Antimicrobial Property,Antioxidant Capacity,and Cytotoxicity of Essential Oil from Cumin Produced in Iran

ABSTRACT: Cumin (Cuminum cyminum) is one of the commonly used spices in food preparations. It is also used in traditional medicine as a stimulant, a carminative, and an astringent. In this study, we characterized the antimicrobial, antioxidant, and cytotoxic activities of cumin. E. coli, S. aureus, and S. faecalis were sensitive to various oil dilutions. The total phenol content of the essential oil was estimated to be 33.43 μg GAE/mg of the oil. The oil showed higher antioxidant activity compared with that of BHT and BHA. The cumin essential oil exhibited a dose-dependent scavenging of DPPH radicals and 5.4 μg of the oil was sufficient to scavenge 50% of DPPH radicals/mL. At a concentration of 0.1 μL/mL, oil destructed Hela cells by 79%. The antioxidant activity of cumin essential oil might contribute to its cytotoxic activity. Acute and subchronic toxicity was studied in a 30-d oral toxicity study by administration to Wistar rats of the essential oil. A 17.38% decrease in WBCs count, and 25.77%, 14.24%, and 108.81% increase in hemoglobin concentration, hematocrit, and platelet count, respectively, were noted. LDL/HDL ratio was reduced to half, which adds to the nutritional effects of cumin. Thus, cumin with a high phenolic content and good antioxidant activity can be supplemented for both nutritional purposes and preservation of foods.     

A study on the efficiency of hardware Trojan detection based on path-delay fingerprinting

Hardware Trojan horses (HTHs) are among the most challenging treats to the security of integrated circuits. Path-delay fingerprinting has shown to be a promising HTH detection approach. However, previous work in this area incurs a large hardware cost or requires expensive testing techniques. Moreover, the relation between technology mapping and the efficiency of delay-based HTH detection have not yet been studied. In this paper, we present a HTH detection method which uses an effective test-vector selection scheme and a path-delay measurement structure. Furthermore, we demonstrate the large impact of technology mapping on the effectiveness of delay-based HTH detection. We also show that delay-based detection methods are highly scalable. In case of choosing an area-driven design strategy, the average HTH detection probability of our approach is about 63%, 78% and 90% if false alarm rate is 0%, 2% and 16%, respectively. However, with modifications in the technology mapping, the results show improvements to 85%, 94% and 99%, at the cost of about 20% area overhead. In addition, the efficiency of our method would not decrease for large benchmarks with thousands of gates.     

Modified chitosan as a polymeric nanoreactor for fabrication of pure ZnO nano particles

ZnO nanoparticles have been prepared successfully by hydrogel decomposition method (HDM). Synthesized ZnO nanoparticles were characterized by X‐ray diffraction (XRD), fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and transition electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Narrow distribution of sizes with a 20–30 nm diameter and regular distribution of ZnO nanoparticles are attributed to the application of poly(acrylic acid‐co‐acrylamide) grafted chitosan hydrogel as coating agent. The results show that the polymer thermal decomposition technique is a perfect method for the synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010     

Effect of the Hierarchical Structure in Poly(propylene)/Clay Composites on their Thermal Stability: From Single‐ to Multi‐Step Degradation Processes

Composites with several hierarchical structures were prepared by using different clays, compatibilizers, and PPs. TGA showed that the thermal stability of the composites can be strongly improved, under either inert or thermo‐oxidative conditions, depending on the type of clay and its morphology. Drastic increases in the temperature of the maximum rate of weight loss (ΔT_peak ≈ 170 °C) under thermo‐oxidative conditions were observed depending on the clay dispersion. Furthermore, some composites had a complex multi‐step degradation behavior instead of a single‐step process related with different clay morphologies that can be present simultaneously. Finally, it was concluded that the TGA has a higher sensitivity toward the composite morphology than the mechanical properties.

     

The Effect of the Relief Wave on the Uniformity of an Air Blast Load

In most blast loading structure analyses, it is assumed that the load acts uniformly on a target area. For the rationable design, it is useful to have a quantitative criterion to determine at which maximum distance the standoff can be placed to assume a uniform pressure distribution. Surprisingly, no standard criterion was found in the literature and the effect of blast wave clearing was not considered as well. In this paper, pressure histories applied on structures are calculated considering the non‐uniform loading characteristic as well as pressure relief from the edges. Additionally, the effects of various parameters on uniformity of impulse distribution are investigated. The results have shown that the effect of pressure relief on impulse uniformity is very important, especially when the blast wave is attenuated. This phenomenon leads an optimum distance at which impulse distribution is the most uniform.     

