Bee Bread Ameliorates Vascular Inflammation and Impaired Vasorelaxation in Obesity-Induced Vascular Damage Rat Model: The Role of eNOS/NO/cGMP-Signaling Pathway

Obesity and hyperlipidemia are major risk factors for developing vascular diseases. Bee bread (BB) has been reported to exhibit some biological actions, including anti-obesity and anti-hyperlipidemic. This study aims to investigate whether bee bread can ameliorate vascular inflammation and impaired vasorelaxation activity through eNOS/NO/cGMP pathway in obese rats. Forty male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into four groups (n = 10/group), namely: control (normal group), obese rats (OB group), obese rats treated with bee bread (0.5 g/kg/day, OB/BB group) and obese rats treated with orlistat (10 mg/kg/day, OB/OR group). The latter three groups were given a high-fat diet (HFD) for 6 weeks to induced obesity before being administered with their respective treatments for another 6 weeks. After 12 weeks of the total experimental period, rats in the OB group demonstrated significantly higher Lee obesity index, lipid profile (total cholesterol, triglyceride, low-density lipoprotein), aortic proinflammatory markers (tumor necrosis factor-α, nuclear factor-κβ), aortic structural damage and impairment in vasorelaxation response to acetylcholine (ACh). Bee bread significantly ameliorated the obesity-induced vascular damage manifested by improvements in the lipid profile, aortic inflammatory markers, and the impaired vasorelaxation activity by significantly enhancing nitric oxide release, promoting endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) and cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) immunoexpression. These findings suggest that the administration of bee bread ameliorates the impaired vasorelaxation response to ACh by improving eNOS/NO/cGMP-signaling pathway in obese rats, suggesting its vascular therapeutic role.     

Al2O3/Yttria‐Stabilized Zirconia Hollow‐Fiber Membrane Incorporated with Iron Oxide for Pb(II) Removal

Removal by absorptive ceramic membranes can simultaneously absorb and separate metal ions from water. Alumina/yttria‐stabilized zirconia (Al₂O₃/YSZ) hollow‐fiber membranes, fabricated using phase inversion and sintering process, were deposited with iron oxide by an in‐situ hydrothermal process. The results showed that α‐Fe₂O₃ was produced and incorporated across the membranes. A reduction in flux was recorded with the deposition of α‐Fe₂O_3. However, it improved the adsorption capacity for heavy metal adsorption. The adsorption‐separation test demonstrated that the optimized membrane is able to completely remove Pb(II) ions after two hours.     

Improvements and limitation of soy protein-based adhesive: A review

Soy protein is known for its eco-friendly, sustainable, and biodegradable qualities that are likely used as raw material in producing bioadhesive. However, soy protein-based adhesive are lacking in terms of adhesive strength and water-resistance compared to commercial formaldehyde-based adhesives such as phenol and urea-formaldehyde resin. Therefore, continuous research has been done to improve adhesive performance. This can be done via physical or modification methods, including the usage of cross-linking agents, structural modification, enzymatic modification, and the addition of additives. This review will cover these modification methods that give significant enhancement to the water-resistance and adhesive strength of soy protein-based adhesives.     

Synthesis of Co3O4 @ Organo/Polymeric Bentonite Structures as Environmental Photocatalysts and Antibacterial Agents for Enhanced Removal of Methyl Parathion and Pathogenic Bacteria

