Levels of Major and Minor Elements in Some Commercial Fruit Juices Available in Serbia

Purpose: To evaluate the macro- and micro-nutrient elements of some commercially available fruit juices in Serbia.Methods: Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) technique was employed for determination of the major and minor elements in samples of two different types of fruit juices - clear and cloudy.Results: Among macro-nutrient elements, potassium (K) had the highest content of 230.17 μg/g in samples of multivitamine cloudy juice. The content of K was higher in cloudy fruit juices than in clear fruit juices. The content of iron, which is among the group of trace elements, ranged from 2.237 to 5.911 μg/g in clear juices and 3.55 to 10.05 μg/g in cloudy fruit juices. Other trace elements followed the descending order copper > zinc > nickel in terms of their content. The presence of aluminum and cadmium in the tested samples of fruit juices can be toxic since they have no nutritional value, and hence may be treated as potential contaminants in these beverages.Conclusion: All the tested juices had some nutritional value for human health and the juices could be use as an additional source of these elements. The content of aluminium and cadmium are below levels permitted by national regulations.Keywords: Elements, Fruit juice, Inductively-coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry

Development and Application of Ligand-Exchange Reaction Method for the Determination of Clonazepam

Purpose: This paper presents an improved kinetic-spectrophotometric procedure for determining clonazepam (CZP) in pharmaceutical formulations and human serum.Methods: The method is based on ligand-exchange reaction. The reaction was followed spectrophotometrically by measuring the rate of change of absorbance at 425 nm in ethanolic sodium hydroxide solution.Results: The optimum operating conditions for reagent concentrations and temperature were established. Linear calibration curve was obtained in the range of 0.32 - 4.10 μg mL-1. The optimized conditions yielded a theoretical detection limit of 0.24 μg mL-1 based on the 3.3So criterion, where S0 is standard deviation of the calibration line. The interference of certain drugs, foreign ions and amino acids on the reaction rate were studied in order to assess the selectivity of the method.Conclusion: The developed method is sensitive, accurate and reproducible and could be used for routine anlysis of clonazepam in pharmaceutical preparations and serum samples.Keywords: Clonazepam, Ligand-exchange reaction, Kinetic spectrometry, Validation, Pharmaceutical preparation, Human seru

Object detection at level crossing using deep learning

Multiple projects within the rail industry across different regions have been initiated to address the issue of over-population. These expansion plans and upgrade of technologies increases the number of intersections, junctions, and level crossings. A level crossing is where a railway line is crossed by a road or right of way on the level without the use of a tunnel or bridge. Level crossings still pose a significant risk to the public, which often leads to serious accidents between rail, road, and footpath users and the risk is dependent on their unpredictable behavior. For Great Britain, there were three fatalities and 385 near misses at level crossings in 2015–2016. Furthermore, in its annual safety report, the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) highlighted the risk of incidents at level crossings during 2016/17 with a further six fatalities at level crossings including four pedestrians and two road vehicles. The relevant authorities have suggested an upgrade of the existing sensing system and the integration of new novel technology at level crossings. The present work addresses this key issue and discusses the current sensing systems along with the relevant algorithms used for post-processing the information. The given information is adequate for a manual operator to make a decision or start an automated operational cycle. Traditional sensors have certain limitations and are often installed as a “single sensor”. The single sensor does not provide sufficient information; hence another sensor is required. The algorithms integrated with these sensing systems rely on the traditional approach, where background pixels are compared with new pixels. Such an approach is not effective in a dynamic and complex environment. The proposed model integrates deep learning technology with the current Vision system (e.g., CCTV to detect and localize an object at a level crossing). The proposed sensing system should be able to detect and localize particular objects (e.g., pedestrians, bicycles, and vehicles at level crossing areas.) The radar system is also discussed for a “two out of two” logic interlocking system in case of fail-mechanism. Different techniques to train a deep learning model are discussed along with their respective results. The model achieved an accuracy of about 88% from the MobileNet model for classification and a loss metric of 0.092 for object detection. Some related future work is also discussed

Arsenic removal by magnetite-loaded amino modified nano/microcellulose adsorbents: Effect of functionalization and media size

Comparative adsorption study related to benefits of parent media size, i.e. microfibrillated cellulose (MC) versus nanocellulose (NC) support, for the preparation of magnetite (MG) based high performance adsorbent for arsenic removal was conducted. Precipitation of MG on amino terminal branched organic structure, L, either linked by maleic acid residue on NC surface (NC-MA/L) or linked by oxalyl bridge on MC surface (MC-O/L) produced NC-MA/L-MG and MC-O/L-MG adsorbents, respectively. Precipitation of nanosized MG on amino functionalized NC-MA/L and MC-O/L, performed according to optimized procedure, contributed to improved textural properties and adsorptive/kinetic performances of novel adsorbents. Adsorption capacity of arsenate, As(V), was in favor of NC-MA/L-MG (85.3 versus 18.5 mg g(-1)) while MC-O/L-MG exhibited faster kinetics (0.541 versus 0.189 g mg(-1) min(-1)). Lower capacity of arsenite, As(III), removal, 68.3 mg g(-1) for NC-MA/L-MG and 17.8 mg g(-1) for MC-O/L-MG, were obtained. Calculated activation energies, 13.28 and 10.87 kJ mol(-1) for NC-MA/L-MG and MC-O/L-MG with respect to As(V), respectively, suggest, in accordance with results of Weber-Morris fitting, that internal mass transfer controls adsorption process. Model free adsorption kinetics confirmed beneficial uses of MC-O/L-MG due to low activation energy dependence on the extent of adsorption

Improved constraints on sterile neutrino mixing from disappearance searches in the MINOS, MINOS+, Daya Bay, and Bugey-3 experiments

Searches for electron antineutrino, muon neutrino, and muon antineutrino disappearance driven by sterile neutrino mixing have been carried out by the Daya Bay and MINOS+ collaborations. This Letter presents the combined results of these searches, along with exclusion results from the Bugey-3 reactor experiment, framed in a minimally extended four-neutrino scenario. Significantly improved constraints on the θμe mixing angle are derived that constitute the most constraining limits to date over five orders of magnitude in the mass-squared splitting Δm412, excluding the 90% C.L. sterile-neutrino parameter space allowed by the LSND and MiniBooNE observations at 90% CLs for Δm412<13 eV2. Furthermore, the LSND and MiniBooNE 99% C.L. allowed regions are excluded at 99% CLs for Δm412<1.6 eV2

Structural, spectroscopic and computational study of 5-(substituted phenylazo)-3-cyano-1-ethyl-6-hydroxy-4-methyl-2-pyridones

Ten 5-(substituted phenylazo)-3-cyano-1-ethyl-6-hydroxy-4-methyl-2-pyridones were studied (five new compounds) to provide insight into the electronic effects of diverse substituents located at different positions in their phenyl moieties. The structural features of these dyes were examined by combining experimental and theoretical approaches. The crystal structures of two derivatives were revealed by X-ray crystallography and diverse packing modes owing to different intermolecular interactions (- stacking and lone pair- interactions, as well as hydrogen bonds) were found. A study on lattice energy and energy related to the molecular pairs obtained from their crystal packing was performed. The tautomerism and ionisation of the dyes in ethanol or N,N -dimethylformamide solution were rationalised in terms of diazo component substitution pattern