Release and absorption of carotenes from processed carrots (Daucus carota) using in vitro digestion coupled with a Caco-2 cell trans-well culture model

The release and absorption (bioavailability) of carotenoids is a prerequisite for their nutritional impact. This can be strongly affected by the processing conditions used to prepare the food matrix that contains them. To determine the effect of processing on carotenoid bioavailability, homogenized, raw, blanched and cooked carrots were exposed to an in vitro gastric and intestinal digestion model. Final digest samples were placed onto a Caco-2 cell trans-well monolayer culture to mimic intestinal absorption. The results show that the cooked carrot puree consisting of primarily single plant cell particles had the highest release of carotenes, followed by blanched consisting primarily of plant cell clusters and raw carrot puree consisting of larger plant cell clusters. Absorption through the Caco-2 cell layer was the highest from the digesta of cooked carrot puree followed by the digesta of blanched carrot puree. This study demonstrates that thermal processing and/or mechanical homogenization to disrupt plant cell wall matrix enhances the in vitro bioavailability of carotenes from carrots.     

Age estimation using local direction and moment pattern (LDMP) features

Multimedia Tools and Applications - An automatic estimation of age from face images is gaining attention due to its interesting applications such as age-based access control, customer profiling for...     

Data fusion with flexible message composition in Driver-in-the-Loop vehicular CPS

This work addresses a unique data fusion problem in Vehicular Cyber-Physical Systems (VCPS) arising from Human Factors (HF) considerations. Typically, a VCPS message intended for human drivers is composed of many data elements (DEs), and different messages can be fused by the sender before transmission e.g., by eliminating identical (or redundant) DEs in order to save transmission bandwidth in the wireless network. Still, not all distinct DEs can be received properly due to the limited transmission resources available to the sender and/or transmission errors. Subsequently, some of the messages intended for a driver cannot be delivered. On the other hand, a partially delivered message may still be beneficial (in terms of generating some utility) to a driver. More specifically, when considering HF, the DEs can be grouped into two distinct parts: essential and auxiliary. While a partially reconstructed message missing even a single essential DE fails to produce any benefit (or utility) for a driver, each auxiliary DE can independently produce an additional utility so long as all the essential DEs of the message are also available.In this paper, we deal with a new Driver-in-the-Loop Data Fusion Problem (DDFP) with the primary issue being: given a list of out-going messages and a limit on the number of DEs that can be transmitted, how does the sender choose which DEs (each carrying a different utility) to transmit, in order to maximize the system-wide utility at the receiver. We formulate DDFP mathematically, and prove it to be NP-Complete. We study DDFP in both ideal and lossy communication networks, and propose several efficient algorithms for them. Besides the Single-Sender-Single-Receiver model, we also look into DDFP in Multiple-Sender-Single-Receiver and Single-Sender-Multiple-Receiver models with several practical considerations. Numerical results from large scale simulations are also presented.     

On-road video delivery with integrated heterogeneous wireless networks

We consider on-road video delivery using heterogeneous wireless networks, e.g., usage-limited 3G (or 4G) cellular networks and coverage-limited Wi-Fi networks consisting of scattered road-side Access Points (APs), in order to improve mobile user (passenger) experience of such video services. We address the following three fundamental, non-trivial issues and associated challenges: (1) how to dynamically allocate Wi-Fi bandwidth within each AP’s coverage; (2) how to dynamically allocate cellular bandwidth subject to data usage limits; and (3) how to jointly optimize the solutions to the former two issues. In particular, we focus on a new optimization problem called On-road Video Delivery (OVD) with integrated heterogeneous networks. Our whole objective is to maximize the system-wide User Experience Index (UEI), which is a performance metric used to evaluate the user experience of such on-road video services. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first that focuses on on-road video delivery with both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. We prove OVD to be NP-Complete and propose two efficient solutions to deal with the above issues. We also design an online version of one proposed algorithm by considering the dynamic arrival of users. The numerical results from large-scale simulations are also presented to evaluate their effectiveness.     

Interactions at the Al-S-Fe Interface: S Inhibition of Aluminum Oxidation

The deposition of aluminum on S/Fe(111)(1× 1) at 300 K in UHV results in the formation ofa disordered S-modified Al adlayer. Insertion of Albetween the sulfur atoms and the Fe substrate isindicated by an increase of the S Auger signal withincreasing Al deposition. Room-temperature oxidation ofAl/S/Fe(111) in UHV is inhibited compared to theoxidation of aluminum deposited on the sulfur-freeFe(111). The oxygen-uptake curves and variations in theS(LVV), Fe(MVV) intensities with oxygen exposure arealso consistent with the insertion of the aluminum atomsbetween the S overlayer and the Fe substrate.     

Practical Options for Adopting Recurrent Neural Network and Its Variants on Remaining Useful Life Prediction

The remaining useful life(RUL)of a system is generally predicted by utilising the data collected from the sensors that continuously monitor different indicators.Recently,different deep learning(DL)techniques have been used for RUL prediction and achieved great success.Because the data is often time-sequential,recurrent neural network(RNN)has attracted significant interests due to its efficiency in dealing with such data.This paper systematically reviews RNN and its variants for RUL prediction,with a specific focus on understanding how different components(e.g.,types of optimisers and activation functions)or parameters(e.g.,sequence length,neuron quantities)affect their performance.After that,a case study using the well-studied NASA's C-MAPSS dataset is presented to quantitatively evaluate the inflluence of various state-of-the-art RNN structures on the RUL prediction performance.The result suggests that the variant methods usually perform better than the original RNN,and among which,Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory generally has the best performance in terms of stability,precision and accuracy.Certain model structures may fail to produce valid RUL prediction result due to the gradient vanishing or gradient exploring problem if the parameters are not chosen appropriately.It is concluded that parameter tuning is a crucial step to achieve optimal prediction performance.     

