Study on antioxidant activity of Echinacea purpurea L. extracts and its impact on cell viability

This study investigates the antioxidant activity of Echinacea Purpurea L. (EP) extracts and its impact on cell viability. The polysaccharides content of EP was 159.8 ± 12.4 mg/g dry weight (DW), with extracts obtained by applying 55% ethanol at 55°C containing 11.0 ±1.0 mg gallic acid equivalent/g DW of total phenolic compound. Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity, 0.1 mg/mL of EP extracts exhibited only 30% when compared to the ascorbic acid at the same concentration. Reducing power of extractsincreased linearly with its concentration and the concentration at 2.0 mg/mL reached about 65% of ascorbic acid at 0.3 mg/mL. The chelating capacity of ferrous iron (Fe2+) was 70% as good as that of thesynthetic metal chelater EDTA when added to 5.0 mg/mL of EP extracts. The DPPH scavenging capacity showed 85.1% at 0.5 mg/mL of extracts and with half-effective doses (ED50) was measured at 0.23mg/mL. The superoxide anions scavenging capacity of EP extracts was nearly equivalent to ascorbic acid (91.1% vs 93.0%) at the same concentration of 1.6 mg/mL and ED50 was 0.32 and 0.13 mg/mL, respectively. Microculture tetrazolium assays showed extracts had 92% cell viability at 1.6 mg/mL forchicken’s peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and 84% for RAW 264.7 macrophages, neither reaching the IC50 level. In summary, the EP extracts had antioxidant activity similar to that of ascorbic acid, but have no serious effect on inhibiting chicken’s PBMCs viability

Characterization of volatile organic compounds at a roadside environment in Hong Kong: An investigation of influences after air pollution control strategies

Vehicular emission is one of the important anthropogenic pollution sources for volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Four characterization campaigns were conducted at a representative urban roadside environment in Hong Kong between May 2011 and February 2012. Carbon monoxide (CO) and VOCs including methane (CH4), non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs), halocarbons, and alkyl nitrates were quantified. Both mixing ratios and compositions of the target VOCs show ignorable seasonal variations. Except CO, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tracers of propane, i-butane and n-butane are the three most abundant VOCs, which increased significantly as compared with the data measured at the same location in 2003. Meanwhile, the mixing ratios of diesel- and gasoline tracers such as ethyne, alkenes, aromatics, halogenated, and nitrated hydrocarbons decreased by at least of 37%. The application of advanced multivariate receptor modeling technique of positive matrix factorization (PMF) evidenced that the LPG fuel consumption is the largest pollution source, accounting for 60 ± 5% of the total quantified VOCs at the roadside location. The sum of ozone formation potential (OFP) for the target VOCs was 300.9 μg-O3 m-3, which was 47% lower than the value of 567.3 μg-O3 m-3 measured in 2003. The utilization of LPG as fuel in public transport (i.e., taxis and mini-buses) contributed 51% of the sum of OFP, significantly higher than the contributions from gasoline- (16%) and diesel-fueled (12%) engine emissions. Our results demonstrated the effectiveness of the switch from diesel to LPG-fueled engine for taxis and mini-buses implemented by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government between the recent ten years, in additional to the execution of substitution to LPG-fueled engine and restrictions of the vehicular emissions in compliance with the updated European emission standards

Effects of Spent Cooling and Swirler Angle on a 9-point Swirl-Venturi Injector

This paper presents multipoint lean-direct-injection (LDI) emissions results for flame tube combustion tests at an inlet pressure of 1034 kPa and inlet temperatures between 835 and 865 K; these are the combustor inlet conditions that the High Speed Research (HSR) program used for supersonic cruise. It focuses on one class of LDI geometry, 9-point swirl-venturi LDI (SV-LDI). Two parameters are compared in this paper: the use of dome cooling air and the swirler blade angle. Dome cooling air is called 'spent cooling' and is at combustor inlet conditions. Three cooling variations are studied: cooling at the venturi throat, cooling at the dome face, and no cooling at all. Two swirler blade angles are studied: 45 deg and 60 deg. The HSR 9-point SV-LDI emissions are also compared to a similar 9-point SV-LDI design which was used in the later ultra-efficient engine technology (UEET) program. The HSR and UEET designs cannot be compared directly due to different UEET combustor conditions. Therefore, this paper uses previously published UEET correlation equations to make comparisons. Results show that using a 45 deg swirler produces lower NOx emissions than using a 60 deg swirler. This is consistent with the later UEET results. The effects of spent cooling depend on swirler angle, spent cooling location, and the test conditions. For the configuration with 45 deg swirlers, spent cooling delivers lower NOx emissions when it is injected at the throat. For the 60 deg swirler, spent cooling does not have much effect on NOx emissions. These results might be caused by the location and the intensity of the flame recirculation zone

A tunable Au core–Ag shell nanoparticle tip for tip-enhanced spectroscopy

A single Au nanoparticle (NP) with a diameter of 5 nm was transferred to the end of a Si-tip through a picking process, and an Ag shell with a controlled thickness was formed on the Au core. By carrying out tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) measurements on biphenyl-4-thiol (BPT) with the Au@Ag NP-tip (overall diameter of 22-60 nm), we confirm that such tips show a plasmonic localfield enhancement which is sufficient for tip-enhanced spectromicroscopy.1195Ysciescopu

