An Optimal Control Method for Maximizing the Efficiency of Direct Drive Ocean Wave Energy Extraction System

PubMed Central

Chen, Zhongxian; Yu, Haitao; Wen, Cheng

2014-01-01

The goal of direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system is to convert ocean wave energy into electricity. The problem explored in this paper is the design and optimal control for the direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system. An optimal control method based on internal model proportion integration differentiation (IM-PID) is proposed in this paper though most of ocean wave energy extraction systems are optimized by the structure, weight, and material. With this control method, the heavy speed of outer heavy buoy of the energy extraction system is in resonance with incident wave, and the system efficiency is largely improved. Validity of the proposed optimal control method is verified in both regular and irregular ocean waves, and it is shown that IM-PID control method is optimal in that it maximizes the energy conversion efficiency. In addition, the anti-interference ability of IM-PID control method has been assessed, and the results show that the IM-PID control method has good robustness, high precision, and strong anti-interference ability. PMID:25152913

An optimal control method for maximizing the efficiency of direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system.

PubMed

Chen, Zhongxian; Yu, Haitao; Wen, Cheng

2014-01-01

The goal of direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system is to convert ocean wave energy into electricity. The problem explored in this paper is the design and optimal control for the direct drive ocean wave energy extraction system. An optimal control method based on internal model proportion integration differentiation (IM-PID) is proposed in this paper though most of ocean wave energy extraction systems are optimized by the structure, weight, and material. With this control method, the heavy speed of outer heavy buoy of the energy extraction system is in resonance with incident wave, and the system efficiency is largely improved. Validity of the proposed optimal control method is verified in both regular and irregular ocean waves, and it is shown that IM-PID control method is optimal in that it maximizes the energy conversion efficiency. In addition, the anti-interference ability of IM-PID control method has been assessed, and the results show that the IM-PID control method has good robustness, high precision, and strong anti-interference ability.

Gaussian white noise as a resource for work extraction.

PubMed

Dechant, Andreas; Baule, Adrian; Sasa, Shin-Ichi

2017-03-01

We show that uncorrelated Gaussian noise can drive a system out of equilibrium and can serve as a resource from which work can be extracted. We consider an overdamped particle in a periodic potential with an internal degree of freedom and a state-dependent friction, coupled to an equilibrium bath. Applying additional Gaussian white noise drives the system into a nonequilibrium steady state and causes a finite current if the potential is spatially asymmetric. The model thus operates as a Brownian ratchet, whose current we calculate explicitly in three complementary limits. Since the particle current is driven solely by additive Gaussian white noise, this shows that the latter can potentially perform work against an external load. By comparing the extracted power to the energy injection due to the noise, we discuss the efficiency of such a ratchet.

Phase equilibria in a system of aqueous arginine with an octane solution of sulfonic acid

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kuvaeva, Z. I.; Koval'chuk, I. V.; Vodop'yanova, L. A.; Soldatov, V. S.

2013-05-01

The extraction of arginine (Arg) from aqueous salt (0.1 M NaCl) solutions with a sulfo extractant in a wide range of pH values and amino acid concentrations was studied. The 0.1 M solution of dinonylnaphthalenesulfonic acid (HD) in octane was used as an extractant. The degree of extraction was found to be high at pH 0.8-9.0. This can be explained by the effect of additional intermolecular interactions in the extractant phase involving the guanidine group of Arg.

A UWB Radar Signal Processing Platform for Real-Time Human Respiratory Feature Extraction Based on Four-Segment Linear Waveform Model.

PubMed

Hsieh, Chi-Hsuan; Chiu, Yu-Fang; Shen, Yi-Hsiang; Chu, Ta-Shun; Huang, Yuan-Hao

2016-02-01

This paper presents an ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse-radio radar signal processing platform used to analyze human respiratory features. Conventional radar systems used in human detection only analyze human respiration rates or the response of a target. However, additional respiratory signal information is available that has not been explored using radar detection. The authors previously proposed a modified raised cosine waveform (MRCW) respiration model and an iterative correlation search algorithm that could acquire additional respiratory features such as the inspiration and expiration speeds, respiration intensity, and respiration holding ratio. To realize real-time respiratory feature extraction by using the proposed UWB signal processing platform, this paper proposes a new four-segment linear waveform (FSLW) respiration model. This model offers a superior fit to the measured respiration signal compared with the MRCW model and decreases the computational complexity of feature extraction. In addition, an early-terminated iterative correlation search algorithm is presented, substantially decreasing the computational complexity and yielding negligible performance degradation. These extracted features can be considered the compressed signals used to decrease the amount of data storage required for use in long-term medical monitoring systems and can also be used in clinical diagnosis. The proposed respiratory feature extraction algorithm was designed and implemented using the proposed UWB radar signal processing platform including a radar front-end chip and an FPGA chip. The proposed radar system can detect human respiration rates at 0.1 to 1 Hz and facilitates the real-time analysis of the respiratory features of each respiration period.

Effects of certain polyphenols and extracts on furans and acrylamide formation in model system, and total furans during storage.

PubMed

Oral, Rasim Alper; Dogan, Mahmut; Sarioglu, Kemal

2014-01-01

Using a glucose-glycine and asparagine-fructose system as a Maillard reaction model, the effects of seven polyphenols and solid phase extracts of three plants on the formation of furans and acrylamide were investigated. The polyphenols and extracts were used in biscuit formulation and acrylamide formation was observed. They were used for the storage of the glycine-glucose model system at three different temperatures. The addition of some of the extracts and polyphenols significantly decreased furan formation to different extents. All phenolic compounds and plant extracts decreased in the range of 30.8-85% in the model system except for oleuropein, and all of them decreased in the range of 10.3-19.2% in biscuit. Total furan formation was inhibited by caffeic acid, punicalagin, epicatechin, ECE and PPE during storage. This study evaluated and found the inhibitory effect on the formation of furans and acrylamide in Maillard reactions by the use of some plant extracts and polyphenols. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Assessment of the antimobial activity of olive leaf extract against foodborne bacterial pathogens

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Olive leaf extract (OLE) has been used traditionally as an herbal supplement since it contains polyphenolic compounds with beneficial properties ranging from increasing energy levels, lowering blood pressure, and supporting the cardiovascular and immune systems. In addition to the beneficial effect...

Model-Based Extracted Water Desalination System for Carbon Sequestration

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dees, Elizabeth M.; Moore, David Roger; Li, Li

Over the last 1.5 years, GE Global Research and Pennsylvania State University defined a model-based, scalable, and multi-stage extracted water desalination system that yields clean water, concentrated brine, and, optionally, salt. The team explored saline brines that ranged across the expected range for extracted water for carbon sequestration reservoirs (40,000 up to 220,000 ppm total dissolved solids, TDS). In addition, the validated the system performance at pilot scale with field-sourced water using GE’s pre-pilot and lab facilities. This project encompassed four principal tasks, in addition to Project Management and Planning: 1) identify a deep saline formation carbon sequestration site andmore » a partner that are suitable for supplying extracted water; 2) conduct a techno-economic assessment and down-selection of pre-treatment and desalination technologies to identify a cost-effective system for extracted water recovery; 3) validate the downselected processes at the lab/pre-pilot scale; and 4) define the scope of the pilot desalination project. Highlights from each task are described below: Deep saline formation characterization The deep saline formations associated with the five DOE NETL 1260 Phase 1 projects were characterized with respect to their mineralogy and formation water composition. Sources of high TDS feed water other than extracted water were explored for high TDS desalination applications, including unconventional oil and gas and seawater reverse osmosis concentrate. Technoeconomic analysis of desalination technologies Techno-economic evaluations of alternate brine concentration technologies, including humidification-dehumidification (HDH), membrane distillation (MD), forward osmosis (FO), turboexpander-freeze, solvent extraction and high pressure reverse osmosis (HPRO), were conducted. These technologies were evaluated against conventional falling film-mechanical vapor recompression (FF-MVR) as a baseline desalination process. Furthermore, a quality function deployment (QFD) method was used to compare alternate high TDS desalination technologies to FF-MVR. High pressure reverse osmosis was found to a be a promising alternative desalination technology. A deep-dive technoeconomic analysis of HPRO was performed, including Capex and Opex estimates, for seawater RO (SWRO). Additionally, two additional cases were explored: 1) a comparison of a SWRO plus HPRO system to the option of doubling the size of a standard seawater RO system to achieve the same total pure water recovery rate; and 2) a flue gas desulfurization wastewater treatment zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) application, where preconcentration with RO (SWRO or SWRO + HPRO) before evaporation and crystallization was compared to FF-MVR and crystallization technologies without RO preconcentration. Pre-pilot process validation Pre-pilot-scale tests were conducted using field production water to validate key process steps for extracted water pretreatment. Approximately 5,000 gallons of field produced water was processed through, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, and steam regenerable sorbent operations. Smaller quantities were processed through microclarification. In addition, analytical methods (purge-and-trap gas chromatography and Hach TOC analytical methods) were validated. Lab-scale HPRO elements were constructed and tested at high pressures, to identify and mitigate technical risks of the technology. Lastly, improvements in RO membrane materials were identified as the necessary next step to achieve further improvement in element performance at high pressure. Scope of Field Pilot A field pilot for extracted water pretreatment was designed.« less

Multiclass pesticide determination in olives and their processing factors in olive oil: comparison of different olive oil extraction systems.

PubMed

Amvrazi, Elpiniki G; Albanis, Triantafyllos A

2008-07-23

The processing factors (pesticide concentration found in olive oil/pesticide concentration found in olives) of azinphos methyl, chlorpyrifos, lambda-cyhalothrin, deltamethrin, diazinon, dimethoate, endosulfan, and fenthion were determined in olive oil production process in various laboratory-scale olive oil extractions based on three- or two-phase centrifugation systems in comparison with samples collected during olive oil extractions in conventional olive mills located at different olive oil production areas in Greece. Pesticide analyses were performed using a multiresidue method developed in our laboratory for the determination of different insecticides and herbicides in olive oil by solid-phase extraction techniques coupled to gas chromatography detection (electron capture detection and nitrogen phosphorus detection), optimized, and validated for olive fruits sample preparation. Processing factors were found to vary among the different pesticides studied. Water addition in the oil extraction procedure (as in a three-phase centrifugation system) was found to decrease the processing factors of dimethoate, alpha-endosulfan, diazinon, and chlorpyrifos, whereas those of fenthion, azinphos methyl, beta-endosulfan, lambda-cyhalothrin, and deltamethrin residues were not affected. The water content of olives processed was found to proportionally affect pesticide processing factors. Fenthion sulfoxide and endosulfan sulfate were the major metabolites of fenthion and endosulfan, respectively, that were detected in laboratory-produced olive oils, but only the concentration of fenthion sulfoxide was found to increase with the increase of water addition in the olive oil extraction process.

Vinegar decreases allergenic response in lentil and egg food allergy.

PubMed

Armentia, A; Dueñas-Laita, A; Pineda, F; Herrero, M; Martín, B

2010-01-01

Food allergy results from an atypical response of the mucosal immune system to orally consumed allergens. Antacid medication inhibits the digestion of dietary proteins and causes food allergy. A decrease of the gastric pH might enhance the function of digestion and reduce the risk of food allergy. To test a possible decrease in the allergenicity of powerful food allergens (egg, chicken, lentils) with the addition of vinegar during the cooking process. We included seven patients who suffered from anaphylaxis due to egg, chicken and lentils. We added vinegar to egg, chicken and lentil processed extracts used for skin prick tests (SPT) and compared the wheal areas obtained with the same extracts sources and the same way but without vinegar addition. Immunodetection was performed with the different processed extracts and patients' sera. Only one patient consented food challenge with vinegar-marinated-chicken. Wheal areas were significantly minor with the food extract with vinegar. Immunodetection showed a decrease of the response with vinegar processed extracts. Vinegar addition during the cooking process may decrease lentil and chicken allergenicity. Copyright 2009 SEICAP. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

A critical review on the spray drying of fruit extract: effect of additives on physicochemical properties.

PubMed

Krishnaiah, Duduku; Nithyanandam, Rajesh; Sarbatly, Rosalam

2014-01-01

Spray drying accomplishes drying while particles are suspended in the air and is one method in the family of suspended particle processing systems, along with fluid-bed drying, flash drying, spray granulation, spray agglomeration, spray reaction, spray cooling, and spray absorption. This drying process is unique because it involves both particle formation and drying. The present paper reviews spray drying of fruit extracts, such as acai, acerola pomace, gac, mango, orange, cactus pear, opuntia stricta fruit, watermelon, and durian, and the effects of additives on physicochemical properties such as antioxidant activity, total carotenoid content, lycopene and β-carotene content, hygroscopy, moisture content, volatile retention, stickiness, color, solubility, glass transition temperature, bulk density, rehydration, caking, appearance under electron microscopy, and X-ray powder diffraction. The literature clearly demonstrates that the effect of additives and encapsulation play a vital role in determining the physicochemical properties of fruit extract powder. The technical difficulties in spray drying of fruit extracts can be overcome by modifying the spray dryer design. It also reveals that spray drying is a novel technology for converting fruit extract into powder form.

Homogeneous Liquid–Liquid Extraction of Rare Earths with the Betaine—Betainium Bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide Ionic Liquid System

PubMed Central

Hoogerstraete, Tom Vander; Onghena, Bieke; Binnemans, Koen

2013-01-01

Several fundamental extraction parameters such as the kinetics and loading were studied for a new type of metal solvent extraction system with ionic liquids. The binary mixture of the ionic liquid betainium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide and water shows thermomorphic behavior with an upper critical solution temperature (UCST), which can be used to avoid the slower mass transfer due to the generally higher viscosity of ionic liquids. A less viscous homogeneous phase and mixing on a molecular scale are obtained when the mixture is heated up above 55 °C. The influence of the temperature, the heating and cooling times, were studied for the extraction of neodymium(III) with betaine. A plausible and equal extraction mechanism is proposed in bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, nitrate, and chloride media. After stripping of the metals from the ionic liquid phase, a higher recovery of the ionic liquid was obtained by salting-out of the ionic liquid fraction lost by dissolution in the aqueous phase. The change of the upper critical solution temperature by the addition of HCl or betaine was investigated. In addition, the viscosity was measured below and above the UCST as a function of the temperature. PMID:24169434

Extractables characterization for five materials of construction representative of packaging systems used for parenteral and ophthalmic drug products.

PubMed

Jenke, Dennis; Castner, James; Egert, Thomas; Feinberg, Tom; Hendricker, Alan; Houston, Christopher; Hunt, Desmond G; Lynch, Michael; Shaw, Arthur; Nicholas, Kumudini; Norwood, Daniel L; Paskiet, Diane; Ruberto, Michael; Smith, Edward J; Holcomb, Frank

2013-01-01

Polymeric and elastomeric materials are commonly encountered in medical devices and packaging systems used to manufacture, store, deliver, and/or administer drug products. Characterizing extractables from such materials is a necessary step in establishing their suitability for use in these applications. In this study, five individual materials representative of polymers and elastomers commonly used in packaging systems and devices were extracted under conditions and with solvents that are relevant to parenteral and ophthalmic drug products (PODPs). Extraction methods included elevated temperature sealed vessel extraction, sonication, refluxing, and Soxhlet extraction. Extraction solvents included a low-pH (pH = 2.5) salt mixture, a high-pH (pH = 9.5) phosphate buffer, a 1/1 isopropanol/water mixture, isopropanol, and hexane. The resulting extracts were chemically characterized via spectroscopic and chromatographic means to establish the metal/trace element and organic extractables profiles. Additionally, the test articles themselves were tested for volatile organic substances. The results of this testing established the extractables profiles of the test articles, which are reported herein. Trends in the extractables, and their estimated concentrations, as a function of the extraction and testing methodologies are considered in the context of the use of the test article in medical applications and with respect to establishing best demonstrated practices for extractables profiling of materials used in PODP-related packaging systems and devices. Plastic and rubber materials are commonly encountered in medical devices and packaging/delivery systems for drug products. Characterizing the extractables from these materials is an important part of determining that they are suitable for use. In this study, five materials representative of plastics and rubbers used in packaging and medical devices were extracted by several means, and the extracts were analytically characterized to establish each material's profile of extracted organic compounds and trace element/metals. This information was utilized to make generalizations about the appropriateness of the test methods and the appropriate use of the test materials.

Membrane-mediated extractive fermentation for lactic acid production from cellulosic biomass.

PubMed

Chen, R; Lee, Y Y

1997-01-01

Lactic acid production from cellulosic biomass by cellulase and Lactobacillus delbrueckii was studied in a fermenter-extractor employing a microporous hollow fiber membrane (MHF). This bioreactor system was operated under a fed-batch mode with continuous removal of lactic acid by anin situ extraction. A tertiary amine (Alamine 336) was used as an extractant for lactic acid. The extraction capacity of Alamine 336 is greatly enhanced by addition of alcohol. Long-chain alcohols serve well for this purpose since they are less toxic to micro-organism. Addition of kerosene, a diluent, was necessary to reduce the solvent viscosity. A solvent mixture of 20% Alamine 336, 40% oleyl alcohol, and 40% kerosene was found to be most effective in the extraction of lactic acid. Progressive change of pH from an initial value of 5.0 down to 4.3 has significantly improved the overall performance of the simultaneous saccharification and extractive fermentation over that of constant pH operation. The change of pH was applied to promote cell growth in the early phase, and extraction in the latter phase.

A Real-Time System for Lane Detection Based on FPGA and DSP

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, Jing; Li, Shutao; Sun, Bin

2016-12-01

This paper presents a real-time lane detection system including edge detection and improved Hough Transform based lane detection algorithm and its hardware implementation with field programmable gate array (FPGA) and digital signal processor (DSP). Firstly, gradient amplitude and direction information are combined to extract lane edge information. Then, the information is used to determine the region of interest. Finally, the lanes are extracted by using improved Hough Transform. The image processing module of the system consists of FPGA and DSP. Particularly, the algorithms implemented in FPGA are working in pipeline and processing in parallel so that the system can run in real-time. In addition, DSP realizes lane line extraction and display function with an improved Hough Transform. The experimental results show that the proposed system is able to detect lanes under different road situations efficiently and effectively.

Influence of finishing systems on hydrophilic and lipophilic oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) in beef.

PubMed

Wu, C; Duckett, S K; Neel, J P S; Fontenot, J P; Clapham, W M

2008-11-01

The aim of this research was to: (1) develop a reliable extraction procedure and assay to determine antioxidant activity in meat products, and (2) assess the effect of beef finishing system (forage-finished: alfalfa, pearl millet or mixed pastures vs. concentrate-finished) on longissimus muscle antioxidant activity. The effect of extraction method (ethanol concentration and extraction time), protein removal, and sample preparation method (pulverization or freeze drying) were first evaluated to develop an antioxidant assay for meat products. Beef extracts prepared with low ethanol concentrations (20%) demonstrated higher hydrophilic ORAC. Protein removal prior to extraction reduced hydrophilic ORAC values. Sample preparation method influenced both hydrophilic and lipophilic ORAC, with pulverized samples containing higher hydrophilic and lipophilic ORAC values. Beef cattle finishing system (Forage: alfalfa, pearl millet, or natural pasture vs. concentrates) had little impact on muscle hydrophilic ORAC, but muscle from forage finished beef contained greater lipophilic ORAC. In addition, broiling of steaks reduced hydrophilic ORAC.

A method for automatically extracting infectious disease-related primers and probes from the literature

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background Primer and probe sequences are the main components of nucleic acid-based detection systems. Biologists use primers and probes for different tasks, some related to the diagnosis and prescription of infectious diseases. The biological literature is the main information source for empirically validated primer and probe sequences. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important for researchers to navigate this important information. In this paper, we present a four-phase method for extracting and annotating primer/probe sequences from the literature. These phases are: (1) convert each document into a tree of paper sections, (2) detect the candidate sequences using a set of finite state machine-based recognizers, (3) refine problem sequences using a rule-based expert system, and (4) annotate the extracted sequences with their related organism/gene information. Results We tested our approach using a test set composed of 297 manuscripts. The extracted sequences and their organism/gene annotations were manually evaluated by a panel of molecular biologists. The results of the evaluation show that our approach is suitable for automatically extracting DNA sequences, achieving precision/recall rates of 97.98% and 95.77%, respectively. In addition, 76.66% of the detected sequences were correctly annotated with their organism name. The system also provided correct gene-related information for 46.18% of the sequences assigned a correct organism name. Conclusions We believe that the proposed method can facilitate routine tasks for biomedical researchers using molecular methods to diagnose and prescribe different infectious diseases. In addition, the proposed method can be expanded to detect and extract other biological sequences from the literature. The extracted information can also be used to readily update available primer/probe databases or to create new databases from scratch. PMID:20682041

Apium graveolens extract influences mood and cognition in healthy mice.

PubMed

Boonruamkaew, Phetcharat; Sukketsiri, Wanida; Panichayupakaranant, Pharkphoom; Kaewnam, Wijittra; Tanasawet, Supita; Tipmanee, Varomyalin; Hutamekalin, Pilaiwanwadee; Chonpathompikunlert, Pennapa

2017-07-01

Apium graveolens is a food flavoring which possesses various health promoting effects. This study investigates the effect of a sub-acute administration of A. graveolens on cognition and anti-depression behaviors via antioxidant and related neurotransmitter systems in mice brains. Cognition and depression was assessed by various models of behavior. The antioxidant system of glutathione peroxidase (GPx), % inhibition of superoxide anion (O 2 - ), and lipid peroxidation were studied. In addition, neurochemical parameters including acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and monoamine oxidase-type A (MAO-A) were also evaluated. Nine groups of male mice were fed for 30 days with different substances-a control, vehicle, A. graveolens extract (65-500 mg/kg), and reference drugs (donepezil and fluoxetine). The results indicated that the effect of the intake of A. graveolens extract (125-500 mg/kg) was similar to the reference drugs, as it improved both spatial and non-spatial memories. Moreover, there was a decrease in immobility time in both the forced swimming and tail suspension tests. In addition, the A. graveolens extract reduced lipid peroxidation of the brain and increased GPx activity and the % inhibition of O 2 - , whereas the activities of AChE and MAO-A were decreased. Thus, our data have shown that the consumption of A. graveolens extract improved cognitive function and anti-depression activities as well as modulating the endogenous antioxidant and neurotransmitter systems in the brain, resulting in increased neuronal density. This result indicated an important role for A. graveolens extract in preventing age-associated decline in cognitive function associated with depression.

Extraction of Vertical Profiles of Atmospheric Variables from Gridded Binary, Edition 2 (GRIB2) Model Output Files

DTIC Science & Technology

2018-01-18

processing. Specifically, the method described herein uses wgrib2 commands along with a Python script or program to produce tabular text files that in...It makes use of software that is readily available and can be implemented on many computer systems combined with relatively modest additional...example), extracts appropriate information, and lists the extracted information in a readable tabular form. The Python script used here is described in

Wide coverage biomedical event extraction using multiple partially overlapping corpora

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Biomedical events are key to understanding physiological processes and disease, and wide coverage extraction is required for comprehensive automatic analysis of statements describing biomedical systems in the literature. In turn, the training and evaluation of extraction methods requires manually annotated corpora. However, as manual annotation is time-consuming and expensive, any single event-annotated corpus can only cover a limited number of semantic types. Although combined use of several such corpora could potentially allow an extraction system to achieve broad semantic coverage, there has been little research into learning from multiple corpora with partially overlapping semantic annotation scopes. Results We propose a method for learning from multiple corpora with partial semantic annotation overlap, and implement this method to improve our existing event extraction system, EventMine. An evaluation using seven event annotated corpora, including 65 event types in total, shows that learning from overlapping corpora can produce a single, corpus-independent, wide coverage extraction system that outperforms systems trained on single corpora and exceeds previously reported results on two established event extraction tasks from the BioNLP Shared Task 2011. Conclusions The proposed method allows the training of a wide-coverage, state-of-the-art event extraction system from multiple corpora with partial semantic annotation overlap. The resulting single model makes broad-coverage extraction straightforward in practice by removing the need to either select a subset of compatible corpora or semantic types, or to merge results from several models trained on different individual corpora. Multi-corpus learning also allows annotation efforts to focus on covering additional semantic types, rather than aiming for exhaustive coverage in any single annotation effort, or extending the coverage of semantic types annotated in existing corpora. PMID:23731785

The planning and establishment of a sample preparation laboratory for drug discovery

PubMed Central

Dufresne, Claude

2000-01-01

Nature has always been a productive source of new drugs. With the advent of high-throughput screening, it has now become possible to rapidly screen large sample collections. In addition to seeking greater diversity from natural product sources (micro-organisms, plants, etc.), fractionation of the crude extracts prior to screening is becoming a more important part of our efforts. As sample preparation protocols become more involved, automation can help to achieve and maintain a desired sample throughput. To address the needs of our screening program, two robotic systems were designed. The first system processes crude extracts all the way to 96-well plates, containing solutions suitable for screening in biological and biochemical assays. The system can dissolve crude extracts, fractionate them on solid-phase extraction cartridges, dry and weigh each fraction, re-dissolve them to a known concentration, and prepare mother plates. The second system replicates mother plates into a number of daughter plates. PMID:18924691

40 CFR 125.139 - As the Director, what must I do to comply with the requirements of this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... DISCHARGE ELIMINATION SYSTEM Requirements Applicable to Cooling Water Intake Structures for New Offshore Oil... the initial permit application from the owner or operator of a new offshore oil and gas extraction... offshore oil and gas extraction facility. In addition, the Director must review materials to determine...

40 CFR 125.139 - As the Director, what must I do to comply with the requirements of this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... DISCHARGE ELIMINATION SYSTEM Requirements Applicable to Cooling Water Intake Structures for New Offshore Oil... the initial permit application from the owner or operator of a new offshore oil and gas extraction... offshore oil and gas extraction facility. In addition, the Director must review materials to determine...

40 CFR 125.139 - As the Director, what must I do to comply with the requirements of this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... DISCHARGE ELIMINATION SYSTEM Requirements Applicable to Cooling Water Intake Structures for New Offshore Oil... the initial permit application from the owner or operator of a new offshore oil and gas extraction... offshore oil and gas extraction facility. In addition, the Director must review materials to determine...

40 CFR 125.139 - As the Director, what must I do to comply with the requirements of this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... DISCHARGE ELIMINATION SYSTEM Requirements Applicable to Cooling Water Intake Structures for New Offshore Oil... the initial permit application from the owner or operator of a new offshore oil and gas extraction... offshore oil and gas extraction facility. In addition, the Director must review materials to determine...

40 CFR 125.139 - As the Director, what must I do to comply with the requirements of this subpart?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... DISCHARGE ELIMINATION SYSTEM Requirements Applicable to Cooling Water Intake Structures for New Offshore Oil... the initial permit application from the owner or operator of a new offshore oil and gas extraction... offshore oil and gas extraction facility. In addition, the Director must review materials to determine...

Multivessel supercritical fluid extraction of food items in Total Diet Study.

PubMed

Hopper, M L; King, J W; Johnson, J H; Serino, A A; Butler, R J

1995-01-01

An off-line, large capacity, multivessel supercritical fluid extractor (SFE) was designed and constructed for extraction of large samples. The extractor can simultaneously process 1-6 samples (15-25 g) by using supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2), which is relatively nontoxic and nonflammable, as the solvent extraction medium. Lipid recoveries for the SFE system were comparable to those obtained by blending or Soxhlet extraction procedures. Extractions at 10,000 psi, 80 degrees C, expanded gaseous CO2 flow rates of 4-5 L/min (35 degrees C), and 1-3 h extraction times gave reproducible lipid recoveries for pork sausage (relative standard deviation [RSD], 1.32%), corn chips (RSD, 0.46%), cheddar cheese (RSD, 1.14%), and peanut butter (RSD, 0.44%). In addition, this SFE system gave reproducible recoveries (> 93%) for butter fortified with cis-chlordane and malathion at the 100 ppm and 0.1 ppm levels. Six portions each of cheddar cheese, saltine crackers, sandwich cookies, and ground hamburger also were simultaneously extracted with SC-CO2 and analyzed for incurred pesticide residues. Results obtained with this SFE system were reproducible and comparable with results from organic-solvent extraction procedures currently used in the Total Diet Study; therefore, use and disposal of large quantities of organic solvents can be eliminated.

Cinnamon extract ameliorates ionizing radiation-induced cellular injury in rats.

PubMed

Azab, Khaled Sh; Mostafa, Abdel-Halem A; Ali, Ehab M M; Abdel-Aziz, Mohamed A S

2011-11-01

The present study aimed to investigate the protective role of cinnamon extract against inflammatory and oxidative injuries in gamma irradiated rats. Rats were subjected to fractionated doses of gamma radiation. Cinnamon extract were daily administrated before starting irradiation and continued after radiation exposure. The results obtained revealed that the administration of cinnamon extract to irradiated rats significantly ameliorated the changes induced in liver antioxidant system; catalase, superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase activities as well as reduced glutathione concentration. The liver's lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation indices were significantly decreased when compared with their equivalent values in irradiated rats. Furthermore, the changes induces in xanthine oxidoreductase system were significantly diminished. In addition, the changes in liver nitric oxide contents, serum tumor necrosis factor alpha and C-reactive protein levels were markedly improved. In conclusion, the administration of cinnamon extract might provide substantial protection against radiation-induced oxidative and inflammatory damages. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Low Leachable Container System Consisting of a Polymer-Based Syringe with Chlorinated Isoprene Isobutene Rubber Plunger Stopper.

PubMed

Kiminami, Hideaki; Takeuchi, Katsuyuki; Nakamura, Koji; Abe, Yoshihiko; Lauwers, Philippe; Dierick, William; Yoshino, Keisuke; Suzuki, Shigeru

2015-01-01

A 36 month leachable study on water for injection in direct contact within a polymer-based prefillable syringe consisting of a cyclo olefin polymer barrel, a chlorinated isoprene isobutene rubber plunger stopper, a polymer label attached on the barrel, and a secondary packaging was conducted at 25 ± 2 °C and 60 ± 5% relative humidity. Through the various comparison studies, no difference in the leachable amounts was observed between this polymer-based prefilled syringe and a glass bottle as a blank sample reference by 36 months. No influence on the leachables study outcome was noted from the printed label and/or label adhesive or from the secondary packaging. In an additional study, no acrylic acid used as the label adhesive leachable was detected by an extended storage for 45 months at 25 ± 2 °C and 60 ± 5% relative humidity as a worst case. To obtain more details, a comparison extractable study was conducted between a cyclo olefin polymer barrel and a glass barrel. In addition, chlorinated isoprene isobutene rubber and bromo isoprene isobutene rubber were compared. As a result, no remarkable difference was found in the organic extractables for syringe barrels. On the other hand, in the case of element extractable analysis, the values for the cyclo olefin polymer barrel were lower than that for the glass barrel. For the plunger stoppers, the chlorinated isoprene isobutene rubber applied in this study was showing a lower extractable profile as compared to the bromo isoprene isobutene rubber, both for organic and element extractables. In conclusion, the proposed polymer-based prefillable syringe system has great potential and represents a novel alternative that can achieve very low level extractable profiles and can bring additional value to the highly sensitive biotech drug market. A 36 month leachable study on water for injection in direct contact within a cyclo olefin polymer barrel and chlorinated isoprene isobutene rubber plunger stopper that has a polymer label attached to the barrel and is wrapped into a secondary packaging was conducted at 25 °C and 60% relative humidity. Through the various comparison studies, no difference in the leachable amounts was observed between polymer-based prefilled syringes and a glass bottle as a blank sample reference by 36 months. No influences on the leachables study outcome were noted from the secondary packaging. To obtain more details, a comparison extractable study was conducted between the cyclo olefin polymer and the glass barrel. In addition, chlorinated isoprene isobutene rubber and bromo isoprene isobutene rubber plunger stoppers were compared as well. As a result, no remarkable difference was found in the organic extractables for barrels. As for element extractable analysis, the values for the cyclo olefin polymer barrel were lower than that for the glass barrel. For the plunger stoppers, the chlorinated isoprene isobutene rubber applied in this study was showing a lower extractable profile as compared to the bromo isoprene isobutene rubber, both for organic and element extractables. In conclusion, the proposed polymer-based prefillable syringe system has great potential and represents a novel alternative that can achieve very low level extractable profiles and can bring additional value to the highly sensitive biotech drug market. © PDA, Inc. 2015.

Investigation of the use of various plant extracts activity in ruminant

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yüca, Songül; Gül, Mehmet; Ćaǧlayan, Alper

2016-04-01

The prohibition of the use of antibiotics and as a result of the adverse effect on health of synthetic products, research has focused on natural feed additives. In recent years, the diet of farm animals many feed additives have been used for various purposes or continues. These include as used in ruminant rations as plant extract thyme, anise, pepper, mint, garlic, rosemary, cinnamon, parsley, bay leaf, coconut, like used herbal extracts and their effects on the performance of ruminants was investigated. Antioxidant, antifungal, antiviral, anti-inflamaotry is known to have effects of plant extract. By stimulating the digestive system of ruminants, they increase the activity of digestive enzymes, to prevent environmental pollution caused by manure, regulations rumen fermentation, inhibition of methane formation and protein degradability in the rumen as well as the animal is known to have many benefits. The structure of essential oils and plant extracts in this collection, examining the use of ruminant livestock events and the importance of the use in animal nutrition into practice will be discussed.

Study on chemical, bioactive and food preserving properties of Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.: Fr.) Murr.

PubMed

Petrović, Jovana; Stojković, Dejan; Reis, Filipa S; Barros, Lillian; Glamočlija, Jasmina; Ćirić, Ana; Ferreira, Isabel C F R; Soković, Marina

2014-07-25

Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.: Fr.) Murr. was studied to determine the nutritional value, bioactive compounds, in vitro antioxidants, and antimicrobial and antitumor activities. The studied mushroom is a rich source of carbohydrates and proteins. Mannitol and trehalose were the main free sugars. In addition, the polyunsaturated fatty acids α-, γ- and δ-tocopherols were found. Oxalic and citric acids were the most abundant organic acids; cinnamic and p-hydroxybenzoic acids were quantified in the methanolic extract and could be related to the antioxidant properties. It was the polysaccharidic extract that exhibited higher antioxidant and antimicrobial activities, indicating that the compounds present in this extract possess stronger bioactivity. Only the polysaccharidic extract revealed antiproliferative activity in human tumor cell lines. In addition, a suitable model system with chicken pâté was developed to test the antimicrobial preserving properties of L. sulphureus. The methanolic extract was used to examine in situ preserving properties against Aspergillus flavus and demonstrated excellent preserving potential.

Prenuptial dental extractions in Acadian women: first report of a cultural tradition.

PubMed

Gordon, Sara C; Kaste, Linda M; Barasch, Andrei; Safford, Monika M; Foong, W Choong; ElGeneidy, Adry

2011-12-01

Prenuptial tooth extractions, extractions of all teeth in at least one dental arch before marriage, are not identified in the dental literature. Driven by a professional encounter, the purpose of this study was to confirm the existence of this practice among Acadian women. An 8-item survey instrument with space for comments was mailed to 182 dentists from traditionally Acadian regions of Canada. The survey was provided in English and French. Ninety dentists responded (50.3%); 8 of them (9%) had been asked to perform prenuptial extractions, and an additional 9 volunteered awareness of this practice. Awareness and requests were associated with dental practice in a county with a ≥20% French-speaking population. Prenuptial extractions in this population have been confirmed by the current cohort of dentists. The potential public health, clinical, and systemic health research implications for women who are edentulous for most of their adult life merit further study. Additionally, it is important to determine if interventions are needed to curtail cultural expectations of such practices.

Water-compatible molecularly imprinted polymers for efficient direct injection on-line solid-phase extraction of ropivacaine and bupivacaine from human plasma.

PubMed

Cobb, Zoe; Sellergren, Börje; Andersson, Lars I

2007-12-01

Two novel molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) selected from a combinatorial library of bupivacaine imprinted polymers were used for selective on-line solid-phase extraction of bupivacaine and ropivacaine from human plasma. The MIPs were prepared using methacrylic acid as the functional monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate as the cross-linking monomer and in addition hydroxyethylmethacrylate to render the polymer surface hydrophilic. The novel MIPs showed high selectivity for the analytes and required fewer and lower concentrations of additives to suppress non-specific adsorption compared with a conventional MIP. This enabled the development of an on-line system for direct extraction of buffered plasma. Selective extraction was achieved without the use of time-consuming solvent switch steps, and transfer of the analytes from the MIP column to the analytical column was carried out under aqueous conditions fully compatible with reversed-phase LC gradient separation of analyte and internal standard. The MIPs showed excellent aqueous compatibility and yielded extractions with acceptable recovery and high selectivity.

Compaction Kinetics on Single DNAs: Purified Nucleosome Reconstitution Systems versus Crude Extract

PubMed Central

Wagner, Gaudeline; Bancaud, Aurélien; Quivy, Jean-Pierre; Clapier, Cédric; Almouzni, Geneviève; Viovy, Jean-Louis

2005-01-01

Kinetics of compaction on single DNA molecules are studied by fluorescence videomicroscopy in the presence of 1), Xenopus egg extracts and 2), purified nucleosome reconstitution systems using a combination of histones with either the histone chaperone Nucleosome Assembly Protein (NAP-1) or negatively charged macromolecules such as polyglutamic acid and RNA. The comparison shows that the compaction rates can differ by a factor of up to 1000 for the same amount of histones, depending on the system used and on the presence of histone tails, which can be subjected to post-translational modifications. Reactions with purified reconstitution systems follow a slow and sequential mechanism, compatible with the deposition of one (H3-H4)2 tetramer followed by two (H2A-H2B) dimers. Addition of the histone chaperone NAP-1 increases both the rate of the reaction and the packing ratio of the final product. These stimulatory effects cannot be obtained with polyglutamic acid or RNA, suggesting that yNAP-1 impact on the reaction cannot simply be explained in terms of charge screening. Faster compaction kinetics and higher packing ratios are reproducibly reached with extracts, indicating a role of additional components present in this system. Data are discussed and models proposed to account for the kinetics obtained in our single-molecule assay. PMID:16100259

[Total analysis of organic rubber additives].

PubMed

He, Wen-Xuan; Robert, Shanks; You, Ye-Ming

2010-03-01

In the present paper, after middle pressure chromatograph separation using both positive phase and reversed-phase conditions, the organic additives in ethylene-propylene rubber were identified by infrared spectrometer. At the same time, by using solid phase extraction column to maintain the main component-fuel oil in organic additves to avoid its interfering with minor compounds, other organic additves were separated and analysed by GC/Ms. In addition, the remaining active compound such as benzoyl peroxide was identified by CC/Ms, through analyzing acetone extract directly. Using the above mentioned techniques, soften agents (fuel oil, plant oil and phthalte), curing agent (benzoylperoxide), vulcanizing accelerators (2-mercaptobenzothiazole, ethyl thiuram and butyl thiuram), and antiagers (2, 6-Di-tert-butyl-4-methyl phenol and styrenated phenol) in ethylene-propylene rubber were identified. Although the technique was established in ethylene-propylene rubber system, it can be used in other rubber system.

Aqueous extract of Carica papaya leaves exhibits anti-tumor activity and immunomodulatory effects.

PubMed

Otsuki, Noriko; Dang, Nam H; Kumagai, Emi; Kondo, Akira; Iwata, Satoshi; Morimoto, Chikao

2010-02-17

Various parts of Carica papaya Linn. (CP) have been traditionally used as ethnomedicine for a number of disorders, including cancer. There have been anecdotes of patients with advanced cancers achieving remission following consumption of tea extract made from CP leaves. However, the precise cellular mechanism of action of CP tea extracts remains unclear. The aim of the present study is to examine the effect of aqueous-extracted CP leaf fraction on the growth of various tumor cell lines and on the anti-tumor effect of human lymphocytes. In addition, we attempted to identify the functional molecular weight fraction in the CP leaf extract. The effect of CP extract on the proliferative responses of tumor cell lines and human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), and cytotoxic activities of PBMC were assessed by [(3)H]-thymidine incorporation. Flow cytometric analysis and measurement of caspase-3/7 activities were performed to confirm the induction of apoptosis on tumor cells. Cytokine productions by PBMC were measured by ELISA. Gene profiling of the effect of CP extract treatment was performed by microarray analysis and real-time RT-PCR. We observed significant growth inhibitory activity of the CP extract on tumor cell lines. In PBMC, the production of IL-2 and IL-4 was reduced following the addition of CP extract, whereas that of IL-12p40, IL-12p70, IFN-gamma and TNF-alpha was enhanced without growth inhibition. In addition, cytotoxicity of activated PBMC against K562 was enhanced by the addition of CP extract. Moreover, microarray analyses showed that the expression of 23 immunomodulatory genes, classified by gene ontology analysis, was enhanced by the addition of CP extract. In this regard, CCL2, CCL7, CCL8 and SERPINB2 were representative of these upregulated genes, and thus may serve as index markers of the immunomodulatory effects of CP extract. Finally, we identified the active components of CP extract, which inhibits tumor cell growth and stimulates anti-tumor effects, to be the fraction with M.W. less than 1000. Since Carica papaya leaf extract can mediate a Th1 type shift in human immune system, our results suggest that the CP leaf extract may potentially provide the means for the treatment and prevention of selected human diseases such as cancer, various allergic disorders, and may also serve as immunoadjuvant for vaccine therapy. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Membrane-mediated extractive fermentation for lactic acid production from cellulosic biomass

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Chen, Rongfu; Lee, Y.Y.

1997-12-31

Lactic acid production from cellulosic biomass by cellulose and Lactobacillus delbrueckii was studied in a fermenter-extractor employing a microporous hollow fiber membrane (NIHF). This bioreactor system was operated under a fed-batch mode with continuous removal of lactic acid by an in situ extraction. A tertiary amine (Alamine 336) was used as an extractant for lactic acid. The extraction capacity of Alamine 336 is greatly enhanced by addition of alcohol. Long-chain alcohols serve well for this purpose since they are less toxic to micro-organism. Addition of kerosene, a diluent, was necessary to reduce the solvent viscosity. A solvent mixture of 20%more » Alamine 336,40% oleyl alcohol, and 40% kerosene was found to be most effective in the extraction of lactic acid. Progressive change of pH from an initial value of 5.0 down to 4.3 has significantly improved the overall performance of the simultaneous saccharification and extractive fermentation over that of constant pH operation. The change of pH was applied to promote cell growth in the early phase, and extraction in the latter phase. 20 refs., 10 figs., 1 tab.« less

Formation of lysine-derived oxidation products and loss of tryptophan during processing of porcine patties with added avocado byproducts.

PubMed

Utrera, Mariana; Rodríguez-Carpena, Javier-Germán; Morcuende, David; Estévez, Mario

2012-04-18

The effects of the addition of avocado oil and a phenolic-rich avocado peel extract on protein oxidation were studied in porcine patties subjected to cooking and chilled storage. Protein oxidation was assessed by means of tryptophan loss and the formation of specific lysine oxidation products, such as α-aminoadipic semialdehyde (AAS), α-aminoadipic acid (AAA), and Schiff bases. In the present paper, quantitative data of AAA are reported for the first time on a food matrix. The addition of the avocado extract inhibited the formation of AAS, AAA, and Schiff bases in patties during cooking and subsequent chilled storage. The antioxidant effect may respond to the protecting effect of phenolic compounds, mainly procyanidins, found on the avocado extract. Apparently, the combination of both strategies (back-fat replacement and addition of avocado extract) does not lead to an enhanced advantage on the oxidative stability of the product. The novel methodologies used in the present study enable a better comprehension of the mechanisms and consequences of protein oxidation in food systems.

Usnea barbata CO2-supercritical extract in alkyl polyglucoside-based emulsion system: contribution of Confocal Raman imaging to the formulation development of a natural product.

PubMed

Zugic, Ana; Lunter, Dominique Jasmin; Daniels, Rolf; Pantelic, Ivana; Tasic Kostov, Marija; Tadic, Vanja; Misic, Dusan; Arsic, Ivana; Savic, Snezana

2016-08-01

Topical treatment of skin infections is often limited by drawbacks related to both antimicrobial agents and their vehicles. In addition, considering the growing promotion of natural therapeutic products, our objective was to develop and evaluate naturally-based emulsion system, as prospective topical formulation for skin infections-treatment. Therefore, alkyl polyglucoside surfactants were used for stabilization of a vehicle serving as potential carrier for supercritical CO2-extract of Usnea barbata, lichen with well-documented antimicrobial activity, incorporated using two protocols and three concentrations. Comprehensive physicochemical characterization suggested possible involvement of extract's particles in stabilization of the investigated system. Raman spectral imaging served as the key method in disclosing extract's particles potential to participate in the microstructure of the tested emulsion system via three mechanisms: (1) particle-particle aggregation, (2) adsorption at the oil-water interface and (3) hydrophobic particle-surfactant interactions. Stated extract-vehicle interaction proved to be correlated to the preparation procedure and extract concentration on one hand and to affect the physicochemical and biopharmaceutical features of investigated system, on the other hand. Thereafter, formulation with the best preliminary stability and liberation profile was selected for further efficiency and in vivo skin irritation potential evaluation, implying pertinent in vitro antimicrobial activity against G+ bacteria and overall satisfying preliminary safety profile.

eGARD: Extracting associations between genomic anomalies and drug responses from text

PubMed Central

Rao, Shruti; McGarvey, Peter; Wu, Cathy; Madhavan, Subha; Vijay-Shanker, K.

2017-01-01

Tumor molecular profiling plays an integral role in identifying genomic anomalies which may help in personalizing cancer treatments, improving patient outcomes and minimizing risks associated with different therapies. However, critical information regarding the evidence of clinical utility of such anomalies is largely buried in biomedical literature. It is becoming prohibitive for biocurators, clinical researchers and oncologists to keep up with the rapidly growing volume and breadth of information, especially those that describe therapeutic implications of biomarkers and therefore relevant for treatment selection. In an effort to improve and speed up the process of manually reviewing and extracting relevant information from literature, we have developed a natural language processing (NLP)-based text mining (TM) system called eGARD (extracting Genomic Anomalies association with Response to Drugs). This system relies on the syntactic nature of sentences coupled with various textual features to extract relations between genomic anomalies and drug response from MEDLINE abstracts. Our system achieved high precision, recall and F-measure of up to 0.95, 0.86 and 0.90, respectively, on annotated evaluation datasets created in-house and obtained externally from PharmGKB. Additionally, the system extracted information that helps determine the confidence level of extraction to support prioritization of curation. Such a system will enable clinical researchers to explore the use of published markers to stratify patients upfront for ‘best-fit’ therapies and readily generate hypotheses for new clinical trials. PMID:29261751

Combining active learning and semi-supervised learning techniques to extract protein interaction sentences.

PubMed

Song, Min; Yu, Hwanjo; Han, Wook-Shin

2011-11-24

Protein-protein interaction (PPI) extraction has been a focal point of many biomedical research and database curation tools. Both Active Learning and Semi-supervised SVMs have recently been applied to extract PPI automatically. In this paper, we explore combining the AL with the SSL to improve the performance of the PPI task. We propose a novel PPI extraction technique called PPISpotter by combining Deterministic Annealing-based SSL and an AL technique to extract protein-protein interaction. In addition, we extract a comprehensive set of features from MEDLINE records by Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, which further improve the SVM classifiers. In our feature selection technique, syntactic, semantic, and lexical properties of text are incorporated into feature selection that boosts the system performance significantly. By conducting experiments with three different PPI corpuses, we show that PPISpotter is superior to the other techniques incorporated into semi-supervised SVMs such as Random Sampling, Clustering, and Transductive SVMs by precision, recall, and F-measure. Our system is a novel, state-of-the-art technique for efficiently extracting protein-protein interaction pairs.

Spiroketalcarminic Acid, a Novel Minor Anthraquinone Pigment in Cochineal Extract Used in Food Additives.

PubMed

Ito, Yusai; Harikai, Naoki; Ishizuki, Kyoko; Shinomiya, Kazufusa; Sugimoto, Naoki; Akiyama, Hiroshi

2017-09-01

Cochineal extract prepared from the scale insect Dactylopus coccus (American cochineal) has been used as a natural red dye for food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. The major pigment in cochineal extract is carminic acid (CA), an anthraquinone glucoside, and several minor pigments have been previously reported. Our investigation aimed at establishing the safety of cochineal dye products using ultra performance liquid chromatography-photo diode array-electrospray ionization-time of flight (UPLC-PDA-ESI-TOF)/MS found an unknown minor pigment, spiroketalcarminic acid (1), in three commercial cochineal extract samples; cochineal extract used in food additives, carmine that is an aluminum salt of cochineal extract used as natural dye, and a research reagent of CA. The purification of 1 from cochineal extract involved sequential chromatographic techniques, including preparative reversed-phase HPLC. Two dimensional (2D)-NMR and mass analyses established the structure of 1 to be a novel anthraquinone with an unusual 6,5-spiroketal system instead of the C-glucosyl moiety of CA. The absolute stereochemistry of the spiroketal moiety in 1 was determined by nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy (NOESY) correlations and optical rotation. No data corresponding to 1 had previously been reported for extracts of dried cochineal insects and traditional art products dyed with cochineal extract, indicating that 1 is likely produced during the preparation of commercial cochineal extract.

Nanostructured lipid system as a strategy to improve the anti-Candida albicans activity of Astronium sp.

PubMed Central

Bonifácio, Bruna Vidal; Ramos, Matheus Aparecido dos Santos; da Silva, Patrícia Bento; Negri, Kamila Maria Silveira; de Oliveira Lopes, Érica; de Souza, Leonardo Perez; Vilegas, Wagner; Pavan, Fernando Rogério; Chorilli, Marlus; Bauab, Taís Maria

2015-01-01

The genus Astronium (Anacardiaceae) includes species, such as Astronium fraxinifolium, Astronium graveolens, and Astronium urundeuva, which possess anti-inflammatory, anti-ulcerogenic, healing, and antimicrobial properties. Nanostructured lipid systems are able to potentiate the action of plant extracts, reducing the required dose and side effects and improving antimicrobial activity. This work aims to evaluate a nanostructured lipid system that was developed as a strategy to improve the anti-Candida albicans activity of hydroethanolic extracts of stems and leaves from Astronium sp. The antifungal activity against C. albicans (ATCC 18804) was evaluated in vitro by a microdilution technique. In addition to the in vitro assays, the Astronium sp. that showed the best antifungal activity and selectivity index was submitted to an in vivo assay using a model of vulvovaginal candidiasis infection. In these assays, the extracts were either used alone or were incorporated into the nanostructured lipid system (comprising 10% oil phase, 10% surfactant, and 80% aqueous phase). The results indicated a minimal inhibitory concentration of 125.00 µg/mL before incorporation into the nanostructured system; this activity was even more enhanced when this extract presented a minimal inhibitory concentration of 15.62 µg/mL after its incorporation. In vivo assay dates showed that the nanostructure-incorporated extract of A. urundeuva leaves was more effective than both the unincorporated extract and the antifungal positive control (amphotericin B). These results suggest that this nanostructured lipid system can be used in a strategy to improve the in vitro and in vivo anti-C. albicans activity of hydroethanolic extracts of Astronium sp. PMID:26300640

Xenopus egg extract: A powerful tool to study genome maintenance mechanisms.

PubMed

Hoogenboom, Wouter S; Klein Douwel, Daisy; Knipscheer, Puck

2017-08-15

DNA repair pathways are crucial to maintain the integrity of our genome and prevent genetic diseases such as cancer. There are many different types of DNA damage and specific DNA repair mechanisms have evolved to deal with these lesions. In addition to these repair pathways there is an extensive signaling network that regulates processes important for repair, such as cell cycle control and transcription. Despite extensive research, DNA damage repair and signaling are not fully understood. In vitro systems such as the Xenopus egg extract system, have played, and still play, an important role in deciphering the molecular details of these processes. Xenopus laevis egg extracts contain all factors required to efficiently perform DNA repair outside a cell, using mechanisms conserved in humans. These extracts have been used to study several genome maintenance pathways, including mismatch repair, non-homologous end joining, ICL repair, DNA damage checkpoint activation, and replication fork stability. Here we describe how the Xenopus egg extract system, in combination with specifically designed DNA templates, contributed to our detailed understanding of these pathways. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Clinical Trial Examining the Effects of Green Tea Extract on Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity and Quality of Life.

PubMed

Shamekhi, Z; Amani, R; Habibagahi, Z; Namjoyan, F; Ghadiri, Ata; Saki Malehi, A

2017-07-01

Antiinflammatory and immunomodulatory benefit of green tea (Camellia sinensis) in autoimmune disease has been proven in recent studies. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of green tea on disease activity and quality of life in systemic lupus erythematosus patients. A randomized controlled trial on subjects with lupus was conducted, and 68 patients in the age range of 39.1 ± 10.3 years and body mass index of 25.7 ± 5.21 kg/m 2 completed the 12-week study. Patients were randomly divided into two groups of intervention (1000 mg green tea extract, two capsules/day) and control (1000 mg of starch, two capsules/day). Main outcome measure, systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity, was assessed by the systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity index at the first and after 3 months of intervention. In addition, patient's quality of life was evaluated by short form of quality-of-life questionnaire at baseline and after 3 months. Green tea extract supplementation significantly reduced disease activity in lupus patients (p < 0.004); in addition, it significantly increased the vitality (p < 0.006) and general health (p < 0.01). This study showed that daily consumption of green tea extracts for 12 weeks improves the systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity as well as some aspects of quality of life. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Extracting and standardizing medication information in clinical text - the MedEx-UIMA system.

PubMed

Jiang, Min; Wu, Yonghui; Shah, Anushi; Priyanka, Priyanka; Denny, Joshua C; Xu, Hua

2014-01-01

Extraction of medication information embedded in clinical text is important for research using electronic health records (EHRs). However, most of current medication information extraction systems identify drug and signature entities without mapping them to standard representation. In this study, we introduced the open source Java implementation of MedEx, an existing high-performance medication information extraction system, based on the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) framework. In addition, we developed new encoding modules in the MedEx-UIMA system, which mapped an extracted drug name/dose/form to both generalized and specific RxNorm concepts and translated drug frequency information to ISO standard. We processed 826 documents by both systems and verified that MedEx-UIMA and MedEx (the Python version) performed similarly by comparing both results. Using two manually annotated test sets that contained 300 drug entries from medication list and 300 drug entries from narrative reports, the MedEx-UIMA system achieved F-measures of 98.5% and 97.5% respectively for encoding drug names to corresponding RxNorm generic drug ingredients, and F-measures of 85.4% and 88.1% respectively for mapping drug names/dose/form to the most specific RxNorm concepts. It also achieved an F-measure of 90.4% for normalizing frequency information to ISO standard. The open source MedEx-UIMA system is freely available online at http://code.google.com/p/medex-uima/.

The ICSI+ Multilingual Sentence Segmentation System

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-01-01

these steps the ASR output needs to be enriched with information additional to words, such as speaker diarization , sentence segmentation, or story...and the out- of a speaker diarization is considered as well. We first detail extraction of the prosodic features, and then describe the clas- ation...also takes into account the speaker turns that estimated by the diarization system. In addition to the Max- 1) model speaker turn unigrams, trigram

Analysis of signal transduction in cell-free extracts and rafts of Xenopus eggs.

PubMed

Tokmakov, Alexander A; Iwasaki, Tetsushi; Sato, Ken-Ichi; Fukami, Yasuo

2010-05-01

Intracellular signaling during egg activation/fertilization has been extensively studied using intact eggs, which can be manipulated by microinjection of different mRNAs, proteins, or chemical drugs. Furthermore, egg extracts, which retain high CSF activity (CSF-arrested extracts), were developed for studying fertilization/activation signal transduction, which have significant advantages as a model system. The addition of calcium to CSF-arrested extracts initiates a plethora of signaling events that take place during egg activation. Hence, the signaling downstream of calcium mobilization has been successfully studied in the egg extracts. Moreover, despite disruption of membrane-associated signaling compartments and ordered compartmentalization during extract preparation, CSF-arrested extracts can be successfully used to study early signaling events, which occur upstream of calcium release during egg activation/fertilization. In combination with the CSF-arrested extracts, activated egg rafts can reproduce some events of egg activation, including PLCgamma activation, IP3 production, transient calcium release, MAPK inactivation, and meiotic exit. This becomes possible due to complementation of the sperm-induced egg activation signaling machinery present in the rafts with the components of signal transduction system localized in the extracts. Herein, we describe protocols for studying molecular mechanisms of egg fertilization/activation using cell-free extracts and membrane rafts prepared from metaphase-arrested Xenopus eggs.

A Hybrid Mineral Battery: Energy Storage and Dissolution Behavior of CuFeS2 in a Fixed Bed Flow Cell.

PubMed

Deen, Kashif Mairaj; Asselin, Edouard

2018-05-09

The development of a hybrid system capable of storing energy and the additional benefit of Cu extraction is discussed in this work. A fixed bed flow cell (FBFC) was used in which a composite negative electrode containing CuFeS 2 (80 wt %) and carbon black (20 wt %) in graphite felt was separated from a positive (graphite felt) electrode by a proton-exchange membrane. The anolyte (0.2 m H 2 SO 4 ) and catholyte (0.5 m Fe 2+ in 0.2 m H 2 SO 4 with or without 0.1 m Cu 2+ ) were circulated in the cell. The electrochemical activity of the Fe 2+ /Fe 3+ redox couple over graphite felt significantly improved after the addition of Cu 2+ in the catholyte. Ultimately, in the CuFeS 2 ∥Fe 2+ /Cu 2+ (CFeCu) FBFC system, the specific capacity increased continuously to 26.4 mAh g -1 in 500 galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) cycles, compared to the CuFeS 2 ∥Fe 2+ (CFe) system (13.9 mAh g -1 ). Interestingly, the specific discharge energy gradually increased to 3.6 Wh kg -1 in 500 GCD cycles for the CFeCu system compared to 3.29 Wh kg -1 for the CFe system in 150 cycles. In addition to energy storage, 10.75 % Cu was also extracted from the mineral, which is an important feature of the CFeCu system as it would allow Cu extraction and recovery through hydrometallurgical methods. © 2018 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

A generalizable NLP framework for fast development of pattern-based biomedical relation extraction systems.

PubMed

Peng, Yifan; Torii, Manabu; Wu, Cathy H; Vijay-Shanker, K

2014-08-23

Text mining is increasingly used in the biomedical domain because of its ability to automatically gather information from large amount of scientific articles. One important task in biomedical text mining is relation extraction, which aims to identify designated relations among biological entities reported in literature. A relation extraction system achieving high performance is expensive to develop because of the substantial time and effort required for its design and implementation. Here, we report a novel framework to facilitate the development of a pattern-based biomedical relation extraction system. It has several unique design features: (1) leveraging syntactic variations possible in a language and automatically generating extraction patterns in a systematic manner, (2) applying sentence simplification to improve the coverage of extraction patterns, and (3) identifying referential relations between a syntactic argument of a predicate and the actual target expected in the relation extraction task. A relation extraction system derived using the proposed framework achieved overall F-scores of 72.66% for the Simple events and 55.57% for the Binding events on the BioNLP-ST 2011 GE test set, comparing favorably with the top performing systems that participated in the BioNLP-ST 2011 GE task. We obtained similar results on the BioNLP-ST 2013 GE test set (80.07% and 60.58%, respectively). We conducted additional experiments on the training and development sets to provide a more detailed analysis of the system and its individual modules. This analysis indicates that without increasing the number of patterns, simplification and referential relation linking play a key role in the effective extraction of biomedical relations. In this paper, we present a novel framework for fast development of relation extraction systems. The framework requires only a list of triggers as input, and does not need information from an annotated corpus. Thus, we reduce the involvement of domain experts, who would otherwise have to provide manual annotations and help with the design of hand crafted patterns. We demonstrate how our framework is used to develop a system which achieves state-of-the-art performance on a public benchmark corpus.

Response surface optimization of extraction protocols to obtain phenolic rich antioxidant from sea buckthorn and their potential application into model meat system.

PubMed

Wagh, Rajesh V; Chatli, Manish K

2017-05-01

In the present study, processing parameters for the extraction of phenolic rich sea buckthorn seed (SBTE) extract were optimised using response surface method and subjected for in vitro efficacy viz. total phenolic, ABTS, DPPH and SASA activity. The optimised model depicted MeOH as a solvent at 60% concentration level with a reaction time of 20 min and extracting temperature of 55 °C for the highest yield and total phenolic content. The efficacy of different concentration of obtained SBT was evaluated in raw ground pork as a model meat system on the basis of various physico-chemical, microbiological, sensory quality characteristics. Addition of 0.3% SBTE significantly reduced the lipid peroxidation (PV, TBARS and FFA) and improved instrumental colour ( L* , a*, b* ) attributes of raw ground pork during refrigerated storage of 9 days. Results concluded that SBTE at 0.3% level can successfully improve the oxidative stability, microbial, sensory quality attributes in the meat model system.

Development and validation of a rapid multi-class method for the confirmation of fourteen prohibited medicinal additives in pig and poultry compound feed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

PubMed

Cronly, Mark; Behan, P; Foley, B; Malone, E; Earley, S; Gallagher, M; Shearan, P; Regan, L

2010-12-01

A confirmatory method has been developed to allow for the analysis of fourteen prohibited medicinal additives in pig and poultry compound feed. These compounds are prohibited for use as feed additives although some are still authorised for use in medicated feed. Feed samples are extracted by acetonitrile with addition of sodium sulfate. The extracts undergo a hexane wash to aid with sample purification. The extracts are then evaporated to dryness and reconstituted in initial mobile phase. The samples undergo an ultracentrifugation step prior to injection onto the LC-MS/MS system and are analysed in a run time of 26 min. The LC-MS/MS system is run in MRM mode with both positive and negative electrospray ionisation. The method was validated over three days and is capable of quantitatively analysing for metronidazole, dimetridazole, ronidazole, ipronidazole, chloramphenicol, sulfamethazine, dinitolimide, ethopabate, carbadox and clopidol. The method is also capable of qualitatively analysing for sulfadiazine, tylosin, virginiamycin and avilamycin. A level of 100 microg kg(-1) was used for validation purposes and the method is capable of analysing to this level for all the compounds. Validation criteria of trueness, precision, repeatability and reproducibility along with measurement uncertainty are calculated for all analytes. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Enhancement of 6-pentyl-α-pyrone fermentation activity in an extractive liquid-surface immobilization (Ext-LSI) system by mixing anion-exchange resin microparticles.

PubMed

Oda, Shinobu; Michihata, Sayumi; Sakamoto, Naoki; Horibe, Hideo; Kono, Akihiko; Ohashi, Shinichi

2012-12-01

The addition of anion-exchange resin microparticles into a polyacrylonitrile (PAN) ballooned microsphere layer drastically enhanced the fermentative activity of Trichoderma atroviride AG2755-5NM398 in an extractive liquid-surface immobilization (Ext-LSI) system. The production of 6-pentyl-α-pyrone (6PP), a fungicidal secondary metabolite, was 1.92-fold higher than the control (PAN alone). Copyright © 2012 The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Waterflooding injectate design systems and methods

DOEpatents

Brady, Patrick V.; Krumhansl, James L.

2016-12-13

A method of recovering a liquid hydrocarbon using an injectate includes recovering the liquid hydrocarbon through primary extraction. Physico-chemical data representative of electrostatic interactions between the liquid hydrocarbon and the reservoir rock are measured. At least one additive of the injectate is selected based on the physico-chemical data. The method includes recovering the liquid hydrocarbon from the reservoir rock through secondary extraction using the injectate.

An online handwriting recognition system for Turkish

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vural, Esra; Erdogan, Hakan; Oflazer, Kemal; Yanikoglu, Berrin A.

2004-12-01

Despite recent developments in Tablet PC technology, there has not been any applications for recognizing handwritings in Turkish. In this paper, we present an online handwritten text recognition system for Turkish, developed using the Tablet PC interface. However, even though the system is developed for Turkish, the addressed issues are common to online handwriting recognition systems in general. Several dynamic features are extracted from the handwriting data for each recorded point and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) are used to train letter and word models. We experimented with using various features and HMM model topologies, and report on the effects of these experiments. We started with first and second derivatives of the x and y coordinates and relative change in the pen pressure as initial features. We found that using two more additional features, that is, number of neighboring points and relative heights of each point with respect to the base-line improve the recognition rate. In addition, extracting features within strokes and using a skipping state topology improve the system performance as well. The improved system performance is 94% in recognizing handwritten words from a 1000-word lexicon.

An online handwriting recognition system for Turkish

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vural, Esra; Erdogan, Hakan; Oflazer, Kemal; Yanikoglu, Berrin A.

2005-01-01

Despite recent developments in Tablet PC technology, there has not been any applications for recognizing handwritings in Turkish. In this paper, we present an online handwritten text recognition system for Turkish, developed using the Tablet PC interface. However, even though the system is developed for Turkish, the addressed issues are common to online handwriting recognition systems in general. Several dynamic features are extracted from the handwriting data for each recorded point and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) are used to train letter and word models. We experimented with using various features and HMM model topologies, and report on the effects of these experiments. We started with first and second derivatives of the x and y coordinates and relative change in the pen pressure as initial features. We found that using two more additional features, that is, number of neighboring points and relative heights of each point with respect to the base-line improve the recognition rate. In addition, extracting features within strokes and using a skipping state topology improve the system performance as well. The improved system performance is 94% in recognizing handwritten words from a 1000-word lexicon.

Layout-aware text extraction from full-text PDF of scientific articles.

PubMed

Ramakrishnan, Cartic; Patnia, Abhishek; Hovy, Eduard; Burns, Gully Apc

2012-05-28

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the most commonly used file format for online scientific publications. The absence of effective means to extract text from these PDF files in a layout-aware manner presents a significant challenge for developers of biomedical text mining or biocuration informatics systems that use published literature as an information source. In this paper we introduce the 'Layout-Aware PDF Text Extraction' (LA-PDFText) system to facilitate accurate extraction of text from PDF files of research articles for use in text mining applications. Our paper describes the construction and performance of an open source system that extracts text blocks from PDF-formatted full-text research articles and classifies them into logical units based on rules that characterize specific sections. The LA-PDFText system focuses only on the textual content of the research articles and is meant as a baseline for further experiments into more advanced extraction methods that handle multi-modal content, such as images and graphs. The system works in a three-stage process: (1) Detecting contiguous text blocks using spatial layout processing to locate and identify blocks of contiguous text, (2) Classifying text blocks into rhetorical categories using a rule-based method and (3) Stitching classified text blocks together in the correct order resulting in the extraction of text from section-wise grouped blocks. We show that our system can identify text blocks and classify them into rhetorical categories with Precision1 = 0.96% Recall = 0.89% and F1 = 0.91%. We also present an evaluation of the accuracy of the block detection algorithm used in step 2. Additionally, we have compared the accuracy of the text extracted by LA-PDFText to the text from the Open Access subset of PubMed Central. We then compared this accuracy with that of the text extracted by the PDF2Text system, 2commonly used to extract text from PDF. Finally, we discuss preliminary error analysis for our system and identify further areas of improvement. LA-PDFText is an open-source tool for accurately extracting text from full-text scientific articles. The release of the system is available at http://code.google.com/p/lapdftext/.

Influence of additional heat exchanger block on directional solidification system for growing multi-crystalline silicon ingot - A simulation investigation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nagarajan, S. G.; Srinivasan, M.; Aravinth, K.; Ramasamy, P.

2018-04-01

Transient simulation has been carried out for analyzing the heat transfer properties of Directional Solidification (DS) furnace. The simulation results revealed that the additional heat exchanger block under the bottom insulation on the DS furnace has enhanced the control of solidification of the silicon melt. Controlled Heat extraction rate during the solidification of silicon melt is requisite for growing good quality ingots which has been achieved by the additional heat exchanger block. As an additional heat exchanger block, the water circulating plate has been placed under the bottom insulation. The heat flux analysis of DS system and the temperature distribution studies of grown ingot confirm that the established additional heat exchanger block on the DS system gives additional benefit to the mc-Si ingot.

Two-Phase Extraction for Comprehensive Analysis of the Plant Metabolome by NMR.

PubMed

Schripsema, Jan; Dagnino, Denise

2018-01-01

Metabolomics is the area of research, which strives to obtain complete metabolic fingerprints, to detect differences between them, and to provide hypothesis to explain those differences [1]. But obtaining complete metabolic fingerprints is not an easy task. Metabolite extraction is a key step during this process, and much research has been devoted to finding the best solvent mixture to extract as much metabolites as possible.Here a procedure is described for analysis of both polar and apolar metabolites using a two-phase extraction system. D 2 O and CDCl 3 are the solvents of choice, and their major advantage is that, for the identification of the compounds, standard databases can be used because D 2 O and CDCl 3 are the solvents most commonly used for pure compound NMR spectra. The procedure enables the absolute quantification of components via the addition of suitable internal standards. The extracts are also suitable for further analysis with other systems like LC-MS or GC-MS.

Partitioning of mercury in aqueous biphasic systems and on ABEC resins.

PubMed

Rogers, R D; Griffin, S T

1998-06-26

Poly(ethylene glycol)-based aqueous biphasic systems (PEG-ABS) can be utilized to separate and recover metal ions in environmental and hydrometallurgical applications. A concurrent study was conducted comparing the partitioning of mercury between aqueous layers in an ABS [Me-PEG-5000/(NH4)2SO4] and partitioning of mercury from aqueous solutions to aqueous biphasic extraction chromatographic (ABEC-5000) resins. In ammonium sulfate solutions, mercury partitions to the salt-rich phase in ABS, but by using halide ion extractants, mercury will partition to the PEG-rich phase after formation of a chloro, bromo or iodo complex. The efficacy of the extractant increases in the order Cl-

Thermal stability of oils added with avocado (Persea americana cv. Hass) or olive (Olea europaea cv. Arbequina) leaf extracts during the French potatoes frying.

PubMed

Jiménez, Paula; García, Paula; Bustamante, Andrés; Barriga, Andrés; Robert, Paz

2017-04-15

Effect of the addition of avocado (Persea americana cv. Hass) or olive (Olea europaea cv. Arbequina) hydroalcoholic leaf extracts (AHE and OHE, respectively) on thermal stability of canola oil (CO) and high oleic sunflower oil (HOSO) during French potatoes frying at 180°C was studied. The extracts were characterized by the total phenolic content, phenol chromatographic profiles and antioxidant activity. B-type trimer procyanidins were the major phenolic compounds identified in AHE. OHE showed higher phenol content, antioxidant activity regarding AHE. CO+OHE and HOSO+OHE decreased the formation of polar compounds and showed an anti-polymeric effect with respect to oils without extracts, whereas AHE extract showed a prooxidant effect on HOSO. Therefore, OHE showed an antioxidant effect on HOSO and CO under the studied conditions. In addition, all systems (CO+AHE, HOSO+AHE, CO+OHE and HOSO+OHE) increased the retention of tocopherols. These results demonstrate the potential utility of OHE as natural antioxidant for oils. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Phytochemical screening and antiviral activity of some medicinal plants from the island Soqotra.

PubMed

Mothana, Ramzi A A; Mentel, Renate; Reiss, Christiane; Lindequist, Ulrike

2006-04-01

Methanol and hot-aqueous extracts of 25 different plant species, used in Yemeni traditional medicine and growing, partly as endemic plants, on the island Soqotra have been investigated for their antiviral activity. In addition, the phytochemical identification of the main chemical constituents was performed. The extracts were assayed in two in vitro viral systems, which used influenza virus type A/MDCK cells and herpes simplex virus type 1/Vero cells, at non-cytotoxic concentrations. The herpes simplex virus type 1 showed more sensitivity than the influenza virus type A against the extracts investigated. The methanol extracts of Boswellia ameero, Boswellia elongata, Buxus hildebrandtii, Cissus hamaderohensis, Cleome socotrana, Dracaena cinnabari, Exacum affine, Jatropha unicostata and Kalanchoe farinacea showed anti-influenza virus type A activity with 50% inhibition (IC50) concentrations ranging from 0.7 to 12.5 microg/mL. In addition, 17 plants of the 25 investigated exhibited anti-HSV-1 activity. The antiviral activity of some active extracts was also observed on a molecular level. Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Protective effects of Urtica dioica seed extract in aflatoxicosis: histopathological and biochemical findings.

PubMed

Uyar, A; Yener, Z; Dogan, A

2016-04-01

The ameliorative potential and antioxidant capacity of an extract of Urtica dioica seeds (UDS) was investigated using histopathological changes in liver and kidney, measuring serum marker enzymes, antioxidant defence systems and lipid peroxidation (malondialdehyde (MDA)) content in various tissues of broilers exposed to aflatoxin (AF). A total of 32 broilers were divided randomly into 4 groups: control, UDS extract-treated, AF-treated and AF+UDS extract-treated. Broilers in control and UDS extract-treated groups were fed on a diet without AF. The AF-treated group and AF+UDS extract-treated groups were treated with an estimated 1 mg total AF/kg feed. The AF+UDS extract groups received in addition 30 ml UDS extract/kg diet for 21 d. The AF-treated group had significantly decreased body weight gain when compared to the other groups. Biochemical analysis showed a small increase in the concentrations of serum aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, gamma glutamyl transpeptidase and lactate dehydrogenase in the AF-treated group compared to that of the control group, whereas concentrations of these enzymes were decreased in the AF+UDS group compared to that of the AF-treated group. Administration of supplementary UDS extract helped restore the AF-induced increase in MDA and reduced the antioxidant system towards normality, particularly in the liver, brain, kidney and heart. Hepatorenal protection by UDS extracts was further supported by the almost normal histology in AF+UDS extract-treated group as compared to the degenerative changes in the AF-treated broilers. It was concluded that UDS extract has a protective hepatorenal effect in broilers affected by aflatoxicosis, probably acting by promoting the antioxidative defence systems.

In vitro screening of selected feed additives, plant essential oils and plant extracts for rumen methane mitigation.

PubMed

Durmic, Zoey; Moate, Peter J; Eckard, Richard; Revell, Dean K; Williams, Richard; Vercoe, Philip E

2014-04-01

Ruminants produce large quantities of methane in their rumen as a by-product of microbial digestion of feed. Antibiotics are added to ruminant feed to reduce wasteful production of methane; however, this practice has some downsides. A search for safer and natural feed additives with anti-methanogenic properties is under way. The objective of this research was to examine selected feed additives, plant essential oils and plant extracts for their anti-methanogenic potential in the rumen using an in vitro batch fermentation system. A significant reduction (P < 0.05) in methane production was observed with nine feed additives (up to 40% reduction), all eight essential oils (up to 75% reduction) and two plant extracts (14% reduction) when compared to their respective controls. Amongst these, only an algal meal high in docosahexaenoic acid, preparations of Nannochloropsis oculata, calcareous marine algae, yeast metabolites and two tannins did not inhibit microbial gas and volatile acid production. The current study identified some potent dietary ingredients or plant compounds that can assist in developing novel feed additives for methane mitigation from the rumen. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry.

Activity of Extracts from Submerged Cultured Mycelium of Winter Mushroom, Flammulina velutipes (Agaricomycetes), on the Immune System In Vitro.

