Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy: an efficient tool for measuring size, size-distribution and polydispersity of microemulsion droplets in solution

Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) is an ideal tool for measuring molecular diffusion and size under extremely dilute conditions. However, the power of FCS has not been utilized to its best to measure diffusion and size parameters of complex chemical systems. Here, we apply FCS to measure the size, and, most importantly, the size distribution and polydispersity of a supramolecular nanostructure (i.e., microemulsion droplets, MEDs) in dilute solution. It is shown how the refractive index mismatch of a solution can be corrected in FCS to obtain accurate size parameters of particles, bypassing the optical matching problem of light scattering techniques that are used often for particle-size measurements. We studied the MEDs of 13 different W(0) values from 2 to 50 prepared in a ternary mixture of water, sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate (AOT), and isooctane, with sulforhodamine-B as a fluorescent marker. We find that, near the optical matching point of MEDs, the dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements underestimate the droplet sizes while FCS estimates the accurate ones. A Gaussian distribution model (GDM) and a maximum-entropy-based FCS data fitting model (MEMFCS) are used to analyze the fluorescence correlation curves that unfold Gaussian-type size distributions of MEDs in solution. We find the droplet size varies linearly with W(0) up to ~20, but beyond this W(0) value, the size variation deviates from this linearity. To explain nonlinear variation of droplet size for W(0) values beyond ~20, we invoke a model (the coated-droplet model) that incorporates the size polydispersity of the droplets.     

A novel method for the management of sulfone-rich waste produced in the oxidative desulfurization (ODS) process

The oxidative desulfurization (ODS) process is one of the new desulfurization processes for the production of clean fuels. Despite the benefits of the ODS process, this process faces several important challenges. One of the most important challenges of this process is the management of a waste which is rich of sulfone compounds. In the present study, a new strategy which is the addition of waste to the bitumen with other solid waste such as high density polyethylene (HDPE) waste has been investigated. The experimental design method was applied to investigate the effect of addition of the sulfone and HDPE wastes to the properties of the bitumen blends including degree of penetration, softening point, and mass loss. It was found that the sulfone waste can be added to the bitumen as a softener. The results showed that several grades of bitumen including 50/60, 60/70, 85/100 can be produced through the addition of sulfone waste along with the HDPE waste to the base 60/70 bitumen. In general, the application of simple processes such as mixing the wastes with the bitumen can reduce the cost of waste management, considerably.     

Multi-Run Concrete Autoencoder to Identify Prognostic lncRNAs for 12 Cancers

Background: Long non-coding RNA plays a vital role in changing the expression profiles of various target genes that lead to cancer development. Thus, identifying prognostic lncRNAs related to different cancers might help in developing cancer therapy. Method: To discover the critical lncRNAs that can identify the origin of different cancers, we propose the use of the state-of-the-art deep learning algorithm concrete autoencoder (CAE) in an unsupervised setting, which efficiently identifies a subset of the most informative features. However, CAE does not identify reproducible features in different runs due to its stochastic nature. We thus propose a multi-run CAE (mrCAE) to identify a stable set of features to address this issue. The assumption is that a feature appearing in multiple runs carries more meaningful information about the data under consideration. The genome-wide lncRNA expression profiles of 12 different types of cancers, with a total of 4768 samples available in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), were analyzed to discover the key lncRNAs. The lncRNAs identified by multiple runs of CAE were added to a final list of key lncRNAs that are capable of identifying 12 different cancers. Results: Our results showed that mrCAE performs better in feature selection than single-run CAE, standard autoencoder (AE), and other state-of-the-art feature selection techniques. This study revealed a set of top-ranking 128 lncRNAs that could identify the origin of 12 different cancers with an accuracy of 95%. Survival analysis showed that 76 of 128 lncRNAs have the prognostic capability to differentiate high- and low-risk groups of patients with different cancers. Conclusion: The proposed mrCAE, which selects actual features, outperformed the AE even though it selects the latent or pseudo-features. By selecting actual features instead of pseudo-features, mrCAE can be valuable for precision medicine. The identified prognostic lncRNAs can be further studied to develop therapies for different cancers.     

Mechanical and gelling properties of comminuted sausages containing chicken MDM

The present investigation focuses on the physicochemical properties, rheological behaviors and texture of raw and cooked emulsions containing different mechanically deboned meat (MDM) from chicken. MDMs were produced from the neck, backs and thighs. The texture and mechanical profile analyses were performed using a small deformation dynamic oscillation in a shear and instrumental texture analyzer. The mechanical spectra of the raw and cooked MDM emulsion gels were classified as weak gels based on their frequency sweep and tan δ results. Both the G′ and G″ values increased with increasing frequency in the temperature of 4 and 10 °C. The MDM from thighs had the lowest water holding capacity (WHC) and emulsifying (EC) values, while the MDM from backs had significant values of 2.41 and 128.87, respectively. The cooked emulsion containing backs showed the highest hardness and cohesiveness values, while the emulsion containing necks and thighs had the lowest texture parameters.     