Experimental investigation of high-energy photon splitting in atomic fields

The new data analysis of the experiment, where the photon splitting in the atomic fields has been observed for the first time, is presented. This experiment was performed at the tagged photon beam of the ROKK-1M facility at the VEPP-4M collider. In the energy region of 120-450 MeV, the statistics of $1.6\cdot 10^9$ photons incident on the BGO target was collected. About 400 candidates to the photon splitting events were reconstructed. Within the attained experimental accuracy, the experimental results are consistent with the cross section calculated exactly in an atomic field. The predictions obtained in the Born approximation significantly differ from the experimental results.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, LaTe

Facile Synthesis of High Quality Graphene Nanoribbons

Graphene nanoribbons have attracted attention for their novel electronic and spin transport properties1-6, and because nanoribbons less than 10 nm wide have a band gap that can be used to make field effect transistors. However, producing nanoribbons of very high quality, or in high volumes, remains a challenge. Here, we show that pristine few-layer nanoribbons can be produced by unzipping mildly gas-phase oxidized multiwalled carbon nanotube using mechanical sonication in an organic solvent. The nanoribbons exhibit very high quality, with smooth edges (as seen by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy), low ratios of disorder to graphitic Raman bands, and the highest electrical conductance and mobility reported to date (up to 5e2/h and 1500 cm2/Vs for ribbons 10-20 nm in width). Further, at low temperature, the nanoribbons exhibit phase coherent transport and Fabry-Perot interference, suggesting minimal defects and edge roughness. The yield of nanoribbons was ~2% of the starting raw nanotube soot material, which was significantly higher than previous methods capable of producing high quality narrow nanoribbons1. The relatively high yield synthesis of pristine graphene nanoribbons will make these materials easily accessible for a wide range of fundamental and practical applications.Comment: Nature Nanotechnology in pres

Laser-induced etching of few-layer graphene synthesized by Rapid-Chemical Vapour Deposition on Cu thin films

The outstanding electrical and mechanical properties of graphene make it very attractive for several applications, Nanoelectronics above all. However a reproducible and non destructive way to produce high quality, large-scale area, single layer graphene sheets is still lacking. Chemical Vapour Deposition of graphene on Cu catalytic thin films represents a promising method to reach this goal, because of the low temperatures (T < 900 Celsius degrees) involved during the process and of the theoretically expected monolayer self-limiting growth. On the contrary such self-limiting growth is not commonly observed in experiments, thus making the development of techniques allowing for a better control of graphene growth highly desirable. Here we report about the local ablation effect, arising in Raman analysis, due to the heat transfer induced by the laser incident beam onto the graphene sample.Comment: v1:9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to SpringerPlus; v2: 11 pages, PDFLaTeX, 9 figures, revised peer-reviewed version resubmitted to SpringerPlus; 1 figure added, figure 1 and 4 replaced,typos corrected, "Results and discussion" section significantly extended to better explain etching mechanism and features of Raman spectra, references adde

Vertical leakage mechanism in GaN on Si high electron mobility transistor buffer layers

Control of leakage currents in the buffer layers of GaN based transistors on Si substrates is vital for the demonstration of high performance devices. Here, we show that the growth conditions during the metal organic chemical vapour deposition growth of the graded AlGaN strain relief layers (SRLs) can significantly influence the vertical leakage. Using scanning capacitance microscopy, secondary ion mass spectrometry, and transmission electron microscopy, we investigate the origins of leakage paths and show that they result from the preferential incorporation of oxygen impurities on the side wall facets of the inverted hexagonal pyramidal pits which can occur during the growth of the graded AlGaN SRL. We also show that when 2D growth of the AlGaN SRL is maintained a significant increase in the breakdown voltage can be achieved even in much thinner buffer layer structures. These results demonstrate the importance of controlling the morphology of the high electron mobility transistor buffer layer as even at a very low density the leakage paths identified would provide leakage paths in large area devices.This work was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under Grant Code Nos. EP/K014471/1 and EP/N01202X/1 and the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme Grant Agreement No. 279361 (MACONS)

The wavelet-NARMAX representation : a hybrid model structure combining polynomial models with multiresolution wavelet decompositions

A new hybrid model structure combing polynomial models with multiresolution wavelet decompositions is introduced for nonlinear system identification. Polynomial models play an important role in approximation theory, and have been extensively used in linear and nonlinear system identification. Wavelet decompositions, in which the basis functions have the property of localization in both time and frequency, outperform many other approximation schemes and offer a flexible solution for approximating arbitrary functions. Although wavelet representations can approximate even severe nonlinearities in a given signal very well, the advantage of these representations can be lost when wavelets are used to capture linear or low-order nonlinear behaviour in a signal. In order to sufficiently utilise the global property of polynomials and the local property of wavelet representations simultaneously, in this study polynomial models and wavelet decompositions are combined together in a parallel structure to represent nonlinear input-output systems. As a special form of the NARMAX model, this hybrid model structure will be referred to as the WAvelet-NARMAX model, or simply WANARMAX. Generally, such a WANARMAX representation for an input-output system might involve a large number of basis functions and therefore a great number of model terms. Experience reveals that only a small number of these model terms are significant to the system output. A new fast orthogonal least squares algorithm, called the matching pursuit orthogonal least squares (MPOLS) algorithm, is also introduced in this study to determine which terms should be included in the final model