PubMed

Kashina, Svetlana; Villavicencio, Lerida Liss Flores; Zaina, Silvio; Ordaz, Marco Balleza; Sabanero, Gloria Barbosa; Fujiyoshi, Victor Tsutsumi; Lopez, Myrna Sabanero

2016-01-01

Extracts from submerged cultured mycelium of two strains of Flammulina velutipes, a popular culinary mushroom, were obtained by ultrasound and tested in vitro to determine their activity in innate immunity (monocytes/ macrophages). In addition, polyclonal antibodies against the extracts were produced. Both extracts have similar glycoproteins that contain mannose and glucose but have different glycoproteins with galactoseamine units. Two novel immunogenic glycoproteins with molecular weights of 32 and 25 kDa have been revealed. It is thought that these proteins are produced only by submerged cultured mycelium. Both extracts show immune-enhancing activity based on the significant modification of various parameters such as cytokine production, phagocytosis, and reactive oxygen species production.

Interactive Image Analysis System Design,

DTIC Science & Technology

1982-12-01

This report describes a design for an interactive image analysis system (IIAS), which implements terrain data extraction techniques. The design... analysis system. Additionally, the system is fully capable of supporting many generic types of image analysis and data processing, and is modularly...employs commercially available, state of the art minicomputers and image display devices with proven software to achieve a cost effective, reliable image

SEER Cancer Query Systems (CanQues)

Cancer.gov

These applications provide access to cancer statistics including incidence, mortality, survival, prevalence, and probability of developing or dying from cancer. Users can display reports of the statistics or extract them for additional analyses.

Extracting and standardizing medication information in clinical text – the MedEx-UIMA system

PubMed Central

Jiang, Min; Wu, Yonghui; Shah, Anushi; Priyanka, Priyanka; Denny, Joshua C.; Xu, Hua

2014-01-01

Extraction of medication information embedded in clinical text is important for research using electronic health records (EHRs). However, most of current medication information extraction systems identify drug and signature entities without mapping them to standard representation. In this study, we introduced the open source Java implementation of MedEx, an existing high-performance medication information extraction system, based on the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) framework. In addition, we developed new encoding modules in the MedEx-UIMA system, which mapped an extracted drug name/dose/form to both generalized and specific RxNorm concepts and translated drug frequency information to ISO standard. We processed 826 documents by both systems and verified that MedEx-UIMA and MedEx (the Python version) performed similarly by comparing both results. Using two manually annotated test sets that contained 300 drug entries from medication list and 300 drug entries from narrative reports, the MedEx-UIMA system achieved F-measures of 98.5% and 97.5% respectively for encoding drug names to corresponding RxNorm generic drug ingredients, and F-measures of 85.4% and 88.1% respectively for mapping drug names/dose/form to the most specific RxNorm concepts. It also achieved an F-measure of 90.4% for normalizing frequency information to ISO standard. The open source MedEx-UIMA system is freely available online at http://code.google.com/p/medex-uima/. PMID:25954575

Solvent Extraction Separation of Trivalent Americium from Curium and the Lanthanides

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jensen, Mark P.; Chiarizia, Renato; Ulicki, Joseph S.

2015-02-27

The sterically constrained, macrocyclic, aqueous soluble ligand N,N'-bis[(6-carboxy-2-pyridyl)methyl]-1,10-diaza-18-crown-6 (H2BP18C6) was investigated for separating americium from curium and all the lanthanides by solvent extraction. Pairing H2BP18C6, which favors complexation of larger f-element cations, with acidic organophosphorus extractants that favor extraction of smaller f-element cations, such as bis-(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid (HDEHP) or (2-ethylhexyl)phosphonic acid mono(2-ethylhexyl) ester (HEH[EHP]), created solvent extraction systems with good Cm/Am selectivity, excellent trans-lanthanide selectivity (Kex,Lu/Kex,La = 108), but poor selectivity for Am against the lightest lanthanides. However, using an organic phase containing both a neutral extractant, N,N,N’,N’-tetra(2-ethylhexyl)diglycolamide (TEHDGA), and HEH[EHP] enabled rejection of the lightest lanthanides during loading ofmore » the organic phase from aqueous nitric acid, eliminating their interference in the americium stripping stages. In addition, although it is a macrocyclic ligand, H2BP18C6 does not significantly impede the mass transfer kinetics of the HDEHP solvent extraction system« less

Investigation of aggregation in solvent extraction of lanthanides by acidic extractants (organophosphorus and naphthenic acid)

USGS Publications Warehouse

Zhou, N.; Wu, J.; Yu, Z.; Neuman, R.D.; Wang, D.; Xu, G.

1997-01-01

Three acidic extractants (I) di(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (HDEHP), (II) 2-ethylhexyl phosphonic acid mono-2-ethylhexyl ester (HEHPEHE) and (III) naphthenic acid were employed in preparing the samples for the characterization of the coordination structure of lanthanide-extractant complexes and the physicochemical nature of aggregates formed in the organic diluent of the solvent extraction systems. Photo correlation spectroscopy (PCS) results on the aggregates formed by the partially saponified HDEHP in n-heptane showed that the hydrodynamic radius of the aggregates was comparable to the molecular dimensions of HDEHP. The addition of 2-octanol into the diluent, by which the mixed solvent was formed, increased the dimensions of the corresponding aggregates. Aggregates formed from the lanthanide ions and HDEHP in the organic phase of the extraction systems were found very unstable. In the case of naphthenic acid, PCS data showed the formation of w/o microemulsion from the saponified naphthenic acid in the mixed solvent. The extraction of lanthanides by the saponified naphthenic acid in the mixed solvent under the given experimental conditions was a process of destruction of the w/o microemulsion. A possible mechanism of the breakdown of the w/o microemulsion droplets is discussed.

Preparation and use of Xenopus egg extracts to study DNA replication and chromatin associated proteins

PubMed Central

Gillespie, Peter J.; Gambus, Agnieszka; Blow, J. Julian

2012-01-01

The use of cell-free extracts prepared from eggs of the South African clawed toad, Xenopus laevis, has led to many important discoveries in cell cycle research. These egg extracts recapitulate the key nuclear transitions of the eukaryotic cell cycle in vitro under apparently the same controls that exist in vivo. DNA added to the extract is first assembled into a nucleus and is then efficiently replicated. Progression of the extract into mitosis then allows the separation of paired sister chromatids. The Xenopus cell-free system is therefore uniquely suited to the study of the mechanisms, dynamics and integration of cell cycle regulated processes at a biochemical level. In this article we describe methods currently in use in our laboratory for the preparation of Xenopus egg extracts and demembranated sperm nuclei for the study of DNA replication in vitro. We also detail how DNA replication can be quantified in this system. In addition, we describe methods for isolating chromatin and chromatin-bound protein complexes from egg extracts. These recently developed and revised techniques provide a practical starting point for investigating the function of proteins involved in DNA replication. PMID:22521908

[Determination of heavy metals for RoHS compliance by ICP-OES spectrometry coupled with microwave extraction system].

PubMed

Hua, Li; Wu, Yi-Ping; An, Bing; Lai, Xiao-Wei

2008-11-01

The harm of heavy metals contained in electronic and electrical equipment (EEE) on environment is of high concern by human. Aiming to handle the great challenge of RoHS compliance, the determinations of trace or ultratrace chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg) and lead (Pb) by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) was performed in the present paper, wherein, microwave extraction technology was used to prepare the sample solutions. In addition, the precision, recovery, repeatability and interference issues of this method were also discussed. The results exhibited that using the microwave extraction system to prepare samples is more quick, lossless, contamination-free in comparison with the conventional extraction methods such as dry ashing, wet-oven extraction etc. By analyzing the recoveries of these four heavy metals over different working time and wavelengths, the good recovery range between 85% and 115% showed that there was only tiny loss or contamination during the process of microwave extraction, sample introduction and ICP detection. Repeatability experiments proved that ICP plasma had a good stability during the working time and the matrix effect was small. Interference was a problem troublesome for atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), however, the techniques of standard additions or inter-element correction (IEC) method can effectively eliminated the interferences of Ni, As, Fe etc. with the Cd determination. By employing the multi-wavelengths and two correction point methods, the issues of background curve sloping shift and spectra overlap were successfully overcome. Besides, for the determinations of trace heavy metal elements, the relative standard deviation (RSD) was less than 3% and the detection limits were less than 1 microg x L(-10 (3sigma, n = 5) for samples, standard solutions, and standard additions, which proved that ICP-OES has a good precision and high reliability. This provided a reliable technique support for electronic and electrical (EE) industries to comply with RoHS directive.

Improving efficiency of a small forensic DNA laboratory: validation of robotic assays and evaluation of microcapillary array device.

PubMed

Crouse, Cecelia A; Yeung, Stephanie; Greenspoon, Susan; McGuckian, Amy; Sikorsky, Julie; Ban, Jeff; Mathies, Richard

2005-08-01

To present validation studies performed for the implementation of existing and new technologies to increase the efficiency in the forensic DNA Section of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office (PBSO) Crime Laboratory. Using federally funded grants, internal support, and an external Process Mapping Team, the PBSO collaborated with forensic vendors, universities, and other forensic laboratories to enhance DNA testing procedures, including validation of the DNA IQ magnetic bead extraction system, robotic DNA extraction using the BioMek2000, the ABI7000 Sequence Detection System, and is currently evaluating a micro Capillary Array Electrophoresis device. The PBSO successfully validated and implemented both manual and automated Promega DNA IQ magnetic bead extractions system, which have increased DNA profile results from samples with low DNA template concentrations. The Beckman BioMek2000 DNA robotic workstation has been validated for blood, tissue, bone, hair, epithelial cells (touch evidence), and mixed stains such as semen. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of samples tested per case since implementation of the robotic extraction protocols. The validation of the ABI7000 real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) technology and the single multiplex short tandem repeat (STR) PowerPlex16 BIO amplification system has provided both a time and a financial benefit. In addition, the qPCR system allows more accurate DNA concentration data and the PowerPlex 16 BIO multiplex generates DNA profiles data in half the time when compared to PowerPlex1.1 and PowerPlex2.1 STR systems. The PBSO's future efficiency requirements are being addressed through collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley and the Virginia Division of Forensic Science to validate microcapillary array electrophoresis instrumentation. Initial data demonstrated the electrophoresis of 96 samples in less than twenty minutes. The PBSO demonstrated, through the validation of more efficient extraction and quantification technology, an increase in the number of evidence samples tested using robotic/DNA IQ magnetic bead DNA extraction, a decrease in the number of negative samples amplified due to qPCR and implementation of a single multiplex amplification system. In addition, initial studies show the microcapillary array electrophoresis device (microCAE) evaluation results provide greater sensitivity and faster STR analysis output than current platforms.

All-paths graph kernel for protein-protein interaction extraction with evaluation of cross-corpus learning.

PubMed

Airola, Antti; Pyysalo, Sampo; Björne, Jari; Pahikkala, Tapio; Ginter, Filip; Salakoski, Tapio

2008-11-19

Automated extraction of protein-protein interactions (PPI) is an important and widely studied task in biomedical text mining. We propose a graph kernel based approach for this task. In contrast to earlier approaches to PPI extraction, the introduced all-paths graph kernel has the capability to make use of full, general dependency graphs representing the sentence structure. We evaluate the proposed method on five publicly available PPI corpora, providing the most comprehensive evaluation done for a machine learning based PPI-extraction system. We additionally perform a detailed evaluation of the effects of training and testing on different resources, providing insight into the challenges involved in applying a system beyond the data it was trained on. Our method is shown to achieve state-of-the-art performance with respect to comparable evaluations, with 56.4 F-score and 84.8 AUC on the AImed corpus. We show that the graph kernel approach performs on state-of-the-art level in PPI extraction, and note the possible extension to the task of extracting complex interactions. Cross-corpus results provide further insight into how the learning generalizes beyond individual corpora. Further, we identify several pitfalls that can make evaluations of PPI-extraction systems incomparable, or even invalid. These include incorrect cross-validation strategies and problems related to comparing F-score results achieved on different evaluation resources. Recommendations for avoiding these pitfalls are provided.

Layout-aware text extraction from full-text PDF of scientific articles

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the most commonly used file format for online scientific publications. The absence of effective means to extract text from these PDF files in a layout-aware manner presents a significant challenge for developers of biomedical text mining or biocuration informatics systems that use published literature as an information source. In this paper we introduce the ‘Layout-Aware PDF Text Extraction’ (LA-PDFText) system to facilitate accurate extraction of text from PDF files of research articles for use in text mining applications. Results Our paper describes the construction and performance of an open source system that extracts text blocks from PDF-formatted full-text research articles and classifies them into logical units based on rules that characterize specific sections. The LA-PDFText system focuses only on the textual content of the research articles and is meant as a baseline for further experiments into more advanced extraction methods that handle multi-modal content, such as images and graphs. The system works in a three-stage process: (1) Detecting contiguous text blocks using spatial layout processing to locate and identify blocks of contiguous text, (2) Classifying text blocks into rhetorical categories using a rule-based method and (3) Stitching classified text blocks together in the correct order resulting in the extraction of text from section-wise grouped blocks. We show that our system can identify text blocks and classify them into rhetorical categories with Precision1 = 0.96% Recall = 0.89% and F1 = 0.91%. We also present an evaluation of the accuracy of the block detection algorithm used in step 2. Additionally, we have compared the accuracy of the text extracted by LA-PDFText to the text from the Open Access subset of PubMed Central. We then compared this accuracy with that of the text extracted by the PDF2Text system, 2commonly used to extract text from PDF. Finally, we discuss preliminary error analysis for our system and identify further areas of improvement. Conclusions LA-PDFText is an open-source tool for accurately extracting text from full-text scientific articles. The release of the system is available at http://code.google.com/p/lapdftext/. PMID:22640904

A High-Speed Vision-Based Sensor for Dynamic Vibration Analysis Using Fast Motion Extraction Algorithms.

PubMed

Zhang, Dashan; Guo, Jie; Lei, Xiujun; Zhu, Changan

2016-04-22

The development of image sensor and optics enables the application of vision-based techniques to the non-contact dynamic vibration analysis of large-scale structures. As an emerging technology, a vision-based approach allows for remote measuring and does not bring any additional mass to the measuring object compared with traditional contact measurements. In this study, a high-speed vision-based sensor system is developed to extract structure vibration signals in real time. A fast motion extraction algorithm is required for this system because the maximum sampling frequency of the charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor can reach up to 1000 Hz. Two efficient subpixel level motion extraction algorithms, namely the modified Taylor approximation refinement algorithm and the localization refinement algorithm, are integrated into the proposed vision sensor. Quantitative analysis shows that both of the two modified algorithms are at least five times faster than conventional upsampled cross-correlation approaches and achieve satisfactory error performance. The practicability of the developed sensor is evaluated by an experiment in a laboratory environment and a field test. Experimental results indicate that the developed high-speed vision-based sensor system can extract accurate dynamic structure vibration signals by tracking either artificial targets or natural features.

In vitro lethal efficacy of leaf extract of Cannabis sativa Linn on the larvae of Chironomous samoensis Edward: an insect of public health concern.

PubMed

Roy, Bishnupada; Dutta, B K

2003-11-01

Leaf extract of C. sativa causes paralysis leading to death in larvae of C. samoensis. The extract brought a drastic change in the morphology of sensilla trichoidea and the general body cuticle. The larvae exposed to the leaf extract also showed a significant reduction in the concentration of Mg and Fe, while Mn showed only slight average increase. Since the sensilla trichoidea has nerve connection, it is expected that the toxic principle of the leaf extract has affected the central nervous system. The significant reduction of the level of Fe indicates that the extract could cause the reduction in oxygen binding capacity of the haemolymph, thereby acting as a respiratory poison in addition to its known role as a neurotoxic substance.

Comparison of measured changes in seasonal soil water content by rainfed maize-bean intercrop and component cropping systems in a semi-arid region of southern Africa

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ogindo, H. O.; Walker, S.

Seasonal water content fluctuation within the effective root zone was monitored during the growing season for a maize-bean intercrop (IMB), sole maize (SM) and sole bean (SB) in Free State Province, Republic of South Africa. Comparisons were undertaken for progressive depths of extraction 0-300 mm; 300-600 mm and 600-900 mm respectively. These enabled the understanding of water extraction behavior of the cropping systems within the different soil layers including the topsoil surface normally influenced by soil surface evaporation. Additive intercrops have been known to conserve water, largely due to the early high leaf area index and the higher total leaf area. In this study, the combined effect of the intercrop components seemed to lower the total water demand by the intercrop compared to the sole crops. During the two seasons (2000/2001 and 2001/2002) the drained upper limit (DUL) and crop lower limits (CLL) were determined. The maize-bean intercrop, sole maize and sole bean had CLL of 141 mm/m, 149 mm/m and 159 mm/m respectively. The DUL was 262 mm/m for the site and therefore the potential plant extractable soil water for the cropping systems were: 121 mm/m (IMB); 114 mm/m (SM) and 103 mm/m (SB). Overall, the intercrop did not have significantly different total soil water extraction during both seasons, although it was additive, showing that it had higher water to biomass conversion.

Guar Gum Stimulates Biogenic Sulfide Production at Elevated Pressures: Implications for Shale Gas Extraction

PubMed Central

Nixon, Sophie L.; Walker, Leanne; Streets, Matthew D. T.; Eden, Bob; Boothman, Christopher; Taylor, Kevin G.; Lloyd, Jonathan R.

2017-01-01

Biogenic sulfide production is a common problem in the oil industry, and can lead to costly hydrocarbon processing and corrosion of extraction infrastructure. The same phenomenon has recently been identified in shale gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing, and organic additives in fracturing fluid have been hypothesized to stimulate this process. Constraining the relative effects of the numerous organic additives on microbial metabolism in situ is, however, extremely challenging. Using a bespoke bioreactor system we sought to assess the potential for guar gum, the most commonly used gelling agent in fracturing fluids, to stimulate biogenic sulfide production by sulfate-reducing microorganisms at elevated pressure. Two pressurized bioreactors were fed with either sulfate-amended freshwater medium, or low-sulfate natural surface water, in addition to guar gum (0.05 w/v%) and an inoculum of sulfate-reducing bacteria for a period of 77 days. Sulfide production was observed in both bioreactors, even when the sulfate concentration was low. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences indicate that heterotrophic bacteria closely associated with the genera Brevundimonas and Acinetobacter became enriched early in the bioreactor experiments, followed by an increase in relative abundance of 16S rRNA genes associated with sulfate-reducing bacteria (Desulfosporosinus and Desulfobacteraceae) at later time points. Results demonstrate that guar gum can stimulate acid- and sulfide-producing microorganisms at elevated pressure, and may have implications for the potential role in microbially induced corrosion during hydraulic fracturing operations. Key differences between experimental and in situ conditions are discussed, as well as additional sources of carbon and energy for biogenic sulfide production during shale gas extraction. Our laboratory approach can be tailored to better simulate deep subsurface conditions in order to probe the role of other fracturing fluid additives and downhole parameters on microbial metabolisms observed in these systems. Such baseline studies will prove essential for effective future development of shale gas worldwide. PMID:28469616

Guar Gum Stimulates Biogenic Sulfide Production at Elevated Pressures: Implications for Shale Gas Extraction.

PubMed

Nixon, Sophie L; Walker, Leanne; Streets, Matthew D T; Eden, Bob; Boothman, Christopher; Taylor, Kevin G; Lloyd, Jonathan R

2017-01-01

Biogenic sulfide production is a common problem in the oil industry, and can lead to costly hydrocarbon processing and corrosion of extraction infrastructure. The same phenomenon has recently been identified in shale gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing, and organic additives in fracturing fluid have been hypothesized to stimulate this process. Constraining the relative effects of the numerous organic additives on microbial metabolism in situ is, however, extremely challenging. Using a bespoke bioreactor system we sought to assess the potential for guar gum, the most commonly used gelling agent in fracturing fluids, to stimulate biogenic sulfide production by sulfate-reducing microorganisms at elevated pressure. Two pressurized bioreactors were fed with either sulfate-amended freshwater medium, or low-sulfate natural surface water, in addition to guar gum (0.05 w/v%) and an inoculum of sulfate-reducing bacteria for a period of 77 days. Sulfide production was observed in both bioreactors, even when the sulfate concentration was low. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences indicate that heterotrophic bacteria closely associated with the genera Brevundimonas and Acinetobacter became enriched early in the bioreactor experiments, followed by an increase in relative abundance of 16S rRNA genes associated with sulfate-reducing bacteria ( Desulfosporosinus and Desulfobacteraceae) at later time points. Results demonstrate that guar gum can stimulate acid- and sulfide-producing microorganisms at elevated pressure, and may have implications for the potential role in microbially induced corrosion during hydraulic fracturing operations. Key differences between experimental and in situ conditions are discussed, as well as additional sources of carbon and energy for biogenic sulfide production during shale gas extraction. Our laboratory approach can be tailored to better simulate deep subsurface conditions in order to probe the role of other fracturing fluid additives and downhole parameters on microbial metabolisms observed in these systems. Such baseline studies will prove essential for effective future development of shale gas worldwide.

Method and Device for Extraction of Liquids from a Solid Particle Material

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

deMayo, Benjamin (Inventor)

2017-01-01

A method, system, and device for separating oil from oil sands or oil shale is disclosed. The method includes heating the oil sands, spinning the heated oil sands, confining the sand particles mechanically, and recovering the oil substantially free of the sand. The method can be used without the addition of chemical extraction agents. The system includes a source of centrifugal force, a heat source, a separation device, and a recovery device. The separation device includes a method of confining the sands while allowing the oil to escape, such as through an aperture.

Protocol: high throughput silica-based purification of RNA from Arabidopsis seedlings in a 96-well format

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

The increasing popularity of systems-based approaches to plant research has resulted in a demand for high throughput (HTP) methods to be developed. RNA extraction from multiple samples in an experiment is a significant bottleneck in performing systems-level genomic studies. Therefore we have established a high throughput method of RNA extraction from Arabidopsis thaliana to facilitate gene expression studies in this widely used plant model. We present optimised manual and automated protocols for the extraction of total RNA from 9-day-old Arabidopsis seedlings in a 96 well plate format using silica membrane-based methodology. Consistent and reproducible yields of high quality RNA are isolated averaging 8.9 μg total RNA per sample (~20 mg plant tissue). The purified RNA is suitable for subsequent qPCR analysis of the expression of over 500 genes in triplicate from each sample. Using the automated procedure, 192 samples (2 × 96 well plates) can easily be fully processed (samples homogenised, RNA purified and quantified) in less than half a day. Additionally we demonstrate that plant samples can be stored in RNAlater at -20°C (but not 4°C) for 10 months prior to extraction with no significant effect on RNA yield or quality. Additionally, disrupted samples can be stored in the lysis buffer at -20°C for at least 6 months prior to completion of the extraction procedure providing a flexible sampling and storage scheme to facilitate complex time series experiments. PMID:22136293

Protocol: high throughput silica-based purification of RNA from Arabidopsis seedlings in a 96-well format.

PubMed

Salvo-Chirnside, Eliane; Kane, Steven; Kerr, Lorraine E

2011-12-02

The increasing popularity of systems-based approaches to plant research has resulted in a demand for high throughput (HTP) methods to be developed. RNA extraction from multiple samples in an experiment is a significant bottleneck in performing systems-level genomic studies. Therefore we have established a high throughput method of RNA extraction from Arabidopsis thaliana to facilitate gene expression studies in this widely used plant model. We present optimised manual and automated protocols for the extraction of total RNA from 9-day-old Arabidopsis seedlings in a 96 well plate format using silica membrane-based methodology. Consistent and reproducible yields of high quality RNA are isolated averaging 8.9 μg total RNA per sample (~20 mg plant tissue). The purified RNA is suitable for subsequent qPCR analysis of the expression of over 500 genes in triplicate from each sample. Using the automated procedure, 192 samples (2 × 96 well plates) can easily be fully processed (samples homogenised, RNA purified and quantified) in less than half a day. Additionally we demonstrate that plant samples can be stored in RNAlater at -20°C (but not 4°C) for 10 months prior to extraction with no significant effect on RNA yield or quality. Additionally, disrupted samples can be stored in the lysis buffer at -20°C for at least 6 months prior to completion of the extraction procedure providing a flexible sampling and storage scheme to facilitate complex time series experiments.

A high-precision rule-based extraction system for expanding geospatial metadata in GenBank records

PubMed Central

Weissenbacher, Davy; Rivera, Robert; Beard, Rachel; Firago, Mari; Wallstrom, Garrick; Scotch, Matthew; Gonzalez, Graciela

2016-01-01

Objective The metadata reflecting the location of the infected host (LOIH) of virus sequences in GenBank often lacks specificity. This work seeks to enhance this metadata by extracting more specific geographic information from related full-text articles and mapping them to their latitude/longitudes using knowledge derived from external geographical databases. Materials and Methods We developed a rule-based information extraction framework for linking GenBank records to the latitude/longitudes of the LOIH. Our system first extracts existing geospatial metadata from GenBank records and attempts to improve it by seeking additional, relevant geographic information from text and tables in related full-text PubMed Central articles. The final extracted locations of the records, based on data assimilated from these sources, are then disambiguated and mapped to their respective geo-coordinates. We evaluated our approach on a manually annotated dataset comprising of 5728 GenBank records for the influenza A virus. Results We found the precision, recall, and f-measure of our system for linking GenBank records to the latitude/longitudes of their LOIH to be 0.832, 0.967, and 0.894, respectively. Discussion Our system had a high level of accuracy for linking GenBank records to the geo-coordinates of the LOIH. However, it can be further improved by expanding our database of geospatial data, incorporating spell correction, and enhancing the rules used for extraction. Conclusion Our system performs reasonably well for linking GenBank records for the influenza A virus to the geo-coordinates of their LOIH based on record metadata and information extracted from related full-text articles. PMID:26911818

A high-precision rule-based extraction system for expanding geospatial metadata in GenBank records.

PubMed

Tahsin, Tasnia; Weissenbacher, Davy; Rivera, Robert; Beard, Rachel; Firago, Mari; Wallstrom, Garrick; Scotch, Matthew; Gonzalez, Graciela

2016-09-01

The metadata reflecting the location of the infected host (LOIH) of virus sequences in GenBank often lacks specificity. This work seeks to enhance this metadata by extracting more specific geographic information from related full-text articles and mapping them to their latitude/longitudes using knowledge derived from external geographical databases. We developed a rule-based information extraction framework for linking GenBank records to the latitude/longitudes of the LOIH. Our system first extracts existing geospatial metadata from GenBank records and attempts to improve it by seeking additional, relevant geographic information from text and tables in related full-text PubMed Central articles. The final extracted locations of the records, based on data assimilated from these sources, are then disambiguated and mapped to their respective geo-coordinates. We evaluated our approach on a manually annotated dataset comprising of 5728 GenBank records for the influenza A virus. We found the precision, recall, and f-measure of our system for linking GenBank records to the latitude/longitudes of their LOIH to be 0.832, 0.967, and 0.894, respectively. Our system had a high level of accuracy for linking GenBank records to the geo-coordinates of the LOIH. However, it can be further improved by expanding our database of geospatial data, incorporating spell correction, and enhancing the rules used for extraction. Our system performs reasonably well for linking GenBank records for the influenza A virus to the geo-coordinates of their LOIH based on record metadata and information extracted from related full-text articles. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Analysis of separation test for automatic brake adjuster based on linear radon transformation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Luo, Zai; Jiang, Wensong; Guo, Bin; Fan, Weijun; Lu, Yi

2015-01-01

The linear Radon transformation is applied to extract inflection points for online test system under the noise conditions. The linear Radon transformation has a strong ability of anti-noise and anti-interference by fitting the online test curve in several parts, which makes it easy to handle consecutive inflection points. We applied the linear Radon transformation to the separation test system to solve the separating clearance of automatic brake adjuster. The experimental results show that the feature point extraction error of the gradient maximum optimal method is approximately equal to ±0.100, while the feature point extraction error of linear Radon transformation method can reach to ±0.010, which has a lower error than the former one. In addition, the linear Radon transformation is robust.

Vibration extraction based on fast NCC algorithm and high-speed camera.

PubMed

Lei, Xiujun; Jin, Yi; Guo, Jie; Zhu, Chang'an

2015-09-20

In this study, a high-speed camera system is developed to complete the vibration measurement in real time and to overcome the mass introduced by conventional contact measurements. The proposed system consists of a notebook computer and a high-speed camera which can capture the images as many as 1000 frames per second. In order to process the captured images in the computer, the normalized cross-correlation (NCC) template tracking algorithm with subpixel accuracy is introduced. Additionally, a modified local search algorithm based on the NCC is proposed to reduce the computation time and to increase efficiency significantly. The modified algorithm can rapidly accomplish one displacement extraction 10 times faster than the traditional template matching without installing any target panel onto the structures. Two experiments were carried out under laboratory and outdoor conditions to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the system performance in practice. The results demonstrated the high accuracy and efficiency of the camera system in extracting vibrating signals.

Effects of pyrite and sphalerite on population compositions, dynamics and copper extraction efficiency in chalcopyrite bioleaching process.

PubMed

Xiao, Yunhua; Liu, Xueduan; Dong, Weiling; Liang, Yili; Niu, Jiaojiao; Gu, Yabing; Ma, Liyuan; Hao, Xiaodong; Zhang, Xian; Xu, Zhen; Yin, Huaqun

2017-07-01

This study used an artificial microbial community with four known moderately thermophilic acidophiles (three bacteria including Acidithiobacillus caldus S1, Sulfobacillus thermosulfidooxidans ST and Leptospirillum ferriphilum YSK, and one archaea, Ferroplasma thermophilum L1) to explore the variation of microbial community structure, composition, dynamics and function (e.g., copper extraction efficiency) in chalcopyrite bioleaching (C) systems with additions of pyrite (CP) or sphalerite (CS). The community compositions and dynamics in the solution and on the ore surface were investigated by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). The results showed that the addition of pyrite or sphalerite changed the microbial community composition and dynamics dramatically during the chalcopyrite bioleaching process. For example, A. caldus (above 60%) was the dominant species at the initial stage in three groups, and at the middle stage, still dominated C group (above 70%), but it was replaced by L. ferriphilum (above 60%) in CP and CS groups; at the final stage, L. ferriphilum dominated C group, while F. thermophilum dominated CP group on the ore surface. Furthermore, the additions of pyrite or sphalerite both made the increase of redox potential (ORP) and the concentrations of Fe 3+ and H + , which would affect the microbial community compositions and copper extraction efficiency. Additionally, pyrite could enhance copper extraction efficiency (e.g., improving around 13.2% on day 6) during chalcopyrite bioleaching; on the contrary, sphalerite restrained it.

Radical scavenging activities of Rio Red grapefruits and Sour orange fruit extracts in different in vitro model systems.

PubMed

Jayaprakasha, G K; Girennavar, Basavaraj; Patil, Bhimanagouda S

2008-07-01

Antioxidant fractions from two different citrus species such as Rio Red (Citrus paradise Macf.) and Sour orange (Citrus aurantium L.) were extracted with five different polar solvents using Soxhlet type extractor. The total phenolic content of the extracts was determined by Folin-Ciocalteu method. Ethyl acetate extract of Rio Red and Sour orange was found to contain maximum phenolics. The dried fractions were screened for their antioxidant activity potential using in vitro model systems such as 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH), phosphomolybdenum method and nitroblue tetrazolium (NBT) reduction at different concentrations. The methanol:water (80:20) fraction of Rio Red showed the highest radical scavenging activity 42.5%, 77.8% and 92.1% at 250, 500 and 1000 ppm, respectively, while methanol:water (80:20) fraction of Sour orange showed the lowest radical scavenging activity at all the tested concentrations. All citrus fractions showed good antioxidant capacity by the formation of phosphomolybdenum complex at 200 ppm. In addition, superoxide radical scavenging activity was assayed using non-enzymatic (NADH/phenaxine methosulfate) superoxide generating system. All the extracts showed variable superoxide radical scavenging activity. Moreover, methanol:water (80:20) extract of Rio Red and methanol extract of Sour orange exhibited marked reducing power in potassium ferricyanide reduction method. The data obtained using above in vitro models clearly establish the antioxidant potential of citrus fruit extracts. However, comprehensive studies need to be conducted to ascertain the in vivo bioavailability, safety and efficacy of such extracts in experimental animals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on antioxidant activity of different polar extracts from Rio Red and Sour oranges.

Methodology for extracting local constants from petroleum cracking flows

DOEpatents

Chang, Shen-Lin; Lottes, Steven A.; Zhou, Chenn Q.

2000-01-01

A methodology provides for the extraction of local chemical kinetic model constants for use in a reacting flow computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computer code with chemical kinetic computations to optimize the operating conditions or design of the system, including retrofit design improvements to existing systems. The coupled CFD and kinetic computer code are used in combination with data obtained from a matrix of experimental tests to extract the kinetic constants. Local fluid dynamic effects are implicitly included in the extracted local kinetic constants for each particular application system to which the methodology is applied. The extracted local kinetic model constants work well over a fairly broad range of operating conditions for specific and complex reaction sets in specific and complex reactor systems. While disclosed in terms of use in a Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) riser, the inventive methodology has application in virtually any reaction set to extract constants for any particular application and reaction set formulation. The methodology includes the step of: (1) selecting the test data sets for various conditions; (2) establishing the general trend of the parametric effect on the measured product yields; (3) calculating product yields for the selected test conditions using coupled computational fluid dynamics and chemical kinetics; (4) adjusting the local kinetic constants to match calculated product yields with experimental data; and (5) validating the determined set of local kinetic constants by comparing the calculated results with experimental data from additional test runs at different operating conditions.

Isolation, Separation, and Preconcentration of Biologically Active Compounds from Plant Matrices by Extraction Techniques.

PubMed

Raks, Victoria; Al-Suod, Hossam; Buszewski, Bogusław

2018-01-01

Development of efficient methods for isolation and separation of biologically active compounds remains an important challenge for researchers. Designing systems such as organomineral composite materials that allow extraction of a wide range of biologically active compounds, acting as broad-utility solid-phase extraction agents, remains an important and necessary task. Selective sorbents can be easily used for highly selective and reliable extraction of specific components present in complex matrices. Herein, state-of-the-art approaches for selective isolation, preconcentration, and separation of biologically active compounds from a range of matrices are discussed. Primary focus is given to novel extraction methods for some biologically active compounds including cyclic polyols, flavonoids, and oligosaccharides from plants. In addition, application of silica-, carbon-, and polymer-based solid-phase extraction adsorbents and membrane extraction for selective separation of these compounds is discussed. Potential separation process interactions are recommended; their understanding is of utmost importance for the creation of optimal conditions to extract biologically active compounds including those with estrogenic properties.

In vitro inhibitory effects of plant-based foods and their combinations on intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase.

PubMed

Adisakwattana, Sirichai; Ruengsamran, Thanyachanok; Kampa, Patcharaporn; Sompong, Weerachat

2012-07-31

Plant-based foods have been used in traditional health systems to treat diabetes mellitus. The successful prevention of the onset of diabetes consists in controlling postprandial hyperglycemia by the inhibition of α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase activities, resulting in aggressive delay of carbohydrate digestion to absorbable monosaccharide. In this study, five plant-based foods were investigated for intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase. The combined inhibitory effects of plant-based foods were also evaluated. Preliminary phytochemical analysis of plant-based foods was performed in order to determine the total phenolic and flavonoid content. The dried plants of Hibiscus sabdariffa (Roselle), Chrysanthemum indicum (chrysanthemum), Morus alba (mulberry), Aegle marmelos (bael), and Clitoria ternatea (butterfly pea) were extracted with distilled water and dried using spray drying process. The dried extracts were determined for the total phenolic and flavonoid content by using Folin-Ciocateu's reagent and AlCl3 assay, respectively. The dried extract of plant-based food was further quantified with respect to intestinal α-glucosidase (maltase and sucrase) inhibition and pancreatic α-amylase inhibition by glucose oxidase method and dinitrosalicylic (DNS) reagent, respectively. The phytochemical analysis revealed that the total phenolic content of the dried extracts were in the range of 230.3-460.0 mg gallic acid equivalent/g dried extract. The dried extracts contained flavonoid in the range of 50.3-114.8 mg quercetin equivalent/g dried extract. It was noted that the IC50 values of chrysanthemum, mulberry and butterfly pea extracts were 4.24±0.12 mg/ml, 0.59±0.06 mg/ml, and 3.15±0.19 mg/ml, respectively. In addition, the IC50 values of chrysanthemum, mulberry and butterfly pea extracts against intestinal sucrase were 3.85±0.41 mg/ml, 0.94±0.11 mg/ml, and 4.41±0.15 mg/ml, respectively. Furthermore, the IC50 values of roselle and butterfly pea extracts against pancreatic α-amylase occurred at concentration of 3.52±0.15 mg/ml and 4.05±0.32 mg/ml, respectively. Combining roselle, chrysanthemum, and butterfly pea extracts with mulberry extract showed additive interaction on intestinal maltase inhibition. The results also demonstrated that the combination of chrysanthemum, mulberry, or bael extracts together with roselle extract produced synergistic inhibition, whereas roselle extract showed additive inhibition when combined with butterfly pea extract against pancreatic α-amylase. The present study presents data from five plant-based foods evaluating the intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase inhibitory activities and their additive and synergistic interactions. These results could be useful for developing functional foods by combination of plant-based foods for treatment and prevention of diabetes mellitus.

Improving the extraction of l-phenylalanine by the use of ionic liquids as adjuvants in aqueous biphasic systems.

PubMed

Yang, Hongpeng; Chen, Li; Zhou, Cunshan; Yu, Xiaojie; Yagoub, Abu ElGasim A; Ma, Haile

2018-04-15

Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is widely used in the polymer-salt systems. However, the low polarity of the PEG-rich phase limits the application of aqueous biphasic systems (ABS). To overcome this disadvantage, a small quantity of ionic liquid (IL) was used as an adjuvant in ABS to enlarge the polarity range. Therefore, an innovative study involving addition of 4wt% imidazolium-based ILs to the PEG 600/NaH 2 PO 4 ABS, aiming at controlling the phase behavior and extraction ability, was carried out. The phase diagrams, the tie-lines and the partitioning behavior of l-phenylalanine and ILs were studied in these systems. The results reveal that l-phenylalanine preferentially partitions for the PEG-rich phase. The addition of 4wt% IL to ABS controls the partitioning behavior of l-phenylalanine, which depends on the type of IL employed. Moreover, it is verified that increasing temperature lead to a decrease in the partition coefficient of l-phenylalanine. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Combining Feature Extraction Methods to Assist the Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease.

PubMed

Segovia, F; Górriz, J M; Ramírez, J; Phillips, C

2016-01-01

Neuroimaging data as (18)F-FDG PET is widely used to assist the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Looking for regions with hypoperfusion/ hypometabolism, clinicians may predict or corroborate the diagnosis of the patients. Modern computer aided diagnosis (CAD) systems based on the statistical analysis of whole neuroimages are more accurate than classical systems based on quantifying the uptake of some predefined regions of interests (ROIs). In addition, these new systems allow determining new ROIs and take advantage of the huge amount of information comprised in neuroimaging data. A major branch of modern CAD systems for AD is based on multivariate techniques, which analyse a neuroimage as a whole, considering not only the voxel intensities but also the relations among them. In order to deal with the vast dimensionality of the data, a number of feature extraction methods have been successfully applied. In this work, we propose a CAD system based on the combination of several feature extraction techniques. First, some commonly used feature extraction methods based on the analysis of the variance (as principal component analysis), on the factorization of the data (as non-negative matrix factorization) and on classical magnitudes (as Haralick features) were simultaneously applied to the original data. These feature sets were then combined by means of two different combination approaches: i) using a single classifier and a multiple kernel learning approach and ii) using an ensemble of classifier and selecting the final decision by majority voting. The proposed approach was evaluated using a labelled neuroimaging database along with a cross validation scheme. As conclusion, the proposed CAD system performed better than approaches using only one feature extraction technique. We also provide a fair comparison (using the same database) of the selected feature extraction methods.

Coley's Lessons Remembered: Augmenting Mistletoe Therapy.

PubMed

Orange, Maurice; Reuter, Uwe; Hobohm, Uwe

2016-12-01

The following four observations point in the same direction, namely that there is an unleveraged potential for stimulating the innate immune system against cancer: (1) experimental treatments with bacterial extracts more than 100 years ago by Coley and contemporaries, (2) a positive correlation between spontaneous regressions and febrile infection, (3) epidemiological data suggesting an inverse correlation between a history of infection and the likelihood of developing cancer, and (4) our recent finding that a cocktail of pattern recognition receptor ligands (PRRLs) can eradicate solid tumors in cancer mice if applied metronomically. Because the main immunostimulating component of mistletoe extract (ME), mistletoe lectin, has been shown to be a PRRL as well, we suggest to apply ME in combination with additional PRRLs. Additional PRRLs can be found in approved drugs already on the market. Therefore, augmentation of ME might be feasible, with the aim of reattaining the old successes using approved drugs rather than bacterial extracts. © The Author(s) 2016.

Direct analysis of textile dyes from trace fibers by automated microfluidics extraction system coupled with Q-TOF mass spectrometer for forensic applications.

PubMed

Sultana, Nadia; Gunning, Sean; Furst, Stephen J; Garrard, Kenneth P; Dow, Thomas A; Vinueza, Nelson R

2018-05-19

Textile fiber is a common form of transferable trace evidence at the crime scene. Different techniques such as microscopy or spectroscopy are currently being used for trace fiber analysis. Dye characterization in trace fiber adds an important molecular specificity during the analysis. In this study, we performed a direct trace fiber analysis method via dye characterization by a novel automated microfluidics device (MFD) dye extraction system coupled with a quadrupole-time-of-flight (Q-TOF) mass spectrometer (MS). The MFD system used an in-house made automated procedure which requires only 10μL of organic solvent for the extraction. The total extraction and identification time by the system is under 12min. A variety of sulfonated azo and anthraquinone dyes were analyzed from ∼1mm length nylon fiber samples. This methodology successfully characterized multiple dyes (≥3 dyes) from a single fiber thread. Additionally, it was possible to do dye characterization from single fibers with a diameter of ∼10μm. The MFD-MS system was used for elemental composition and isotopic distribution analysis where MFD-MS/MS was used for structural characterization of dyes on fibers. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Statistical Modeling of Zr/Hf Extraction using TBP-D2EHPA Mixtures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rezaeinejhad Jirandehi, Vahid; Haghshenas Fatmehsari, Davoud; Firoozi, Sadegh; Taghizadeh, Mohammad; Keshavarz Alamdari, Eskandar

2012-12-01

In the present work, response surface methodology was employed for the study and prediction of Zr/Hf extraction curves in a solvent extraction system using D2EHPA-TBP mixtures. The effect of change in the levels of temperature, nitric acid concentration, and TBP/D2EHPA ratio (T/D) on the Zr/Hf extraction/separation was studied by the use of central composite design. The results showed a statistically significant effect of T/D, nitric acid concentration, and temperature on the extraction percentage of Zr and Hf. In the case of Zr, a statistically significant interaction was found between T/D and nitric acid, whereas for Hf, both interactive terms between temperature and T/D and nitric acid were significant. Additionally, the extraction curves were profitably predicted applying the developed statistical regression equations; this approach is faster and more economical compared with experimentally obtained curves.

Antioxidant activities, metal contents, total phenolics and flavonoids of seven Morchella species.

PubMed

Gursoy, Nevcihan; Sarikurkcu, Cengiz; Cengiz, Mustafa; Solak, M Halil

2009-09-01

Seven Morchella species were analyzed for their antioxidant activities in different test systems namely beta-carotene/linoleic acid, DPPH, reducing power, chelating effect and scavenging effect (%) on the stable ABTS*(+), in addition to their heavy metals, total phenolic and flavonoid contents. In beta-carotene/linoleic acid system, the most active mushrooms were M. esculenta var. umbrina and M.angusticeps. In the case of DPPH, methanol extract of M. conica showed high antioxidant activity. The reducing power of the methanol extracts of mushrooms increased with concentration. Chelating capacity of the extracts was also increased with the concentration. On the other hand, in 40 microg ml(-1) concentration, methanol extract of M. conica, exhibited the highest radical scavenging activity (78.66+/-2.07%) when reacted with the ABTS*(+) radical. Amounts of seven elements (Cu, Mn, Co, Zn, Fe, Ca, and Mg) and five heavy metals (Ni, Pb, Cd, Cr, and Al) were also determined in all species. M. conica was found to have the highest phenolic content among the samples. Flavonoid content of M. rotunda was also found superior (0.59+/-0.01 microg QEs/mg extract).

Extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and organochlorine pesticides from soils: a comparison between Soxhlet extraction, microwave-assisted extraction and accelerated solvent extraction techniques.

PubMed

Wang, Wentao; Meng, Bingjun; Lu, Xiaoxia; Liu, Yu; Tao, Shu

2007-10-29

The methods of simultaneous extraction of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) from soils using Soxhlet extraction, microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) and accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) were established, and the extraction efficiencies using the three methods were systemically compared from procedural blank, limits of detection and quantification, method recovery and reproducibility, method chromatogram and other factors. In addition, soils with different total organic carbon contents were used to test the extraction efficiencies of the three methods. The results showed that the values obtained in this study were comparable with the values reported by other studies. In some respects such as method recovery and reproducibility, there were no significant differences among the three methods for the extraction of PAHs and OCPs. In some respects such as procedural blank and limits of detection and quantification, there were significant differences among the three methods. Overall, ASE had the best extraction efficiency compared to MAE and Soxhlet extraction, and the extraction efficiencies of MAE and Soxhlet extraction were comparable to each other depending on the property such as TOC content of the studied soil. Considering other factors such as solvent consumption and extraction time, ASE and MAE are preferable to Soxhlet extraction.

A compilation of safety impact information for extractables associated with materials used in pharmaceutical packaging, delivery, administration, and manufacturing systems.

PubMed

Jenke, Dennis; Carlson, Tage

2014-01-01

Demonstrating suitability for intended use is necessary to register packaging, delivery/administration, or manufacturing systems for pharmaceutical products. During their use, such systems may interact with the pharmaceutical product, potentially adding extraneous entities to those products. These extraneous entities, termed leachables, have the potential to affect the product's performance and/or safety. To establish the potential safety impact, drug products and their packaging, delivery, or manufacturing systems are tested for leachables or extractables, respectively. This generally involves testing a sample (either the extract or the drug product) by a means that produces a test method response and then correlating the test method response with the identity and concentration of the entity causing the response. Oftentimes, analytical tests produce responses that cannot readily establish the associated entity's identity. Entities associated with un-interpretable responses are termed unknowns. Scientifically justifiable thresholds are used to establish those individual unknowns that represent an acceptable patient safety risk and thus which do not require further identification and, conversely, those unknowns whose potential safety impact require that they be identified. Such thresholds are typically based on the statistical analysis of datasets containing toxicological information for more or less relevant compounds. This article documents toxicological information for over 540 extractables identified in laboratory testing of polymeric materials used in pharmaceutical applications. Relevant toxicological endpoints, such as NOELs (no observed effects), NOAELs (no adverse effects), TDLOs (lowest published toxic dose), and others were collated for these extractables or their structurally similar surrogates and were systematically assessed to produce a risk index, which represents a daily intake value for life-long intravenous administration. This systematic approach uses four uncertainty factors, each assigned a factor of 10, which consider the quality and relevance of the data, differences in route of administration, non-human species to human extrapolations, and inter-individual variation among humans. In addition to the risk index values, all extractables and most of their surrogates were classified for structural safety alerts using Cramer rules and for mutagenicity alerts using an in silico approach (Benigni/Bossa rule base for mutagenicity via Toxtree). Lastly, in vitro mutagenicity data (Ames Salmonella typimurium and Mouse Lymphoma tests) were collected from available databases (Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information and Carcinogenic Potency Database). The frequency distributions of the resulting data were established; in general risk index values were normally distributed around a band ranging from 5 to 20 mg/day. The risk index associated with 95% level of the cumulative distribution plot was approximately 0.1 mg/day. Thirteen extractables in the dataset had individual risk index values less than 0.1 mg/day, although four of these had additional risk indices, based on multiple different toxicological endpoints, above 0.1 mg/day. Additionally, approximately 50% of the extractables were classified in Cramer Class 1 (low risk of toxicity) and approximately 35% were in Cramer Class 3 (no basis to assume safety). Lastly, roughly 20% of the extractables triggered either an in vitro or in silico alert for mutagenicity. When Cramer classifications and the mutagenicity alerts were compared to the risk indices, extractables with safety alerts generally had lower risk index values, although the differences in the risk index data distributions, extractables with or without alerts, were small and subtle. Leachables from packaging systems, manufacturing systems, or delivery devices can accumulate in drug products and potentially affect the drug product. Although drug products can be analyzed for leachables (and material extracts can be analyzed for extractables), not all leachables or extractables can be fully identified. Safety thresholds can be used to establish whether the unidentified substances can be deemed to be safe or whether additional analytical efforts need to be made to secure the identities. These thresholds are typically based on the statistical analysis of datasets containing toxicological information for more or less relevant compounds. This article contains safety data for over 500 extractables that were identified in laboratory characterizations of polymers used in pharmaceutical applications. The safety data consists of structural toxicity classifications of the extractables as well as calculated risk indices, where the risk indices were obtained by subjecting toxicological safety data, such as NOELs (no observed effects), NOAELs (no adverse effects), TDLOs (lowest published toxic dose), and others to a systematic evaluation process using appropriate uncertainty factors. Thus the risk index values represent daily exposures for the lifetime intravenous administration of drugs. The frequency distributions of the risk indices and Cramer classifications were examined. The risk index values were normally distributed around a range of 5 to 20 mg/day, and the risk index associated with the 95% level of the cumulative frequency plot was 0.1 mg/day. Approximately 50% of the extractables were in Cramer Class 1 (low risk of toxicity) and approximately 35% were in Cramer Class 3 (high risk of toxicity). Approximately 20% of the extractables produced an in vitro or in silico mutagenicity alert. In general, the distribution of risk index values was not strongly correlated with the either extractables' Cramer classification or by mutagenicity alerts. However, extractables with either in vitro or in silico alerts were somewhat more likely to have low risk index values. © PDA, Inc. 2014.

Considering context: reliable entity networks through contextual relationship extraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

David, Peter; Hawes, Timothy; Hansen, Nichole; Nolan, James J.

2016-05-01

Existing information extraction techniques can only partially address the problem of exploiting unreadable-large amounts text. When discussion of events and relationships is limited to simple, past-tense, factual descriptions of events, current NLP-based systems can identify events and relationships and extract a limited amount of additional information. But the simple subset of available information that existing tools can extract from text is only useful to a small set of users and problems. Automated systems need to find and separate information based on what is threatened or planned to occur, has occurred in the past, or could potentially occur. We address the problem of advanced event and relationship extraction with our event and relationship attribute recognition system, which labels generic, planned, recurring, and potential events. The approach is based on a combination of new machine learning methods, novel linguistic features, and crowd-sourced labeling. The attribute labeler closes the gap between structured event and relationship models and the complicated and nuanced language that people use to describe them. Our operational-quality event and relationship attribute labeler enables Warfighters and analysts to more thoroughly exploit information in unstructured text. This is made possible through 1) More precise event and relationship interpretation, 2) More detailed information about extracted events and relationships, and 3) More reliable and informative entity networks that acknowledge the different attributes of entity-entity relationships.

Chemical and Functional Properties of Chia Seed (Salvia hispanica L.) Gum

PubMed Central

Segura-Campos, Maira Rubi; Ciau-Solís, Norma; Rosado-Rubio, Gabriel; Chel-Guerrero, Luis; Betancur-Ancona, David

2014-01-01

Chia (Salvia hispanica L.) constitutes a potential alternative raw material and ingredient in food industry applications due to its dietary fiber content. Gum can be extracted from its dietary fiber fractions for use as an additive to control viscosity, stability, texture, and consistency in food systems. The gum extracted from chia seeds was characterized to determine their quality and potential as functional food additives. The extracted chia gum contained 26.2% fat and a portion was submitted to fat extraction, producing two fractions: gum with fat (FCG) and gum partly defatted (PDCG). Proximal composition and physicochemical characterization showed these fractions to be different (P < 0.05). The PDCG had higher protein, ash, and carbohydrates content than the FCG, in addition to higher water-holding (110.5 g water/g fiber) and water-binding capacities (0.84 g water/g fiber). The FCG had greater oil-holding capacity (25.7 g oil/g fiber) and water absorption capacity (44 g water/g fiber). In dispersion trials, the gums exhibited a non-Newtonian fluid behavior, specifically shear thinning or pseudoplastic type. PDCG had more viscosity than FCG. Chia seed is an excellent natural source of gum with good physicochemical and functional qualities, and is very promising for use in food industry. PMID:26904622

PDF text classification to leverage information extraction from publication reports.

PubMed

Bui, Duy Duc An; Del Fiol, Guilherme; Jonnalagadda, Siddhartha

2016-06-01

Data extraction from original study reports is a time-consuming, error-prone process in systematic review development. Information extraction (IE) systems have the potential to assist humans in the extraction task, however majority of IE systems were not designed to work on Portable Document Format (PDF) document, an important and common extraction source for systematic review. In a PDF document, narrative content is often mixed with publication metadata or semi-structured text, which add challenges to the underlining natural language processing algorithm. Our goal is to categorize PDF texts for strategic use by IE systems. We used an open-source tool to extract raw texts from a PDF document and developed a text classification algorithm that follows a multi-pass sieve framework to automatically classify PDF text snippets (for brevity, texts) into TITLE, ABSTRACT, BODYTEXT, SEMISTRUCTURE, and METADATA categories. To validate the algorithm, we developed a gold standard of PDF reports that were included in the development of previous systematic reviews by the Cochrane Collaboration. In a two-step procedure, we evaluated (1) classification performance, and compared it with machine learning classifier, and (2) the effects of the algorithm on an IE system that extracts clinical outcome mentions. The multi-pass sieve algorithm achieved an accuracy of 92.6%, which was 9.7% (p<0.001) higher than the best performing machine learning classifier that used a logistic regression algorithm. F-measure improvements were observed in the classification of TITLE (+15.6%), ABSTRACT (+54.2%), BODYTEXT (+3.7%), SEMISTRUCTURE (+34%), and MEDADATA (+14.2%). In addition, use of the algorithm to filter semi-structured texts and publication metadata improved performance of the outcome extraction system (F-measure +4.1%, p=0.002). It also reduced of number of sentences to be processed by 44.9% (p<0.001), which corresponds to a processing time reduction of 50% (p=0.005). The rule-based multi-pass sieve framework can be used effectively in categorizing texts extracted from PDF documents. Text classification is an important prerequisite step to leverage information extraction from PDF documents. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Studies on the use of supercritical ammonia for ceramic nitride synthesis and fabrication

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cornell, Linda; Lin, Y. C.; Philipp, Warren H.

1990-01-01

The extractability of ammonia halides (including ammonium thiocyanate) formed as byproducts from the synthesis of Si(NH)2 via ammonolysis of the corresponding silicon tetrahalides using supercritical NH3 as the extraction medium was investigated. It was found that the NH4SCN byproduct of ammonolysis of Si(SCN)4 can be almost completely extracted from the insoluble Si(NH)2 forming a promising system for the synthesis of pure Si(NH)2, one of the best precursors for Si3N4. In addition it was found that Si3N4, AlN, BN, and Si(NH)2 are insoluble in SC ammonia. Also discussed are design considerations for a supercritical ammonia extraction unit.

System Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Used as Gas Oxidant and Coolant in Vanadium-Extraction Converter

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, Wei Tong; Wang, Yu; Liang, Xiao Ping

2017-10-01

With the aim of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and of using waste resources in steel plants, the use of CO2 as a gas oxidant and coolant in the converter to increase productivity and energy efficiency was investigated in this study. Experiments were performed in combination with thermodynamic theory on vanadium-extraction with CO2 and oxygen (O2) mixed injections. The results indicate that the temperature of the hot metal bath decreased as the amount of CO2 introduced into O2 increased. At an injection of 85 vol.% O2 and 15 vol.% CO2, approximately 12% of additional carbon was retained in the hot metal. Moreover, the content of vanadium trioxide in the slag was higher. In addition, the O2 consumption per ton of hot metal was reduced by 8.5% and additional chemical energy was recovered by the controlled injection of CO2 into the converter. Therefore, using CO2 as a gas coolant was conducive to vanadium extraction, and O2 consumption was reduced.

Potential transfer of organic pollutants from littoral plastics debris to the marine environment.

PubMed

León, Víctor M; García, Inés; González, Emilia; Samper, Raquel; Fernández-González, Verónica; Muniategui-Lorenzo, Soledad

2018-05-01

Plastic polymers act as passive samplers in air system and concentrate hydrophobic organic contaminants by sorption or specific interactions, which can be transported to other systems such as the marine environment. In this study plastic debris was sampled in the surrounding area of a Mediterranean lagoon in order to determine the concentration of persistent and emerging organic contaminants. More specifically, desorption of 91 regulated and emerging organic contaminants (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, organochlorinated pesticides, current-use pesticides, personal care products, other pesticides and plastic additives) was characterized for the first 24 h from different polymers to seawater and the remaining content of these contaminants was also extracted by ultrasonic extraction with methanol. All samples were analyzed by Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction coupled to GC/MS. A significant fraction of sorbed contaminants in polymers was desorbed in the first 24 h, particularly for triazines and organophosphorus pesticides due to their lower hydrophobicity than other considered analytes. The remaining contaminants contained in plastics can be also transferred to seawater, sediments or biota. Considering 24 h desorbed fraction plus the remaining methanol extracted fraction, the highest transfer levels corresponded to personal care products, plastic additives, current-use pesticides and PAHs. This is the first study to show the relevance of the transport of organic contaminants on plastic debris from littoral areas to the marine environment. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Determination of initiation of DNA replication before and after nuclear formation in Xenopus egg cell free extracts

PubMed Central

1993-01-01

Xenopus egg extracts prepared before and after egg activation retain M- and S-phase specific activity, respectively. Staurosporine, a potent inhibitor of protein kinase, converted M-phase extracts into interphase- like extracts that were capable of forming nuclei upon the addition of sperm DNA. The nuclei formed in the staurosporine treated M-phase extract were incapable of replicating DNA, and they were unable to initiate replication upon the addition of S-phase extracts. Furthermore, replication was inhibited when the staurosporine-treated M- phase extract was added in excess to the staurosporine-treated S-phase extract before the addition of DNA. The membrane-depleted S-phase extract supported neither nuclear formation nor replication; however, preincubation of sperm DNA with these extracts allowed them to form replication-competent nuclei upon the addition of excess staurosporine- treated M-phase extract. These results demonstrate that positive factors in the S-phase extracts determined the initiation of DNA replication before nuclear formation, although these factors were unable to initiate replication after nuclear formation. PMID:8253833

Tracking Simulation of Third-Integer Resonant Extraction for Fermilab's Mu2e Experiment

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Park, Chong Shik; Amundson, James; Michelotti, Leo

2015-02-13

The Mu2e experiment at Fermilab requires acceleration and transport of intense proton beams in order to deliver stable, uniform particle spills to the production target. To meet the experimental requirement, particles will be extracted slowly from the Delivery Ring to the external beamline. Using Synergia2, we have performed multi-particle tracking simulations of third-integer resonant extraction in the Delivery Ring, including space charge effects, physical beamline elements, and apertures. A piecewise linear ramp profile of tune quadrupoles was used to maintain a constant averaged spill rate throughout extraction. To study and minimize beam losses, we implemented and introduced a number ofmore » features, beamline element apertures, and septum plane alignments. Additionally, the RF Knockout (RFKO) technique, which excites particles transversely, is employed for spill regulation. Combined with a feedback system, it assists in fine-tuning spill uniformity. Simulation studies were carried out to optimize the RFKO feedback scheme, which will be helpful in designing the final spill regulation system.« less

Validation of high-throughput measurement system with microwave-assisted extraction, fully automated sample preparation device, and gas chromatography-electron capture detector for determination of polychlorinated biphenyls in whale blubber.

PubMed

Fujita, Hiroyuki; Honda, Katsuhisa; Hamada, Noriaki; Yasunaga, Genta; Fujise, Yoshihiro

2009-02-01

Validation of a high-throughput measurement system with microwave-assisted extraction (MAE), fully automated sample preparation device (SPD), and gas chromatography-electron capture detector (GC-ECD) for the determination of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in minke whale blubber was performed. PCB congeners accounting for > 95% of the total PCBs burden in blubber were efficiently extracted with a small volume (20 mL) of n-hexane using MAE due to simultaneous saponification and extraction. Further, the crude extract obtained by MAE was rapidly purified and automatically substituted to a small volume (1 mL) of toluene using SPD without using concentrators. Furthermore, the concentration of PCBs in the purified and concentrated solution was accurately determined by GC-ECD. Moreover, the result of accuracy test using a certified material (SRM 1588b; Cod liver oil) showed good agreement with the NIST certified concentration values. In addition, the method quantification limit of total-PCB in whale blubbers was 41 ng g(-1). This new measurement system for PCBs takes only four hours. Consequently, it indicated this method is the most suitable for the monitoring and screening of PCBs in the conservation of the marine ecosystem and safe distribution of foods.

Assessment of anti-oxidant activity of plant extracts using microbial test systems.

PubMed

Oktyabrsky, O; Vysochina, G; Muzyka, N; Samoilova, Z; Kukushkina, T; Smirnova, G

2009-04-01

To evaluate the anti-oxidant properties of extracts from 20 medicinal herbs growing in western Siberia using microbial test systems and different in vitro methods. In vivo anti-oxidant activity of extracts was evaluated for their capacity to protect bacteria, Escherichia coli, against bacteriostatic and bactericidal effects of H(2)O(2) and menadione, and action on anti-oxidant gene expression. In vitro anti-oxidant activity has been examined by a number of methods including: the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH(*))-scavenging assay, chelating activity and capacity to protect plasmid DNA against oxidative damage. In addition, total polyphenol content was determined. The extracts of Fragaria vesca, Rosa majalis, Pentaphylloides fruticosa, Alchemilla vulgaris and Pulmonaria mollis possessed the highest levels of anti-oxidant activity in vivo and in vitro. The protective properties were more closely related to the DPPH(*) radical-scavenging activity, tannin content and action on anti-oxidant gene expression than to other parameters. The extracts of medicinal plants may have anti-oxidant effects on bacteria simultaneously through several different pathways, including direct inhibition of reactive oxygen species, iron chelation and anti-oxidant genes induction. Using microbial test systems, we revealed herbs that may be used as potential sources of natural anti-oxidants.

Characterization of paprika (Capsicum annuum) extract in orange juices by liquid chromatography of carotenoid profiles.

PubMed

Mouly, P P; Gaydou, E M; Corsetti, J

1999-03-01

The carotenoid pigment profiles of authentic pure orange juices from Spain and Florida and an industrial paprika (Capsicum annuum) extract used for food coloring were obtained using reversed-phase liquid chromatography with a C18 packed column and an acetone/methanol/water eluent system. The procedure involving the carotenoid extraction is described. Both retention times and spectral properties using photodiode array detection for characterization of the major carotenoids at 430 and 519 nm are given. The influence of external addition of tangerine juice and/or paprika extract on orange juice color is described using the U.S. Department of Agriculture scale and adulterated orange juice. The procedure for quantitation of externally added paprika extract to orange juice is investigated, and the limit of quantitation, coefficient of variation, and recoveries are determined.

Evaluation of the effect on aggregate properties of samples extracted using the ignition furnace.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2000-04-01

The Superpave mix design system includes four consensus aggregate properties to ensure aggregate quality: coarse aggregate angularity, flat and elongated particles, fine aggregate angularity, and sand equivalent. In addition to determining these cons...

Embryonic exposure to an aqueous coal dust extract results in gene expression alterations associated with the development and function of connective tissue and the hematological system, immunological and inflammatory disease, and cancer in zebrafish.

PubMed

Caballero-Gallardo, Karina; Wirbisky-Hershberger, Sara E; Olivero-Verbel, Jesus; de la Rosa, Jesus; Freeman, Jennifer L

2018-03-01

Coal mining is one of the economic activities with the greatest impact on environmental quality. At all stages contaminants are released as particulates such as coal dust. The first aim of this study was to obtain an aqueous coal dust extract and characterize its composition in terms of trace elements by ICP-MS. In addition, the developmental toxicity of the aqueous coal extract was evaluated using zebrafish (Danio rerio) after exposure to different concentrations (0-1000 ppm; μg mL -1 ) to establish acute toxicity, morphology and transcriptome changes. Trace elements within the aqueous coal dust extract present at the highest concentrations (>10 ppb) included Sr, Zn, Ba, As, Cu and Se. In addition, Cd and Pb were found in lower concentrations. No significant difference in mortality was observed (p > 0.05), but a delay in hatching was found at 0.1 and 1000 ppm (p < 0.05). No significant differences in morphological characteristics were observed in any of the treatment groups (p > 0.05). Transcriptomic results of zebrafish larvae revealed alterations in 77, 61 and 1376 genes in the 1, 10, and 100 ppm groups, respectively. Gene ontology analysis identified gene alterations associated with the development and function of connective tissue and the hematological system, as well as pathways associated with apoptosis, the cell cycle, transcription, and oxidative stress including the MAPK signaling pathway. In addition, altered genes were associated with cancer; connective tissue, muscular, and skeletal disorders; and immunological and inflammatory diseases. Overall, this is the first study to characterize gene expression alterations in response to developmental exposure to aqueous coal dust residue from coal mining with transcriptome results signifying functions and systems to target in future studies.

78 FR 49117 - Listing of Color Additives Exempt From Certification; Spirulina Extract

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-08-13

... because it more appropriately describes the additive. II. Identity, Manufacturing, and Specifications The.... FDA-2011-C-0878] Listing of Color Additives Exempt From Certification; Spirulina Extract AGENCY: Food...) is amending the color additive regulations to provide for the safe use of spirulina extract made from...

Fat Metabolism in Higher Plants

PubMed Central

Jacobson, Bruce S.; Jaworski, J. G.; Stumpf, P. K.

1974-01-01

Stearyl-acyl carrier protein desaturase (EC 1.14.99.6), present in the stroma fraction of spinach (Spinacia oleracea) chloroplasts, rapidly desaturated enzymatically prepared stearyl-acyl carrier protein to oleic acid. No other substrates were desaturated. In addition to stearyl-acyl carrier protein, reduced ferredoxin was an essential component of the system. The electron donor systems were either ascorbate, dichlorophenolindophenol, photosystem I and light, or NADPH and ferredoxin-NADP reductase. The desaturase was more active in extracts prepared from chloroplasts obtained from immature spinach leaves than from mature leaves. Stearyl-acyl carrier protein desaturase also occurs in soluble extracts of avocado (Persea americana Mill.) mesocarp and of developing safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) seeds. PMID:16658913

Pharmacokinetic Studies of Chinese Medicinal Herbs Using an Automated Blood Sampling System and Liquid Chromatography-mass Spectrometry.

PubMed

Wu, Yu-Tse; Wu, Ming-Tsang; Lin, Chia-Chun; Chien, Chao-Feng; Tsai, Tung-Hu

2012-01-01

The safety of herbal products is one of the major concerns for the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine, and pharmacokinetic data of medicinal herbs guide us to design the rational use of the herbal formula. This article reviews the advantages of the automated blood sampling (ABS) systems for pharmacokinetic studies. In addition, three commonly used sample preparative methods, protein precipitation, liquid-liquid extraction and solid-phase extraction, are introduced. Furthermore, the definition, causes and evaluation of matrix effects in liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) analysis are demonstrated. Finally, we present our previous works as practical examples of the application of ABS systems and LC/MS for the pharmacokinetic studies of Chinese medicinal herbs.

Total Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB), Antioxidant Activity, and Acceptance of Synbiotic Yoghurt with Binahong Leaf Extract (Anredera cordifolia (Ten.) Steenis)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lestari, R. P.; Nissa, C.; Afifah, D. N.; Anjani, G.; Rustanti, N.

2018-02-01

Alternative treatment for metabolic syndrome can be done by providing a diet consist of functional foods or beverages. Synbiotic yoghurt containing binahong leaf extract which high in antioxidant, total LAB and fiber can be selected to reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome. The effect of binahong leaf extract in synbiotic yoghurt against total LAB, antioxidant activity, and acceptance were analyzed. The experiment was done with complete randomized design with addition of binahong leaf extract 0% (control); 0.12%; 0.25%; 0.5% in synbiotic yoghurt. Analysis of total LAB using Total Plate Count test, antioxidant activity using DPPH, and acceptance were analyzed by hedonic test. The addition of binahong leaf extract in various doses in synbiotic yoghurt decreased total LAB without significant effect (p=0,145). There was no effect of addition binahong leaf extract on antioxidant activity (p=0,297). The addition of binahong leaf extract had an effect on color, but not on aroma, texture and taste. The best result was yoghurt synbiotic with addition of 0,12% binahong leaf extract. Conclusion of the research was the addition of binahong leaf extract to synbiotic yogurt did not significantly affect total LAB, antioxidant activity, aroma, texture and taste; but had a significant effect on color.

Characterization of proacrosin/acrosin system after liquid storage and cryopreservation of turkey semen (Meleagris gallopavo).

PubMed

Słowińska, M; Liszewska, E; Dietrich, G J; Ciereszko, A

2012-09-15

This study was designed to identify the effect of liquid storage at 4 °C for 48 h and cryopreservation on the proacrosin/acrosin system of turkey spermatozoa. Anti-acrosin I antibodies were produced and used to demonstrate Western blot analysis profile of the proacrosin/acrosin system of sperm and seminal plasma and possible changes in the proacrosin/acrosin system of turkey sperm stored for 2.5, 24, and 48 h or cryopreserved. At the same time acrosin-like activity was examined by the measurement of amidase activity of sperm extracts, sperm suspension, and seminal plasma of turkey semen. A computer-assisted sperm analysis system was used to monitor the sperm motility characteristics of turkey sperm stored for 48 h or cryopreserved. Different profiles of the sperm proacrosin/acrosin system were observed regarding the presence or absence of inhibitors (p-nitrophenyl-p'-guanidine benzoate [NPGB] and Kazal family inhibitor) during the extraction process. When NPGB was present three main bands were observed with the molecular weight ranging from 66 to 35 kDa. Bands corresponding to acrosin I and II were not observed. In sperm extract without NPGB, three or four bands were observed with the molecular weight ranging from 41 to 30 kDa. The bands corresponding to acrosin I and II were observed. During liquid storage a decrease in sperm motility and an increase in sperm-extracted amidase activity were observed. After 24 and 48 h of storage, extracted amidase activity was higher than at 2.5 h by 24% and 31%, respectively. However, no changes in the Western blot analysis profiles of sperm extract and seminal plasma were visible during liquid storage. After cryopreservation a decrease in sperm motility and all sperm motility parameters were observed. In contrast to liquid storage, cryopreservation did not increase extracted amidase activity. However, changes in Western blot analysis profiles were visible in sperm extract and seminal plasma after cryopreservation. After freezing-thawing, additional bands appeared in sperm extract and seminal plasma. These bands were of different molecular weight regarding the presence or absence of NPGB. These data suggest that the mechanism of damage to the proacrosin/acrosin system is different for liquid storage and cryopreservation. Liquid storage seems to increase in the susceptibility of the proacrosin/acrosin system to be activated during extraction. Kazal inhibitors of turkey seminal plasma are involved in the control of proacrosin activation. The disturbances of the proacrosin/acrosin system of turkey spermatozoa can be related to a disturbance in the induction of the acrosome reaction. Our results may be important for a better understanding of the proacrosin/acrosin system of turkey spermatozoa and disturbance to this system during liquid storage and cryopreservation. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bio-oil extraction of Jatropha curcas with ionic liquid co-solvent: Fate of biomass protein.

PubMed

Severa, Godwin; Edwards, Melisa; Cooney, Michael J

2017-02-01

The fate of oil-seed biomass protein has been tracked through all steps of a multi-phase extraction process using an ionic liquid based co-solvent system previously demonstrated to extract bio-oil and phorbol esters and to recover fermentable sugars from Jatropha oil seed. These analyses, however, did not address the fate of biomass protein. This work demonstrated that the majority of protein (∼86%) tracked with the biomass with the balance lost to co-solvent (∼12%) and methanol (∼2%) washes. A significant portion of the ionic liquid remained with the treated biomass and required aggressive methanol washes to recover. A system analysis showed a net-positive energy balance and thus the potential of this system to produce both bio-oil and protein-rich toxin-free biomass. While these results further support Jatropha as an oil seed crop, the additional costs of solvent recovery will need to be addressed if commercialization is to be realized. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Wavelet images and Chou's pseudo amino acid composition for protein classification.

PubMed

Nanni, Loris; Brahnam, Sheryl; Lumini, Alessandra

2012-08-01

The last decade has seen an explosion in the collection of protein data. To actualize the potential offered by this wealth of data, it is important to develop machine systems capable of classifying and extracting features from proteins. Reliable machine systems for protein classification offer many benefits, including the promise of finding novel drugs and vaccines. In developing our system, we analyze and compare several feature extraction methods used in protein classification that are based on the calculation of texture descriptors starting from a wavelet representation of the protein. We then feed these texture-based representations of the protein into an Adaboost ensemble of neural network or a support vector machine classifier. In addition, we perform experiments that combine our feature extraction methods with a standard method that is based on the Chou's pseudo amino acid composition. Using several datasets, we show that our best approach outperforms standard methods. The Matlab code of the proposed protein descriptors is available at http://bias.csr.unibo.it/nanni/wave.rar .

Chemical properties of the transactinide elements studied inliquid phase with SISAK

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Omtvedt, J.P.; Alstad, J.; Bjornstad, T.

2007-05-01

This article starts with a review of the current SISAKliquid-liquid extraction system, as used after the physical preseparatorBGS at LBNL for chemical studies of transactinide elements. Emphasis willbe on new additions and developments. Then the possibilities offered bythe new TASCA separator at GSI and the use of actinide targets at bothGSI and LBNL are discussed with respect to future SISAK transactinideexperiments. Finally, current and future liquid-liquid extraction systemsfor studying elements Rf up to Hs are discussed.

