Supercritical fluid extraction of daphne (Laurus nobilis L.) seed oil

Laurus nobilis L., commonly known as daphne tree, is an evergreen that belongs to the Lauraceae family. Daphne trees produce grape-sized shiny purplish berries having three parts: flesh, skin, and an inner kernel (single seed). This study examines supercritical CO₂ (SC-CO₂) extraction of oil from daphne seeds. The oil yield of ground seeds varied from 14 to 28% depending on the method and particle size used for oil recovery. Yields were similar for both petroleum ether and SC-CO₂ extraction. The extraction yield decreased significantly with increasing particle size. The amount of extract collected increased exponentially with increasing SC-CO₂ pressure. The highest extraction yield was obtained at the highest temperature studied, 75°C. More than 45% of the oil was lauric acid. SC-CO₂ is a viable technique to obtain high-purity L. nobilis L. seed oil, which is a potential ingredient for the cosmetic industry.     

A comprehensive survey: artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm and applications

Swarm intelligence (SI) is briefly defined as the collective behaviour of decentralized and self-organized swarms. The well known examples for these swarms are bird flocks, fish schools and the colony of social insects such as termites, ants and bees. In 1990s, especially two approaches based on ant colony and on fish schooling/bird flocking introduced have highly attracted the interest of researchers. Although the self-organization features are required by SI are strongly and clearly seen in honey bee colonies, unfortunately the researchers have recently started to be interested in the behaviour of these swarm systems to describe new intelligent approaches, especially from the beginning of 2000s. During a decade, several algorithms have been developed depending on different intelligent behaviours of honey bee swarms. Among those, artificial bee colony (ABC) is the one which has been most widely studied on and applied to solve the real world problems, so far. Day by day the number of researchers being interested in ABC algorithm increases rapidly. This work presents a comprehensive survey of the advances with ABC and its applications. It is hoped that this survey would be very beneficial for the researchers studying on SI, particularly ABC algorithm.     

Incidence and antibiotic resistance of Salmonella spp. on raw chicken carcasses

The current study was carried out to detect Salmonella spp. contamination on chicken carcasses and to determine the antibiotic susceptibility profiles and serotype distribution of the isolates. A total of 200 packaged fresh raw chicken samples sold at retail in different markets in central Anatolia were analysed between April 2005 and March 2006. Salmonella spp. was detected in 34% (68/200) of samples using cultural technique and were confirmed by PCR. Ten Salmonella serovars were identified; predominant ones included Typhimurium, Infantis and Heidelberg. All of the Salmonella spp. isolates tested, exhibited resistance to one or more antimicrobial agents used. Resistance to penicillin, oxacillin, clindamycin, vancomycin, erythromycin and ampicillin were evident 100%, 97%, 97%, 92.6%, 89.7% and 85.2%, respectively. Also resistance to tetracycline (67.6%), streptomycin (61.7%), neomycin (55.8%) and cephalothin (52.9%) was observed but a small percentage of the isolates demonstrated resistance to gentamicin (14.7%), chloramphenicol (10.2%), cefotaxime (2.9%) and amikacin (2.9%). As a result, high prevalence of Salmonella spp. and the relatively high resistance among the bacteria tested could pose public health and therapeutic problems in consumers as potential vehicle of resistant Salmonella foodborne infections. To avoid Salmonella contamination, hygienic rules of slaughter and poultry meat processing must be rigorously observed and antibiotic use must be controlled by governmental agencies to prevent increased resistance of antibiotics.     

Chemical Profile and Biological Activities of Two Edible Plants: Chemical Investigation and Quantitative Analysis Using Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry and Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry

The objectives of this study were to define the phenolic and fatty acid profiles, anticholinesterase, antioxidant, antimicrobial activities, and total phenolic-flavonoid contents of Lycopsis orientalis and Tragopogon latifolius var. angustifolius which have been used as food source and food supplement in Anatolia and have never been examined before. Rosmarinic and quinic acids (21.11 and 11.46 mg g^–1 extract, respectively) were found to be the most abundant constituents in L. orientalis and T. latifolius var. angustifolius among the studied 27 compounds by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. In the fatty acid compositions of L. orientalis and T. latifolius var. angustifolius that were determined by gas chromatography mass spectrometry, oleic (29.1%) and palmitic (28.7%) acids were identified as the major components, respectively. The high antioxidant activity of the methanol extract of L. orientalis shows parallelism to its rosmarinic acid content. Besides, this extract showed medium anticholinesterase activity. The results of the present study proves that the L. orientalis might also be used as a food source due to its high phenolic acid content and strong antioxidant property.     

Pressurised solvent extraction of policosanol from wheat straw,germ and bran

Policosanols (PCs) are a group of long chain aliphatic alcohols that have been reported to have low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol-lowering properties. Wheat is a good source of these compounds. This study examined the effect of solvent type and temperature on extract yields and PC content and composition in the extracts. Wheat germ, straw and bran samples were extracted with petroleum ether, chloroform, n-hexane and ethanol at various temperatures ranging from 80 to 125 °C.     

Artificial neural networks in their simplest forms for analysis and synthesis of RF/microwave planar transmission lines

In this work, the multiplayer perceptron (MLP) and radial basis function (RBF) neural networks in their simplest forms are employed in function approximation for highly nonlinear and complex analysis and synthesis of the most commonly used planar RF/microwave transmission lines, that is, microstrip lines, coupled microstrip lines, and basic and shielded coplanar‐waveguides. Since the analysis and synthesis processes for these systems have “one‐to‐one mapping” relations with each other, a forward model is defined for the analysis process for all these types of the planar transmission lines; on the other hand, a reverse model is also considered for the synthesis of the same lines. This reverse model is realized by swapping some of the inputs/outputs in the analysis model, and training the neural networks accordingly. Both MLP and RBF types of neural models are applied to the four widely used anisotropic and isotropic dielectric materials: PTFE/microstrip glass, RT/Duroid 6006, alumina and gallium arsenide. The results are shown to agree very well with the targets. A low‐pass filter with 30‐dB attenuation frequency at 3.5 GHz on an alumina substrate is designed by the use of a neural‐network synthesis and its resulting performance agrees well with the one using analytical formulas for the synthesis. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2005.