Synthesis and physical properties of new oxide AgMnO<Subscript>2</Subscript>

A novel oxide AgMnO₂ was prepared from LiMnO₂ via Ag⁺ → Li⁺ exchange in the eutectic melt AgNO₃-KNO₃. It crystallizes in a monoclinically distorted unit cell (SG C2/m) caused by the Jahn-Teller (J-T) ion Mn³⁺ (3d ⁴). The structure was refined by isotypy with the crednerite CuMnO₂. There are two long axial Mn–O of 264.2(0) pm and four equatorial bonds of 192.7(3) pm and Mn–O–Mn adjoining (83.07°) are bent below the ideal angle. The thermal variation of the magnetic susceptibility (χ/T ⁻¹) obeys a Curie-Weiss law with manganese in a trivalent, high spin (HS) state accommodated in elongated MnO₆ octahedra (14.8%). Direct coupling between Mn³⁺ involves negative exchange interactions through long-range antiparallel moments with a temperature θ _p = −436 K and a magnetic moment of 5.26 μ_B/Mn³⁺ slightly larger than the spin only moment. The title oxide is stable in air up to ∼680 °C before it decomposes into metal silver. It displays a semi-conducting behavior with an activation energy of ∼0.45 eV, characteristic of a conduction by low mobility polarons between Ag^+/2+ where nearly all polarons are bonded. The photoelectrochemical properties of AgMnO₂ have been investigated by photocurrent technique in 1 M KOH. The cathodic photocurrent J _ph provides unambiguous evidence of p-type character attributed to oxygen insertion (0.025 oxygen by formula unit) as required by the charge compensating mechanism. The valence band is made up of Ag−4d wave functions positioned at ∼5.14 eV below vacuum. A comparison with CuMnO₂ was also reported.     

Rapid Synthesis and Antiproliferative Properties of Polyazamacrocycle-Based Bi- and Tetra-Gold(I) Phosphine Dithiocarbamate Complexes

A family of bi- and tetrametallic gold(I) phosphine dithiocarbamate complexes were synthesized, starting from cyclam and dimethylcyclam polyazamacrocycles, respectively, along with their monometallic gold(I) chloridophosphine precursors. Their antiproliferative properties were evaluated on two cancer cell lines (A549 and NSCLC-N6-L16). Most of the mono- and bimetallic complexes displayed strong activities and, in particular, one bimetallic derivative showed antiproliferative properties in the low micromolar range. Insights into the structure–activity relationships are given, along with determination of the thioredoxin reductase inhibition potential, two-photon imaging of the fluorescent derivatives, and evaluation of gold uptake.     

Polyphenol composition and antioxidant activity of cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) seed extract under drought

This research evaluated the effect of drought on total and individual polyphenol contents as well as the antioxidant activities of cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.) seeds of 2 geographic origins, Tunisia (TCS) and India (ICS). Plants were treated with different levels of water deficit: control. Our results indicated that, in both varieties, moderate water deficit (MWD) improved the number of umbels per plant as well as the number of umbellets per umbel and the seed yield, in comparison to the control, but it decreased under severe water deficit (SWD). Besides, total phenolic contents were higher in the treated seeds and drought increased the level of total and individual polyphenols. This increase was appreciably more important in TCS than in ICS. Moreover, antioxidant activities of the extracts were determined by 4 different test systems, namely 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl, β-carotene/linoleic acid chelating, and reducing power assays, and showed that treated seeds exhibited the highest activity, for both TCS and ICS.     