In vitro inhibitory effects of plant-based foods and their combinations on intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Plant-based foods have been used in traditional health systems to treat diabetes mellitus. The successful prevention of the onset of diabetes consists in controlling postprandial hyperglycemia by the inhibition of α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase activities, resulting in aggressive delay of carbohydrate digestion to absorbable monosaccharide. In this study, five plant-based foods were investigated for intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase. The combined inhibitory effects of plant-based foods were also evaluated. Preliminary phytochemical analysis of plant-based foods was performed in order to determine the total phenolic and flavonoid content. Methods The dried plants of Hibiscus sabdariffa (Roselle), Chrysanthemum indicum (chrysanthemum), Morus alba (mulberry), Aegle marmelos (bael), and Clitoria ternatea (butterfly pea) were extracted with distilled water and dried using spray drying process. The dried extracts were determined for the total phenolic and flavonoid content by using Folin-Ciocateu’s reagent and AlCl3 assay, respectively. The dried extract of plant-based food was further quantified with respect to intestinal α-glucosidase (maltase and sucrase) inhibition and pancreatic α-amylase inhibition by glucose oxidase method and dinitrosalicylic (DNS) reagent, respectively. Results The phytochemical analysis revealed that the total phenolic content of the dried extracts were in the range of 230.3-460.0 mg gallic acid equivalent/g dried extract. The dried extracts contained flavonoid in the range of 50.3-114.8 mg quercetin equivalent/g dried extract. It was noted that the IC50 values of chrysanthemum, mulberry and butterfly pea extracts were 4.24±0.12 mg/ml, 0.59±0.06 mg/ml, and 3.15±0.19 mg/ml, respectively. In addition, the IC50 values of chrysanthemum, mulberry and butterfly pea extracts against intestinal sucrase were 3.85±0.41 mg/ml, 0.94±0.11 mg/ml, and 4.41±0.15 mg/ml, respectively. Furthermore, the IC50 values of roselle and butterfly pea extracts against pancreatic α-amylase occurred at concentration of 3.52±0.15 mg/ml and 4.05±0.32 mg/ml, respectively. Combining roselle, chrysanthemum, and butterfly pea extracts with mulberry extract showed additive interaction on intestinal maltase inhibition. The results also demonstrated that the combination of chrysanthemum, mulberry, or bael extracts together with roselle extract produced synergistic inhibition, whereas roselle extract showed additive inhibition when combined with butterfly pea extract against pancreatic α-amylase. Conclusions The present study presents data from five plant-based foods evaluating the intestinal α-glucosidase and pancreatic α-amylase inhibitory activities and their additive and synergistic interactions. These results could be useful for developing functional foods by combination of plant-based foods for treatment and prevention of diabetes mellitus. PMID:22849553

Deep features for efficient multi-biometric recognition with face and ear images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Omara, Ibrahim; Xiao, Gang; Amrani, Moussa; Yan, Zifei; Zuo, Wangmeng

2017-07-01

Recently, multimodal biometric systems have received considerable research interest in many applications especially in the fields of security. Multimodal systems can increase the resistance to spoof attacks, provide more details and flexibility, and lead to better performance and lower error rate. In this paper, we present a multimodal biometric system based on face and ear, and propose how to exploit the extracted deep features from Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) on the face and ear images to introduce more powerful discriminative features and robust representation ability for them. First, the deep features for face and ear images are extracted based on VGG-M Net. Second, the extracted deep features are fused by using a traditional concatenation and a Discriminant Correlation Analysis (DCA) algorithm. Third, multiclass support vector machine is adopted for matching and classification. The experimental results show that the proposed multimodal system based on deep features is efficient and achieves a promising recognition rate up to 100 % by using face and ear. In addition, the results indicate that the fusion based on DCA is superior to traditional fusion.

Characterization of an in vitro system for the synthesis of mRNA from human parainfluenza virus type 3.

PubMed

De, B P; Galinski, M S; Banerjee, A K

1990-03-01

A cell extract derived from human parainfluenza virus type 3-infected human lung carcinoma (HLC) cells synthesized mRNA in vitro. Under optimal conditions, the extract was able to support transcription of all virus-encoded genes as determined by hybridization analyses. The RNA products contained full-length poly(A)-containing mRNA species similar to those observed in acutely infected cells. Further purification of the viral nucleocapsids from the infected HLC cell extract resulted in total loss of the capacity of the extract to synthesize mRNA in vitro. However, the addition of cytoplasmic extracts from uninfected HLC cells to the nucleocapsid preparations restored transcription to levels observed in the infected cell lysates, indicating requirement of a host factor(s) in the human parainfluenza virus type 3 transcription process. In distinction to the abundant transcription observed in the cell extract from HLC cells, cell extract prepared from CV-1 cells failed to support transcription in vitro. High levels of RNase activity in the cell extract from CV-1 cells appears to be the principal reason for this difference.

Overview of the ID, EPI and REL tasks of BioNLP Shared Task 2011.

PubMed

Pyysalo, Sampo; Ohta, Tomoko; Rak, Rafal; Sullivan, Dan; Mao, Chunhong; Wang, Chunxia; Sobral, Bruno; Tsujii, Jun'ichi; Ananiadou, Sophia

2012-06-26

We present the preparation, resources, results and analysis of three tasks of the BioNLP Shared Task 2011: the main tasks on Infectious Diseases (ID) and Epigenetics and Post-translational Modifications (EPI), and the supporting task on Entity Relations (REL). The two main tasks represent extensions of the event extraction model introduced in the BioNLP Shared Task 2009 (ST'09) to two new areas of biomedical scientific literature, each motivated by the needs of specific biocuration tasks. The ID task concerns the molecular mechanisms of infection, virulence and resistance, focusing in particular on the functions of a class of signaling systems that are ubiquitous in bacteria. The EPI task is dedicated to the extraction of statements regarding chemical modifications of DNA and proteins, with particular emphasis on changes relating to the epigenetic control of gene expression. By contrast to these two application-oriented main tasks, the REL task seeks to support extraction in general by separating challenges relating to part-of relations into a subproblem that can be addressed by independent systems. Seven groups participated in each of the two main tasks and four groups in the supporting task. The participating systems indicated advances in the capability of event extraction methods and demonstrated generalization in many aspects: from abstracts to full texts, from previously considered subdomains to new ones, and from the ST'09 extraction targets to other entities and events. The highest performance achieved in the supporting task REL, 58% F-score, is broadly comparable with levels reported for other relation extraction tasks. For the ID task, the highest-performing system achieved 56% F-score, comparable to the state-of-the-art performance at the established ST'09 task. In the EPI task, the best result was 53% F-score for the full set of extraction targets and 69% F-score for a reduced set of core extraction targets, approaching a level of performance sufficient for user-facing applications. In this study, we extend on previously reported results and perform further analyses of the outputs of the participating systems. We place specific emphasis on aspects of system performance relating to real-world applicability, considering alternate evaluation metrics and performing additional manual analysis of system outputs. We further demonstrate that the strengths of extraction systems can be combined to improve on the performance achieved by any system in isolation. The manually annotated corpora, supporting resources, and evaluation tools for all tasks are available from http://www.bionlp-st.org and the tasks continue as open challenges for all interested parties.

Overview of the ID, EPI and REL tasks of BioNLP Shared Task 2011

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

We present the preparation, resources, results and analysis of three tasks of the BioNLP Shared Task 2011: the main tasks on Infectious Diseases (ID) and Epigenetics and Post-translational Modifications (EPI), and the supporting task on Entity Relations (REL). The two main tasks represent extensions of the event extraction model introduced in the BioNLP Shared Task 2009 (ST'09) to two new areas of biomedical scientific literature, each motivated by the needs of specific biocuration tasks. The ID task concerns the molecular mechanisms of infection, virulence and resistance, focusing in particular on the functions of a class of signaling systems that are ubiquitous in bacteria. The EPI task is dedicated to the extraction of statements regarding chemical modifications of DNA and proteins, with particular emphasis on changes relating to the epigenetic control of gene expression. By contrast to these two application-oriented main tasks, the REL task seeks to support extraction in general by separating challenges relating to part-of relations into a subproblem that can be addressed by independent systems. Seven groups participated in each of the two main tasks and four groups in the supporting task. The participating systems indicated advances in the capability of event extraction methods and demonstrated generalization in many aspects: from abstracts to full texts, from previously considered subdomains to new ones, and from the ST'09 extraction targets to other entities and events. The highest performance achieved in the supporting task REL, 58% F-score, is broadly comparable with levels reported for other relation extraction tasks. For the ID task, the highest-performing system achieved 56% F-score, comparable to the state-of-the-art performance at the established ST'09 task. In the EPI task, the best result was 53% F-score for the full set of extraction targets and 69% F-score for a reduced set of core extraction targets, approaching a level of performance sufficient for user-facing applications. In this study, we extend on previously reported results and perform further analyses of the outputs of the participating systems. We place specific emphasis on aspects of system performance relating to real-world applicability, considering alternate evaluation metrics and performing additional manual analysis of system outputs. We further demonstrate that the strengths of extraction systems can be combined to improve on the performance achieved by any system in isolation. The manually annotated corpora, supporting resources, and evaluation tools for all tasks are available from http://www.bionlp-st.org and the tasks continue as open challenges for all interested parties. PMID:22759456

Controlled release of an extract of Calendula officinalis flowers from a system based on the incorporation of gelatin-collagen microparticles into collagen I scaffolds: design and in vitro performance.

PubMed

Jiménez, Ronald A; Millán, Diana; Suesca, Edward; Sosnik, Alejandro; Fontanilla, Marta R

2015-06-01

Aiming to develop biological skin dresses with improved performance in the treatment of skin wounds, acellular collagen I scaffolds were modified with polymeric microparticles and the subsequent loading of a hydroglycolic extract of Calendula officinalis flowers. Microparticles made of gelatin-collagen were produced by a water-in-oil emulsion/cross-linking method. Thereafter, these microparticles were mixed with collagen suspensions at three increasing concentrations and the resulting mixtures lyophilized to make microparticle-loaded porous collagen scaffolds. Resistance to enzymatic degradation, ability to associate with the C. officinalis extract, and the extract release profile of the three gelatin-collagen microparticle-scaffold prototypes were assessed in vitro and compared to collagen scaffolds without microparticles used as control. Data indicated that the incorporation of gelatin-collagen microparticles increased the resistance of the scaffolds to in vitro enzymatic degradation, as well as their association with the C. officinalis flower extract. In addition, a sharp decrease in cytotoxicity, as well as more prolonged release of the extract, was attained. Overall results support the potential of these systems to develop innovative dermal substitutes with improved features. Furthermore, the gelatin-collagen mixture represents a low-cost and scalable alternative with high clinical transferability, especially appealing in developing countries.

Ultrasonic Micro-Blades for the Rapid Extraction of Impact Tracks from Aerogel

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ishii, H. A.; Graham, G. A.; Kearsley, A. T.; Grant, P. G.; Snead, C. J.; Bradley, J. P.

2005-01-01

The science return of NASA's Stardust Mission with its valuable cargo of cometary debris hinges on the ability to efficiently extract particles from silica aerogel collectors. The current method for extracting cosmic dust impact tracks is a mature procedure involving sequential perforation of the aerogel with glass needles on computer controlled micromanipulators. This method is highly successful at removing well-defined aerogel fragments of reasonable optical clarity while causing minimal damage to the surrounding aerogel collector tile. Such a system will be adopted by the JSC Astromaterials Curation Facility in anticipation of Stardust s arrival in early 2006. In addition to Stardust, aerogel is a possible collector for future sample return missions and is used for capture of hypervelocity ejecta in high power laser experiments of interest to LLNL. Researchers will be eager to obtain Stardust samples for study as quickly as possible, and rapid extraction tools requiring little construction, training, or investment would be an attractive asset. To this end, we have experimented with micro-blades for the Stardust impact track extraction process. Our ultimate goal is a rapid extraction system in a clean electron beam environment, such as an SEM or dual-beam FIB, for in situ sample preparation, mounting and analysis.

Cytosolic Extract Induces Tir Translocation and Pedestals in EPEC-Infected Red Blood Cells

PubMed Central

Swimm, Alyson I; Kalman, Daniel

2008-01-01

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) are deadly contaminants in water and food, and induce protrusion of actin-filled membranous pedestals beneath themselves upon attachment to intestinal epithelia. Pedestal formation requires clustering of Tir and subsequent recruitment of cellular tyrosine kinases including Abl, Arg, and Etk as well as signaling molecules Nck, N-WASP, and Arp2/3 complex. We have developed a cytosolic extract-based cellular system that recapitulates actin pedestal formation in permeabilized red blood cells (RBC) infected with EPEC. RBC support attachment of EPEC and translocation of virulence factors, but not pedestal formation. We show here that extract induces a rapid Ca++-dependent release of Tir from the EPEC Type III secretion system, and that cytoplasmic factor(s) present in the extract facilitate translocation of Tir into the RBC plasma membrane. We show that Abl and related kinases in the extract phosphorylate Tir and that actin polymerization can be reconstituted in infected RBC following addition of cytosolic extract. Reconstitution requires the bacterial virulence factors Tir and intimin, and phosphorylation of Tir on tyrosine residue 474 results in the recruitment of Nck, N-WASP, and Arp2/3 complex beneath attached bacteria at sites of actin polymerization. Together these data describe a biochemical system for dissection of host components that mediate Type III secretion and the mechanisms by which complexes of proteins are recruited to discrete sites within the plasma membrane to initiate localized actin polymerization and morphological changes. PMID:18208322

21 CFR 573.520 - Hemicellulose extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... DRUGS, FEEDS, AND RELATED PRODUCTS FOOD ADDITIVES PERMITTED IN FEED AND DRINKING WATER OF ANIMALS Food Additive Listing § 573.520 Hemicellulose extract. Hemicellulose extract may be safely used in animal feed when incorporated therein in accordance with the following conditions: (a) The additive is produced...

New seminal variety of Stevia rebaudiana: Obtaining fractions with high antioxidant potential of leaves.

PubMed

Milani, Paula G; Formigoni, Maysa; Dacome, Antonio S; Benossi, Livia; Costa, Cecília E M DA; Costa, Silvio C DA

2017-01-01

The aim of this study was to determine the composition and antioxidant potential of leaves of a new variety of Stevia rebaudiana (Stevia UEM-13). Stevia leaves of UEM-13 contain rebaudioside A as the main glycoside, while most wild Stevia plants contain stevioside. Furthermore can be multiplied by seed, which reduces the cost of plant culture techniques as other clonal varieties are multiplied by buds, requiring sophisticated and expensive seedling production systems. Ethanol and methanol were used in the extraction to determine the bioactive compounds. The methanolic extract was fractionated sequentially with hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and isobutanol, and the highest concentration of phenolic compounds and flavonoids was obtained in the ethyl acetate fraction (524.20 mg galic acid equivalent/g; 380.62 µg quercetin equivalent/g). The glycoside content varied greatly among the fractions (0.5% - 65.3%). Higher antioxidant potential was found in the methanol extract and the ethyl acetate fraction with 93.5% and 97.32%, respectively. In addition to being an excellent source for obtaining of extracts rich in glycoside, this new variety can also be used as raw material for the production of extracts or fractions with a significant amount of antioxidant activity and potential to be used as additives in food.

Optimization of furfural production from D-xylose with formic acid as catalyst in a reactive extraction system.

PubMed

Yang, Wandian; Li, Pingli; Bo, Dechen; Chang, Heying; Wang, Xiaowei; Zhu, Tao

2013-04-01

Furfural is one of the most promising platform chemicals derived from biomass. In this study, response surface methodology (RSM) was utilized to determine four important parameters including reaction temperature (170-210°C), formic acid concentration (5-25 g/L), o-nitrotoluene volume percentage (20-80 vt.%), and residence time (40-200 min). The maximum furfural yield of 74% and selectivity of 86% were achieved at 190°C for 20 g/L formic acid concentration and 75 vt.% o-nitrotoluene by 75 min. The high boiling solvent, o-nitrotoluene, was recommended as extraction solvent in a reactive extraction system to obtain high furfural yield and reduce furfural-solvent separation costs. Although the addition of halides to the xylose solutions enhanced the furfural yield and selectivity, the concentration of halides was not an important factor on the furfural yield and selectivity. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Experimental energy harvesting from fluid flow by using two vibrating masses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nishi, Yoshiki; Fukuda, Kengo; Shinohara, Wataru

2017-04-01

In this study, an experiment was performed to determine how the addition of a second degree of freedom to a vibratory system affects its energy extraction from a surrounding fluid flow. A circular cylinder was submerged underwater and subjected to flow, and another cylinder mounted on springs was inserted between the submerged cylinder and a generator. The experiment results demonstrated that vortex-induced vibration occurred at frequencies that were locked-in to the first and second natural modes for reduced velocity ranges of 5.0-9.0 and greater than 12.0, respectively. The output voltages were particularly high when the vibration frequency was locked-in to that of the second natural mode. It was found that application of energy extraction using a system with two degrees of freedom can widen the range of reduced velocity within which power extraction is effective.

Separation of phenolic acids from sugarcane rind by online solid-phase extraction with high-speed counter-current chromatography.

PubMed

Geng, Ping; Fang, Yingtong; Xie, Ronglong; Hu, Weilun; Xi, Xingjun; Chu, Qiao; Dong, Genlai; Shaheen, Nusrat; Wei, Yun

2017-02-01

Sugarcane rind contains some functional phenolic acids. The separation of these compounds from sugarcane rind is able to realize the integrated utilization of the crop and reduce environment pollution. In this paper, a novel protocol based on interfacing online solid-phase extraction with high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) was established, aiming at improving and simplifying the process of phenolic acids separation from sugarcane rind. The conditions of online solid-phase extraction with HSCCC involving solvent system, flow rate of mobile phase as well as saturated extent of absorption of solid-phase extraction were optimized to improve extraction efficiency and reduce separation time. The separation of phenolic acids was performed with a two-phase solvent system composed of butanol/acetic acid/water at a volume ratio of 4:1:5, and the developed online solid-phase extraction with HSCCC method was validated and successfully applied for sugarcane rind, and three phenolic acids including 6.73 mg of gallic acid, 10.85 mg of p-coumaric acid, and 2.78 mg of ferulic acid with purities of 60.2, 95.4, and 84%, respectively, were obtained from 150 mg sugarcane rind crude extracts. In addition, the three different elution methods of phenolic acids purification including HSCCC, elution-extrusion counter-current chromatography and back-extrusion counter-current chromatography were compared. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The TIGER system: a Census Bureau innovation serving data analysts.

PubMed

Carbaugh, L W; Marx, R W

1990-01-01

This article describes the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) system, an automated geographic data base. The emphasis is on the availability of file extracts and their usefulness to data analysts. In addition to describing the available files, it mentions various applications for the data, explains the data limitations, and notes problems encountered to date.

District heating and cooling systems for communities through power plant retrofit distribution network. Volume 3. Final report, September 1, 1978-May 31, 1979

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None

This final report of Phase I of the study presents Task 4, Technical Review and Assessment. The most-promising district-heating concept identified in the Phase I study for the Public Service Electric and Gas Company, Newark, New Jersey, is a hot-water system in which steam is extracted from an existing turbine and used to drive a new, small backpressure turbine-generator. The backpressure turbine provides heat for district heating and simultaneously provides additional electric-generating capacity to partially offset the capacity lost due to the steam extraction. This approach is the most-economical way to retrofit the stations studied for district heating while minimizingmore » electric-capacity loss. Nine fossil-fuel-fired stations within the PSE and G system were evaluated for possibly supplying heat for district heating and cooling in cogeneration operations, but only three were selected to supply the district-heating steam. They are Essex, Hudson, and Bergen. Plant retrofit, thermal distribution schemes, consumer-conversion scheme, and consumer-metering system are discussed. Extensive technical information is provided in 16 appendices, additional tables, figures, and drawings. (MCW)« less

Antioxidant activity and protective effect of Clitoria ternatea flower extract on testicular damage induced by ketoconazole in rats.

PubMed

Iamsaard, Sitthichai; Burawat, Jaturon; Kanla, Pipatpong; Arun, Supatcharee; Sukhorum, Wannisa; Sripanidkulchai, Bungorn; Uabundit, Nongnut; Wattathorn, Jintanaporn; Hipkaeo, Wiphawi; Fongmoon, Duriya; Kondo, Hisatake

2014-06-01

Ketoconazole (KET), an antifungal drug, has adverse effects on the male reproductive system. Pre-treatments with antioxidant plant against testicular damage induced by KET are required. The flowers of Clitoria ternatea (CT) are proven to have hepatoprotective potential. However, the protective effect on KET-induced testicular damage has not been reported. To investigate the protective effect of CT flower extracts with antioxidant activity on male reproductive parameters including sperm concentration, serum testosterone level, histopathology of the testis, and testicular tyrosine phosphorylation levels in rats induced with KET. The antioxidant activity of CT flower extracts was determined using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assays. Male rats were treated with CT flower extracts (10, 50, or 100 mg/kg BW) or distilled water via a gastric tube for 28 d (preventive period: Days 1-21) and induced by KET (100 mg/kg BW) via intraperitoneal injection for 7 d (induction period: Days 22-28). After the experiment, all animals were examined for the weights of the testis, epididymis plus vas deferens and seminal vesicle, serum testosterone levels, sperm concentration, histological structures and diameter of testis, and testicular tyrosine phosphorylation levels by immunoblotting. The CT flower extracts had capabilities for DPPH scavenging and high reducing power. At 100 mg/kg BW, the extract had no toxic effects on the male reproductive system. Significantly, in CT+KET groups, CT flower extracts (50 and 100 mg/kg BW) alleviated the reduction of reproductive organ weight parameters, testosterone levels, and sperm concentration. In addition, CT flower extracts gave protection from testicular damage in KET-induced rats. Moreover, in the CT100+KET group, CT flower extracts significantly enhanced the expression of a testicular 50-kDa tyrosine phosphorylated protein compared with that of other groups. C. ternatea flower extracts possessing antioxidant activity are not harmful to the male reproductive system and can protect against testicular damage in KET-induced rats.

Experimental validation of the dual positive and negative ion beam acceleration in the plasma propulsion with electronegative gases thruster

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rafalskyi, Dmytro, E-mail: dmytro.rafalskyi@lpp.polytechnique.fr; Popelier, Lara; Aanesland, Ane

The PEGASES (Plasma Propulsion with Electronegative Gases) thruster is a gridded ion thruster, where both positive and negative ions are accelerated to generate thrust. In this way, additional downstream neutralization by electrons is redundant. To achieve this, the thruster accelerates alternately positive and negative ions from an ion-ion plasma where the electron density is three orders of magnitude lower than the ion densities. This paper presents a first experimental study of the alternate acceleration in PEGASES, where SF{sub 6} is used as the working gas. Various electrostatic probes are used to investigate the source plasma potential and the energy, composition,more » and current of the extracted beams. We show here that the plasma potential control in such system is key parameter defining success of ion extraction and is sensitive to both parasitic electron current paths in the source region and deposition of sulphur containing dielectric films on the grids. In addition, large oscillations in the ion-ion plasma potential are found in the negative ion extraction phase. The oscillation occurs when the primary plasma approaches the grounded parts of the main core via sub-millimetres technological inputs. By controlling and suppressing the various undesired effects, we achieve perfect ion-ion plasma potential control with stable oscillation-free operation in the range of the available acceleration voltages (±350 V). The measured positive and negative ion currents in the beam are about 10 mA for each component at RF power of 100 W and non-optimized extraction system. Two different energy analyzers with and without magnetic electron suppression system are used to measure and compare the negative and positive ion and electron fluxes formed by the thruster. It is found that at alternate ion-ion extraction the positive and negative ion energy peaks are similar in areas and symmetrical in position with +/− ion energy corresponding to the amplitude of the applied acceleration voltage.« less

21 CFR 73.1100 - Cochineal extract; carmine.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Drugs § 73.1100 Cochineal extract; carmine. (a) Identity and specifications. (1) The color additives cochineal extract and carmine shall conform in identity and specifications to the requirements of § 73.100(a) (1) and (2) and (b). (2) Color additive...

Tenebrio molitor Extracts Modulate the Response to Environmental Stressors and Extend Lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans.

PubMed

Won, Seong-Min; Cha, Hye-Uk; Yi, Sun Shin; Kim, Sung-Jo; Park, Sang-Kyu

2016-09-08

Tenebrio molitor are large insects and their larvae are consumed as food in many countries. The nutritional composition of T. molitor has been studied and contains high amounts of proteins, unsaturated fatty acids, and valuable minerals. However, the bioactivity of T. molitor has not been fully understood. We examined the effects of T. molitor extracts on resistance to oxidative stress and organism's lifespan using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system. The response to heat shock and ultraviolet (UV) irradiation was monitored in vivo. The extracts from T. molitor showed significant effects on resistance to oxidative stress and UV irradiation and extend both mean and maximum lifespan of C. elegans. The number of progeny produced significantly increased in animals supplemented with T. molitor extracts. In addition, the expression of hsp-16.2 and sod-3 was markedly upregulated by supplementation with T. molitor extracts. These findings suggest that T. molitor extracts can increase response to stressors and extend lifespan by the induction of longevity assurance genes in C. elegans.

Ameliorating activity of ginger (Zingiber officinale) extract against lead induced renal toxicity in male rats.

PubMed

Reddy, Y Amarnath; Chalamaiah, M; Ramesh, B; Balaji, G; Indira, P

2014-05-01

Lead poisoning has been known to be associated with structural and functional abnormalities of multiple organ systems of human body. The aim of this investigation was to study the renal protective effects of ginger (Zingiber officinale) extract in lead induced toxicity rats. In this study renal glutathione (GSH) level, glutathione peroxidase (GPX), glutathione-s-transferase (GST), and catalase enzymes were measured in lead nitrate (300 mg/kg BW), and lead nitrate plus ginger extract (150 mg/kg BW) treated rat groups for 1 week and 3 weeks respectively. The glutathione level and GSH dependent antioxidant enzymes such as glutathione peroxidase, glutathione-s-transferase, and catalase significantly (P < 0.05) increased in ginger extract treated rat groups. In addition, histological studies showed lesser renal changes in lead plus ginger extract treated rat groups than that of lead alone treated rat groups. These results indicate that ginger extract alleviated lead toxic effects by enhancing the levels of glutathione, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione-s-transferase and catalase.

Integrating biofiltration with SVE: A case study

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Lesley, M.P.; Rangan, C.R.

1996-12-01

A prototype integrated soil vacuum extraction/biofiltration system has been designed and installed at a gasoline contaminated LUST site in southern Delaware. The prototype system remediates contaminated moisture entrained in the air stream, employs automatic water level controls in the filters, and achieves maximum vapor extraction and VOC destruction efficiency with an optimum power input. In addition, the valving and piping layout allows the direction of air flow through the filters to be reversed at a given time interval, which minimizes biofouling, thereby increasing efficiency by minimizing the need for frequent cleaning. This integrated system achieves constant VOC destruction rates ofmore » 40 to 70% while maintaining optimal VOC removal rates from the subsurface. The modular design allows for easy mobilization, setup and demobilization at state-lead LUST sites throughout Delaware.« less

Image processing and analysis using neural networks for optometry area

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Netto, Antonio V.; Ferreira de Oliveira, Maria C.

2002-11-01

In this work we describe the framework of a functional system for processing and analyzing images of the human eye acquired by the Hartmann-Shack technique (HS), in order to extract information to formulate a diagnosis of eye refractive errors (astigmatism, hypermetropia and myopia). The analysis is to be carried out using an Artificial Intelligence system based on Neural Nets, Fuzzy Logic and Classifier Combination. The major goal is to establish the basis of a new technology to effectively measure ocular refractive errors that is based on methods alternative those adopted in current patented systems. Moreover, analysis of images acquired with the Hartmann-Shack technique may enable the extraction of additional information on the health of an eye under exam from the same image used to detect refraction errors.

21 CFR 73.170 - Grape skin extract (enocianina).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.170 Grape skin extract (enocianina). (a... removed. A small amount of sulphur dioxide may be present. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made... suitable in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b) Specifications. Grape skin extract (enocianina...

21 CFR 73.170 - Grape skin extract (enocianina).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.170 Grape skin extract (enocianina). (a... removed. A small amount of sulphur dioxide may be present. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made... suitable in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b) Specifications. Grape skin extract (enocianina...

21 CFR 73.170 - Grape skin extract (enocianina).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.170 Grape skin extract (enocianina). (a... removed. A small amount of sulphur dioxide may be present. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made... suitable in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b) Specifications. Grape skin extract (enocianina...

21 CFR 73.170 - Grape skin extract (enocianina).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.170 Grape skin extract (enocianina). (a... removed. A small amount of sulphur dioxide may be present. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made... suitable in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b) Specifications. Grape skin extract (enocianina...

21 CFR 73.170 - Grape skin extract (enocianina).

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.170 Grape skin extract (enocianina). (a... removed. A small amount of sulphur dioxide may be present. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made... suitable in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b) Specifications. Grape skin extract (enocianina...

Consequence of the antioxidant activities and tyrosinase inhibitory effects of various extracts from the fruiting bodies of Pleurotus ferulae

PubMed Central

Alam, Nuhu; Yoon, Ki Nam; Lee, Jae Seong; Cho, Hae Jin; Lee, Tae Soo

2011-01-01

This study was initiated to screen the antioxidant activities, tyrosinase inhibitory effects on the fruiting bodies of Pleurotus ferulae extracted with acetone, methanol and hot water. The antioxidant activities were performed on β-carotene–linoleic acid, reducing power, DPPH, ferrous ions chelating abilities, and xanthine oxidase. In addition to this, phenolic compounds were also analyzed. The methanolic extract showed the strongest β-carotene–linoleic acid inhibition and high reducing power as compared to other extracts. The scavenging effects on DPPH radicals, the acetonic and methanolic extracts were more effective than hot water extracts. The strongest chelating effect was obtained from the methanolic extract as compared to the tested synthetic antioxidant. Gallic acid, protocatechuic acid, caffeic acid, vanillin, ferulic acid, naringin, resveratrol, naringenin, hesperetin, formononetin and biochanin-A were detected from acetonitrile and hydrochloric acid (5:1) solvent extract. Xanthine oxidase and tyrosinase inhibitory activities of acetonic, methanolic, and hot water extracts of P. ferulae increased with increasing concentration. The results suggested that consumption of P. ferulae might be beneficial to the antioxidant, xanthine oxidase, and tyrosinase protection system of the human body against oxidative damage and others complications. PMID:23961169

Sieve-based relation extraction of gene regulatory networks from biological literature

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Background Relation extraction is an essential procedure in literature mining. It focuses on extracting semantic relations between parts of text, called mentions. Biomedical literature includes an enormous amount of textual descriptions of biological entities, their interactions and results of related experiments. To extract them in an explicit, computer readable format, these relations were at first extracted manually from databases. Manual curation was later replaced with automatic or semi-automatic tools with natural language processing capabilities. The current challenge is the development of information extraction procedures that can directly infer more complex relational structures, such as gene regulatory networks. Results We develop a computational approach for extraction of gene regulatory networks from textual data. Our method is designed as a sieve-based system and uses linear-chain conditional random fields and rules for relation extraction. With this method we successfully extracted the sporulation gene regulation network in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis for the information extraction challenge at the BioNLP 2013 conference. To enable extraction of distant relations using first-order models, we transform the data into skip-mention sequences. We infer multiple models, each of which is able to extract different relationship types. Following the shared task, we conducted additional analysis using different system settings that resulted in reducing the reconstruction error of bacterial sporulation network from 0.73 to 0.68, measured as the slot error rate between the predicted and the reference network. We observe that all relation extraction sieves contribute to the predictive performance of the proposed approach. Also, features constructed by considering mention words and their prefixes and suffixes are the most important features for higher accuracy of extraction. Analysis of distances between different mention types in the text shows that our choice of transforming data into skip-mention sequences is appropriate for detecting relations between distant mentions. Conclusions Linear-chain conditional random fields, along with appropriate data transformations, can be efficiently used to extract relations. The sieve-based architecture simplifies the system as new sieves can be easily added or removed and each sieve can utilize the results of previous ones. Furthermore, sieves with conditional random fields can be trained on arbitrary text data and hence are applicable to broad range of relation extraction tasks and data domains. PMID:26551454

Sieve-based relation extraction of gene regulatory networks from biological literature.

PubMed

Žitnik, Slavko; Žitnik, Marinka; Zupan, Blaž; Bajec, Marko

2015-01-01

Relation extraction is an essential procedure in literature mining. It focuses on extracting semantic relations between parts of text, called mentions. Biomedical literature includes an enormous amount of textual descriptions of biological entities, their interactions and results of related experiments. To extract them in an explicit, computer readable format, these relations were at first extracted manually from databases. Manual curation was later replaced with automatic or semi-automatic tools with natural language processing capabilities. The current challenge is the development of information extraction procedures that can directly infer more complex relational structures, such as gene regulatory networks. We develop a computational approach for extraction of gene regulatory networks from textual data. Our method is designed as a sieve-based system and uses linear-chain conditional random fields and rules for relation extraction. With this method we successfully extracted the sporulation gene regulation network in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis for the information extraction challenge at the BioNLP 2013 conference. To enable extraction of distant relations using first-order models, we transform the data into skip-mention sequences. We infer multiple models, each of which is able to extract different relationship types. Following the shared task, we conducted additional analysis using different system settings that resulted in reducing the reconstruction error of bacterial sporulation network from 0.73 to 0.68, measured as the slot error rate between the predicted and the reference network. We observe that all relation extraction sieves contribute to the predictive performance of the proposed approach. Also, features constructed by considering mention words and their prefixes and suffixes are the most important features for higher accuracy of extraction. Analysis of distances between different mention types in the text shows that our choice of transforming data into skip-mention sequences is appropriate for detecting relations between distant mentions. Linear-chain conditional random fields, along with appropriate data transformations, can be efficiently used to extract relations. The sieve-based architecture simplifies the system as new sieves can be easily added or removed and each sieve can utilize the results of previous ones. Furthermore, sieves with conditional random fields can be trained on arbitrary text data and hence are applicable to broad range of relation extraction tasks and data domains.

Effect of Additional Suji Leaves and Turmeric Extract on Physicochemical Characteristic and Antioxidant Activity of Arenga-Canna Noodle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miftakhussolikhah; Ariani, D.; Herawati, ERN; Nastiti, A.; Angwar, M.; Pranoto, Y.

2017-12-01

Canna can be used as raw material for noodle but need a substitute material such as arenga starch. Arenga-canna noodle has dark appearance. Addition coloring agents from suji leaves and turmeric extract was done to improve product appearance and its functional characteristics. In this study, noodle was made with five variations of suji leaves and turmeric extract. Physical and chemical properties of noodle were analyzed. The results showed addition suji leaves extract and turmeric extract 0.4 g suji leaf/ml water and 0.06 g turmeric/ml water respectively, produce the best arenga-canna noodle quality. The addition of natural coloring agents increased antioxidant activity.

Three immobilized-cell columnar bioreactors for enhanced production of commodity chemicals

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Davison, B.H.; Scott, C.D.; Kaufman, E.N.

1993-07-01

Immobilized-cell fluidized-bed bioreactors (FBRS) can be used with a variety of fermentations to increase production of fuels, solvents, organic acids, and other fermentation products. Part of the increased rates and yields are due to the immobilization of the biocatalyst at high concentrations. This FBR system with immobilized Zymomonas mobiles increased ethanol productivity more than tenfold with 99% conversion and near stoichiometric yields. FBRs also offer several additional modes of operation for simultaneous fermentation and separation to further increase production by removing the inhibitory products directly from the continuous fermentation. The production of lactic acid by immobilized Lactobacillus was augmented withmore » the addition and removal of solid adsorbent particles to the FBR. An immiscible organic extractant also was used to extract butanol from the acetone-butanol fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum. Demonstrations with these FBR systems have already shown definite advantages by improved overall product yields (decreasing feed costs) and by increased rates (decreasing capital and operating costs). Further demonstration and scale-up continue.« less

Three immobilized-cell columnar bioreactors for enhanced production of commodity chemicals

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Davison, B.H.; Scott, C.D.; Kaufman, E.N.

1993-12-31

Immobilized-cell fluidized-bed bioreactors (FBRs) can be used with a variety of fermentations to increase production of fuels, solvents, organic acids, and other fermentation products. Part of the increased rates and yields are due to the immobilization of the biocatalyst at high concentrations. This FBR system with immobilized Zymomonas mobilis increased ethanol productivity more than tenfold with 99% conversion and near stoichiometric yields. FBRs also offer several additional modes of operation for simultaneous fermentation and separation to further increase production by removing the inhibitory products directly from the continuous fermentation. The production of lactic acid by immobilized Lactobacillus was augmented withmore » the addition and removal of solid adsorbent particles to the FBR. An immiscible organic extractant also was used to extract butanol from the acetone-butanol fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum. Demonstrations with these FBR systems have already shown definite advantages by improved overall product yields (decreasing feed costs) and by increased rates (decreasing capital and operating costs). Further demonstration and scale-up continue.« less

Alcohol based-deep eutectic solvent (DES) as an alternative green additive to increase rotenone yield

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Othman, Zetty Shafiqa; Hassan, Nur Hasyareeda; Zubairi, Saiful Irwan

2015-09-01

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are basically molten salts that interact by forming hydrogen bonds between two added components at a ratio where eutectic point reaches a melting point lower than that of each individual component. Their remarkable physicochemical properties (similar to ionic liquids) with remarkable green properties, low cost and easy handling make them a growing interest in many fields of research. Therefore, the objective of pursuing this study is to analyze the potential of alcohol-based DES as an extraction medium for rotenone extraction from Derris elliptica roots. DES was prepared by a combination of choline chloride, ChCl and 1, 4-butanediol at a ratio of 1/5. The structure of elucidation of DES was analyzed using FTIR, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR. Normal soaking extraction (NSE) method was carried out for 14 hours using seven different types of solvent systems of (1) acetone; (2) methanol; (3) acetonitrile; (4) DES; (5) DES + methanol; (6) DES + acetonitrile; and (7) [BMIM] OTf + acetone. Next, the yield of rotenone, % (w/w), and its concentration (mg/ml) in dried roots were quantitatively determined by means of RP-HPLC. The results showed that a binary solvent system of [BMIM] OTf + acetone and DES + acetonitrile was the best solvent system combination as compared to other solvent systems. It contributed to the highest rotenone content of 0.84 ± 0.05% (w/w) (1.09 ± 0.06 mg/ml) and 0.84 ± 0.02% (w/w) (1.03 ± 0.01 mg/ml) after 14 hours of exhaustive extraction time. In conclusion, a combination of the DES with a selective organic solvent has been proven to have a similar potential and efficiency as of ILs in extracting bioactive constituents in the phytochemical extraction process.

Active learning for ontological event extraction incorporating named entity recognition and unknown word handling.

PubMed

Han, Xu; Kim, Jung-jae; Kwoh, Chee Keong

2016-01-01

Biomedical text mining may target various kinds of valuable information embedded in the literature, but a critical obstacle to the extension of the mining targets is the cost of manual construction of labeled data, which are required for state-of-the-art supervised learning systems. Active learning is to choose the most informative documents for the supervised learning in order to reduce the amount of required manual annotations. Previous works of active learning, however, focused on the tasks of entity recognition and protein-protein interactions, but not on event extraction tasks for multiple event types. They also did not consider the evidence of event participants, which might be a clue for the presence of events in unlabeled documents. Moreover, the confidence scores of events produced by event extraction systems are not reliable for ranking documents in terms of informativity for supervised learning. We here propose a novel committee-based active learning method that supports multi-event extraction tasks and employs a new statistical method for informativity estimation instead of using the confidence scores from event extraction systems. Our method is based on a committee of two systems as follows: We first employ an event extraction system to filter potential false negatives among unlabeled documents, from which the system does not extract any event. We then develop a statistical method to rank the potential false negatives of unlabeled documents 1) by using a language model that measures the probabilities of the expression of multiple events in documents and 2) by using a named entity recognition system that locates the named entities that can be event arguments (e.g. proteins). The proposed method further deals with unknown words in test data by using word similarity measures. We also apply our active learning method for the task of named entity recognition. We evaluate the proposed method against the BioNLP Shared Tasks datasets, and show that our method can achieve better performance than such previous methods as entropy and Gibbs error based methods and a conventional committee-based method. We also show that the incorporation of named entity recognition into the active learning for event extraction and the unknown word handling further improve the active learning method. In addition, the adaptation of the active learning method into named entity recognition tasks also improves the document selection for manual annotation of named entities.

Potential of using plant extracts for purification of shallow well water in Malawi

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pritchard, M.; Mkandawire, T.; Edmondson, A.; O'Neill, J. G.; Kululanga, G.

There has been very little scientific research work into the use of plant extracts to purify groundwater. Research studies on the purification of groundwater have mainly been carried out in developed countries and have focused on water purification systems using aluminium sulphate (a coagulant) and chlorine (a disinfectant). Such systems are expensive and not viable for rural communities due to abject poverty. Shallow well water, which is commonly available throughout Africa, is often grossly contaminated and usually consumed untreated. As a result, water-related diseases kill more than 5 million people every year worldwide. This research was aimed at examining natural plant extracts in order to develop inexpensive ways for rural communities to purify their groundwater. The study involved creating an inventory of plant extracts that have been used for water and wastewater purification. A prioritisation system was derived to select the most suitable extracts, which took into account criteria such as availability, purification potential, yield and cost of extraction. Laboratory trials were undertaken on the most promising plant extracts, namely: Moringa oleifera, Jatropha curcas and Guar gum. The extracts were added to water samples obtained from five shallow wells in Malawi. The trials consisted of jar tests to assess the coagulation potential and the resulting effect on physico-chemical and microbiological parameters such as temperature, pH, turbidity and coliforms. The results showed that the addition of M. oleifera, J. curcas and Guar gum can considerably improve the quality of shallow well water. Turbidity reduction was higher for more turbid water. A reduction efficiency exceeding 90% was achieved by all three extracts on shallow well water that had a turbidity of 49 NTU. A reduction in coliforms was about 80% for all extracts. The pH of the water samples increased with dosage, but remained within acceptable levels for drinking water for all the extracts. Overall, M. oleifera powder produced superior results, followed by Guar gum and lastly J. curcas. There is a need to carry out further more detailed tests, which include toxicity to guarantee the safety of using plant extracts as a coagulant in the purification of drinking water for human consumption.

Ultrasonic-assisted extraction combined with sample preparation and analysis using LC-ESI-MS/MS allowed the identification of 24 new phenolic compounds in pecan nut shell [Carya illinoinensis (Wangenh) C. Koch] extracts.

PubMed

Hilbig, Josiane; Alves, Victor Rodrigues; Müller, Carmen Maria Olivera; Micke, Gustavo Amadeu; Vitali, Luciano; Pedrosa, Rozangela Curi; Block, Jane Mara

2018-04-01

Ultrasonic-assisted extraction combined with statistical tools (factorial design, response surface methodology and kinetics) were used to evaluate the effects of the experimental conditions of temperature, solid-to-solvent ratio, ethanol concentration and time for the extraction of the total phenolic content from pecan nut shells. The optimal conditions for the aqueous and hydroalcoholic extract (with 20% v/v of ethanol) were 60 and 80 °C; solid to solvent ratio of 30 mL·g -1 (for both) and extraction time of 35 and 25 min, respectively. Using these optimize extraction conditions, 426 and 582 mg GAE·g -1 of phenolic compounds, from the aqueous and hydroalcoholic phases respectively, were obtained. In addition, the analysis of the phenolic compounds using the LC-ESI-MS/MS system allowed the identification of 29 phenolic compounds, 24 of which had not been reported in literature for this raw material yet. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Inhibition of Steptococcus mutans biofilm formation by extracts of Tenacibaculum sp. 20J, a bacterium with wide-spectrum quorum quenching activity.

PubMed

Muras, Andrea; Mayer, Celia; Romero, Manuel; Camino, Tamara; Ferrer, Maria D; Mira, Alex; Otero, Ana

2018-01-01

Background : Previous studies have suggested the quorum sensing signal AI-2 as a potential target to prevent the biofilm formation by Streptococcus mutans , a pathogen involved in tooth decay. Objective : To obtain inhibition of biofilm formation by S. mutans by extracts obtained from the marine bacterium Tenacibaculum sp. 20J interfering with the AI-2 quorum sensing system. Design : The AI-2 inhibitory activity was tested with the biosensors Vibrio harveyi BB170 and JMH597. S. mutans ATCC25175 biofilm formation was monitored using impedance real-time measurements with the xCELLigence system®, confocal laser microscopy, and the crystal violet quantification method. Results : The addition of the cell extract from Tenacibaculum sp. 20J reduced biofilm formation in S. mutans ATCC25175 by 40-50% compared to the control without significantly affecting growth. A decrease of almost 40% was also observed in S. oralis DSM20627 and S. dentisani 7747 biofilms. Conclusions : The ability of Tenacibaculum sp. 20J to interfere with AI-2 and inhibit biofilm formation in S. mutans was demonstrated. The results indicate that the inhibition of quorum sensing processes may constitute a suitable strategy for inhibiting dental plaque formation, although additional experiments using mixed biofilm models would be required.

Inhibition of Steptococcus mutans biofilm formation by extracts of Tenacibaculum sp. 20J, a bacterium with wide-spectrum quorum quenching activity

PubMed Central

Muras, Andrea; Mayer, Celia; Romero, Manuel; Camino, Tamara; Ferrer, Maria D.; Mira, Alex; Otero, Ana

2018-01-01

ABSTRACT Background: Previous studies have suggested the quorum sensing signal AI-2 as a potential target to prevent the biofilm formation by Streptococcus mutans, a pathogen involved in tooth decay. Objective: To obtain inhibition of biofilm formation by S. mutans by extracts obtained from the marine bacterium Tenacibaculum sp. 20J interfering with the AI-2 quorum sensing system. Design: The AI-2 inhibitory activity was tested with the biosensors Vibrio harveyi BB170 and JMH597. S. mutans ATCC25175 biofilm formation was monitored using impedance real-time measurements with the xCELLigence system®, confocal laser microscopy, and the crystal violet quantification method. Results: The addition of the cell extract from Tenacibaculum sp. 20J reduced biofilm formation in S. mutans ATCC25175 by 40–50% compared to the control without significantly affecting growth. A decrease of almost 40% was also observed in S. oralis DSM20627 and S. dentisani 7747 biofilms. Conclusions: The ability of Tenacibaculum sp. 20J to interfere with AI-2 and inhibit biofilm formation in S. mutans was demonstrated. The results indicate that the inhibition of quorum sensing processes may constitute a suitable strategy for inhibiting dental plaque formation, although additional experiments using mixed biofilm models would be required. PMID:29410771

The Zigbee wireless ECG measurement system design with a motion artifact remove algorithm by using adaptive filter and moving weighted factor

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kwon, Hyeokjun; Oh, Sechang; Varadan, Vijay K.

2012-04-01

The Electrocardiogram(ECG) signal is one of the bio-signals to check body status. Traditionally, the ECG signal was checked in the hospital. In these days, as the number of people who is interesting with periodic their health check increase, the requirement of self-diagnosis system development is being increased as well. Ubiquitous concept is one of the solutions of the self-diagnosis system. Zigbee wireless sensor network concept is a suitable technology to satisfy the ubiquitous concept. In measuring ECG signal, there are several kinds of methods in attaching electrode on the body called as Lead I, II, III, etc. In addition, several noise components occurred by different measurement situation such as experimenter's respiration, sensor's contact point movement, and the wire movement attached on sensor are included in pure ECG signal. Therefore, this paper is based on the two kinds of development concept. The first is the Zibee wireless communication technology, which can provide convenience and simpleness, and the second is motion artifact remove algorithm, which can detect clear ECG signal from measurement subject. The motion artifact created by measurement subject's movement or even respiration action influences to distort ECG signal, and the frequency distribution of the noises is around from 0.2Hz to even 30Hz. The frequencies are duplicated in actual ECG signal frequency, so it is impossible to remove the artifact without any distortion of ECG signal just by using low-pass filter or high-pass filter. The suggested algorithm in this paper has two kinds of main parts to extract clear ECG signal from measured original signal through an electrode. The first part is to extract motion noise signal from measured signal, and the second part is to extract clear ECG by using extracted motion noise signal and measured original signal. The paper suggests several techniques in order to extract motion noise signal such as predictability estimation theory, low pass filter, a filter including a moving weighted factor, peak to peak detection, and interpolation techniques. In addition, this paper introduces an adaptive filter in order to extract clear ECG signal by using extracted baseline noise signal and measured signal from sensor.

A Novel Extraction Method Combining Plasma with a Whole-Blood Fraction Shows Excellent Sensitivity and Reproducibility for Patients at High Risk for Invasive Aspergillosis

PubMed Central

Springer, Jan; Schloßnagel, Hannes; Heinz, Werner; Doedt, Thomas; Soeller, Rainer; Einsele, Hermann

2012-01-01

Diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis (IA) is still a major problem in routine clinical practice. Early diagnosis is essential for a good patient prognosis. PCR is a highly sensitive method for the detection of nucleic acids and could play an important role in improving the diagnosis of fungal infections. Therefore, a novel DNA extraction method, ultraclean production (UCP), was developed allowing purification of both cellular and cell-free circulating fungal DNA. In this prospective study we evaluated the commercially available UCP extraction system and compared it to an in-house system. Sixty-three patients at high risk for IA were screened twice weekly, and DNA extracted by both methods was cross-analyzed, in triplicate, by two different real-time PCR assays. The negative predictive values were high for all methods (94.3 to 100%), qualifying them as screening methods, but the sensitivity and diagnostic odds ratios were higher using the UCP extraction method. Sensitivity ranged from 33.3 to 66.7% using the in-house extracts to 100% using the UCP extraction method. Most of the unclassified patients showed no positive PCR results; however, single-positive PCR replicates were observed in some cases. These can bear clinical relevance but should be interpreted with additional clinical and laboratory data. The PCR assays from the UCP extracts showed greater reproducibility than the in-house method for probable IA patients. The standardized UCP extraction method yielded superior results, with regard to sensitivity and reproducibility, than the in-house method. This was independent of the PCR assay used to detect fungal DNA in the sample extracts. PMID:22593600

Enzyme assisted extraction of biomolecules as an approach to novel extraction technology: A review.

PubMed

Nadar, Shamraja S; Rao, Priyanka; Rathod, Virendra K

2018-06-01

An interest in the development of extraction techniques of biomolecules from various natural sources has increased in recent years due to their potential applications particularly for food and nutraceutical purposes. The presence of polysaccharides such as hemicelluloses, starch, pectin inside the cell wall, reduces the extraction efficiency of conventional extraction techniques. Conventional techniques also suffer from low extraction yields, time inefficiency and inferior extract quality due to traces of organic solvents present in them. Hence, there is a need of the green and novel extraction methods to recover biomolecules. The present review provides a holistic insight to various aspects related to enzyme aided extraction. Applications of enzymes in the recovery of various biomolecules such as polyphenols, oils, polysaccharides, flavours and colorants have been highlighted. Additionally, the employment of hyphenated extraction technologies can overcome some of the major drawbacks of enzyme based extraction such as longer extraction time and immoderate use of solvents. This review also includes hyphenated intensification techniques by coupling conventional methods with ultrasound, microwave, high pressure and supercritical carbon dioxide. The last section gives an insight on application of enzyme immobilization as a strategy for large scale extraction. Immobilization of enzymes on magnetic nanoparticles can be employed to enhance the operational performance of the system by multiple use of expensive enzymes making them industrially and economically feasible. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Chemical-induced disease relation extraction with various linguistic features.

PubMed

Gu, Jinghang; Qian, Longhua; Zhou, Guodong

2016-01-01

Understanding the relations between chemicals and diseases is crucial in various biomedical tasks such as new drug discoveries and new therapy developments. While manually mining these relations from the biomedical literature is costly and time-consuming, such a procedure is often difficult to keep up-to-date. To address these issues, the BioCreative-V community proposed a challenging task of automatic extraction of chemical-induced disease (CID) relations in order to benefit biocuration. This article describes our work on the CID relation extraction task on the BioCreative-V tasks. We built a machine learning based system that utilized simple yet effective linguistic features to extract relations with maximum entropy models. In addition to leveraging various features, the hypernym relations between entity concepts derived from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)-controlled vocabulary were also employed during both training and testing stages to obtain more accurate classification models and better extraction performance, respectively. We demoted relation extraction between entities in documents to relation extraction between entity mentions. In our system, pairs of chemical and disease mentions at both intra- and inter-sentence levels were first constructed as relation instances for training and testing, then two classification models at both levels were trained from the training examples and applied to the testing examples. Finally, we merged the classification results from mention level to document level to acquire final relations between chemicals and diseases. Our system achieved promisingF-scores of 60.4% on the development dataset and 58.3% on the test dataset using gold-standard entity annotations, respectively. Database URL:https://github.com/JHnlp/BC5CIDTask. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

Development of blood extraction system designed by female mosquito's blood sampling mechanism for bio-MEMS

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsuchiya, Kazuyoshi; Nakanishi, Naoyuki; Nakamachi, Eiji

2005-02-01

A compact and wearable wristwatch type Bio-MEMS such as a health monitoring system (HMS) to detect blood sugar level for diabetic patient, was newly developed. The HMS consists of (1) a indentation unit with a microneedle to generate the skin penetration force using a shape memory alloy(SMA) actuator, (2) a pumping unit using a bimorph PZT piezoelectric actuator to extract the blood and (3) a gold (Au) electrode as a biosensor immobilized GOx and attached to the gate electrode of MOSFET to detect the amount of Glucose in extracted blood. GOx was immobilized on a self assembled spacer combined with an Au electrode by the cross-link method using BSA as an additional bonding material. The device can extract blood in a few microliter through a painless microneedle with the negative pressure by deflection of the bimorph PZT piezoelectric actuator produced in the blood chamber, by the similar way the female mosquito extracts human blood with muscle motion to flex or relax. The performances of the liquid sampling ability of the pumping unit through a microneedle (3.8mm length, 100μm internal diameter) using the bimorph PZT piezoelectric microactuator were measured. The blood extraction micro device could extract human blood at the speed of 2μl/min, and it is enough volume to measure a glucose level, compared to the amount of commercial based glucose level monitor. The electrode embedded in the blood extraction device chamber could detect electrons generated by the hydrolysis of hydrogen peroxide produced by the reaction between GOx and glucose in a few microliter extracted blood, using the constant electric current measurement system of the MOSFET type hybrid biosensor. The output voltage for the glucose diluted in the chamber was increased lineally with increase of the glucose concentration.

Calibration of Viking imaging system pointing, image extraction, and optical navigation measure

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Breckenridge, W. G.; Fowler, J. W.; Morgan, E. M.

1977-01-01

Pointing control and knowledge accuracy of Viking Orbiter science instruments is controlled by the scan platform. Calibration of the scan platform and the imaging system was accomplished through mathematical models. The calibration procedure and results obtained for the two Viking spacecraft are described. Included are both ground and in-flight scan platform calibrations, and the additional calibrations unique to optical navigation.

Effects of phytoestrogen extracts isolated from rye, green and yellow pea seeds on hormone production and proliferation of trophoblast tumor cells Jeg3.

PubMed

Matscheski, A; Richter, D-U; Hartmann, A-M; Effmert, U; Jeschke, U; Kupka, M S; Abarzua, S; Briese, V; Ruth, W; Kragl, U; Piechulla, B

2006-01-01

Phytoestrogens are a diverse group of non-steroidal plant compounds. Because they have chemical structures similar to estrogens they are able to bind on estrogen receptors in humans. In this study, we tested the effects of crude phytoestrogen extracts from rye (Secale cereale), green pea (Pisum sativum) and yellow pea seeds (Pisum sativum cv.) on cell proliferation and the production of progesterone in trophoblast tumor cells of the cell line Jeg3. Isoflavone extracts from green and yellow pea seeds and lignan extracts from rye seeds were obtained, using different extraction methods. Isolated extracts were incubated in different concentrations with trophoblast tumor cells. Untreated cells were used as controls. At designated times, aliquots were removed and tested for estradiol and progesterone production. In addition, we tested the effects of the phytoestrogen extracts on cell proliferation. Cell proliferation is significantly inhibited by potential phytoestrogens isolated from rye, green and yellow pea seeds in trophoblast tumor cells of the cell line Jeg3. We found a correlation between the effects of proliferation and production of estradiol in isoflavone extracts from green and yellow pea seeds in Jeg3 cells. In addition, higher concentrations of isoflavones isolated from green pea seeds and lignans from rye showed also a inhibition of progesterone production whereas higher concentrations of rye lignans elevated estradiol production in Jeg3 cells. A useful indicator test system for potential phytoestrogens could be established. Based on the obtained results it is proposed that green and yellow pea seeds contain measurable concentrations of isoflavones and rye seeds contain lignans which can be isolated and used for special human diet programs. Copyright 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Extractive biotransformation for production of metabolites of poorly soluble compounds: synthesis of 32-hydroxy-rifalazil.

PubMed

Mozhaev, Vadim V; Mozhaeva, Lyudmila V; Michels, Peter C; Khmelnitsky, Yuri L

2008-10-01

A novel reaction system was developed for the production of metabolites of poorly water-soluble parent compounds using mammalian liver microsomes. The system includes the selection and use of an appropriate hydrophobic polymeric resin as a reservoir for the hydrophobic parent compounds and its metabolites. The utility of the extractive biotransformation approach was shown for the production of a low-yielding, synthetically challenging 32-hydroxylated metabolite of the antibiotic rifalazil using mouse liver microsomes. To address the low solubility and reactivity of rifalazil in the predominantly aqueous microsomal catalytic system, a variety of strategies were tested for the enhanced delivery of hydrophobic substrates, including the addition of mild detergents, polyvinylpyrrolidone, glycerol, bovine serum albumin, and hydrophobic polymeric resins. The latter strategy was identified as the most suitable for the production of 32-hydroxy-rifalazil, resulting in up to 13-fold enhancement of the volumetric productivity compared with the standard aqueous system operating at the solubility limit of rifalazil. The production process was optimized for a wide range of reaction parameters; the most important for improving volumetric productivity included the type and amount of the polymeric resin, cofactor recycling system, concentrations of the biocatalyst and rifalazil, reaction temperature, and agitation rate. The optimized extractive biotransformation system was used to synthesize 32-hydroxy-rifalazil on a multimilligram scale.

The effect of antioxidants on quantitative changes of lysine and methionine in linoleic acid emulsions at different pH conditions.

PubMed

Hęś, Marzanna; Gliszczyńska-Świgło, Anna; Gramza-Michałowska, Anna

2017-01-01

Plants are an important source of phenolic compounds. The antioxidant capacities of green tea, thyme and rosemary extracts that contain these compounds have been reported earlier. However, there is a lack of accessible information about their activity against lipid oxidation in emulsions and inhibit the interaction of lipid oxidation products with amino acids. Therefore, the influence of green tea, thyme and rosemary extracts and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) on quantitative changes in lysine and methionine in linoleic acid emulsions at a pH of isoelectric point and a pH lower than the isoelectric point of amino acids was investigated. Total phenolic contents in plant extracts were determined spectrophotometrically by using Folin-Ciocalteu's reagent, and individual phenols by using HPLC. The level of oxidation of emulsion was determined using the measurement of peroxides and TBARS (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances). Methionine and lysine in the system were reacted with sodium nitroprusside and trinitrobenzenesulphonic acid respectively, and the absorbance of the complexes was measured. Extract of green tea had the highest total polyphenol content. The system containing antioxidants and amino acid protected linoleic acid more efficiently than by the addition of antioxidants only. Lysine and methionine losses in samples without the addition of antioxidants were lower in their isoelectric points than below these points. Antioxidants decrease the loss of amino acids. The protective properties of antioxidants towards methionine were higher in a pH of isoelectric point whereas towards lysine in pH below this point. Green tea, thyme and rosemary extracts exhibit antioxidant activity in linoleic acid emulsions. Moreover, they can be utilized to inhibit quantitative changes in amino acids in lipid emulsions. However, the antioxidant efficiency of these extracts seems to depend on pH conditions. Further investigations should be carried out to clarify this issue.

Integrated Micro-Chip Amino Acid Chirality Detector for MOD

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Glavin, D. P.; Bada, J. L.; Botta, O.; Kminek, G.; Grunthaner, F.; Mathies, R.

2001-01-01

Integration of a micro-chip capillary electrophoresis analyzer with a sublimation-based extraction technique, as used in the Mars Organic Detector (MOD), for the in-situ detection of amino acids and their enantiomers on solar system bodies. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.

Losartan attenuates the coronary perivasculitis through its local and systemic anti-inflammatory properties in a murine model of Kawasaki disease.

PubMed

Suganuma, Eisuke; Niimura, Fumio; Matsuda, Shinichi; Ukawa, Toshiko; Nakamura, Hideaki; Sekine, Kaori; Kato, Masahiko; Aiba, Yuji; Koga, Yasuhiro; Hayashi, Kuniyoshi; Takahashi, Osamu; Mochizuki, Hiroyuki

2017-04-01

Kawasaki disease is a common systemic vasculitis that leads to coronary artery lesions. Besides its antihypertensive effects, losartan can modulate inflammation in cardiovascular disease. We examined whether losartan can attenuate coronary inflammation in a murine model of Kawasaki disease. Five-wk-old C57/BL6J male mice were intraperitoneally injected with Lactobacillus casei cell wall extract to induce coronary inflammation and divided into four groups: placebo, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), losartan, and IVIG+losartan. After 2 wk, mice were harvested. The coronary perivasculitis was significantly attenuated by losartan but not by IVIG alone, and further dramatic attenuation by IVIG+losartan was observed. The frequency of Lactobacillus casei cell wall extract-induced myocarditis (80%) was markedly lowered by losartan (22%) and IVIG+losartan (0%). Furthermore, interleukin (IL)-6 mRNA was markedly attenuated by IVIG+losartan. Serum levels of IL-6, TNF-α, MCP-1, and IL-10 after Lactobacillus casei cell wall extract injection were slightly decreased by IVIG or losartan. Moreover, IL-1β, IL-10, and MCP-1 levels were significantly decreased by IVIG+losartan. The addition of losartan to IVIG strongly attenuated the severity of coronary perivasculitis and the incidence of myocarditis, along with suppressing systemic/local cytokines as well as the activated macrophage infiltration. Therefore, losartan may be a potentially useful additive drug for the acute phase of Kawasaki disease to minimize coronary artery lesions.

Modern Trends of Additional Professional Education Development for Mineral Resource Extracting

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borisova, Olga; Frolova, Victoria; Merzlikina, Elena

2017-11-01

The article contains the results of development of additional professional education research, including the field of mineral resource extracting in Russia. The paper describes the levels of education received in Russian Federation and determines the place and role of additional professional education among them. Key factors influencing the development of additional professional education are identified. As a result of the research, the authors proved the necessity of introducing additional professional education programs on educational Internet platforms for mineral resource extracting.

TEES 2.2: Biomedical Event Extraction for Diverse Corpora

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Background The Turku Event Extraction System (TEES) is a text mining program developed for the extraction of events, complex biomedical relationships, from scientific literature. Based on a graph-generation approach, the system detects events with the use of a rich feature set built via dependency parsing. The TEES system has achieved record performance in several of the shared tasks of its domain, and continues to be used in a variety of biomedical text mining tasks. Results The TEES system was quickly adapted to the BioNLP'13 Shared Task in order to provide a public baseline for derived systems. An automated approach was developed for learning the underlying annotation rules of event type, allowing immediate adaptation to the various subtasks, and leading to a first place in four out of eight tasks. The system for the automated learning of annotation rules is further enhanced in this paper to the point of requiring no manual adaptation to any of the BioNLP'13 tasks. Further, the scikit-learn machine learning library is integrated into the system, bringing a wide variety of machine learning methods usable with TEES in addition to the default SVM. A scikit-learn ensemble method is also used to analyze the importances of the features in the TEES feature sets. Conclusions The TEES system was introduced for the BioNLP'09 Shared Task and has since then demonstrated good performance in several other shared tasks. By applying the current TEES 2.2 system to multiple corpora from these past shared tasks an overarching analysis of the most promising methods and possible pitfalls in the evolving field of biomedical event extraction are presented. PMID:26551925

TEES 2.2: Biomedical Event Extraction for Diverse Corpora.

PubMed

Björne, Jari; Salakoski, Tapio

2015-01-01

The Turku Event Extraction System (TEES) is a text mining program developed for the extraction of events, complex biomedical relationships, from scientific literature. Based on a graph-generation approach, the system detects events with the use of a rich feature set built via dependency parsing. The TEES system has achieved record performance in several of the shared tasks of its domain, and continues to be used in a variety of biomedical text mining tasks. The TEES system was quickly adapted to the BioNLP'13 Shared Task in order to provide a public baseline for derived systems. An automated approach was developed for learning the underlying annotation rules of event type, allowing immediate adaptation to the various subtasks, and leading to a first place in four out of eight tasks. The system for the automated learning of annotation rules is further enhanced in this paper to the point of requiring no manual adaptation to any of the BioNLP'13 tasks. Further, the scikit-learn machine learning library is integrated into the system, bringing a wide variety of machine learning methods usable with TEES in addition to the default SVM. A scikit-learn ensemble method is also used to analyze the importances of the features in the TEES feature sets. The TEES system was introduced for the BioNLP'09 Shared Task and has since then demonstrated good performance in several other shared tasks. By applying the current TEES 2.2 system to multiple corpora from these past shared tasks an overarching analysis of the most promising methods and possible pitfalls in the evolving field of biomedical event extraction are presented.

21 CFR 73.169 - Grape color extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Grape color extract. 73.169 Section 73.169 Food... COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.169 Grape color extract. (a) Identity. (1) The...-dextrin. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with grape color extract may contain only those...

21 CFR 73.169 - Grape color extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false Grape color extract. 73.169 Section 73.169 Food... COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.169 Grape color extract. (a) Identity. (1) The...-dextrin. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with grape color extract may contain only those...

21 CFR 73.169 - Grape color extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Grape color extract. 73.169 Section 73.169 Food... COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.169 Grape color extract. (a) Identity. (1) The...-dextrin. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with grape color extract may contain only those...

Interaction of Plant Extracts with Central Nervous System Receptors

PubMed Central

Lundstrom, Kenneth; Pham, Huyen Thanh; Dinh, Long Doan

2017-01-01

Background: Plant extracts have been used in traditional medicine for the treatment of various maladies including neurological diseases. Several central nervous system receptors have been demonstrated to interact with plant extracts and components affecting the pharmacology and thereby potentially playing a role in human disease and treatment. For instance, extracts from Hypericum perforatum (St. John’s wort) targeted several CNS receptors. Similarly, extracts from Piper nigrum, Stephania cambodica, and Styphnolobium japonicum exerted inhibition of agonist-induced activity of the human neurokinin-1 receptor. Methods: Different methods have been established for receptor binding and functional assays based on radioactive and fluorescence-labeled ligands in cell lines and primary cell cultures. Behavioral studies of the effect of plant extracts have been conducted in rodents. Plant extracts have further been subjected to mood and cognition studies in humans. Results: Mechanisms of action at molecular and cellular levels have been elucidated for medicinal plants in support of standardization of herbal products and identification of active extract compounds. In several studies, plant extracts demonstrated affinity to a number of CNS receptors in parallel indicating the complexity of this interaction. In vivo studies showed modifications of CNS receptor affinity and behavioral responses in animal models after treatment with medicinal herbs. Certain plant extracts demonstrated neuroprotection and enhanced cognitive performance, respectively, when evaluated in humans. Noteworthy, the penetration of plant extracts and their protective effect on the blood-brain-barrier are discussed. Conclusion: The affinity of plant extracts and their isolated compounds for CNS receptors indicates an important role for medicinal plants in the treatment of neurological disorders. Moreover, studies in animal and human models have confirmed a scientific basis for the application of medicinal herbs. However, additional investigations related to plant extracts and their isolated compounds, as well as their application in animal models and the conducting of clinical trials, are required. PMID:28930228

Parachute Compartment Drop Test Vehicle for Testing the Crew Exploration Vehicle's Parachute Assembly System

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lubey, Daniel P.; Thiele, Sara R.; Gruseck, Madelyn L.; Evans, Carol T.

2010-01-01

Though getting astronauts safely into orbit and beyond has long been one of NASA?s chief goals, their safe return has always been equally as important. The Crew Exploration Vehicle?s (CEV) Parachute Assembly System (CPAS) is designed to safely return astronauts to Earth on the next-generation manned spacecraft Orion. As one means for validating this system?s requirements and testing its functionality, a test article known as the Parachute Compartment Drop Test Vehicle (PC-DTV) will carry a fully-loaded yet truncated CPAS Parachute Compartment (PC) in a series of drop tests. Two aerodynamic profiles for the PC-DTV currently exist, though both share the same interior structure, and both have an Orion-representative weight of 20,800 lbf. Two extraction methods have been developed as well. The first (Cradle Monorail System 2 - CMS2) uses a sliding rail technique to release the PC-DTV midair, and the second (Modified DTV Sled; MDS) features a much less constrained separation method though slightly more complex. The decision as to which aerodynamic profile and extraction method to use is still not finalized. Additional CFD and stress analysis must be undertaken in order to determine the more desirable options, though at present the "boat tail" profile and the CMS2 extraction method seem to be the favored options in their respective categories. Fabrication of the PC-DTV and the selected extraction sled is set to begin in early October 2010 with an anticipated first drop test in mid-March 2011.

Determination of bromhexine in plasma by reversed-phase liquid chromatography. Interference of lipoproteins on extraction.

PubMed

Johansson, M; Lenngren, S

1988-11-18

Extraction of the hydrophobic tertiary amine bromhexine from plasma using cyclohexane-heptafluorobutanol (99.5:0.5, v/v) was studied at different pH values. The extraction yield from buffer solutions was quantitative at pH greater than 4.1, but from plasma the extraction yield decreased with increasing pH. Furthermore, at pH 8.4 the extraction yield varied greatly (56-99%) in different human plasma. The addition of lipoproteins to phosphate buffer, at pH 8.1, decreased the extraction yields considerably. Quantitative extraction from plasma was obtained by using a very long extraction time at pH 8.4 or by decreasing the pH to 5.4. The chromatographic system consisted of a reversed-phase column (Nucleosil C18, 5 microns) with an acidic mobile phase (methanol-phosphate buffer, pH 2) containing an aliphatic tertiary amine. UV detection at 308 or 254 nm was used. The limit of quantitation was 5 ng/ml using 3.00 ml of plasma and detection at 254 nm. The intra-assay precision for bromhexine was better than 3.6% at 5 ng/ml.

Eco-sustainable systems based on poly(lactic acid), diatomite and coffee grounds extract for food packaging.

PubMed

Cacciotti, Ilaria; Mori, Stefano; Cherubini, Valeria; Nanni, Francesca

2018-06-01

In the food packaging sector many efforts have been (and are) devoted to the development of new materials in order to reply to an urgent market demand for green and eco-sustainable products. Particularly a lot of attention is currently devoted both to the use of compostable and biobased polymers as innovative and promising alternative to the currently used petrochemical derived polymers, and to the re-use of waste materials coming from agriculture and food industry. In this work, multifunctional eco-sustainable systems, based on poly(lactic acid) (PLA) as biopolymeric matrix, diatomaceous earth as reinforcing filler and spent coffee grounds extract as oxygen scavenger, were produced for the first time, in order to provide a simultaneous improvement of mechanical and gas barrier properties. The influence of the diatomite and the spent coffee grounds extract on the microstructural, mechanical and oxygen barrier properties of the produced films was deeply investigated by means of X-Ray diffraction (XRD), infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR, ATR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), uniaxial tensile tests, O 2 permeabilimetry measurements. An improvement of both mechanical and oxygen barrier properties was recorded for systems characterised by the co-presence of diatomite and coffee grounds extract, suggesting a possible synergic effect of the two additives. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Aqueous biphasic systems formed by deep eutectic solvent and new-type salts for the high-performance extraction of pigments.

PubMed

Zhang, Hongmei; Wang, Yuzhi; Zhou, Yigang; Chen, Jing; Wei, Xiaoxiao; Xu, Panli

2018-05-01

Deep eutectic solvent (DES) composed of polypropylene glycol 400 (PPG 400) and tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBAB) was combined with a series of new-type salts such as quaternary ammonium salts, amino acid and polyols to form Aqueous Biphasic Systems (ABSs). Phase-forming ability of the salts was investigated firstly. The results showed that polyols had a relatively weak power to produce phases within studied scopes. And the shorter of carbon chain length of salts, the easier to obtain phase-splitting. Then partitioning of three pigments in PPG 400/betaine-based ABSs was addressed to investigate the effect of pigments' hydrophobicity on extraction efficiency. It was found that an increase in hydrophobicity contributed to the migration of pigments in the DES-rich phase. On the other hand, with a decline in phase-forming ability of salts, the extraction efficiency of the whole systems started to go down gradually. Based on the results, selective separation experiment was conducted successfully in the PPG 400/betaine-based systems, including more than 93.00% Sudan Ⅲ in the top phase and about 80.00% sunset yellow FCF/amaranth in the bottom phase. Additionally, ABSs constructed by DES/betaine for partitioning amaranth were further utilized to explore the performances of influence factors and back extraction. It can be concluded that after the optimization above 98.00% amaranth was transferred into the top phase. And 67.98% amaranth can be transferred into the bottom phase in back-extraction experiment. At last, dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were applied to probe into extraction mechanism. The results demonstrated that hydrophobicity played an important role in the separation process of pigments. Through combining with new-type DES, this work was devoted to introducing plentiful salts as novel compositions of ABSs and providing an eco-friendly extraction way for partitioning pigments, which boosted development of ABSs in the monitoring food safety field. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Withania somnifera Extract Protects Model Neurons from In Vitro Traumatic Injury

PubMed Central

Saykally, Jessica N.; Hatic, Haris; Keeley, Kristen L.; Jain, Subhash C.; Ravindranath, Vijayalakshmi

2017-01-01

Withania somnifera has been used in traditional medicine for a variety of neural disorders. Recently, chronic neurodegenerative conditions have been shown to benefit from treatment with this extract. To evaluate the action of this extract on traumatically injured neurons, the efficacy of W. somnifera root extract as a neuroprotective agent was examined in cultured model neurons exposed to an in vitro injury system designed to mimic mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Neuronal health was evaluated by staining with annexin V (an early, apoptotic feature) and monitoring released lactate dehydrogenase activity (a terminal cell loss parameter). Potential mechanisms underlying the observed neuroprotection were examined. Additionally, morphological changes were monitored following injury and treatment. Although no differences were found in the expression of the antioxidant transcription factor nuclear factor erythroid 2-like 2 (Nrf2) or other Nrf2-related downstream components, significant changes were seen in apoptotic signaling. Treatment with the extract resulted in an increased length of neurites projecting from the neuronal cell body after injury. W. somnifera extract treatment also resulted in reduced cell death in the model neuron TBI system. The cell death factor Bax was involved (its expression was reduced 2-fold by the treatment) and injury-induced reduction in neurite lengths and numbers was reversed by the treatment. This all indicates that W. somnifera root extract was neuroprotective and could have therapeutic potential to target factors involved in secondary injury and long-term sequelae of mild TBI. PMID:28933215

Direct Sampling and Analysis from Solid Phase Extraction Cards using an Automated Liquid Extraction Surface Analysis Nanoelectrospray Mass Spectrometry System

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Walworth, Matthew J; ElNaggar, Mariam S; Stankovich, Joseph J

Direct liquid extraction based surface sampling, a technique previously demonstrated with continuous flow and autonomous pipette liquid microjunction surface sampling probes, has recently been implemented as the Liquid Extraction Surface Analysis (LESA) mode on the commercially available Advion NanoMate chip-based infusion nanoelectrospray ionization system. In the present paper, the LESA mode was applied to the analysis of 96-well format custom solid phase extraction (SPE) cards, with each well consisting of either a 1 or 2 mm diameter monolithic hydrophobic stationary phase. These substrate wells were conditioned, loaded with either single or multi-component aqueous mixtures, and read out using the LESAmore » mode of a TriVersa NanoMate or a Nanomate 100 coupled to an ABI/Sciex 4000QTRAPTM hybrid triple quadrupole/linear ion trap mass spectrometer and a Thermo LTQ XL linear ion trap mass spectrometer. Extraction conditions, including extraction/nanoESI solvent composition, volume, and dwell times, were optimized in the analysis of targeted compounds. Limit of detection and quantitation as well as analysis reproducibility figures of merit were measured. Calibration data was obtained for propranolol using a deuterated internal standard which demonstrated linearity and reproducibility. A 10x increase in signal and cleanup of micromolar Angiotensin II from a concentrated salt solution was demonstrated. Additionally, a multicomponent herbicide mixture at ppb concentration levels was analyzed using MS3 spectra for compound identification in the presence of isobaric interferences.« less

Withania somnifera Extract Protects Model Neurons from In Vitro Traumatic Injury.

