The Case for Visual Analytics of Arsenic Concentrations in Foods

Arsenic is a naturally occurring toxic metal and its presence in food could be a potential risk to the health of both humans and animals. Prolonged ingestion of arsenic contaminated water may result in manifestations of toxicity in all systems of the body. Visual Analytics is a multidisciplinary field that is defined as the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. The concentrations of arsenic vary in foods making it impractical and impossible to provide regulatory limit for each food. This review article presents a case for the use of visual analytics approaches to provide comparative assessment of arsenic in various foods. The topics covered include (i) metabolism of arsenic in the human body; (ii) arsenic concentrations in various foods; (ii) factors affecting arsenic uptake in plants; (ii) introduction to visual analytics; and (iv) benefits of visual analytics for comparative assessment of arsenic concentration in foods. Visual analytics can provide an information superstructure of arsenic in various foods to permit insightful comparative risk assessment of the diverse and continually expanding data on arsenic in food groups in the context of country of study or origin, year of study, method of analysis and arsenic species

Raman and optical studies of spray pyrolysed Sb<inf>2</inf>S<inf>3</inf> thin films

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Optical and electrical properties of thin films grown by spray pyrolysis

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Optimization of the artificial neuronal network for the degradation and mineralization of amoxicillin photoinduced by the complex ferrioxalate with a gradual and progressive approach of the ligand

International audienceIn this work, the Ferrioxalate complex was used to mineralize the widely used antibiotic amoxicillin (AMX). The effect of operational parameters such as Fe3+ concentration, the molar ratio (Oxalate/Fe3+), and initial pH was studied for achieving high efficiency of degradation and mineralization. The effect of inorganic ions in the degradation of AMX was also investigated. Optimization of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict the performance of the process was realized. Neural networks were applied to model AMX degradation using 75 experimental data. Analysis of the results shows that the oxalate: iron ratio is limited to 3 with a Fe3+ concentration of 0.35 mM. In order to avoid this limitation, an alternative solution was adopted to increase the molar ratio with the gradual and progressive use of oxalic acid ligand. Almost total degradation and mineralization of AMX was achieved at the free initial pH of 2.8 and final pH of 6. The study of the effect of inorganic ions showed that bicarbonate and sulfate ions play an important role in contrast to Cl− ions with no noticeable influence. Neural network application resulted in a MSE of 1.1543 × 10-5 and a correlation coefficient r of 0.99 for AMX degradation and MSE of 1.12162 × 10-5 with r of 0.99 for mineralization. The model can describe successfully the percentage of degradation and mineralization of AMX under various conditions. ANN and NSGA-II (Non-dominant Sorting Genetic Algorithm -II) hybrid method to solve a multi-objective problem was proposed to determine the optimal (Fe3+/Ox/UVA) operating and process parameters

«Structural, Optical and Dielectric Properties of ZnO(0.7)CdO(0.3) Composite Thin Films»

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Polysaccharide-based films of cactus mucilage and agar with antioxidant properties for active food packaging

The production of films derived from renewable resources for food packaging applications is an important research area within the scope of sustainable development. Herein, fully biobased films made from cactus mucilage (CM), extracted from Algerian Opuntia ficus-indica cladodes, and agar (A), extracted from marine red algae, were assembled via solvent film casting method. The effect of agar concentration on the properties of the plasticized CM films (40 wt.% glycerol) was evaluated at three different mass ratios of CM/A, namely 70:30, 60:40 and 50:50. Overall, the results revealed that the polysaccharide-based films exhibited good mechanical properties (Young’s modulus ≥ 135 MPa and tensile strength ≥ 5.3 MPa) and UVlight protection (transmittance ≤ 40% (200–400 nm)), as well as thermal stability up to 140 °C, low water vapor transmission rate (WVTR ≤ 10.6 g  h−1 m−2) and moderate antioxidant activity (DPPH scavenging ≥ 19% and ferric reducing antioxidant power ≥ 1.3 mg AAE per g of film). Following from this, the pliable freestanding CM/A-based films with UV protection, water barrier properties and antioxidant activity can be a low-cost and eco-friendly option for the development of active food packaging materials.publishe

«Propriétés structurales et optiques des couches minces WO_(3-x) fabriquées par la technique Spray-Pyrolysis»

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