New sustainable bioconversion concept of date by-products (Phoenix dactylifera L.) to biohydrogen,biogas and date-syrup

The dates production is usually accompanied by considerable loss of fruit byproducts. The chemical analysis showed that ‘Deglet Nour’ discarded flesh is rich in soluble sugars (79.8% ± 0.8%) and fibers (12.3% ± 0.4%). A processing approach was implemented to permit the production of biohydrogen from the flesh and biogas from the crude fiber fraction after soluble sugars extraction. This approach showed interesting results since the obtained biochemical hydrogen potential and the maximum methane yield were 292 mL H₂/gVS _initial and 235 mL CH₄/gVS _fibers respectively. Parallelly, the “hot water” soluble sugar fraction (date syrup) was of interest for agro-alimentary applications and showed a high sucrose, glucose and fructose content of 33.5%, 11.8% and 13.17% respectively. This study presents a proof of concept allowing an efficient sustainable energetic conversion of the date by-products biomass to biohydrogen via dark fermentation or to soluble sugars fraction and biogas via a biorefinery approach.     

Enrichment of white flour with spices positively impacts safety and consumer acceptance of bread

Aiming at increasing the nutritional value and sensory quality of bread, we assessed the enrichment of white flour with different levels of powdered cinnamon and pomegranate peel, through rheological, nutritional, aromatic, textural and sensory analyses. These extra ingredients were chosen for their richness in bioactive compounds, and they differently affected bread quality. In relation to raw flour, introduced ingredients slightly decreased moisture and protein content, while increasing ash, fibre and radical scavenging activity, which can be attributed to the sharing of aromatic compounds by cinnamon and pomegranate peel during the bread making process. When cinnamon was incorporated at 1%, the content of all furan derivatives was reduced up to 1/4 of initial value, 2-pentyl furan totally disappeared, and furfuryl alcohol was reduced to 2.1%. Despite enriched bread’s texture was slightly worse, it was still acceptable in sensory tests, as 150 interviewed naive consumers preferred the new product over the control.     

Synchronised interrelationship between lipid/protein oxidation analysis and sensory attributes in refrigerated minced beef meat formulated with Punica granatum peel extract

Microbiological, chemical and sensory effects of pomegranate peel ethanol extract (EE) at 0.1, 0.5 and 1% (w w⁻¹) on refrigerated minced beef meat were undertaken. Chemical analyses revealed that the treated meat underwent significant decrease (P < 0.05) of primary and secondary lipid oxidation. By the end of storage, EE at 1% reduced the MetMb, carbonyl group accumulation and the disappearance of sulphydryl proteins by 56.68, 65.71 and 59.69% respectively, compared with control samples. EE at 1% showed also the highest scores for colour, appearance, odour and overall acceptability (OA) attributes using a 9-point hedonic scale. Chemometric approaches showed that lipid/protein oxidation analysis, sensory attributes and storage time allowed the samples discrimination. Oxidative stability parameters were equally used to predict OA by linear regression analysis. The reported data provide an approach to strengthen the interpretation of sensory quality and how they are affected by chemical changes in newly formulated meat products.     

A Sliding Mode Multiobserver Based on an Uncoupled Multimodel: An Application on a Transesterification Reaction

This paper concerns the design of robust sliding mode multiobserver for nonlinear systems. A discrete uncoupled multimodel structure is retained for the modeling of nonlinear systems. Unlike the classically used multimodel structures, the retained uncoupled multimodel is known by its flexibility of modeling, thus, the structures of the partial models are adapted to the complexity of the local models in each operating zone. Sufficient conditions are provided, in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), to ensure the asymptotic stability of the proposed sliding mode multiobserver. A convergence analysis is achieved to obtain the convergence radius. A numerical example and a real time application on a transesterification reactor are carried out to illustrate, once again, the performance of the proposed sliding mode multiobserver in terms of precision and rapidity of convergence.     

A systematic design of emulators for multivariable non square and nonlinear systems

In this paper, multimodel and neural emulators are proposed for uncoupled multivariable nonlinear plants with unknown dynamics. The contributions of this paper are to extend the emulators to multivariable non square systems and to propose a systematic method to compute the multimodel synthesis parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed emulators is shown through two simulation examples. The obtained results are very satisfactory, they illustrate the performance of both emulators and show the advantages of the multimodel emulator relatively to the neural one.