PubMed

Saykally, Jessica N; Hatic, Haris; Keeley, Kristen L; Jain, Subhash C; Ravindranath, Vijayalakshmi; Citron, Bruce A

2017-07-01

Withania somnifera has been used in traditional medicine for a variety of neural disorders. Recently, chronic neurodegenerative conditions have been shown to benefit from treatment with this extract. To evaluate the action of this extract on traumatically injured neurons, the efficacy of W. somnifera root extract as a neuroprotective agent was examined in cultured model neurons exposed to an in vitro injury system designed to mimic mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Neuronal health was evaluated by staining with annexin V (an early, apoptotic feature) and monitoring released lactate dehydrogenase activity (a terminal cell loss parameter). Potential mechanisms underlying the observed neuroprotection were examined. Additionally, morphological changes were monitored following injury and treatment. Although no differences were found in the expression of the antioxidant transcription factor nuclear factor erythroid 2-like 2 (Nrf2) or other Nrf2-related downstream components, significant changes were seen in apoptotic signaling. Treatment with the extract resulted in an increased length of neurites projecting from the neuronal cell body after injury. W. somnifera extract treatment also resulted in reduced cell death in the model neuron TBI system. The cell death factor Bax was involved (its expression was reduced 2-fold by the treatment) and injury-induced reduction in neurite lengths and numbers was reversed by the treatment. This all indicates that W. somnifera root extract was neuroprotective and could have therapeutic potential to target factors involved in secondary injury and long-term sequelae of mild TBI.

Sequential cloud-point extraction for toxicological screening analysis of medicaments in human plasma by high pressure liquid chromatography with diode array detector.

PubMed

Madej, Katarzyna; Persona, Karolina; Wandas, Monika; Gomółka, Ewa

2013-10-18

A complex extraction system with the use of cloud-point extraction technique (CPE) was developed for sequential isolation of basic and acidic/neutral medicaments from human plasma/serum, screened by HPLC/DAD method. Eight model drugs (paracetamol, promazine, chlorpromazine, amitriptyline, salicyclic acid, opipramol, alprazolam and carbamazepine) were chosen for the study of optimal CPE conditions. The CPE technique consists in partition of an aqueous sample with addition of a surfactant into two phases: micelle-rich phase with the isolated compounds and water phase containing a surfactant below the critical micellar concentration, mainly under influence of temperature change. The proposed extraction system consists of two chief steps: isolation of basic compounds (from pH 12) and then isolation of acidic/neutral compounds (from pH 6) using surfactant Triton X-114 as the extraction medium. Extraction recovery varied from 25.2 to 107.9% with intra-day and inter-day precision (RSD %) ranged 0.88-1087 and 5.32-17.96, respectively. The limits of detection for the studied medicaments at λ 254nm corresponded to therapeutic or low toxic plasma concentration levels. Usefulness of the proposed CPE-HPLC/DAD method for toxicological drug screening was tested via its application to analysis of two serum samples taken from patients suspected of drug overdosing. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Protective Effects of the Mushroom Lactarius deterrimus Extract on Systemic Oxidative Stress and Pancreatic Islets in Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats

PubMed Central

Mihailović, Mirjana; Arambašić Јovanović, Jelena; Uskoković, Aleksandra; Grdović, Nevena; Dinić, Svetlana; Vidović, Senka; Poznanović, Goran; Mujić, Ibrahim; Vidaković, Melita

2015-01-01

The aim of this study was to assess the in vivo effects of the extract of the medicinal mushroom, Lactarius deterrimus, when administered (60 mg/kg, i.p.) daily for four weeks to streptozotocin- (STZ-) induced diabetic rats. Diabetic rats treated with the L. deterrimus extract displayed several improved biochemical parameters in the circulation: reduced hyperglycemia, lower triglyceride concentration and reduced glycated hemoglobin, glycated serum protein, and advanced glycation end product (AGE) levels. This treatment also adjusted the diabetes-induced redox imbalance. Thus, higher activities of the antioxidative enzymes, superoxide dismutase, and catalase in the circulation were accompanied by increased levels of free intracellular thiols and glutathionylated proteins after treatment with the L. deterrimus extract. In addition to a systemic antioxidant effect, the administration of the extract to diabetic rats also had a positive localized effect on pancreatic islets where it decreased AGE formation, and increased the expression of chemokine CXCL12 protein that mediates the restoration of β-cell population through the activation of the serine/threonine-specific Akt protein kinase prosurvival pathway. As a result, the numbers of proliferating cell nuclear antigen- (PCNA-) and insulin-positive β-cells were increased. These results show that the ability of the L. deterrimus extract to alleviate oxidative stress and increase β-cell mass represents a therapeutic potential for diabetes management. PMID:26221612

Micro-electromembrane extraction across free liquid membranes. Instrumentation and basic principles.

PubMed

Kubáň, Pavel; Boček, Petr

2014-06-13

A micro-electromembrane extraction (μ-EME) technique using electrically induced transfer of charged analytes across free liquid membranes (FLMs) was presented. A disposable extraction unit was proposed and it was made of a short segment of transparent perfluoroalkoxy tubing, which was successively filled with three liquid plugs serving as acceptor solution, FLM and donor solution. These plugs formed a three-phase extraction system, which was precisely defined, that was stable and required μL to sub-μL volumes of all respective solutions. Basic instrumental set-up and extraction principles of μ-EME were examined using an anionic and a cationic dye, 4,5-dihydroxy-3-(p-sulfophenylazo)-2,7-naphthalene disulfonic acid trisodium salt (SPADNS) and crystal violet, respectively. Transfers of the charged dyes from donor into acceptor solutions across FLMs consisting of 1-pentanol were visualized by a microscope camera and quantitative measurements were performed by UV-vis spectrophotometry. The effects of operational parameters of μ-EME system were comprehensively investigated and experimental measurements were accompanied with theoretical calculations. Extraction recoveries above 60% were achieved for 5min μ-EME of 1mM SPADNS at 100V with repeatability values below 5%. Selectivity of FLMs was additionally examined by capillary electrophoretic analyses of acceptor solutions and the potential of FLMs for μ-EME pretreatment of samples with artificial complex matrices was demonstrated. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automation of DNA and miRNA co-extraction for miRNA-based identification of human body fluids and tissues.

PubMed

Kulstein, Galina; Marienfeld, Ralf; Miltner, Erich; Wiegand, Peter

2016-10-01

In the last years, microRNA (miRNA) analysis came into focus in the field of forensic genetics. Yet, no standardized and recommendable protocols for co-isolation of miRNA and DNA from forensic relevant samples have been developed so far. Hence, this study evaluated the performance of an automated Maxwell® 16 System-based strategy (Promega) for co-extraction of DNA and miRNA from forensically relevant (blood and saliva) samples compared to (semi-)manual extraction methods. Three procedures were compared on the basis of recovered quantity of DNA and miRNA (as determined by real-time PCR and Bioanalyzer), miRNA profiling (shown by Cq values and extraction efficiency), STR profiles, duration, contamination risk and handling. All in all, the results highlight that the automated co-extraction procedure yielded the highest miRNA and DNA amounts from saliva and blood samples compared to both (semi-)manual protocols. Also, for aged and genuine samples of forensically relevant traces the miRNA and DNA yields were sufficient for subsequent downstream analysis. Furthermore, the strategy allows miRNA extraction only in cases where it is relevant to obtain additional information about the sample type. Besides, this system enables flexible sample throughput and labor-saving sample processing with reduced risk of cross-contamination. © 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Mathematical morphology-based shape feature analysis for Chinese character recognition systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pai, Tun-Wen; Shyu, Keh-Hwa; Chen, Ling-Fan; Tai, Gwo-Chin

1995-04-01

This paper proposes an efficient technique of shape feature extraction based on the application of mathematical morphology theory. A new shape complexity index for preclassification of machine printed Chinese Character Recognition (CCR) is also proposed. For characters represented in different fonts/sizes or in a low resolution environment, a more stable local feature such as shape structure is preferred for character recognition. Morphological valley extraction filters are applied to extract the protrusive strokes from four sides of an input Chinese character. The number of extracted local strokes reflects the shape complexity of each side. These shape features of characters are encoded as corresponding shape complexity indices. Based on the shape complexity index, data base is able to be classified into 16 groups prior to recognition procedures. The performance of associating with shape feature analysis reclaims several characters from misrecognized character sets and results in an average of 3.3% improvement of recognition rate from an existing recognition system. In addition to enhance the recognition performance, the extracted stroke information can be further analyzed and classified its own stroke type. Therefore, the combination of extracted strokes from each side provides a means for data base clustering based on radical or subword components. It is one of the best solutions for recognizing high complexity characters such as Chinese characters which are divided into more than 200 different categories and consist more than 13,000 characters.

Phase fluctuation spectra: New radio science information to become available in the DSN tracking system Mark III-77

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Berman, A. L.

1977-01-01

An algorithm was developed for the continuous and automatic computation of Doppler noise concurrently at four sample rate intervals, evenly spanning three orders of magnitude. Average temporal Doppler phase fluctuation spectra will be routinely available in the DSN tracking system Mark III-77 and require little additional processing. The basic (noise) data will be extracted from the archival tracking data file (ATDF) of the tracking data management system.

Information extraction from multi-institutional radiology reports.

PubMed

Hassanpour, Saeed; Langlotz, Curtis P

2016-01-01

The radiology report is the most important source of clinical imaging information. It documents critical information about the patient's health and the radiologist's interpretation of medical findings. It also communicates information to the referring physicians and records that information for future clinical and research use. Although efforts to structure some radiology report information through predefined templates are beginning to bear fruit, a large portion of radiology report information is entered in free text. The free text format is a major obstacle for rapid extraction and subsequent use of information by clinicians, researchers, and healthcare information systems. This difficulty is due to the ambiguity and subtlety of natural language, complexity of described images, and variations among different radiologists and healthcare organizations. As a result, radiology reports are used only once by the clinician who ordered the study and rarely are used again for research and data mining. In this work, machine learning techniques and a large multi-institutional radiology report repository are used to extract the semantics of the radiology report and overcome the barriers to the re-use of radiology report information in clinical research and other healthcare applications. We describe a machine learning system to annotate radiology reports and extract report contents according to an information model. This information model covers the majority of clinically significant contents in radiology reports and is applicable to a wide variety of radiology study types. Our automated approach uses discriminative sequence classifiers for named-entity recognition to extract and organize clinically significant terms and phrases consistent with the information model. We evaluated our information extraction system on 150 radiology reports from three major healthcare organizations and compared its results to a commonly used non-machine learning information extraction method. We also evaluated the generalizability of our approach across different organizations by training and testing our system on data from different organizations. Our results show the efficacy of our machine learning approach in extracting the information model's elements (10-fold cross-validation average performance: precision: 87%, recall: 84%, F1 score: 85%) and its superiority and generalizability compared to the common non-machine learning approach (p-value<0.05). Our machine learning information extraction approach provides an effective automatic method to annotate and extract clinically significant information from a large collection of free text radiology reports. This information extraction system can help clinicians better understand the radiology reports and prioritize their review process. In addition, the extracted information can be used by researchers to link radiology reports to information from other data sources such as electronic health records and the patient's genome. Extracted information also can facilitate disease surveillance, real-time clinical decision support for the radiologist, and content-based image retrieval. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Total lactic acid bacteria, antioxidant activity, and acceptance of synbiotic yoghurt with red ginger extract (Zingiberofficinale var. rubrum)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Larasati, B. A.; Panunggal, B.; Afifah, D. N.; Anjani, G.; Rustanti, N.

2018-02-01

Antioxidant related to oxidative stress can caused the metabolic disorders. A functional food that high in antioxidant can be use as the alternative prevention. The addition of red ginger extract in yoghurt could form a functional food, that high in antioxidant, synbiotic and fiber. The influence of red ginger extract on yoghurt synbiotic against lactic acid bacteria, antioxidant activity and acceptance were analyzed. This was an experimental research with one factor complete randomized design, specifically the addition of red ginger extract 0%; 0,1%; 0,3% and 0,5% into synbiotic yoghurt. Total plate count method used to analyze the lactic acid bacteria, 1-1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) method for antioxidant activity, and acceptance analyzed with hedonic test. The higher the dose of extract added to synbiotic yoghurt, the antioxidant activity got significantly increased (ρ=0,0001), while the lactic acid bacteria got insignificantly decreased (ρ=0,085). The addition of 0,5% red ginger extract obtained the antioxidant activity of 71% and 4,86 × 1013 CFU/ml on lactic acid bacteria, which the requirement for probiotic on National Standard of Indonesia is >107 CFU/ml. The addition of extract had a significant effect on acceptance (ρ=0,0001) in flavor, color, and texture, but not aroma (ρ=0,266). The optimal product in this research was the yoghurt synbiotic with addition of 0,1% red ginger extract. To summarize, the addition of red ginger extract in synbiotic yoghurt had significant effect on antioxidant activity, flavor, color, and texture, but no significant effect on lactic acid bacteria and aroma.

Toxicity Screening of Volatile Chemicals Using a Novel Air-Liquid Interface In Vitro Exposure System

EPA Science Inventory

Traditional in vitro dosing methods require, for example, the addition of particulate matter (PM), PM extracts, or chemicals in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) or water into cell culture medium. However, about 10% of chemicals nominated for study in the U.S Environmental Protection Age...

[Radiological dose and metadata management].

PubMed

Walz, M; Kolodziej, M; Madsack, B

2016-12-01

This article describes the features of management systems currently available in Germany for extraction, registration and evaluation of metadata from radiological examinations, particularly in the digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) environment. In addition, the probable relevant developments in this area concerning radiation protection legislation, terminology, standardization and information technology are presented.

OXIDATION OF BIPHENYL BY A MULTICOMPONENT ENZYME SYSTEM FROM PSEUDOMONAS SP. STRAIN LB400

EPA Science Inventory

Pseudomonas sp. strain LB400 grows on biphenyl as the sole carbon and energy source. This organism also cooxidizes several chlorinated biphenyl congeners. Biphenyl dioxygenase activity in cell extract required addition of NAD(P)H as an electron donor for the conversion of bipheny...

Critical Evaluation of Air-Liquid Interface Cell Exposure Systems for In Vitro Assessment of Atmospheric Pollutants##

EPA Science Inventory

Conventional in vitro exposure studies of airborne pollutants involve, for example, the addition of particulate matter (PM) or PM extracts to the cell culture medium, or the bubbling of gases into the culture medium; these methods alter the pollutant’s physical and chemical...

α, α', α", α'"- meso-tetrahexyltetramethyl-calix[4]pyrrole: An easy-to-prepare, isomerically pure anion extractant with enhanced solubility in organic solvents

DOE PAGES

Williams, Neil J.; Bryantsev, Vyacheslav S.; Custelcean, Radu; ...

2016-01-29

α, α', α", α'"- meso-Tetrahexyltetramethyl-calix[4]pyrrole is easily obtained as a single diastereomer in a one-pot reaction. It exhibits enhanced solubility in organic solvents, including aliphatic solvents, relative to its parent meso-octamethylcalix[4]pyrrole (1). Somewhat surprisingly, the tetrahexyl derivative 2 complexes with tributylmethylammonium chloride in chloroform more strongly than does 1 as shown by NMR titrations. However, 1 and 2 exhibit comparable complexation strength in extraction experiments, the difference between the NMR and extraction results being attributed to the effect of organic-phase water in the extraction systems. Mass-action analysis indicates the formation of the predominant complex TBMA +(1 or 2)Cl – inmore » both NMR and extraction systems, and equilibrium constants are reported. x-Ray crystal structures were obtained for the free ligand 2 and its complex with tetramethylammonium chloride. In addition, the free ligand crystallises in the 1,3-alt conformation with equatorial hexyl arms. In the chloride complex with 2 in its cone conformation, the hexyl arms adopt an axial orientation, enveloping the anion. DFT calculations show this binding conformation to be the most stable, mostly owing to destabilising steric interactions involving the pyrrole C–H and alkyl C–H groups positioned equatorially.« less

α, α', α", α'"- meso-tetrahexyltetramethyl-calix[4]pyrrole: An easy-to-prepare, isomerically pure anion extractant with enhanced solubility in organic solvents

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Williams, Neil J.; Bryantsev, Vyacheslav S.; Custelcean, Radu

α, α', α", α'"- meso-Tetrahexyltetramethyl-calix[4]pyrrole is easily obtained as a single diastereomer in a one-pot reaction. It exhibits enhanced solubility in organic solvents, including aliphatic solvents, relative to its parent meso-octamethylcalix[4]pyrrole (1). Somewhat surprisingly, the tetrahexyl derivative 2 complexes with tributylmethylammonium chloride in chloroform more strongly than does 1 as shown by NMR titrations. However, 1 and 2 exhibit comparable complexation strength in extraction experiments, the difference between the NMR and extraction results being attributed to the effect of organic-phase water in the extraction systems. Mass-action analysis indicates the formation of the predominant complex TBMA +(1 or 2)Cl – inmore » both NMR and extraction systems, and equilibrium constants are reported. x-Ray crystal structures were obtained for the free ligand 2 and its complex with tetramethylammonium chloride. In addition, the free ligand crystallises in the 1,3-alt conformation with equatorial hexyl arms. In the chloride complex with 2 in its cone conformation, the hexyl arms adopt an axial orientation, enveloping the anion. DFT calculations show this binding conformation to be the most stable, mostly owing to destabilising steric interactions involving the pyrrole C–H and alkyl C–H groups positioned equatorially.« less

Zinc ion enhances GABA tea-mediated oxidative DNA damage.

PubMed

Chuang, Show-Mei; Wang, Hsueh-Fang; Hsiao, Ching-Chuan; Cherng, Shur-Hueih

2012-02-15

GABA tea is a tea product that contains a high level of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Previous study has demonstrated a synergistic effect of GABA tea and copper ions on DNA breakage. This study further explored whether zinc (Zn), a nonredox metal, modulated DNA cleavage induced by GABA tea extract. In a cell-free system, Zn(2+) significantly enhanced GABA tea extract and (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG)- or H(2)O(2)-induced DNA damage at 24 h of incubation. Additionally, low dosages of GABA tea extract (1-10 μg/mL) possessed pro-oxidant activity to increase H(2)O(2)/Zn(2+)-induced DNA cleavage in a dose-dependent profile. By use of various reactive oxygen scavengers, it was observed that glutathione, catalase, and potassium iodide effectively inhibited DNA degradation caused by the GABA tea extract/H(2)O(2)/Zn(2+) system. Moreover, the data showed that the GABA tea extract itself (0.5-5 mg/mL) could induce DNA cleavage in a long-term exposure (48 h). EGCG, but not the GABA tea extract, enhanced H(2)O(2)-induced DNA cleavage. In contrast, GABA decreased H(2)O(2)- and EGCG-induced DNA cleavage, suggesting that GABA might contribute the major effect on the antioxidant activity of GABA tea extract. Furthermore, a comet assay revealed that GABA tea extract (0.25 mg/mL) and GABA had antioxidant activity on H(2)O(2)-induced DNA breakage in human peripheral lymphocytes. Taken together, these findings indicate that GABA tea has the potential of both pro-oxidant and antioxidant. It is proposed that a balance between EGCG-induced pro-oxidation and GABA-mediated antioxidation may occur in a complex mixture of GABA tea extract.

PHARMACOGNOSTICAL INVESTIGATIONS ON TRIPHALA CHURNAM

PubMed Central

Ashokkumar, D.

2007-01-01

Pharmacognostical and preliminary phytochemical studies of Triphala churnam were carried out. The churnam of triphala consists of equal quantities of deseeded fruits of Terminalia chebula, Terminalia bellerica and Emblica officinalis. Triphala is exclusively used in more than 200 drug formulations in Indian system of Medicine. The present study involved the pharmacognostical evaluation of Triphala, in which morphological and powder microscopical characters were established. In addition, physico-chemical parameters such as ash values viz, total ash (10.21± 0.42), acid insoluble ash (2.54 ± 0.06), water-soluble ash (5.46±0.24) and sulphated ash (13.12 ± 0.63), extractive values viz, alcohol soluble extractive (11.20±0.18)) and water-soluble extractive (52.56±2.04), fluorescent analysis and microchmical tests were determined. The preliminary phytochemical study revealed the presence of carbohydrates, reducing sugar and tannins in aqueous extract and carbohydrates, flavonoids and tannins in alcoholic extract. This standardization would be very much helpful for the identification of Triphala churnam to differentiate from other powdered sources. PMID:22557240

In Vitro Screening for Anti-Cholinesterase and Antioxidant Activity of Methanolic Extracts of Ayurvedic Medicinal Plants Used for Cognitive Disorders

PubMed Central

Mathew, Maya; Subramanian, Sarada

2014-01-01

Inhibition of Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is still considered as the main therapeutic strategy against Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Many plant derived phytochemicals have shown AChE inhibitory activity in addition to the currently approved drugs for AD. In the present study, methanolic extracts of 20 plants used in Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine for improving cognitive function were screened for acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity by Ellman’s microplate colorimetric method. Out of 20 extracts, Emblica officinalis, Nardostachys jatamansi, Nelumbo nucifera, Punica granatum and Raulfia Serpentina showed IC50 values <100 µg/ml for acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity. Antioxidant activities of these plants were assessed by DPPH scavenging assay. Among the extracts used, antioxidant activity was highest for Terminalia chebula and Emblica officinalis with IC50 values <10 µg/ml. Considering the complex multifactorial etiology of AD, these plant extracts will be safer and better candidates for the future disease modifying therapies against this devastating disease. PMID:24466247

Screening for estrogenic and antiestrogenic activities of plants growing in Egypt and Thailand

PubMed Central

El-Halawany, Ali M.; El Dine, Riham Salah; Chung, Mi Hwa; Nishihara, Tsutomu; Hattori, Masao

2011-01-01

Background: There is a growing demand for the discovery of new phytoestrogens to be used as a safe and effective hormonal replacement therapy. Materials and Methods: The methanol extracts of 40 plants from the Egyptian and Thailand folk medicines were screened for their estrogen agonist and antagonist activities. The estrogenic and antiestrogenic effects of the tested extracts were carried out using the yeast two-hybrid assay system expressing ERα and ERβ. In addition, all the extracts were subjected to a naringinase treatment and retested for their estrogenic activity. Results: The methanol extracts of Derris reticulata and Dracaena lourieri showed the most potent estrogenic activity on both estrogen-receptor subtypes, while, the methanol extracts of Butea monosperma, Erythrina fusca, and Dalbergia candenatensis revealed significant estrogenic activity on ERβ only. Nigella sativa, Sophora japonica, Artabotrys harmandii, and Clitorea hanceana showed estrogenic effect only after naringinase treatment. The most potent antiestrogenic effect was revealed by Aframomum melegueta, Dalbergia candenatensis, Dracena loureiri, and Mansonia gagei. PMID:21772754

In vitro screening for anti-cholinesterase and antioxidant activity of methanolic extracts of ayurvedic medicinal plants used for cognitive disorders.

PubMed

Mathew, Maya; Subramanian, Sarada

2014-01-01

Inhibition of Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is still considered as the main therapeutic strategy against Alzheimer's disease (AD). Many plant derived phytochemicals have shown AChE inhibitory activity in addition to the currently approved drugs for AD. In the present study, methanolic extracts of 20 plants used in Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine for improving cognitive function were screened for acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity by Ellman's microplate colorimetric method. Out of 20 extracts, Emblica officinalis, Nardostachys jatamansi, Nelumbo nucifera, Punica granatum and Raulfia Serpentina showed IC50 values <100 µg/ml for acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity. Antioxidant activities of these plants were assessed by DPPH scavenging assay. Among the extracts used, antioxidant activity was highest for Terminalia chebula and Emblica officinalis with IC50 values <10 µg/ml. Considering the complex multifactorial etiology of AD, these plant extracts will be safer and better candidates for the future disease modifying therapies against this devastating disease.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis Based on Convolutional Neural Network System for Colorectal Polyp Classification: Preliminary Experience.

PubMed

Komeda, Yoriaki; Handa, Hisashi; Watanabe, Tomohiro; Nomura, Takanobu; Kitahashi, Misaki; Sakurai, Toshiharu; Okamoto, Ayana; Minami, Tomohiro; Kono, Masashi; Arizumi, Tadaaki; Takenaka, Mamoru; Hagiwara, Satoru; Matsui, Shigenaga; Nishida, Naoshi; Kashida, Hiroshi; Kudo, Masatoshi

2017-01-01

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is becoming a next-generation tool for the diagnosis of human disease. CAD for colon polyps has been suggested as a particularly useful tool for trainee colonoscopists, as the use of a CAD system avoids the complications associated with endoscopic resections. In addition to conventional CAD, a convolutional neural network (CNN) system utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) has been developing rapidly over the past 5 years. We attempted to generate a unique CNN-CAD system with an AI function that studied endoscopic images extracted from movies obtained with colonoscopes used in routine examinations. Here, we report our preliminary results of this novel CNN-CAD system for the diagnosis of colon polyps. A total of 1,200 images from cases of colonoscopy performed between January 2010 and December 2016 at Kindai University Hospital were used. These images were extracted from the video of actual endoscopic examinations. Additional video images from 10 cases of unlearned processes were retrospectively assessed in a pilot study. They were simply diagnosed as either an adenomatous or nonadenomatous polyp. The number of images used by AI to learn to distinguish adenomatous from nonadenomatous was 1,200:600. These images were extracted from the videos of actual endoscopic examinations. The size of each image was adjusted to 256 × 256 pixels. A 10-hold cross-validation was carried out. The accuracy of the 10-hold cross-validation is 0.751, where the accuracy is the ratio of the number of correct answers over the number of all the answers produced by the CNN. The decisions by the CNN were correct in 7 of 10 cases. A CNN-CAD system using routine colonoscopy might be useful for the rapid diagnosis of colorectal polyp classification. Further prospective studies in an in vivo setting are required to confirm the effectiveness of a CNN-CAD system in routine colonoscopy. © 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Continous Representation Learning via User Feedback

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Representation learning is a deep-learning based technique for extracting features from data for the purpose of machine learning. This requires a large amount of data, on order tens of thousands to millions of samples, to properly teach the deep neural network. This a system for continuous representation learning, where the system may be improved with a small number of additional samples (order 10-100). The unique characteristics of this invention include a human-computer feedback component, where assess the quality of the current representation and then provides a better representation to the system. The system then mixes the new data with oldmore » training examples to avoid overfitting and improve overall performance of the system. The model can be exported and shared with other users, and it may be applied to additional images the system hasn't seen before.« less

Application of cavitation system to accelerate aqueous enzymatic extraction of seed oil from Cucurbita pepo L. and evaluation of hypoglycemic effect.

PubMed

Li, Xiao-Juan; Li, Zhu-Gang; Wang, Xun; Han, Jun-Yan; Zhang, Bo; Fu, Yu-Jie; Zhao, Chun-Jian

2016-12-01

Cavitation-accelerated aqueous enzymatic extraction (CAEE) of seed oil from Cucurbita pepo was performed. An enzyme cocktail comprised of cellulose, pectinase and proteinase can work synergistically in releasing the oil. The CAEE extraction conditions were optimized by a Plackett-Burman design followed by a central composite methodology. A maximal extraction yield of 58.06% was achieved under optimal conditions of vacuum degree -0.07, enzyme amount 1.05% and extraction time 69min. As compared to soxhlet extraction (SE)-derived oil, CAEE-derived oil exhibited similar physical properties and better oxidation stability. In addition, chemical composition analyzing showed that the content of linoleic acid obtained by CAEE (47.67%) was higher than that of SE (44.51%). Moreover, the IC50 of oil obtained by CAEE and SE, as measured by α-amylase inhibition assay, were 40.68μg/mL and 45.46μg/mL. All results suggest that CAEE represents an excellent alternative protocol for production of oil from oil-bearing materials. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Phyto-SERM Constitutes from Flemingia macrophylla

PubMed Central

Lai, Wan-Chun; Tsui, Ya-Ting; Singab, Abdel Nasser B.; El-Shazly, Mohamed; Du, Ying-Chi; Hwang, Tsong-Long; Wu, Chin-Chung; Yen, Ming-Hong; Lee, Ching-Kuo; Hou, Ming-Feng; Wu, Yang-Chang; Chang, Fang-Rong

2013-01-01

The methanolic extract of Flemingia macrophylla roots exhibited significant estrogenic activity in the transgenic plant assay system which was comparable to the activity of soybean extract. Utilizing estrogenic activity-guided fractionation, one new compound, fleminigin, together with 23 known compounds were isolated from F. macrophylla roots’ methanolic extract. The structure of the new compound was identified based on intensive spectroscopic analysis and the full spectral data for one of the isolated compounds, flemichin E, was introduced for the first time in the current investigation. The estrogenic and anti-estrogenic activities of the isolated compounds were evaluated revealing that the isolated isoflavonoids may act as partial estrogen agonists, as well as antagonists. Additionally, the anti-inflammatory and the cytotoxic activities of the isolated compounds were studied. These results suggested the potential applications of F. macrophylla extract and its isolated compounds as selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs). PMID:23896592

Performance of a Retrofitted Multicyclone for PM2.5 Emission Control

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dewika, M.; Rashid, M.; Ammar, M. R.

2018-03-01

This paper presents on the performance of a retrofitted multicyclone system, which aims to increase the collection efficiency of PM2.5 (i.e. particulate size fraction ≤ 2.5 μm) emission. The multicyclone was retrofitted by extracting 15% and 20% of the total volumetric air flow rate at the dust hopper of the unit using an additional Induced Draft Fan. The total collection efficiency with and without the extraction was measured at various air volumetric flow rates and particulate mass inlet concentration. The results showed that there was a reduction of 12% to 54% depending on the inlet concentration of PM2.5 emission in the stack with compared to without extraction increasing the collection efficiency of the retrofitted multicyclone. The finding suggests that a simple technique of applying gas extraction at the dust hopper of a multicyclone as reported in this study able to increase the overall performance in fine particulate collection.

Ethanolic extraction, purification, and partial characterization of a fluorescent toxin from the coral reef crab, Lophozozymus pictor.

PubMed

Lau, C O; Tan, C H; Khoo, H E; Li, Q T; Yuen, R

1995-01-01

A purification procedure for Lophozozymus pictor toxin (LPTX) following ethanolic extraction of whole crab homogenate is described. The ethanol-extracted toxin (LPTX-E) had higher yield and specific activity than the hot aqueous-extracted one (LPTX-H). It was found that LPTX-E was fluorescent and cochromatographed with LPTX-H on two-dimensional thin-layer chromatography. Although LPTX-E, LPTX-H, and palytoxin (P. caribaeorum, PTX) had similar migration and retention times when analysed on high performance capillary electrophoresis and gel permeation-high performance liquid chromatography respectively, LPTX-E and LPTX-H were both fluorescent in contrast to PTX. In addition, LPTX-E had a different retention time compared with PTX when chromatographed on reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography in the solvent system 80% acetonitrile and 0.02 M Tris-HCl, pH 7.2, at a 4:1 ratio, respectively, indicating some differences in their chemical structures.

Application of an efficient strategy based on liquid-liquid extraction, high-speed counter-current chromatography, and preparative HPLC for the rapid enrichment, separation, and purification of four anthraquinones from Rheum tanguticum.

PubMed

Chen, Tao; Liu, Yongling; Zou, Denglang; Chen, Chen; You, Jinmao; Zhou, Guoying; Sun, Jing; Li, Yulin

2014-01-01

This study presents an efficient strategy based on liquid-liquid extraction, high-speed counter-current chromatography, and preparative HPLC for the rapid enrichment, separation, and purification of four anthraquinones from Rheum tanguticum. A new solvent system composed of petroleum ether/ethyl acetate/water (4:2:1, v/v/v) was developed for the liquid-liquid extraction of the crude extract from R. tanguticum. As a result, emodin, aloe-emodin, physcion, and chrysophanol were greatly enriched in the organic layer. In addition, an efficient method was successfully established to separate and purify the above anthraquinones by high-speed counter-current chromatography and preparative HPLC. This study supplies a new alternative method for the rapid enrichment, separation, and purification of emodin, aloe-emodin, physcione, and chrysophanol. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Physiological profiling of soil microbial communities in a Florida scrub-oak ecosystem: spatial distribution and nutrient limitations.

PubMed

Brown, Alisha L P; Garland, Jay L; Day, Frank P

2009-01-01

Rapid physiological profiling of heterotrophic microbial communities enables intensive analysis of the factors affecting activity in aerobic habitats, such as soil. Previous methods for performing such profiling were severely limited due to enrichment bias and inflexibility in incubation conditions. We tested a new physiological profiling approach based on a microtiter plate oxygen sensor system (Becton Dickinson Oxygen Biosensor System (BDOBS)), which allows for testing of lower substrate addition (i.e., lower enrichment potential) and manipulation of physiochemical assay conditions, such as pH and nutrients. Soil microbial communities associated with a scrub-oak forest ecosystem on Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge in central Florida, USA, were studied in order to evaluate microbial activity in a nutrient poor soil and to provide baseline data on the site for subsequent evaluation of the effects of elevated CO(2) on ecosystem function. The spatial variation in physiological activity amongst different habitats (litter, bulk soil, and rhizosphere) was examined as a function of adaptation to local resources (i.e., water soluble extracts of roots and leaf litter) and the degree of N and P limitation. All the communities were primarily N-limited, with a secondary P limitation, which was greater in the rhizosphere and bulk soil. The litter community showed greater overall oxygen consumption when exposed to litter extracts relative to the rhizosphere or soil, suggesting acclimation toward greater use of the mixed substrates in the extract. Root extracts were readily used by communities from all the habitats with no habitat specific acclimation observed. A priming effect was detected in all habitats; addition of glucose caused a significant increase in the use of soil organic carbon. Response to added glucose was only observed with N and P addition, suggesting that C may be lost to the groundwater from these porous soils because nutrient limitation prevents C immobilization.

Anxiolytic-like actions of the hexane extract from leaves of Annona cherimolia in two anxiety paradigms: possible involvement of the GABA/benzodiazepine receptor complex.

PubMed

López-Rubalcava, C; Piña-Medina, B; Estrada-Reyes, R; Heinze, G; Martínez-Vázquez, M

2006-01-11

A hexane extract of leaves of Annona cherimolia produced anxiolytic-like actions when administered to mice and tested in two animal models of anxiety: the mouse avoidance exploratory behavior and the burying behavior tests. In order to discard unspecific drug-actions on general activity, all treatments studied in the anxiety paradigms were also analyzed in the open field test. Results showed that A. cherimolia induced anxiolytic-like actions at the doses of 6.25, 12.5, 25.0 and 50.0 mg/kg. Picrotoxin (0.25 mg/kg), a GABA-gated chloride ion channel blocker, antagonized the anxiolytic-like actions of A. cherimolia, while a sub-effective dose of muscimol (0.5 mg/kg), a selective GABA(A) receptor agonist, facilitated the effects of a sub-optimal dose of A. cherimolia (3.12 mg/kg). Thus, the involvement of the GABA(A) receptor complex in the anxiolytic-like actions of A. cherimolia hexane extract is suggested. In addition the extract was also able to enhance the duration of sodium pentobarbital induced sleeping time. Taken together, results indicate that the hexane extract of A. cherimolia has depressant activity on the Central Nervous System and could interact with the GABA(A) receptor complex. On the other hand, the chromatographic separation of this extract led to the isolation of palmitone, and beta-sitosterol as major constituents. In addition a GC-MS study of some fractions revealed the presence of several compounds such beta-cariophyllene, beta-selinene, alpha-cubebene, and linalool that have been reported to show effects on behavior that could explain some of the extract effects.

Improving the physico-chemical and sensory characteristics of camel meat burger patties using ginger extract and papain.

PubMed

Abdel-Naeem, Heba H S; Mohamed, Hussein M H

2016-08-01

The objective of the current study was to include tenderizing agents in the formulation of camel meat burger patties to improve the physico-chemical and sensory characteristics of the product. Camel meat burger patties were processed with addition of ginger extract (7%), papain (0.01%) and mixture of ginger extract (5%) and papain (0.005%) in addition to control. Addition of ginger, papain and their mixture resulted in significant (P<0.05) increase of the collagen solubility and sensory scores (juiciness, tenderness and overall acceptability) with significant (P<0.05) reduction of the shear force values. Ginger extract resulted in extensive fragmentation of myofibrils; however, papain extract caused noticeable destructive effect on connective tissue. Moreover, ginger and papain resulted in improvement of the lipid stability of treated burger patties during storage. Therefore, addition of ginger extract and papain powder during formulation of camel burger patties can improve their physico-chemical and sensory properties. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Volatile aroma components and antioxidant activities of the flavedo peel extract of unripe Shiikuwasha (Citrus depressa Hayata).

PubMed

Asikin, Yonathan; Taira, Ikuko; Inafuku, Sayuri; Sumi, Hidekazu; Sawamura, Masayoshi; Takara, Kensaku; Wada, Koji

2012-04-01

The flavedo peel extracts of unripe Shiikuwasha (Citrus depressa Hayata) fruits were extracted using steam distillation (SD) or a cold-press (CP) system. Volatile aroma content and composition were determined using gas chromatography (GC) and each compound was identified using gas chromatography-mass spectrophotometry (GC-MS). The major constituents of the extracts were monoterpene hydrocarbons (91.75-93.75%[709.32-809.05 mg/100 g of fresh flavedo peel]) including limonene (43.08-45.13%[341.46-379.81 mg/100 g of fresh flavedo peel]), γ-terpinene (27.88-29.06%[219.90-245.86 mg/100 g of fresh flavedo peel]), and p-cymene (8.13-11.02%[61.47-97.22 mg/100 g of fresh flavedo peel]). The extraction process used was determined to be a decisive factor that affects the composition of key citrus aroma components, as well as the antioxidant activities of the Shiikuwasha fruit. Antioxidant capabilities of the extracts were examined by assay of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical-scavenging activity and β-carotene bleaching inhibition. The cold-press extraction system may better retain the total phenolic content of the flavedo peel and display superior antioxidant activities, compared to the steam distillation extraction method. Shiikuwasha (Citrus depressa Hayata) is a type of small citrus fruit, and has been used as raw material for beverage and food additive productions in Japan. It had a unique aroma composition in which the limonene content of its peels is lower than that of other commonly known citrus peels. The present study detailed the volatile aroma composition, as well as antioxidant capabilities of Shiikuwasha peel extracts of different extraction methods, that are cold-press and steam distillation methods. The results of this study may provide a basis for selection of Shiikuwasha peel extracts in food industry for citrus flavor production. © 2012 Institute of Food Technologists®

[Investigation on Inhibitory Capacities of Seventeen Herbal Extracts on Oxidative Stress using Ultraviolet and Fluorescence Spectroscopy].

PubMed

Hou, Guang-yue; Zheng, Zhong; Song, Feng-rui; Liu, Zhi-qiang; Zhao, Bing

2015-03-01

Diabetic patients usually suffer from complications and the long-term secondary complications are the main cause of morbidity and mortality. The hyperglycemia-induced oxidative stress is one of the important pathogenesis of diabetic complications, while the oxidative stress is associated with the lipid peroxidation reaction and the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Our study was focus on the pathogenesis of diabetic complications and based on the oxidative stress reaction. In this research, the oxidative stress inhibiting effects of seventeen herbal extracts were studied based on spectroscopic methodology. The capacities of herbal extracts against the lipid peroxidation reaction of rat liver in vitro were investigated using spectrophotometric method. It showed that the inhibitory activity of Radix Scutellariae and Flos Sophorae Immaturus were better than other herbal extracts. Additionally, the herbal extracts rich in flavonoids, alkaloids and lignanoids showed good inhibitory activities on the lipid peroxidation reaction. On the contrary, the saponin-rich herbal extracts possessed weak inhibitory effects. We applied the BSA/glucose (fructose) system combined with fluorescent spectroscopy to determine the inhibitory activities of herbal extracts in glycation model reactions. The results showed that the AGEs formation inhibitory activity of Flos Sophorae Immaturus, Radix Scutellariae and Rhizoma Anemarrhenae were better than others in the BSA/glucose (fructose) system by fluorescene analysis. The results demonstrated that the herbal extracts rich in flavonoids were found to be more effective than that of those herbal extracts as alkaloids and terpenoids class in inhibiting oxidative stress, while the saponin-rich herbal extracts showed weak inhibitory activities against oxidative stress. The Flos Sophorae Immaturus and Radix Scutellariae extracts had better inhibitory activity to the oxidative stress, so their pharmacological activity could be explored in further investigations. These results demonstrated in this assay could provide a reference for the study of pharmacological activity, and thus lays the foundation for the further study of the application of natural products in the prevention and treatment of diabetic complications.

The Application of Clove Extract Protects Chinese-style Sausages against Oxidation and Quality Deterioration

PubMed Central

Peng, Xinyan

2017-01-01

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of clove extract (CE) (0.25%, 0.5%, 1%, and 2%) on the oxidative stability and quality deterioration of Chinese-style sausage stored for 21 d at 4°C. The addition of clove extract to sausages significantly retarded increases in Thiobarbituric Reactive Substances (TBARS) values (p<0.05), while also controlling the production of protein carbonyls (p<0.05). However, the addition of clove extract promoted reduced thiol group content in sausages (p<0.05). Sausages amended with clove extract also had decreased L* values (p<0.05) and increased a* values (p<0.05) when compared with the control. Similarly, texture deterioration was retarded in sausage containing added clove extract when compared with the control during refrigerated storage. Moreover, the addition of clove extract had no negative effects on the sensory properties of sausages. These results suggested that clove extract was effective at protecting sausages from oxidation and quality deterioration during refrigerated storage for 21 d. PMID:28316478

The Application of Clove Extract Protects Chinese-style Sausages against Oxidation and Quality Deterioration.

PubMed

Zhang, Huiyun; Peng, Xinyan; Li, Xinling; Wu, Jingjuan; Guo, Xinyu

2017-01-01

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of clove extract (CE) (0.25%, 0.5%, 1%, and 2%) on the oxidative stability and quality deterioration of Chinese-style sausage stored for 21 d at 4°C. The addition of clove extract to sausages significantly retarded increases in Thiobarbituric Reactive Substances (TBARS) values ( p <0.05), while also controlling the production of protein carbonyls ( p <0.05). However, the addition of clove extract promoted reduced thiol group content in sausages ( p <0.05). Sausages amended with clove extract also had decreased L* values ( p <0.05) and increased a* values ( p <0.05) when compared with the control. Similarly, texture deterioration was retarded in sausage containing added clove extract when compared with the control during refrigerated storage. Moreover, the addition of clove extract had no negative effects on the sensory properties of sausages. These results suggested that clove extract was effective at protecting sausages from oxidation and quality deterioration during refrigerated storage for 21 d.

Hand Motion Classification Using a Multi-Channel Surface Electromyography Sensor

PubMed Central

Tang, Xueyan; Liu, Yunhui; Lv, Congyi; Sun, Dong

2012-01-01

The human hand has multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) for achieving high-dexterity motions. Identifying and replicating human hand motions are necessary to perform precise and delicate operations in many applications, such as haptic applications. Surface electromyography (sEMG) sensors are a low-cost method for identifying hand motions, in addition to the conventional methods that use data gloves and vision detection. The identification of multiple hand motions is challenging because the error rate typically increases significantly with the addition of more hand motions. Thus, the current study proposes two new methods for feature extraction to solve the problem above. The first method is the extraction of the energy ratio features in the time-domain, which are robust and invariant to motion forces and speeds for the same gesture. The second method is the extraction of the concordance correlation features that describe the relationship between every two channels of the multi-channel sEMG sensor system. The concordance correlation features of a multi-channel sEMG sensor system were shown to provide a vast amount of useful information for identification. Furthermore, a new cascaded-structure classifier is also proposed, in which 11 types of hand gestures can be identified accurately using the newly defined features. Experimental results show that the success rate for the identification of the 11 gestures is significantly high. PMID:22438703

Hand motion classification using a multi-channel surface electromyography sensor.

PubMed

Tang, Xueyan; Liu, Yunhui; Lv, Congyi; Sun, Dong

2012-01-01

The human hand has multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) for achieving high-dexterity motions. Identifying and replicating human hand motions are necessary to perform precise and delicate operations in many applications, such as haptic applications. Surface electromyography (sEMG) sensors are a low-cost method for identifying hand motions, in addition to the conventional methods that use data gloves and vision detection. The identification of multiple hand motions is challenging because the error rate typically increases significantly with the addition of more hand motions. Thus, the current study proposes two new methods for feature extraction to solve the problem above. The first method is the extraction of the energy ratio features in the time-domain, which are robust and invariant to motion forces and speeds for the same gesture. The second method is the extraction of the concordance correlation features that describe the relationship between every two channels of the multi-channel sEMG sensor system. The concordance correlation features of a multi-channel sEMG sensor system were shown to provide a vast amount of useful information for identification. Furthermore, a new cascaded-structure classifier is also proposed, in which 11 types of hand gestures can be identified accurately using the newly defined features. Experimental results show that the success rate for the identification of the 11 gestures is significantly high.

High pressure feeder and method of operating to feed granular or fine materials

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Vimalchand, Pannalal; Liu, Guohai; Peng, Wan Wang

2014-10-07

A coal feed system to feed pulverized low rank coals containing up to 25 wt % moisture to gasifiers operating up to 1000 psig pressure is described. The system includes gas distributor and collector gas permeable pipes imbedded in the lock vessel. Different methods of operation of the feed system are disclosed to minimize feed problems associated with bridging and packing of the pulverized coal. The method of maintaining the feed system and feeder device exit pressures using gas addition or extraction with the pressure control device is also described.

High pressure feeder and method of operating to feed granular or fine materials

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Vimalchand, Pannalal; Liu, Guohai; Peng, Wan Wang

A coal feed system to feed pulverized low rank coals containing up to 25 wt % moisture to gasifiers operating up to 1000 psig pressure is described. The system includes gas distributor and collector gas permeable pipes imbedded in the lock vessel. Different methods of operation of the feed system are disclosed to minimize feed problems associated with bridging and packing of the pulverized coal. The method of maintaining the feed system and feeder device exit pressures using gas addition or extraction with the pressure control device is also described.

Chemical characteristic and functional properties of arenga starch-taro (Colocasia esculanta L.) flour noodle with turmeric extracts addition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ervika Rahayu N., H.; Ariani, Dini; Miftakhussolikhah, E., Maharani P.; Yudi, P.

2017-01-01

Arenga starch-taro (Colocasia esculanta L.) flour noodle is an alternative carbohydrate source made from 75% arenga starch and 25% taro flour, but it has a different color with commercial noodle product. The addition of natural color from turmeric may change the consumer preference and affect chemical characteristic and functional properties of noodle. This research aims to identify chemical characteristic and functional properties of arenga starch-taro flour noodle with turmeric extract addition. Extraction was performed using 5 variances of turmeric rhizome (0.06; 0.12; 0.18; 0.24; and 0.30 g (fresh weight/ml water). Then, noodle was made and chemical characteristic (proximate analysis) as well as functional properties (amylose, resistant starch, dietary fiber, antioxidant activity) were then evaluated. The result showed that addition of turmeric extract did not change protein, fat, carbohydrate, amylose, and resistant starch content significantly, while antioxidant activity was increased (23,41%) with addition of turmeric extract.

Spectral monitoring of toluene and ethanol in gasoline blends using Fourier-Transform Raman spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ortega Clavero, Valentin; Weber, Andreas; Schröder, Werner; Curticapean, Dan; Meyrueis, Patrick; Javahiraly, Nicolas

2013-04-01

The combination of fossil-derived fuels with ethanol and methanol has acquired relevance and attention in several countries in recent years. This trend is strongly affected by market prices, constant geopolitical events, new sustainability policies, new laws and regulations, etc. Besides bio-fuels these materials also include different additives as anti-shock agents and as octane enhancer. Some of the chemical compounds in these additives may have harmful properties for both environment and public health (besides the inherent properties, like volatility). We present detailed Raman spectral information from toluene (C7H8) and ethanol (C2H6O) contained in samples of ElO gasoline-ethanol blends. The spectral information has been extracted by using a robust, high resolution Fourier-Transform Raman spectrometer (FT-Raman) prototype. This spectral information has been also compared with Raman spectra from pure additives and with standard Raman lines in order to validate its accuracy in frequency. The spectral information is presented in the range of 0 cm-1 to 3500 cm-1 with a resolution of 1.66cm-1. This allows resolving tight adjacent Raman lines like the ones observed around 1003cm-1 and 1030cm-1 (characteristic lines of toluene). The Raman spectra obtained show a reduced frequency deviation when compared to standard Raman spectra from different calibration materials. The FT-Raman spectrometer prototype used for the analysis consist basically of a Michelson interferometer and a self-designed photon counter cooled down on a Peltier element arrangement. The light coupling is achieved with conventional62.5/125μm multi-mode fibers. This FT-Raman setup is able to extract high resolution and frequency precise Raman spectra from the additives in the fuels analyzed. The proposed prototype has no additional complex hardware components or costly software modules. The mechanical and thermal disturbances affecting the FT-Raman system are mathematically compensated by accurately extracting the optical path information of the Michelson interferometer. This is accomplished by generating an additional interference pattern with a λ = 632.8 nm Helium-Neon laser (HeNe laser). It enables the FT-Raman system to perform reliable and clean spectral measurements from the materials under observation.

Role of soil disturbances in determining post-harvest plant biodiversity and invasive weed distributions

Treesearch

Daniel G. Neary; Will H. Moir; Steven T. Overby

2002-01-01

Harvesting for conventional forestry products, bioenergy, or fuels reduction creates varying levels of soil disturbance depending upon the felling and extraction systems used. Site preparation before replanting imposes additional soil disturbances depending on the mix of mechanical, chemical, and fire techniques used These inter-rotation disturbances usually affect...

Establishment of a Digital Knowledge Conversion Architecture Design Learning with High User Acceptance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Yun-Wu; Weng, Apollo; Weng, Kuo-Hua

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study is to design a knowledge conversion and management digital learning system for architecture design learning, helping students to share, extract, use and create their design knowledge through web-based interactive activities based on socialization, internalization, combination and externalization process in addition to…

Augmenting and updating NASA spacelink electronic information system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Blake, Jean A.

1989-01-01

The development of Spacelink during its gestation, birth, infancy, and childhood are described. In addition to compiling and developing more material for implementation in Spacelink, Summer 1989 was spent scanning the insignias of the various manned missions into Spacelink. Material for the above was extracted from existing NASA publications, documents and photographs.

Liquid and solid self-microemulsifying drug delivery systems for improving the oral bioavailability of andrographolide from a crude extract of Andrographis paniculata.

PubMed

Sermkaew, Namfa; Ketjinda, Wichan; Boonme, Prapaporn; Phadoongsombut, Narubodee; Wiwattanapatapee, Ruedeekorn

2013-11-20

The purpose of this study was to develop self-microemulsifying formulations of an Andrographis paniculata extract in liquid and pellet forms for an improved oral delivery of andrographolide. The optimized liquid self-microemulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) was composed of A. paniculata extract (11.1%), Capryol 90 (40%), Cremophor RH 40 (40%) and Labrasol (8.9%). This liquid SMEDDS was further adsorbed onto colloidal silicon dioxide and microcrystalline cellulose, and converted to SMEDDS pellets by the extrusion/spheronization technique. The microemulsion droplet sizes of the liquid and pellet formulations after dilution with water were in the range of 23.4 and 30.3 nm. The in vitro release of andrographolide from the liquid SMEDDS and SMEDDS pellets was 97.64% (SD 1.97%) and 97.74% (SD 3.36%) within 15 min, respectively while the release from the initial extract was only 10%. The oral absorption of andrographolide was determined in rabbits. The C(max) value of andrographolide from the A. paniculata extract liquid SMEDDS and SMEDDS pellet formulations (equivalent to 17.5mg/kg of andrographolide) was 6-fold and 5-fold greater than the value from the initial extract in aqueous suspension (equivalent to 35 mg/kg of andrographolide), respectively. In addition, the AUC(0-12h) was increased 15-fold by the liquid SMEDDS and 13-fold by the SMEDDS pellets compared to the extract in aqueous suspension, respectively. The results clearly indicated that the liquid and solid SMEDDS could be effectively used to improve the dissolution and oral bioavailability that would also enable a reduction in the dose of the poorly water soluble A. paniculata extract. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Polar extracts from (Tunisian) Acacia salicina Lindl. Study of the antimicrobial and antigenotoxic activities

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Methanolic, aqueous and Total Oligomer Flavonoids (TOF)-enriched extracts obtained from the leaves of Acacia salicina 'Lindl.' were investigated for antibacterial, antimutagenic and antioxidant activities. Methods The antimicrobial activity was tested on the Gram positive and Gram negative reference bacterial strains. The Mutagenic and antimutagenic activities against direct acting mutagens, methylmethane sulfonate (MMS) and 4-nitro-o-phenylenediamine (NOPD), and indirect acting mutagens, 2-aminoanthracene (2-AA) and benzo[a]pyrene (B(a)P) were performed with S. typhimurium TA102 and TA98 assay systems. In addition, the enzymatic and nonenzymatic methods were employed to evaluate the anti-oxidative effects of the tested extracts. Results A significant effect against the Gram positive and Gram negative reference bacterial strains was observed with all the extracts. The mutagenic and antimutagenic studies revealed that all the extracts decreased the mutagenicity induced by B(a)P (7.5 μg/plate), 2-AA (5 μg/plate), MMS (1.3 mg/plate) and NOPD (10 μg/plate). Likewise, all the extracts showed an important free radical scavenging activity towards the superoxide anion generated by the xanthine/xanthine oxidase assay system, as well as high Trolox Equivalent Antioxidant Capacity (TEAC), against the 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS)+• radical. TOF-enriched extract exhibited the highest protective effect against free radicals, direct acting-mutagen and metabolically activated S9-dependent mutagens. Conclusions The present study indicates that the extracts from A. salicina leaves are a significant source of compounds with the antimutagenic and antioxidant activities, and this may be useful for developing potential chemopreventive substances. PMID:22490278

A neural joint model for entity and relation extraction from biomedical text.

PubMed

Li, Fei; Zhang, Meishan; Fu, Guohong; Ji, Donghong

2017-03-31

Extracting biomedical entities and their relations from text has important applications on biomedical research. Previous work primarily utilized feature-based pipeline models to process this task. Many efforts need to be made on feature engineering when feature-based models are employed. Moreover, pipeline models may suffer error propagation and are not able to utilize the interactions between subtasks. Therefore, we propose a neural joint model to extract biomedical entities as well as their relations simultaneously, and it can alleviate the problems above. Our model was evaluated on two tasks, i.e., the task of extracting adverse drug events between drug and disease entities, and the task of extracting resident relations between bacteria and location entities. Compared with the state-of-the-art systems in these tasks, our model improved the F1 scores of the first task by 5.1% in entity recognition and 8.0% in relation extraction, and that of the second task by 9.2% in relation extraction. The proposed model achieves competitive performances with less work on feature engineering. We demonstrate that the model based on neural networks is effective for biomedical entity and relation extraction. In addition, parameter sharing is an alternative method for neural models to jointly process this task. Our work can facilitate the research on biomedical text mining.

Protective effects of pulmonary epithelial lining fluid on oxidative stress and DNA single-strand breaks caused by ultrafine carbon black, ferrous sulphate and organic extract of diesel exhaust particles

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Chuang, Hsiao-Chi; Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Shuang Ho Hospital, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan; Cheng, Yi-Ling

Pulmonary epithelial lining fluid (ELF) is the first substance to make contact with inhaled particulate matter (PM) and interacts chemically with PM components. The objective of this study was to determine the role of ELF in oxidative stress, DNA damage and the production of proinflammatory cytokines following physicochemical exposure to PM. Ultrafine carbon black (ufCB, 15 nm; a model carbonaceous core), ferrous sulphate (FeSO{sub 4}; a model transition metal) and a diesel exhaust particle (DEP) extract (a model organic compound) were used to examine the acellular oxidative potential of synthetic ELF and non-ELF systems. We compared the effects of exposuremore » to ufCB, FeSO{sub 4} and DEP extract on human alveolar epithelial Type II (A549) cells to determine the levels of oxidative stress, DNA single-strand breaks and interleukin-8 (IL-8) production in ELF and non-ELF systems. The effects of ufCB and FeSO{sub 4} on the acellular oxidative potential, cellular oxidative stress and DNA single-strand breakage were mitigated significantly by the addition of ELF, whereas there was no decrease following treatment with the DEP extract. There was no significant effect on IL-8 production following exposure to samples that were suspended in ELF/non-ELF systems. The results of the present study indicate that ELF plays an important role in the initial defence against PM in the pulmonary environment. Experimental components, such as ufCB and FeSO{sub 4}, induced the production of oxidative stress and led to DNA single-strand breaks, which were moderately prevented by the addition of ELF. These findings suggest that ELF plays a protective role against PM-driven oxidative stress and DNA damage. -- Highlights: ► To determine the role of ELF in ROS, DNA damage and IL-8 after exposure to PM. ► ufCB, FeSO{sub 4} and DEP extract were used to examine the protective effects of ELF. ► PM-driven oxidative stress and DNA single-strand breakage were mitigated by ELF. ► The findings suggest that ELF has a protective role against PM. ► The synthetic ELF system could reduce the use of animals in PM-driven ROS testing.« less

Influence of sample processing on the analysis of carotenoids in maize.

PubMed

Rivera, Sol; Canela, Ramon

2012-09-21

We performed a number of tests with the aim to develop an effective extraction method for the analysis of carotenoid content in maize seed. Mixtures of methanol-ethyl acetate (6:4, v/v) and methanol-tetrahydrofuran (1:1, v/v) were the most effective solvent systems for carotenoid extraction from maize endosperm under the conditions assayed. In addition, we also addressed sample preparation prior to the analysis of carotenoids by liquid chromatography (LC). The LC response of extracted carotenoids and standards in several solvents was evaluated and results were related to the degree of solubility of these pigments. Three key factors were found to be important when selecting a suitable injection solvent: compatibility between the mobile phase and injection solvent, carotenoid polarity and content in the matrix.

Agile Text Mining for the 2014 i2b2/UTHealth Cardiac Risk Factors Challenge

PubMed Central

Cormack, James; Nath, Chinmoy; Milward, David; Raja, Kalpana; Jonnalagadda, Siddhartha R

2016-01-01

This paper describes the use of an agile text mining platform (Linguamatics’ Interactive Information Extraction Platform, I2E) to extract document-level cardiac risk factors in patient records as defined in the i2b2/UTHealth 2014 Challenge. The approach uses a data-driven rule-based methodology with the addition of a simple supervised classifier. We demonstrate that agile text mining allows for rapid optimization of extraction strategies, while post-processing can leverage annotation guidelines, corpus statistics and logic inferred from the gold standard data. We also show how data imbalance in a training set affects performance. Evaluation of this approach on the test data gave an F-Score of 91.7%, one percent behind the top performing system. PMID:26209007

A new site for 85Kr measurements on groundwater samples

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lange, T.; Hebert, D.

2001-06-01

As a part of a new 85Kr laboratory, which is currently being established at the Institute of Applied Physics in Freiberg, Germany, a modified CO 2 extractor for krypton sampling is used. The operation principle is simple and contamination-safe with a reasonable effort. Continuously pumped under pressure, the water passes a Venturi-type nozzle and degasses due to relaxing. The extracted gas mixture then enters a recirculation system flowing through a CO 2 trap (NaOH), molecular sieves and a cooled charcoal trap, where krypton and other components are adsorbed. Remaining gases reenter the system at the Venturi-type nozzle. To keep the circulation alive an additional helium support is needed. In a simple field experiment, extraction efficiencies up to 0.8 for 222Rn have been measured.

Automatic recognition of emotions from facial expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xue, Henry; Gertner, Izidor

2014-06-01

In the human-computer interaction (HCI) process it is desirable to have an artificial intelligent (AI) system that can identify and categorize human emotions from facial expressions. Such systems can be used in security, in entertainment industries, and also to study visual perception, social interactions and disorders (e.g. schizophrenia and autism). In this work we survey and compare the performance of different feature extraction algorithms and classification schemes. We introduce a faster feature extraction method that resizes and applies a set of filters to the data images without sacrificing the accuracy. In addition, we have enhanced SVM to multiple dimensions while retaining the high accuracy rate of SVM. The algorithms were tested using the Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE) Database and the Database of Faces (AT&T Faces).

Evaluation of the antioxidant activity of four edible mushrooms from the Central Anatolia, Eskisehir - Turkey: Lactarius deterrimus, Suillus collitinus, Boletus edulis, Xerocomus chrysenteron.

PubMed

Sarikurkcu, Cengiz; Tepe, Bektas; Yamac, Mustafa

2008-09-01

The methanolic extracts of Lactarius deterrimus, Suillus collitinus, Boletus edulis, Xerocomus chrysenteron were analyzed for their antioxidant activities in different test systems namely beta-carotene/linoleic acid, DPPH free radical scavenging, reducing power and metal chelating activities in addition to their total phenolic and flavonoid contents. In beta-carotene/linoleic acid and DPPH systems, L. deterrimus and B. edulis showed the strongest activity patterns. Their activities were as strong as the positive controls. The reducing power of the species was excellent. Chelating capacity of the extracts was increased with the increasing concentration. On the other hand, B. edulis found to have the highest phenolic content. Total flavonoid content of S. collitinus found the superior to the other mushrooms.

Online measurement of bead geometry in GMAW-based additive manufacturing using passive vision

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiong, Jun; Zhang, Guangjun

2013-11-01

Additive manufacturing based on gas metal arc welding is an advanced technique for depositing fully dense components with low cost. Despite this fact, techniques to achieve accurate control and automation of the process have not yet been perfectly developed. The online measurement of the deposited bead geometry is a key problem for reliable control. In this work a passive vision-sensing system, comprising two cameras and composite filtering techniques, was proposed for real-time detection of the bead height and width through deposition of thin walls. The nozzle to the top surface distance was monitored for eliminating accumulated height errors during the multi-layer deposition process. Various image processing algorithms were applied and discussed for extracting feature parameters. A calibration procedure was presented for the monitoring system. Validation experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the online measurement system for bead geometry in layered additive manufacturing.

Comparison of the ion exclusion chromatographic method with the Monier-Williams method for determination of total sulfite in foods.

PubMed

Kim, H J

1989-01-01

Experimental data comparing the alkali extraction/ion exclusion chromatographic method with the Monier-Williams method for determination of total sulfite are presented in (a) enzymatic and nonenzymatic browning systems, (b) vegetables containing naturally occurring sulfite, and (c) a carbohydrate-type food additive, erythorbic acid. Excellent agreement, with a linear correlation coefficient of 0.99, was observed in fresh potato samples homogenized with sulfite and allowed to react for different time intervals (enzymatic browning system). A good overall correlation was observed in dehydrated, sulfited apple samples heated for different times (nonenzymatic browning system); however, as heating time increased, higher results were obtained by the Monier-Williams method than by the alkali extraction/ion exclusion chromatographic method. The results of determining sulfite in the alkali trapping solution following acid distillation or acid treatment without heat suggested that this deviation was due to a fraction of sulfite bound to the browning reaction products in such a way that it was released by acid distillation but not by alkali extraction or acid treatment without heat. Similar behavior was demonstrated in cabbage with naturally occurring sulfite, which was released by acid distillation but not by alkali extraction or acid treatment without heat. The ion exclusion chromatographic method could overcome interference by the volatile caramelization reaction products in the Monier-Williams determination of erythorbic acid.

SPECTROSCOPIC ONLINE MONITORING FOR PROCESS CONTROL AND SAFEGUARDING OF RADIOCHEMICAL STREAMS

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bryan, Samuel A.; Levitskaia, Tatiana G.

2013-09-29

There is a renewed interest worldwide to promote the use of nuclear power and close the nuclear fuel cycle. The long term successful use of nuclear power is critically dependent upon adequate and safe processing and disposition of the used nuclear fuel. Liquid-liquid extraction is a separation technique commonly employed for the processing of the dissolved used nuclear fuel. The instrumentation used to monitor these processes must be robust, require little or no maintenance, and be able to withstand harsh environments such as high radiation fields and aggressive chemical matrices. This paper summarizes application of the absorption and vibrational spectroscopicmore » techniques supplemented by physicochemical measurements for radiochemical process monitoring. In this context, our team experimentally assessed the potential of Raman and spectrophotometric techniques for online real-time monitoring of the U(VI)/nitrate ion/nitric acid and Pu(IV)/Np(V)/Nd(III), respectively, in solutions relevant to spent fuel reprocessing. These techniques demonstrate robust performance in the repetitive batch measurements of each analyte in a wide concentration range using simulant and commercial dissolved spent fuel solutions. Spectroscopic measurements served as training sets for the multivariate data analysis to obtain partial least squares predictive models, which were validated using on-line centrifugal contactor extraction tests. Satisfactory prediction of the analytes concentrations in these preliminary experiments warrants further development of the spectroscopy-based methods for radiochemical process control and safeguarding. Additionally, the ability to identify material intentionally diverted from a liquid-liquid extraction contactor system was successfully tested using on-line process monitoring as a means to detect the amount of material diverted. A chemical diversion and detection from a liquid-liquid extraction scheme was demonstrated using a centrifugal contactor system operating with the simulant PUREX extraction system of Nd(NO3)3/nitric acid aqueous phase and TBP/n-dodecane organic phase. During a continuous extraction experiment, a portion of the feed from a counter-current extraction system was diverted while the spectroscopic on-line process monitoring system was simultaneously measuring the feed, raffinate and organic products streams. The amount observed to be diverted by on-line spectroscopic process monitoring was in excellent agreement with values based from the known mass of sample directly taken (diverted) from system feed solution.« less

Interactions Between Flavonoid-Rich Extracts and Sodium Caseinate Modulate Protein Functionality and Flavonoid Bioaccessibility in Model Food Systems.

PubMed

Elegbede, Jennifer L; Li, Min; Jones, Owen G; Campanella, Osvaldo H; Ferruzzi, Mario G

2018-05-01

With growing interest in formulating new food products with added protein and flavonoid-rich ingredients for health benefits, direct interactions between these ingredient classes becomes critical in so much as they may impact protein functionality, product quality, and flavonoids bioavailability. In this study, sodium caseinate (SCN)-based model products (foams and emulsions) were formulated with grape seed extract (GSE, rich in galloylated flavonoids) and green tea extract (GTE, rich in nongalloylated flavonoids), respectively, to assess changes in functional properties of SCN and impacts on flavonoid bioaccessibility. Experiments with pure flavonoids suggested that galloylated flavonoids reduced air-water interfacial tension of 0.01% SCN dispersions more significantly than nongalloylated flavonoids at high concentrations (>50 μg/mL). This observation was supported by changes in stability of 5% SCN foam, which showed that foam stability was increased at high levels of GSE (≥50 μg/mL, P < 0.05) but was not affected by GTE. However, flavonoid extracts had modest effects on SCN emulsion. In addition, galloylated flavonoids had higher bioaccessibility in both SCN foam and emulsion. These results suggest that SCN-flavonoid binding interactions can modulate protein functionality leading to difference in performance and flavonoid bioaccessibility of protein-based products. As information on the beneficial health effects of flavonoids expands, it is likely that usage of these ingredients in consumer foods will increase. However, the necessary levels to provide such benefits may exceed those that begin to impact functionality of the macronutrients such as proteins. Flavonoid inclusion within protein matrices may modulate protein functionality in a food system and modify critical consumer traits or delivery of these beneficial plant-derived components. The product matrices utilized in this study offer relevant model systems to evaluate how fortification with flavonoid-rich extracts allows for differing effects on formability and stability of the protein-based systems, and on bioaccessibility of fortified flavonoid extracts. © 2018 Institute of Food Technologists®.

Optimizing graph-based patterns to extract biomedical events from the literature

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

In BioNLP-ST 2013 We participated in the BioNLP 2013 shared tasks on event extraction. Our extraction method is based on the search for an approximate subgraph isomorphism between key context dependencies of events and graphs of input sentences. Our system was able to address both the GENIA (GE) task focusing on 13 molecular biology related event types and the Cancer Genetics (CG) task targeting a challenging group of 40 cancer biology related event types with varying arguments concerning 18 kinds of biological entities. In addition to adapting our system to the two tasks, we also attempted to integrate semantics into the graph matching scheme using a distributional similarity model for more events, and evaluated the event extraction impact of using paths of all possible lengths as key context dependencies beyond using only the shortest paths in our system. We achieved a 46.38% F-score in the CG task (ranking 3rd) and a 48.93% F-score in the GE task (ranking 4th). After BioNLP-ST 2013 We explored three ways to further extend our event extraction system in our previously published work: (1) We allow non-essential nodes to be skipped, and incorporated a node skipping penalty into the subgraph distance function of our approximate subgraph matching algorithm. (2) Instead of assigning a unified subgraph distance threshold to all patterns of an event type, we learned a customized threshold for each pattern. (3) We implemented the well-known Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM) principle to optimize the event pattern set by balancing prediction errors on training data against regularization. When evaluated on the official GE task test data, these extensions help to improve the extraction precision from 62% to 65%. However, the overall F-score stays equivalent to the previous performance due to a 1% drop in recall. PMID:26551594

Alcohol based-deep eutectic solvent (DES) as an alternative green additive to increase rotenone yield

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Othman, Zetty Shafiqa; Hassan, Nur Hasyareeda; Zubairi, Saiful Irwan

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are basically molten salts that interact by forming hydrogen bonds between two added components at a ratio where eutectic point reaches a melting point lower than that of each individual component. Their remarkable physicochemical properties (similar to ionic liquids) with remarkable green properties, low cost and easy handling make them a growing interest in many fields of research. Therefore, the objective of pursuing this study is to analyze the potential of alcohol-based DES as an extraction medium for rotenone extraction from Derris elliptica roots. DES was prepared by a combination of choline chloride, ChCl and 1,more » 4-butanediol at a ratio of 1/5. The structure of elucidation of DES was analyzed using FTIR, {sup 1}H-NMR and {sup 13}C-NMR. Normal soaking extraction (NSE) method was carried out for 14 hours using seven different types of solvent systems of (1) acetone; (2) methanol; (3) acetonitrile; (4) DES; (5) DES + methanol; (6) DES + acetonitrile; and (7) [BMIM] OTf + acetone. Next, the yield of rotenone, % (w/w), and its concentration (mg/ml) in dried roots were quantitatively determined by means of RP-HPLC. The results showed that a binary solvent system of [BMIM] OTf + acetone and DES + acetonitrile was the best solvent system combination as compared to other solvent systems. It contributed to the highest rotenone content of 0.84 ± 0.05% (w/w) (1.09 ± 0.06 mg/ml) and 0.84 ± 0.02% (w/w) (1.03 ± 0.01 mg/ml) after 14 hours of exhaustive extraction time. In conclusion, a combination of the DES with a selective organic solvent has been proven to have a similar potential and efficiency as of ILs in extracting bioactive constituents in the phytochemical extraction process.« less

PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF DWPF IMPACTS OF BORIC ACID USE IN CESIUM STRIP FOR SWPF AND MCU

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Stone, M.

2010-09-28

A new solvent system is being evaluated for use in the Modular Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU) and in the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). The new system includes the option to replace the current dilute nitric acid strip solution with boric acid. To support this effort, the impact of using 0.01M, 0.1M, 0.25M and 0.5M boric acid in place of 0.001M nitric acid was evaluated for impacts on the DWPF facility. The evaluation only covered the impacts of boric acid in the strip effluent and does not address the other changes in solvents (i.e., the new extractant, called MaxCalix,more » or the new suppressor, guanidine). Boric acid additions may lead to increased hydrogen generation during the SRAT and SME cycles as well as change the rheological properties of the feed. The boron in the strip effluent will impact glass composition and could require each SME batch to be trimmed with boric acid to account for any changes in the boron from strip effluent additions. Addition of boron with the strip effluent will require changes in the frit composition and could lead to changes in melt behavior. The severity of the impacts from the boric acid additions is dependent on the amount of boric acid added by the strip effluent. The use of 0.1M or higher concentrations of boric acid in the strip effluent was found to significantly impact DWPF operations while the impact of 0.01M boric acid is expected to be relatively minor. Experimental testing is required to resolve the issues identified during the preliminary evaluation. The issues to be addressed by the testing are: (1) Impact on SRAT acid addition and hydrogen generation; (2) Impact on melter feed rheology; (3) Impact on glass composition control; (4) Impact on frit production; and (5) Impact on melter offgas. A new solvent system is being evaluated for use in the Modular Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU) and in the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). The new system includes the option to replace the current dilute nitric acid strip solution with boric acid. To support this effort, the impact of using 0.01M, 0.1M, 0.25M and 0.5M boric acid in place of 0.001M nitric acid was evaluated for impacts on the DWPF facility. The evaluation only covered the impacts of boric acid in the strip effluent and does not address the other changes in solvents (i.e., the new extractant, called MaxCalix, or the new suppressor, guanidine). Experimental testing with the improved solvent is required to determine the impact of any changes in the entrained solvent on DWPF processing.« less

Enhancing interpretability of automatically extracted machine learning features: application to a RBM-Random Forest system on brain lesion segmentation.

PubMed

Pereira, Sérgio; Meier, Raphael; McKinley, Richard; Wiest, Roland; Alves, Victor; Silva, Carlos A; Reyes, Mauricio

2018-02-01

Machine learning systems are achieving better performances at the cost of becoming increasingly complex. However, because of that, they become less interpretable, which may cause some distrust by the end-user of the system. This is especially important as these systems are pervasively being introduced to critical domains, such as the medical field. Representation Learning techniques are general methods for automatic feature computation. Nevertheless, these techniques are regarded as uninterpretable "black boxes". In this paper, we propose a methodology to enhance the interpretability of automatically extracted machine learning features. The proposed system is composed of a Restricted Boltzmann Machine for unsupervised feature learning, and a Random Forest classifier, which are combined to jointly consider existing correlations between imaging data, features, and target variables. We define two levels of interpretation: global and local. The former is devoted to understanding if the system learned the relevant relations in the data correctly, while the later is focused on predictions performed on a voxel- and patient-level. In addition, we propose a novel feature importance strategy that considers both imaging data and target variables, and we demonstrate the ability of the approach to leverage the interpretability of the obtained representation for the task at hand. We evaluated the proposed methodology in brain tumor segmentation and penumbra estimation in ischemic stroke lesions. We show the ability of the proposed methodology to unveil information regarding relationships between imaging modalities and extracted features and their usefulness for the task at hand. In both clinical scenarios, we demonstrate that the proposed methodology enhances the interpretability of automatically learned features, highlighting specific learning patterns that resemble how an expert extracts relevant data from medical images. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cross domains Arabic named entity recognition system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Al-Ahmari, S. Saad; Abdullatif Al-Johar, B.

2016-07-01

Named Entity Recognition (NER) plays an important role in many Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications such as; Information Extraction (IE), Question Answering (QA), Text Clustering, Text Summarization and Word Sense Disambiguation. This paper presents the development and implementation of domain independent system to recognize three types of Arabic named entities. The system works based on a set of domain independent grammar-rules along with Arabic part of speech tagger in addition to gazetteers and lists of trigger words. The experimental results shown, that the system performed as good as other systems with better results in some cases of cross-domains corpora.