Two green nanocomposites of Co₃O₄ decorated CTAB/bentonite (Co@CT/BE) and chitosan/bentonite (Co@CH/BE) were synthesized as enhanced and environmental photocatalysts and antibacterial agents. As photocatalysts, the products were applied in the effective oxidation of toxic methyl parathion pesticide (MP) in wastewater under a visible light source. The application of Co@CH/BE (0.02 g) resulted in the complete oxidation of MP (50 mg/L) after 40 min and complete mineralization after 60 min. while the complete oxidation and mineralization of MP (50 mg/L) by Co@CT/BE was recognized after 75 min and 100 min, respectively. The Co@CH/BE composite is of higher activity than Co@CT/BE and can cause complete oxidation for MP at high concentrations up to 100 mg/L after 75 min. The oxidation pathway was illustrated considering the existence of the hydroxyl radicals as the active oxidizing species and the identified secondary organic compounds during the oxidation tests. The detected intermediate converted into end products of CO₂ and inorganic anions of SO₄^?2, NO₃^?, and PO₄^?3 at the final stages of the oxidation processes. As antibacterial agents, the two composites exhibit considerable inhabitation zones of about 20 mm against both the Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus and Gram-negative bacterium Vibrio Sp. The synthetic Co@CH/BE showed the best antibacterial properties with 200 μg/mL as minimum inhibitory against Staphylococcus aureus.

     

Correction to: Synthesis of Co3O4 @ Organo/Polymeric Bentonite Structures as Environmental Photocatalysts and Antibacterial Agents for Enhanced Removal of Methyl Parathion and Pathogenic Bacteria

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials -     

Coalitional game‐based behavior analysis for spectrum access in cognitive radios

The core of cognitive radio paradigm is to introduce cognitive devices able to opportunistically access the licensed radio bands. The coexistence of licensed and unlicensed users prescribes an effective spectrum hole‐detection and a non‐interfering sharing of those frequencies. Collaborative resource allocation and spectrum information exchange are required but often costly in terms of energy and delay. In this paper, each secondary user (SU) can achieve spectrum sensing and data transmission through a coalitional game‐based mechanism. SUs are called upon to report their sensing results to the elected coalition head, which properly decides on the channel state and the transmitter in each time slot according to a proposed algorithm. The goal of this paper is to provide a more holistic view on the spectrum and enhance the cognitive system performance through SUs behavior analysis. We formulate the problem as a coalitional game in partition form with non‐transferable utility, and we investigate on the impact of both coalition formation and the combining reports costs. We discuss the Nash Equilibrium solution for our coalitional game and propose a distributed strategic learning algorithm to illustrate a concrete case of coalition formation and the SUs competitive and cooperative behaviors inter‐coalitions and intra‐coalitions. We show through simulations that cognitive network performances, the energy consumption and transmission delay, improve evidently with the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Multi-objective Optimization for Sizing and Placement of Voltage-controlled Distributed Generation Using Supervised Big Bang–Big Crunch Method

Abstract—This article presents an efficient multi-objective optimization approach based on the supervised big bang–big crunch method for optimal planning of dispatchable distributed generator. The proposed approach aims to enhance the system performance indices by optimal sizing and placement of distributed generators connected to balanced/unbalanced distribution networks. The distributed generation units in the proposed algorithms are modeled as a voltage-controlled node with the flexibility to be converted to a constant power node in the case of reactive power limit violation. The proposed algorithm is implemented in the MATLAB (The MathWorks, Natick, Massachusetts, USA) environment, and the simulation studies are performed on IEEE 69-bus and IEEE 123-node distribution test systems. Validation of the proposed method is done by comparing the results with published results obtained from other competing methods, and the consequent discussions prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

A new interval diagnosis method: Application to the spacecraft rendezvous phase of the Mars sample return mission

This paper presents a new optimized interval principal component analysis applied to detect and isolate actuators faults of an autonomous spacecraft involved in the rendezvous phase of the Mars sample return mission. Based on the exploitation of various arithmetic and interval analysis properties, the new interval model is built by solving the interval eigenpairs problem via a resolution of a parametric linear programming problem. The detection and isolation phases are performed by extending the classic methods to interval-valued data. The proposed method is applied to detect and isolate actuators faults that can occur on the spacecraft's thrusters. Based on data provided by a “high fidelity” industrial simulator developed by Thales Alenia Space, the obtained results proved the effectiveness of the proposed interval fault diagnosis method on detecting and isolating thrusters' faults.