Saliency detection based on hybrid artificial bee colony and firefly optimization

Pattern Analysis and Applications - Saliency detection is one of the challenging problems still tackled by image processing and computer vision research communities. Although not very numerous,...     

The Nucleation Effect of PbSe Additive on Bi2Sr2CaCu2Oδ Glass Ceramics

Glass and Ceramics - The crystallisation kinetics and effects of doping on Bi2Sr2CaCu2Oδ (BSCCO) glass ceramic system with 0.0%, 0.1%, 0.3% and 0.5% PbSe were investigated in this study....     

Effects of the Anti-Tumorigenic Agent AT101 on Human Glioblastoma Cells in the Microenvironmental Glioma Stem Cell Niche

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a barely treatable disease due to its profound chemoresistance. A distinct inter- and intratumoral heterogeneity reflected by specialized microenvironmental niches and different tumor cell subpopulations allows GBMs to evade therapy regimens. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop alternative treatment strategies. A promising candidate for the treatment of GBMs is AT101, the R(-) enantiomer of gossypol. The present study evaluates the effects of AT101, alone or in combination with temozolomide (TMZ), in a microenvironmental glioma stem cell niche model of two GBM cell lines (U251MG and U87MG). AT101 was found to induce strong cytotoxic effects on U251MG and U87MG stem-like cells in comparison to the respective native cells. Moreover, a higher sensitivity against treatment with AT101 was observed upon incubation of native cells with a stem-like cell-conditioned medium. This higher sensitivity was reflected by a specific inhibitory influence on the p-p42/44 signaling pathway. Further, the expression of CXCR7 and the interleukin-6 receptor was significantly regulated upon these stimulatory conditions. Since tumor stem-like cells are known to mediate the development of tumor recurrences and were observed to strongly respond to the AT101 treatment, this might represent a promising approach to prevent the development of GBM recurrences.     

Energy-efficient and fault-tolerant drone-BS placement in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Wireless Networks - This paper introduces a distributed and energy-aware algorithm, called Minimum Drone Placement (MDP) algorithm, to determine the minimum number of base stations mounted on...     

Designing carbon-supported Fe2O3 anodes for lithium ion batteries

Journal of Applied Electrochemistry - In this study, within the defined orthogonal array of Taguchi design, the hydrothermal process parameters have been optimized for fabricating the smallest...     

Evaluation of Transport Phenomena for Removing Vanadium from Petrochemical Industry Solid Waste

Transport phenomena are investigated which are involved in the electrokinetic remediation process used for removing vanadium from deactivated catalysts from oil catalytic cracking that are currently allotted to cement plants and class-I landfills. Variables such as the concentration of electrolyte, electric potential, and applied electric current were evaluated in order to determine the effects produced by electroosmosis, diffusion, hydraulic gradient, and electromigration on the removal of vanadium from the catalyst. It was observed that migration is the most relevant phenomenon in the remediation tests, and for the best remediation condition, the migratory flow accounted for about 87 % of the vanadium removal.     

Optimising clarification of carrot juice by bacterial crude pectinase

This study was undertaken to search for potential use of crude bacterial pectinase enzyme produced from Bacillus subtilis grown on hazelnut shell hydrolysate in clarification of carrot juice and to optimize the enzyme load, pH and time using the Box–Behnken response surface methodology (RSM). The carrot juice was treated with the crude pectinase enzyme (5.60 U mL^?1) at different concentrations (0.1–0.5%), pH (4–7), and time (2–6 h). The obtained enzyme was also compared with commercial fungal pectinase at identical conditions. RSM provided optimal clarification conditions of 0.5% (w/v) enzyme load, 7.0 pH, and 6 h of time estimating 100% clarity, whose experimental counterpart was 94.47 ± 0.01%. High values of coefficient of determination (R² = 0.9631), predicted R² (0.8989) and insignificant lack‐of‐fit (0.12) also showed that the model was successful in predicting % clarity for various combinations. This study also indicated that crude bacterial pectinase providing about 95% clarity is superior to commercial fungal pectinase, which gave 78% clarity under tested conditions, in terms of clarification ability for carrot juice.     

Heterojunction diode application of yttrium ıron oxide (Y3Fe5O12)

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - In this study, the Cr/Y3Fe5O12/p-Si/Al heterojunction diode was fabricated with coating the Y3Fe5O12 interface material on p-Si using spin...