Preliminary Study of Hyptis pectinata (L.) Poit Extract Biotransformation by Aspergillus niger

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rejeki, D. S.; Aminin, A. L. N.; Suzery, M.

2018-04-01

One alternative approach to increase the content of bioactive compounds is fermentation. Hyptis pectinata (L.) Poit is a plant that can be found in tropical area and potentially as anticancer, anti-inflammatory, insect repellant, antiviral and antioxidant. In this research, efforts have been made to increase bioactive plant capacity of Hyptis pectinata (L.) Poit through submerged fermentation using Aspergillus niger. The study was performed by adding methanol extract of Hyptis pectinata (L.) Poit on two conditions, that was added at the beginning of fermentation and while entering a phase of death. Aspergillus niger growth rate in both conditions was observed by determining the dry weight of cells every 24 hours. The transformation profil of extract was observed after 24 hours of extract addition in early death phase by the TLC method. The results show that the addition of Hyptis pectinata (L.) Poit extract at log phase triggers the cells to growth faster, whereas the addition at the early death phase precisely accelerates cell death. TLC profile shows the emergence of new compounds suspected as the products of transformation of Hyptis pectinata (L.) Poit extract on day 8 after addition of extract.

Face recognition system using multiple face model of hybrid Fourier feature under uncontrolled illumination variation.

PubMed

Hwang, Wonjun; Wang, Haitao; Kim, Hyunwoo; Kee, Seok-Cheol; Kim, Junmo

2011-04-01

The authors present a robust face recognition system for large-scale data sets taken under uncontrolled illumination variations. The proposed face recognition system consists of a novel illumination-insensitive preprocessing method, a hybrid Fourier-based facial feature extraction, and a score fusion scheme. First, in the preprocessing stage, a face image is transformed into an illumination-insensitive image, called an "integral normalized gradient image," by normalizing and integrating the smoothed gradients of a facial image. Then, for feature extraction of complementary classifiers, multiple face models based upon hybrid Fourier features are applied. The hybrid Fourier features are extracted from different Fourier domains in different frequency bandwidths, and then each feature is individually classified by linear discriminant analysis. In addition, multiple face models are generated by plural normalized face images that have different eye distances. Finally, to combine scores from multiple complementary classifiers, a log likelihood ratio-based score fusion scheme is applied. The proposed system using the face recognition grand challenge (FRGC) experimental protocols is evaluated; FRGC is a large available data set. Experimental results on the FRGC version 2.0 data sets have shown that the proposed method shows an average of 81.49% verification rate on 2-D face images under various environmental variations such as illumination changes, expression changes, and time elapses.

Pathology report data extraction from relational database using R, with extraction from reports on melanoma of skin as an example.

PubMed

Ye, Jay J

2016-01-01

Different methods have been described for data extraction from pathology reports with varying degrees of success. Here a technique for directly extracting data from relational database is described. Our department uses synoptic reports modified from College of American Pathologists (CAP) Cancer Protocol Templates to report most of our cancer diagnoses. Choosing the melanoma of skin synoptic report as an example, R scripting language extended with RODBC package was used to query the pathology information system database. Reports containing melanoma of skin synoptic report in the past 4 and a half years were retrieved and individual data elements were extracted. Using the retrieved list of the cases, the database was queried a second time to retrieve/extract the lymph node staging information in the subsequent reports from the same patients. 426 synoptic reports corresponding to unique lesions of melanoma of skin were retrieved, and data elements of interest were extracted into an R data frame. The distribution of Breslow depth of melanomas grouped by year is used as an example of intra-report data extraction and analysis. When the new pN staging information was present in the subsequent reports, 82% (77/94) was precisely retrieved (pN0, pN1, pN2 and pN3). Additional 15% (14/94) was retrieved with certain ambiguity (positive or knowing there was an update). The specificity was 100% for both. The relationship between Breslow depth and lymph node status was graphed as an example of lesion-specific multi-report data extraction and analysis. R extended with RODBC package is a simple and versatile approach well-suited for the above tasks. The success or failure of the retrieval and extraction depended largely on whether the reports were formatted and whether the contents of the elements were consistently phrased. This approach can be easily modified and adopted for other pathology information systems that use relational database for data management.

ENZYMES OF GLUCOSE AND PYRUVATE CATABOLISM IN CELLS, SPORES, AND GERMINATED SPORES OF CLOSTRIDIUM BOTULINUM1

PubMed Central

Simmons, Richard J.; Costilow, Ralph N.

1962-01-01

Simmons, R. J. (Michigan State University, East Lansing), and R. N. Costilow. Enzymes of glucose and pyruvate catabolism in cells, spores, and germinated spores of Clostridium botulinum. J. Bacteriol. 84:1274–1281. 1962.—An investigation was made of the enzymes of vegetative cells, spores, and germinated spores of Clostridium botulinum 62-A to elucidate a pathway of glucose metabolism. Manometric studies were conducted with intact cells, and various enzymes and enzyme systems were assayed in cell-free and spore-free extracts by use of spectrophotometric and colorimetric procedures. Glucose fermentation was found to be inducible; glucokinase was the controlling enzyme. All other enzymes of the Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas (EMP) pathway were found in both induced and non-induced cells, but they were in relatively low concentrations in the latter. This, plus the fact that no glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase was detected, led to the conclusion that glucose is catabolized primarily by the EMP system. A number of glycolytic enzymes were also found in extracts of spores and germinated spores of this organism, but the activities were extremely low as compared with activities in cell extracts. A phosphoroclastic-type reaction was readily demonstrated in both glucose-adapted and non-adapted cells, but not in spores and germinated spores. However, both acetokinase and phosphotransacetylase, as well as coenzyme A transphorase, were detected in spores and germinated-spore extracts, although at very low activity levels as compared with cell extracts. The specific activity of diaphorase in spore extracts was about one-half that of corresponding cell extracts, and the activity of reduced diphosphopyridine nucleotide (DPNH) oxidase was actually higher in the spore extracts. In addition, the DPNH oxidase in spore extracts was considerably more heat-stable than that in extracts of cells or germinated spores. PMID:13977433

Comparison of ambient solvent extraction methods for the analysis of fatty acids in non-starch lipids of flour and starch

PubMed Central

Bahrami, Niloufar; Yonekura, Lina; Linforth, Robert; Carvalho da Silva, Margarida; Hill, Sandra; Penson, Simon; Chope, Gemma; Fisk, Ian Denis

2014-01-01

BACKGROUND Lipids are minor components of flours, but are major determinants of baking properties and end-product quality. To the best of our knowledge, there is no single solvent system currently known that efficiently extracts all non-starch lipids from all flours without the risk of chemical, mechanical or thermal damage. This paper compares nine ambient solvent systems (monophasic and biphasic) with varying polarities: Bligh and Dyer (BD); modified Bligh and Dyer using HCl (BDHCL); modified BD using NaCl (BDNaCl); methanol–chloroform–hexane (3:2:1, v/v); Hara and Radin (hexane–isopropanol, 3:2, v/v); water-saturated n-butanol; chloroform; methanol and hexane for their ability to extract total non-starch lipids (separated by lipid classes) from wheat flour (Triticum aestivum L.). Seven ambient extraction protocols were further compared for their ability to extract total non-starch lipids from three alternative samples: barley flour (Hordeum vulgare L.), maize starch (Zea mays L.) and tapioca starch (Manihot esculenta Crantz). RESULTS For wheat flour the original BD method and those containing HCl or NaCl tended to extract the maximum lipid and a significant correlation between lipid extraction yield (especially the glycolipids and phospholipids) and the polarity of the solvent was observed. For the wider range of samples BD and BD HCl repeatedly offered the maximum extraction yield and using pooled standardized (by sample) data from all flours, total non-starch lipid extraction yield was positively correlated with solvent polarity (r = 0.5682, P < 0.05) and water ratio in the solvent mixture (r = 0.5299, P < 0.05). CONCLUSION In general, BD-based methods showed better extraction yields compared to methods without the addition of water and, most interestingly, there was much greater method dependence of lipid yields in the starches when compared to the flour samples, which is due to the differences in lipid profiles between the two sample types (flours and starches). PMID:24132804

[Extraction and recognition of attractors in three-dimensional Lorenz plot].

PubMed

Hu, Min; Jang, Chengfan; Wang, Suxia

2018-02-01

Lorenz plot (LP) method which gives a global view of long-time electrocardiogram signals, is an efficient simple visualization tool to analyze cardiac arrhythmias, and the morphologies and positions of the extracted attractors may reveal the underlying mechanisms of the onset and termination of arrhythmias. But automatic diagnosis is still impossible because it is lack of the method of extracting attractors by now. We presented here a methodology of attractor extraction and recognition based upon homogeneously statistical properties of the location parameters of scatter points in three dimensional LP (3DLP), which was constructed by three successive RR intervals as X , Y and Z axis in Cartesian coordinate system. Validation experiments were tested in a group of RR-interval time series and tags data with frequent unifocal premature complexes exported from a 24-hour Holter system. The results showed that this method had excellent effective not only on extraction of attractors, but also on automatic recognition of attractors by the location parameters such as the azimuth of the points peak frequency ( A PF ) of eccentric attractors once stereographic projection of 3DLP along the space diagonal. Besides, A PF was still a powerful index of differential diagnosis of atrial and ventricular extrasystole. Additional experiments proved that this method was also available on several other arrhythmias. Moreover, there were extremely relevant relationships between 3DLP and two dimensional LPs which indicate any conventional achievement of LPs could be implanted into 3DLP. It would have a broad application prospect to integrate this method into conventional long-time electrocardiogram monitoring and analysis system.

Leadless Cardiac Pacemaker Implantation After Lead Extraction in Patients With Severe Device Infection.

PubMed

Kypta, Alexander; Blessberger, Hermann; Kammler, Juergen; Lambert, Thomas; Lichtenauer, Michael; Brandstaetter, Walter; Gabriel, Michael; Steinwender, Clemens

2016-09-01

Conventional pacemaker therapy is limited by short- and long-term complications, most notably device infection. Transcatheter pacing systems (TPS) may be beneficial in this kind of patients as they eliminate the need for a device pocket and leads and thus may reduce the risk of re-infection. We assessed a novel procedure in 6 patients with severe device infection who were pacemaker dependent. After lead extraction a single chamber TPS was implanted into the right ventricle. Of the 6 patients who underwent lead extraction due to severe device infection at our institution, 3 were diagnosed with a pocket infection only, whereas the other 3 showed symptoms of both pocket and lead infection. Successful lead extraction and TPS implantation was accomplished in all patients. Four patients were bridged with a temporary pacemaker between 2 hours and 2 days after lead extraction, whereas 2 patients had the TPS implanted during the same procedure just before traditional pacemaker system removal. All patients stayed free of infection during the follow-up period of 12 weeks. An additional positron emission tomography scan was performed in each patient and indicated no signs of an infection around the TPS. Transcather pacemaker implantation was safe and feasible in 6 patients and did not result in re-infection even if implanted before removal of the infected pacemaker system within the same procedure. Therefore, implantation of a TPS may be an option for patients with severe device infection, especially in those with blocked venous access or who are pacemaker dependent. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Lipid Nanocarriers for Oral Delivery of Serenoa repens CO2 Extract: A Study of Microemulsion and Self-Microemulsifying Drug Delivery Systems.

PubMed

Guccione, Clizia; Bergonzi, Maria Camilla; Awada, Khaled M; Piazzini, Vieri; Bilia, Anna Rita

2018-07-01

The aim of this study was the development and characterization of lipid nanocarriers using food grade components for oral delivery of Serenoa repens CO 2 extract, namely microemulsions (MEs) and self-microemulsifying drug delivery systems (SMEDDSs) to improve the oral absorption. A commercial blend (CB) containing 320 of S. repens CO 2 extract plus the aqueous soluble extracts of nettle root and pineapple stem was formulated in two MEs and two SMEDDSs. The optimized ME loaded with the CB (CBM2) had a very low content of water (only 17.3%). The drug delivery systems were characterized by dynamic light scattering, transmission electron microscopy, and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with a diode-array detector analyses in order to evaluate the size, the homogeneity, the morphology, and the encapsulation efficiency. β -carotene was selected as marker for the quantitative HPLC analysis. Additionally, physical and chemical stabilities were acceptable during 3 wk at 4 °C. Stability of these nanocarriers in simulated stomach and intestinal conditions was proved. Finally, the improvement of oral absorption of S. repens was studied in vitro using parallel artificial membrane permeability assay. An enhancement of oral permeation was found in both CBM2 and CBS2 nanoformulations comparing with the CB and S. repens CO 2 extract. The best performance was obtained by the CBM2 nanoformulation (~ 17%) predicting a 30 - 70% passive oral human absorption in vivo . Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Dissipation of bentazone, pyrimethanil and boscalid in biochar and digestate based soil mixtures for biopurification systems.

PubMed

Mukherjee, Santanu; Tappe, Wolfgang; Weihermueller, Lutz; Hofmann, Diana; Köppchen, Stephan; Laabs, Volker; Schroeder, Tom; Vereecken, Harry; Burauel, Peter

2016-02-15

Biopurification systems, such as biofilters, are biotechnological tools to prevent point sources of pesticide pollution stemming from on-farm operations. For the purification processes pesticide sorption and mineralization and/or dissipation are essential and both largely depend on the type of filling materials and the pesticide in use. In this paper the mineralization and dissipation of three contrasting (14)C-labeled pesticides (bentazone, boscalid, and pyrimethanil) were investigated in laboratory incubation experiments using sandy soil, biochar produced from Pine woodchips, and/or digestate obtained from anaerobic digestion process using maize silage, chicken manure, beef and pig urine as feedstock. The results indicate that the addition of digestate increased pesticide mineralization, whereby the mineralization was not proportional to the digestate loads in the mixture, indicating a saturation effect in the turnover rate of pesticides. This effect was in correlation with the amount of water extractable DOC, obtained from the digestate based mixtures. Mixing biochar into the soil generally reduced total mineralization and led to larger sorption/sequestration of the pesticides, resulting in faster decrease of the extractable fraction. Also the addition of biochar to the soil/digestate mixtures reduced mineralization compared to the digestate alone mixture but mineralization rates were still higher as for the biochar/soil alone. In consequence, the addition of biochar to the soil generally decreased pesticide dissipation times and larger amounts of biochar led to high amounts of non-extractable residues of pesticide in the substrates. Among the mixtures tested, a mixture of digestate (5%) and biochar (5%) gave optimal results with respect to mineralization and simultaneous sorption for all three pesticides. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Methanol Generates Numerous Artifacts during Sample Extraction and Storage of Extracts in Metabolomics Research

PubMed Central

Sauerschnig, Claudia; Doppler, Maria

2017-01-01

Many metabolomics studies use mixtures of (acidified) methanol and water for sample extraction. In the present study, we investigated if the extraction with methanol can result in artifacts. To this end, wheat leaves were extracted with mixtures of native and deuterium-labeled methanol and water, with or without 0.1% formic acid. Subsequently, the extracts were analyzed immediately or after storage at 10 °C, −20 °C or −80 °C with an HPLC-HESI-QExactive HF-Orbitrap instrument. Our results showed that 88 (8%) of the >1100 detected compounds were derived from the reaction with methanol and either formed during sample extraction or short-term storage. Artifacts were found for various substance classes such as flavonoids, carotenoids, tetrapyrrols, fatty acids and other carboxylic acids that are typically investigated in metabolomics studies. 58 of 88 artifacts were common between the two tested extraction variants. Remarkably, 34 of 73 (acidified extraction solvent) and 33 of 73 (non-acidified extraction solvent) artifacts were formed de novo as none of these meth(ox)ylated metabolites were found after extraction of native leaf samples with CD3OH/H2O. Moreover, sample extracts stored at 10 °C for several days, as can typically be the case during longer measurement sequences, led to an increase in both the number and abundance of methylated artifacts. In contrast, frozen sample extracts were relatively stable during a storage period of one week. Our study shows that caution has to be exercised if methanol is used as the extraction solvent as the detected metabolites might be artifacts rather than natural constituents of the biological system. In addition, we recommend storing sample extracts in deep freezers immediately after extraction until measurement. PMID:29271872

Antenna Measurements: Test & Analysis of the Radiated Emissions from the NASA/Orion Spacecraft - Parachute System Simulator

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Norgard, John D.

2012-01-01

For future NASA Manned Space Exploration of the Moon and Mars, a blunt body capsule, called the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), composed of a Crew Module (CM) and a Service Module (SM), with a parachute decent assembly is planned for reentry back to Earth. A Capsule Parachute Assembly System (CPAS) is being developed for preliminary parachute drop tests at the Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) to simulate high-speed reentry to Earth from beyond Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) and to provide measurements of landing parameters and parachute loads. The avionics systems on CPAS also provide mission critical firing events to deploy, reef, and release the parachutes in three stages (extraction, drogues, mains) using mortars and pressure cartridge assemblies. In addition, a Mid-Air Delivery System (MDS) is used to separate the capsule from the sled that is used to eject the capsule from the back of the drop plane. Also, high-speed and high-definition cameras in a Video Camera System (VCS) are used to film the drop plane extraction and parachute landing events. To verify Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) of the CPAS system from unintentional radiation, Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) measurements are being made inside a semi-anechoic chamber at NASA/JSC at 1m from the electronic components of the CPAS system. In addition, EMI measurements of the integrated CPAS system are being made inside a hanger at YPG. These near-field B-Dot probe measurements on the surface of a parachute simulator (DART) are being extrapolated outward to the 1m standard distance for comparison to the MIL-STD radiated emissions limit.

Bioproduction of 4-vinylphenol from corn cob alkaline hydrolyzate in two-phase extractive fermentation using free or immobilized recombinant E. coli expressing pad gene.

PubMed

Salgado, José Manuel; Rodríguez-Solana, Raquel; Curiel, José Antonio; de Las Rivas, Blanca; Muñoz, Rosario; Domínguez, José Manuel

2014-05-10

In situ extractive fermentation was used to produce 4-vinyl derivatives from hydroxycinnamic acids extracted from corn cobs by recombinant Escherichia coli cells expressing Lactobacillus plantarum phenolic acid descarboxylase (PAD) gene. This microorganism mainly produced 4-vinylphenol (4VP) from p-coumaric acid (p-CA). In the first study , we observed that the concentrations of 4VP are higher than 1g/L which had a negative impact on decarboxylation of p-CA to 4VP by recombinant E. coli cells. Because of this, and in order to improve the downstream process, a two-phase aqueous-organic solvent system was developed. The results of the extractive fermentation indicated that it was possible to use hydrolyzates as aqueous phase to bioproduce 4VP, and recover simultaneously the product in the organic phase containing hexane. The detoxification of pre-treated corn cob alkaline hydrolyzate improved 4VP production up to 1003.5mg/L after 24h fermentation (QP=41.813mg/Lh). Additionally, preliminary experiments using cells immobilized in calcium alginate showed to be a good system for the biotransform of p-CA to 4VP in extractive fermentation, although the process hindered partially the recovery of 4VP in the organic phase. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effect of Caesalpinia sappan L. extract on physico-chemical properties of emulsion-type pork sausage during cold storage.

PubMed

Jin, Sang-Keun; Ha, So-Ra; Choi, Jung-Seok

2015-12-01

This study was performed to investigate the effect of extract from heart wood of Caesalpinia sappan on the physico-chemical properties and to find the appropriate addition level in the emulsion-type pork sausage during cold storage. The pH of treatments with C. sappan extract was significantly lower than control and T1 during cold storage periods (P<0.05). Also, the reduction of moisture content, and the increase of cooking loss significantly occurred by the addition of 0.2% C. sappan extract. Also, the texture properties and sensory of sausages containing C. sappan extract were decreased compared to control. Inclusion of the C. sappan extract in sausages resulted in lower lightness and higher yellowness, chroma and hue values. However, the antioxidant, antimicrobial activity, and volatile basic nitrogen in the emulsion-type pork sausages with C. sappan extract showed increased quality characteristics during cold storage. In conclusion, the proper addition level of C. sappan extract was 0.1% on the processing of emulsion-type pork sausage. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

21 CFR 73.295 - Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. 73.295... GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.295 Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal is the dried, ground...

21 CFR 73.295 - Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. 73.295... GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.295 Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal is the dried, ground...

21 CFR 73.295 - Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. 73.295... GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.295 Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal is the dried, ground...

21 CFR 73.295 - Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. 73.295... GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.295 Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal is the dried, ground...

21 CFR 73.295 - Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. 73.295... GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.295 Tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal and extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive tagetes (Aztec marigold) meal is the dried, ground...

21 CFR 73.100 - Cochineal extract; carmine.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.100 Cochineal extract; carmine. (a) Identity. (1... suitable and that are listed in this subpart as safe in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Cochineal extract; carmine. 73.100 Section 73.100...

21 CFR 73.100 - Cochineal extract; carmine.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.100 Cochineal extract; carmine. (a) Identity. (1... suitable and that are listed in this subpart as safe in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2013-04-01 2013-04-01 false Cochineal extract; carmine. 73.100 Section 73.100...

21 CFR 73.100 - Cochineal extract; carmine.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.100 Cochineal extract; carmine. (a) Identity. (1... suitable and that are listed in this subpart as safe in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Cochineal extract; carmine. 73.100 Section 73.100...

21 CFR 73.100 - Cochineal extract; carmine.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.100 Cochineal extract; carmine. (a) Identity. (1... suitable and that are listed in this subpart as safe in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b... 21 Food and Drugs 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Cochineal extract; carmine. 73.100 Section 73.100...

The Effect of LAB as Probiotic Starter Culture and Green Tea Extract Addition on Dry Fermented Pork Loins Quality.

PubMed

Neffe-Skocińska, Katarzyna; Jaworska, Danuta; Kołożyn-Krajewska, Danuta; Dolatowski, Zbigniew; Jachacz-Jówko, Luiza

2015-01-01

The objective of this study was to evaluate the microbiological, physicochemical, and sensory quality of dry fermented pork loin produced with the addition of Lb. rhamnosus LOCK900 probiotic strain, 0.2% glucose, and 1.5% green tea extract. Three loins were prepared: control sample (P0: no additives), sample supplemented with glucose and probiotic strain (P1), and sample with glucose, green tea extract, and probiotic (P2). The samples were analyzed after 21 days of ripening and 180 days of storage. The results indicated that the highest count of LAB was observed both in the samples: with probiotic and with probiotic and green tea extract (7.00 log cfu/g after ripening; 6.00 log cfu/g after storage). The oxidation-reduction potential values were lower in the probiotic loin samples. Probiotic and green tea extract have not caused color changes of study loins during storage. The study demonstrated that an addition of probiotic and green tea extract to dry fermented loins is possible and had no impact on sensory quality after product storage.

The Effect of LAB as Probiotic Starter Culture and Green Tea Extract Addition on Dry Fermented Pork Loins Quality

PubMed Central

Jaworska, Danuta; Kołożyn-Krajewska, Danuta; Dolatowski, Zbigniew; Jachacz-Jówko, Luiza

2015-01-01

The objective of this study was to evaluate the microbiological, physicochemical, and sensory quality of dry fermented pork loin produced with the addition of Lb. rhamnosus LOCK900 probiotic strain, 0.2% glucose, and 1.5% green tea extract. Three loins were prepared: control sample (P0: no additives), sample supplemented with glucose and probiotic strain (P1), and sample with glucose, green tea extract, and probiotic (P2). The samples were analyzed after 21 days of ripening and 180 days of storage. The results indicated that the highest count of LAB was observed both in the samples: with probiotic and with probiotic and green tea extract (7.00 log cfu/g after ripening; 6.00 log cfu/g after storage). The oxidation-reduction potential values were lower in the probiotic loin samples. Probiotic and green tea extract have not caused color changes of study loins during storage. The study demonstrated that an addition of probiotic and green tea extract to dry fermented loins is possible and had no impact on sensory quality after product storage. PMID:25961018

21 CFR 73.30 - Annatto extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.30 Annatto extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive..., methyl alcohol, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with...

21 CFR 73.30 - Annatto extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.30 Annatto extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive..., methyl alcohol, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with...

21 CFR 73.30 - Annatto extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.30 Annatto extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive..., methyl alcohol, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with...

21 CFR 73.30 - Annatto extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.30 Annatto extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive..., methyl alcohol, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with...

21 CFR 73.30 - Annatto extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.30 Annatto extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive..., methyl alcohol, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene. (2) Color additive mixtures for food use made with...

Adverse Drug Reaction Identification and Extraction in Social Media: A Scoping Review

PubMed Central

Bellet, Florelle; Asfari, Hadyl; Souvignet, Julien; Texier, Nathalie; Jaulent, Marie-Christine; Beyens, Marie-Noëlle; Burgun, Anita; Bousquet, Cédric

2015-01-01

Background The underreporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) through traditional reporting channels is a limitation in the efficiency of the current pharmacovigilance system. Patients’ experiences with drugs that they report on social media represent a new source of data that may have some value in postmarketing safety surveillance. Objective A scoping review was undertaken to explore the breadth of evidence about the use of social media as a new source of knowledge for pharmacovigilance. Methods Daubt et al’s recommendations for scoping reviews were followed. The research questions were as follows: How can social media be used as a data source for postmarketing drug surveillance? What are the available methods for extracting data? What are the different ways to use these data? We queried PubMed, Embase, and Google Scholar to extract relevant articles that were published before June 2014 and with no lower date limit. Two pairs of reviewers independently screened the selected studies and proposed two themes of review: manual ADR identification (theme 1) and automated ADR extraction from social media (theme 2). Descriptive characteristics were collected from the publications to create a database for themes 1 and 2. Results Of the 1032 citations from PubMed and Embase, 11 were relevant to the research question. An additional 13 citations were added after further research on the Internet and in reference lists. Themes 1 and 2 explored 11 and 13 articles, respectively. Ways of approaching the use of social media as a pharmacovigilance data source were identified. Conclusions This scoping review noted multiple methods for identifying target data, extracting them, and evaluating the quality of medical information from social media. It also showed some remaining gaps in the field. Studies related to the identification theme usually failed to accurately assess the completeness, quality, and reliability of the data that were analyzed from social media. Regarding extraction, no study proposed a generic approach to easily adding a new site or data source. Additional studies are required to precisely determine the role of social media in the pharmacovigilance system. PMID:26163365

Adverse Drug Reaction Identification and Extraction in Social Media: A Scoping Review.

PubMed

Lardon, Jérémy; Abdellaoui, Redhouane; Bellet, Florelle; Asfari, Hadyl; Souvignet, Julien; Texier, Nathalie; Jaulent, Marie-Christine; Beyens, Marie-Noëlle; Burgun, Anita; Bousquet, Cédric

2015-07-10

The underreporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) through traditional reporting channels is a limitation in the efficiency of the current pharmacovigilance system. Patients' experiences with drugs that they report on social media represent a new source of data that may have some value in postmarketing safety surveillance. A scoping review was undertaken to explore the breadth of evidence about the use of social media as a new source of knowledge for pharmacovigilance. Daubt et al's recommendations for scoping reviews were followed. The research questions were as follows: How can social media be used as a data source for postmarketing drug surveillance? What are the available methods for extracting data? What are the different ways to use these data? We queried PubMed, Embase, and Google Scholar to extract relevant articles that were published before June 2014 and with no lower date limit. Two pairs of reviewers independently screened the selected studies and proposed two themes of review: manual ADR identification (theme 1) and automated ADR extraction from social media (theme 2). Descriptive characteristics were collected from the publications to create a database for themes 1 and 2. Of the 1032 citations from PubMed and Embase, 11 were relevant to the research question. An additional 13 citations were added after further research on the Internet and in reference lists. Themes 1 and 2 explored 11 and 13 articles, respectively. Ways of approaching the use of social media as a pharmacovigilance data source were identified. This scoping review noted multiple methods for identifying target data, extracting them, and evaluating the quality of medical information from social media. It also showed some remaining gaps in the field. Studies related to the identification theme usually failed to accurately assess the completeness, quality, and reliability of the data that were analyzed from social media. Regarding extraction, no study proposed a generic approach to easily adding a new site or data source. Additional studies are required to precisely determine the role of social media in the pharmacovigilance system.

Extractive cultivation of recombinant Escherichia coli using aqueous two-phase systems for production and separation of intracellular heat shock proteins.

PubMed

Umakoshi, H; Yano, K; Kuboi, R; Komasawa, I

1996-01-01

The extractive cultivation of recombinant Escherichia coli cells to produce, release, and separate heat shock proteins (HSPs; GroEL and GroES) using poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)/dextran (Dex) aqueous two-phase systems was developed. The growth rate of E. coli OW10/pND5 cells in the PEG/Dex two-phase media was almost the same value as that in the control media. The addition of 0.1 M potassium phosphate salts (KPi) increased the productivity of HSPs with keeping the growth rate of E. coli cells relatively high. The partition coefficients of HSPs were improved to greater values when phosphate salts were added at a concentration of more than 0.1 M. As a result, PEG/Dex systems supplemented with 0.1 M KPi were found to be the optimized two-phase systems for the extractive cultivation of E. coli cells. In the systems, the HSPs were selectively partitioned to the top phase while cells occupied the bottom phase and the interface between the two phases. This integrated process was extended to a semicontinuous operating mode, where the top phase containing the HSPs was recovered following intermittent heating and ultrasonic irradiation. The bottom phase containing cells and cell debris was recycled together with new top phase solution to repeat production and recovery of HSPs.

Pretreatment Solution for Water Recovery Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Muirhead, Dean (Inventor)

2018-01-01

Chemical pretreatments are used to produce usable water by treating a water source with a chemical pretreatment that contains a hexavalent chromium and an acid to generate a treated water source, wherein the concentration of sulfate compounds in the acid is negligible, and wherein the treated water source remains substantially free of precipitates after the addition of the chemical pretreatment. Other methods include reducing the pH in urine to be distilled for potable water extraction by pretreating the urine before distillation with a pretreatment solution comprising one or more acid sources selected from a group consisting of phosphoric acid, hydrochloric acid, and nitric acid, wherein the urine remains substantially precipitate free after the addition of the pretreatment solution. Another method described comprises a process for reducing precipitation in urine to be processed for water extraction by mixing the urine with a pretreatment solution comprising hexavalent chromium compound and phosphoric acid.

Ciguatoxin extracted from poisonous moray eels Gymnothorax javanicus triggers acetylcholine release from Torpedo cholinergic synaptosomes via reversed Na(+)-Ca2+ exchange.

PubMed

Molgó, J; Gaudry-Talarmain, Y M; Legrand, A M; Moulian, N

1993-09-17

Ciguatoxin (CTX) (0.1 pM to 10 nM) added to a suspension of Torpedo synaptosomes incubated in Ca(2+)-free medium caused no detectable acetylcholine (ACh) release. However, subsequent addition of Ca2+ caused a large ACh release that depended on time of exposure, dose of CTX and on [Ca2+]. Tetrodotoxin completely prevented CTX-induced Ca(2+)-dependent ACh release. Simultaneous blockade of Ca2+ channel subtypes by FTX, a toxin extracted from the venom of the spider Agelenopsis aperta, omega-conotoxin and Gd3+ did not prevent ACh release caused by CTX, upon addition of Ca2+. These results suggest that CTX activates the reversed operation of the Na+/Ca2+ exchange system allowing the entry of Ca2+ in exchange for Na+. It is concluded that Torpedo synaptosomes are endowed with Na+ channels sensitive to pico- to nanomolar concentrations of CTX.

Demonstration of a Speckle Based Sensing with Pulse-Doppler Radar for Vibration Detection.

PubMed

Ozana, Nisan; Bauer, Reuven; Ashkenazy, Koby; Sasson, Nissim; Schwarz, Ariel; Shemer, Amir; Zalevsky, Zeev

2018-05-03

In previous works, an optical technique for extraction and separation of remote static vibrations has been demonstrated. In this paper, we will describe an approach in which RF speckle movement is used to extract remote vibrations of a static target. The use of conventional radar Doppler methods is not suitable for detecting vibrations of static targets. In addition, the speckle method has an important advantage, in that it is able to detect vibrations at far greater distances than what is normally detected in classical optical methods. The experiment described in this paper was done using a motorized vehicle, which engine was turned on and off. The results showed that the system was able to distinguish between the different engine states, and in addition, was able to determine the vibration frequency of the engine. The first step towards real time detection of human vital signs using RF speckle patterns is presented.

Electron doping effects on the electrical conductivity of zigzag carbon nanotubes and corresponding unzipped armchair graphene nanoribbons

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mousavi, Hamze; Jalilvand, Samira; Kurdestany, Jamshid Moradi; Grabowski, Marek

2017-10-01

The Kubo formula is used to extract the electrical conductivity (EC) of different diameters of doped zigzag carbon nanotubes and their corresponding unzipped armchair graphene nanoribbons, as a function of temperature and chemical potential, within the tight-binding Hamiltonian model and Green's functions approach. The results reveal more sensitivity to temperature for semiconducting systems in addition to a decrease in EC of all systems with increasing cross-sections.

Determination of strontium-90 in milk samples using a controlled precipitation clean-up step prior to ion-chromatography.

PubMed

Cobb, J; Warwick, P; Carpenter, R C; Morrison, R T

1995-12-01

Strontium-90 may be determined by beta-counting its yttrium-90 daughter following separation by ion-chromatography, using a three column system comprising a chelating concentrator column, a cation-exchange column and an anion-exchange separator column. The column system has previously been applied to the determination of strontium-90 in water and urine samples. The applicability of the system to the analysis of milk is hampered by the large concentrations of calcium present, which significantly reduces the extraction of yttrium-90 by the concentrator column. A maximum of approximately 200 mg of calcium can be present for the successful extraction of yttrium-90, which greatly limits the quantity of milk that can be analysed. The quantity of milk analysed can be increased by the inclusion of a controlled precipitation step prior to the ion-chromatographic separation. The precipitation is carried out on acid digested milk samples by the addition of ammonia solution until the addition of one drop causes a reduction in pH resulting in the precipitation of calcium hydrogenphosphate. Under these conditions, approximately 20% of the calcium present in the original milk sample is precipitated, yttrium-90 is precipitated whereas strontium-90 is not precipitated. Dissolution of the precipitate, followed by separation of yttrium-90 using the ion-chromatography system facilitates the analysis of a litre of milk with recoveries of greater than 80%.

Treatment of GABA from Fermented Rice Germ Ameliorates Caffeine-Induced Sleep Disturbance in Mice

PubMed Central

Mabunga, Darine Froy N.; Gonzales, Edson Luck T.; Kim, Hee Jin; Choung, Se Young

2015-01-01

γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), a major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system, is involved in sleep physiology. Caffeine is widely used psychoactive substance known to induce wakefulness and insomnia to its consumers. This study was performed to examine whether GABA extracts from fermented rice germ ameliorates caffeine-induced sleep disturbance in mice, without affecting spontaneous locomotor activity and motor coordination. Indeed, caffeine (10 mg/kg, i.p.) delayed sleep onset and reduced sleep duration of mice. Conversely, rice germ ferment extracts-GABA treatment (10, 30, or 100 mg/kg, p.o.), especially at 100 mg/kg, normalized the sleep disturbance induced by caffeine. In locomotor tests, rice germ ferment extracts-GABA slightly but not significantly reduced the caffeine-induced increase in locomotor activity without affecting motor coordination. Additionally, rice germ ferment extracts-GABA per se did not affect the spontaneous locomotor activity and motor coordination of mice. In conclusion, rice germ ferment extracts-GABA supplementation can counter the sleep disturbance induced by caffeine, without affecting the general locomotor activities of mice. PMID:25995826

Simultaneous control of apparent extract and volatile compounds concentrations in low-malt beer fermentation.

PubMed

Kobayashi, Michiko; Nagahisa, Keisuke; Shimizu, Hiroshi; Shioya, Suteaki

2006-12-01

Volatile compounds cause undesirable flavor when their concentrations exceed threshold values in beer fermentation. The objective of this study is to develop a system for controlling apparent extract concentration, which indicates the fermentation degree and which should be decreased below a targeted value at a fixed time under a constraint of tolerable amounts of volatile compounds. In beer fermentation, even though the production of volatile compounds is suppressed by maintaining a low fermentation temperature, a low temperature causes a delay in the control of apparent extract concentration. Volatile compound concentration was estimated on-line, and the simulation of apparent extract consumption and volatile compound production was performed. To formulate various beer tastes and conserve energy for attemperation, optimal temperature profiles were determined using a genetic algorithm (GA). The developed feedback control of the brewing temperature profile was successfully applied, and apparent extract and volatile compound concentrations at a fixed time reached their target concentrations. Additionally, the control technique developed in this study enables us to brew a wide variety of beers with different tastes.

1H NMR based metabolic profiling of eleven Algerian aromatic plants and evaluation of their antioxidant and cytotoxic properties.

PubMed

Brahmi, Nabila; Scognamiglio, Monica; Pacifico, Severina; Mekhoukhe, Aida; Madani, Khodir; Fiorentino, Antonio; Monaco, Pietro

2015-10-01

Eleven Algerian medicinal and aromatic plants (Aloysia triphylla, Apium graveolens, Coriandrum sativum, Laurus nobilis, Lavandula officinalis, Marrubium vulgare, Mentha spicata, Inula viscosa, Petroselinum crispum, Salvia officinalis, and Thymus vulgaris) were selected and their hydroalcoholic extracts were screened for their antiradical and antioxidant properties in cell-free systems. In order to identify the main metabolites constituting the extracts, 1 H NMR-based metabolic profiling was applied. Data obtained emphasized the antiradical properties of T. vulgaris, M. spicata and L. nobilis extracts (RACI 1.37, 0.97 and 0.93, respectively), whereas parsley was the less active as antioxidant (RACI -1.26). When the cytotoxic effects of low and antioxidant doses of each extract were evaluated towards SK-N-BE(2)C neuronal and HepG2 hepatic cell lines, it was observed that all the extracts weakly affected the metabolic redox activity of the tested cell lines. Overall, data strongly plead in favor of the use of these plants as potential food additives in replacement of synthetic compounds. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In vitro evaluation of free radical scavenging activity of Codariocalyx motorius root extract.

PubMed

Chidambaram, Uma; Pachamuthu, Vanitha; Natarajan, Suganya; Elango, Bhakkiyalakshmi; Suriyanarayanan; Ramkumar, Kunga Mohan

2013-03-01

To determine the phenolic content in Codariocalyx motorius root extract and to evaluate its antioxidant properties using various in vitro assay systems. The antioxidant activity was evaluated based on scavenging of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl, hydroxyl radicals, superoxide anions, nitric oxide, hydrogen peroxide, peroxynitrite, reducing power and by inhibition of lipid peroxidation which was estimated in terms of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances. The root extract of the Codariocalyx motorius (C. motorius) exhibited potent total antioxidant activity that increased with increasing amount of extract concentration, which was compared with standard drug such as quercetin, butylated hydroxytoluene, tocopherol at different concentrations. The different concentrations of the extracts showed inhibition on lipid peroxidation. In addition, the extracts had effective reducing power, free radical scavenging, super oxide anion scavenging, nitric oxide scavenging, lipid peroxidation, and total phenolic content depending on concentration. High correlation between total phenolic contents and scavenging potential of different reactive oxygen species (r(2)=0.831-0.978) indicated the polyphenols as the main antioxidants. Codariocalyx motorius (C. motorius) root possess the highly active antioxidant substance which can be used for the treatment of oxidative stress-related diseases. Copyright © 2013 Hainan Medical College. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Developing Biological ISRU: Implications for Life Support and Space Exploration

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Brown, I. I.; Allen, C. C.; Garrison, D. H.; Sarkisova, S. A.; Galindo, C.; Mckay, David S.

2010-01-01

Main findings: 1) supplementing very dilute media for cultivation of CB with analogs of lunar or Martian regolith effectively supported the proliferation of CB; 2) O2 evolution by siderophilic cyanobacteria cultivated in diluted media but supplemented with iron-rich rocks was higher than O2 evolution by same strain in undiluted medium; 3) preliminary data suggest that organic acids produced by CB are involved in iron-rich mineral dissolution; 4) the CB studied can accumulate iron on and in their cells; 4) sequencing of the cyanobacterium JSC-1 genome revealed that this strain possesses molecular features which make it applicable for the cultivation in special photoreactors on Moon and Mars. Conclusion: As a result of pilot studies, we propose, to develop a concept for semi-closed integrated system that uses CB to extract useful elements to revitalize air and produce valuable biomolecules. Such a system could be the foundation of a self-sustaining extraterrestrial outpost (Hendrickx, De Wever et al., 2005; Handford, 2006). A potential advantage of a cyanobacterial photoreactor placed between LSS and ISRU loops is the possibility of supplying these systems with extracted elements and compounds from the regolith. In addition, waste regolith may be transformed into additional products such as methane, biomass, and organic and inorganic soil enrichment for the cultivation of higher plants.

Measuring strand discontinuity-directed mismatch repair in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae by cell-free nuclear extracts.

PubMed

Yuan, Fenghua; Lai, Fangfang; Gu, Liya; Zhou, Wen; El Hokayem, Jimmy; Zhang, Yanbin

2009-05-01

Mismatch repair corrects biosynthetic errors generated during DNA replication, whose deficiency causes a mutator phenotype and directly underlies hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer and sporadic cancers. Because of remarkably high conservation of the mismatch repair machinery between the budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and humans, the study of mismatch repair in yeast has provided tremendous insights into the mechanisms of this repair pathway in humans. In addition, yeast cells possess an unbeatable advantage over human cells in terms of the easy genetic manipulation, the availability of whole genome deletion strains, and the relatively low cost for setting up the system. Although many components of eukaryotic mismatch repair have been identified, it remains unclear if additional factors, such as DNA helicase(s) and redundant nuclease(s) besides EXO1, participate in eukaryotic mismatch repair. To facilitate the discovery of novel mismatch repair factors, we developed a straightforward in vitro cell-free repair system. Here, we describe the practical protocols for preparation of yeast cell-free nuclear extracts and DNA mismatch substrates, and the in vitro mismatch repair assay. The validity of the cell-free system was confirmed by the mismatch repair deficient yeast strain (Deltamsh2) and the complementation assay with purified yeast MSH2-MSH6.

Performance and methane emissions in dairy cows fed oregano and green tea extracts as feed additives.

PubMed

Kolling, G J; Stivanin, S C B; Gabbi, A M; Machado, F S; Ferreira, A L; Campos, M M; Tomich, T R; Cunha, C S; Dill, S W; Pereira, L G R; Fischer, V

2018-05-01

Plant extracts have been proposed as substitutes for chemical feed additives due to their potential as rumen fermentation modifiers and because of their antimicrobial and antioxidant activities, possibly reducing methane emissions. This study aimed to evaluate the use of oregano (OR), green tea extracts (GT), and their association as feed additives on the performance and methane emissions from dairy between 28 and 87 d of lactation. Thirty-two lactating dairy cows, blocked into 2 genetic groups: 16 Holstein cows and 16 crossbred Holstein-Gir, with 522.6 ± 58.3 kg of body weight, 57.2 ± 20.9 d in lactation, producing 27.5 ± 5.0 kg/cow of milk and with 3.1 ± 1.8 lactations were evaluated (means ± standard error of the means). Cows were allocated into 4 treatments: control (CON), without plant extracts in the diet; oregano extract (OR), with the addition of 0.056% of oregano extract in the dry matter (DM) of the diet; green tea (GT), with the addition of 0.028% of green tea extract in the DM of the diet; and mixture, with the addition of 0.056% oregano extract and 0.028% green tea extract in the DM of the diet. The forage-to-concentrate ratio was 60:40. Forage was composed of corn silage (94%) and Tifton hay (6%); concentrate was based on ground corn and soybean meal. Plant extracts were supplied as powder, which was previously added and homogenized into 1 kg of concentrate in natural matter, top-dressed onto the total mixed diet. No treatment by day interaction was observed for any of the evaluated variables, but some block by treatment interactions were significant. In Holstein cows, the mixture treatment decreased gross energy and tended to decrease the total-tract apparent digestibility coefficient for crude protein and total digestible nutrients when compared with OR. During the gas measurement period, GT and OR increased the digestible fraction of the ingested DM and decreased CH 4 expressed in grams per kilogram of digestible DMI compared with CON. The use of extracts did not change rumen pH, total volatile fatty acid concentration, milk yield, or most milk traits. Compared with CON, oregano addition decreased fat concentration in milk. The use of plant extracts altered some milk fatty acids but did not change milk fatty acids grouped according to chain length (short or long), saturation (unsaturated or saturated), total conjugated linoleic acids, and n-3 and n-6 contents. Green tea and oregano fed separately reduced gas emission in cows during the first third of lactation and have potential to be used as feed additives for dairy cows. Copyright © 2018 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Chromatographic Evaluation and Characterization of Components of Gentian Root Extract Used as Food Additives.

PubMed

Amakura, Yoshiaki; Yoshimura, Morio; Morimoto, Sara; Yoshida, Takashi; Tada, Atsuko; Ito, Yusai; Yamazaki, Takeshi; Sugimoto, Naoki; Akiyama, Hiroshi

2016-01-01

Gentian root extract is used as a bitter food additive in Japan. We investigated the constituents of this extract to acquire the chemical data needed for standardized specifications. Fourteen known compounds were isolated in addition to a mixture of gentisin and isogentisin: anofinic acid, 2-methoxyanofinic acid, furan-2-carboxylic acid, 5-hydroxymethyl-2-furfural, 2,3-dihydroxybenzoic acid, isovitexin, gentiopicroside, loganic acid, sweroside, vanillic acid, gentisin 7-O-primeveroside, isogentisin 3-O-primeveroside, 6'-O-glucosylgentiopicroside, and swertiajaposide D. Moreover, a new compound, loganic acid 7-(2'-hydroxy-3'-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl)benzoate (1), was also isolated. HPLC was used to analyze gentiopicroside and amarogentin, defined as the main constituents of gentian root extract in the List of Existing Food Additives in Japan.

A Multimedia, Augmented Reality Interactive System for the Application of a Guided School Tour

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Ko-Chun; Huang, Sheng-Wen; Chu, Sheng-Kai; Su, Ming-Wei; Chen, Chia-Yen; Chen, Chi-Fa

The paper describes an implementation of a multimedia, augmented reality system used for a guided school tour. The aim of this work is to improve the level of interactions between a viewer and the system by means of augmented reality. In the implemented system, hand motions are captured via computer vision based approaches and analyzed to extract representative actions which are used to interact with the system. In this manner, tactile peripheral hardware such as keyboard and mouse can be eliminated. In addition, the proposed system also aims to reduce hardware related costs and avoid health risks associated with contaminations by contact in public areas.

Biochemical and molecular evidences for the antitumor potential of Ginkgo biloba leaves extract in rodents.

PubMed

Ahmed, Hanaa H; Shousha, Wafaa Gh; El-Mezayen, Hatem A; El-Toumy, Sayed A; Sayed, Alaa H; Ramadan, Aesha R

2017-01-01

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the deadliest primary cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of 10% or less. This study was undertaken to elucidate the underlying biochemical and molecular mechanisms in favor of N-nitrosodiethylamine-induced hepatocellular carcinoma. Furthermore, the aim of this work was extended to explore the efficacy of Ginkgo biloba leaves extract in deterioration of HCC in rats. In the current study, HCC group experienced significant downregulation of ING-3 gene expression and upregulation of Foxp-1 gene expression in liver. Treatment of HCC groups with Ginkgo biloba leaves extract resulted in upregulation of ING-3 and downregulation of Foxp-1 gene expression in liver. In addition, there was significant increase in serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and glypican-3 (GPC-3) levels in HCC group versus the negative control group. In contrast, the groups with HCC subjected to either high or low dose of Ginkgo biloba leaves extract elicited significant reduction (P<0.05) of AFP, CEA and GPC-3 in serum compared to the untreated HCC rats. Besides, histological examination of liver tissue sections of rats in HCC group revealed typical anaplasia. Interestingly, treatment with Ginkgo biloba leaves extract elicited marked improvement in the histological feature of liver tissue in HCC groups. In conclusion, this research indicated that the carcinogenic potency of N-nitrosodiethylamine targeted multiple systems on the cellular and molecular levels. In addition, the results of the current study shed light on the promising anticancer activity of Ginkgo biloba leaves extract in treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma induced chemically in the experimental model through its apoptotic and antiproliferative properties.

Binary Code Extraction and Interface Identification for Security Applications

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-10-02

the functions extracted during the end-to-end applications and at the bottom some additional functions extracted from the OpenSSL library. fact that as...mentioned in Section 5.1 through Section 5.3 and some additional functions that we extract from the OpenSSL library for evaluation purposes. The... OpenSSL functions, the false positives and negatives are measured by comparison with the original C source code. For the malware samples, no source is

Morus alba L. Stem Extract Attenuates Pain and Articular Cartilage Damage in the Anterior Cruciate Ligament Transection-Induced Rat Model of Osteoarthritis.

PubMed

Khunakornvichaya, Arada; Lekmeechai, Sujinna; Pham, Phi Phuong; Himakoun, Wanwisa; Pitaksuteepong, Tasana; Morales, Noppawan Phumala; Hemstapat, Warinkarn

2016-01-01

This study was designed to investigate the anti-nociceptive effect of Morus alba stem extract as well as its cartilage protective effect in the anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT)-induced rat model of osteoarthritis (OA). The anti-nociceptive effect of this plant extract was determined by measuring hind limb weight bearing, while the severity of cartilage damage to the knee joints was evaluated using the modified Mankin grading system. Oral administration of M. alba stem extract (56 and 560 mg/kg) significantly attenuated joint pain as indicated by a significant (p < 0.05) increase in the values of percent weight borne on the operated hind limb for the OA-induced groups that received M. alba stem extract at 56 and 560 mg/kg when compared to those of the vehicle-treated OA-induced group. In addition, a significant improvement in the Mankin score was also observed in rats treated with 560 mg/kg M. alba stem extract, which was in agreement with its pain-relieving effect. The results showed that M. alba stem extract exhibited an anti-nociceptive effect as well as cartilage protection in the ACLT-induced rat model of OA, supporting its potential use as a therapeutic treatment for OA. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Automatic definition of the oncologic EHR data elements from NCIT in OWL.

PubMed

Cuggia, Marc; Bourdé, Annabel; Turlin, Bruno; Vincendeau, Sebastien; Bertaud, Valerie; Bohec, Catherine; Duvauferrier, Régis

2011-01-01

Semantic interoperability based on ontologies allows systems to combine their information and process them automatically. The ability to extract meaningful fragments from ontology is a key for the ontology re-use and the construction of a subset will help to structure clinical data entries. The aim of this work is to provide a method for extracting a set of concepts for a specific domain, in order to help to define data elements of an oncologic EHR. a generic extraction algorithm was developed to extract, from the NCIT and for a specific disease (i.e. prostate neoplasm), all the concepts of interest into a sub-ontology. We compared all the concepts extracted to the concepts encoded manually contained into the multi-disciplinary meeting report form (MDMRF). We extracted two sub-ontologies: sub-ontology 1 by using a single key concept and sub-ontology 2 by using 5 additional keywords. The coverage of sub-ontology 2 to the MDMRF concepts was 51%. The low rate of coverage is due to the lack of definition or mis-classification of the NCIT concepts. By providing a subset of concepts focused on a particular domain, this extraction method helps at optimizing the binding process of data elements and at maintaining and enriching a domain ontology.

Requirements for the conceptual design of advanced underground coal extraction systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Gangal, M. D.; Lavin, M. L.

1981-01-01

Conceptual design requirements are presented for underground coal mining systems having substantially improved performance in the areas of production cost and miner safety. Mandatory performance levels are also set for miner health, environmental impact, and coal recovery. In addition to mandatory design goals and constraints, a number of desirable system characteristics are identified which must be assessed in terms of their impact on production cost and their compatibility with other system elements. Although developed for the flat lying, moderately thick seams of Central Appalachia, these requirements are designed to be easily adaptable to other coals.

Kerogen extraction from subterranean oil shale resources

DOEpatents

Looney, Mark Dean; Lestz, Robert Steven; Hollis, Kirk; Taylor, Craig; Kinkead, Scott; Wigand, Marcus

2010-09-07

The present invention is directed to methods for extracting a kerogen-based product from subsurface (oil) shale formations, wherein such methods rely on fracturing and/or rubblizing portions of said formations so as to enhance their fluid permeability, and wherein such methods further rely on chemically modifying the shale-bound kerogen so as to render it mobile. The present invention is also directed at systems for implementing at least some of the foregoing methods. Additionally, the present invention is also directed to methods of fracturing and/or rubblizing subsurface shale formations and to methods of chemically modifying kerogen in situ so as to render it mobile.

Kerogen extraction from subterranean oil shale resources

DOEpatents

Looney, Mark Dean [Houston, TX; Lestz, Robert Steven [Missouri City, TX; Hollis, Kirk [Los Alamos, NM; Taylor, Craig [Los Alamos, NM; Kinkead, Scott [Los Alamos, NM; Wigand, Marcus [Los Alamos, NM

2009-03-10

The present invention is directed to methods for extracting a kerogen-based product from subsurface (oil) shale formations, wherein such methods rely on fracturing and/or rubblizing portions of said formations so as to enhance their fluid permeability, and wherein such methods further rely on chemically modifying the shale-bound kerogen so as to render it mobile. The present invention is also directed at systems for implementing at least some of the foregoing methods. Additionally, the present invention is also directed to methods of fracturing and/or rubblizing subsurface shale formations and to methods of chemically modifying kerogen in situ so as to render it mobile.

Physical data measurements and mathematical modelling of simple gas bubble experiments in glass melts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Weinberg, Michael C.

1986-01-01

In this work consideration is given to the problem of the extraction of physical data information from gas bubble dissolution and growth measurements. The discussion is limited to the analysis of the simplest experimental systems consisting of a single, one component gas bubble in a glassmelt. It is observed that if the glassmelt is highly under- (super-) saturated, then surface tension effects may be ignored, simplifying the task of extracting gas diffusivity values from the measurements. If, in addition, the bubble rise velocity is very small (or very large) the ease of obtaining physical property data is enhanced. Illustrations are given for typical cases.

Ultrasound-assisted extraction of rare-earth elements from carbonatite rocks.

PubMed

Diehl, Lisarb O; Gatiboni, Thais L; Mello, Paola A; Muller, Edson I; Duarte, Fabio A; Flores, Erico M M

2018-01-01

In view of the increasing demand for rare-earth elements (REE) in many areas of high technology, alternative methods for the extraction of these elements have been developed. In this work, a process based on the use of ultrasound for the extraction of REE from carbonatite (an igneous rock) is proposed to avoid the use of concentrated reagents, high temperature and excessive extraction time. In this pioneer work for REE extraction from carbonatite rocks in a preliminary investigation, ultrasonic baths, cup horn systems or ultrasound probes operating at different frequencies and power were evaluated. In addition, the power released to the extraction medium and the ultrasound amplitude were also investigated and the temperature and carbonatite mass/volume of extraction solution ratio were optimized to 70°C and 20mg/mL, respectively. Better extraction efficiencies (82%) were obtained employing an ultrasound probe operating at 20kHz for 15min, ultrasound amplitude of 40% (692Wdm -3 ) and using a diluted extraction solution (3% v/v HNO 3 +2% v/v HCl). It is important to mention that high extraction efficiency was obtained even using a diluted acid mixture and relatively low temperature in comparison to conventional extraction methods for REE. A comparison of results with those obtained by mechanical stirring (500rpm) using the same conditions (time, temperature and extraction solution) was carried out, showing that the use of ultrasound increased the extraction efficiency up to 35%. Therefore, the proposed ultrasound-assisted procedure can be considered as a suitable alternative for high efficiency extraction of REE from carbonatite rocks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Dynamic pH junction high-speed counter-current chromatography coupled with microwave-assisted extraction for online separation and purification of alkaloids from Stephania cepharantha.

PubMed

Yuan, Zhiquan; Xiao, Xiaohua; Li, Gongke

2013-11-22

A simple and efficient dynamic pH junction high-speed counter-current chromatography method was developed and further applied to the online extraction, separation and purification of alkaloids from Stephania cepharantha by coupling with microwave-assisted extraction. Mineral acid and organic base were added into the mobile phase and the sample solution, respectively, leading to the formation of a dynamic pH junction in the column and causing focus of alkaloids. Selective focus of analytes can be achieved on the basis of velocity changes of the pH junction through appropriate selection of solvent systems and optimization of additive concentrations. The extract can be directly introduced into the HSCCC for the online extraction, separation and purification of alkaloids from S. cepharantha. Continuous separation can be easily achieved with the same solvent system. Under the optimum conditions, 6.0 g original sample was extracted with 60 mL of the upper phase of hexane-ethyl acetate-methanol-water (1:1:1:1, v/v/v/v) containing 10% triethylamine under 50 °C and 400 W irradiation power for 10 min, the extracts were directly separated and purified by high-speed counter-current chromatography. A total of 5.7 mg sinomenine, 8.3mg 6,7-di-O-acetylsinococuline, 17.9 mg berbamine, 12.7 mg isotetrandrine and 14.6 mg cepharanthine were obtained with purities of 96.7%, 93.7%, 98.7%, 97.3% and 99.3%, respectively. The online method provides good selectivity to ionizable compounds and improves the separation and purification efficiency of the high-speed counter-current chromatography technique. It has good potential for separation and purification of effective compounds from natural products. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A nanoscale study of charge extraction in organic solar cells: the impact of interfacial molecular configurations.

PubMed

Tang, Fu-Ching; Wu, Fu-Chiao; Yen, Chia-Te; Chang, Jay; Chou, Wei-Yang; Gilbert Chang, Shih-Hui; Cheng, Horng-Long

2015-01-07

In the optimization of organic solar cells (OSCs), a key problem lies in the maximization of charge carriers from the active layer to the electrodes. Hence, this study focused on the interfacial molecular configurations in efficient OSC charge extraction by theoretical investigations and experiments, including small molecule-based bilayer-heterojunction (sm-BLHJ) and polymer-based bulk-heterojunction (p-BHJ) OSCs. We first examined a well-defined sm-BLHJ model system of OSC composed of p-type pentacene, an n-type perylene derivative, and a nanogroove-structured poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (NS-PEDOT) hole extraction layer. The OSC with NS-PEDOT shows a 230% increment in the short circuit current density compared with that of the conventional planar PEDOT layer. Our theoretical calculations indicated that small variations in the microscopic intermolecular interaction among these interfacial configurations could induce significant differences in charge extraction efficiency. Experimentally, different interfacial configurations were generated between the photo-active layer and the nanostructured charge extraction layer with periodic nanogroove structures. In addition to pentacene, poly(3-hexylthiophene), the most commonly used electron-donor material system in p-BHJ OSCs was also explored in terms of its possible use as a photo-active layer. Local conductive atomic force microscopy was used to measure the nanoscale charge extraction efficiency at different locations within the nanogroove, thus highlighting the importance of interfacial molecular configurations in efficient charge extraction. This study enriches understanding regarding the optimization of the photovoltaic properties of several types of OSCs by conducting appropriate interfacial engineering based on organic/polymer molecular orientations. The ultimate power conversion efficiency beyond at least 15% is highly expected when the best state-of-the-art p-BHJ OSCs are combined with present arguments.

Design of extraction system in BRing at HIAF

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ruan, Shuang; Yang, Jiancheng; Zhang, Jinquan; Shen, Guodong; Ren, Hang; Liu, Jie; Shangguan, Jingbing; Zhang, Xiaoying; Zhang, Jingjing; Mao, Lijun; Sheng, Lina; Yin, Dayu; Wang, Geng; Wu, Bo; Yao, Liping; Tang, Meitang; Cai, Fucheng; Chen, Xiaoqiang

2018-06-01

The Booster Ring (BRing), which is the key part of HIAF (High Intensity heavy ion Accelerator Facility) complex at IMP (Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences), can provide uranium (A / q = 7) beam with a wide extraction energy range of 200-800 MeV/u. To fulfill a flexible beam extraction for multi-purpose experiments, both fast and slow extraction systems will be accommodated in the BRing. The fast extraction system is used for extracting short bunched beam horizontally in single-turn. The slow extraction system is used to provide quasi-continuous beam by the third order resonance and RF-knockout scheme. To achieve a compact structure, the two extraction systems are designed to share the same extraction channel. The general design of the fast and slow extraction systems and simulation results are discussed in this paper.

21 CFR 73.530 - Spirulina extract.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES GENERAL LISTING OF COLOR ADDITIVES EXEMPT FROM CERTIFICATION Foods § 73.530 Spirulina extract. (a) Identity. (1) The color additive... listed in this subpart as safe for use in color additive mixtures for coloring foods. (b) Specifications...

Novel approaches mediated by tailor-made green solvents for the extraction of phenolic compounds from agro-food industrial by-products.

PubMed

Fernández, María de Los Ángeles; Espino, Magdalena; Gomez, Federico J V; Silva, María Fernanda

2018-01-15

An environmentally friendly method for the phenolic compound extraction from agro-food industrial by-products was developed in order to contribute with their sustainable valorization. A Natural Deep Eutectic Solvent was chemometrically-designed for the first time and compared with traditional solvents in terms of analyte stabilization. The combination of lactic acid, glucose and 15% water (LGH-15) was selected as optimal. A high-efficiency ultrasound-assisted extraction mediated by LGH-15 prior to HPLC-DAD allows the determination of 14 phenols in onion, olive, tomato and pear industrial by-products. NADES synthesis as well as the extraction procedures were optimized by Response Surface Methodology. Thus, phenolic determination in these complex samples was achieved by a simple, non-expensive, eco-friendly and robust system. The application to different matrices demonstrated the versatility of the proposed method. NADES opens interesting perspectives for their potential use as vehicles of bioactive compounds as food additives or pharmaceuticals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

SULFUR REDUCTION IN GASOLINE AND DIESEL FUELS BY EXTRACTION/ADSORPTION OF REFRACTORY DIBENZOTHIOPHENES

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Scott G. McKinley; Celedonio M. Alvarez

2003-03-01

The purpose of this study was to remove thiophene, benzothiophene and dibenzothiophene from a simulated gasoline feedstock. We found that Ru(NH{sub 3}){sub 5}(H{sub 2}O){sup 2+} reacts with a variety of thiophenes (Th*), affording Ru(NH{sub 3}){sub 5}(Th*){sup 2+}. We used this reactivity to design a biphasic extraction process that removes more than 50% of the dibenzothiophene in the simulated feedstock. This extraction system consists of a hydrocarbon phase (simulated petroleum feedstock) and extractant Ru(NH{sub 3}){sub 5}(H{sub 2}O){sup 2+} in an aqueous phase (70% dimethylformamide, 30% H{sub 2}O). The DBT is removed in situ from the newly formed Ru(NH{sub 3}){sub 5}(DBT){sup 2+}more » by either an oxidation process or addition of H{sub 2}O, to regenerate Ru(NH{sub 3}){sub 5}(H{sub 2}O){sup 2+}.« less

Ensemble methods with simple features for document zone classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Obafemi-Ajayi, Tayo; Agam, Gady; Xie, Bingqing

2012-01-01

Document layout analysis is of fundamental importance for document image understanding and information retrieval. It requires the identification of blocks extracted from a document image via features extraction and block classification. In this paper, we focus on the classification of the extracted blocks into five classes: text (machine printed), handwriting, graphics, images, and noise. We propose a new set of features for efficient classifications of these blocks. We present a comparative evaluation of three ensemble based classification algorithms (boosting, bagging, and combined model trees) in addition to other known learning algorithms. Experimental results are demonstrated for a set of 36503 zones extracted from 416 document images which were randomly selected from the tobacco legacy document collection. The results obtained verify the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed set of features in comparison to the commonly used Ocropus recognition features. When used in conjunction with the Ocropus feature set, we further improve the performance of the block classification system to obtain a classification accuracy of 99.21%.

In situ stabilization of cadmium-, lead-, and zinc-contaminated soil using various amendments.

PubMed

Lee, Sang-Hwan; Lee, Jin-Soo; Choi, Youn Jeong; Kim, Jeong-Gyu

2009-11-01

Chemical stabilization is an in situ remediation method that uses inexpensive amendments to reduce contaminant availability in polluted soil. We tested the effects of several amendments (limestone, red-mud, and furnace slag) on the extractability of heavy metals, microbial activities, phytoavailability of soil metals (assessed using lettuce, Lactuca sativa L.), and availability of heavy metals in ingested soil to the human gastrointestinal system (assessed using the physiologically based extraction test). The application of soil amendments significantly decreased the amount of soluble and extractable heavy metals in the soil (p<0.05). The decreased extractable metal content of soil was accompanied by increased microbial activity and decreased plant uptake of heavy metals. Soil microbial activities (soil respiration, urease, and dehydrogenase activity) significantly increased in limestone and red-mud-amended soils. Red-mud was the most effective treatment in decreasing heavy-metal concentrations in lettuce. Compared to non-amended control soil, lettuce uptake of Cd, Pb, and Zn was reduced 86%, 58%, and 73%, respectively, by the addition of red-mud.

Transport modeling and multivariate adaptive regression splines for evaluating performance of ASR systems in freshwater aquifers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Forghani, Ali; Peralta, Richard C.

2017-10-01

The study presents a procedure using solute transport and statistical models to evaluate the performance of aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) systems designed to earn additional water rights in freshwater aquifers. The recovery effectiveness (REN) index quantifies the performance of these ASR systems. REN is the proportion of the injected water that the same ASR well can recapture during subsequent extraction periods. To estimate REN for individual ASR wells, the presented procedure uses finely discretized groundwater flow and contaminant transport modeling. Then, the procedure uses multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) analysis to identify the significant variables affecting REN, and to identify the most recovery-effective wells. Achieving REN values close to 100% is the desire of the studied 14-well ASR system operator. This recovery is feasible for most of the ASR wells by extracting three times the injectate volume during the same year as injection. Most of the wells would achieve RENs below 75% if extracting merely the same volume as they injected. In other words, recovering almost all the same water molecules that are injected requires having a pre-existing water right to extract groundwater annually. MARS shows that REN most significantly correlates with groundwater flow velocity, or hydraulic conductivity and hydraulic gradient. MARS results also demonstrate that maximizing REN requires utilizing the wells located in areas with background Darcian groundwater velocities less than 0.03 m/d. The study also highlights the superiority of MARS over regular multiple linear regressions to identify the wells that can provide the maximum REN. This is the first reported application of MARS for evaluating performance of an ASR system in fresh water aquifers.

Agile text mining for the 2014 i2b2/UTHealth Cardiac risk factors challenge.

PubMed

Cormack, James; Nath, Chinmoy; Milward, David; Raja, Kalpana; Jonnalagadda, Siddhartha R

2015-12-01

This paper describes the use of an agile text mining platform (Linguamatics' Interactive Information Extraction Platform, I2E) to extract document-level cardiac risk factors in patient records as defined in the i2b2/UTHealth 2014 challenge. The approach uses a data-driven rule-based methodology with the addition of a simple supervised classifier. We demonstrate that agile text mining allows for rapid optimization of extraction strategies, while post-processing can leverage annotation guidelines, corpus statistics and logic inferred from the gold standard data. We also show how data imbalance in a training set affects performance. Evaluation of this approach on the test data gave an F-Score of 91.7%, one percent behind the top performing system. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Recent Application of Solid Phase Based Techniques for Extraction and Preconcentration of Cyanotoxins in Environmental Matrices.

PubMed

Mashile, Geaneth Pertunia; Nomngongo, Philiswa N

2017-03-04

Cyanotoxins are toxic and are found in eutrophic, municipal, and residential water supplies. For this reason, their occurrence in drinking water systems has become a global concern. Therefore, monitoring, control, risk assessment, and prevention of these contaminants in the environmental bodies are important subjects associated with public health. Thus, rapid, sensitive, selective, simple, and accurate analytical methods for the identification and determination of cyanotoxins are required. In this paper, the sampling methodologies and applications of solid phase-based sample preparation methods for the determination of cyanotoxins in environmental matrices are reviewed. The sample preparation techniques mainly include solid phase micro-extraction (SPME), solid phase extraction (SPE), and solid phase adsorption toxin tracking technology (SPATT). In addition, advantages and disadvantages and future prospects of these methods have been discussed.

Products derived from olive leaves and fruits can alter in vitro ruminal fermentation and methane production.

PubMed

Shakeri, Pirouz; Durmic, Zoey; Vadhanabhuti, Joy; Vercoe, Philip E

2017-03-01

The industrial processing of olive generates a high quantity of by-products. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of products derived from olive trees, i.e. leaves, fruits or kernels as a sole substrate (part A), and crude extract from leaves combined with a substrate (part B) on rumen microbial fermentation in an in vitro batch fermentation system. In this study, total gas production, methane production, and concentrations of volatile fatty acids (VFA) and ammonia in ruminal fluid were measured. In part A, in vitro fermentation of leaves or fruits yielded a gas and total VFA production that were comparable with control substrate, while most of them produced significantly less methane (up to 55.6%) when compared to control substrate. In part B, amongst leaf extracts, only addition of chloroform extract reduced methane production, which was also associated with a decrease (P < 0.01) in gas production. This effect was associated with a significant reduction (P < 0.01) in acetate to propionate ratio and ammonia production, but not in reduction in VFA concentrations. Olive leaf and olive leaf chloroform extract reduced ammonia production and increased the molar proportion of propionate in the rumen and can assist in developing novel feed additives for methane mitigation from the rumen. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.

Creating a Holistic Extractables and Leachables (E&L) Program for Biotechnology Products.

PubMed

Li, Kim; Rogers, Gary; Nashed-Samuel, Yasser; Lee, Hans; Mire-Sluis, Anthony; Cherney, Barry; Forster, Ronald; Yeh, Ping; Markovic, Ingrid

2015-01-01

The risk mitigation of extractables and leachables presents significant challenges to regulators and drug manufacturers with respect to the development, as well as the lifecycle management, of drug products. A holistic program is proposed, using a science- and risk-based strategy for testing extractables and leachables from primary containers, drug delivery devices, and single-use systems for the manufacture of biotechnology products. The strategy adopts the principles and concepts from ICH Q9 and ICH Q8(R2). The strategy is phase-appropriate, progressing from extractables testing for material screening/selection/qualification through leachables testing of final products. The strategy is designed primarily to ensure patient safety and product quality of biotechnology products. The holistic program requires robust extraction studies using model solvents, with careful consideration of solvation effect, pH, ionic strength, temperature, and product-contact surface and duration. From a wide variety of process- and product-contact materials, such extraction studies have identified and quantified over 200 organic extractable compounds. The most commonly observed compounds were siloxanes, fatty acid amides, and methacrylates. Toxicology assessments were conducted on these compounds using risk-based decision analysis. Parenteral permitted daily exposure limits were derived, as appropriate, for the majority of these compounds. Analysis of the derived parenteral permitted daily exposure limits helped to establish action thresholds to target high-risk leachables in drug products on stability until expiry. Action thresholds serve to trigger quality investigations to determine potential product impact. The holistic program also evaluates the potential risk for immunogenicity. This approach for primary drug containers and delivery devices is also applicable to single-use systems when justified with a historical knowledge base and understanding of the manufacturing processes of biotechnology products. In the development of a drug product, careful consideration is given to impurities that may originate from manufacturing equipment, process components, and packaging materials. The majority of such impurities are common chemical additives used to improve the physicochemical properties of a wide range of plastic materials. Suppliers and drug manufacturers conduct studies to extract chemical additives from the plastic materials in order to screen and predict those that may leach into a drug product. In this context, the term extractables refers to a profile of extracted compounds observed in studies under harsh conditions. In contrast, the term leachables refers to those impurities that leach from the materials under real-use conditions and may be present in final drug products. The purpose of this article is to present a holistic approach that effectively minimizes the risk of leachables to patient safety and product quality. © PDA, Inc. 2015.

Anti-Aging and Antioxidant Potential of Paullinia cupana var. sorbilis: Findings in Caenorhabditis elegans Indicate a New Utilization for Roasted Seeds of Guarana.

PubMed

Peixoto, Herbenya; Roxo, Mariana; Röhrig, Teresa; Richling, Elke; Wang, Xiaojuan; Wink, Michael

2017-08-15

Background: Roasted seeds of Amazonian guarana ( Paullinia cupana var. sorbilis; Sapindaceae) are popular in South America due to their stimulant activity on the central nervous system (CNS). Rich in purine alkaloids, markedly caffeine, the seeds are extensively used in the Brazilian beverage industry for the preparation of soft drinks and as additives in energy drinks. Methods: To investigate the putative anti-aging and antioxidant activity of guarana, we used the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans . Chemical analyses were performed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS). Results: When tested in the model system Caenorhabditis elegans , the water extract from roasted guarana seeds enhanced resistance against oxidative stress, extended lifespan and attenuated aging markers such as muscle function decline and polyQ40 aggregation. Conclusions: In the current study, we demonstrate that guarana extracts can work as a powerful antioxidant in vivo; moreover, guarana extracts exhibit anti-aging properties. Our results suggest that the biological activities of guarana go beyond the extensively reported CNS stimulation.

Anti-Aging and Antioxidant Potential of Paullinia cupana var. sorbilis: Findings in Caenorhabditis elegans Indicate a New Utilization for Roasted Seeds of Guarana

PubMed Central

Roxo, Mariana; Röhrig, Teresa; Richling, Elke

2017-01-01

Background: Roasted seeds of Amazonian guarana (Paullinia cupana var. sorbilis; Sapindaceae) are popular in South America due to their stimulant activity on the central nervous system (CNS). Rich in purine alkaloids, markedly caffeine, the seeds are extensively used in the Brazilian beverage industry for the preparation of soft drinks and as additives in energy drinks. Methods: To investigate the putative anti-aging and antioxidant activity of guarana, we used the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. Chemical analyses were performed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS). Results: When tested in the model system Caenorhabditis elegans, the water extract from roasted guarana seeds enhanced resistance against oxidative stress, extended lifespan and attenuated aging markers such as muscle function decline and polyQ40 aggregation. Conclusions: In the current study, we demonstrate that guarana extracts can work as a powerful antioxidant in vivo; moreover, guarana extracts exhibit anti-aging properties. Our results suggest that the biological activities of guarana go beyond the extensively reported CNS stimulation. PMID:28930275

Comparison of procedure coding systems for level 1 and 2 hospitals in South Africa.

PubMed

Montewa, Lebogang; Hanmer, Lyn; Reagon, Gavin

2013-01-01

The ability of three procedure coding systems to reflect the procedure concepts extracted from patient records from six hospitals was compared, in order to inform decision making about a procedure coding standard for South Africa. A convenience sample of 126 procedure concepts was extracted from patient records at three level 1 hospitals and three level 2 hospitals. Each procedure concept was coded using ICPC-2, ICD-9-CM, and CCSA-2001. The extent to which each code assigned actually reflected the procedure concept was evaluated (between 'no match' and 'complete match'). For the study sample, CCSA-2001 was found to reflect the procedure concepts most completely, followed by ICD-9-CM and then ICPC-2. In practice, decision making about procedure coding standards would depend on multiple factors in addition to coding accuracy.

[Research on Control System of an Exoskeleton Upper-limb Rehabilitation Robot].

