A new method for evaluating sulfur dioxide tolerance of certain trees

The paper proposes a new method for evaluating the tolerance of trees to SO₂ pollution stress, and grouping plants as indicators and controllers by tolerance index values. The index is calculated by a new arithmetic formula. The developed model is useful in identifying tolerant and susceptible plants to SO₂.     

Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease using Naive Bayesian Classifier

In the world of modern medicine, though there is lot of medical achievements, some diseases still continue to pest the human race. Unfortunately, dementia is one such disease. All over the world, a large number of people are suffering from dementia. Dementia is a brain-related disease. Diagnosis of the disease at the earlier stage is the requirement of the day. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the types of the dementia, and around 60 % of demented are affected from Alzheimer’s disease (Salmon and Bondi in Neuro psychological assessment of dementia. National Institutes of Health, 2010). All over the world, there are around 35 million people suffering from AD and this number is expected to double by 2030 and more than triple by 2050, that is to 115 million (Prince et al. in World Alzheimer report 2013: journey of caringan analysis of long-term care for dementia. Kings College, London, 2013). Diagnosis of this disease at an early stage will help the patients to lead a quality life for the remaining tenure of their life. In this paper, the authors have collected data of 466 subjects by conducting neuropsychological tests. The authors focus on diagnosis of AD for neuropsychological tests using Naive Bayes.

     

Assessing the ability of nisin A and derivatives thereof to inhibit gram-negative bacteria from the genus Thermus

Nisin is a bacteriocin that is globally employed as a biopreservative in food systems to control gram-positive, and some gram-negative, bacteria. Here we tested the bioactivity of nisin A-producing Lactococcus lactis NZ9700 and producers of bioengineered variants thereof against representatives of the gram-negative genus Thermus, which has been associated with the pink discoloration defect in cheese. Starting with a total of 73 nisin variant-producing Lactococcus lactis, bioactivity against Thermus was assessed via agar diffusion assays, and 22 variants were found to have bioactivity greater than or equal to that of the nisin A-producing control. To determine to what extent this enhanced bioactivity was attributable to an increase in specific activity, minimum inhibitory concentrations were determined using the corresponding purified form of these 22 nisin A derivatives. From these experiments, nisin M17Q and M21F were identified as peptides with enhanced antimicrobial activity against the majority of Thermus target strains tested. In addition, several other peptide variants were found to exhibit enhanced specific activity against a subset of strains.     

Minimum energy optimal external torque control of human binocular vision

In this paper, we consider eyes from the human binocular system, that simultaneously gaze on stationary point targets in space, while optimally skipping from one target to the next, by rotating their individual gaze directions. The head is assumed fixed on the torso and the rotating gaze directions of the two eyes are assumed restricted to pass through a point in the visual space. It is further assumed that, individually the rotations of the two eyes satisfy the well known Listing’s law. We formulate and study a combined optimal gaze rotation for the two eyes, by constructing a single Riemannian metric, on the associated parameter space. The goal is to optimally rotate so that the convergent gaze changes between two pre-specified target points in a finite time interval [0, 1]. The cost function we choose is the total energy, measured by the L2 norm, of the six external torques on the binocular system. The torque functions are synthesized by solving an associated ‘two-point boundary value problem’. The paper demonstrates, via simulation, the shape of the optimal gaze trajectory of the focused point of the binocular system. The Euclidean distance between the initial and the final point is compared to the arc-length of the optimal trajectory. The consumed energy, is computed for different eye movement chores and discussed in the paper. Via simulation we observe that certain eye movement maneuvers are energy efficient and demonstrate that the optimal external torque is a linear function in time. We also explore and conclude that splitting an arbitrary optimal eye movement into optimal vergence and version components is not energy efficient although this is how the human oculomotor control seems to operate. Optimal gaze trajectories and optimal external torque functions reported in this paper is new.     

Review: Removal of Thiosalt/Sulfate from Mining Effluents by Adsorption and Ion Exchange

Thiosalts are generated as intermediate products in the oxidation of sulfide ores. Thiosalts have relatively low toxicity, however sulfate formed from the degradation of thiosalts, leads to pH depression in receiving water bodies creating toxic conditions for aquatic organisms. Therefore, proper management and treatment of mining effluent water containing thiosalts is critical. This article briefly discusses Acid Mine Drainage (AMD), different sulfur species present in AMD, behavior of thiosalts as a function of pH and temperature, and thiosalt treatment methods including natural degradation, chemical, and biological oxidation. Carbonaceous adsorbents, ion-exchange resins and other adsorbent approaches are discussed in detail.     

Effect of intermittent microwave convective drying on physicochemical properties of dragon fruit

Food Science and Biotechnology - The study was carried out to investigate the effect of Intermittent microwave convective drying (IMCD) on the overall quality of dried dragon fruit in terms of...