Poly (hydroxyethyl methacrylate-glycidyl methacrylate) films modified with different functional groups: In vitro interactions with platelets and rat stem cells

Copolymerization of 2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) with glycidylmethacrylate (GMA) in the presence of α-α′-azoisobisbutyronitrile (AIBN) resulted in the formation of hydrogel films carrying reactive epoxy groups. Thirteen kinds of different molecules with pendant NH₂ group were used for modifications of the p(HEMA-GMA) films. The NH₂ group served as anchor binding site for immobilization of functional groups on the hydrogel film via direct epoxy ring opening reaction. The modified hydrogel films were characterized by FTIR, and contact angle studies. In addition, mechanical properties of the hydrogel films were studied, and modified hydrogel films showed improved mechanical properties compared with the non-modified film, but they are less elastic than the non-modified film. The biological activities of these films such as platelet adhesion, red blood cells hemolysis, and swelling behavior were studied. The effect of modified hydrogel films, including NH₂, (using different aliphatic CH₂ chain lengths) CH₃, SO₃H, aromatic groups with substituted OH and COOH groups, and amino acids were also investigated on the adhesion, morphology and survival of rat mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). The MTT colorimetric assay reveals that the p(HEMA-GMA)-GA-AB, p(HEMA-GMA)-GA-Phe, p(HEMA-GMA)-GA-Trp, p(HEMA-GMA)-GA-Glu formulations have an excellent biocompatibility to promote the cell adhesion and growth. We anticipate that the fabricated p(HEMA-GMA) based hydrogel films with controllable surface chemistry and good stable swelling ratio may find extensive applications in future development of tissue engineering scaffold materials, and in various biotechnological areas.     

Adsorption of hexavalent chromium from aqueous solutions by bio-chars obtained during biomass pyrolysis

In this study, bio-chars were evaluated as a potential adsorbent for the removal of Cr (VI) ions from aqueous solutions. The effects of some important parameters including initial pH (1.5–7), adsorbent dose (0.2–5 g/L), contact time (5–900 min) and initial Cr (VI) ion concentration (5–75 mg/L) were tested on the removal of Cr (VI) ions from aqueous solution in batch experiments. Maximum adsorption capacities of the tested bio-chars under the certain experimental conditions determined as optimal were 3.53 mg/g for NCBC, 3.97 mg/g for NZCBC and 6.08 mg/g for ACBC, respectively. Results of the kinetic and isotherm modeling studies revealed that the adsorption data fitted well with a pseudo-second order and Langmuir model. In among the tested bio-chars, the bio-char (ACBC) was largely equivalent to activated carbon: AC (9.97 mg/g) in terms of adsorption capacity. All results indicated that the bio-chars had higher adsorption capacity than some chars and activated carbons reported previously, and also that these bio-chars could be used successfully as low-cost adsorbents for the removal of chromium ions from aqueous solutions under the tested experimental conditions.     

配内燃机车离心风机的设计改型

利用商业软件Fluent对配内燃机车离心风机内部气流的流动情况进行了数值模拟。模拟结果与实验结果对比表明,两者能够较好的吻合,误差在5％以下。在此基础上,对风机内部的流场分布,尤其是沿叶高方向气流的流动情况进行了分析,找到了导致风机效率较低的原因,并有针对性地对风机进行了改型。改型后的模拟结果显示,风机的效率提高了6％左右,效率提升较为明显。     

Purification and characterization of a novel thermostable phytase from the thermophilic Geobacillus sp. TF16

A novel phytase from thermophilic Geobacillus sp. TF16 was puri?ed approximately 5-fold using ammonium sulfate precipitation and ion exchange chromatography, and determined as a single band 106.04 kDa on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Optimum temperature and optimum pH were found to be 85°C and 4.0, respectively. The enzyme is highly thermostable and V_max and K_m values were calculated as 526.28 U/mg and 1.31 mM, respectively. It was also found that the enzyme exhibited a broad substrate selectivity and resistance toward proteases and effectively hydrolyzed soymilk phytate. These results suggest that this study provides an alternative phytase enzyme with enhanced properties.     

Characterization of light diesel fraction obtained from upgraded heavy oil

In this study, the role of a low-cost catalyst (activated molasses soil) over the hydrocarbon distribution of the light diesel (or distillate) fraction of the pre-upgraded heavy crude oil (Bati Raman) was examined in detail. The low-cost catalyst showed a strong impact on the hydrocarbon distribution of the light diesel fuel fraction. The physicochemical characteristics such as hydrocarbon group distribution, density and kinematic viscosity of the light diesel fuels obtained from the upgraded heavy oil indicated a proper consistency with those having the commercial diesel fuels. As a result, it was revealed that the low-cost material could be successively used in the heavy oil upgrading to obtain the light diesel fuels.     