The electrical properties and stability of the hafnium silicate/Si<Subscript>0.8</Subscript>Ge<Subscript>0.2</Subscript>(100) interface

The effect of post-oxidation N₂ annealing and post-metallization forming-gas annealing on the electrical properties of Pt/Hf-silicate (3 nm)/Si_0.8Ge_0.2(100)/n-type Si(100) metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) capacitors is reported. Capacitance-voltage (C-V) and current density-voltage (J-V) measurements of asgrown, 3-nm-thick, hafnium-silicate films containing ∼12at.%Hf indicate a large number of bulk and interface traps with a current density of ∼10⁻² A/cm² at V_FB+1 V. Post-ultraviolet (UV)/O₃ oxidation annealing in N₂ at 350°C for 30 min leads to a significant improvement in the electrical characteristics of the film. A post-metallization anneal (PMA) at 450°C for 30 min in forming gas (90% N₂:10% H₂), however, degraded the electrical properties of the films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses of the forming-gas-annealed films indicate that a possible cause for the degradation in electrical properties is the hydrogen-induced reduction of GeO₂ in the interfacial Si_xGe_1−xO₂ oxide layer to elemental germanium. Implications for the introduction of hafnium silicate as a viable gate dielectric for SiGe-based devices are discussed.     

Design of novel compact eight-element lotus shaped UWB-MIMO antenna with triple-notch characteristics on hollow substrate

The design of novel compact two-element and eight-element lotus shaped multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system employing pattern diversity with enhanced isolation characteristics is presented. The proposed two-element antenna system is arranged rotationally on a square-hollow substrate resulting in an eight-element MIMO antenna system employing pattern diversity. The developed eight-element MIMO antenna system resonates in the frequency range 3.1 to 14.6 GHz housing the complete UWB band with triple band-notch characteristics at 3.7–4.5 GHz (C-band satellite down link [3.7–4.2 GHz]), 5.1–5.9 GHz (WLAN) and 6.8–8.25 GHz (X-band satellite down link (7.25–7.75 GHz) and up link (7.9–8.4 GHz)) bands. The antenna system gives element-to-element isolation of more than 25 dB in the majority of the operating band with a peak gain of 6.8 dBi and a maximum 90% efficiency. The important MIMO metrics like ECC (envelope correlation coefficient), DG (diversity gain), total active reflection coefficient (TARC), channel capacity losses (CCL) and MEG (mean effective gain) are presented for both two-element and eight-element to estimate the performance the proposed antennas in multi-antenna environments. The both two- and eight-element designs are fabricated and the measured results of those are well agreed with simulation results.     

S-Induced Destabilization of Aluminum Oxide at the Fe(poly)–S–Al2O3 Interface

Auger measurements reveal that, under UHV conditions, interfacial sulfurinduces the destabilization of an aluminum oxide overlayer at theFe–Al₂O₃ interface at temperatures above400 K. One monolayer deposition of Al onto Fe/S results in the insertion ofAl at the Fe–S interface. Exposure of Fe–Al–S to oxygenat 300 K gives rise to the complete oxidation of the aluminum adlayer asevidenced by the disappearance of the Al⁰ Auger signal and thestoichiometric formation of the aluminum oxide. When the resultingFe–S–Al₂O₃ is annealed progressively tohigher temperatures between 400 and 900 K, analysis of the Auger spectrashows a dramatic decline in the Al/O Auger intensity ratio. This declineis accompanied by the appearance of a small signal due to Al⁰,which maintains a constant intensity as the total Al signal (due mainly toAl³⁺) decreases. The appearance of the Al⁰ Augersignal accompanied by the attenuation of the Al³⁺ signalsignifies the chemical conversion of Al³⁺ into Al⁰,probably followed by diffusion of Al into the bulk. The possibility ofalumina dewetting and island formation, however, cannot be ruled out onthe basis of the present data. In the absence of interfacial sulfur, the alumina–Fe interface is stable to 900 K.     

RNA Cleavage Properties of Nucleobase-Specific RNase MC1 and Cusativin Are Determined by the Dinucleotide-Binding Interactions in the Enzyme-Active Site

Knowledge of the cleavage specificity of ribonucleases is critical for their application in RNA modification mapping or RNA-protein binding studies. Here, we detail the cleavage specificity and efficiency of ribonuclease MC1 and cusativin using a customized RNA sequence that contained all dinucleotide combinations and homopolymer sequences. The sequencing of the oligonucleotide digestion products by a semi-quantitative liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis documented as little as 0.5–1% cleavage levels for a given dinucleotide sequence combination. While RNase MC1 efficiently cleaved the [A/U/C]pU dinucleotide bond, no cleavage was observed for the GpU bond. Similarly, cusativin efficiently cleaved Cp[U/A/G] dinucleotide combinations along with UpA and [A/U]pU, suggesting a broader specificity of dinucleotide preferences. The molecular interactions between the substrate and active site as determined by the dinucleotide docking studies of protein models offered additional evidence and support for the observed substrate specificity. Targeted alteration of the key amino acid residues in the nucleotide-binding site confirms the utility of this in silico approach for the identification of key interactions. Taken together, the use of bioanalytical and computational approaches, involving LC-MS and ligand docking of tertiary structural models, can form a powerful combination to help explain the RNA cleavage behavior of RNases.