Formation of toxic aldehydes in cod liver oil after ultraviolet irradiation

Formaldehyde, acrolein, malonaldehyde (MA), acetaldehyde and propanal produced from cod liver oil upon ultraviolet irradiation (λ_max=300 nm) were derivatized into nitrogenor sulfur-containing compounds and then analyzed by capillary gas chromatography with a nitrogen-phosphorus detector or a flame photometric detector. Acrolein and MA were formed at levels of 10.9±3.06 and 190.2±38.4 nmol/mg of fish oil, respectively. Maximum levels of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and propanal formed were 7.0±0.90, 49.1±4.5 and 35.8±4.0 nmol/mg of oil, respectively. Formation of propanal in large quantities corresponded to the high content of ɛ-3 fatty acids in cod liver oil.     

The approximate solution of charged particle motion equations in oscillating magnetic fields using the local multiquadrics collocation method

The charged particle motion for certain configurations of oscillating magnetic fields can be simulated by a Volterra integro-differential equation of the second order with time-periodic coefficients. This paper investigates a simple and accurate scheme for computationally solving these types of integro-differential equations. To start the method, we first reduce the integro-differential equations to equivalent Volterra integral equations of the second kind. Subsequently, the solution of the mentioned Volterra integral equations is estimated by the collocation method based on the local multiquadrics formulated on scattered points. We also expand the proposed method to solve fractional integro-differential equations including non-integer order derivatives. Since the offered method does not need any mesh generations on the solution domain, it can be recognized as a meshless method. To demonstrate the reliability and efficiency of the new technique, several illustrative examples are given. Moreover, the numerical results confirm that the method developed in the current paper in comparison with the method based on the globally supported multiquadrics has much lesser volume computing.

     

Highly efficient synthesis of coumarin derivatives in the presence of H14[NaP5W30O110] as a green and reusable catalyst

A variety of heteropolyanions including: Keggin, Dawson, Preyssler, mixed addenda and sandwich types, catalyzed the formation of 4-methylnaphtho-(1,2-b)-pyran-2-one (coumarin) from the condensation of α-naphthol and ethylacetoacetate in a solvent free system and under heating conditions. Our data vividly indicate that sodium30–tungsto pentaphosphate, [NaP₅W₃₀O₁₁₀]¹⁴⁻, which so-called Preyssler’s anion, with high hydrolytic (pH 0–12) and thermal stability is the catalyst of choice. This catalyst catalyzed the synthesis of other coumarin derivatives in high yields and good selectivity.     

Enhancing spatial and temporal utilities in differentially private moving objects database release

International Journal of Information Security - The pervasive use of mobile technologies and GPS-equipped vehicles has resulted in a large number of moving objects databases. Privacy protection is...     

Determination of stability constants of mercury(II) by garlic organosulfur ligands with differential pulse voltammetry

Journal of Applied Electrochemistry - In this work, interactions of mercury with di allyl disulfide (DADS), dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), and diallyl sulfide (DAS) were studied by differential pulse...     

MC-MLAS: Multi-channel Minimum Latency Aggregation Scheduling in Wireless Sensor Networks

Data aggregation is a key, yet time-consuming functionality in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Multi-channel design is a promising technique to alleviate interference as a primary reason for long latency of TDMA aggregation scheduling. Indeed, it provides more potential of parallel transmissions over different frequency channels, thus minimizing time latency. In this paper, we focus on designing a multi-channel minimum latency aggregation scheduling protocol, named MC-MLAS, using a new joint approach for tree construction, channel assignment, and transmission scheduling. To our best knowledge, this is the first work in the literature which combines orthogonal channels and partially overlapping channels to consider the total latency involved in data aggregation. Extensive simulations verify the superiority of MC-MLAS in WSNs.     

Embedding linear arrays of the maximum length in O-shaped meshes

The Journal of Supercomputing - Embedding an interconnection network into another network is one of the important problems in parallel processing. In this paper, we study embedding of linear arrays...     