PubMed

Wang, Lulu; Hu, Xin; Hu, Jie; Fang, Youfang; He, Rongrong; Yu, Hongliu

2016-12-01

In order to help the patients with upper-limb disfunction go on rehabilitation training,this paper proposed an upper-limb exoskeleton rehabilitation robot with four degrees of freedom(DOF),and realized two control schemes,i.e.,voice control and electromyography control.The hardware and software design of the voice control system was completed based on RSC-4128 chips,which realized the speech recognition technology of a specific person.Besides,this study adapted self-made surface eletromyogram(sEMG)signal extraction electrodes to collect sEMG signals and realized pattern recognition by conducting sEMG signals processing,extracting time domain features and fixed threshold algorithm.In addition,the pulse-width modulation(PWM)algorithm was used to realize the speed adjustment of the system.Voice control and electromyography control experiments were then carried out,and the results showed that the mean recognition rate of the voice control and electromyography control reached 93.1%and 90.9%,respectively.The results proved the feasibility of the control system.This study is expected to lay a theoretical foundation for the further improvement of the control system of the upper-limb rehabilitation robot.

Quantitation of quinapril in human plasma by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry with quinolone matrix additives.

PubMed

Lu, Chi-Yu; Liu, Fei-Tsui; Feng, Chia-Hsien

2011-09-15

The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) is an essential body fluid maintenance system that controls pressure in the human body. The conversion of angiotensin I to angiotensin II by angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) is a key process in the RAAS because angiotensin II causes the vasoconstriction association with hypertension. Because of its effectiveness as an ACE blocker, quinipril is widely used for clinical treatment of hypertension and chronic congestive heart failure(.) Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization coupled with time-of-flight analyzer (MALDI-TOF) is a high throughput instrument for biological sample analysis. This study developed a micro-scale approach for using MALDI-TOF to detect quinapril in biological samples. A micro-liquid-liquid-extraction strategy combined with ion-pair interaction successfully extracted quinapril from aqueous layer to organic layer. Quinolones were then used as matrix additives to suppress undesired substances in plasma produce signals. Several factors affecting extraction efficiency were investigated in a biosample with a volume of only 10 μL. This method is successful to monitor quinapril in the clinical therapeutic range. The proposed method proved effective for monitoring the trace amounts of quinapril typically used for clinical therapy. The relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) and relative error (R.E.) used for evaluating within- and between-day assays of quinapril in plasma consistently remained below 15%. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Driving profile modeling and recognition based on soft computing approach.

PubMed

Wahab, Abdul; Quek, Chai; Tan, Chin Keong; Takeda, Kazuya

2009-04-01

Advancements in biometrics-based authentication have led to its increasing prominence and are being incorporated into everyday tasks. Existing vehicle security systems rely only on alarms or smart card as forms of protection. A biometric driver recognition system utilizing driving behaviors is a highly novel and personalized approach and could be incorporated into existing vehicle security system to form a multimodal identification system and offer a greater degree of multilevel protection. In this paper, detailed studies have been conducted to model individual driving behavior in order to identify features that may be efficiently and effectively used to profile each driver. Feature extraction techniques based on Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) are proposed and implemented. Features extracted from the accelerator and brake pedal pressure were then used as inputs to a fuzzy neural network (FNN) system to ascertain the identity of the driver. Two fuzzy neural networks, namely, the evolving fuzzy neural network (EFuNN) and the adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), are used to demonstrate the viability of the two proposed feature extraction techniques. The performances were compared against an artificial neural network (NN) implementation using the multilayer perceptron (MLP) network and a statistical method based on the GMM. Extensive testing was conducted and the results show great potential in the use of the FNN for real-time driver identification and verification. In addition, the profiling of driver behaviors has numerous other potential applications for use by law enforcement and companies dealing with buses and truck drivers.

Microwave-assisted extraction with water for fast extraction and simultaneous RP-HPLC determination of phenolic acids in radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae.

PubMed

Fang, Xinsheng; Wang, Jianhua; Zhou, Hongying; Jiang, Xingkai; Zhu, Lixiang; Gao, Xin

2009-07-01

An optimized microwave-assisted extraction method using water (MAE-W) as the extractant and an efficient HPLC analysis method were first developed for the fast extraction and simultaneous determination of D(+)-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl) lactic acid (Dla), salvianolic acid B (SaB), and lithospermic acid (La) in radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae. The key parameters of MAE-W were optimized. It was found that the degradation of SaB was inhibited when using the optimized MAE-W and the stable content of Dla, La, and SaB in danshen was obtained. Furthermore, compared to the conventional extraction methods, the proposed MAE-W is a more rapid method with higher yield and lower solvent consumption with a reproducibility (RSD <6%). In addition, using water as extractant is safe and helpful for environment protection, which could be referred to as green extraction. The separation and quantitative determination of the three compounds was carried out by a developed reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) method with UV detection. Highly efficient separation was obtained using gradient solvent system. The optimized HPLC analysis method was validated to have specificity, linearity, precision, and accuracy. The results indicated that MAE-W followed by HPLC-UV determination is an appropriate alternative to previously proposed method for quality control of radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae.

Enhanced Product Recovery from Glycerol Fermentation into 3-Carbon Compounds in a Bioelectrochemical System Combined with In Situ Extraction.

PubMed

Roume, Hugo; Arends, Jan B A; Ameril, Camar P; Patil, Sunil A; Rabaey, Korneel

2016-01-01

Given the large amount of crude glycerol formed as a by-product in the biodiesel industries and the concomitant decrease in its overall market price, there is a need to add extra value to this biorefinery side stream. Upgrading can be achieved by new biotechnologies dealing with recovery and conversion of glycerol present in wastewaters into value-added products, aiming at a zero-waste policy and developing an economically viable process. In microbial bioelectrochemical systems (BESs), the mixed microbial community growing on the cathode can convert glycerol reductively to 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO). However, the product yield is rather limited in BESs compared with classic fermentation processes, and the synthesis of side-products, resulting from oxidation of glycerol, such as organic acids, represents a major burden for recovery of 1,3-PDO. Here, we show that the use of an enriched mixed-microbial community of glycerol degraders and in situ extraction of organic acids positively impacts 1,3-PDO yield and allows additional recovery of propionate from glycerol. We report the highest production yield achieved (0.72 mol 1,3-PDO mol -1 glycerol ) in electricity-driven 1,3-PDO biosynthesis from raw glycerol, which is very close to the 1,3-PDO yield reported thus far for a mixed-microbial culture-based glycerol fermentation process. We also present a combined approach for 1,3-PDO production and propionate extraction in a single three chamber reactor system, which leads to recovery of additional 3-carbon compounds in BESs. This opens up further opportunities for an economical upgrading of biodiesel refinery side or waste streams.

Enhanced Product Recovery from Glycerol Fermentation into 3-Carbon Compounds in a Bioelectrochemical System Combined with In Situ Extraction

PubMed Central

Roume, Hugo; Arends, Jan B. A.; Ameril, Camar P.; Patil, Sunil A.; Rabaey, Korneel

2016-01-01

Given the large amount of crude glycerol formed as a by-product in the biodiesel industries and the concomitant decrease in its overall market price, there is a need to add extra value to this biorefinery side stream. Upgrading can be achieved by new biotechnologies dealing with recovery and conversion of glycerol present in wastewaters into value-added products, aiming at a zero-waste policy and developing an economically viable process. In microbial bioelectrochemical systems (BESs), the mixed microbial community growing on the cathode can convert glycerol reductively to 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO). However, the product yield is rather limited in BESs compared with classic fermentation processes, and the synthesis of side-products, resulting from oxidation of glycerol, such as organic acids, represents a major burden for recovery of 1,3-PDO. Here, we show that the use of an enriched mixed-microbial community of glycerol degraders and in situ extraction of organic acids positively impacts 1,3-PDO yield and allows additional recovery of propionate from glycerol. We report the highest production yield achieved (0.72 mol1,3-PDO mol−1glycerol) in electricity-driven 1,3-PDO biosynthesis from raw glycerol, which is very close to the 1,3-PDO yield reported thus far for a mixed-microbial culture-based glycerol fermentation process. We also present a combined approach for 1,3-PDO production and propionate extraction in a single three chamber reactor system, which leads to recovery of additional 3-carbon compounds in BESs. This opens up further opportunities for an economical upgrading of biodiesel refinery side or waste streams. PMID:27725929

Headspace versus direct immersion solid phase microextraction in complex matrixes: investigation of analyte behavior in multicomponent mixtures.

PubMed

Gionfriddo, Emanuela; Souza-Silva, Érica A; Pawliszyn, Janusz

2015-08-18

This work aims to investigate the behavior of analytes in complex mixtures and matrixes with the use of solid-phase microextraction (SPME). Various factors that influence analyte uptake such as coating chemistry, extraction mode, the physicochemical properties of analytes, and matrix complexity were considered. At first, an aqueous system containing analytes bearing different hydrophobicities, molecular weights, and chemical functionalities was investigated by using commercially available liquid and solid porous coatings. The differences in the mass transfer mechanisms resulted in a more pronounced occurrence of coating saturation in headspace mode. Contrariwise, direct immersion extraction minimizes the occurrence of artifacts related to coating saturation and provides enhanced extraction of polar compounds. In addition, matrix-compatible PDMS-modified solid coatings, characterized by a new morphology that avoids coating fouling, were compared to their nonmodified analogues. The obtained results indicate that PDMS-modified coatings reduce artifacts associated with coating saturation, even in headspace mode. This factor, coupled to their matrix compatibility, make the use of direct SPME very practical as a quantification approach and the best choice for metabolomics studies where wide coverage is intended. To further understand the influence on analyte uptake on a system where additional interactions occur due to matrix components, ex vivo and in vivo sampling conditions were simulated using a starch matrix model, with the aim of mimicking plant-derived materials. Our results corroborate the fact that matrix handling can affect analyte/matrix equilibria, with consequent release of high concentrations of previously bound hydrophobic compounds, potentially leading to coating saturation. Direct immersion SPME limited the occurrence of the artifacts, which confirms the suitability of SPME for in vivo applications. These findings shed light into the implementation of in vivo SPME strategies in quantitative metabolomics studies of complex plant-based systems.

FORMATE—PYRUVATE EXCHANGE REACTION IN STREPTOCOCCUS FAECALIS II.

PubMed Central

Oster, M. O.; Wood, N. P.

1964-01-01

Oster, M. O. (A. & M. College of Texas, College Station), and N. P. Wood. Formate-pyruvate exchange reaction in Streptococcus faecalis. II. Reaction conditions for cell extracts. J. Bacteriol. 87:104–113. 1964.—In contrast to intact cells of Streptococcus faecalis, no stimulation of the formate-pyruvate exchange reaction was observed in cell extracts when yeast extract was added to the reaction mixture. A heated extract of Micrococcus lactilyticus, vitamin K5, ferrous sulfate, and ferrous ammonium sulfate stimulated an active exchange by protecting the system from oxygen. Tetrahydrofolate, 2,3-dimercaptopropanol, and sodium sulfide provided partial protection, whereas ascorbate, glutathione, sodium hydrosulfite, ammonium sulfide, and sodium bisulfite gave insufficient protection or were inhibitory. Oxidation-reduction (O-R) indicators were not inhibitory and were used to estimate the O-R potentials of reaction mixtures. A potential at least as negative as −125 mv was estimated to be necessary to preserve or initiate formate-pyruvate exchange activity. The reaction operated over a narrow pH range when strict anaerobic conditions were not maintained but, when the system was suitably poised, the pH range was broader. The influence of high phosphate concentrations was less under strictly anaerobic conditions, and orthophosphate could be replaced by small amounts of pyrophosphate. Effect of temperature, time, and amount of extract is presented. Addition of reduced benzyl viologen and hydrogen-saturated palladium in the buffer during 8 hr of dialysis prevented inactivation of extracts. Recovery of activity could be obtained after ammonium sulfate treatment when a combination of palladium chloride, neutral red, and hydrogen bubbling were used. PMID:14102842

[Treatment of cough in respiratory tract infections - the effect of combining the natural active compounds with thymol].

PubMed

Schönknecht, Karina; Krauss, Hanna; Jambor, Jerzy; Fal, Andrzej M

Cough is one of the characteristic symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections (URI). Herbal medicines are often used in the treatment of the cough associated with infection and to accelerate recovery or support the immune system. An example of such products are extracts of thyme and primrose, and also their combination with thymol. Thymus vulgaris is a spasmolytic, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and antioxidant agent. The most important component responsible for the activity of thyme is thymol contained in the volatile thyme oil. Primrose is, most of all, a saponine agent with expectorant and secretolytic activity, showing also spasmolytic, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial effects. Because of the additive effects of the mentioned extracts and their wide activity profile they are often used as a combination drug. The use of this combination was assessed in the URI with the effects of alleviation of cough and dyspnea, and shortening the length of the disease. The effectiveness of the drug containing the extracts of thyme and primrose with the addition of thymol (Bronchosol®) was comparable to synthetic ambroxol and its safety has been proved. Moreover, the in-vitro antibacterial and antifungal effects of this drug have been evaluated.

Interference of hawthorn on serum digoxin measurements by immunoassays and pharmacodynamic interaction with digoxin.

PubMed

Dasgupta, Amitava; Kidd, Laura; Poindexter, Brian J; Bick, Roger J

2010-08-01

Hawthorn is an herb indicated for treating cardiac illness. Because a patient taking digoxin may also take hawthorn, we investigated potential interference of hawthorn in serum digoxin measurements using immunoassays as well as pharmacodynamic interaction between hawthorn and digoxin. Hawthorn contains alkaloids that are structurally similar to digoxin and may interfere with serum digoxin measurement using immunoassays. In addition, hawthorn has cardioactive properties similar to digoxin. To study potential pharmacodynamic interaction between hawthorn and digoxin. The effects of hawthorn extract on serum digoxin measurements using Digoxin III (Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, Illinois) and the Tina-Quant digoxin assay (Roche Diagnostics, Indianapolis, Indiana) were investigated using 2 different brands of extract. To study the pharmacodynamic interaction between hawthorn and digoxin, we used an isolated adult rat cardiomyocyte system, measuring calcium transients by real-time fluorescence spectrophotometry. Hawthorn interfered only with the Digoxin III immunoassay but had no effect on the Tina-Quant assay. Both hawthorn extracts increased intracellular calcium levels, but the lack of additive response with digoxin suggests both may bind to the same site of Na, K adenosine triphosphatase. Because of interference of hawthorn with a digoxin immunoassay and pharmacodynamic interaction with digoxin, a patient receiving digoxin should avoid hawthorn.

Heart rate calculation from ensemble brain wave using wavelet and Teager-Kaiser energy operator.

PubMed

Srinivasan, Jayaraman; Adithya, V

2015-01-01

Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal artifacts are caused by various factors, such as, Electro-oculogram (EOG), Electromyogram (EMG), Electrocardiogram (ECG), movement artifact and line interference. The relatively high electrical energy cardiac activity causes EEG artifacts. In EEG signal processing the general approach is to remove the ECG signal. In this paper, we introduce an automated method to extract the ECG signal from EEG using wavelet and Teager-Kaiser energy operator for R-peak enhancement and detection. From the detected R-peaks the heart rate (HR) is calculated for clinical diagnosis. To check the efficiency of our method, we compare the HR calculated from ECG signal recorded in synchronous with EEG. The proposed method yields a mean error of 1.4% for the heart rate and 1.7% for mean R-R interval. The result illustrates that, proposed method can be used for ECG extraction from single channel EEG and used in clinical diagnosis like estimation for stress analysis, fatigue, and sleep stages classification studies as a multi-model system. In addition, this method eliminates the dependence of additional synchronous ECG in extraction of ECG from EEG signal process.

Economical and Environmentally Benign Extraction of Rare Earth Elements (REES) from Coal & Coal Byproducts

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Carlson, Gary

This final report provides a complete summary of the activities, results, analytical discussion, and overall evaluation of the project titled “Economical and Environmentally Benign Extraction of Rare Earth Elements (REES) from Coal & Coal Byproducts” under DOE Award Number DE-FE-0027155 that started in March 2016 and ended December 2017. Fly ash was selected as the coal-byproduct source material due to fact that it is readily available with no need for extensive methods to obtain the material, it is produced in large quantities (>50 million tons per year) and had REE concentrations similar to other coal-byproducts. The selected fly ash usedmore » throughout this project was from the Mill Creek power generating facility operated by Louisville Gas and Electric located in Louisville, KY and was subjected to a variety of physical and chemical characterization tests. Results from fusion extractions showed that the selected fly-ash had a TREE+Y concentration of 480 ppm with critical REEs concentration of 200 ppm. The fly ash had an outlook ratio of 1.25 and an estimated value of $16-$18 worth of salable REEs per 1-tonne of fly ash. Additional characterizations by optical evaluation, QEMSCAN, XRD, size fractionation, and SEM analysis showed the fly ash consisted of small glassy spherules with a size range between 1 to 110 µm (ave. diam. of 13 um), was heterogeneous in chemical composition (main crystalline phases: aluminum oxides and iron oxides) and was primarily an amorphous material (75 to 80%). A simple stepped approach was completed to estimate the total REE resource quantity. The approach included REE characterization of the representative samples, evaluation of fly-ash availability, and final determination estimated resource availability with regards to REE grade on a regional and national scale. This data represents the best available information and is based upon the assumptions that the power generating facility where the fly-ash was obtained will use the same coal sources (actual mines were identified), the coal materials will have relatively consistent REE concentrations, and the REE extraction process developed during this project can achieve 42% REE recovery (validated and confirmed). Calculations indicated that the estimated REE resource is approximately 175,000 tonnes with a current estimated value of $3,330MM. The proposed REE extraction and production process developed during this project used four fundamental steps; 1) fly-ash pretreatment to enhance REE extraction, 2) REE extraction by acid digestion, 3) REE separation/concentration by carbon adsorption and column chromatography, and 4) REE oxide production. Secondary processing steps to manage process residuals and additional processing techniques to produce value-added products were incorporated into the process during the project. These secondary steps were not only necessary to manage residuals, but also provided additional revenue streams that offset operational and capital expenditures. The process produces one value product stream (production of zeolite Na-P1), a solids waste stream, and one liquid stream that met RCRA discharge requirements. Based upon final design criteria and operational parameters, the proposed system could produce approximately 200 grams of REOs from 1-tonne of fly-ash, thereby representing a TREE+Y recovery of 42% (project target of > 25%). A detailed economic model was developed to evaluate both CAPEX and OPEX estimates for systems with varying capacities between 100 kg to 200 tonnes of fly ash processed per day. Using a standard system capacity of 10 tonne/day system, capital costs were estimated at $88/kg fly ash while operating costs were estimated at approximately $450/kg fly ash. This operating cost estimate includes a revenue of $495/tonne of fly ash processed from the value-added product produced from the system (zeolite Na-P1). Although operating cost savings due to zeolite production were significant, the capital + operating cost for a 10 tonne system was more expensive than the total dollar value of REEs present in the fly ash material. Specifically, the estimated cost per 1-tonne of fly ash treated is approximately $540 while the estimated value of REEs in the fly ash is $18-$20/tonne. This is an excessive difference showing that the proposed process is not economically feasible strictly on the basis of REE revenue compared to extraction costs. Although the current proposed system does not produce sufficient quantities of REEs or additional revenue sources to offset operational and capital costs, supplementary factors including US strategic concerns, commercial demands, and defense department requirements must be factored. At this time, the process developed during this project provides foundational information for future development of simple processes that require low capital investment and one that will extract a valuable quality and quantity of REE oxides from industrial waste.« less

Supercritical CO2 extract from strawberry seeds as a valuable component of mild cleansing compositions.

PubMed

Sikora, E; Michorczyk, P; Olszańska, M; Ogonowski, J

2015-12-01

The aim of this work was an elaboration of mild cleansing compositions, containing supercritical CO2 extract from strawberry seeds (SC-CO2 strawberry seed oil), as a moisturizing and skin-softening agent. The influence of concentration of the oil on user properties of shower/bath products was studied. A series of products (shower/bath cosmetics) composed mainly of mild surfactants (amphoacetates, sulfosuccinates, betaines) and containing different amounts of the oil (0.5 up to 5.0%) were prepared. For the stable products (formulations containing up to 2% of the oil), the influence of the SC-CO2 strawberry seed oil addition on the products' stability, foam ability, surface tension, pH and rheological properties was studied. Moreover, the skin compatibility and moisturizing efficiency of the cleansing products were recorded in a group of 15 volunteers (including 10 women and five men, aged 20-30 years), using skin diagnosis system AramoTS, Aram Huvis Co. Additionally, characterization of CO2 extract from strawberry seeds was performed. Measurements of the oil's analytical constants, that is acid value and saponification number, were conducted according to Polish Standard PN-EN ISO 660:2010 and PN-EN ISO 3657:2013, respectively. The oil concentration influences stability of the products. Only the formulations containing 0.5-2% of the extract have shown high stability. Moreover, used in the amount up to 2% the SC-CO2, strawberry seed oil does not affect significantly the cleansing and foaming properties of the products. The obtained shower/bath cosmetics showed good user properties and additionally good skin-moisturizing effect. The supercritical CO2 extract from strawberry seeds, rich source of unsaturated fatty acid, could be successfully used in the formulation of body washing compositions as a moisturizing and skin-softening agent. © 2015 Society of Cosmetic Scientists and the Société Française de Cosmétologie.

Effect of aluminum, zinc, copper, and lead on the acid-base properties of water extracts from soils

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Motuzova, G. V.; Makarychev, I. P.; Petrov, M. I.

2013-01-01

The potentiometric titration of water extracts from the upper horizons of taiga-zone soils by salt solutions of heavy metals (Pb, Cu, and Zn) showed that their addition is an additional source of the extract acidity because of the involvement of the metal ions in complexation with water-soluble organic substances (WSOSs). At the addition of 0.01 M water solutions of Al(NO3)3 to water extracts from soils, Al3+ ions are also involved in complexes with WSOSs, which is accompanied by stronger acidification of the extracts from the upper horizon of soddy soils (with a near-neutral reaction) than from the litter of bog-podzolic soil (with a strongly acid reaction). The effect of the Al3+ hydrolysis on the acidity of the extracts is insignificantly low in both cases. A quantitative relationship was revealed between the release of protons and the ratio of free Cu2+ ions to those complexed with WSOSs at the titration of water extracts from soils by a solution of copper salt.

Comprehension of direct extraction of hydrophilic antioxidants using vegetable oils by polar paradox theory and small angle X-ray scattering analysis.

PubMed

Li, Ying; Fabiano-Tixier, Anne Sylvie; Ruiz, Karine; Rossignol Castera, Anne; Bauduin, Pierre; Diat, Olivier; Chemat, Farid

2015-04-15

Since the polar paradox theory rationalised the fact that polar antioxidants are more effective in nonpolar media, extractions of phenolic compounds in vegetable oils were inspired and achieved in this study for obtaining oils enriched in phenolic compounds. Moreover, the influence of surfactants on the extractability of phenolic compounds was experimentally studied first, followed by the small angle X-ray scattering analysis for the oil structural observation before and after extraction so as to better understand the dissolving mechanism underpinning the extraction. The results showed a significant difference on the extraction yield of phenolic compounds among oils, which was mainly dependent on their composition instead of the unsaturation of fatty acids. Appropriate surfactant additions could significantly improve extraction yield for refined sunflower oils, which 1% w/w addition of glyceryl oleate was determined as the optimal. Besides, 5% w/w addition of lecithin performed the best in oil enrichments compared with mono- and di-glycerides. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improved Yield of High Molecular Weight DNA Coincides with Increased Microbial Diversity Access from Iron Oxide Cemented Sub-Surface Clay Environments

DOE PAGES

Hurt, Jr., Richard A.; Robeson II, Michael S.; Shakya, Migun; ...

2014-07-14

Despite more than three decades of progress, efficient nucleic acid extraction from microbial communities has remained difficult, particularly from clay environments. Lysis with concentrated guanidine followed by concentrated sodium phosphate extraction supported DNA and RNA recovery from high iron, low humus content clay. Alterating the extraction pH or using other ionic solutions (Na 2SO 4 and NH 4H 2PO 4) yielded no detectable nucleic acid. DNA recovered using a lysis solution with 500 mM phosphate buffer (PB) followed by a 1 M PB wash was 15.22±2.33 g DNA/g clay, with most DNA consisting of >20 Kb fragments, compared to 2.46±0.25more » g DNA/g clay with the Powerlyzer soil DNA system (MoBio). Increasing [PB] in the lysis reagent coincided with increasing DNA fragment length. Rarefaction plots based on16S rRNA (V1/V3 region) pyrosequencing libraries from A-horizon and clay soils showed an ~80% and ~400% larger accessed diversity compared to a previous grinding protocol or the Powerlyzer soil DNA system, respectively. The observed diversity from the Firmicutes showed the strongest increase with >3-fold more bacterial species recovered using this system. Additionally, some OTU's having more than 100 sequences in these libraries were absent in samples extracted using the PowerLyzer reagents or the previous lysis method.« less

Improved Yield of High Molecular Weight DNA Coincides with Increased Microbial Diversity Access from Iron Oxide Cemented Sub-Surface Clay Environments

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hurt, Jr., Richard A.; Robeson II, Michael S.; Shakya, Migun

Despite more than three decades of progress, efficient nucleic acid extraction from microbial communities has remained difficult, particularly from clay environments. Lysis with concentrated guanidine followed by concentrated sodium phosphate extraction supported DNA and RNA recovery from high iron, low humus content clay. Alterating the extraction pH or using other ionic solutions (Na 2SO 4 and NH 4H 2PO 4) yielded no detectable nucleic acid. DNA recovered using a lysis solution with 500 mM phosphate buffer (PB) followed by a 1 M PB wash was 15.22±2.33 g DNA/g clay, with most DNA consisting of >20 Kb fragments, compared to 2.46±0.25more » g DNA/g clay with the Powerlyzer soil DNA system (MoBio). Increasing [PB] in the lysis reagent coincided with increasing DNA fragment length. Rarefaction plots based on16S rRNA (V1/V3 region) pyrosequencing libraries from A-horizon and clay soils showed an ~80% and ~400% larger accessed diversity compared to a previous grinding protocol or the Powerlyzer soil DNA system, respectively. The observed diversity from the Firmicutes showed the strongest increase with >3-fold more bacterial species recovered using this system. Additionally, some OTU's having more than 100 sequences in these libraries were absent in samples extracted using the PowerLyzer reagents or the previous lysis method.« less

Aqueous biphasic systems in the separation of food colorants.

PubMed

Santos, João H P M; Capela, Emanuel V; Boal-Palheiros, Isabel; Coutinho, João A P; Freire, Mara G; Ventura, Sónia P M

2018-04-25

Aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) composed of polypropylene glycol and carbohydrates, two benign substances are proposed to separate two food colorants (E122 and E133). ABS are promising extractive platforms, particularly for biomolecules, due to their aqueous and mild nature (pH and temperature), reduced environmental impact and processing costs. Another major aspect considered, particularly useful in downstream processing, is the "tuning" ability for the extraction and purification of these systems by a proper choice of the ABS components. In this work, our intention is to show the concept of ABS as an alternative and volatile organic solvent-free tool to separate two different biomolecules in a simple way, so simple that teachers can effectively adopt it in their classes to explain the concept of bioseparation processes. Informative documents and general information about the preparation of binodal curves and their use in the partition of biomolecules is available in this work to be used by teachers in their classes. In this sense, the students use different carbohydrates to build ABS, then study the partition of two food color dyes (synthetic origin), thus evaluating their ability on the separation of both food colorants. Through these experiments, the students get acquainted with ABS, learn how to determine solubility curves and perform extraction procedures using colorant food additives, that can also be applied in the extraction of various (bio)molecules. © 2018 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2018. © 2018 The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Sperm DNA fragmentation induced by cryopreservation: new insights and effect of a natural extract from Opuntia ficus-indica.

PubMed

Meamar, Mehrdad; Zribi, Nassira; Cambi, Marta; Tamburrino, Lara; Marchiani, Sara; Filimberti, Erminio; Fino, Maria Grazia; Biggeri, Annibale; Menezo, Yves; Forti, Gianni; Baldi, Elisabetta; Muratori, Monica

2012-08-01

To analyze the effect of cryopreservation on sperm DNA fragmentation (SDF) in two cytometric sperm populations, PI(brighter) and PI(dimmer), and to test the effects of Opuntia ficus-indica (OFI) extracts, which contain antioxidants and flavanoids, and of resveratrol on cryopreservation of human semen. In vitro prospective study. Institutional study. Twenty-one normozoospermic men undergoing semen analysis for couple infertility. Cryopreservation using the routine method in the presence of OFI extracts or resveratrol. Measurement of SDF by TUNEL/PI flow cytometric method to evaluate sperm motility (by automated motion analysis, CASA system) and viability (by eosin/nigrosin staining) in the two populations of sperm PI(br) and PI(dim). Cryopreservation induced an increase of SDF only in the PI(br) sperm population. The increase was negatively dependent on the basal values of SDF in the same population. Addition of OFI extracts and resveratrol to the cryopreservation medium slightly but statistically significantly reduced SDF in the PI(br) population without affecting the deleterious effect of cryopreservation on sperm motion parameters or viability. The increase of SDF in the PI(br) population, which is unrelated to semen quality, suggests that caution must be taken in using cryopreserved semen, as morphologically normal and motile sperm may be damaged. The addition of substances with multifunctional properties such as OFI extracts to cryopreservation medium is only slightly effective in preventing the dramatic effects on SDF. Copyright © 2012 American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Microscopic and spectroscopic characterization of humic substances from a compost amended copper contaminated soil: main features and their potential effects on Cu immobilization.

PubMed

Medina, Jorge; Monreal, Carlos; Chabot, Denise; Meier, Sebastián; González, María Eugenia; Morales, Esteban; Parillo, Rita; Borie, Fernando; Cornejo, Pablo

2017-06-01

We characterized humic substances (HS) extracted from a Cu-contaminated soil without compost addition (C) or amended with a wheat straw-based compost (WSC) (H1), co-composted with Fe 2 O 3 (H2), or co-composted with an allophane-rich soil (H3). Extracted HS were characterized under electron microscopy (SEM/TEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (X-EDS), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. In addition, HS extracted from WSC (H4) were characterized at pH 4.0 and 8.0 with descriptive purposes. At pH 4.0, globular structures of H4 were observed, some of them aggregating within a large network. Contrariwise, at pH 8.0, long tubular and disaggregated structures prevailed. TEM microscopy suggests organo-mineral interactions at scales of 1 to 200 nm with iron oxide nanoparticles. HS extracted from soil-compost incubations showed interactions at nanoscale with minerals and crystal compounds into the organic matrix of HS. Bands associated to acidic functional groups of HS may suggest potential sorption interactions with transition metals. We conclude that metal ions and pH have an important role controlling the morphology and configuration of HS from WSC. Characterization of H4 extracted from WSC showed that physicochemical protection of HS could be present in composting systems treated with inorganic materials. Finally, the humified fractions obtained from compost-amended soils may have an important effect on metal-retention, supporting their potential use in metal-contaminated soils.

Real-time text extraction based on the page layout analysis system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soua, M.; Benchekroun, A.; Kachouri, R.; Akil, M.

2017-05-01

Several approaches were proposed in order to extract text from scanned documents. However, text extraction in heterogeneous documents stills a real challenge. Indeed, text extraction in this context is a difficult task because of the variation of the text due to the differences of sizes, styles and orientations, as well as to the complexity of the document region background. Recently, we have proposed the improved hybrid binarization based on Kmeans method (I-HBK)5 to extract suitably the text from heterogeneous documents. In this method, the Page Layout Analysis (PLA), part of the Tesseract OCR engine, is used to identify text and image regions. Afterwards our hybrid binarization is applied separately on each kind of regions. In one side, gamma correction is employed before to process image regions. In the other side, binarization is performed directly on text regions. Then, a foreground and background color study is performed to correct inverted region colors. Finally, characters are located from the binarized regions based on the PLA algorithm. In this work, we extend the integration of the PLA algorithm within the I-HBK method. In addition, to speed up the separation of text and image step, we employ an efficient GPU acceleration. Through the performed experiments, we demonstrate the high F-measure accuracy of the PLA algorithm reaching 95% on the LRDE dataset. In addition, we illustrate the sequential and the parallel compared PLA versions. The obtained results give a speedup of 3.7x when comparing the parallel PLA implementation on GPU GTX 660 to the CPU version.

A robust and efficient method for the extraction of plant extracellular surface lipids as applied to the analysis of silks and seedling leaves of maize

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Loneman, Derek M.; Peddicord, Layton; Al-Rashid, Amani

Aerial plant organs possess a diverse array of extracellular surface lipids, including both non-polar and amphipathic constituents that collectively provide a primary line of defense against environmental stressors. Extracellular surface lipids on the stigmatic silks of maize are composed primarily of saturated and unsaturated linear hydrocarbons, as well as fatty acids, and aldehydes. To efficiently extract lipids of differing polarities from maize silks, five solvent systems (hexanes; hexanes:diethyl ether (95:5); hexanes:diethyl ether (90:10); chloroform:hexanes (1:1) and chloroform) were tested by immersing fresh silks in solvent for different extraction times. Surface lipid recovery and the relative composition of individual constituents weremore » impacted to varying degrees depending on solvent choice and duration of extraction. Analyses were performed using both silks and leaves to demonstrate the utility of the solvent- and time-optimized protocol in comparison to extraction with the commonly used chloroform solvent. Overall, the preferred solvent system was identified as hexanes:diethyl ether (90:10), based on its effectiveness in extracting surface hydrocarbons and fatty acids as well as its reduced propensity to extract presumed internal fatty acids. Metabolite profiling of wildtype and glossy1 seedlings, which are impaired in surface lipid biosynthesis, demonstrated the ability of the preferred solvent to extract extracellular surface lipids rich in amphipathic compounds (aldehydes and alcohols). In addition to the expected deficiencies in dotriacontanal and dotriacontan-1-ol for gl1 seedlings, an unexpected increase in fatty acid recovery was observed in gl1 seedlings extracted in chloroform, suggesting that chloro-form extracts lipids from internal tissues of gl1 seedlings. This highlights the importance of extraction method when evaluating mutants that have altered cuticular lipid compositions. Lastly, metabolite profiling of silks from maize inbreds B73 and Mo17, exposed to different environments and harvested at different ages, revealed differences in hydrocarbon and fatty acid composition, demonstrating the dynamic nature of surface lipid accumulation on silks.« less

A robust and efficient method for the extraction of plant extracellular surface lipids as applied to the analysis of silks and seedling leaves of maize

DOE PAGES

Loneman, Derek M.; Peddicord, Layton; Al-Rashid, Amani; ...

2017-07-11

Aerial plant organs possess a diverse array of extracellular surface lipids, including both non-polar and amphipathic constituents that collectively provide a primary line of defense against environmental stressors. Extracellular surface lipids on the stigmatic silks of maize are composed primarily of saturated and unsaturated linear hydrocarbons, as well as fatty acids, and aldehydes. To efficiently extract lipids of differing polarities from maize silks, five solvent systems (hexanes; hexanes:diethyl ether (95:5); hexanes:diethyl ether (90:10); chloroform:hexanes (1:1) and chloroform) were tested by immersing fresh silks in solvent for different extraction times. Surface lipid recovery and the relative composition of individual constituents weremore » impacted to varying degrees depending on solvent choice and duration of extraction. Analyses were performed using both silks and leaves to demonstrate the utility of the solvent- and time-optimized protocol in comparison to extraction with the commonly used chloroform solvent. Overall, the preferred solvent system was identified as hexanes:diethyl ether (90:10), based on its effectiveness in extracting surface hydrocarbons and fatty acids as well as its reduced propensity to extract presumed internal fatty acids. Metabolite profiling of wildtype and glossy1 seedlings, which are impaired in surface lipid biosynthesis, demonstrated the ability of the preferred solvent to extract extracellular surface lipids rich in amphipathic compounds (aldehydes and alcohols). In addition to the expected deficiencies in dotriacontanal and dotriacontan-1-ol for gl1 seedlings, an unexpected increase in fatty acid recovery was observed in gl1 seedlings extracted in chloroform, suggesting that chloro-form extracts lipids from internal tissues of gl1 seedlings. This highlights the importance of extraction method when evaluating mutants that have altered cuticular lipid compositions. Lastly, metabolite profiling of silks from maize inbreds B73 and Mo17, exposed to different environments and harvested at different ages, revealed differences in hydrocarbon and fatty acid composition, demonstrating the dynamic nature of surface lipid accumulation on silks.« less

Impact of Microorganisms on the Dynamics of Unsaturated Flow Within Fractures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stoner, D. L.; Stedtfeld, R. D.; Tyler, T. L.; White, F. J.; McJunkin, T. R.

2002-12-01

Understanding the impact of microorganisms on fluid flow in groundwater and subsurface environments is of significance because of the importance of natural water resources, contaminant transport, and in situ bioprocesses such as mineral dissolution and recovery, enhanced oil recovery, and remediation. In this study, the impact of microorganisms and nutrient amendments on the behavior of water within a fracture system was evaluated using an experimental system comprised of limestone blocks and a groundwater isolate, {\\ it Sphingomonas} sp. Four blocks (25 cm x 6.6 cm x 5 cm) were configured to make a vertical fracture (50.2 x 5 x 0.07 cm) that was intersected by a horizontal fracture (13.4 x 5 x 0.1 cm). To monitor the behavior of water within the fracture, 5 optical sensors each consisting of a light emitting diode and photocell were installed external to the vertical fracture. Two were installed above the fracture intersection, two below and one at the intersection. The presence of fluid in the fracture was detected as a decrease in light transmission as the fluid passed by each detector. Drop interval (the period of time between succeeding drops at the same detector) and drop width (the period of time it took for a water drop or stream to pass by each detector) data were collected for each of the five detectors. Liquids were introduced via a single needle at the top of the fracture at a rate of 0.5 ml/min. Deionized water, which had been chemically equilibrated with the limestone rock, was the control medium to which 1) cells; 2) cells with 0.01% yeast extract; 3) cells with 0.1% yeast extract; and 4) cells with 0.1% yeast extract and 30 mM urea were added. For the equilibrated water, drop intervals and drop widths above the fracture intersection were ~1 s and <0.1 s, respectively. Drop intervals and drop widths at and below the intersection were ~100 s and ~10 s, respectively. Above the fracture intersection, the addition of cells or cells with 0.01% yeast extract had little effect on drop intervals and drop widths. At and below the intersection, however, drop intervals increased to ~500 s and drop widths to ~10 s. Later with the addition of 0.1% yeast extract or 0.1% yeast extract with urea, drop interval and drop width immediately increased at locations above the fracture intersection and within 24 hours, continuous streaming was observed. For the lower sensors, drop interval and drop width initially decreased, followed by continuous streaming the day after the 0.1% yeast extract and urea was added to the system. In conclusion, the dynamics of drop behavior in fracture systems is a complex process that is impacted by the presence of bacteria and nutrient amendments as well as the fracture configuration.

Automated endoscopic navigation and advisory system from medical image

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kwoh, Chee K.; Khan, Gul N.; Gillies, Duncan F.

1999-05-01

In this paper, we present a review of the research conducted by our group to design an automatic endoscope navigation and advisory system. The whole system can be viewed as a two-layer system. The first layer is at the signal level, which consists of the processing that will be performed on a series of images to extract all the identifiable features. The information is purely dependent on what can be extracted from the 'raw' images. At the signal level, the first task is performed by detecting a single dominant feature, lumen. Few methods of identifying the lumen are proposed. The first method used contour extraction. Contours are extracted by edge detection, thresholding and linking. This method required images to be divided into overlapping squares (8 by 8 or 4 by 4) where line segments are extracted by using a Hough transform. Perceptual criteria such as proximity, connectivity, similarity in orientation, contrast and edge pixel intensity, are used to group edges both strong and weak. This approach is called perceptual grouping. The second method is based on a region extraction using split and merge approach using spatial domain data. An n-level (for a 2' by 2' image) quadtree based pyramid structure is constructed to find the most homogenous large dark region, which in most cases corresponds to the lumen. The algorithm constructs the quadtree from the bottom (pixel) level upward, recursively and computes the mean and variance of image regions corresponding to quadtree nodes. On reaching the root, the largest uniform seed region, whose mean corresponds to a lumen is selected that is grown by merging with its neighboring regions. In addition to the use of two- dimensional information in the form of regions and contours, three-dimensional shape can provide additional information that will enhance the system capabilities. Shape or depth information from an image is estimated by various methods. A particular technique suitable for endoscopy is the shape from shading, which is developed to obtain the relative depth of the colon surface in the image by assuming a point light source very close to the camera. If we assume the colon has a shape similar to a tube, then a reasonable approximation of the position of the center of the colon (lumen) will be a function of the direction in which the majority of the normal vectors of shape are pointing. The second layer is the control layer and at this level, a decision model must be built for endoscope navigation and advisory system. The system that we built is the models of probabilistic networks that create a basic, artificial intelligence system for navigation in the colon. We have constructed the probabilistic networks from correlated objective data using the maximum weighted spanning tree algorithm. In the construction of a probabilistic network, it is always assumed that the variables starting from the same parent are conditionally independent. However, this may not hold and will give rise to incorrect inferences. In these cases, we proposed the creation of a hidden node to modify the network topology, which in effect models the dependency of correlated variables, to solve the problem. The conditional probability matrices linking the hidden node to its neighbors are determined using a gradient descent method which minimizing the objective cost function. The error gradients can be treated as updating messages and ca be propagated in any direction throughout any singly connected network to adjust the network parameters. With the above two- level approach, we have been able to build an automated endoscope navigation and advisory system successfully.

Effect of solvent addition sequence on lycopene extraction efficiency from membrane neutralized caustic peeled tomato waste.

PubMed

Phinney, David M; Frelka, John C; Cooperstone, Jessica L; Schwartz, Steven J; Heldman, Dennis R

2017-01-15

Lycopene is a high value nutraceutical and its isolation from waste streams is often desirable to maximize profits. This research investigated solvent addition order and composition on lycopene extraction efficiency from a commercial tomato waste stream (pH 12.5, solids ∼5%) that was neutralized using membrane filtration. Constant volume dilution (CVD) was used to desalinate the caustic salt to neutralize the waste. Acetone, ethanol and hexane were used as direct or blended additions. Extraction efficiency was defined as the amount of lycopene extracted divided by the total lycopene in the sample. The CVD operation reduced the active alkali of the waste from 0.66 to <0.01M and the moisture content of the pulp increased from 93% to 97% (wet basis), showing the removal of caustic salts from the waste. Extraction efficiency varied from 32.5% to 94.5%. This study demonstrates a lab scale feasibility to extract lycopene efficiently from tomato processing byproducts. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The effect of cinnamon extract and long-term aerobic training on heart function, biochemical alterations and lipid profile following exhaustive exercise in male rats.

PubMed

Badalzadeh, Reza; Shaghaghi, Mehrnoush; Mohammadi, Mustafa; Dehghan, Gholamreza; Mohammadi, Zeynab

2014-12-01

Regular training is suggested to offer a host of benefits especially on cardiovascular system. In addition, medicinal plants can attenuate oxidative stress-mediated damages induced by stressor insults. In this study, we investigated the concomitant effect of cinnamon extract and long-term aerobic training on cardiac function, biochemical alterations and lipid profile following exhaustive exercise. Male Wistar rats (250-300 g) were divided into five groups depending on receiving regular training, cinnamon bark extraction, none or both of them, and then encountered with an exhausted exercise in last session. An 8-week endurance training program was designed with a progressive increase in training speed and time. Myocardial hemodynamics was monitored using a balloon-tipped catheter inserted into left ventricles. Blood samples were collected for analyzing biochemical markers, lipid profiles and lipid-peroxidation marker, malondealdehyde (MDA). Trained animals showed an enhanced cardiac force and contractility similar to cinnamon-treated rats. Co-application of regular training and cinnamon had additive effect in cardiac hemodynamic (P<0.05). Both regular training and supplementation with cinnamon significantly decreased serum levels of total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and increased high-density lipoprotein (HDL) level and HDL/LDL ratio as compared to control group (P<0.01). Furthermore, pre-treatment with cinnamon extract and/or regular training significantly reduced MDA level elevation induced by exhausted exercise (P<0.01). Long-term treatment of rats with cinnamon and regular training improved cardiac hemodynamic through an additive effect. The positive effects of cinnamon and regular training on cardiac function were associated with a reduced serum MDA level and an improved blood lipid profile.

Extraction of Extended Small-Scale Objects in Digital Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Volkov, V. Y.

2015-05-01

Detection and localization problem of extended small-scale objects with different shapes appears in radio observation systems which use SAR, infra-red, lidar and television camera. Intensive non-stationary background is the main difficulty for processing. Other challenge is low quality of images, blobs, blurred boundaries; in addition SAR images suffer from a serious intrinsic speckle noise. Statistics of background is not normal, it has evident skewness and heavy tails in probability density, so it is hard to identify it. The problem of extraction small-scale objects is solved here on the basis of directional filtering, adaptive thresholding and morthological analysis. New kind of masks is used which are open-ended at one side so it is possible to extract ends of line segments with unknown length. An advanced method of dynamical adaptive threshold setting is investigated which is based on isolated fragments extraction after thresholding. Hierarchy of isolated fragments on binary image is proposed for the analysis of segmentation results. It includes small-scale objects with different shape, size and orientation. The method uses extraction of isolated fragments in binary image and counting points in these fragments. Number of points in extracted fragments is normalized to the total number of points for given threshold and is used as effectiveness of extraction for these fragments. New method for adaptive threshold setting and control maximises effectiveness of extraction. It has optimality properties for objects extraction in normal noise field and shows effective results for real SAR images.

Comparison of Artemisia annua Bioactivities between Traditional Medicine and Chemical Extracts

PubMed Central

Nageeb, Ahmed; Al-Tawashi, Azza; Mohammad Emwas, Abdul-Hamid; Abdel-Halim Al-Talla, Zeyad; Al-Rifai, Nahla

2013-01-01

The present work investigates the efficacy of using Artemisia annua in traditional medicine in comparison with chemical extracts of its bioactive molecules. In addition, the effects of location (Egypt and Jericho) on the bioactivities of the plant were investigated. The results showed that water extracts of Artemisia annua from Jericho have stronger antibacterial activities than organic solvent extracts. In contrast, water and organic solvent extracts of the Artemisia annua from Egypt do not have anti-bacterial activity. Furthermore, while the methanol extract of EA displayed high anticancer affects, the water extract of Egypt and the extracts of Jericho did not show significant anticancer activity. Finally, the results showed that the methanol and water extracts of Jericho had the highest antioxidant activity, while the extracts of Egypt had none. The current results validate the scientific bases for the use of Artemisia annua in traditional medicine. In addition, our results suggest that the collection location of the Artemisia annua has an effect on its chemical composition and bioactivities. PMID:24761137

Information extraction system

DOEpatents

Lemmond, Tracy D; Hanley, William G; Guensche, Joseph Wendell; Perry, Nathan C; Nitao, John J; Kidwell, Paul Brandon; Boakye, Kofi Agyeman; Glaser, Ron E; Prenger, Ryan James

2014-05-13

An information extraction system and methods of operating the system are provided. In particular, an information extraction system for performing meta-extraction of named entities of people, organizations, and locations as well as relationships and events from text documents are described herein.

The effect of different solvents and number of extraction steps on the polyphenol content and antioxidant capacity of basil leaves (Ocimum basilicum L.) extracts.

PubMed

Złotek, Urszula; Mikulska, Sylwia; Nagajek, Małgorzata; Świeca, Michał

2016-09-01

The objectives of this study were to determine best conditions for the extraction of phenolic compounds from fresh, frozen and lyophilized basil leaves. The acetone mixtures with the highest addition of acetic acid extracted most of the phenolic compounds when fresh and freeze-dried material have been used. The three times procedure was more effective than once shaking procedure in most of the extracts obtained from fresh basil leaves - unlike the extracts derived from frozen material. Surprisingly, there were not any significant differences in the content of phenolics between the two used procedures in the case of lyophilized basil leaves used for extraction. Additionally, the positive correlation between the phenolic compounds content and antioxidant activity of the studied extracts has been noted. It is concluded that the acetone mixtures were more effective than the methanol ones for polyphenol extraction. The number of extraction steps in most of the cases was also a statistically significant factor affecting the yield of phenolic extraction as well as antioxidant potential of basil leaf extracts.

Change Analysis in Structural Laser Scanning Point Clouds: The Baseline Method

PubMed Central

Shen, Yueqian; Lindenbergh, Roderik; Wang, Jinhu

2016-01-01

A method is introduced for detecting changes from point clouds that avoids registration. For many applications, changes are detected between two scans of the same scene obtained at different times. Traditionally, these scans are aligned to a common coordinate system having the disadvantage that this registration step introduces additional errors. In addition, registration requires stable targets or features. To avoid these issues, we propose a change detection method based on so-called baselines. Baselines connect feature points within one scan. To analyze changes, baselines connecting corresponding points in two scans are compared. As feature points either targets or virtual points corresponding to some reconstructable feature in the scene are used. The new method is implemented on two scans sampling a masonry laboratory building before and after seismic testing, that resulted in damages in the order of several centimeters. The centres of the bricks of the laboratory building are automatically extracted to serve as virtual points. Baselines connecting virtual points and/or target points are extracted and compared with respect to a suitable structural coordinate system. Changes detected from the baseline analysis are compared to a traditional cloud to cloud change analysis demonstrating the potential of the new method for structural analysis. PMID:28029121

Change Analysis in Structural Laser Scanning Point Clouds: The Baseline Method.

PubMed

Shen, Yueqian; Lindenbergh, Roderik; Wang, Jinhu

2016-12-24

A method is introduced for detecting changes from point clouds that avoids registration. For many applications, changes are detected between two scans of the same scene obtained at different times. Traditionally, these scans are aligned to a common coordinate system having the disadvantage that this registration step introduces additional errors. In addition, registration requires stable targets or features. To avoid these issues, we propose a change detection method based on so-called baselines. Baselines connect feature points within one scan. To analyze changes, baselines connecting corresponding points in two scans are compared. As feature points either targets or virtual points corresponding to some reconstructable feature in the scene are used. The new method is implemented on two scans sampling a masonry laboratory building before and after seismic testing, that resulted in damages in the order of several centimeters. The centres of the bricks of the laboratory building are automatically extracted to serve as virtual points. Baselines connecting virtual points and/or target points are extracted and compared with respect to a suitable structural coordinate system. Changes detected from the baseline analysis are compared to a traditional cloud to cloud change analysis demonstrating the potential of the new method for structural analysis.

77 FR 2935 - Mars, Inc.; Filing of Color Additive Petition

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-01-20

... for the safe use of spirulina blue, an extract made from the biomass of Anthrospira platensis... blue, an extract made from the biomass of Anthrospira platensis (spirulina), as a color additive in...

Anticonvulsant and Antioxidant Effects of Tilia americana var. mexicana and Flavonoids Constituents in the Pentylenetetrazole-Induced Seizures

PubMed Central

Cárdenas-Rodríguez, Noemí; González-Trujano, María Eva; Aguirre-Hernández, Eva; Ruíz-García, Matilde; Sampieri, Aristides; Coballase-Urrutia, Elvia; Carmona-Aparicio, Liliana

2014-01-01

Tilia genus is commonly used around the world for its central nervous system properties; it is prepared as tea and used as tranquilizing, anticonvulsant, and analgesic. In this study, anticonvulsant activity of the Tilia americana var. mexicana inflorescences and leaves was investigated by evaluating organic and aqueous extracts (100, 300, and 600 mg/kg, i.p.) and some flavonoids in the pentylenetetrazole-induced seizures in mice. Moreover, antioxidant effect of these extracts and flavonoids was examined in an in vitro study by using spectrophotometric technique. Significant activity was observed in the methanol extract from inflorescences. An HPLC analysis of the methanol extract from inflorescences and leaves of Tilia allowed demonstrating the respective presence of some partial responsible flavonoid constituents: quercetin (20.09 ± 1.20 μg/mg and 3.39 ± 0.10 μg/mg), rutin (3.52 ± 0.21 μg/mg and 8.94 ± 0.45 μg/mg), and isoquercitrin (1.74 ± 0.01 μg/mg and 1.24 ± 0.13 μg/mg). In addition, significant but different antioxidant properties were obtained among the flavonoids and the extracts investigated. Our results provide evidence of the anticonvulsant activity of Tilia reinforcing its utility for central nervous system diseases whose mechanism of action might involve partial antioxidant effects due to the presence of flavonoids. PMID:25197430

Green and Efficient Processing of Cinnamomum cassia Bark by Using Ionic Liquids: Extraction of Essential Oil and Construction of UV-Resistant Composite Films from Residual Biomass.

PubMed

Mehta, Mohit J; Kumar, Arvind

2017-12-14

There is significant interest in the development of a sustainable and integrated process for the extraction of essential oils and separation of biopolymers by using novel and efficient solvent systems. Herein, cassia essential oil enriched in coumarin is extracted from Cinnamomum cassia bark by using a protic ionic liquid (IL), ethylammonium nitrate (EAN), through dissolution and the creation of a biphasic system with the help of diethyl ether. The process has been perfected, in terms of higher biomass dissolution ability and essential oil yield through the addition of aprotic ILs (based on the 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium (C 4 mim) cation and chloride or acetate anions) to EAN. After extraction of oil, cellulose-rich material and free lignin were regenerated from biomass-IL solutions by using a 1:1 mixture of acetone-water. The purity of the extracted essential oil and biopolymers were ascertained by means of FTIR spectroscopy, NMR spectroscopy, and GC-MS techniques. Because lignin contains UV-blocking chromophores, the oil-free residual lignocellulosic material has been directly utilized to construct UV-light-resistant composite materials in conjunction with the biopolymer chitosan. Composite material thus obtained was processed to form biodegradable films, which were characterized for mechanical and optical properties. The films showed excellent UV-light resistance and mechanical properties, thereby making it a material suitable for packaging and light-sensitive applications. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Non-conventional solvents in liquid phase microextraction and aqueous biphasic systems.

PubMed

An, Jiwoo; Trujillo-Rodríguez, María J; Pino, Verónica; Anderson, Jared L

2017-06-02

The development of rapid, convenient, and high throughput sample preparation approaches such as liquid phase microextraction techniques have been continuously developed over the last decade. More recently, significant attention has been given to the replacement of conventional organic solvents used in liquid phase microextraction techniques in order to reduce toxic waste and to improve selectivity and/or extraction efficiency. With these objectives, non-conventional solvents have been explored in liquid phase microextraction and aqueous biphasic systems. The utilized non-conventional solvents include ionic liquids, magnetic ionic liquids, and deep eutectic solvents. They have been widely used as extraction solvents or additives in various liquid phase microextraction modes including dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction, single-drop microextraction, hollow fiber-liquid phase microextraction, as well as in aqueous biphasic systems. This review provides an overview into the use of non-conventional solvents in these microextraction techniques in the past 5 years (2012-2016). Analytical applications of the techniques are also discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A multiscale Markov random field model in wavelet domain for image segmentation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dai, Peng; Cheng, Yu; Wang, Shengchun; Du, Xinyu; Wu, Dan

2017-07-01

The human vision system has abilities for feature detection, learning and selective attention with some properties of hierarchy and bidirectional connection in the form of neural population. In this paper, a multiscale Markov random field model in the wavelet domain is proposed by mimicking some image processing functions of vision system. For an input scene, our model provides its sparse representations using wavelet transforms and extracts its topological organization using MRF. In addition, the hierarchy property of vision system is simulated using a pyramid framework in our model. There are two information flows in our model, i.e., a bottom-up procedure to extract input features and a top-down procedure to provide feedback controls. The two procedures are controlled simply by two pyramidal parameters, and some Gestalt laws are also integrated implicitly. Equipped with such biological inspired properties, our model can be used to accomplish different image segmentation tasks, such as edge detection and region segmentation.

Preliminary experiments on pharmacokinetic diffuse fluorescence tomography of CT-scanning mode

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Yanqi; Wang, Xin; Yin, Guoyan; Li, Jiao; Zhou, Zhongxing; Zhao, Huijuan; Gao, Feng; Zhang, Limin

2016-10-01

In vivo tomographic imaging of the fluorescence pharmacokinetic parameters in tissues can provide additional specific and quantitative physiological and pathological information to that of fluorescence concentration. This modality normally requires a highly-sensitive diffuse fluorescence tomography (DFT) working in dynamic way to finally extract the pharmacokinetic parameters from the measured pharmacokinetics-associated temporally-varying boundary intensity. This paper is devoted to preliminary experimental validation of our proposed direct reconstruction scheme of instantaneous sampling based pharmacokinetic-DFT: A highly-sensitive DFT system of CT-scanning mode working with parallel four photomultiplier-tube photon-counting channels is developed to generate an instantaneous sampling dataset; A direct reconstruction scheme then extracts images of the pharmacokinetic parameters using the adaptive-EKF strategy. We design a dynamic phantom that can simulate the agent metabolism in living tissue. The results of the dynamic phantom experiments verify the validity of the experiment system and reconstruction algorithms, and demonstrate that system provides good resolution, high sensitivity and quantitativeness at different pump speed.

Interpretation of fingerprint image quality features extracted by self-organizing maps

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Danov, Ivan; Olsen, Martin A.; Busch, Christoph

2014-05-01

Accurate prediction of fingerprint quality is of significant importance to any fingerprint-based biometric system. Ensuring high quality samples for both probe and reference can substantially improve the system's performance by lowering false non-matches, thus allowing finer adjustment of the decision threshold of the biometric system. Furthermore, the increasing usage of biometrics in mobile contexts demands development of lightweight methods for operational environment. A novel two-tier computationally efficient approach was recently proposed based on modelling block-wise fingerprint image data using Self-Organizing Map (SOM) to extract specific ridge pattern features, which are then used as an input to a Random Forests (RF) classifier trained to predict the quality score of a propagated sample. This paper conducts an investigative comparative analysis on a publicly available dataset for the improvement of the two-tier approach by proposing additionally three feature interpretation methods, based respectively on SOM, Generative Topographic Mapping and RF. The analysis shows that two of the proposed methods produce promising results on the given dataset.

Feasibility of ion-pair/supercritical fluid extraction of an ionic compound--pseudoephedrine hydrochloride.

PubMed

Eckard, P R; Taylor, L T

1997-02-01

The supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) of an ionic compound, pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, from a spiked-sand surface was successfully demonstrated. The effect of carbon dioxide density (CO2), supercritical fluid composition (pure vs. methanol modified), and the addition of a commonly used reversed-phase liquid chromatographic ion-pairing reagent, 1-heptanesulfonic acid, sodium salt, on extraction efficiency was examined. The extraction recoveries of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride with the addition of the ion-pairing reagent from a spiked-sand surface were shown to be statistically greater than the extraction recoveries without the ion-pairing reagent with both pure and methanol-modified carbon dioxide.

Evaluation of cell lysis procedures and use of a micro fluidic system for an automated DNA-based cell identification in interplanetary missions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hall, J. A.; Felnagle, E.; Fries, M.; Spearing, S.; Monaco, L.; Steele, A.

2006-12-01

A Modular Assay System for Solar System Exploration (MASSE) is being developed to include sample handling, pre-treatment, separation and analysis of biological target compounds by both DNA and protein microarrays. To better design sensitive and accurate initial upstream sample handling of the MASSE instrument, experiments investigating the sensitivity and potential extraction bias of commercially available DNA extraction kits between classes of environmentally relevant prokaryotes such as gram-negative bacteria ( Escherichia coli), gram-positive bacteria ( Bacillus megatarium), and Archaea ( Haloarcula marismortui) were performed. For extractions of both planktonic cultures and spiked Mars simulated regolith, FTA ® paper demonstrated the highest sensitivity, with detection as low as ˜1×10 1 cells and ˜3.3×10 2 cells, respectively. In addition to the highest sensitivity, custom modified application of FTA ® paper extraction protocol is the simplest in terms of incorporation into MASSE and displayed little bias in sensitivity with respect to prokaryotic cell type. The implementation of FTA paper for environmental microbiology investigations appears to be a viable and effective option potentially negating the need for other pre-concentration steps such as filtration and negating concerns regarding extraction efficiency of cells. In addition to investigations on useful technology for upstream sample handling in MASSE, we have also evaluated the potential for μTAS to be employed in the MASSE instrument by employing proprietary lab-on-a-chip development technology to investigate the potential for microfluidic cell lysis of different prokaryotic cells employing both chemical and biological lysis agents. Real-time bright-field microscopy and quantitative PMT detection indicated that that gram positive, gram negative and archaeal cells were effectively lyzed in a few seconds using the microfluidic chip protocol developed. This included employing a lysis buffer with components including lysozyme, Protease, Proteinase K, Tween-20 and TritonX-100. The effectiveness of antibiotics and other chemical lysis agents were also screened and demonstrated partial effectiveness on all three cell types. This work demonstrates a step wise approach to evaluating the efficacy and sensitivity of commercial macro-scale technology and state-of-the-art developmental microfluidic technology under consideration for incorporation into the remotely operated MASSE instrument currently under development at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Moringa oleifera Seed Extract Alleviates Scopolamine-Induced Learning and Memory Impairment in Mice.

PubMed

Zhou, Juan; Yang, Wu-Shuang; Suo, Da-Qin; Li, Ying; Peng, Lu; Xu, Lan-Xi; Zeng, Kai-Yue; Ren, Tong; Wang, Ying; Zhou, Yu; Zhao, Yun; Yang, Li-Chao; Jin, Xin

2018-01-01

The extract of Moringa oleifera seeds has been shown to possess various pharmacological properties. In the present study, we assessed the neuropharmacological effects of 70% ethanolic M. oleifera seed extract (MSE) on cognitive impairment caused by scopolamine injection in mice using the passive avoidance and Morris water maze (MWM) tests. MSE (250 or 500 mg/kg) was administered to mice by oral gavage for 7 or 14 days, and cognitive impairment was induced by intraperitoneal injection of scopolamine (4 mg/kg) for 1 or 6 days. Mice that received scopolamine alone showed impaired learning and memory retention and considerably decreased cholinergic system reactivity and neurogenesis in the hippocampus. MSE pretreatment significantly ameliorated scopolamine-induced cognitive impairment and enhanced cholinergic system reactivity and neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Additionally, the protein expressions of phosphorylated Akt, ERK1/2, and CREB in the hippocampus were significantly decreased by scopolamine, but these decreases were reversed by MSE treatment. These results suggest that MSE-induced ameliorative cognitive effects are mediated by enhancement of the cholinergic neurotransmission system and neurogenesis via activation of the Akt, ERK1/2, and CREB signaling pathways. These findings suggest that MSE could be a potent neuropharmacological drug against amnesia, and its mechanism might be modulation of cholinergic activity via the Akt, ERK1/2, and CREB signaling pathways.

Fungistatic activity of composts with the addition of polymers obtained from thermoplastic corn starch and polyethylene - An innovative cleaner production alternative.

PubMed

Mierzwa-Hersztek, Monika; Gleń-Karolczyk, Katarzyna; Gondek, Krzysztof

2018-04-22

Compost extracts with the addition of polymers obtained from thermoplastic corn starch and polyethylene are novel organic amendments, which can be typically applied to suppress soil-borne diseases. Considering the diversity of biologically active substances, including those growth-promoting and stabilizing various pathogens contained in extracts, composts have a large potential to successfully replace the massively used pesticides. The effect of various concentrations of water compost extracts with the addition of polymers obtained from thermoplastic corn starch and polyethylene on the linear growth, biomass, and sporulation of the following polyphagous fungi was assessed under in situ and in vitro conditions: Fusarium culmorum (W.G. Smith), Fusarium graminearum Schwabe, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary, Rhizoctonia solani Kühn, Alternaria alternata (Fr.) Keissler. The studies revealed that the fungistatic activity was determined by the kind and concentration of compost extract added to the medium, as well as by the fungus kind. The analyzed compost extracts blocked the linear growth of the tested fungi on average by 22%, biomass increment by 51%, and sporulation by 57%. F. culmorum and S. sclerotiorum proved to be the most sensitive to the tested compost extracts. It was found that the extract from compost with the addition of polymer with the highest share of polyethylene blocked the sporulation of F. culmorum by 87% and F. graminearum by 92%. In turn, composts with the addition of polymers with the highest share of a biocomponent weakened the fungistatic activity of composts. The authors demonstrated that the addition of microbiological inoculum to one of the composts enhanced the fungistatic activity with respect to S. sclerotiorum, F. graminearum, and F. culmorum. The obtained results can be used to better understand the growth-promoting and suppression effects of compost extracts with polymer addition, help to enhance crop production, and constitute a paradigm shift towards the development of the next generation of compost with applications in a range of new fields. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Sida tuberculata (Malvaceae): a study based on development of extractive system and in silico and in vitro properties

PubMed Central

da Rosa, H.S.; Salgueiro, A.C.F.; Colpo, A.Z.C.; Paula, F.R.; Mendez, A.S.L.; Folmer, V.

2016-01-01

Sida tuberculata (Malvaceae) is a medicinal plant traditionally used in Brazil as an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory agent. Here, we aimed to investigate the different extractive techniques on phytochemical parameters, as well as to evaluate the toxicity and antioxidant capacity of S. tuberculata extracts using in silico and in vitro models. Therefore, in order to determine the dry residue content and the main compound 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) concentration, extracts from leaves and roots were prepared testing ethanol and water in different proportions. Extracts were then assessed by Artemia salina lethality test, and toxicity prediction of 20E was estimated. Antioxidant activity was performed by DPPH and ABTS radical scavenger assays, ferric reducing power assay, nitrogen derivative scavenger, deoxyribose degradation, and TBARS assays. HPLC evaluation detected 20E as main compound in leaves and roots. Percolation method showed the highest concentrations of 20E (0.134 and 0.096 mg/mL of extract for leaves and roots, respectively). All crude extracts presented low toxic potential on A. salina (LD50 >1000 µg/mL). The computational evaluation of 20E showed a low toxicity prediction. For in vitro antioxidant tests, hydroethanolic extracts of leaves were most effective compared to roots. In addition, hydroethanolic extracts presented a higher IC50 antioxidant than aqueous extracts. TBARS formation was prevented by leaves hydroethanolic extract from 0.015 and 0.03 mg/mL and for roots from 0.03 and 0.3 mg/mL on egg yolk and rat tissue, respectively (P<0.05). These findings suggest that S. tuberculata extracts are a considerable source of ecdysteroids and possesses a significant antioxidant property with low toxic potential. PMID:27409335

Sida tuberculata (Malvaceae): a study based on development of extractive system and in silico and in vitro properties.

PubMed

da Rosa, H S; Salgueiro, A C F; Colpo, A Z C; Paula, F R; Mendez, A S L; Folmer, V

2016-07-11

Sida tuberculata (Malvaceae) is a medicinal plant traditionally used in Brazil as an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory agent. Here, we aimed to investigate the different extractive techniques on phytochemical parameters, as well as to evaluate the toxicity and antioxidant capacity of S. tuberculata extracts using in silico and in vitro models. Therefore, in order to determine the dry residue content and the main compound 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) concentration, extracts from leaves and roots were prepared testing ethanol and water in different proportions. Extracts were then assessed by Artemia salina lethality test, and toxicity prediction of 20E was estimated. Antioxidant activity was performed by DPPH and ABTS radical scavenger assays, ferric reducing power assay, nitrogen derivative scavenger, deoxyribose degradation, and TBARS assays. HPLC evaluation detected 20E as main compound in leaves and roots. Percolation method showed the highest concentrations of 20E (0.134 and 0.096 mg/mL of extract for leaves and roots, respectively). All crude extracts presented low toxic potential on A. salina (LD50 >1000 µg/mL). The computational evaluation of 20E showed a low toxicity prediction. For in vitro antioxidant tests, hydroethanolic extracts of leaves were most effective compared to roots. In addition, hydroethanolic extracts presented a higher IC50 antioxidant than aqueous extracts. TBARS formation was prevented by leaves hydroethanolic extract from 0.015 and 0.03 mg/mL and for roots from 0.03 and 0.3 mg/mL on egg yolk and rat tissue, respectively (P<0.05). These findings suggest that S. tuberculata extracts are a considerable source of ecdysteroids and possesses a significant antioxidant property with low toxic potential.

Automatic signal extraction, prioritizing and filtering approaches in detecting post-marketing cardiovascular events associated with targeted cancer drugs from the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).

PubMed

Xu, Rong; Wang, Quanqiu

2014-02-01

Targeted drugs dramatically improve the treatment outcomes in cancer patients; however, these innovative drugs are often associated with unexpectedly high cardiovascular toxicity. Currently, cardiovascular safety represents both a challenging issue for drug developers, regulators, researchers, and clinicians and a concern for patients. While FDA drug labels have captured many of these events, spontaneous reporting systems are a main source for post-marketing drug safety surveillance in 'real-world' (outside of clinical trials) cancer patients. In this study, we present approaches to extracting, prioritizing, filtering, and confirming cardiovascular events associated with targeted cancer drugs from the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS). The dataset includes records of 4,285,097 patients from FAERS. We first extracted drug-cardiovascular event (drug-CV) pairs from FAERS through named entity recognition and mapping processes. We then compared six ranking algorithms in prioritizing true positive signals among extracted pairs using known drug-CV pairs derived from FDA drug labels. We also developed three filtering algorithms to further improve precision. Finally, we manually validated extracted drug-CV pairs using 21 million published MEDLINE records. We extracted a total of 11,173 drug-CV pairs from FAERS. We showed that ranking by frequency is significantly more effective than by the five standard signal detection methods (246% improvement in precision for top-ranked pairs). The filtering algorithm we developed further improved overall precision by 91.3%. By manual curation using literature evidence, we show that about 51.9% of the 617 drug-CV pairs that appeared in both FAERS and MEDLINE sentences are true positives. In addition, 80.6% of these positive pairs have not been captured by FDA drug labeling. The unique drug-CV association dataset that we created based on FAERS could facilitate our understanding and prediction of cardiotoxic events associated with targeted cancer drugs. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Field and laboratory determination of a poly(vinyl/vinylidene chloride) additive in brick mortar.

PubMed

Law, S L; Newman, J H; Ptak, F L

1990-02-01

A polymerized vinyl/vinylidene chloride additive, used in brick mortar during the 60s and 70s, is detected at the building site by the field method, which employs a commercially available chloride test strip. The field test results can then be verified by the laboratory methods. In one method, total chlorine in the mortar is determined by an oxygen-bomb method and the additive chloride is determined by difference after water-soluble chlorides have been determined on a separate sample. In the second method, the polymerized additive is extracted directly from the mortar with tetrahydrofuran (THF). The difference in weight before and after extraction of the additive gives the weight of additive in the mortar. Evaporation of the THF from the extract leaves a thin film of the polymer, which gives an infrared "fingerprint" spectrum characteristic of the additive polymer.

Extraction of space-charge-dominated ion beams from an ECR ion source: Theory and simulation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alton, G. D.; Bilheux, H.

2004-05-01

Extraction of high quality space-charge-dominated ion beams from plasma ion sources constitutes an optimization problem centered about finding an optimal concave plasma emission boundary that minimizes half-angular divergence for a given charge state, independent of the presence or lack thereof of a magnetic field in the extraction region. The curvature of the emission boundary acts to converge/diverge the low velocity beam during extraction. Beams of highest quality are extracted whenever the half-angular divergence, ω, is minimized. Under minimum half-angular divergence conditions, the plasma emission boundary has an optimum curvature and the perveance, P, current density, j+ext, and extraction gap, d, have optimum values for a given charge state, q. Optimum values for each of the independent variables (P, j+ext and d) are found to be in close agreement with those derived from elementary analytical theory for extraction with a simple two-electrode extraction system, independent of the presence of a magnetic field. The magnetic field only increases the emittances of beams through additional aberrational effects caused by increased angular divergences through coupling of the longitudinal to the transverse velocity components of particles as they pass though the mirror region of the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source. This article reviews the underlying theory of elementary extraction optics and presents results derived from simulation studies of extraction of space-charge dominated heavy-ion beams of varying mass, charge state, and intensity from an ECR ion source with emphasis on magnetic field induced effects.

THE SOLVENT EXTRACTION OF NITROSYLRUTHENIUM BY TRILAURYLAMINE IN NITRATE SYSTEM. Summary Report for the Period, July 1, 1960 to March 31, 1962

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Skavdahl, R.E.; Mason, E.A.

1962-06-01

An investigation of the solvent extraction characteristics of the nitro and nitrato complexes of nitrosylruthenium in nitric acid- sodium nitrate aqueous media was conducted. As the organic extractant phase, a solution of trilaurylamine (TLA) in toluene was utilized. In addition to the usual process parameter variation tyne of experiment, a rapid dilution type of experiment was used extensively to determine qualitative and semiquantitative results regarding the degree of extractability and concentration of the more extractable species of the nitrato complexes of nitrosylruthenium. It was found that the acids of the tetra-nitrato and pentanitrato complexes were the more extractable species formore » that set of complexes and that the acid of the penta-nitrato complex was the more extractable of the two. It was observed that for freshly prepared solutions, the dinitro complex of nitrosylruthenium was much more extractable than the gross nitrato complexes solutions. Nitro complexes in general, and the dinitro complex in particular, may be the controlling agent in ruthenium decontamination of spent nuclear fuel processed by solvent extraction methods. The experimental results from both sets of complexes could be more meaningfully correlated on the basis of unbound nitric acid concentration in the organic phase than on the basis of nitric acid concentration in the aqueous phase. The extraction of nitric acid by TLA from nitric acid-sodium nitrate aqueous solutions was investigated and the results correlated on the basis of activity of the undissociated nitric acid in the aqueous phase. (auth)« less

Chitosan-tripolyphosphate nanoparticles as Arrabidaea chica standardized extract carrier: synthesis, characterization, biocompatibility, and antiulcerogenic activity.

PubMed

Servat-Medina, Leila; González-Gómez, Alvaro; Reyes-Ortega, Felisa; Sousa, Ilza Maria Oliveira; Queiroz, Nubia de Cássia Almeida; Zago, Patricia Maria Wiziack; Jorge, Michelle Pedrosa; Monteiro, Karin Maia; de Carvalho, João Ernesto; San Román, Julio; Foglio, Mary Ann

2015-01-01

Natural products using plants have received considerable attention because of their potential to treat various diseases. Arrabidaea chica (Humb. & Bonpl.) B. Verlot is a native tropical American vine with healing properties employed in folk medicine for wound healing, inflammation, and gastrointestinal colic. Applying nanotechnology to plant extracts has revealed an advantageous strategy for herbal drugs considering the numerous features that nanostructured systems offer, including solubility, bioavailability, and pharmacological activity enhancement. The present study reports the preparation and characterization of chitosan-sodium tripolyphosphate nanoparticles (NPs) charged with A. chica standardized extract (AcE). Particle size and zeta potential were measured using a Zetasizer Nano ZS. The NP morphological characteristics were observed using scanning electron microscopy. Our studies indicated that the chitosan/sodium tripolyphosphate mass ratio of 5 and volume ratio of 10 were found to be the best condition to achieve the lowest NP sizes, with an average hydrodynamic diameter of 150±13 nm and a zeta potential of +45±2 mV. Particle size decreased with AcE addition (60±10.2 nm), suggesting an interaction between the extract's composition and polymers. The NP biocompatibility was evaluated using human skin fibroblasts. AcE-NP demonstrated capability of maintaining cell viability at the lowest concentrations tested, stimulating cell proliferation at higher concentrations. Antiulcerogenic activity of AcE-NP was also evaluated with an acute gastric ulcer experimental model induced by ethanol and indomethacin. NPs loaded with A. chica extract reduced the ulcerative lesion index using lower doses compared with the free extract, suggesting that extract encapsulation in chitosan NPs allowed for a dose reduction for a gastroprotective effect. The AcE encapsulation offers an approach for further application of the A. chica extract that could be considered a potential candidate for ulcer-healing pharmaceutical systems.

