Viability of Lactobacillus acidophilus in rice bran‐enriched stirred yoghurt and the physicochemical and sensory characteristics of product during refrigerated storage

This study was aimed at investigating the fortification of probiotic yoghurt with rice bran to increase nutritional properties of the product. The different levels of rice bran (0.3%, 0.6%, 0.9% and 1.2%) were incorporated into milk. The yoghurt samples were produced after pasteurisation, addition of starter culture and 1% Lactobacillus acidophilus suspension (6 × 10⁸ CFU mL^?1) and incubation. During sample storage in refrigerator, the viability of L. acidophilus, viscosity and physicochemical and sensory properties of product were investigated. Rice bran significantly increased the viability of L. acidophilus (P < 0.05). In addition, all probiotic yoghurts incorporating rice bran indicated higher viscosity and acidity and lower pH and syneresis compared to plain yoghurts. Furthermore, increments in rice bran incorporation levels resulted in a reduction in consumers' sample preferences. In general, the addition of rice bran at a suitable level could increase L. acidophilus viability and improve quality attributes of yoghurt.     

Trapping of Free Electrons in Multipole System

In this paper, the effective Parameters in the confinement and trapping of fast electrons in plasma source Such as; plasma pressure, wall material of plasma chamber and magnetic mirror rate have been investigated with using Comsol & Geant4 code. The calculations are shown that the Multicusp magnetic field was effective the pressure less than 5?mTor, and the confinement effect becomes stronger with decreasing pressure. It is equivalent to a higher yield of output ions of plasma source. The number of fast electrons trapped in the magnetic field increases with increasing magnetic field intensity and using aluminum for wall material. Optimum conditions of confinement plasma, leading to increased the hot electron density, and ionization efficiency is increased. The results of investigations have demonstrated good correspondence with theoretical calculations, therefore there is the adequacy of the developed approach and the possibility to build more effective source ion on this basis.     

Synergetic effects of Y-zeolite and amorphous silica-alumina as main FCC catalyst components on triisopropylbenzene cracking and coke formation

The synergetic effects of HY-zeolite and silica-alumina (SA), as two major components of an FCC catalyst, on the cracking activity and coking tendency during catalytic cracking of 1,3,5-triisopropylbenzene (TiPB, as a resid representative) were studied. NaY-zeolite and SA were synthesized by hydrothermal and co-precipitation methods, respectively, and ammonium exchanged for three times at 80 °C. The catalysts were characterized by XRD, XRF, SEM, BET, AAS and ammonia TPD techniques. TiPB cracking was investigated on four different catalyst configurations including SA, Y-zeolite, SA.Y and SA-Y in a fixed bed reactor. SA.Y stands for physical mixture of equal amounts of Y-zeolite and SA. For SA-Y, a bed of SA was placed upstream of the same amount of Y-zeolite. The catalysts were in-situ activated at 475 °C and evaluated by TiPB cracking at 350 °C. The coke content of the catalyst beds, after 40 min cracking of TiPB, was estimated by TPO using an FT-IR gas cell. At 3 min time on stream, 5.2 times higher yield of benzene, as a deep cracking product, is observed on SA-Y as compared to SA.Y. The TiPB conversion decreases in the order of SA-Y > SA.Y > Y-zeolite ? SA. Furthermore, as compared to Y-zeolite, 24% lower coke is formed on SA-Y. Also CO evolution during TPO of coked SA-Y catalyst is about 24% lower than that of the coked zeolite. As a result, protecting of Y-zeolite by SA from direct exposure to resid feed enhances the cracking activity, decreases the tendency to coke formation and diminishes CO emission in the catalyst regeneration process.     

Diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder using non‐linear analysis of the EEG signal

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common behavioural disorder that may be found in 5%–8% of the children. Early diagnosis of ADHD is crucial for treating the disease and reducing its harmful effects on education, employment, relationships, and life quality. On the other hand, non‐linear analysis methods are widely applied in processing the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. It has been proved that the brain neuronal activity and its related EEG signals have chaotic behaviour. Hence, chaotic indices can be employed to classify the EEG signals. In this study, a new approach is proposed based on the combination of some non‐linear features to distinguish ADHD from normal children. Lyapunov exponent, fractal dimension, correlation dimension and sample, fuzzy and approximate entropies are the non‐linear extracted features. For computing, the chaotic time series of obtained EEG in the brain frontal lobe (FP1, FP2, F3, F4, and Fz) need to be analysed. Experiments on a set of EEG signal obtained from 50 ADHD and 26 normal cases yielded a sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 98, 92.31, and 96.05%, respectively. The obtained accuracy provides a significant improvement in comparison to the other similar studies in identifying and classifying children with ADHD.Inspec keywords: feature extraction, time series, fractals, electroencephalography, medical disorders, neurophysiology, medical signal processing, entropy, signal classification, Lyapunov methodsOther keywords: nonlinear extracted features, chaotic time series, identifying classifying children, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, nonlinear analysis methods, electroencephalogram signals, brain neuronal activity, chaotic behaviour, chaotic indices, EEG signals, nonlinear features, approximate entropies, common behavioural disorder, early diagnosis, life quality, ADHD     

