Investigation of graphene channel interaction with yeast cell for cell counting application

Graphene superior and unique properties make it a suitable material for biosensor. In this work, graphene interaction with yeast cell is investigated for development of graphenebased cell counter. The fabricated graphene channel was characterized by means of two-terminal and solution-gated three-terminal measurement setup. The correlation between graphene channel resistance and cell concentration was confirmed. The yeast cell was found to give n-type doping which modulate the conductivity of graphene channel

Interesterificación enzimática sobre las propiedades físico-químicas de las mezclas de aceites de semillas de Moringa oleifera con oleína de palma y aceite de coco virgen

The enzymatic interesterification (IE) of palm olein (PO) and virgin coconut oil (VCO) with the high oleic acid (86%) Moringa oleifera seed oil (MoO) could yield a good source of oleic acid fat stock that may contain desirable nutritional and physical properties. Lipozyme RMIM resulted in different functionalities for the MoO/PO and MoO/VCO blends due to inherent changes in triacylglycerol (TAG) compositions which, in turn, led to different trends in DSC thermograms and solid fat contents (SFC). The enzymatic IE of MoO/VCO increased U2S and S2U (up to 20% medium and long chain, MLCT) while it decreased U3 (triunsaturated) and S3 (trisaturated) TAGs. The IE of the MoO/PO blends increased U2S and S3 (MMP, myristic, myristic, palmitic) and decreased S2U, resulting in a lowering of melting points and SFC for MoO/VCO, while showing an increase in them for MoO/PO. A 2.55% increase in S3 after 24 h MoO/PO 30:70 IE revealed a 6.5% harder oil at 10 °C which may imply a wider application compared to the original liquid oils. Novel MLCTs with improved nutritional and physical properties were generated in the MoO/VCO blends after IE due to the incorporation of oleic acid and medium chain fatty acids. MoO/PO 50:50 and 70:30 w/w after 12 h IE and MoO/VCO 30:70 are suitable for incorporation into the fat phase in ice-cream formulations while, the spreadability and plasticity of MoO/VCO 70:30 improved at low temperatures. Both interesterified blends could be used as high oleic acid frying oils.La interesterificación enzimática (IE) de la oleína de palma (PO), aceite de coco virgen (VCO) con alto contenido en ácido oleico (86%) y aceites de semilla de Moringa oleífera (MOO) podría ser una buena fuente de ácido oleico con propiedades nutricionales y físicas deseables. La lipozyme RMIM produce diferentes funcionalidades para las mezclas MoO/PO y MoO/ VCO debido a los cambios inherentes en la composición de triacilgliceroles (TAG) que, a su vez, dieron lugar a diferentes perfiles en los termogramas de DSC y en los contenidos de grasa sólida (SFC). La IE de MoO/VCO aumentó los TAGs, U2S y S2U (hasta un 20% de cadena media y larga, MLCT), mientras que disminuyó los TAGs triinsaturados (U3) y trisaturados (S3). La IE de mezclas MoO/PO, aumentó los TAGs U2S y S3 (MMP, mirístico, mirístico, palmítico) y disminuyó S2U, lo que da lugar a una reducción del punto de fusión y de SFC para el MoO/VCO mientras que estos parámetros aumentan para MoO/PO. El aumento de un 2.55% en S3 después de 24 h de IE de MoO/PO 30:70 da lugar a aceites 6,5% más duros a10 °C, que pueden tener unas aplicaciones más amplias en comparación con los aceites líquidos originales. Nuevos MLCTs con mejores propiedades nutricionales y físicas se generaron con las mezclas MoO/VCO tras IE debido a la incorporación de ácido oleico y ácidos grasos de cadena media. MoO/PO 50:50 y 70:30 w/w después de 12 h de IE y MoO/VCO 30:70 son adecuados para su incorporación como grasa en las formulaciones de helados, mientras que la untabilidad y plasticidad de MoO/VCO 70:30 mejoró a bajas temperaturas. Ambas mezclas interesterificadas podrían ser utilizados como aceites alto oleico para fritura

Physicochemical properties and thermal behavior of binary blends of Madhuca longifolia seed fat and palm oil as a lard substitute

Fat extracted from pork is prohibited under halal and kosher food regulations. A study was carried out on Madhuca longifolia seed fat and palm oil to compare their physicochemical, solidification and melting characteristics to formulate halal alternative lipid substitutes. Various blends of Madhuca longifolia (ML) and palm oil (PO) was formulated in order to become similar to lard (LD). A total of three binary blends were prepared: ML:PO (97:3; w/w), ML:PO (95:5), ML:PO (93:7), and identified by the mass ratio of ML to PO. The fat blends were compared with LD in terms of the fatty acid and triacylglycerol compositions using gas chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography, respectively. In addition, the fat blends also being studied for thermal properties using differential scanning calorimetry and solid fat content using p-nuclear magnetic resonance. Although there were considerable differences between LD and the fat blends with regard to fatty acid and triacylglycerol compositions, some similarities were seen regarding to thermal properties and solid fat content profiles. The blend of ML:PO (97:3) displayed closer similarity to LD with respect to melting transition at -3.59°C and its solid fat content profile showed the least difference to that of LD throughout the temperature range measured