Immobilization of polyphenol oxidase on carboxymethylcellulose hydrogel beads: preparation and characterization

Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) beads were prepared by a liquid curing method in the presence of trivalent ferric ions, and epicholorohydrin was covalently attached to the CMC beads. Polyphenol oxidase (PPO) was then covalently immobilized onto CMC beads. The enzyme loading was 603 µg g⁻¹ bead and the retained activity of the immobilized enzyme was found to be 44%. The K_m values were 0.65 and 0.87 mM for the free and the immobilized enzyme, and the V_max values were found to be 1890 and 760 U mg⁻¹ for the free and the immobilized enzyme, respectively. The optimum pH was 6.5 for the free and 7.0 for the immobilized enzyme. The optimum reaction temperature for the free enzyme was 40 °C and for the immobilized enzyme was 45 °C. Immobilization onto CMC hydrogel beads made PPO more stable to heat and storage, implying that the covalent immobilization imparted higher conformational stability to the enzyme. © 2000 Society of Chemical Industry     

Invertase immobilized on spacer‐arm attached poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) membrane: Preparation and properties

Microporous poly(2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (pHEMA) membrane was prepared by UV‐initiated photopolymerization. The spacer arm (i.e., hexamethylene diamine) was attached covalently and then invertase was immobilized by the condensation reaction of the amino groups of the spacer arm with carboxyl groups of the enzyme in the presence of carbodiimides. The values of the Michael's constant K_m of invertase were significantly larger (ca. 2.5 times) upon immobilization, indicating decreased affinity by the enzyme for its substrate, whereas V_max was smaller for the immobilized invertase. Immobilization improved the pH stability of the enzyme as well as its temperature stability. Thermal stability was found to increase with immobilization and at 70°C the half times for the activity decay were 12 min for the free enzyme and 41 min for the immobilized enzyme. The immobilized enzyme activity was found to be quite stable in repeated experiments. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 75: 1685–1692, 2000     

Biosorption of Hg2+, Cd2+, and Zn2+ by Ca-alginate and immobilized wood-rotting fungus Funalia trogii

Funalia trogii biomass was immobilized in Ca-alginate gel beads. The live and heat inactivated immobilized forms were used for the biosorption of Hg2+, Cd2+ and Zn2+ ions by using plain Ca-alginate gel beads as a control system. The effect of pH was investigated and the maximum adsorption of metal ions on the Ca-alginate and both live and inactivated immobilized fungal preparations were observed at pH 6.0. The temperature change between 15 and 45 degrees C did not affect the biosorption capacity. The biosorption of Hg2+, Cd2+ and Zn2+ ions on the Ca-alginate beads and on both immobilized forms was studied in aqueous solutions in the concentration range of 30-600 mg/L. The metal biosorption capacities of the heat inactivated immobilized F. trogii for Hg2+, Cd2+ and Zn2+ were 403.2, 191.6, and 54.0 mg/g, respectively, while Hg2+, Cd2+ and Zn2+ biosorption capacities of the immobilized live form were 333.0, 164.8 and 42.1 mg/g, respectively. The same affinity order on a molar basis was observed for single or multi-metal ions (Hg2+ > Cd2+ > Zn2+). The Langmuir and the Freundlich type models were found to exhibit good fit to the experimental data. The experimental data were analyzed using the first-order (Langergren equations) and the second order (Ritchie equations). The experimental biosorption capacity with time is found to be best fit the second-order equations. The alginate-fungus system could be regenerated by washing with a solution of hydrochloride acid (10 mM). The percent desorption achieved was as high as 97. The biosorbents were reused in five biosorption-desorption cycles without significant loss of their initial biosorption capacity.     

A new facial expression recognition based on curvelet transform and online sequential extreme learning machine initialized with spherical clustering

In this paper, a novel algorithm is proposed for facial expression recognition by integrating curvelet transform and online sequential extreme learning machine (OSELM) with radial basis function (RBF) hidden node having optimal network architecture. In the proposed algorithm, the curvelet transform is firstly applied to each region of the face image divided into local regions instead of whole face image to reduce the curvelet coefficients too huge to classify. Feature set is then generated by calculating the entropy, the standard deviation and the mean of curvelet coefficients of each region. Finally, spherical clustering (SC) method is employed to the feature set to automatically determine the optimal hidden node number and RBF hidden node parameters of OSELM by aim of increasing classification accuracy and reducing the required time to select the hidden node number. So, the learning machine is called as OSELM-SC. It is constructed two groups of experiments: The aim of the first one is to evaluate the classification performance of OSELM-SC on the benchmark datasets, i.e., image segment, satellite image and DNA. The second one is to test the performance of the proposed facial expression recognition algorithm on the Japanese Female Facial Expression database and the Cohn-Kanade database. The obtained experimental results are compared against the state-of-the-art methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can produce effective facial expression features and exhibit good recognition accuracy and robustness.