Development of methods for determining free fatty acid contents in red colored oils

Food Science and Biotechnology - Buah merah oil and red palm oil are red colored and unrefined edible oils. Because of this color characteristic, measuring acid value by titration method can be...     

Wetting,infiltration and interaction behavior of CMAS towards columnar YSZ coatings deposited by plasma spray physical vapor

Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) produced by electron beam physical vapor deposition (EB-PVD) or plasma spray (PS) usually suffer from molten calcium-magnesium-alumino-silicate (CMAS) attack. In this study, columnar structured YSZ coatings were fabricated by plasma spray physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD). The coatings were CMAS-infiltrated at 1250?°C for short terms (1, 5, 30?min). The wetting and spreading dynamics of CMAS melt on the coating surface was in-situ investigated using a heating microscope. The results indicate that the spreading evolution of CMAS melt can be described in terms of two stages with varied time intervals and spreading velocities. Besides, the PS-PVD columnar coating (～100?μm thick) was fully penetrated by CMAS melt within 1?min. After the CMAS attack for 30?min, the original feathered-YSZ grains (tetragonal phase) in both PS-PVD and EB-PVD coatings were replaced by globular shaped monoclinic ZrO₂ grains in the interaction regions.     

Properties and applications of β‐glycosidase from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron that specifically hydrolyses isoflavone glycosides

To modify the glycan part of glycosides, the gene encoding β‐glycosidase was cloned from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron VPI‐5482. The cloned gene, bt_1780, was expressed in Escherichia coli MC1061 and the expressed enzyme was purified using Ni‐NTA affinity chromatography. The purified enzyme, BTBG, showed optimal activity at 50 °C and pH 5.5. Interestingly, this enzyme did not have any hydrolysing activity on ordinary β‐linkage–containing substrates such as xylobiose, lactose and cello‐oligosaccharide, but specifically hydrolysed isoflavone glycosides such as daidzin, genistin and glycitin. Compared to a commercial beta glucosidase, BTBG selectively hydrolysed isoflavone glycosides in soybean extract mixture solution. These results suggest that BTBG may be a specialized enzyme for the hydrolysis of glycosides and that the substrate specificity of BTBG is applicable for the bioconversion of isoflavone glycosides in the food industry.     

The Spatial LASSO With Applications to Unmixing Hyperspectral Biomedical Images

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a spectroscopic method that uses densely sampled measurements along the electromagnetic spectrum to identify the unique molecular composition of an object. Traditionally HSI has been associated with remote sensing-type applications, but recently has found increased use in biomedicine, from investigations at the cellular to the tissue level. One of the main challenges in the analysis of HSI is estimating the proportions, also called abundance fractions of each of the molecular signatures. While there is great promise for HSI in the area of biomedicine, large variability in the measurements and artifacts related to the instrumentation has slow adoption into more widespread practice. In this article, we propose a novel regularization and variable selection method called the spatial LASSO (SPLASSO). The SPLASSO incorporates spatial information via a graph Laplacian-based penalty to help improve the model estimation process for multivariate response data. We show the strong performance of this approach on a benchmark HSI dataset with considerable improvement in predictive accuracy over the standard LASSO. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Decoder side information generation techniques in Wyner-Ziv video coding: a review

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In Wyner-Ziv (WZ) video coding, decoder side information (SI) takes a key role in a WZ video codec among other building blocks. In this paper, we review the...     

Microwave drying performance of lignite with the assistance of biomass-derived char

Microwave lignite drying with assistance of biomass-derived char was addressed and effect of bio-char on drying rate and energy consumption was investigated in this work. Effective diffusion coefficient and activation energy for the drying process were also analyzed. The results indicated the drying process was largely dependent on the variation of sample temperature. Bio-char originated from pine wood was most favorable for lignite drying, considering its better promoting effect and advanced security. There existed an optimal bio-char addition ratio for drying process at different power. The corresponding optimal ratio was 10% at 231?W and 15% at 385?W, at which the biggest drying rate and the least energy consumption were reached. It was compared lignite drying initiated at 385?W was better for energy conservation. Effective diffusivity was improved and activation energy was simultaneously reduced, with the addition of bio-char. The minimum activation energy was 15.54?W?·?g^?1, which was gained at bio-char addition ratio of 10%. The results revealed the effect of bio-char on depressing activation energy could rival that of metal-based additives. The drying process with assistance of microwave and bio-char could present technical and economical benefits on lignite upgrading.