Rubber-Tree Leaf Diseases Mapping Using Close Range Remote Sensing Images

 Currently, close-range remote sensing method using drone-based platform which payload compact sensor has been used for monitoring and mapping in the agriculture sector at large area. Thus, this study is deployed drone with a compact sensor to identify the rubber tree leaf diseases based on two groups of a spectral wavelength which are visible (RGB: 0.4 µm – 0.7 µm) and near infrared (NIR: 0.7µm – 2.0 µm), respectively. Spectral obtained from drone-based platform will be validated using ground observation handheld spectroradiometer. Eight types of rubber tree clones leaf at three different conditions (healthy, unhealthy and severe) were randomly selected within the 9.4-hectare Experimental Rubber Plot, Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia (RRIM), Kota Tinggi, Johor whereby consist RRIM 2000 series, RRIM 3000 series, and PB series, respectively. Based on the result, quantitative analysis shows that the f-value is smaller than Critical-one tail for healthy, unhealthy while for severe the f-value is larger than Critical-one tail. The f-value is 2.887 < 4.283 (healthy), 0.002 < 0.264 (unhealthy) and 1.008 > 0.0526, respectively. Thus, this can be concluded that spectral and estimate is equal at the 0.05 significant levels. For qualitative analysis, it shows that each rubber clone tree diseases can be distinguished at the near infrared band for healthy, unhealthy and severe respectively

Rubber-Tree Leaf Diseases Mapping Using Close Range Remote Sensing Images

 Currently, close-range remote sensing method using drone-based platform which payload compact sensor has been used for monitoring and mapping in the agriculture sector at large area. Thus, this study is deployed drone with a compact sensor to identify the rubber tree leaf diseases based on two groups of a spectral wavelength which are visible (RGB: 0.4 µm – 0.7 µm) and near infrared (NIR: 0.7µm – 2.0 µm), respectively. Spectral obtained from drone-based platform will be validated using ground observation handheld spectroradiometer. Eight types of rubber tree clones leaf at three different conditions (healthy, unhealthy and severe) were randomly selected within the 9.4-hectare Experimental Rubber Plot, Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia (RRIM), Kota Tinggi, Johor whereby consist RRIM 2000 series, RRIM 3000 series, and PB series, respectively. Based on the result, quantitative analysis shows that the f-value is smaller than Critical-one tail for healthy, unhealthy while for severe the f-value is larger than Critical-one tail. The f-value is 2.887 < 4.283 (healthy), 0.002 < 0.264 (unhealthy) and 1.008 > 0.0526, respectively. Thus, this can be concluded that spectral and estimate is equal at the 0.05 significant levels. For qualitative analysis, it shows that each rubber clone tree diseases can be distinguished at the near infrared band for healthy, unhealthy and severe respectively

Electroencephalography (eeg) application on quantifying emotional intelligence during meditation

Humans have two distinctive quotients that need to be considered such as Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Emotional quotient is also known as Emotional Intelligence (EI) which can be defined as the ability of a person on how they understand themselves and handle their emotion, as well as understanding society around them. Quantifying EI is an issue that has attracted various field of work. This manuscript aims to investigate the relation of EI in meditation using the human electroencephalogram (EEG) device. Low-cost 16 electrodes Emotiv Epoch neuroheadset was used in this study. A stimulus on a Quran recitation audio- visual was setup as the meditation intervention. The EEG signal obtained from this experiment showed that the Power Spectral Densities (PSD) of alpha brainwaves on the right frontal lobe were gradually reduced when the subjects are watching and listening to the Quran recitation’s video. Hence, the negative feelings were reduced which indicated that the participants are emotionally stable. This finding may suggest that humans are prone to relax when the Quran is being recited repeatedly. This finding further confirms that Quran recitation correlate with the self-awareness and self-regulate attributes of EI. Additionally, differences in response were observed from the male and female subjects

Review of feature extraction approaches on biomedical text classification

The overcoming volume of online biomedical literature causes congestion of data and difficulties in organizing these documents and also to retrieve the required documents from the database, especially in the Medline database. One of the solutions to surpass the overwhelming of documents is to apply classification. However, each document must be represented by a set of terminology or feature vectors. The identification of terminology or feature from biomedical literature is one of the most important and challenging tasks in text classification. This is due to a large number of new features and entities that appear in the biomedical domain. In addition, combining sets of features from different terminological resources leads to naming conflicts such as homonymous use of names and terminological ambiguities. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate and evaluate the effective ways for extracting the relevant and meaningful features in order to increase the classification accuracy and improve the performance of web searches. Towards this effort, we conduct several classification experiments to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of feature extraction approaches for extracting the relevant and informative features from the biomedical literature. For our experiments, we use two different sets of features, which are a set of features that are extracted using the Genia tagger tool and set of features that are extracted by medical experts from Pusat Perubatan Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (PPUKM). The results show the performance of classification using features that are extracted by medical experts outperform the performance of classification using the Genia Tagger tool when applying feature selection method

Effect of scanning parameters on dose-response of radiochromic films irradiated with photon and electron beams

Proper dosimetry settings are crucial in radiotherapy to ensure accurate radiation dose delivery. This work evaluated scanning parameters as affecting factors in reading the dose-response of EBT2 and EBT3 radiochromic films (RCFs) irradiated with clinical photon and electron beams. The RCFs were digitised using Epson� Expression� 10000XL flatbed scanner and image analyses of net optical density (netOD) were conducted using five scanning parameters i.e. film type, resolution, image bit depth, colour to grayscale transformation and image inversion. The results showed that increasing spatial resolution and deepening colour depth did not improve film sensitivity, while grayscale scanning caused sensitivity reduction below than that detected in the Red-channel. It is also evident that invert and colour negative film type selection negated netOD values, hence unsuitable for scanning RCFs. In conclusion, choosing appropriate scanning parameters are important to maintain preciseness and reproducibility in films dosimetry