Synthesis and characterization of nano-hydroxyapatite using Sapindus Mukorossi extract

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Subha, B.; Prasath, P. Varun; Abinaya, R.; Kavitha, R. J.; Ravichandran, K.

2015-06-01

Nano-Hydroxyapatite (HAP) powders were successfully synthesised by hydrothermal method using Sapindus Mukorossi extract as an additive. The structural and morphological analyses of thus synthesised powders were carried out using FT-IR, XRD and FESEM/EDX. The FT-IR spectra confirm the presence of phosphate and hydroxyl groups corresponding to HAP. The XRD analysis reveals the formation of HAP phase and found to reduce the crystallite size with addition of Sapindus Mukorossi extract. The morphology changes from sphere to flake shape by the influence of extract.

A computer-aided system for automatic extraction of femur neck trabecular bone architecture using isotropic volume construction from clinical hip computed tomography images.

PubMed

Vivekanandhan, Sapthagirivasan; Subramaniam, Janarthanam; Mariamichael, Anburajan

2016-10-01

Hip fractures due to osteoporosis are increasing progressively across the globe. It is also difficult for those fractured patients to undergo dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scans due to its complicated protocol and its associated cost. The utilisation of computed tomography for the fracture treatment has become common in the clinical practice. It would be helpful for orthopaedic clinicians, if they could get some additional information related to bone strength for better treatment planning. The aim of our study was to develop an automated system to segment the femoral neck region, extract the cortical and trabecular bone parameters, and assess the bone strength using an isotropic volume construction from clinical computed tomography images. The right hip computed tomography and right femur dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry measurements were taken from 50 south-Indian females aged 30-80 years. Each computed tomography image volume was re-constructed to form isotropic volumes. An automated system by incorporating active contour models was used to segment the neck region. A minimum distance boundary method was applied to isolate the cortical and trabecular bone components. The trabecular bone was enhanced and segmented using trabecular enrichment approach. The cortical and trabecular bone features were extracted and statistically compared with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry measured femur neck bone mineral density. The extracted bone measures demonstrated a significant correlation with neck bone mineral density (r > 0.7, p < 0.001). The inclusion of cortical measures, along with the trabecular measures extracted after isotropic volume construction and trabecular enrichment approach procedures, resulted in better estimation of bone strength. The findings suggest that the proposed system using the clinical computed tomography images scanned with low dose could eventually be helpful in osteoporosis diagnosis and its treatment planning. © IMechE 2016.

Trail-following in termites: Evidence for a multicomponent system.

PubMed

Kaib, M; Bruinsma, O; Leuthold, R H

1982-09-01

Several African termite species from different subfamilies and different habitats are sensitive to trail-active extracts or to naturally laid trails from other species. Using single-extract bioassays, it is shown that the response threshold for trail-following is nearly identical for all tested species (except forHodotermes mossambicus). However, when termite workers have a choice between trails from their own species and from other species, conspecific trail-following is exclusively observed. This phenomenon can be counteracted by dilution (1∶10) of the conspecific trail-pheromone extract. Tests of the trail activity of various synthetic alcohols show that among these, the highest sensitivity of termite workers is to (Z)-3-dodecen-1-ol. Based on our experimental data, we postulate that, in addition to a generally active trail-pheromone constituent (an unsaturated primary C12 alcohol) or a pool of chemically closely related alcohols, other species-specific components are present in termite trails.

MRMer, an interactive open source and cross-platform system for data extraction and visualization of multiple reaction monitoring experiments.

PubMed

Martin, Daniel B; Holzman, Ted; May, Damon; Peterson, Amelia; Eastham, Ashley; Eng, Jimmy; McIntosh, Martin

2008-11-01

Multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mass spectrometry identifies and quantifies specific peptides in a complex mixture with very high sensitivity and speed and thus has promise for the high throughput screening of clinical samples for candidate biomarkers. We have developed an interactive software platform, called MRMer, for managing highly complex MRM-MS experiments, including quantitative analyses using heavy/light isotopic peptide pairs. MRMer parses and extracts information from MS files encoded in the platform-independent mzXML data format. It extracts and infers precursor-product ion transition pairings, computes integrated ion intensities, and permits rapid visual curation for analyses exceeding 1000 precursor-product pairs. Results can be easily output for quantitative comparison of consecutive runs. Additionally MRMer incorporates features that permit the quantitative analysis experiments including heavy and light isotopic peptide pairs. MRMer is open source and provided under the Apache 2.0 license.

Avocado Seeds: Extraction Optimization and Possible Use as Antioxidant in Food

PubMed Central

Gómez, Francisco Segovia; Sánchez, Sara Peiró; Gallego Iradi, Maria Gabriela; Mohd Azman, Nurul Aini; Almajano, María Pilar

2014-01-01

Consumption of avocado (Persea americana Mill) has increased worldwide in recent years. Part of this food (skin and seed) is lost during processing. However, a high proportion of bioactive substances, such as polyphenols, remain in this residue. The primary objective of this study was to model the extraction of polyphenols from the avocado pits. In addition, a further objective was to use the extract obtained to evaluate the protective power against oxidation in food systems, as for instance oil in water emulsions and meat products. Moreover, the possible synergy between the extracts and egg albumin in the emulsions is discussed. In Response Surface Method (RSM), the variables used are: temperature, time and ethanol concentration. The results are the total polyphenols content (TPC) and the antiradical power measured by Oxygen Radical Antioxidant Capacity (ORAC). In emulsions, the primary oxidation, by Peroxide Value and in fat meat the secondary oxidation, by TBARS (Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances), were analyzed. The RSM model has an R2 of 94.69 for TPC and 96.7 for ORAC. In emulsions, the inhibition of the oxidation is about 30% for pure extracts and 60% for the combination of extracts with egg albumin. In the meat burger oxidation, the formation of TBARS is avoided by 90%. PMID:26784880

Investigation of Microbubble Cavitation-Induced Calcein Release from Cells In Vitro.

PubMed

Maciulevičius, Martynas; Tamošiūnas, Mindaugas; Jakštys, Baltramiejus; Jurkonis, Rytis; Venslauskas, Mindaugas Saulius; Šatkauskas, Saulius

2016-12-01

In the present study, microbubble (MB) cavitation signal analysis was performed together with calcein release evaluation in both pressure and exposure duration domains of the acoustic field. A passive cavitation detection system was used to simultaneously measure MB scattering and attenuation signals for subsequent extraction efficiency relative to MB cavitation activity. The results indicate that the decrease in the efficiency of extraction of calcein molecules from Chinese hamster ovary cells, as well as cell viability, is associated with MB cavitation activity and can be accurately predicted using inertial cavitation doses up to 0.18 V × s (R 2  > 0.9, p < 0.0001). No decrease in additional calcein release or cell viability was observed after complete MB sonodestruction was achieved. This indicates that the optimal exposure duration within which maximal sono-extraction efficiency is obtained coincides with the time necessary to achieve complete MB destruction. These results illustrate the importance of MB inertial cavitation in the sono-extraction process. To our knowledge, this study is the first to (i) investigate small molecule extraction from cells via sonoporation and (ii) relate the extraction process to the quantitative characteristics of MB cavitation acoustic spectra. Copyright © 2016 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Coriandrum sativum: evaluation of its anxiolytic effect in the elevated plus-maze.

PubMed

Emamghoreishi, Masoumeh; Khasaki, Mohammad; Aazam, Maryam Fath

2005-01-15

The clinical applications of benzodiazepines as anxiolytics are limited by their unwanted side effects. Therefore, the development of new pharmacological agents is well justified. Among medicinal plants, Coriandrum sativum L. has been recommended for relief of anxiety and insomnia in Iranian folk medicine. Nevertheless, no pharmacological studies have thus far evaluated its effects on central nervous system. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine if the aqueous extract of Coriandrum sativum seed has anxiolytic effect in mice. Additionally, its effect on spontaneous activity and neuromuscular coordination were evaluated. The anxiolytic effect of aqueous extract (10, 25, 50, 100 mg/kg, i.p.) was examined in male albino mice using elevated plus-maze as an animal model of anxiety. The effects of the extract on spontaneous activity and neuromuscular coordination were assessed using Animex Activity Meter and rotarod, respectively. In the elevated plus-maze, aqueous extract at 100 mg/kg showed an anxiolytic effect by increasing the time spent on open arms and the percentage of open arm entries, compared to control group. Aqueous extract at 50, 100 and 500 mg/kg significantly reduced spontaneous activity and neuromuscular coordination, compared to control group. These results suggest that the aqueous extract of Coriandrum sativum seed has anxiolytic effect and may have potential sedative and muscle relaxant effects.

Analyzing privacy requirements: A case study of healthcare in Saudi Arabia.

PubMed

Ebad, Shouki A; Jaha, Emad S; Al-Qadhi, Mohammed A

2016-01-01

Developing legally compliant systems is a challenging software engineering problem, especially in systems that are governed by law, such as healthcare information systems. This challenge comes from the ambiguities and domain-specific definitions that are found in governmental rules. Therefore, there is a significant business need to automatically analyze privacy texts, extract rules and subsequently enforce them throughout the supply chain. The existing works that analyze health regulations use the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act as a case study. In this article, we applied the Breaux and Antón approach to the text of the Saudi Arabian healthcare privacy regulations; in Saudi Arabia, privacy is among the top dilemmas for public and private healthcare practitioners. As a result, we extracted and analyzed 2 rights, 4 obligations, 22 constraints, and 6 rules. Our analysis can assist requirements engineers, standards organizations, compliance officers and stakeholders by ensuring that their systems conform to Saudi policy. In addition, this article discusses the threats to the study validity and suggests open problems for future research.

Standardized data sharing in a paediatric oncology research network--a proof-of-concept study.

PubMed

Hochedlinger, Nina; Nitzlnader, Michael; Falgenhauer, Markus; Welte, Stefan; Hayn, Dieter; Koumakis, Lefteris; Potamias, George; Tsiknakis, Manolis; Saraceno, Davide; Rinaldi, Eugenia; Ladenstein, Ruth; Schreier, Günter

2015-01-01

Data that has been collected in the course of clinical trials are potentially valuable for additional scientific research questions in so called secondary use scenarios. This is of particular importance in rare disease areas like paediatric oncology. If data from several research projects need to be connected, so called Core Datasets can be used to define which information needs to be extracted from every involved source system. In this work, the utility of the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) Operational Data Model (ODM) as a format for Core Datasets was evaluated and a web tool was developed which received Source ODM XML files and--via Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT)--generated standardized Core Dataset ODM XML files. Using this tool, data from different source systems were extracted and pooled for joined analysis in a proof-of-concept study, facilitating both, basic syntactic and semantic interoperability.

Pore-water extraction from unsaturated tuff by triaxial and one-dimensional compression methods, Nevada Test Site, Nevada

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Mower, T.E.; Higgins, J.D.; Yang, In C.

1994-07-01

The hydrologic system in the unsaturated tuff at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is being evaluated for the US Department of Energy by the Yucca Mountain Project Branch of the US Geological Survey as a potential site for a high-level radioactive-waste repository. Part of this investigation includes a hydrochemical study that is being made to assess characteristics of the hydrologic system such as: traveltime, direction of flow, recharge and source relations, and types and magnitudes of chemical reactions in the unsaturated tuff. In addition, this hydrochemical information will be used in the study of the dispersive and corrosive effects of unsaturated-zone watermore » on the radioactive-waste storage canisters. This report describes the design and validation of laboratory experimental procedures for extracting representative samples of uncontaminated pore water from welded and nonwelded, unsaturated tuffs from the Nevada Test Site.« less

Application of quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization to motor imagery EEG classification.

PubMed

Hsu, Wei-Yen

2013-12-01

In this study, we propose a recognition system for single-trial analysis of motor imagery (MI) electroencephalogram (EEG) data. Applying event-related brain potential (ERP) data acquired from the sensorimotor cortices, the system chiefly consists of automatic artifact elimination, feature extraction, feature selection and classification. In addition to the use of independent component analysis, a similarity measure is proposed to further remove the electrooculographic (EOG) artifacts automatically. Several potential features, such as wavelet-fractal features, are then extracted for subsequent classification. Next, quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO) is used to select features from the feature combination. Finally, selected sub-features are classified by support vector machine (SVM). Compared with without artifact elimination, feature selection using a genetic algorithm (GA) and feature classification with Fisher's linear discriminant (FLD) on MI data from two data sets for eight subjects, the results indicate that the proposed method is promising in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications.

Signal processing method and system for noise removal and signal extraction

DOEpatents

Fu, Chi Yung; Petrich, Loren

2009-04-14

A signal processing method and system combining smooth level wavelet pre-processing together with artificial neural networks all in the wavelet domain for signal denoising and extraction. Upon receiving a signal corrupted with noise, an n-level decomposition of the signal is performed using a discrete wavelet transform to produce a smooth component and a rough component for each decomposition level. The n.sup.th level smooth component is then inputted into a corresponding neural network pre-trained to filter out noise in that component by pattern recognition in the wavelet domain. Additional rough components, beginning at the highest level, may also be retained and inputted into corresponding neural networks pre-trained to filter out noise in those components also by pattern recognition in the wavelet domain. In any case, an inverse discrete wavelet transform is performed on the combined output from all the neural networks to recover a clean signal back in the time domain.

High-throughput and direct measurement of androgen levels using turbulent flow chromatography liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (TFC-LC-TQMS) to discover chemicals that modulate dihydrotestosterone production in human prostate cancer cells.

PubMed

Kang, Kyungsu; Peng, Lei; Jung, Yu-Jin; Kim, Joo Yeon; Lee, Eun Ha; Lee, Hee Ju; Kim, Sang Min; Sung, Sang Hyun; Pan, Cheol-Ho; Choi, Yongsoo

2018-02-01

To develop a high-throughput screening system to measure the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in cultured human prostate cancer cells using turbulent flow chromatography liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (TFC-LC-TQMS). After optimizing the cell reaction system, this method demonstrated a screening capability of 103 samples, including 78 single compounds and 25 extracts, in less than 12 h without manual sample preparation. Consequently, fucoxanthin, phenethyl caffeate, and Curcuma longa L. extract were validated as bioactive chemicals that inhibited DHT production in cultured DU145 cells. In addition, naringenin boosted DHT production in DU145 cells. The method can facilitate the discovery of bioactive chemicals that modulate the DHT production, and four phytochemicals are potential candidates of nutraceuticals to adjust DHT levels in male hormonal dysfunction.

Querying and Extracting Timeline Information from Road Traffic Sensor Data

PubMed Central

Imawan, Ardi; Indikawati, Fitri Indra; Kwon, Joonho; Rao, Praveen

2016-01-01

The escalation of traffic congestion in urban cities has urged many countries to use intelligent transportation system (ITS) centers to collect historical traffic sensor data from multiple heterogeneous sources. By analyzing historical traffic data, we can obtain valuable insights into traffic behavior. Many existing applications have been proposed with limited analysis results because of the inability to cope with several types of analytical queries. In this paper, we propose the QET (querying and extracting timeline information) system—a novel analytical query processing method based on a timeline model for road traffic sensor data. To address query performance, we build a TQ-index (timeline query-index) that exploits spatio-temporal features of timeline modeling. We also propose an intuitive timeline visualization method to display congestion events obtained from specified query parameters. In addition, we demonstrate the benefit of our system through a performance evaluation using a Busan ITS dataset and a Seattle freeway dataset. PMID:27563900

Performance of two MALDI-TOF MS systems for the identification of yeasts isolated from bloodstream infections and cerebrospinal fluids using a time-saving direct transfer protocol.

PubMed

Hamprecht, Axel; Christ, Sara; Oestreicher, Tanja; Plum, Georg; Kempf, Volkhard A J; Göttig, Stephan

2014-04-01

The rapid and correct identification of pathogens is of paramount importance for the treatment of patients with invasive infections. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) can speed up the identification of bacteria and fungi and has quickly been embraced by medical microbiology laboratories worldwide. Different MALDI-TOF systems have been compared in studies focussing on identification rates of different pathogens. Another aspect that has not been systematically assessed is the performance in daily routine and handling, which is important especially for microbiology routine laboratories. We compared two widespread commercial systems, Microflex LT Biotyper (Bruker) and VitekMS (bioMérieux), for the identification of 210 relevant clinical yeasts under routine conditions, using a time-saving direct transfer protocol. We assessed the need for an additional extraction step, the threshold for species identification and the duration of measurements with the two systems. The tested yeasts included 34 Candida albicans isolates, 144 non-albicans Candida spp. and 32 yeasts of different genera. The results of the two MS systems were compared with that of biochemical identification and, in case of discrepancies, DNA sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer or the large subunit of ribosomal DNA. Both systems correctly identified 96.2 % of isolates [202/210, non-significant (n.s.)]. Misidentifications were observed for VitekMS only (n = 5, no major errors, n.s.). VitekMS was the slower system (19.8 vs. 8.0 min for 10 samples, p = 0.002) but had the advantage of a more effective direct transfer protocol with less need for an additional extraction step.

Effect of Fermented Spinach as Sources of Pre-Converted Nitrite on Color Development of Cured Pork Loin

PubMed Central

Hwang, Ko-Eun

2017-01-01

The effect of fermented spinach extracts on color development in cured meats was investigated in this study. The pH values of raw cured meats without addition of fermented spinach extract or nitrite (negative control) were higher (p<0.05) than those added with fermented spinach extract. The pH values of raw and cooked cured meats in treatment groups were decreased with increasing addition levels of fermented spinach extract. The lightness and yellowness values of raw cured meats formulated with fermented spinach extract were higher (p<0.05) than those of the control groups (both positive and negative controls). The redness values of cooked cured meats were increased with increasing fermented spinach extract levels, whereas the yellowness values of cooked cured meats were decreased with increasing levels of fermented spinach extract. The lowest volatile basic nitrogen (VBN) and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) values were observed in the positive control group with addition of nitrite. TBARS values of cured meats added with fermented spinach extract were decreased with increasing levels of fermented spinach extract and VBN values of curing meat with 30% fermented spinach extract was lower than the other treatments. Total viable bacterial counts in cured meats added with fermented spinach extract ranged from 0.34-1.01 Log CFU/g. E. coli and coliform bacteria were not observed in any of the cured meats treated with fermented spinach extracts or nitrite. Residual nitrite contents in treatment groups were increased with increasing levels of fermented spinach extract added. These results demonstrated that fermented spinach could be added to meat products to improve own curing characteristics. PMID:28316477

Effect of Fermented Spinach as Sources of Pre-Converted Nitrite on Color Development of Cured Pork Loin.

PubMed

Kim, Tae-Kyung; Kim, Young-Boong; Jeon, Ki-Hong; Park, Jong-Dae; Sung, Jung-Min; Choi, Hyun-Wook; Hwang, Ko-Eun; Choi, Yun-Sang

2017-01-01

The effect of fermented spinach extracts on color development in cured meats was investigated in this study. The pH values of raw cured meats without addition of fermented spinach extract or nitrite (negative control) were higher ( p <0.05) than those added with fermented spinach extract. The pH values of raw and cooked cured meats in treatment groups were decreased with increasing addition levels of fermented spinach extract. The lightness and yellowness values of raw cured meats formulated with fermented spinach extract were higher ( p <0.05) than those of the control groups (both positive and negative controls). The redness values of cooked cured meats were increased with increasing fermented spinach extract levels, whereas the yellowness values of cooked cured meats were decreased with increasing levels of fermented spinach extract. The lowest volatile basic nitrogen (VBN) and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) values were observed in the positive control group with addition of nitrite. TBARS values of cured meats added with fermented spinach extract were decreased with increasing levels of fermented spinach extract and VBN values of curing meat with 30% fermented spinach extract was lower than the other treatments. Total viable bacterial counts in cured meats added with fermented spinach extract ranged from 0.34-1.01 Log CFU/g. E. coli and coliform bacteria were not observed in any of the cured meats treated with fermented spinach extracts or nitrite. Residual nitrite contents in treatment groups were increased with increasing levels of fermented spinach extract added. These results demonstrated that fermented spinach could be added to meat products to improve own curing characteristics.

Aged garlic has more potent antiglycation and antioxidant properties compared to fresh garlic extract in vitro

PubMed Central

Elosta, Abdulhakim; Slevin, Mark; Rahman, Khalid; Ahmed, Nessar

2017-01-01

Protein glycation involves formation of early (Amadori) and late advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) together with free radicals via autoxidation of glucose and Amadori products. Glycation and increased free radical activity underlie the pathogenesis of diabetic complications. This study investigated whether aged garlic has more potent antiglycation and antioxidant properties compared to fresh garlic extract in vitro in a cell-free system. Proteins were glycated by incubation with sugars (glucose, methylglyoxal or ribose) ±5–15 mg/mL of aged and fresh garlic extracts. Advanced glycation endproducts were measured using SDS-PAGE gels and by ELISA whereas Amadori products were assessed by the fructosamine method. Colorimetric methods were used to assess antioxidant activity, free radical scavenging capacity, protein-bound carbonyl groups, thiol groups and metal chelation activities in addition to phenolic, total flavonoid and flavonol content of aged and fresh garlic extracts. Aged garlic inhibited AGEs by 56.4% compared to 33.5% for an equivalent concentration of fresh garlic extract. Similarly, aged garlic had a higher total phenolic content (129 ± 1.8 mg/g) compared to fresh garlic extract (56 ± 1.2 mg/g). Aged garlic has more potent antiglycation and antioxidant properties compared to fresh garlic extract and is more suitable for use in future in vivo studies. PMID:28051097

Chromatographic Separations Using Solid-Phase Extraction Cartridges: Separation of Wine Phenolics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brenneman, Charles A.; Ebeler, Susan E.

1999-12-01

We describe a simple laboratory experiment that demonstrates the principles of chromatographic separation using solid-phase extraction columns and red wine. By adjusting pH and mobile phase composition, the wine is separated into three fractions of differing polarity. The content of each fraction can be monitored by UV-vis spectroscopy. When the experiment is combined with experiments involving HPLC or GC separations, students gain a greater appreciation for and understanding of the highly automated instrumental systems currently available. In addition, they learn about the chemistry of polyphenolic compounds, which are present in many foods and beverages and which are receiving much attention for their potentially beneficial health effects.

A Multicusp Ion Source for Radioactive Ion Beams

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wutte, D.; Freedman, S.; Gough, R.; Lee, Y.; Leitner, M.; Leung, K. N.; Lyneis, C.; Picard, D. S.; Sun, L.; Williams, M. D.; Xie, Z. Q.

1997-05-01

In order to produce a radioactive ion beam of (14)O+, a 10-cm-diameter, 13.56 MHz radio frequency (rf) driven multicusp ion source is now being developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In this paper we describe the specific ion source design and the basic ion source characteristics using Ar, Xe and a 90types of measurements have been performed: extractable ion current, ion species distributions, gas efficiency, axial energy spread and ion beam emittance measurements. The source can generate ion current densities of approximately 60 mA/cm2 . In addition the design of the ion beam extraction/transport system for the actual experimental setup for the radioactive beam line will be presented.

Deep Learning Based Binaural Speech Separation in Reverberant Environments.

PubMed

Zhang, Xueliang; Wang, DeLiang

2017-05-01

Speech signal is usually degraded by room reverberation and additive noises in real environments. This paper focuses on separating target speech signal in reverberant conditions from binaural inputs. Binaural separation is formulated as a supervised learning problem, and we employ deep learning to map from both spatial and spectral features to a training target. With binaural inputs, we first apply a fixed beamformer and then extract several spectral features. A new spatial feature is proposed and extracted to complement the spectral features. The training target is the recently suggested ideal ratio mask. Systematic evaluations and comparisons show that the proposed system achieves very good separation performance and substantially outperforms related algorithms under challenging multi-source and reverberant environments.

Graphene/TiO2 nanocomposite based solid-phase extraction and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry for lipidomic profiling of avocado (Persea americana Mill.).

PubMed

Shen, Qing; Yang, Mei; Li, Linqiu; Cheung, Hon-Yeung

2014-12-10

Phospholipids possess important physiological, structural and nutritional functions in biological systems. This study described a solid-phase extraction (SPE) method, employing graphene and titanium dioxide (G/TiO2) nanocomposite as sorbent, for the selective isolation and enrichment of phospholipids from avocado (Persea americana Mill.). Based on the principal that the phosphoryl group in the phospholipid can interact with TiO2 via a bridging bidentate mode, an optimum condition was established for SPE, and was successfully applied to prepare avocado samples. The extracts were monitored by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight/tandem mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF/MS) in both positive-ion and negative-ion modes. Results showed that phospholipids could be efficiently extracted in a clean manner by G/TiO2 based SPE. In addition, the signals of phospholipids were enhanced while the noise was reduced. Some minor peaks became more obvious. In conclusion, the nanocomposite material of G/TiO2 was proved to be a promising sorbent for selective separation of phospholipids from crude lipid extract. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A combination of NMR and liquid chromatography to characterize the protective effects of Rhus tripartita extracts on ethanol-induced toxicity and inflammation on intestinal cells.

PubMed

Ben Barka, Zaineb; Grintzalis, Konstantinos; Polet, Madeleine; Heude, Clement; Sommer, Ulf; Ben Miled, Hanène; Ben Rhouma, Khémais; Mohsen, Sakly; Tebourbi, Olfa; Schneider, Yves-Jacques

2018-02-20

Consumption of ethanol may have severe effects on human organs and tissues and lead to acute and chronic inflammation of internal organs. The present study aims at investigating the potential protective effects of three different extracts prepared from the leaves, root, and stem of the sumac, Rhus tripartita, against ethanol-induced toxicity and inflammation using intestinal cells as a cell culture system, in vitro model of the intestinal mucosa. The results showed an induction of cytotoxicity by ethanol, which was partially reversed by co-administration of the plant extracts. As part of investigating the cellular response and the mechanism of toxicity, the role of reduced thiols and glutathione-S-transferases were assessed. In addition, intestinal cells were artificially imposed to an inflammation state and the anti-inflammatory effect of the extracts was estimated by determination of interleukin-8. Finally, a detailed characterization of the contents of the three plant extracts by high resolution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry revealed significant differences in their chemical compositions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Isolation and Characterization of Adhesive Secretion from Cuvierian Tubules of Sea Cucumber Holothuria forskåli (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea)

PubMed Central

Baranowska, Malgorzata; Schloßmacher, Ute; McKenzie, J. Douglas; Müller, Werner E. G.; Schröder, Heinz C.

2011-01-01

The sea cucumber Holothuria forskåli possesses a specialized system called Cuvierian tubules. During mechanical stimulation white filaments (tubules) are expelled and become sticky upon contact with any object. We isolated a protein with adhesive properties from protein extracts of Cuvierian tubules from H. forskåli. This protein was identified by antibodies against recombinant precollagen D which is located in the byssal threads of the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis. To find out the optimal procedure for extraction and purification, the identified protein was isolated by several methods, including electroelution, binding to glass beads, immunoprecipitation, and gel filtration. Antibodies raised against the isolated protein were used for localization of the adhesive protein in Cuvierian tubules. Immunostaining and immunogold electron microscopical studies revealed the strongest immunoreactivity in the mesothelium; this tissue layer is involved in adhesion. Adhesion of Cuvierian tubule extracts was measured on the surface of various materials. The extracted protein showed the strongest adhesion to Teflon surface. Increased adhesion was observed in the presence of potassium and EDTA, while cadmium caused a decrease in adhesion. Addition of antibodies and trypsin abolished the adhesive properties of the extract. PMID:22013488

Membrane-assisted extraction of monoterpenes: from in silico solvent screening towards biotechnological process application

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

This work focuses on the process development of membrane-assisted solvent extraction of hydrophobic compounds such as monoterpenes. Beginning with the choice of suitable solvents, quantum chemical calculations with the simulation tool COSMO-RS were carried out to predict the partition coefficient (logP) of (S)-(+)-carvone and terpinen-4-ol in various solvent–water systems and validated afterwards with experimental data. COSMO-RS results show good prediction accuracy for non-polar solvents such as n-hexane, ethyl acetate and n-heptane even in the presence of salts and glycerol in an aqueous medium. Based on the high logP value, n-heptane was chosen for the extraction of (S)-(+)-carvone in a lab-scale hollow-fibre membrane contactor. Two operation modes are investigated where experimental and theoretical mass transfer values, based on their related partition coefficients, were compared. In addition, the process is evaluated in terms of extraction efficiency and overall product recovery, and its biotechnological application potential is discussed. Our work demonstrates that the combination of in silico prediction by COSMO-RS with membrane-assisted extraction is a promising approach for the recovery of hydrophobic compounds from aqueous solutions. PMID:29765654

The effect of filler addition and oven temperature to the antioxidant quality in the drying of Physalis angulata leaf extract obtained by subcritical water extraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Susanti, R. F.; Natalia, Desy

2016-11-01

In traditional medicine, Physalis angulata which is well known as ceplukan in Indonesia, has been utilized to cure several diseases by conventional extraction in hot water. The investigation of the Swietenia mahagoni extract activity in modern medicine typically utilized organic solvents such as ethanol, methanol, chloroform and hexane in extraction. In this research, subcritical water was used as a solvent instead of organic solvent to extract the Pysalis angulata leaf part. The focus of this research was the investigation of extract drying condition in the presence of filler to preserve the quality of antioxidant in Swietenia mahagoni extract. Filler, which is inert, was added to the extract during drying to help absorb the water while protect the extract from exposure in heat during drying. The effects of filler types, concentrations and oven drying temperatures were investigated to the antioxidant quality covering total phenol and antioxidant activity. Aerosil and microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) were utilized as fillers with concentration was varied from 0-30 wt% for MCC and 0-15 wt% for aerosil. The oven drying temperature was varied from 40-60 oC. The results showed that compare to extract dried without filler, total phenol and antioxidant activity were improved upon addition of filler. The higher the concentration of filler, the better the antioxidant; however it was limited by the homogeneity of filler in the extract. Both of the variables (oven temperature and concentration) played an important role in the improvement of extract quality of Swietenia mahagoni leaf. It was related to the drying time which can be minimized to protect the deterioration of extract from heat. In addition, filler help to provide the powder form of extract instead of the typical extract form which is sticky and oily.

New opportunities of the application of natural herb and spice extracts in plant oils: application of electron paramagnetic resonance in examining the oxidative stability.

PubMed

Kozłowska, Mariola; Szterk, Arkadiusz; Zawada, Katarzyna; Ząbkowski, Tomasz

2012-09-01

The aim of this study was to establish the applicability of natural water-ethanol extracts of herbs and spices in increasing the oxidative stability of plant oils and in the production of novel food. Different concentrations (0, 100, 300, 500, and 700 ppm) of spice extracts and butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) (100 ppm) were added to the studied oils. The antioxidant activity of spice extracts was determined with electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical assay. The study showed that the extracts significantly increased the oxidative stability of the examined oils when compared to one of the strongest synthetic antioxidants--BHA. The applied simple production technology and addition of herb and spice extracts to plant oils enabled enhancement of their oxidative stability. The extracts are an alternative to the oils aromatized with an addition of fresh herbs, spices, and vegetables because it did not generate additional flavors thus enabling the maintenance of the characteristic ones. Moreover, it will increase the intake of natural substances in human diet, which are known to possess anticarcinogenic properties. © 2012 Institute of Food Technologists®

Chlorophytum borivilianum as potential terminator of free radicals in various in vitro oxidation systems.

PubMed

Visavadiya, Nishant P; Soni, Badrish; Dalwadi, Nirav; Madamwar, Datta

2010-04-01

Chlorophytum borivilianum is a very popular herb in traditional Indian medicine and used as a potent "Rasayana" drug in "Ayurveda" as a rejuvenator. Currently, a large body of evidence supports the key role of free radicals in diverse pathological conditions such as aging and atherosclerosis. The present investigation essentially focuses on the comprehensive account of in vitro antioxidant activity exerted by C.borivilianum root extracts (i.e., aqueous and ethanolic), to clarify the pharmacological antagonism of chemicals/metals-mediated oxidation. Graded-dose (25 to 1000 microg/ml) of aqueous extract exhibited higher antioxidant potency as evidenced by powerful nitric oxide, superoxide, hydroxyl, DPPH and ABTS(*+) radicals scavenging activity along with reducing capacity (Fe(3+)/ferricyanide complex and FRAP assays), metal chelating ability, as well as markedly suppressed the lipid peroxidation in mitochondrial fractions as compared to ethanolic extract. Further, aqueous extract significantly decreased (P < 0.05) copper-mediated human serum and kinetics of LDL oxidation, as demonstrated by prolongation of lag phase time with decline of oxidation rate, conjugated dienes, lipid hydroperoxides and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances. In addition, the total polyphenol and flavonoid contents of aqueous extract were higher than that of ethanolic extract, which indicated a positive correlation between antioxidant activity and contents of total phenols. The IC(50) values of both extracts were also compared with appropriate antioxidant standards. Overall, aqueous extract of C.borivilianum root has significant powerful antioxidant activity and may favorably affect atherosclerosis risk status by reducing LDL oxidation susceptibility.

Ulmus macrocarpa Hance Extracts Attenuated H2O2 and UVB-Induced Skin Photo-Aging by Activating Antioxidant Enzymes and Inhibiting MAPK Pathways

PubMed Central

Choi, Sun-Il; Lee, Jin-Ha; Kim, Jae-Min; Jung, Tae-Dong; Cho, Bong-Yeon; Choi, Seung-Hyun; Lee, Dae-Won; Kim, Jinkyung; Kim, Jong-Yea; Lee, Ok-Hawn

2017-01-01

To protect from reactive oxygen species (ROS) damages, skin cells have evolved to have antioxidant enzymes, such as copper and zinc-dependent superoxide dismutase (SOD1), mitochondrial manganese-dependent superoxide dismutase (SOD2), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GPX), and glutathione reductase (GR), and suppressed the expression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) through the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathways, such as c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and p38. Bioactive compounds analyses were performed using a high-performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array detector (HPLC-PDA) system. The antioxidant activity of Ulmus macrocarpa Hance (UMH) extracts was estimated in vitro. The anti-aging activity of UMH extracts was estimated in vivo using the SKH-1 hairless mice. The UMH extracts reduced the H2O2-induced intracellular ROS production and the cell damages in human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs). Moreover, the H2O2-induced phosphorylation of JNK and p38 was detected in HDF and UMH extracts blocked the phosphorylation. These results suggest that UMH extracts can reduce the expression of MMPs and the reduced MMPs lead to the inhibition of collagen degradation. In addition, oral administration of the UMH extracts decreased the depth, thickness, and length of wrinkles on UVB exposed hairless mice. Therefore, UMH extracts play an advantage of the functional materials in antioxidant and anti-aging of skin. PMID:28587261

Automated processing of whole blood samples for the determination of immunosuppressants by liquid chromatography tandem-mass spectrometry.

PubMed

Vogeser, Michael; Spöhrer, Ute

2006-01-01

Liquid chromatography tandem-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is an efficient technology for routine determination of immunosuppressants in whole blood; however, time-consuming manual sample preparation remains a significant limitation of this technique. Using a commercially available robotic pipetting system (Tecan Freedom EVO), we developed an automated sample-preparation protocol for quantification of tacrolimus in whole blood by LC-MS/MS. Barcode reading, sample resuspension, transfer of whole blood aliquots into a deep-well plate, addition of internal standard solution, mixing, and protein precipitation by addition of an organic solvent is performed by the robotic system. After centrifugation of the plate, the deproteinized supernatants are submitted to on-line solid phase extraction, using column switching prior to LC-MS/MS analysis. The only manual actions within the entire process are decapping of the tubes, and transfer of the deep-well plate from the robotic system to a centrifuge and finally to the HPLC autosampler. Whole blood pools were used to assess the reproducibility of the entire analytical system for measuring tacrolimus concentrations. A total coefficient of variation of 1.7% was found for the entire automated analytical process (n=40; mean tacrolimus concentration, 5.3 microg/L). Close agreement between tacrolimus results obtained after manual and automated sample preparation was observed. The analytical system described here, comprising automated protein precipitation, on-line solid phase extraction and LC-MS/MS analysis, is convenient and precise, and minimizes hands-on time and the risk of mistakes in the quantification of whole blood immunosuppressant concentrations compared to conventional methods.

Soluble organic substances extracted from compost as amendments for Fenton-like oxidation of contaminated sites.

PubMed

Zingaretti, Daniela; Lombardi, Francesco; Baciocchi, Renato

2018-04-01

The Fenton process is a well known treatment that proved to be effective for the remediation of sites contaminated by a wide range of organic pollutants. Its application to soil-water systems typically requires the addition of a stabilizer, in order to increase the H 2 O 2 lifetime and thus the radius of influence of the treatment, and a chelating agent, aimed to extract and maintain in solution the iron present in the soil. However, as the use of these compounds has been debated for their environmental impact, efforts have been placed to test new "greener" amendments. Namely, in line with the concept of circular economy introduced by the European Council, in this study we have tested the use of humic acids extracted from compost as amendment in a Fenton-like process. These substances are of potential interest as can form complexes with metal ions and act as sorbents for hydrophobic organic compounds. Fenton-like lab-scale tests with the extracted humic acids were performed on a soil-water system artificially contaminated by chlorophenol. The obtained results were compared with those achieved applying commercial humic acids or traditional amendments (i.e. KH 2 PO 4 or EDTA) used as reference. The humic acids extracted from compost allowed to achieve a H 2 O 2 lifetime close to the one obtained with traditional stabilizing agent; besides, humic acids proved also effective in removing chlorophenol, with performance close to the one achieved using a traditional chelating agent. These findings hence suggest that the use of the humic acids extracted from wastes in a Fenton-like process could allow to replace at the same time the H 2 O 2 stabilizer and the chelating agent. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Geothermal waste heat utilization from in situ thermal bitumen recovery operations.

PubMed

Nakevska, Nevenka; Schincariol, Robert A; Dehkordi, S Emad; Cheadle, Burns A

2015-01-01

In situ thermal methods for bitumen extraction introduce a tremendous amount of energy into the reservoirs raising ambient temperatures of 13 °C to as high as 200 °C at the steam chamber edge and 50 °C along the reservoir edge. In essence these operations have unintentionally acted as underground thermal energy storage systems which can be recovered after completion of bitumen extraction activities. Groundwater flow and heat transport models of the Cold Lake, Alberta, reservoir, coupled with a borehole heat exchanger (BHE) model, allowed for investigating the use of closed-loop geothermal systems for energy recovery. Three types of BHEs (single U-tube, double U-tube, coaxial) were tested and analyzed by comparing outlet temperatures and corresponding heat extraction rates. Initial one year continuous operation simulations show that the double U-tube configuration had the best performance producing an average temperature difference of 5.7 °C, and an average heat extraction of 41 W/m. Given the top of the reservoir is at a depth of 400 m, polyethylene piping provided for larger extraction gains over more thermally conductive steel piping. Thirty year operation simulations illustrate that allowing 6 month cyclic recovery periods only increases the loop temperature gain by a factor of 1.2 over continuous operation. Due to the wide spacing of existing boreholes and reservoir depth, only a small fraction of the energy is efficiently recovered. Drilling additional boreholes between existing wells would increase energy extraction. In areas with shallower bitumen deposits such as the Athabasca region, i.e. 65 to 115 m deep, BHE efficiencies should be larger. © 2014, National Ground Water Association.

Inhibitory effects of 1alpha, 25dihydroxyvitamin D3 and Ajuga iva extract on oxidative stress, toxicity and hypo-fertility in diabetic rat testes.

PubMed

Hamden, K; Carreau, S; Jamoussi, K; Ayadi, F; Garmazi, F; Mezgenni, N; Elfeki, A

2008-09-01

The aim of the current study is to investigate the therapeutic and preventive effects of 1alpha, 25dihydroxyvitaminD3 (1,25 (OH)2 D3) and Afuga iva (AI) extract on diabetes toxicity in rats testes. Thus diabetic rats were treated with 1alpha, 25dihydroxyvitaminD3 or Ajuga iva extract as both therapeutic and preventive treatments on diabetes toxicity in rats testes. Our results showed that diabetes induced a decrease in testosterone and 17beta-estradiol levels in testes and plasma. Besides, a fall in testicular antioxidant capacity appeared by a decrease in both antioxidant (superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activities) and nonenzymatic antioxidant (copper (Cu), magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe) levels). All theses changes enhanced testicular toxicity (increase in testicular aspartate amino transaminase (AST), alanine amino transaminase (ALT), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activities and the lipid peroxidation and triglyceride (TG) levels). In addition, a decrease in testicular total cholesterol (TCh) level was observed in diabetic rats testes. All the changes lead to a decrease in the total number and mobility of epididymal spermatozoa. The administration of 1alpha,25dihydroxyvitaminD3 and Ajuga iva extract three weeks before and after diabetes induction interfered and prevented diabetes toxicity in the reproductive system. 1,25 (OH)2 D3 and Ajuga iva extract blunted all changes observed in diabetic rats. To sum up, the data suggested that 1,25 (OH)2 D3 and Ajuga iva extract have a protective effect on alloxan-induced damage in reproductive system by enhancing the testosterone and 17beta-estradiol levels, consequently protecting from oxidative stress, cellular toxicity and maintaining the number and motility of spermatozoids.

Membrane contactor assisted extraction/reaction process employing ionic liquids

DOEpatents

Lin, Yupo J [Naperville, IL; Snyder, Seth W [Lincolnwood, IL

2012-02-07

The present invention relates to a functionalized membrane contactor extraction/reaction system and method for extracting target species from multi-phase solutions utilizing ionic liquids. One preferred embodiment of the invented method and system relates to an extraction/reaction system wherein the ionic liquid extraction solutions act as both extraction solutions and reaction mediums, and allow simultaneous separation/reactions not possible with prior art technology.

Application of aqueous two-phase micellar system to improve extraction of adenoviral particles from cell lysate.

PubMed

Molino, João Vitor Dutra; Lopes, André Moreni; Viana Marques, Daniela de Araújo; Mazzola, Priscila Gava; da Silva, Joas Lucas; Hirata, Mario Hiroyuki; Hirata, Rosário Dominguez Crespo; Gatti, Maria Silvia Viccari; Pessoa, Adalberto

2017-12-04

Viral vectors are important in medical approaches, such as disease prevention and gene therapy, and their production depends on efficient prepurification steps. In the present study, an aqueous two-phase micellar system (ATPMS) was evaluated to extract human adenovirus type 5 particles from a cell lysate. Adenovirus was cultured in human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK-293) cells to a concentration of 1.4 × 10 10 particles/mL. Cells were lysed, and the system formed by direct addition of Triton X-114 in a 2 3 full factorial design with center points. The systems were formed with Triton X-114 at a final concentration of 1.0, 6.0, and 11.0% (w/w), cell lysate pH of 6.0, 6.5, and 7.0, and incubation temperatures at 33, 35, and 37 °C. Adenovirus particles recovered from partition phases were measured by qPCR. The best system condition was with 11.0% (w/w) of Triton X-114, a cell lysate pH of 7.0, and an incubation temperature at 33 °C, yielding 3.51 × 10 10 adenovirus particles/mL, which increased the initial adenovirus particles concentration by 2.3-fold, purifying it by 2.2-fold from the cell lysate, and removing cell debris. In conclusion, these results demonstrated that the use of an aqueous two-phase micellar system in the early steps of downstream processing could improve viral particle extraction from cultured cells while integrating clarification, concentration, and prepurification steps. © 2017 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

Sensitive gas analysis system on a microchip and application for on-site monitoring of NH3 in a clean room.

PubMed

Hiki, Shinichiro; Mawatari, Kazuma; Aota, Arata; Saito, Maki; Kitamori, Takehiko

2011-06-15

A portable, highly sensitive, and continuous ammonia gas monitoring system was developed with a microfluidic chip. The system consists of a main unit, a gas pumping unit, and a computer which serves as an operation console. The size of the system is 45 cm width × 30 cm depth × 30 cm height, and the portable system was realized. A highly efficient and stable extraction method was developed by utilizing an annular gas/liquid laminar flow. In addition, a stable gas/liquid separation method with a PTFE membrane was developed by arranging a fluidic network in three dimensions to achieve almost zero dead volume at the gas/liquid extraction part. The extraction rate was almost 100% with a liquid flow rate of 3.5 μL/min and a gas flow rate of 100 mL/min (contact time of ~15 ms), and the concentration factor was 200 times by calculating the NH(3) concentration (w/w unit) in the gas and liquid phases. Stable phase separation and detection was sustained for more than 3 weeks in an automated operation, which was sufficient for the monitoring application. The lower limit of detection calculated based on a signal-to-noise ratio of 3 was 84 ppt, which showed good detectability for NH(3) analysis. We believe that our system is a very powerful tool for gas analysis due to the advantages of portable size, high sensitivity, and continuous monitoring, and it is particularly useful in the semiconductor field.

Structural characterization (1->2)-beta-xylose-(1->3)-alpha-arabinose-containing oligosaccharide products of extracted switchgrass (Panicum virgatum, L.) xylan treatment with alpha-arabinofuranosidase and beta-endo-xylanase.

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum, L.) is a potential dedicated biomass crop for use in biocatalytic conversion systems to biofuels. Nearly 30% of switchgrass cell wall material is xylan. The complete depolymerization of xylan is desirable both as an additional carbon source for microbial fermentation a...

78 FR 68713 - Listing of Color Additives Exempt From Certification; Spirulina Extract; Confirmation of...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-11-15

... the dried biomass of the cyanobacteria Arthrospira platensis (A. platensis), as a color additive in... CFR 73.530) to provide for the safe use of spirulina extract made from the dried biomass of the...

High-Efficiency Nitride-Base Photonic Crystal Light Sources

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

James Speck; Evelyn Hu; Claude Weisbuch

2010-01-31

The research activities performed in the framework of this project represent a major breakthrough in the demonstration of Photonic Crystals (PhC) as a competitive technology for LEDs with high light extraction efficiency. The goals of the project were to explore the viable approaches to manufacturability of PhC LEDS through proven standard industrial processes, establish the limits of light extraction by various concepts of PhC LEDs, and determine the possible advantages of PhC LEDs over current and forthcoming LED extraction concepts. We have developed three very different geometries for PhC light extraction in LEDs. In addition, we have demonstrated reliable methodsmore » for their in-depth analysis allowing the extraction of important parameters such as light extraction efficiency, modal extraction length, directionality, internal and external quantum efficiency. The information gained allows better understanding of the physical processes and the effect of the design parameters on the light directionality and extraction efficiency. As a result, we produced LEDs with controllable emission directionality and a state of the art extraction efficiency that goes up to 94%. Those devices are based on embedded air-gap PhC - a novel technology concept developed in the framework of this project. They rely on a simple and planar fabrication process that is very interesting for industrial implementation due to its robustness and scalability. In fact, besides the additional patterning and regrowth steps, the process is identical as that for standard industrially used p-side-up LEDs. The final devices exhibit the same good electrical characteristics and high process yield as a series of test standard LEDs obtained in comparable conditions. Finally, the technology of embedded air-gap patterns (PhC) has significant potential in other related fields such as: increasing the optical mode interaction with the active region in semiconductor lasers; increasing the coupling of the incident light into the active region of solar cells; increasing the efficiency of the phosphorous light conversion in white light LEDs etc. In addition to the technology of embedded PhC LEDs, we demonstrate a technique for improvement of the light extraction and emission directionality for existing flip-chip microcavity (thin) LEDs by introducing PhC grating into the top n-contact. Although, the performances of these devices in terms of increase of the extraction efficiency are not significantly superior compared to those obtained by other techniques like surface roughening, the use of PhC offers some significant advantages such as improved and controllable emission directionality and a process that is directly applicable to any material system. The PhC microcavity LEDs have also potential for industrial implementation as the fabrication process has only minor differences to that already used for flip-chip thin LEDs. Finally, we have demonstrated that achieving good electrical properties and high fabrication yield for these devices is straightforward.« less

Antibacterial activity of kecombrang flower extract (Nicolaia speciosa) microencapsulation with food additive materials formulation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Naufalin, R.; Rukmini, H. S.

2018-01-01

Kecombrang flower (Nicolaia speciosa) contains bioactive components of alkaloids, flavonoids, polyphenols, steroids, saponins, and essential oils as potential antimicrobials. The use of antibacterials in the form of essential oils has constraints; therefore microencapsulation needs to be done to prevent damage to the bioactive components. Microencapsulation can prevent degradation due to radiation or oxygen, easy-mix with foodstuffs and also slow the occurrence of evaporation. This study aimed to determine the effect of types of kecombrang extract, the concentration of microcapsules in food additives (NaCl and sucrose), and concentration of flower extract in the microcapsules. This study used Randomized Block Design (RBD) with 18 treatment combinations and two replications. Factors studied were types of kecombrang flower extract of (semi polar and polar extract), Food Additive types (sucrose and NaCl), the concentration of microcapsules in food additive (0%; 15%; 30% w /v). The results showed that polar and non-polar extract microcapsules produced antibacterial activity of 7.178 mm and 7.145 respectively of Bacillus cereus bacteria, while Escherichia coli was 7.272 mm and 7.289 mm respectively. A 30 percent microcapsule concentration provides antibacterial activity with inhibiting zone of 7, 818 mm for B. cereus and 8,045 for E.coli. Food Additive of sucrose concentrations showed that microcapsules produced tend to be more effective in inhibiting the growth of E.coli and B. cereus bacteria than that of NaCl, with each inhibition zone of 7.499 mm and 7.357 mm

Influence of extraction pH on the foaming, emulsification, oil-binding and visco-elastic properties of marama protein.

PubMed

Gulzar, Muhammad; Taylor, John Rn; Minnaar, Amanda

2017-11-01

Marama bean protein, as extracted previously at pH 8, forms a viscous, adhesive and extensible dough. To obtain a protein isolate with optimum functional properties, protein extraction under slightly acidic conditions (pH 6) was investigated. Two-dimensional electrophoresis showed that pH 6 extracted marama protein lacked some basic 11S legumin polypeptides, present in pH 8 extracted protein. However, it additionally contained acidic high molecular weight polypeptides (∼180 kDa), which were disulfide crosslinked into larger proteins. pH 6 extracted marama proteins had similar emulsification properties to soy protein isolate and several times higher foaming capacity than pH 8 extracted protein, egg white and soy protein isolate. pH 6 extracted protein dough was more elastic than pH 8 extracted protein, approaching the elasticity of wheat gluten. Marama protein extracted at pH 6 has excellent food-type functional properties, probably because it lacks some 11S polypeptides but has additional high molecular weight proteins. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

Lead extraction from Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) funnel glass: Reaction mechanisms in thermal reduction with addition of carbon (C).

PubMed

Lu, Xingwen; Ning, Xun-An; Chen, Da; Chuang, Kui-Hao; Shih, Kaimin; Wang, Fei

2018-06-01

This study quantitatively determined the extraction of lead from CRT funnel glass and examined the mechanisms of thermally reducing lead in the products of sintering Pb-glass with carbon in the pre-heated furnace. The experimentally derived results indicate that a 90.3 wt% lead extraction efficiency can be achieved with 20 wt% of C addition at 950 °C for 3 min under air. The formation of viscous semi-liquid glass blocked the oxygen supply between the interaction of C and Pb-glass, and was highly effective for the extraction of metallic Pb. A maximum of 87.3% lead recover was obtained with a C to Na 2 CO 3 ratio of 1/3 at 1200 °C. The decrease of C/Na 2 CO 3 ratio enhanced the metallic lead recovery by increasing the glass viscosity for effective sedimentation of metallic lead in the bottom. However, with the further increase of temperature and treatment time, re-vitrification of lead back to silicate-glass matrix was detected in both Pb-glass/C and Pb-glass/C/Na 2 CO 3 systems. The findings indicated that with proper controls, using C as an inexpensive reagent can effectively reduce treatment time and energy, which is crucial to a waste-to-resource technology for economically recovering lead from the waste CRT glass. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Using uncertainty to link and rank evidence from biomedical literature for model curation

PubMed Central

Zerva, Chrysoula; Batista-Navarro, Riza; Day, Philip; Ananiadou, Sophia

2017-01-01

Abstract Motivation In recent years, there has been great progress in the field of automated curation of biomedical networks and models, aided by text mining methods that provide evidence from literature. Such methods must not only extract snippets of text that relate to model interactions, but also be able to contextualize the evidence and provide additional confidence scores for the interaction in question. Although various approaches calculating confidence scores have focused primarily on the quality of the extracted information, there has been little work on exploring the textual uncertainty conveyed by the author. Despite textual uncertainty being acknowledged in biomedical text mining as an attribute of text mined interactions (events), it is significantly understudied as a means of providing a confidence measure for interactions in pathways or other biomedical models. In this work, we focus on improving identification of textual uncertainty for events and explore how it can be used as an additional measure of confidence for biomedical models. Results We present a novel method for extracting uncertainty from the literature using a hybrid approach that combines rule induction and machine learning. Variations of this hybrid approach are then discussed, alongside their advantages and disadvantages. We use subjective logic theory to combine multiple uncertainty values extracted from different sources for the same interaction. Our approach achieves F-scores of 0.76 and 0.88 based on the BioNLP-ST and Genia-MK corpora, respectively, making considerable improvements over previously published work. Moreover, we evaluate our proposed system on pathways related to two different areas, namely leukemia and melanoma cancer research. Availability and implementation The leukemia pathway model used is available in Pathway Studio while the Ras model is available via PathwayCommons. Online demonstration of the uncertainty extraction system is available for research purposes at http://argo.nactem.ac.uk/test. The related code is available on https://github.com/c-zrv/uncertainty_components.git. Details on the above are available in the Supplementary Material. Contact sophia.ananiadou@manchester.ac.uk Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:29036627

Using uncertainty to link and rank evidence from biomedical literature for model curation.

PubMed

Zerva, Chrysoula; Batista-Navarro, Riza; Day, Philip; Ananiadou, Sophia

2017-12-01

In recent years, there has been great progress in the field of automated curation of biomedical networks and models, aided by text mining methods that provide evidence from literature. Such methods must not only extract snippets of text that relate to model interactions, but also be able to contextualize the evidence and provide additional confidence scores for the interaction in question. Although various approaches calculating confidence scores have focused primarily on the quality of the extracted information, there has been little work on exploring the textual uncertainty conveyed by the author. Despite textual uncertainty being acknowledged in biomedical text mining as an attribute of text mined interactions (events), it is significantly understudied as a means of providing a confidence measure for interactions in pathways or other biomedical models. In this work, we focus on improving identification of textual uncertainty for events and explore how it can be used as an additional measure of confidence for biomedical models. We present a novel method for extracting uncertainty from the literature using a hybrid approach that combines rule induction and machine learning. Variations of this hybrid approach are then discussed, alongside their advantages and disadvantages. We use subjective logic theory to combine multiple uncertainty values extracted from different sources for the same interaction. Our approach achieves F-scores of 0.76 and 0.88 based on the BioNLP-ST and Genia-MK corpora, respectively, making considerable improvements over previously published work. Moreover, we evaluate our proposed system on pathways related to two different areas, namely leukemia and melanoma cancer research. The leukemia pathway model used is available in Pathway Studio while the Ras model is available via PathwayCommons. Online demonstration of the uncertainty extraction system is available for research purposes at http://argo.nactem.ac.uk/test. The related code is available on https://github.com/c-zrv/uncertainty_components.git. Details on the above are available in the Supplementary Material. sophia.ananiadou@manchester.ac.uk. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

A new perspective of using sequential extraction: To predict the deficiency of trace elements during anaerobic digestion.

PubMed

Cai, Yafan; Wang, Jungang; Zhao, Yubin; Zhao, Xiaoling; Zheng, Zehui; Wen, Boting; Cui, Zongjun; Wang, Xiaofen

2018-09-01

Trace elements were commonly used as additives to facilitate anaerobic digestion. However, their addition is often blind because of the complexity of reaction conditions, which has impeded their widespread application. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate deficiencies in trace elements during anaerobic digestion by establishing relationships between changes in trace element bioavailability (the degree to which elements are available for interaction with biological systems) and digestion performance. To accomplish this, two batch experiments were conducted. In the first, sequential extraction was used to detect changes in trace element fractions and then to evaluate trace element bioavailability in the whole digestion cycle. In the second batch experiment, trace elements (Co, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn, Mo and Se) were added to the reaction system at three concentrations (low, medium and high) and their effects were monitored. The results showed that sequential extraction was a suitable method for assessment of the bioavailability of trace elements (appropriate coefficient of variation and recovery rate). The results revealed that Se had the highest (44.2%-70.9%) bioavailability, while Fe had the lowest (1.7%-3.0%). A lack of trace elements was not directly related to their absolute bioavailability, but was instead associated with changes in their bioavailability throughout the digestion cycle. Trace elements were insufficient when their bioavailability was steady or increased over the digestion cycle. These results indicate that changes in trace element bioavailability during the digestion cycle can be used to predict their deficiency. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Extraction kinetics and properties of proanthocyanidins from pomegranate peel

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

With an objective of developing a safe and efficient method to extract proanthocyanidins products from pomegranate peel for use in nutraceuticals or as food additives, the effects of extraction parameters on the production efficiency, product properties, and extraction kinetics were systematically s...

Determination of the Pb, Cr, and Cd distribution patterns with various chlorine additives in the bottom ashes of a low-temperature two-stage fluidized bed incinerator by chemical sequential extraction.

PubMed

Peng, Tzu-Huan; Lin, Chiou-Liang; Wey, Ming-Yen

2015-09-15

A novel low-temperature two-stage fluidized bed (LTTSFB) incinerator has been successfully developed to control heavy-metal emissions during municipal solid waste (MSW) treatment. However, the characteristics of the residual metal patterns during this process are still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the metal patterns in the different partitions of the LTTSFB bottom ash by chemical sequential extraction. Artificial waste was used to simulate the MSW. Different parameters including the first-stage temperature, chloride additives, and operating gas velocity were also considered. Results indicated that during the low-temperature treatment process, a high metal mobility phase exists in the first-stage sand bed. The main patterns of Cd, Pb, and Cr observed were the water-soluble, exchangeable, and residual forms, respectively. With the different Cl additives, the results showed that polyvinyl chloride addition increased metal mobility in the LTTSFB bottom ash, while, sodium chloride addition may have reduced metal mobility due to the formation of eutectic material. The second-stage sand bed was found to have a lower risk of metal leaching. The results also suggested that, the residual ashes produced by the LTTSFB system must be taken into consideration given their high metal mobility. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Identifying compromised systems through correlation of suspicious traffic from malware behavioral analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Camilo, Ana E. F.; Grégio, André; Santos, Rafael D. C.

2016-05-01

Malware detection may be accomplished through the analysis of their infection behavior. To do so, dynamic analysis systems run malware samples and extract their operating system activities and network traffic. This traffic may represent malware accessing external systems, either to steal sensitive data from victims or to fetch other malicious artifacts (configuration files, additional modules, commands). In this work, we propose the use of visualization as a tool to identify compromised systems based on correlating malware communications in the form of graphs and finding isomorphisms between them. We produced graphs from over 6 thousand distinct network traffic files captured during malware execution and analyzed the existing relationships among malware samples and IP addresses.

Fisetin-Rich Extracts of Rhus verniciflua Stokes Improve Blood Flow Rates in Mice Fed Both Normal and High-Fat Diets.

PubMed

Im, Won Kyun; Park, Hyun Jung; Lee, Kwang Soo; Lee, Jung Hoon; Kim, Young Dong; Kim, Kyeong-Hee; Park, Sang-Jae; Hong, Seokmann; Jeon, Sung Ho

2016-02-01

Although it has been previously reported that Rhus verniciflua Stokes (RVS) possesses in vitro anti-inflammatory activity, the precise in vivo mechanisms of RVS extracts and a main active component called fisetin have not been well elucidated. In this study, using newly developed protocols, we prepared urushiol-free but fisetin-enriched RVS extracts and investigated their effects on the vascular immune system. We found that the water-soluble fractions of detoxified RVS with the flavonoid fisetin can inhibit lipopolysaccharide-induced production of nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). Furthermore, RVS can reduce inducible nitric oxide synthase and COX2 gene expression levels, which are responsible for NO and PGE2 production, respectively, in RAW264.7 macrophage cells. Because inflammation is linked to the activation of the coagulation system, we hypothesized that RVS and its active component fisetin possess anticoagulatory activities. As expected, we found that both RVS and fisetin could inhibit the coagulation of human peripheral blood cells. Moreover, in vivo RVS treatment could return the retarded blood flow elicited by a high-fat diet (HFD) back to the normal level in mice. In addition, RVS treatment has significantly reduced body weight gained by HFD in mice. Taken together, the fisetin-rich RVS extracts have potential antiplatelet and antiobesity activities and could be used as a functional food ingredient to improve blood circulation.

Effects of Psidium guajava leaf extract on secretion systems of Gram-negative enteropathogenic bacteria.

PubMed

Nakasone, Noboru; Ogura, Yasunori; Higa, Naomi; Toma, Claudia; Koizumi, Yukiko; Takaesu, Giichi; Suzuki, Toshihiko; Yamashiro, Tetsu

2018-05-23

We screened a total of 672 plant-tissue extracts to search for phytochemicals that inhibit the function of the type III secretion system (T3SS) of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC). Among candidates examined, we found that an extract from the leaves of Psidium guajava (guava) inhibited the secretion of the EspB protein from EPEC and EHEC without affecting bacterial growth. The guava extract (GE) also inhibited EPEC and EHEC from adhering to and injecting EspB protein into HEp-2 cells. GE seemed to block the translocation of EspB from the bacterial cells to the culture medium. In addition to EPEC and EHEC, GE also inhibited the T3SS of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. After exposure to GE, Y. pseudotuberculosis stopped the secretion of Yop proteins and lost its ability to induce the apoptosis of mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages. S. Typhimurium exposed to GE ceased the secretion of Sip proteins and lost its ability to invade HEp-2 cells. GE inhibited EspC secretion, the type V secretion protein of EPEC, but not Shiga toxin2 from EHEC. Thus, our results suggest that guava leaves contain a novel type of antimicrobial compound that could be used for the therapeutic treatment and prevention of gram-negative enteropathogenic bacterial infections. © 2018 The Societies and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

Editing ERTS-1 data to exclude land aids cluster analysis of water targets

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Erb, R. B. (Principal Investigator)

1973-01-01

The author has identified the following significant results. It has been determined that an increase in the number of spectrally distinct coastal water types is achieved when data values over the adjacent land areas are excluded from the processing routine. This finding resulted from an automatic clustering analysis of ERTS-1 system corrected MSS scene 1002-18134 of 25 July 1972 over Monterey Bay, California. When the entire study area data set was submitted to the clustering only two distinct water classes were extracted. However, when the land area data points were removed from the data set and resubmitted to the clustering routine, four distinct groupings of water features were identified. Additionally, unlike the previous separation, the four types could be correlated to features observable in the associated ERTS-1 imagery. This exercise demonstrates that by proper selection of data submitted to the processing routine, based upon the specific application of study, additional information may be extracted from the ERTS-1 MSS data.

Optimization of Fe2+ supplement in anaerobic digestion accounting for the Fe-bioavailability.

PubMed

Cai, Yafan; Zhao, Xiaoling; Zhao, Yubin; Wang, Hongliang; Yuan, Xufeng; Zhu, Wanbin; Cui, Zongjun; Wang, Xiaofen

2018-02-01

Fe is widely used as an additive in anaerobic digestion, but its bioavailability and the mechanism by which it enhances digestion are unclear. In this study, sequential extraction was used to measure Fe bioavailability, while biochemical parameters, kinetics model and Q-PCR (fluorescence quantitative PCR) were used to explore its mechanism of stimulation. The results showed that sequential extraction is a suitable method to assess the anaerobic system bioavailability of Fe, which is low and fluctuates to a limited extent (1.7 to -3.1wt%), indicating that it would be easy for Fe levels to be insufficient. Methane yield increased when the added Fe 2+ was 10-500mg/L. Appropriate amounts of Fe 2+ accelerated the decomposition of rice straw and facilitated methanogen metabolism, thereby improving reactor performance. The modified Gompertz model better fitted the results than the first-order kinetic model. Feasibility analysis showed that addition of Fe 2+ at ≤50mg/L was suitable. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Improvement of the cloud point extraction of uranyl ions by the addition of ionic liquids.

PubMed

Gao, Song; Sun, Taoxiang; Chen, Qingde; Shen, Xinghai

2013-12-15

The cloud point extraction (CPE) of uranyl ions by different kinds of extractants in Triton X-114 (TX-114) micellar solution was investigated upon the addition of ionic liquids (ILs) with various anions, i.e., bromide (Br(-)), tetrafluoroborate (BF4(-)), hexafluorophosphate (PF6(-)) and bis[(trifluoromethyl)sulfonyl]imide (NTf2(-)). A significant increase of the extraction efficiency was found on the addition of NTf2(-) based ILs when using neutral extractant tri-octylphosphine oxide (TOPO), and the extraction efficiency kept high at both nearly neutral and high acidity. However, the CPE with acidic extractants, e.g., bis(2-ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (HDEHP) and 8-hydroxyquinoline (8-HQ) which are only effective at nearly neutral condition, was not improved by ILs. The results of zeta potential and (19)F NMR measurements indicated that the anion NTf2(-) penetrated into the TX-114 micelles and was enriched in the surfactant-rich phase during the CPE process. Meanwhile, NTf2(-) may act as a counterion in the CPE of UO2(2+) by TOPO. Furthermore, the addition of IL increased the separation factor of UO2(2+) and La(3+), which implied that in the micelle TOPO, NTf2(-) and NO3(-) established a soft template for UO2(2+). Therefore, the combination of CPE and IL provided a supramolecular recognition to concentrate UO2(2+) efficiently and selectively. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Spectrofluorimetric determination of melatonin in kernels of four different Pistacia varieties after ultrasound-assisted solid-liquid extraction.

PubMed

Oladi, Elham; Mohamadi, Maryam; Shamspur, Tayebeh; Mostafavi, Ali

2014-11-11

Melatonin is normally consumed to regulate the body's biological cycle. However it also has therapeutic properties, such as anti-tumor, anti-aging and protects the immune system. There are some reports on the presence of melatonin in edible kernels such as walnuts, but the extraction of melatonin from pistachio kernels is reported here for the first time. For this, the methanolic extract of pistachio kernels was exposed to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis which confirmed the presence of melatonin. A fluorescence-based method was applied for the determination of melatonin in different extracts. When excited at λ=275 nm, the fluorescence emission intensity of melatonin was measured at λ=366 nm. Ultrasound-assisted solid-liquid extraction was used for the extraction of melatonin from pistachio kernels prior to fluorimetric determination. To achieve the highest extraction recovery, the main parameters affecting the extraction efficiency such as extracting solvent type and volume, temperature, sonication time and pH were evaluated. Under the optimized conditions, a linear dependence of fluorescence intensity on melatonin concentration was observed in the range of 0.0040-0.160 μg mL(-1), with a detection limit of 0.0036 μg mL(-1). This method was applied successfully for measuring and comparing the melatonin content in the kernels of four different varieties of Pistacia including Ahmad Aghaei, Akbari, Kalle Qouchi and Fandoghi. In addition, the results obtained were compared with those obtained using GC/MS. A good agreement was observed indicating the reliability of the proposed method. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Spectrofluorimetric determination of melatonin in kernels of four different Pistacia varieties after ultrasound-assisted solid-liquid extraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oladi, Elham; Mohamadi, Maryam; Shamspur, Tayebeh; Mostafavi, Ali

2014-11-01

Melatonin is normally consumed to regulate the body's biological cycle. However it also has therapeutic properties, such as anti-tumor, anti-aging and protects the immune system. There are some reports on the presence of melatonin in edible kernels such as walnuts, but the extraction of melatonin from pistachio kernels is reported here for the first time. For this, the methanolic extract of pistachio kernels was exposed to gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis which confirmed the presence of melatonin. A fluorescence-based method was applied for the determination of melatonin in different extracts. When excited at λ = 275 nm, the fluorescence emission intensity of melatonin was measured at λ = 366 nm. Ultrasound-assisted solid-liquid extraction was used for the extraction of melatonin from pistachio kernels prior to fluorimetric determination. To achieve the highest extraction recovery, the main parameters affecting the extraction efficiency such as extracting solvent type and volume, temperature, sonication time and pH were evaluated. Under the optimized conditions, a linear dependence of fluorescence intensity on melatonin concentration was observed in the range of 0.0040-0.160 μg mL-1, with a detection limit of 0.0036 μg mL-1. This method was applied successfully for measuring and comparing the melatonin content in the kernels of four different varieties of Pistacia including Ahmad Aghaei, Akbari, Kalle Qouchi and Fandoghi. In addition, the results obtained were compared with those obtained using GC/MS. A good agreement was observed indicating the reliability of the proposed method.

Gotu Kola (Centella Asiatica) extract enhances phosphorylation of cyclic AMP response element binding protein in neuroblastoma cells expressing amyloid beta peptide.

PubMed

Xu, Yanan; Cao, Zhiming; Khan, Ikhlas; Luo, Yuan

2008-04-01

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that shows cognitive deficits and memory impairment. Extract from the leaves of Gotu Kola (Centella Asiatica) have been used as an alternative medicine for memory improvement in Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine for a long time. Although several studies have revealed its effect in ameliorating the cognitive impairment in rat models of AD and stimulating property on neuronal dendrites of hippocampal region, the molecular mechanism of Gotu Kola on neuroprotection still remains to be elucidated. In this study, we report that phosphorylation of cyclic AMP response element binding protein (CREB) is enhanced in both a neuroblastoma cell line expressing amyloid beta 1-42 (Abeta) and in rat embryonic cortical primary cell culture. In addition, the contribution of two major single components to the enhanced CREB phosphorylatioin was examined. Furthermore, inhibitors were applied in this study revealing that ERK/RSK signaling pathway might mediate this effect of Gotu Kola extract. Taken together, we provide a possible molecular mechanism for memory enhancing property of Gotu Kola extract for the first time.

Novel procedure for the extraction and concentration of carotenoid-containing chromoplasts from selected plant systems.

PubMed

Fish, Wayne W

2007-02-21

Natural sources of carotenoids for nutraceutical use are desired by the food industry as a result of the increased production of convenience and other highly processed foods. As new physiological roles are discovered for some of the minor carotenoids that are found in only small amounts in present sources, the need for discovery of new sources will amplify. Thus, a method is needed that will effectively and gently concentrate carotenoids from potential new sources for subsequent identification and analysis. A procedure is presented by which carotenoid-containing tissue chromoplasts can be extracted and subsequently concentrated by precipitation, all in an aqueous milieu. The chromoplasts are extracted and solubilized with 0.3% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) in water. The addition of a nominally equal volume of acetonitrile to the chromoplasts in SDS immediately precipitates the chromoplasts out of solution with generally >90% recovery. Carotenoids contained in the concentrated, still-intact chromoplasts can then be solubilized by organic solvent extraction for subsequent analysis. This methodology offers a means to effectively and gently concentrate carotenoids from fruit tissues where yields are often low (e.g., yellow watermelon).

Hydrolyzable Tannins from Sweet Chestnut Fractions Obtained by a Sustainable and Eco-friendly Industrial Process.

PubMed

Campo, Margherita; Pinelli, Patrizia; Romani, Annalisa

2016-03-01

Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) wood extracts, rich in Hydrolyzable Tannins (HTs), are traditionally used in the tanning and textile industries, but recent studies suggest additional uses. The aim of this work is the HPLC-DAD-ESI-MS characterization of Sweet Chestnut aqueous extracts and fractions obtained through a membrane separation technology system without using other solvents, and the evaluation of their antioxidant and antiradical activities. Total tannins range between 2.7 and 138.4 mM; gallic acid ranges between 6% and 100%; castalagin and vescalagin range between 0% and 40%. Gallic Acid Equivalents, measured with the Folin-Ciocalteu test, range between 0.067 and 56.99 g/100 g extract weight; ORAC test results for the marketed fractions are 450.4 and 3050 µmol/g Trolox Equivalents/extract weight. EC₅₀ values, measured with the DPPH test, range between 0.444 and 2.399 µM. These results suggest a new ecofriendly and economically sustainable method for obtaining chestnut fractions with differentiated, stable and reproducible chemical compositions. Such fractions can be marketed for innovative uses in several sectors.

Extraction and Determination of Cyproheptadine in Human Urine by DLLME-HPLC Method.

PubMed

Maham, Mehdi; Kiarostami, Vahid; Waqif-Husain, Syed; Abroomand-Azar, Parviz; Tehrani, Mohammad Saber; Khoeini Sharifabadi, Malihe; Afrouzi, Hossein; Shapouri, Mahmoudreza; Karami-Osboo, Rouhollah

2013-01-01

Novel dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME), coupled with high performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection (HPLC-DAD) has been applied for the extraction and determination of cyproheptadine (CPH), an antihistamine, in human urine samples. In this method, 0.6 mL of acetonitrile (disperser solvent) containing 30 μL of carbon tetrachloride (extraction solvent) was rapidly injected by a syringe into 5 mL urine sample. After centrifugation, the sedimented phase containing enriched analyte was dissolved in acetonitrile and an aliquot of this solution injected into the HPLC system for analysis. Development of DLLME procedure includes optimization of some important parameters such as kind and volume of extraction and disperser solvent, pH and salt addition. The proposed method has good linearity in the range of 0.02-4.5 μg mL(-1) and low detection limit (13.1 ng mL(-1)). The repeatability of the method, expressed as relative standard deviation was 4.9% (n = 3). This method has also been applied to the analysis of real urine samples with satisfactory relative recoveries in the range of 91.6-101.0%.

Design and implementation of the tree-based fuzzy logic controller.

PubMed

Liu, B D; Huang, C Y

1997-01-01

In this paper, a tree-based approach is proposed to design the fuzzy logic controller. Based on the proposed methodology, the fuzzy logic controller has the following merits: the fuzzy control rule can be extracted automatically from the input-output data of the system and the extraction process can be done in one-pass; owing to the fuzzy tree inference structure, the search spaces of the fuzzy inference process are largely reduced; the operation of the inference process can be simplified as a one-dimensional matrix operation because of the fuzzy tree approach; and the controller has regular and modular properties, so it is easy to be implemented by hardware. Furthermore, the proposed fuzzy tree approach has been applied to design the color reproduction system for verifying the proposed methodology. The color reproduction system is mainly used to obtain a color image through the printer that is identical to the original one. In addition to the software simulation, an FPGA is used to implement the prototype hardware system for real-time application. Experimental results show that the effect of color correction is quite good and that the prototype hardware system can operate correctly under the condition of 30 MHz clock rate.

Values associated with management of Yellowstone cutthroat trout in Yellowstone National Park

USGS Publications Warehouse

Gresswell, Robert E.; Liss, W.J.