Flexibility in service parts supply chain: a study on emergency resupply in aviation MRO

Recent trends in the commercial aviation industry have resulted in rapidly increasing complexity and decentralisation in service parts logistics systems. As a consequence, MRO service providers tend to adopt more flexible strategies, such as service parts sourcing and demand fulfilment for customers with different service-level requirements. The MRO service providers often enter into cooperative agreements with other service providers to pool inventories, enabling them to increase their flexibility in delivering services to multiple airlines with different contractual terms. Although using cooperative strategies, such as emergency resupply, is useful to increase flexibility, the inherent complexity of optimal mechanism is a critical issue that needs to be further investigated. To this aim, we consider a repairable service parts inventory system with multi-customer classes and develop an optimal emergency resupply policy. Following this, to overcome the intractability issue of finding the optimal policy, an efficient approximation method is proposed. Numerical results indicate that the proposed approximation method is highly accurate, and leads to a significant costs reduction. This paper sheds light on the effectiveness of emergency resupply policy that improves MRO service providers’ flexibility and enables them to ensure responsive service parts inventory.     

Sono-synthesis and characterization of Ho2O3 nanostructures via a new precipitation way for photocatalytic degradation improvement of erythrosine

For the first time, Ho₂O₃ nanostructures have been successfully produced through a facile sonochemical way. In this way, diethylenetriamine (dien) as a new precipitator and holmium nitrate were employed to fabricate Ho₂O₃ products. To optimize the grain size, morphology and photocatalytic efficiency of Ho₂O₃ samples, the kind of capping agents has been changed. The formed Ho₂O₃ products have been characterized by means of FT-IR, TEM, EDX, XRD, FESEM and DRS. It was observed that the grain size, morphology and photocatalytic efficiency of the sonochemically produced Ho₂O₃ were largely dependent on the kind of capping agent. The photocatalytic behaviors of Ho₂O₃ nano and bulk structures have been compared through decomposition of erythrosine contaminant under ultraviolet irradiation.     

Empirical formulas and global reliability evaluation of reliability graphs

Some formulas have been reported, in terms of elements and nodes, to calculate the number of reliability graphs of identical elements in series-parallel configurations. A simple and efficient algorithm has been proposed for enumeration of spanning trees using an incidence matrix which is used for global reliability evaluation of a graph. An example demonstrates the effectiveness of the algorithm.     

Marketed Vitamin B-Complex Injectables: Stability and Mutual Interaction

The Vitamin B-complex injectables in the Bangladesh drug market have been studied for the sability and mutual interactions of the active ingredients. It was found that the preparation without nicotinamide in the formulation has more stability than that of the preparation having nicotinamide. The presence of nicotinamide in a formulation containing four B-vitamins causes the degradation of thiamine to a sub-standard level within one year of the 2 year's shelf-life.     

Differential interferometry in heat transfer

In this paper the optical methods in heat transfer applications are described briefly. In particular, interferometric methods are discussed in detail as applied to the study of natural convection heat transfer. Of the most popular interferometers, viz. the Mach Zehnder Interferometer (mzi) and the Differential Interferometer (di), thedi is considered in detail. The theoretical and constructional features of adi are outlined. The procedures of heat transfer measurement and the temperature profile estimation are explained. The advantages and limitations of the two interferometers are compared with the help of a sample calculation. The experimental analyses of three cases, viz. (1) isothermal vertical flat plate, (2) single vertical fin attached to a heated horizontal base, and (3) horizontal fin array, are described. Typical heat transfer and temperature profile results are presented. Using the estimated temperature profiles isotherms are plotted. It is possible to get fairly good heat transfer and temperature profiles using adi. The instrument is specially useful in applications involving short optical path lengths because of its superior resolution as compared tomzi.     

A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF STUDIES ON HEAT TRANSFER AND FLUID FLOW IN MICROCHANNELS

The extremely high rates of heat transfer obtained by employing microchannels makes them an attractive alternative to conventional methods of heat dissipation, especially in applications related to the cooling of microelectronics. A compilation and analysis of the results from investigations on fluid flow and heat transfer in micro- and mini-channels and microtubes in the literature is presented in this review, with a special emphasis on quantitative experimental results and theoretical predictions. Anomalies and deviations from the behavior expected for conventional channels, both in terms of the frictional and heat transfer characteristics, are discussed.