Synthesis and Characterization of Copper(II)–Cysteine/SiO2–Al2O3 as an Efficient and Reusable Heterogeneous Catalyst for the Oxidation of Aromatic Alcohols

In the present study, heterogeneous copper(II)–cysteine/SiO₂–Al₂O₃ catalyst was successfully prepared by a simple adsorption method. The physical and chemical properties of Cu(II)–cysteine/SiO₂–Al₂O₃ were investigated by X-ray diffraction, thermal gravimetric analyzer, FT–IR spectroscopy, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller, UV–Vis spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and atomic absorption spectrometer. The obtained composite was effectively employed as catalyst for selective oxidation of various aromatic alcohols to corresponding aldehydes in high yields using hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant under mild condition. The catalyst can be recycled over five times without significant loss of activity.     

Multi-criteria expertness based cooperative Q-learning

One of the most influential points in cooperative learning is the type of exchanging information. If the content of exchanging information among agents is rich, cooperation gives rise to better results. To extract proper knowledge of agents during the cooperation process, some expertness measures that assign expertness levels to the other agents are used. In this paper, a new method named Multi-Criteria Expertness based cooperative Q-learning (MCE) is proposed that utilizes all of the expertness measures and attempts to enrich the exchanging information more efficiently. In MCE, all expertness measures are considered simultaneously and collective knowledge is equal to the combination of learned knowledge by each of expertness measures. The experimental results confirm outstanding performance of the proposed method on a sample maze world and a hunter-prey problem.     

Calculation of Nano-charged Particles Pulsation Frequency in Tokamak

One of the unknown problems that cause to perturbation of tokamak function is charged particles pulsation. Applying the toroidal magnetic field to the charged motive particles implicate plasma in the system. This plasma has a frequency that depends on the toroidal magnetic field. Another frequency exists in this system that is caused to the plasma self magnetism. This lateral pulsation is principal origin of perturbation in the system. In this paper, nano-charged particles pulsation is investigated and its frequency is calculated by Buckingham method. Knowing this frequency is necessary to control perturbation. The result of calculations shows that temperature increasing of the system cause to more intense perturbation.     

Cationic lignin polymers as flocculants for municipal wastewater

In this research, two lignin-[2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]trimethylammonium chloride (METAC) polymers were generated and assessed for their efficiency in treating municipally produced wastewater. The removals of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and turbidity were 47.5% and 71.2%, respectively, for the singular flocculation system at the dosage of 40–70 mg/L. For the dual coagulation/flocculation system, the polymer with a higher charge density (AM2) achieved higher COD and turbidity removals than the polymer with a lower charge density (AM1). To achieve the same organic removal from the wastewater, the alum use could be reduced from 150 mg/L in the single alum use to 35 mg/L in the dual system when used along with 65 mg/L of AM2. In both systems, lignin-METAC polymers exhibited better performance than the flocculant used at a local wastewater treatment plant. Lignin-METAC polymers could be used as bio-based flocculants for the replacement of petroleum-based flocculants and inorganic coagulants.     

IGBDD: Intelligent Grid Based Data Dissemination Protocol for Mobile Sink in Wireless Sensor Networks

Lifetime and energy efficiency are important factors in the design of wireless sensor network. A critical issue during data collection is the formation of energy holes near the sink. Sensors which are located near the sink have to participate in relaying data on behalf of other sensors and thus their energy will be depleted very quickly. Mobile sink movement yields the significant performance gained by decreasing the amount of energy consumption. In this paper, we propose an Intelligent Grid Based Data Disseminating protocol for mobile sink in wireless sensor networks. We have utilized a virtual grid as the protocol’s substructure. In our proposed method, cell heads (CHs) will be selected based on the locations of virtual cross points (CPs) and CPs selection is needless to transfer any required data between neighbor nodes. We have optimized CPs selection using linear programming technique in order to increase network lifetime. By selecting the CHs based on our proposed algorithm, data will be disseminated toward the sink. Our data dissemination protocol is simple and has low overhead to construct and maintain. Also, we have presented a new method for sink location update which leads to the least cost in data transfer. Simulation results illustrate that by utilizing hierarchical functionality and selecting appropriate CPs and consequently selecting CHs, energy consumption will be decreased in comparison with other presented methods which directly lead to network lifetime increment. Also by determining an optimal cell size, packet delivery rate will be improved noticeably.