Synthesis,characterization, and thermal aging behavior of HCl‐doped polyaniline/TRGO nanocomposites

In this article polyaniline (PANI) nanocomposites containing thermally reduced graphene oxide (TRGO) were synthesized and characterized before and after thermal aging. The nanocomposites were prepared through in situ oxidative polymerization of aniline in the presence of TRGO nanoplatelets. FTIR and Raman spectroscopies, XRD, FESEM, and electrical conductivity measurements were used to characterize synthesized materials. PANI/TRGO nanocomposites showed considerably higher electrical conductivity when compared to pure PANI, which was associated with the higher electrical conductivity of TRGO and increased crystallinity of PANI in the presence of TRGO. Pure PANI and PANI/TRGO nanocomposites were thermally aged at 70, 80, 90, and 100 °C. The results showed that the characteristic time of thermal aging process is higher for PANI/TRGO nanocomposites and increases with TRGO loading, which indicates better stability of conductivity during thermal aging process. On the other hand, the characteristic time of thermal aging reduced with aging temperature and a fast decrease was observed from 80 to 90 °C. Improved resistance over thermal aging can be attributed to the barrier effect of TRGO nanoplatelets to the dopant molecules, which retards conductivity degradation in the thermal aging process. Furthermore, TRGO increases PANI crystallinity and it can also prevent crystallinity reduction during thermal aging process. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134, 44635.     

On the dispersion of CNTs in polyamide 6 matrix via solution methods: assessment through electrical, rheological, thermal and morphological analyses

In this study, polyamide 6 (PA 6)/multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) nanocomposites were prepared by different solution methods based on phase inversion, drop-casting and simple evaporation processes. Optical microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy techniques were used to investigate the dispersion states of the nanotubes in PA 6 matrix. The results indicated that the dispersion state of MWCNTs in the nanocomposites prepared by the phase inversion-based method was better than those in the nanocomposites prepared by the other two methods. Electrical, rheological, differential scanning calorimetry and thermo-gravimetric analysis measurements showed that the PA 6/MWCNTs nanocomposites prepared by the phase inversion-based method had higher electrical conductivity, storage modulus, crystallization temperature and thermal stability in comparison with those prepared by the other two methods, attributed to the better dispersion state of MWCNTs. These results confirmed achievement of a good dispersion state of MWCNTs within PA 6 matrix by the phase inversion-based efficient approach.     

Lipase-catalyzed synthesis and characterization of flaxseed oil-based structured lipids

The biosynthesis of structured lipids (SLs) was carried out by the interesterification of flaxseed oil (FO) and tricaprylin (TC) in an organic solvent medium (OSM), using selected commercial lipases, including Amano DF, Novozym 435, Lipozyme TL-IM and Lipozyme RM-IM. The fatty acyl chains of the synthesized triacylglycerols (TAGs) were identified by atmospheric pressure chemical ionization/mass spectrometric (APCI/MS) analysis, while the fatty acid positional distribution of the MLM- and MML-SLs (M-medium and L-long chain fatty acids) was determined by silver-ion high-performance liquid chromatographic (Ag⁺/HPLC) analysis. The effects of reaction temperature (T_r, 30–50 °C), enzyme concentration (E_c, 0.5–4%, w/v), initial water activity (a_w, 0.05–0.43) and reaction time (R_t, 0–72 h) on the efficiency of the enzymes, were studied. The bioconversion yield (%) of the synthesized MLM- and MML-SLs was monitored under the established reaction parameters for each lipase. The maximum yield of MLM-SLs was obtained in the order, of Novozym 435 > Lipozyme TL-IM > Lipozyme RM-IM > Amano DF. Moreover, considering the ratio of the MLM- to MML-SLs produced by each enzyme, Novozym 435 and Lipozyme TL-IM were selected as the most effective enzymes for interesterification of FO and TC.