1995-01-01

Recent emphasis on a holistic view of natural systems and their management is associated with a growing appreciation of the role of human values in these systems. In the past, resource management has been perceived as a dichotomy between extraction (harvest) and nonconsumptive use, but this appears to be an oversimplified view of natural-cultural systems. The recreational fishery for Yellowstone cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki bouvieri) in Yellowstone National Park is an example of the effects of management on a natural-cultural system. Although angler harvest has been drastically reduced or prohibited, the recreational value of Yellowstone cutthroat trout estimated by angling factors (such as landing rate or size) ranks above that of all other sport species in Yellowstone National Park. To maintain an indigenous fishery resource of this quality with hatchery propagation is not economically or technically feasible. Nonconsumptive uses of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout including fish-watching and intangible values, such as existence demand, provide additional support for protection of wild Yellowstone cutthroat trout populations. A management strategy that reduces resource extraction has provided a means to sustain a quality recreational fishery while enhancing values associated with the protection of natural systems.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zalupski, Peter R.; Klaehn, John R.; Peterman, Dean R.

The feasibility of simultaneous separation of uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and curium from a simulated dissolved used fuel simulant adjusted to 1.0 M nitric acid is investigated using a mixture of the soft donor bis(bis-3,5-trifluoromethyl)phenyl) dithiophosphinic acid (“0”) and the hard donor synergist trioctylphosphine oxide (TOPO) dissolved in toluene. The results reported in this work are compared to our recent demonstration of a complete actinide recovery from a simulated dissolved fuel solution using a synergistic combination of bis(o-trifluoromethylphenyl)dithiophosphinic acid (“1”) and TOPO dissolved in either toluene or trifluoromethylphenyl sulfone. While the extraction efficiency of americium was enhanced for the liquid-liquidmore » system containing “0”, enabling to accomplish a trivalent An/Ln separation at 1.0 M HNO3, the extraction of neptunium was drastically diminished, relative to “1”. The partitioning behavior of curium was also negatively impacted, introducing an effective opportunity for americium/curium separation. Radiometric and spectrophotometric studies demonstrate that the complete actinide recovery using the solvent based upon “0” and TOPO is not feasible. Additionally, the importance of radiolytic degradation processes is discussed through the comparisons of extraction properties of liquid-liquid systems based on both soft donor reagents.« less

Use of inorganic and organic wastes for in situ immobilisation of Pb and Zn in a contaminated alkaline soil.

PubMed

Zhou, Y-F; Haynes, R J; Naidu, R

2012-05-01

This study aims to examine whether addition of immobilising agents to a sandy, alkaline (pH = 8.1) soil, which had been contaminated with Pb and Zn by airborne particles from a Pb/Zn smelter, would substantially reduce metal bioavailability. The effectiveness of five waste materials (blast furnace (BF) slag, alum water treatment (WT) sludge, red mud, sugar mill mud and green waste compost) as metal immobilising agents was evaluated by incubating them with a contaminated soil for a period of 12 months at rates of 5% and 10% (w/w), after which, Rhodes grass was grown in the soils in a greenhouse study. Additions of WT sludge, BF slag and red mud reduced CaCl(2), CH(3)COOH, HCl and EDTA-extractable Zn but compost and mill mud had no appreciable immobilising effects. Additions of all amendments reduced levels of CaCl(2), CH(3)COOH and HCl-extractable Pb although concentrations of EDTA-extractable Pb remained unchanged. A sequential extraction procedure showed that additions of mill mud and compost increased the percentage of total Pb and Zn present in the oxidisable fraction whilst additions of the other materials increased the percentage present in the residual fraction. Rhodes grass yields were promoted greatly by additions of red mud, compost and particularly mill mud, and yields were negatively correlated with tissue Pb concentrations and extractable Pb. Red mud was the most effective material for lowering extractable Pb and Zn levels simultaneously while mill mud and compost were notably effective for Pb. A field evaluation in the study area is justified.

Application of standard addition for the determination of carboxypeptidase activity in Actinomucor elegans bran koji.

PubMed

Fu, J; Li, L; Yang, X Q; Zhu, M J

2011-01-01

Leucine carboxypeptidase (EC 3.4.16) activity in Actinomucor elegans bran koji was investigated via absorbance at 507 nm after stained by Cd-nihydrin solution, with calibration curve A, which was made by a set of known concentration standard leucine, calibration B, which was made by three sets of known concentration standard leucine solutions with the addition of three concentrations inactive crude enzyme extract, and calibration C, which was made by three sets of known concentration standard leucine solutions with the addition of three concentrations crude enzyme extract. The results indicated that application of pure amino acid standard curve was not a suitable way to determine carboxypeptidase in complicate mixture, and it probably led to overestimated carboxypeptidase activity. It was found that addition of crude exact into pure amino acid standard curve had a significant difference from pure amino acid standard curve method (p < 0.05). There was no significant enzyme activity difference (p > 0.05) between addition of active crude exact and addition of inactive crude kind, when the proper dilute multiple was used. It was concluded that the addition of crude enzyme extract to the calibration was needed to eliminate the interference of free amino acids and related compounds presented in crude enzyme extract.

Evaluation of certain food additives and contaminants.

PubMed

2013-01-01

This report represents the conclusions of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee convened to evaluate the safety of various food additives and a food contaminant with a view to concluding as to safety concerns and to preparing specifications for identity and purity. The first part of the report contains a general discussion of the principles governing the toxicological evaluation of and assessment of dietary exposure to food additives. A summary follows of the Committee's evaluations of technical, toxicological and dietary exposure data for seven food additives (advantame; glucoamylase from Trichoderma reesei expressed in Trichoderma reesei; glycerol ester of gum rosin; glycerol ester of tall oil rosin; glycerol ester of wood rosin; nisin; and octenyl succinic acid modified gum arabic) and an assessment of dietary exposure to cadmium from cocoa and cocoa products. Specifications for the following food additives were revised: annatto extracts (solvent-extracted bixin and solvent-extracted norbixin); Benzoe tonkinensis; food additives containing aluminium and/or silicon; mineral oil (medium viscosity); modified starches; paprika extract; phosphates (analytical methods for the determination of phosphorus and revision of specifications); 3-phytase from Aspergillus niger expressed in Aspergillus niger; potassium aluminium silicate; and potassium aluminium silicate-based pearlescent pigments. Annexed to the report are tables summarizing the Committee's recommendations for dietary exposures to and toxicological evaluations of the food additives and contaminant considered.

Temporal Analysis and Automatic Calibration of the Velodyne HDL-32E LiDAR System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chan, T. O.; Lichti, D. D.; Belton, D.

2013-10-01

At the end of the first quarter of 2012, more than 600 Velodyne LiDAR systems had been sold worldwide for various robotic and high-accuracy survey applications. The ultra-compact Velodyne HDL-32E LiDAR has become a predominant sensor for many applications that require lower sensor size/weight and cost. For high accuracy applications, cost-effective calibration methods with minimal manual intervention are always desired by users. However, the calibrations are complicated by the Velodyne LiDAR's narrow vertical field of view and the very highly time-variant nature of its measurements. In the paper, the temporal stability of the HDL-32E is first analysed as the motivation for developing a new, automated calibration method. This is followed by a detailed description of the calibration method that is driven by a novel segmentation method for extracting vertical cylindrical features from the Velodyne point clouds. The proposed segmentation method utilizes the Velodyne point cloud's slice-like nature and first decomposes the point clouds into 2D layers. Then the layers are treated as 2D images and are processed with the Generalized Hough Transform which extracts the points distributed in circular patterns from the point cloud layers. Subsequently, the vertical cylindrical features can be readily extracted from the whole point clouds based on the previously extracted points. The points are passed to the calibration that estimates the cylinder parameters and the LiDAR's additional parameters simultaneously by constraining the segmented points to fit to the cylindrical geometric model in such a way the weighted sum of the adjustment residuals are minimized. The proposed calibration is highly automatic and this allows end users to obtain the time-variant additional parameters instantly and frequently whenever there are vertical cylindrical features presenting in scenes. The methods were verified with two different real datasets, and the results suggest that up to 78.43% accuracy improvement for the HDL-32E can be achieved using the proposed calibration method.

Spatiotemporal conceptual platform for querying archaeological information systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Partsinevelos, Panagiotis; Sartzetaki, Mary; Sarris, Apostolos

2015-04-01

Spatial and temporal distribution of archaeological sites has been shown to associate with several attributes including marine, water, mineral and food resources, climate conditions, geomorphological features, etc. In this study, archeological settlement attributes are evaluated under various associations in order to provide a specialized query platform in a geographic information system (GIS). Towards this end, a spatial database is designed to include a series of archaeological findings for a secluded geographic area of Crete in Greece. The key categories of the geodatabase include the archaeological type (palace, burial site, village, etc.), temporal information of the habitation/usage period (pre Minoan, Minoan, Byzantine, etc.), and the extracted geographical attributes of the sites (distance to sea, altitude, resources, etc.). Most of the related spatial attributes are extracted with readily available GIS tools. Additionally, a series of conceptual data attributes are estimated, including: Temporal relation of an era to a future one in terms of alteration of the archaeological type, topologic relations of various types and attributes, spatial proximity relations between various types. These complex spatiotemporal relational measures reveal new attributes towards better understanding of site selection for prehistoric and/or historic cultures, yet their potential combinations can become numerous. Therefore, after the quantification of the above mentioned attributes, they are classified as of their importance for archaeological site location modeling. Under this new classification scheme, the user may select a geographic area of interest and extract only the important attributes for a specific archaeological type. These extracted attributes may then be queried against the entire spatial database and provide a location map of possible new archaeological sites. This novel type of querying is robust since the user does not have to type a standard SQL query but graphically select an area of interest. In addition, according to the application at hand, novel spatiotemporal attributes and relations can be supported, towards the understanding of historical settlement patterns.

A single-vial biphasic liquid extraction assay for choline acetyltransferease using (/sup 3/H)choline

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rand, J.B.; Johnson, C.D.

1981-09-15

A single-vial liquid extraction assay for choline acetyltransferase that uses (/sup 3/H)choline as the labeled substrate has been devised. (/sup 3/H)Choline is incubated with an excess of acetyl-CoA in a small reaction vial which also serves as a scintillation vial. After a suitable reaction period, unreacted (/sup 3/H)choline is quickly and quantitatively converted to phosphoryl-(/sup 3/H)choline by the addition of an excess of choline kinase. This treatment is followed by the addition of scintillation fluid containing sodium tetraphenylboron after which the vial is capped, shaken, and counted. A two-phase system is produced in which product (/sup 3/H)choline is selectively extractedmore » into the scintillation fluid, where is is counted. Phosphoryl-(/sup 3/H)choline remains in the aqueous phase and is not counted. This assay is rapid, simple, and quite sensitive. In comparison to assays using acetyl-CoA as the labeled substrate, it is less sensitive to interference by other enzymes and thus more suitable for measuring choline acetyltransferase in crude extracts and in the initial stages of purificaton. Similar single-vial radiometric assays are described for choline kinase and acetyl-CoA hydrolases.« less

Field Application of a Rapid Spectrophotometric Method for Determination of Persulfate in Soil

PubMed Central

Cunningham, Colin J.; Pitschi, Vanessa; Anderson, Peter; Barry, D. A.; Patterson, Colin; Peshkur, Tanya A.

2013-01-01

Remediation of hydrocarbon contaminated soils can be performed both in situ and ex situ using chemical oxidants such as sodium persulfate. Standard methods for quantifying persulfate require either centrifugation or prolonged settling times. An optimized soil extraction procedure was developed for persulfate involving simple water extraction using a modified disposable syringe. This allows considerable saving of time and removes the need for centrifugation. The extraction time was reduced to only 5 min compared to 15 min for the standard approach. A comparison of the two approaches demonstrated that each provides comparable results. Comparisons were made using high (93 g kg−1 soil) and low (9.3 g kg−1 soil) additions of sodium persulfate to a petroleum hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, as well as sand spiked with diesel. Recoveries of 95±1% and 96±10% were observed with the higher application rate in the contaminated soil and spiked sand, respectively. Corresponding recoveries of 86±5% and 117±19% were measured for the lower application rate. Results were obtained in only 25 min and the method is well suited to batch analyses. In addition, it is suitable for application in a small field laboratory or even a mobile, vehicle-based system, as it requires minimal equipment and reagents. PMID:23776446

A high-throughput platform for low-volume high-temperature/pressure sealed vessel solvent extractions.

PubMed

Damm, Markus; Kappe, C Oliver

2011-11-30

A high-throughput platform for performing parallel solvent extractions in sealed HPLC/GC vials inside a microwave reactor is described. The system consist of a strongly microwave-absorbing silicon carbide plate with 20 cylindrical wells of appropriate dimensions to be fitted with standard HPLC/GC autosampler vials serving as extraction vessels. Due to the possibility of heating up to four heating platforms simultaneously (80 vials), efficient parallel analytical-scale solvent extractions can be performed using volumes of 0.5-1.5 mL at a maximum temperature/pressure limit of 200°C/20 bar. Since the extraction and subsequent analysis by either gas chromatography or liquid chromatography coupled with mass detection (GC-MS or LC-MS) is performed directly from the autosampler vial, errors caused by sample transfer can be minimized. The platform was evaluated for the extraction and quantification of caffeine from commercial coffee powders assessing different solvent types, extraction temperatures and times. For example, 141±11 μg caffeine (5 mg coffee powder) were extracted during a single extraction cycle using methanol as extraction solvent, whereas only 90±11 were obtained performing the extraction in methylene chloride, applying the same reaction conditions (90°C, 10 min). In multiple extraction experiments a total of ~150 μg caffeine was extracted from 5 mg commercial coffee powder. In addition to the quantitative caffeine determination, a comparative qualitative analysis of the liquid phase coffee extracts and the headspace volatiles was performed, placing special emphasis on headspace analysis using solid-phase microextraction (SPME) techniques. The miniaturized parallel extraction technique introduced herein allows solvent extractions to be performed at significantly expanded temperature/pressure limits and shortened extraction times, using standard HPLC autosampler vials as reaction vessels. Remarkable differences regarding peak pattern and main peaks were observed when low-temperature extraction (60°C) and high-temperature extraction (160°C) are compared prior to headspace-SPME-GC-MS performed in the same HPLC/GC vials. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Characterization of Nano Bamboo Charcoal Drug Delivery System for Eucommia ulmoides Extract and Its Anticancer Effect In vitro.

PubMed

Zeng, Zhaoyan; Li, Xiangzhou; Zhang, Sheng; Huang, Dan

2017-01-01

Nano bamboo charcoal is being widely used as sustained release carrier for chemicals for its high specific surface area, sound biocompatibility, and nontoxicity; however, there have been no reports on nano bamboo charcoal as sustained release carrier for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). To study the effect of nano bamboo charcoal in absorbing and sustained releasing Eucommia ulmoides extract (EUE) and to verify the in vitro anticancer effect of the sustained release liquid, so as to provide a theoretical basis for the development and utilization of nano bamboo charcoal as TCM sustained-release preparation. The adsorption capacity for the nano bamboo charcoal on EUE was measured by Langmuir model, and the release experiment was carried out under intestinal fluid condition. Characteristic changes for the nano bamboo charcoal nano-drug delivery system with and without adsorption of E. ulmoides were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and specific surface area. In addition, the anticancer effect from this novel bamboo charcoal E. ulmoides delivery system was evaluated against a human colon cancer cell line (HCT116). It was found that nano bamboo charcoal exhibits good adsorption capacity (up to 462.96 mg/g at 37°C). The cumulative release rate for EUE from this nano bamboo charcoal delivery system was 70.67%, and specific surface area for the nano bamboo charcoal decreased from 820.32 m 2 /g to 443.80 m 2 /g after EUE was loaded. An in vitro anticancer study showed that the inhibition rate for E. ulmoides against HCT116 cancer cells was 23.07%, for this novel bamboo charcoal nano-drug delivery system. This study provides a novel strategy for the delivery of traditional Chinese medicine using bamboo charcoal nano-drug delivery system. The adsorption equilibrium was reached after 30 min of ultrasonic treatmentThe saturated adsorption capacity of Eucommia ulmoides extract by nano bamboo charcoal under ultrosonic condition was 462. 96 mg/gThe cumulative release rate of E. ulmoides extract from the nano bamboo charcoal delivery system in artificial intestinal juice was 70.67%The inhibition ratio of HCT116 cancer cells by sustained release liquid was 23.07%. Abbreviation used: EUE: Eucommia ulmoides extract.

Final report on the safety assessment of Calendula officinalis extract and Calendula officinalis.

PubMed

2001-01-01

Calendula Officinalis Extract is an extract of the flowers of Calendula officinalis, the common marigold, whereas Calendula Officinalis is described as plant material derived from the flowers of C. officinalis. Techniques for preparing Calendula Officinalis Extract include gentle disintegration in soybean oil. Propylene glycol and butylene glycol extractions were also reported. Components of these ingredients are variously reported to include sugars, carotenoids, phenolic acids, sterols, saponins, flavonoids, resins, sterins, quinones, mucilages, vitamins, polyprenylquinones, and essential oils. Calendula Officinalis Extract is reported to be used in almost 200 cosmetic formulations, over a wide range of product categories. There are no reported uses of Calendula Officinalis. Acute toxicity studies in rats and mice indicate that the extract is relatively nontoxic. Animal tests showed at most minimal skin irritation, and no sensitization or phototoxicity. Minimal ocular irritation was seen with one formulation and no irritation with others. Six saponins isolated from C. officinalis flowers were not mutagenic in an Ames test, and a tea derived from C. officinalis was not genotoxic in Drosophila melanogaster. No carcinogenicity or reproductive and developmental toxicity data were available. Clinical testing of cosmetic formulations containing the extract elicited little irritation or sensitization. Absent any basis for concluding that data on one member of a botanical ingredient group can be extrapolated to another in a group, or to the same ingredient extracted differently, these data were not considered sufficient to assess the safety of these ingredients. Additional data needs include current concentration of use data; function in cosmetics; ultraviolet (UV) absorption data; if absorption occurs in the UVA or UVB range, photosensitization data are needed; gross pathology and histopathology in skin and other major organ systems associated with repeated dermal exposures; dermal reproductive/developmental toxicity data; inhalation toxicity data, especially addressing the concentration, amount delivered, and particle size; and genotoxicity testing in a mammalian system; if positive, a 2-year dermal carcinogenicity assay performed using National Toxicology Program (NTP) methods is needed. Until these data are available, it is concluded that the available data are insufficient to support the safety of these ingredients in cosmetic formulations.

Foundation and methodologies in computer-aided diagnosis systems for breast cancer detection.

PubMed

Jalalian, Afsaneh; Mashohor, Syamsiah; Mahmud, Rozi; Karasfi, Babak; Saripan, M Iqbal B; Ramli, Abdul Rahman B

2017-01-01

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer that affects women all over the world. Early detection and treatment of breast cancer could decline the mortality rate. Some issues such as technical reasons, which related to imaging quality and human error, increase misdiagnosis of breast cancer by radiologists. Computer-aided detection systems (CADs) are developed to overcome these restrictions and have been studied in many imaging modalities for breast cancer detection in recent years. The CAD systems improve radiologists' performance in finding and discriminating between the normal and abnormal tissues. These procedures are performed only as a double reader but the absolute decisions are still made by the radiologist. In this study, the recent CAD systems for breast cancer detection on different modalities such as mammography, ultrasound, MRI, and biopsy histopathological images are introduced. The foundation of CAD systems generally consist of four stages: Pre-processing, Segmentation, Feature extraction, and Classification. The approaches which applied to design different stages of CAD system are summarised. Advantages and disadvantages of different segmentation, feature extraction and classification techniques are listed. In addition, the impact of imbalanced datasets in classification outcomes and appropriate methods to solve these issues are discussed. As well as, performance evaluation metrics for various stages of breast cancer detection CAD systems are reviewed.

Foundation and methodologies in computer-aided diagnosis systems for breast cancer detection

PubMed Central

Jalalian, Afsaneh; Mashohor, Syamsiah; Mahmud, Rozi; Karasfi, Babak; Saripan, M. Iqbal B.; Ramli, Abdul Rahman B.

2017-01-01

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer that affects women all over the world. Early detection and treatment of breast cancer could decline the mortality rate. Some issues such as technical reasons, which related to imaging quality and human error, increase misdiagnosis of breast cancer by radiologists. Computer-aided detection systems (CADs) are developed to overcome these restrictions and have been studied in many imaging modalities for breast cancer detection in recent years. The CAD systems improve radiologists' performance in finding and discriminating between the normal and abnormal tissues. These procedures are performed only as a double reader but the absolute decisions are still made by the radiologist. In this study, the recent CAD systems for breast cancer detection on different modalities such as mammography, ultrasound, MRI, and biopsy histopathological images are introduced. The foundation of CAD systems generally consist of four stages: Pre-processing, Segmentation, Feature extraction, and Classification. The approaches which applied to design different stages of CAD system are summarised. Advantages and disadvantages of different segmentation, feature extraction and classification techniques are listed. In addition, the impact of imbalanced datasets in classification outcomes and appropriate methods to solve these issues are discussed. As well as, performance evaluation metrics for various stages of breast cancer detection CAD systems are reviewed. PMID:28435432

Silica nanoparticle based techniques for extraction, detection, and degradation of pesticides.

PubMed

Bapat, Gandhali; Labade, Chaitali; Chaudhari, Amol; Zinjarde, Smita

2016-11-01

Silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) find applications in the fields of drug delivery, catalysis, immobilization and sensing. Their synthesis can be mediated in a facile manner and they display broad range compatibility and stability. Their existence in the form of spheres, wires and sheets renders them suitable for varied purposes. This review summarizes the use of silica nanostructures in developing techniques for extraction, detection and degradation of pesticides. Silica nanostructures on account of their sorbent properties, porous nature and increased surface area allow effective extraction of pesticides. They can be modified (with ionic liquids, silanes or amines), coated with molecularly imprinted polymers or magnetized to improve the extraction of pesticides. Moreover, they can be altered to increase their sensitivity and stability. In addition to the analysis of pesticides by sophisticated techniques such as High Performance Liquid Chromatography or Gas chromatography, silica nanoparticles related simple detection methods are also proving to be effective. Electrochemical and optical detection based on enzymes (acetylcholinesterase and organophosphate hydrolase) or antibodies have been developed. Pesticide sensors dependent on fluorescence, chemiluminescence or Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopic responses are also SiNP based. Moreover, degradative enzymes (organophosphate hydrolases, carboxyesterases and laccases) and bacterial cells that produce recombinant enzymes have been immobilized on SiNPs for mediating pesticide degradation. After immobilization, these systems show increased stability and improved degradation. SiNP are significant in developing systems for effective extraction, detection and degradation of pesticides. SiNPs on account of their chemically inert nature and amenability to surface modifications makes them popular tools for fabricating devices for 'on-site' applications. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ccML, a new mark-up language to improve ISO/EN 13606-based electronic health record extracts practical edition.

PubMed

Sánchez-de-Madariaga, Ricardo; Muñoz, Adolfo; Cáceres, Jesús; Somolinos, Roberto; Pascual, Mario; Martínez, Ignacio; Salvador, Carlos H; Monteagudo, José Luis

2013-01-01

The objective of this paper is to introduce a new language called ccML, designed to provide convenient pragmatic information to applications using the ISO/EN13606 reference model (RM), such as electronic health record (EHR) extracts editors. EHR extracts are presently built using the syntactic and semantic information provided in the RM and constrained by archetypes. The ccML extra information enables the automation of the medico-legal context information edition, which is over 70% of the total in an extract, without modifying the RM information. ccML is defined using a W3C XML schema file. Valid ccML files complement the RM with additional pragmatics information. The ccML language grammar is defined using formal language theory as a single-type tree grammar. The new language is tested using an EHR extracts editor application as proof-of-concept system. Seven ccML PVCodes (predefined value codes) are introduced in this grammar to cope with different realistic EHR edition situations. These seven PVCodes have different interpretation strategies, from direct look up in the ccML file itself, to more complex searches in archetypes or system precomputation. The possibility to declare generic types in ccML gives rise to ambiguity during interpretation. The criterion used to overcome ambiguity is that specificity should prevail over generality. The opposite would make the individual specific element declarations useless. A new mark-up language ccML is introduced that opens up the possibility of providing applications using the ISO/EN13606 RM with the necessary pragmatics information to be practical and realistic.

Life Detection Using Glucose and Tetrasaccharide Enantiomer Pairs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Warmflash, David; Chu, Huanyi; Siefert, Johnathan; Fox, George E.

2009-04-01

A life-detection system based on the expectation that any viable organism will utilize stereoisomers of a given compound asymmetrically is examined. Aqueous extracts of common soil, Mars regolith simulant JSC Mars-1, and suspensions of E. coli and S. cerevisiae were incubated with stereoisomer pairs. The enantiomeric pairs were either D- and L-glucose or a pair of chiral tetrasaccharides. Following an incubation period of 10 days, stereoisomeric selectivity is detectable with the glucose pair by mass spectrometry in extracts made from soil at 0.5 g/ml, in extracts made from JSC Mars-1 at 2.5 g/ml, and in cell suspensions down to 1.0 × 107 cells/ml. For the tetrasaccharide pair, stereoisomeric selectivity was detected in extracts made from 0.5 g/ml or more of common soil but not in JSC Mars-1 simulant. The effective sensitivity in extracts was 2.5 × 107 cells/ml or better for the glucose pair and 5.0 × 108 cells/ml or better for the tetrasaccharide pair. The sensitivity of the glucose pair was such that it could detect life in samples that would be found to be devoid of organic matter by the GCMS system carried by the Viking landers. The results demonstrate the utility of the approach in the search for biological activity on Mars. However, sensitivity is a function of the enantiomer pair used, and this might also be different for hypothetical martian organisms. Therefore, it will be necessary to characterize additional stereoisomeric pairs and, ultimately, to include several in a single test environment.

Life detection using glucose and tetrasaccharide enantiomer pairs.

PubMed

Warmflash, David; Chu, Huanyi; Siefert, Johnathan; Fox, George E

2009-04-01

A life-detection system based on the expectation that any viable organism will utilize stereoisomers of a given compound asymmetrically is examined. Aqueous extracts of common soil, Mars regolith simulant JSC Mars-1, and suspensions of E. coli and S. cerevisiae were incubated with stereoisomer pairs. The enantiomeric pairs were either D- and L-glucose or a pair of chiral tetrasaccharides. Following an incubation period of 10 days, stereoisomeric selectivity is detectable with the glucose pair by mass spectrometry in extracts made from soil at 0.5 g/ml, in extracts made from JSC Mars-1 at 2.5 g/ml, and in cell suspensions down to 1.0 x 10(7) cells/ml. For the tetrasaccharide pair, stereoisomeric selectivity was detected in extracts made from 0.5 g/ml or more of common soil but not in JSC Mars-1 simulant. The effective sensitivity in extracts was 2.5 x 10(7) cells/ml or better for the glucose pair and 5.0 x 10(8) cells/ml or better for the tetrasaccharide pair. The sensitivity of the glucose pair was such that it could detect life in samples that would be found to be devoid of organic matter by the GCMS system carried by the Viking landers. The results demonstrate the utility of the approach in the search for biological activity on Mars. However, sensitivity is a function of the enantiomer pair used, and this might also be different for hypothetical martian organisms. Therefore, it will be necessary to characterize additional stereoisomeric pairs and, ultimately, to include several in a single test environment.

Electrochemical Dissolution of Tungsten Carbide in NaCl-KCl-Na2WO4 Molten Salt

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Liwen; Nie, Zuoren; Xi, Xiaoli; Ma, Liwen; Xiao, Xiangjun; Li, Ming

2018-02-01

Tungsten carbide was utilized as anode to extract tungsten in a NaCl-KCl-Na2WO4 molten salt, and the electrochemical dissolution was investigated. Although the molten salt electrochemical method is a short process method of tungsten extraction from tungsten carbide in one step, the dissolution efficiency and current efficiency are quite low. In order to improve the dissolution rate and current efficiency, the sodium tungstate was added as the active substance. The dissolution rate, the anode current efficiency, and the cathode current efficiency were calculated with different contents of sodium tungstate addition. The anodes prior to and following the reaction, as well as the product, were analyzed through X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive spectrometry. The results demonstrated that the sodium tungstate could improve the dissolution rate and the current efficiency, due to the addition of sodium tungstate decreasing the charge transfer resistance in the electrolysis system. Due to the fact that the addition of sodium tungstate could remove the carbon during electrolysis, pure tungsten powders with 100 nm diameter were obtained when the content of sodium tungstate was 1.0 pct.

Identification of Ginkgo biloba supplements adulteration using high performance thin layer chromatography and ultra high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector-quadrupole time of flight-mass spectrometry.

PubMed

Avula, Bharathi; Sagi, Satyanarayanaraju; Gafner, Stefan; Upton, Roy; Wang, Yan-Hong; Wang, Mei; Khan, Ikhlas A

2015-10-01

Ginkgo biloba is one of the most widely sold herbal supplements and medicines in the world. Its popularity stems from having a positive effect on memory and the circulatory system in clinical studies. As ginkgo popularity increased, non-proprietary extracts were introduced claiming to have a similar phytochemical profile as the clinically tested extracts. The standardized commercial extracts of G. biloba leaf used in ginkgo supplements contain not less than 6% sesquiterpene lactones and 24% flavonol glycosides. While sesquiterpene lactones are unique constituents of ginkgo leaf, the flavonol glycosides are found in many other botanical extracts. Being a high value botanical, low quality ginkgo extracts may be subjected to adulteration with flavonoids to meet the requirement of 24% flavonol glycosides. Chemical analysis by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry revealed that adulteration of ginkgo leaf extracts in many of these products is common, the naturally flavonol glycoside-rich extract being spiked with pure flavonoids or extracts made from another flavonoid-rich material, such as the fruit/flower of Japanese sophora (Styphnolobium japonicum), which also contains the isoflavone genistein. Recently, genistein has been proposed as an analytical marker for the detection of adulteration of ginkgo extracts with S. japonicum. This study confirms that botanically authenticated G. biloba leaf and extracts made therefrom do not contain genistein, and the presence of which even in trace amounts is suggestive of adulteration. In addition to the mass spectrometric approach, a high performance thin layer chromatography method was developed as a fast and economic method for chemical fingerprint analysis of ginkgo samples.

Effects of extraction and high-performance liquid chromatographic conditions on the determination of lutein in spinach.

PubMed

Simonovska, Breda; Vovk, Irena; Glavnik, Vesna; Cernelič, Katarina

2013-02-08

A major factor in the direct determination of lutein in spinach extracts proved to be obtaining reproducible and stable chromatography of lutein. This was achieved on a C30 column with the mobile phase acetone-0.1M triethylammonium acetate (TEAA) buffer (pH 7) 9:1 (v/v). Extraction of 10mg of lyophilized spinach with 10 mL of extraction solvent (ethanol, acetone, ethanol-ethyl acetate 1:1 (v/v), methanol-THF 1:1 (v/v)) for 15 min with magnetic stirring under nitrogen resulted in equal yields of lutein. The yields were enhanced by addition of 15% of 1M TEAA buffer pH 7 to all four extraction solvents. As confirmed by recovery experiments, no loss of lutein occurred during the extraction. The relative standard deviation from triplicate extractions was less than 5%. The addition of 15% TEAA pH 7 to acetone enhanced the extraction yield of lutein also from unlyophilized spinach. The content of lutein in different spinach samples ranged from 5 to 15 mg/100g of fresh weight. The first separation is reported of all the carotenoids and chlorophylls on a C18 core-shell column and the addition of 15% of 1M TEAA buffer pH 7 to acetone also enhanced the extraction yield of β-carotene compared to the yield produced by pure acetone. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Laetiporus sulphureus, edible mushroom from Serbia: investigation on volatile compounds, in vitro antimicrobial activity and in situ control of Aspergillus flavus in tomato paste.

PubMed

Petrović, Jovana; Glamočlija, Jasmina; Stojković, Dejan S; Ćirić, Ana; Nikolić, Miloš; Bukvički, Danka; Guerzoni, Maria Elisabetta; Soković, Marina D

2013-09-01

The volatile compounds of fruiting bodies of wild Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.) Murrill, growing on willow trees from Serbia, were isolated and extracted using methanol, acetone and dichloromethane and investigated by GC/MS-SPME. A total of 56 components were identified in the extracts. Hydrocarbons predominated (76.90%, 77.20%, and 43.10%) in dichloromethane, acetone and methanol extracts, respectively. Fatty acids, esters and sesquiterpenes were present in amounts equal or lower than 2.00%. Ketones were represented with moderate amount with the exception of methanol extract where it reached as much as 28.90% of the total investigated compounds. Extracts were also tested for antimicrobial activity with and without the addition of food additive - potassium disulfite in vitro against eight bacterial and eight fungal species, and in situ in tomato paste against Aspergillus flavus. All the tested extracts showed good antimicrobial activity, but methanol extract with addition of E224 showed the best antimicrobial activity in vitro. In situ results indicate complete inhibition of A. flavus growth in tomato paste after 15 days of the treatment. This study is the first report on volatile composition of L. sulphureus growing wild in Serbia. We describe for the first time the application of its extract as antifungal food preservative. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Triterpenoids Amplify Anti-Tumoral Effects of Mistletoe Extracts on Murine B16.F10 Melanoma In Vivo

PubMed Central

Strüh, Christian M.; Jäger, Sebastian; Kersten, Astrid; Schempp, Christoph M.; Scheffler, Armin; Martin, Stefan F.

2013-01-01

Purpose Mistletoe extracts are often used in complementary cancer therapy although the efficacy of that therapy is controversially discussed. Approved mistletoe extracts contain mainly water soluble compounds of the mistletoe plant, i.e. mistletoe lectins. However, mistletoe also contains water-insoluble triterpenoids (mainly oleanolic acid) that have anti-tumorigenic effects. To overcome their loss in watery extracts we have solubilized mistletoe triterpenoids with cyclodextrins, thus making them available for in vivo cancer experiments. Experimental design B16.F10 subcutaneous melanoma bearing C57BL/6 mice were treated with new mistletoe extracts containing both water soluble compounds and solubilized triterpenoids. Tumor growth and survival was monitored. In addition, histological examinations of the tumor material and tumor surrounding tissue were performed. Results Addition of solubilized triterpenoids increased the anti-tumor effects of the mistletoe extracts, resulting in reduced tumor growth and prolonged survival of the mice. Histological examination of the treated tumors showed mainly tumor necrosis and some apoptotic cells with active caspase-3 and TUNEL staining. A significant decrease of CD31-positive tumor blood vessels was observed after treatment with solubilized triterpenoids and different mistletoe extracts. Conclusion We conclude that the addition of solubilized mistletoe triterpenoids to conventional mistletoe extracts improves the efficacy of mistletoe treatment and may represent a novel treatment option for malignant melanoma. PMID:23614029

[DNA extraction from bones and teeth using AutoMate Express forensic DNA extraction system].

PubMed

Gao, Lin-Lin; Xu, Nian-Lai; Xie, Wei; Ding, Shao-Cheng; Wang, Dong-Jing; Ma, Li-Qin; Li, You-Ying

2013-04-01

To explore a new method in order to extract DNA from bones and teeth automatically. Samples of 33 bones and 15 teeth were acquired by freeze-mill method and manual method, respectively. DNA materials were extracted and quantified from the triturated samples by AutoMate Express forensic DNA extraction system. DNA extraction from bones and teeth were completed in 3 hours using the AutoMate Express forensic DNA extraction system. There was no statistical difference between the two methods in the DNA concentration of bones. Both bones and teeth got the good STR typing by freeze-mill method, and the DNA concentration of teeth was higher than those by manual method. AutoMate Express forensic DNA extraction system is a new method to extract DNA from bones and teeth, which can be applied in forensic practice.

Liquid-liquid extraction of strongly protein bound BMS-299897 from human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid, followed by high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry.

PubMed

Xue, Y J; Pursley, Janice; Arnold, Mark

2007-04-11

BMS-299897 is a gamma-secretase inhibitor that is being developed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), chromatographic/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) methods have been developed and validated for the quantitation of BMS-299897 in human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Both methods utilized (13)C6-BMS-299897, the stable label isotope analog, as the internal standard. For the human plasma extraction method, two incubation steps were required after the addition of 5 mM ammonium acetate and the internal standard in acetonitrile to release the analyte bound to proteins prior to LLE with toluene. For the human CSF extraction method, after the addition of 0.5 N HCl and the internal standard, CSF samples were extracted with toluene and no incubation was required. The organic layers obtained from both extraction methods were removed and evaporated to dryness. The residues were reconstituted and injected into the LC/MS/MS system. Chromatographic separation was achieved isocratically on a MetaChem C18 Hypersil BDS column (2.0 mm x 50 mm, 3 microm). The mobile phase contained 10 mM ammonium acetate pH 5 and acetonitrile. Detection was by negative ion electrospray tandem mass spectrometry. The standard curves ranged from 1 to 1000 ng/ml for human plasma and 0.25-100 ng/ml for human CSF. Both standard curves were fitted to a 1/x weighted quadratic regression model. For both methods, the intra-assay precision was within 8.2% CV, the inter-assay precision was within 5.4% CV, and assay accuracy was within +/-7.4% of the nominal values. The validation and sample analysis results demonstrated that both methods had acceptable precision and accuracy across the calibration ranges.

Quantitative Schlieren analysis applied to holograms of crystals grown on Spacelab 3

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Brooks, Howard L.

1986-01-01

In order to extract additional information about crystals grown in the microgravity environment of Spacelab, a quantitative schlieren analysis technique was developed for use in a Holography Ground System of the Fluid Experiment System. Utilizing the Unidex position controller, it was possible to measure deviation angles produced by refractive index gradients of 0.5 milliradians. Additionally, refractive index gradient maps for any recorded time during the crystal growth were drawn and used to create solute concentration maps for the environment around the crystal. The technique was applied to flight holograms of Cell 204 of the Fluid Experiment System that were recorded during the Spacelab 3 mission on STS 51B. A triglycine sulfate crystal was grown under isothermal conditions in the cell and the data gathered with the quantitative schlieren analysis technique is consistent with a diffusion limited growth process.

ENVIROMENTALLY BENIGN MITIGATION OF MICROBIOLOGICALLY INFLUENCED CORROSION (MIC)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

J. Robert Paterek; Gemma Husmillo; Amrutha Daram

The overall program objective is to develop and evaluate environmentally benign agents or products that are effective in the prevention, inhibition, and mitigation of microbially influenced corrosion (MIC) in the internal surfaces of metallic natural gas pipelines. The goal is to develop one or more environmentally benign (a.k.a. ''green'') products that can be applied to maintain the structure and dependability of the natural gas infrastructure. The technical approach for this quarter includes the application of the method of fractionation of the extracts by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC); determination of antimicrobial activities of the new extracts and fractions using amore » growth inhibition assay, and evaluation of the extracts' ability to inhibit biofilm formation. We initiated the delivery system for these new biocides in the test cell and in mixtures of foam components and biocides/anti-biofilms. A total of 51 fractions collected by HPLC from crude extracts that were obtained from three varieties of Capsicum sp. (Serrano, Habanero, Chile de Arbol) were subjected to growth inhibition tests against two SRB strains, D. vulgaris and D. desulfuricans. Five fractions showed growth inhibition against both strains while seven inhibited D. desulfuricans only. The crude extracts did not show growth inhibition on both strains but were proven to be potent in preventing the formation of biofilm. Growth inhibition tests of the same set of crude extracts against Comamonas denitrificans did not show positive results. The fractions will be subjected to biofilm inhibition and dissociation assay as well. The delivery system to be evaluated first was foam. The ''foam pig'' components of surfactants and water were tested with the biocide addition. The first chemical and physical parameters to be tested were pH and surfactants. Tests using the fractionated pepper extracts are progressing rapidly. Gas chromatographic analysis on a number of fractions is underway. Involvement of other microorganisms in the tests will be extended. The foam application method has been initiated and is being developed.« less

A pilot randomized crossover trial assessing the safety and short-term effects of pomegranate supplementation in hemodialysis patients.

PubMed

Rivara, Matthew B; Mehrotra, Rajnish; Linke, Lori; Ruzinski, John; Ikizler, T Alp; Himmelfarb, Jonathan

2015-01-01

Oxidative stress and systemic inflammation are highly prevalent in patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) and are linked to excess cardiovascular risk. This study examined whether short-term supplementation with pomegranate juice and extract is safe and well tolerated by MHD patients. The secondary aim was to assess the effect of pomegranate supplementation on oxidative stress, systemic inflammation, monocyte function, and blood pressure. Prospective, randomized, crossover, pilot clinical trial (NCT01562340). The study was conducted from March to October 2012 in outpatient dialysis facilities in the Seattle metropolitan area. Twenty-four patients undergoing MHD (men, 64%; mean age, 61 ± 14 years) were randomly assigned to receive pomegranate juice or extract during a 4-week intervention period. After a washout period, all patients received the alternative treatment during a second 4-week intervention period. Patients assigned to receive pomegranate juice received 100 mL of juice before each dialysis session. Patients assigned to receive pomegranate extract were given 1,050 mg of extract daily. The main outcome measures were safety and tolerability of pomegranate juice and extract. Additional secondary outcomes assessed included serum lipids, laboratory biomarkers of inflammation (C-reactive protein and interleukin 6) and oxidative stress (plasma F2 isoprostanes and isofurans), monocyte cytokine production, and predialysis blood pressure. Both pomegranate juice and extract were safe and well tolerated by study participants. Over the study period, neither treatment had a significant effect on lipid profiles, plasma C-reactive protein, interleukin 6, F2-isoprostane or isofuran concentrations, predialysis systolic or diastolic blood pressure nor changed the levels of monocyte cytokine production. Both pomegranate juice and extract are safe and well tolerated by patients undergoing MHD but do not influence markers of inflammation or oxidative stress nor affect predialysis blood pressure. Copyright © 2015 National Kidney Foundation, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Methodological considerations regarding the use of inorganic 197Hg(II) radiotracer to assess mercury methylation potential rates in lake sediment

USGS Publications Warehouse

Perez, Catan S.; Guevara, S.R.; Marvin-DiPasquale, M.; Magnavacca, C.; Cohen, I.M.; Arribere, M.

2007-01-01

Methodological considerations on the determination of benthic methyl-mercury (CH3Hg) production potentials were investigated on lake sediment, using 197Hg radiotracer. Three methods to arrest bacterial activity were compared: flash freezing, thermal sterilization, and ??-irradiation. Flash freezing showed similar CH3Hg recoveries as thermal sterilization, which was both 50% higher than the recoveries obtained with ??-ray irradiation. No additional radiolabel was recovered in kill-control samples after an additional 24 or 65 h of incubation, suggesting that all treatments were effective at arresting Hg(II)-methylating bacterial activity, and that the initial recoveries are likely due to non-methylated 197Hg(II) carry-over in the organic extraction and/or [197Hg]CH3Hg produced via abiotic reactions. Two CH3Hg extraction methods from sediment were compared: (a) direct extraction into toluene after sediment leaching with CuSO4 and HCl and (b) the same extraction with an additional back-extraction step to thiosulphate. Similar information was obtained with both methods, but the low efficiency observed and the extra work associated with the back-extraction procedure represent significant disadvantages, even tough the direct extraction involves higher Hg(II) carry over. ?? 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Extraction of methylxanthines from guaraná seeds, maté leaves, and cocoa beans using supercritical carbon dioxide and ethanol.

PubMed

Saldaña, Marleny D A; Zetzl, Carsten; Mohamed, Rahoma S; Brunner, G

2002-08-14

New experimental data on the extraction of caffeine from guaraná seeds and maté tea leaves, and theobromine from cocoa beans, with supercritical CO2 were obtained using a high-pressure extraction apparatus. The effect of the addition of ethanol to carbon dioxide on the extraction efficiency was also investigated. Caffeine extraction yields of 98% of the initial caffeine content in both wet ground guaraná seeds and maté tea leaves were obtained. Extractions of caffeine from guaraná seeds and maté tea leaves also exhibited a retrograde behavior for the two temperatures considered in this work. In the removal of theobromine from cocoa beans, a much smaller extraction yield was obtained with longer extraction periods and consequently larger solvent requirements. The results of this study confirm the higher selectivity of CO2 for caffeine in comparison with that for theobromine, and also the influence of other components in each particular natural product on the extraction of methylxanthines. The effect of the addition of ethanol to carbon dioxide on the extraction of methylxanthines was significant, particularly in the extraction of theobromine from cocoa beans. In general, the use of ethanol results in lower solvent and energy requirements and thereby improved extraction efficiency.

Oil extraction from Scenedesmus obliquus using a continuous microwave system--design, optimization, and quality characterization.

PubMed

Balasubramanian, Sundar; Allen, James D; Kanitkar, Akanksha; Boldor, Dorin

2011-02-01

A 1.2 kW, 2450 MHz resonant continuous microwave processing system was designed and optimized for oil extraction from green algae (Scenedesmus obliquus). Algae-water suspension (1:1 w/w) was heated to 80 and 95°C, and subjected to extraction for up to 30 min. Maximum oil yield was achieved at 95°C and 30 min. The microwave system extracted 76-77% of total recoverable oil at 20-30 min and 95°C, compared to only 43-47% for water bath control. Extraction time and temperature had significant influence (p<0.0001) on extraction yield. Oil analysis indicated that microwaves extracted oil containing higher percentages of unsaturated and essential fatty acids (indicating higher quality). This study validates for the first time the efficiency of a continuous microwave system for extraction of lipids from algae. Higher oil yields, faster extraction rates and superior oil quality demonstrate this system's feasibility for oil extraction from a variety of feedstock. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

21 CFR 172.580 - Safrole-free extract of sassafras.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 172.580 Food and Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (CONTINUED) FOOD FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION (CONTINUED) FOOD ADDITIVES PERMITTED FOR DIRECT ADDITION TO FOOD FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION Flavoring Agents and Related Substances § 172.580 Safrole-free extract of sassafras...

21 CFR 172.580 - Safrole-free extract of sassafras.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 172.580 Food and Drugs FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (CONTINUED) FOOD FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION (CONTINUED) FOOD ADDITIVES PERMITTED FOR DIRECT ADDITION TO FOOD FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION Flavoring Agents and Related Substances § 172.580 Safrole-free extract of sassafras...

AFRRI (Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute) Annual Research Report, 1 October 1984 through 30 September 1985.

DTIC Science & Technology

1985-09-30

locomotor performance. To evaluate the effects of radiation on social behaviors. To determine how ionizing radiation alters strength and duration of...on social behaviors and the behavioral pharmacology of social behaviors. Study involvement of CNS autostimulation of the immune system of irradiated...marrow cultured in medium not supplemented with the extract. In addition, marrow cultured in media supplemented with various collagen fractions did

Analysis and evaluation of single-use bag extractables for validation in biopharmaceutical applications.

PubMed

Pahl, Ina; Dorey, Samuel; Barbaroux, Magali; Lagrange, Bertille; Frankl, Heike

2014-01-01

This paper describes an approach of extractables determination and gives information on extractables profiles for gamma-sterilized single-use bags with polyethylene inner contact surfaces from five different suppliers. Four extraction solvents were chosen to capture a broad spectrum of extractables. An 80% ethanol extraction was used to extract compounds that represent the bag resin and the organic additives used to stabilize or process the polymer films which would not normally be water-soluble. Extractions with1 M HCl extract, 1 M NaOH extract, and 1% polysorbate 80 were used to bracket potential leachables in biopharmaceutical process fluids. The objective of this study was to obtain extractables data from different bags under identical test conditions. All the bags had a nominal capacity of 5 L, were gamma-irradiated prior to testing, and were tested without modification except that connectors, if any, were removed prior to filling. They were extracted at 40 °C for 30 days. Extractables from all bag extracts were identified and the concentration estimated using headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and flame ionization detection for volatile compounds and for semi-volatile compounds, and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for targeted compounds. Metals and other elements were detected and quantified by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis. The results showed a variety of extractables, some of which are not related to the inner polyethylene contact layer. Detected organic compounds included oligomers from polyolefins, additives and their degradation products, and oligomers from the fill tubing. The concentrations of extractables were in the range of parts-per-billion to parts-per-million per bag under the applied extraction conditions. Toxicological effects of the extractables are not addressed in this paper. Extractables and leachables characterization supports the validation and the use of single-use bags in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing process. This paper describes an approach for the identification and quantification of extractable substances for five commercially available single-use bags from different suppliers under identical analytical conditions. Four test formulations were used for the extraction, and extractables were analyzed with appropriately qualified analytical techniques, allowing for the detection of a broad range of released chemical compounds. Polymer additives such as antioxidants and processing aids and their degradation products were found to be the source of most of the extracted compounds. The concentration of extractables ranged from parts-per-billion to parts-per-million under the applied extraction conditions. © PDA, Inc. 2014.

Effects of Plant Extracts on Microbial Population, Methane Emission and Ruminal Fermentation Characteristics in In vitro

PubMed Central

Kim, E. T.; Kim, C. -H.; Min, K. -S.; Lee, S. S.

2012-01-01

This study was conducted to evaluate effects of plant extracts on methanogenesis and rumen microbial diversity in in vitro. Plant extracts (Artemisia princeps var. Orientalis; Wormwood, Allium sativum for. Pekinense; Garlic, Allium cepa; Onion, Zingiber officinale; Ginger, Citrus unshiu; Mandarin orange, Lonicera japonica; Honeysuckle) were obtained from the Plant Extract Bank at Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology. The rumen fluid was collected before morning feeding from a fistulated Holstein cow fed timothy and commercial concentrate (TDN; 73.5%, crude protein; 19%, crude fat; 3%, crude fiber; 12%, crude ash; 10%, Ca; 0.8%, P; 1.2%) in the ratio of 3 to 2. The 30 ml of mixture, comprising McDougall buffer and rumen liquor in the ratio of 4 to 1, was dispensed anaerobically into serum bottles containing 0.3 g of timothy substrate and plant extracts (1% of total volume, respectively) filled with O2-free N2 gas and capped with a rubber stopper. The serum bottles were held in a shaking incubator at 39°C for 24 h. Total gas production in all plant extracts was higher (p<0.05) than that of the control, and total gas production of ginger extract was highest (p<0.05). The methane emission was highest (p<0.05) at control, but lowest (p<0.05) at garlic extract which was reduced to about 20% of methane emission (40.2 vs 32.5 ml/g DM). Other plant extracts also resulted in a decrease in methane emissions (wormwood; 8%, onion; 16%, ginger; 16.7%, mandarin orange; 12%, honeysuckle; 12.2%). Total VFAs concentration and pH were not influenced by the addition of plant extracts. Acetate to propionate ratios from garlic and ginger extracts addition samples were lower (p<0.05, 3.36 and 3.38 vs 3.53) than that of the control. Real-time PCR indicted that the ciliate-associated methanogen population in all added plant extracts decreased more than that of the control, while the fibrolytic bacteria population increased. In particular, the F. succinogens community in added wormwood, garlic, mandarin orange and honeysuckle extracts increased more than that of the others. The addition of onion extract increased R. albus diversity, while other extracts did not influence the R. albus community. The R. flavefaciens population in added wormwood and garlic extracts decreased, while other extracts increased its abundance compared to the control. In conclusion, the results indicated that the plant extracts used in the experiment could be promising feed additives to decrease methane gas emission from ruminant animals while improving ruminal fermentation. PMID:25049630

Effects of Plant Extracts on Microbial Population, Methane Emission and Ruminal Fermentation Characteristics in In vitro.

PubMed

Kim, E T; Kim, C-H; Min, K-S; Lee, S S

2012-06-01

This study was conducted to evaluate effects of plant extracts on methanogenesis and rumen microbial diversity in in vitro. Plant extracts (Artemisia princeps var. Orientalis; Wormwood, Allium sativum for. Pekinense; Garlic, Allium cepa; Onion, Zingiber officinale; Ginger, Citrus unshiu; Mandarin orange, Lonicera japonica; Honeysuckle) were obtained from the Plant Extract Bank at Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology. The rumen fluid was collected before morning feeding from a fistulated Holstein cow fed timothy and commercial concentrate (TDN; 73.5%, crude protein; 19%, crude fat; 3%, crude fiber; 12%, crude ash; 10%, Ca; 0.8%, P; 1.2%) in the ratio of 3 to 2. The 30 ml of mixture, comprising McDougall buffer and rumen liquor in the ratio of 4 to 1, was dispensed anaerobically into serum bottles containing 0.3 g of timothy substrate and plant extracts (1% of total volume, respectively) filled with O2-free N2 gas and capped with a rubber stopper. The serum bottles were held in a shaking incubator at 39°C for 24 h. Total gas production in all plant extracts was higher (p<0.05) than that of the control, and total gas production of ginger extract was highest (p<0.05). The methane emission was highest (p<0.05) at control, but lowest (p<0.05) at garlic extract which was reduced to about 20% of methane emission (40.2 vs 32.5 ml/g DM). Other plant extracts also resulted in a decrease in methane emissions (wormwood; 8%, onion; 16%, ginger; 16.7%, mandarin orange; 12%, honeysuckle; 12.2%). Total VFAs concentration and pH were not influenced by the addition of plant extracts. Acetate to propionate ratios from garlic and ginger extracts addition samples were lower (p<0.05, 3.36 and 3.38 vs 3.53) than that of the control. Real-time PCR indicted that the ciliate-associated methanogen population in all added plant extracts decreased more than that of the control, while the fibrolytic bacteria population increased. In particular, the F. succinogens community in added wormwood, garlic, mandarin orange and honeysuckle extracts increased more than that of the others. The addition of onion extract increased R. albus diversity, while other extracts did not influence the R. albus community. The R. flavefaciens population in added wormwood and garlic extracts decreased, while other extracts increased its abundance compared to the control. In conclusion, the results indicated that the plant extracts used in the experiment could be promising feed additives to decrease methane gas emission from ruminant animals while improving ruminal fermentation.

Identification of phenanthrene derivatives in Aerides rosea (Orchidaceae) using the combined systems HPLC-ESI-HRMS/MS and HPLC-DAD-MS-SPE-UV-NMR.

PubMed

Cakova, Veronika; Urbain, Aurélie; Antheaume, Cyril; Rimlinger, Nicole; Wehrung, Patrick; Bonté, Frédéric; Lobstein, Annelise

2015-01-01

In our continued efforts to contribute to the general knowledge on the chemical diversity of orchids, we have decided to focus our investigations on the Aeridinae subtribe. Following our previous phytochemical study of Vanda coerulea, which has led to the identification of phenanthrene derivatives, a closely related species, Aerides rosea Lodd. ex Lindl. & Paxton, was chosen for investigation. To identify new secondary metabolites, and to avoid isolation of those already known, by means of the combined systems HPLC-DAD(diode-array detector) with high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (HRMS/MS) and HPLC-DAD-MS-SPE(solid-phase extraction)-UV-NMR. A dereplication strategy was developed using a HPLC-DAD-HRMS/MS targeted method and applied to fractions from A. rosea stem extract. Characterisation of unknown minor compounds was then performed using the combined HPLC-DAD-MS-SPE-UV-NMR system. The dereplication method allowed the characterisation of four compounds (gigantol, imbricatin, methoxycoelonin and coelonin), previously isolated from Vanda coerulea stem extract. The analyses of two fractions permitted the identification of five additional minor constituents including one phenanthropyran, two phenanthrene and two dihydrophenanthrene derivatives. The full set of NMR data of each compound was obtained from microgram quantities. Nine secondary metabolites were characterised in A. rosea stems, utilising HPLC systems combined with high-resolution analytical systems. Two of them are newly described phenanthrene derivatives: aerosanthrene (5-methoxyphenanthrene-2,3,7-triol) and aerosin (3-methoxy-9,10-dihydro-2,5,7-phenanthrenetriol). Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Systemic review of dry socket: aetiology, treatment, and prevention.

PubMed

Tarakji, Bassel; Saleh, Lubna Ahmed; Umair, Ayesha; Azzeghaiby, Saleh Nasser; Hanouneh, Salah

2015-04-01

Our systemic review is to make a comprehensive review about the aetiology, treatment and the prevention of dry socket, the inclusion criteria were all the studies that discuss the dry socket and its etiology, treatment and prevention and exclusion criteria were all the studies that discuss the other complications of tooth extraction, the materials and methods used for this systemic review was to search in the Pub Medline database between 2008 to 2013, using specific words "dry socket, aetiology, treatment and prevention" and published in the English language, the articles were screened by abstract for relevance to aetiology, treatment and prevention of dry socket, 82 papers were identified in pub med but a total of 36 out of Publications were included in the final systemic review according to the specific keywords and materials mentioned above. The occurrence of dry socket in an everyday oral surgery or dental practice is unavoidable. The risk factors are smoking, surgical trauma, single extractions, age, sex, medical history, systemic disorder, extraction site, amount of anaesthesia, operator experience, antibiotics use prior to surgery, difficulty of the surgery and the previous surgical site infection in addition to oral Contraceptives, menstrual cycle and immediate postextraction socket irrigation with normal saline. The traditional options of treatment are directed toward palliative care, such as the irrigation of the surgical site, avoiding curetting the extraction socket, Packing with a zinc oxide- eugenol paste on iodoform gauze can be considered to relieve acute pain episodes, there is also new agents in the market can accelerate the healing of the socket such as PRGF and GECB. The prevention methods include avoiding smoking before and after surgery and a traumatic surgery, the use of antibiotics, such as, azithromycin, can be considered, the other preventive measures such as chlorhecidine rinse or gel can be effective in the reduction of dry socket incidence.

Systemic Review of Dry Socket: Aetiology, Treatment, and Prevention

PubMed Central

Saleh, Lubna Ahmed; Umair, Ayesha; Azzeghaiby, Saleh Nasser; Hanouneh, Salah

2015-01-01

Our systemic review is to make a comprehensive review about the aetiology, treatment and the prevention of dry socket, the inclusion criteria were all the studies that discuss the dry socket and its etiology, treatment and prevention and exclusion criteria were all the studies that discuss the other complications of tooth extraction, the materials and methods used for this systemic review was to search in the Pub Medline database between 2008 to 2013, using specific words “dry socket, aetiology, treatment and prevention” and published in the English language, the articles were screened by abstract for relevance to aetiology, treatment and prevention of dry socket, 82 papers were identified in pub med but a total of 36 out of Publications were included in the final systemic review according to the specific keywords and materials mentioned above. The occurrence of dry socket in an everyday oral surgery or dental practice is unavoidable. The risk factors are smoking, surgical trauma, single extractions, age, sex, medical history, systemic disorder, extraction site, amount of anaesthesia, operator experience, antibiotics use prior to surgery, difficulty of the surgery and the previous surgical site infection in addition to oral Contraceptives, menstrual cycle and immediate postextraction socket irrigation with normal saline. The traditional options of treatment are directed toward palliative care, such as the irrigation of the surgical site, avoiding curetting the extraction socket, Packing with a zinc oxide– eugenol paste on iodoform gauze can be considered to relieve acute pain episodes, there is also new agents in the market can accelerate the healing of the socket such as PRGF and GECB. The prevention methods include avoiding smoking before and after surgery and a traumatic surgery, the use of antibiotics, such as, azithromycin, can be considered, the other preventive measures such as chlorhecidine rinse or gel can be effective in the reduction of dry socket incidence. PMID:26023661

Double-blind, placebo-controlled immunotherapy with mixed grass-pollen allergoids. III. Efficacy and safety of unfractionated and high-molecular-weight preparations in rhinoconjunctivitis and asthma.

PubMed

Bousquet, J; Maasch, H J; Hejjaoui, A; Skassa-Brociek, W; Wahl, R; Dhivert, H; Michel, F B

1989-10-01

Specific immunotherapy with unmodified formalinized allergoids is effective in grass-pollen allergy, but systemic reactions have been observed. A high-molecular-weight formalinized allergoid (HMW-GOID) was fractionated by gel filtration, retaining molecules of greater than 85,000 daltons in the expectation of improving safety without sacrificing efficacy. HMW-GOID and unfractionated allergoid (GOID) had a similar allergenic activity assessed by RAST inhibition, but the HMW-GOID preparation was 65 times less reactive when it was tested by skin prick test than the GOID preparation. A double-blind, placebo-controlled study was carried out in grass pollen-allergic patients with placebo (14 patients), GOID (15 patients), and HMW-GOID (13 patients). An additional group of 18 patients was treated by a rush schedule with a standardized orchard grass-pollen extract. A similar mean cumulative dose was administered with both allergoids. The fractionated allergoid only elicited minor systemic reactions similar to reactions elicited by placebo, whereas 20% of patients treated by GOID and 5.5% of patients receiving the standardized extract had a severe systemic reaction. For rhinitis, conjunctivitis, and asthma, the HMW-GOID and the standardized extract had a similar efficacy, significantly greater than placebo. GOID was less effective than the other two active treatments but was significantly more effective than placebo treatment for asthma and conjunctivitis.

Moringa oleifera Seed Extract Alleviates Scopolamine-Induced Learning and Memory Impairment in Mice

PubMed Central

Zhou, Juan; Yang, Wu-shuang; Suo, Da-qin; Li, Ying; Peng, Lu; Xu, Lan-xi; Zeng, Kai-yue; Ren, Tong; Wang, Ying; Zhou, Yu; Zhao, Yun; Yang, Li-chao; Jin, Xin

2018-01-01

The extract of Moringa oleifera seeds has been shown to possess various pharmacological properties. In the present study, we assessed the neuropharmacological effects of 70% ethanolic M. oleifera seed extract (MSE) on cognitive impairment caused by scopolamine injection in mice using the passive avoidance and Morris water maze (MWM) tests. MSE (250 or 500 mg/kg) was administered to mice by oral gavage for 7 or 14 days, and cognitive impairment was induced by intraperitoneal injection of scopolamine (4 mg/kg) for 1 or 6 days. Mice that received scopolamine alone showed impaired learning and memory retention and considerably decreased cholinergic system reactivity and neurogenesis in the hippocampus. MSE pretreatment significantly ameliorated scopolamine-induced cognitive impairment and enhanced cholinergic system reactivity and neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Additionally, the protein expressions of phosphorylated Akt, ERK1/2, and CREB in the hippocampus were significantly decreased by scopolamine, but these decreases were reversed by MSE treatment. These results suggest that MSE-induced ameliorative cognitive effects are mediated by enhancement of the cholinergic neurotransmission system and neurogenesis via activation of the Akt, ERK1/2, and CREB signaling pathways. These findings suggest that MSE could be a potent neuropharmacological drug against amnesia, and its mechanism might be modulation of cholinergic activity via the Akt, ERK1/2, and CREB signaling pathways. PMID:29740317

Chemical composition, antioxidant and antigenotoxic activities of different fractions of Gentiana asclepiadea L. roots extract

PubMed Central

Mihailovic, Vladimir; Matic, Sanja; Mišic, Danijela; Solujic, Slavica; Stanic, Snežana; Katanic, Jelena; Mladenovic, Milan; Stankovic, Nevena

2013-01-01

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antioxidant and antigenotoxic activities of chloroform, ethyl acetate and n-butanol fractions obtained from Gentiana asclepiadea L. roots methanolic extract. The main secondary metabolites sweroside, swertiamarin and gentiopicrine were quantified in G. asclepiadea root extracts using HPLC-DAD analysis. Amount of total phenols, flavonoids, flavonols and gallotannins was also determined. The antigenotoxic potential of extracts from roots of G. asclepiadea was assessed using the standard in vivo procedure for the detection of sex linked recessive lethal mutations in Drosophila melanogaster males treated with ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS). The results showed that the most abundant secoiridoid in G. asclepiadea roots was gentiopicrine and its content in the n-butanol fraction (442.89 mg/g) was the highest. Among all extracts, ethyl acetate fraction showed the highest antioxidant activity, as well as total phenolics (146.64 GAE/g), flavonoids (44.62 RUE/g), flavonols (22.71 RUE/g) and gallotannins (0.99 mg GAE/g) content. All the fractions showed antioxidant activity using in vitro model systems and the results have been correlated with total phenolics, flavonoids, flavonols and gallotannins content. In addition to antioxidant activity, G. asclepiadea root extract fractions possess an antigenotoxic effect against DNA damage induced by alkylation with EMS. The antioxidant activity exhibited by G. asclepiadea depended on the phenolic compounds content of the tested extracts, while there was no significant difference in the antigenotoxic potential between fractions. PMID:26622219

Effect of Hibiscus sabdariffa and its anthocyanins on some reproductive aspects in rats.

PubMed

Ali, Badreldin H; Al-Lawati, Intisar; Beegam, Sumyia; Ziada, Amal; Al Salam, Suhail; Nemmar, Abderrahim; Blunden, Gerald

2012-01-01

An aqueous extract of Hibiscus sabdariffa L. is a common beverage in many parts of the world. Reports on its effect on reproduction are conflicting, with anecdotal evidence that the plant is an aphrodisiac, while others report that it is estrogenic, and adversely affects spermatogenesis in rats. We have studied the effect of different concentrations of aqueous extracts of H. sabdariffa calyces (10%, 15% and 20%) used as drinking water for 10 consecutive weeks, and its anthocyanins (50, 100, 200 mg/kg for 5 days, orally) on the weight and histology of the testis, and on some biochemical constituents in testicular homogenates, in addition to the plasma concentrations of testosterone, luteinizing hormone and estradiol. The possible presence of an estrogenic effect of the extract and anthocyanins on the uteri of immature female rats was also tested. Neither the H. sabdariffa extract nor the anthocyanins significantly altered either testicular weight and histology, or uterus weight. Plasma concentrations of the three hormones studied, the testicular concentrations of protein, reduced glutathione and total cholesterol, and superoxide dismutase activity were all insignificantly affected by either the extract or the anthocyanins, except for a slight, but statistically significant, decrease in testicular protein concentration caused by the 15% aqueous extract when compared with controls. These results suggest that H. sabdariffa exerts no adverse effect on the male reproductive system. Consumption of H. sabdariffa aqueous extract inhibited the growth of the rats compared with the controls.

Numerical study on the power extraction performance of a flapping foil with a flexible tail

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, J.; Shu, C.; Zhao, N.; Tian, F.-B.

2015-01-01

The numerical study on the power extraction performance of a flapping foil with a flexible tail is performed in this work. A NACA0015 airfoil is arranged in a two-dimensional laminar flow and imposed with a synchronous harmonic plunge and pitch rotary motion. A flat plate that is attached to the trailing edge of the foil is utilized to model a tail, and so they are viewed as a whole for the purpose of power extraction. In addition, the tail either is rigid or can deform due to the exerted hydrodynamic forces. To implement numerical simulations, an immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method is employed. At a Reynolds number of 1100 and the position of the pitching axis at third chord, the influences of the mass and flexibility of the tail as well as the frequency of motion on the power extraction are systematically examined. It is found that compared to the foil with a rigid tail, the efficiency of power extraction for the foil with a deformable tail can be improved. Based on the numerical analysis, it is indicated that the enhanced plunging component of the power extraction, which is caused by the increased lift force, directly contributes to the efficiency improvement. Since a flexible tail with medium and high masses is not beneficial to the efficiency improvement, a flexible tail with low mass together with high flexibility is recommended in the flapping foil based power extraction system.

Tannins from Canarium album with potent antioxidant activity*

PubMed Central

Zhang, Liang-liang; Lin, Yi-ming

2008-01-01

The contents of total phenolics and extractable condensed tannins in the leaves, twigs and stem bark of Canarium album were determined. The structural heterogeneity of condensed tannins from stem bark was characterized by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analyses. The results show the predominance of signals representative of procyanidins and prodelphinidins. In addition, epicatechin and epigallocatechin polymers with galloylated procyanidin or prodelphinidin were also observed. The tannins were screened for their potential antioxidant activities using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and ferric reducing/antioxidant power (FRAP) model systems. Tannins extracted from leaves, twigs and stem bark all showed a very good DPPH radical scavenging activity and ferric reducing power. PMID:18500781

Quantitative, simultaneous, and collinear eye-tracked, high dynamic range optical coherence tomography at 850 and 1060 nm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mooser, Matthias; Burri, Christian; Stoller, Markus; Luggen, David; Peyer, Michael; Arnold, Patrik; Meier, Christoph; Považay, Boris

2017-07-01

Ocular optical coherence tomography at the wavelengths ranges of 850 and 1060 nm have been integrated with a confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope eye-tracker as a clinical commercial-class system. Collinear optics enables an exact overlap of the different channels to produce precisely overlapping depth-scans for evaluating the similarities and differences between the wavelengths to extract additional physiologic information. A reliable segmentation algorithm utilizing Graphcuts has been implemented and applied to automatically extract retinal and choroidal shape in cross-sections and volumes. The device has been tested in normals and pathologies including a cross-sectional and longitudinal study of myopia progress and control with a duplicate instrument in Asian children.

Low-energy ion beam-based deposition of gallium nitride

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Vasquez, M. R., E-mail: mrvasquez@coe.upd.edu.ph; Wada, M.

2016-02-15

An ion source with a remote plasma chamber excited by a 13.56 MHz radio frequency power was used for low-energy broad ion beam extraction. Optical emission spectral analyses showed the sputtering and postionization of a liquid gallium (Ga) target placed in a chamber separated from the source bombarded by argon (Ar) plasma guided by a bent magnetic field. In addition, an E × B probe successfully showed the extraction of low-energy Ga and Ar ion beams using a dual-electrode extractor configuration. By introducing dilute amounts of nitrogen gas into the system, formation of thin Ga-based films on a silicon substratemore » was demonstrated as determined from X-ray diffraction and X-ray reflectivity studies.« less

The Magic Velvet Bean of Mucuna pruriens.

PubMed

Lampariello, Lucia Raffaella; Cortelazzo, Alessio; Guerranti, Roberto; Sticozzi, Claudia; Valacchi, Giuseppe

2012-10-01

Mucuna pruriens (Fabaceae) is an established herbal drug used for the management of male infertility, nervous disorders, and also as an aphrodisiac. It has been shown that its seeds are potentially of substantial medicinal importance. The ancient Indian medical system, Ayurveda, traditionally used M. pruriens, even to treat such things as Parkinson's disease. M. pruriens has been shown to have anti-parkinson and neuroprotective effects, which may be related to its anti-oxidant activity. In addition, anti-oxidant activity of M. pruriens has been also demonstrated in vitro by its ability to scavenge DPPH radicals and reactive oxygen species. In this review the medicinal properties of M. pruriens are summarized, taking in consideration the studies that have used the seeds extracts and the leaves extracts.

Tannins from Canarium album with potent antioxidant activity.

PubMed

Zhang, Liang-liang; Lin, Yi-ming

2008-05-01

The contents of total phenolics and extractable condensed tannins in the leaves, twigs and stem bark of Canarium album were determined. The structural heterogeneity of condensed tannins from stem bark was characterized by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analyses. The results show the predominance of signals representative of procyanidins and prodelphinidins. In addition, epicatechin and epigallocatechin polymers with galloylated procyanidin or prodelphinidin were also observed. The tannins were screened for their potential antioxidant activities using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and ferric reducing/antioxidant power (FRAP) model systems. Tannins extracted from leaves, twigs and stem bark all showed a very good DPPH radical scavenging activity and ferric reducing power.

The Magic Velvet Bean of Mucuna pruriens

PubMed Central

Lampariello, Lucia Raffaella; Cortelazzo, Alessio; Guerranti, Roberto; Sticozzi, Claudia; Valacchi, Giuseppe

2012-01-01

Mucuna pruriens (Fabaceae) is an established herbal drug used for the management of male infertility, nervous disorders, and also as an aphrodisiac. It has been shown that its seeds are potentially of substantial medicinal importance. The ancient Indian medical system, Ayurveda, traditionally used M. pruriens, even to treat such things as Parkinson's disease. M. pruriens has been shown to have anti-parkinson and neuroprotective effects, which may be related to its anti-oxidant activity. In addition, anti-oxidant activity of M. pruriens has been also demonstrated in vitro by its ability to scavenge DPPH radicals and reactive oxygen species. In this review the medicinal properties of M. pruriens are summarized, taking in consideration the studies that have used the seeds extracts and the leaves extracts. PMID:24716148

Efficiency of single extraction schemes in highlighting the impact of changes in land use of contaminated agricultural soils on their trace metal availability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Iqbal, Muhammad; Lamy, Isabelle; Bermond, Alain

2014-05-01

Presently changes in the land use of contaminated and marginal agricultural lands from conventional annual food crops to perennial non-food bionergy crops are being encouraged globally. This is being done to avoid food chain contamination with metal and organic contaminants and to meet world energy needs without disturbing normal fertile agricultural lands. Changes in land use from the annual cropping systems to the perennial cropping systems are known to modify organic matter quality and quantity in case of non contaminated soils. In the case of contaminated soils such changes are susceptible to alter trace metal availabilities but studies reporting such changes are scarce. Different single extraction protocols are used to assess the trace element availability in soils. The efficiency of these extractants depends upon soil conditions and may vary case to case. The objective of the present work was to assess the changes in trace metal availability of contaminated soils when annual crops system is replaced by a perennial crop system using different single extraction protocols. A strategy of studying Cd and Zn availabilities of two sites differing in the soil texture and origin of pollution was adopted i.e. the site of Metaleurop (North of France) and the site of Pierrelaye (Paris Region). They differed in the degree of metal pollution (for Cu, Pb, Cd and Zn) and in the quantity and nature of organic matter (different C/N values). The samples used for this study involved the soils under annual crops and the perennial crop i.e. miscanthus. We investigated the trace metal availabilities of the soils using different single extraction protocols involving chemical metal extractions with EDTA, DTPA and NH4NO3 at equilibrium and kinetic EDTA extractions. The results for the soil under miscanthus compared to annual crop soil showed that single extraction schemes using chelating agents like EDTA and DTPA, however, failed to show if the metal availability can be impacted by land use. The differences in metal availability in the soils under miscanthus and annual crops were highlighted by the weaker extractant NH4NO3 and by kinetic extractions using EDTA. For the Metaleurop site, a trend of decrease in Cd and Zn availability in the soil under perennial miscanthus crop compared to the soil under annual crop was observed. For the organic matter rich sandy soils of Pierrelaye labile Zn increased while Cd was decreased. These results showed little impact on trace metal availabilities at the earlier stage of changes in land use (3 years after conversion). However, on longer terms, the impact can be more remarkable. The study also highlighted the efficacy of the use of combination of metal availability assessment approaches instead of relying on single approaches. In addition the type of changes being occurred in metal availability can be predicted using combined extraction approaches because the mechanisms behind each extraction scheme and their target metal pools being different.

A judicious multiple hypothesis tracker with interacting feature extraction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McAnanama, James G.; Kirubarajan, T.

2009-05-01

The multiple hypotheses tracker (mht) is recognized as an optimal tracking method due to the enumeration of all possible measurement-to-track associations, which does not involve any approximation in its original formulation. However, its practical implementation is limited by the NP-hard nature of this enumeration. As a result, a number of maintenance techniques such as pruning and merging have been proposed to bound the computational complexity. It is possible to improve the performance of a tracker, mht or not, using feature information (e.g., signal strength, size, type) in addition to kinematic data. However, in most tracking systems, the extraction of features from the raw sensor data is typically independent of the subsequent association and filtering stages. In this paper, a new approach, called the Judicious Multi Hypotheses Tracker (jmht), whereby there is an interaction between feature extraction and the mht, is presented. The measure of the quality of feature extraction is input into measurement-to-track association while the prediction step feeds back the parameters to be used in the next round of feature extraction. The motivation for this forward and backward interaction between feature extraction and tracking is to improve the performance in both steps. This approach allows for a more rational partitioning of the feature space and removes unlikely features from the assignment problem. Simulation results demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach.