systems

Linear precoding methods such as zero-forcing (ZF) are near optimal for downlink massive multi-user multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems due to their asymptotic channel property. However, as the number of users increases, the computational complexity of obtaining the inverse matrix of the gram matrix increases. For solving the computational complexity problem, this paper proposes an improved Jacobi (JC)-based precoder to improve error performance of the conventional JC in the downlink massive MIMO systems. The conventional JC was studied for solving the high computational complexity of the ZF algorithm and was able to achieve parallel implementation. However, the conventional JC has poor error performance when the number of users increases, which means that the diagonal dominance component of the gram matrix is reduced. In this paper, the preconditioning method is proposed to improve the error performance. Before executing the JC, the condition number of the linear equation and spectrum radius of the iteration matrix are reduced by multiplying the preconditioning matrix of the linear equation. To further reduce the condition number of the linear equation, this paper proposes a polynomial expansion precondition matrix that supplements diagonal components. The results show that the proposed method provides better performance than other iterative methods and has similar performance to the ZF.     

Robust shaft design to compensate deformation in the hub press-fitting and disk clamping process of 2.5″ HDDs

We investigated deformation of the outer diameter of a shaft due to the hub press-fitting and disk clamping processes associated with a 2.5″ hard disk drive. We propose a new robust shaft design to minimize the effect of deformation on the outer diameter of the shaft. We numerically show the effect of deformation on the shaft due to the pressure, stiffness, and damping coefficients of fluid dynamic bearings (FDBs), and the critical mass and excitation response of the rotor-bearing system. We also experimentally measured the axial non-repeatable runout and the amplitude at the half speed whirl frequency of FDBs with both conventional and proposed designs. Through these tests we confirm that the proposed design improves the static and dynamic performance of the FDBs and rotor-bearing system.     

Bone morphogenic protein-2 (BMP-2) loaded hybrid coating on porous hydroxyapatite scaffolds for bone tissue engineering

In this study, a silica xerogel-chitosan hybrid is utilized as a coating material to incorporate bone morphogenic protein-2 (BMP-2) on a porous hydroxyapatite (HA) scaffold for bone tissue engineering. BMP-2 is known as a therapeutic agent for improving bone regeneration and repair. Silica xerogel-chitosan hybrids have been used for the delivery of a growth factor as well as osteoconductive coatings. The biological properties of the hybrid coating incorporated with BMP-2 were evaluated in terms of the BMP-2 release behavior, osteoblastic cellular responses and in vivo performance. BMP-2 was continuously released from the hybrid coating layer on the porous HA scaffold for up to 6 weeks. The hybrid coating containing BMP-2 showed significantly enhanced osteoblastic cell responses in comparison with the hybrid coating and HA substrate. Consequently, new bone formation was significantly increased within the hybrid coating containing BMP-2. These results reveal that the hybrid coating containing BMP-2 has the potential to be used as a bone implant, whose osteogenic properties are promoted by the release of BMP-2 in a controlled manner for a prolonged period of time.     

Preparation and Evaluation of 2-(Allylthio)Pyrazine-Loaded Lipid Emulsion with Enhanced Stability and Liver Targeting

To develop 2-(allylthio)pyrazine (2-AP)-loaded lipid emulsion for parenteral administration, various lipid emulsions were prepared with soybean oil, lecithin, and other carriers using homogenization method, and their physical stabilities were investigated by measuring their droplet sizes. The pharmacokinetics and tissue distribution of 2-AP in lipid emulsion after intravenous administration to rats were evaluated compared with 2-AP in solution. 2-AP was lipophilic, sparingly water-soluble, and unstable in aqueous medium. The 2-AP-loaded lipid emulsion composed of 1% of 2-AP, 4% of soybean oil, 4% of lecithin, and 91% of water was physically and chemically stable for at least 8 weeks. It gave significantly faster clearance of 2-AP and higher affinity to the organs, especially the liver, compared with the 2-AP in solution, suggesting that it could selectively deliver 2-AP to the liver. Thus, the lipid emulsion with soybean oil and lecithin could be used as a potential dosage form with the liver-targeting property and enhanced stability of sparingly water-soluble 2-AP.     

Hydrogen production from low temperature WGS reaction on co-precipitated Cu–CeO2 catalysts: An optimization of Cu loading

Low temperature water–gas shift (WGS) reaction has been carried out at the gas hourly space velocity of 72,152 h⁻¹ over Cu–CeO₂ catalyst prepared by a co-precipitation method. Cu loading was optimized to obtain highly active co-precipitated Cu–CeO₂ catalysts for low temperature WGS. 80 wt% Cu–CeO₂ exhibited the highest CO conversion as well as the most stable activity (X_CO > 46% at 240 °C for 100 h). The excellent catalytic performance is mainly due to a strong metal to support interaction, resulting in the prevention of Cu sintering.     

A subtle review on the challenges of photocatalytic fuel cell for sustainable power production

The revolution in the arena of functional materials for the development of well advanced engineered photocatalyst can efficiently harness photon energy from a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. These next-generation smart materials would be a spectacular approach in designing devices such as photovoltaic cells, photoelectrochemical cells, and photocatalytic fuel cells. Photocatalytic oxidation of water or wastewater for concurrent production of hydrogen and electric current has turned out as a principal concept for the construction of modern photocatalytic fuel cells (PFCs). Such PFCs mimics reverse photosynthesis process where electrical energy is generated from organic pollutants. In recent years many reviews on focusing the design, fabrication, and theoretical efficiency of the PFCs have been published. Hence the present review is aimed to unveil the wall-to-wall information starting from fundamentals spanning to working principles, structural configuration, electrochemical degradation of pollutants and photoelectrochemical properties, electron transport, thermodynamic behavior and columbic efficiency of studied PFCs.