Biosynthesised AgCl NPs using Bacillus sp. 1/11 and evaluation of their cytotoxic activity and antibacterial and antibiofilm effects on multi‐drug resistant bacteria

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have attracted the attention of researchers due to their properties. Biological synthesis of AgNPs is eco‐friendly and cost‐effective preferred to physical and chemical methods, which utilize environmentally harmful agents and large amounts of energy. Microorganisms have been explored as potential biofactories to synthesize AgNPs. Bacterial NP synthesis is affected by Ag salt concentration, pH, temperature and bacterial species. In this study, Bacillus spp., isolated from soil, were screened for AgNP synthesis at pH 12 with 5 mM Ag nitrate (AgNO₃) final concentration at room temperature. The isolate with fastest color change and the best ultraviolet‐visible spectrum in width and height were chosen as premier one. AgNO₃ and citrate salts were compared in terms of their influence on NP synthesis. Spherical Ag chloride (AgCl) NPs with a size range of 35–40 nm were synthesized in 1.5 mM Ag citrate solution. Fourier transform infrared analysis demonstrated that protein and carbohydrates were capping agents for NPs. In this study, antimicrobial and antitumor properties of the AgNP were investigated. The resulting AgCl NPs had bacteriostatic activity against four standard spp. And multi‐drug resistant strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These NPs are also cytotoxic to cancer cell lines MCF‐7, U87MG and T293.Inspec keywords: silver compounds, nanoparticles, nanomedicine, nanofabrication, particle size, biomedical materials, microorganisms, ultraviolet spectra, visible spectra, Fourier transform infrared spectra, proteins, macromolecules, antibacterial activity, tumours, cancer, cellular biophysics, toxicologyOther keywords: citrate salts, spherical Ag chloride, particle size, Ag citrate solution, Fourier transform infrared analysis, protein, carbohydrates, capping agents, antitumour properties, bacteriostatic activity, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, multidrug resistant strain, cancer cell lines MCF‐7,U87MG, size 35 nm to 40 nm, temperature 293 K to 298 K, AgCl, ultraviolet‐visible spectrum, colour change, room temperature, Ag nitrate final concentration, soil, bacterial species, temperature effect, pH, Ag salt concentration, biofactories, microorganisms, environmentally harmful agents, chemical methods, physical methods, antibacterial properties, electrical properties, mechanical properties, silver nanoparticles, multidrug resistant bacteria, antibiofilm effects, antibacterial effects, cytotoxic activity, Bacillus sp. 1/11, biosynthesised AgCl NPs     

A hybrid approach based on SERVQUAL and fuzzy TOPSIS for evaluating transportation service quality

Managing service quality is vital to retain customer satisfaction and augment revenues for any business organization. Often it is difficult to assess service quality due to lack of quantifiable measures and limited data. In this paper, we present a hybrid approach based on SERVQUAL and fuzzy TOPSIS for evaluating service quality of urban transportation systems. The proposed approach consists of three steps. The first step involves development of a SERVQUAL based questionnaire to collect data for measuring transportation service quality. The participants provide linguistic assessments to rate the service quality criteria and the alternatives. In step 2, the linguistic ratings are combined through fuzzy TOPSIS to generate an overall performance score for each alternative. The alternative with the highest score is finally chosen. In step 3, sensitivity analysis is conducted to evaluate the influence of criteria weights on the decision making process.The strength of the proposed approach is its practical applicability and ability to provide solution under partial or lack of quantitative information. An application of the proposed approach for evaluation of service quality of metro in Montreal is provided.     

A novel method for voice conversion based on non-parallel corpus

This article puts forward a new algorithm for voice conversion which not only removes the necessity of parallel corpus in the training phase but also resolves the issue of insufficiency of the target speaker’s corpus. The proposed approach is based on one of the new voice conversion models utilizing classical LPC analysis-synthesis model combined with GMM. Through this algorithm, the conversion functions among vowels and demi-syllables are derived. We assumed that these functions are rather the same for different speakers if their genders, accents, and languages are alike. Therefore, we will be able to produce the demi-syllables with just having access to few sentences from the target speaker and forming the GMM for one of his/her vowels. The results from the appraisal of the proposed method for voice conversion clarifies that this method has the ability to efficiently realize the speech features of the target speaker. It can also provide results comparable to the ones obtained through the parallel-corpus-based approaches.