Composition of Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) Fruits and Leaves and emblic Leafflower (Phyllanthus emblica) Fruits

Hawthorn (Crataegus sp.) is widely distributed in the northern hemisphere (Asia, Europe and North America). It has been used as a medicinal material and food for hundreds of years both in Europe and in China. Clinical investigations and other research suggest that extracts of hawthorn fruits and leaves have multiple health effects including hypolipidaemic, anti-atherosclerotic, hypotensive, cardioprotective and blood vessel relaxing activities. Hawthorn fruit extracts have also displayed antioxidant and radical scavenging activities. Emblic leafflower fruit (Phyllanthus emblica) is widely used in Chinese and Indian traditional medicine. It has been found to have anti-cancer, hypoglycaemic and hypolipidaemic activities as well as cardioprotective effects and antioxidant activity. The fruit is currently used as a functional food targeted at obese people in China. Phenolic compounds, procyanidins (PCs), flavonols and C-glycosyl flavones in hawthorn and hydrolysable tannins in emblic leafflower fruits are considered among the major bioactive compounds in these berries. Moreover, hawthorn and emblic leafflower fruits are rich in vitamin C, triterpenoids, fruit acids, sugar alcohols and some other components with beneficial effects on the health of human beings. The aim of the thesis work was to characterise the major phenolic compounds in hawthorn fruits and leaves and emblic leafflower fruits as well as other components contributing to the nutritional profile and sensory properties of hawthorn fruits. Differences in the content and compositional profile of the major phenolic compounds, sugars, acids and sugar alcohols within various origins and species of hawthorn were also investigated. Acids, sugars and sugar alcohols in the fruits of different origins/cultivars belonging to three species (C. pinnatifida, C. brettschneideri and C. scabrifolia) of hawthorn were analysed by gas chromatography (GC-FID) and mass spectrometry (Publication I). Citric acid, quinic acid, malic acid, fructose, glucose, sorbitol and myo-inositol were found in all the subspecies. Sucrose was present only in C. scabrifolia and three cultivars of C. pinnatifida var. major. Forty-two phenolic compounds were identified/tentatively identified in fruits of C. pinnatifida var. major by polyamide column chromatography combined with high-performance liquid chromatograph-electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS) (Publication II). Ideain, chlorogenic acid, procyanidin (PC) B2, (-)-epicatechin, hyperoside and isoquercitrin were the major phenolic components identified. In addition, 35 phenolic compounds were tentatively identified based on UV and mass spectra. Eleven major phenolic compounds (hyperoside, isoquercitrin, chlorogenic acid, ideain, (-)-epicatechin, two PC dimers, three PC trimers and a PC dimer-hexoside) were quantified in the fruits of 22 cultivars/origins of three species of Chinese hawthorn by HPLC-ESI-MS with single ion recording function (SIR) (Publication III). The fruits of the hawthorn cultivars/origins investigated fell into two groups, one rich in sugars and flavonols, the other rich in acids and procyanidins. Based on the compositional features, different biological activities and sensory properties may be expected between cultivars/origins of the two groups. The results suggest that the contents of phenolic compounds, acids, sugars and sugar alcohols may be used as chemotaxonomic information distinguishing the hawthorn species from each other. Phenolic compounds in fruits and leaves of C. grayana and their changes during fruit ripening/harvesting were investigated using HPLC-UV-ESI-MS (Publication IV). (-)-Epicatechin, PC B2 and C1, hyperoside and a quercetin-pentoside were the major phenolic compounds in both fruits and leaves. Three C-glycosyl flavones (a luteolin-C-hexoside, a methyl luteolin-C-hexoside and an apigenin-C-hexoside) were present in leaves in abundance, but only at trace levels in fruits. Ideain and 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid were found in fruits only. Additionally, eleven phenolic compounds were identified/tentatively identified in both leaves and fruits (three B-type PC trimers, two B-type PC tetramers, a quercetin-rhamnosylhexoside, a quercetin-pentoside, a methoxykaempferol-methylpentosylhexoside, a quercetin-hexoside acetate, a methoxykaempferol-pentoside, chlorogenic acid and an unknown hydroxycinnamic acid derivative). The total content of phenolic compounds reached the highest level by the end of August in fruits and by the end of September in leaves. The compositional profiles of phenolic compounds in fruits and leaves of C. grayana were different from those of C. pinnatifida, C. brettschneideri, C. scabrifolia, C. pinnatifida. var. major, C. monogyna, C. laevigata and C. pentagyna. Phenolic compounds in emblic leafflower fruits were characterised by Sephadex LH-20 column chromatography combined with HPLC-ESI-MS (Publication V). A mucic acid gallate, three isomers of mucic acid lactone gallate, a galloylglucose, gallic acid, a digalloylglucose, putranjivain A, a galloyl-HHDP-glucose, elaeocarpusin and chebulagic acid represented the major phenolic compounds in fruits of emblic leafflower. In conclusion, results of this study significantly increase the current knowledge on the key bioactive and nutritional components of hawthorn and emblic leafflower fruits. These results provide important information for research on the mechanism responsible for the health benefits of these fruits.Siirretty Doriast

Faster Ray Tracing through Hierarchy Cut Code

We propose a novel ray reordering technique to accelerate the ray tracing process by encoding and sorting rays prior to traversal. Instead of spatial coordinates, our method encodes rays according to the cuts of the hierarchical acceleration structure, which is called the hierarchy cut code. This approach can better adapt to the acceleration structure and obtain a more reliable encoding result. We also propose a compression scheme to decrease the sorting overhead by a shorter sorting key. In addition, based on the phenomenon of boundary drift, we theoretically explain the reason why existing reordering methods cannot achieve better performance by using longer sorting keys. The experiment demonstrates that our method can accelerate secondary ray tracing by up to 1.81 times, outperforming the existing methods. Such result proves the effectiveness of hierarchy cut code, and indicate that the reordering technique can achieve greater performance improvement, which worth further research

Structure Evolution of Graphene Oxide during Thermally Driven Phase Transformation: Is the Oxygen Content Really Preserved?

A mild annealing procedure was recently proposed for the scalable enhancement of graphene oxide (GO) properties with the oxygen content preserved, which was demonstrated to be attributed to the thermally driven phase separation. In this work, the structure evolution of GO with mild annealing is closely investigated. It reveals that in addition to phase separation, the transformation of oxygen functionalities also occurs, which leads to the slight reduction of GO membranes and furthers the enhancement of GO properties. These results are further supported by the density functional theory based calculations. The results also show that the amount of chemically bonded oxygen atoms on graphene decreases gradually and we propose that the strongly physisorbed oxygen species constrained in the holes and vacancies on GO lattice might be responsible for the preserved oxygen content during the mild annealing procedure. The present experimental results and calculations indicate that both the diffusion and transformation of oxygen functional groups might play important roles in the scalable enhancement of GO properties

Phenolic compounds extracted by acidic aqueous ethanol from berries and leaves of different berry plants

Phenolic compounds of berries and leaves of thirteen various plant species were extracted with aqueousethanol and analyzed with UPLC-DAD-ESI-MS, HPLC-DAD, and NMR. The total content of phenolics wasconsistently higher in leaves than in berries (25–7856 vs. 28–711 mg/100 g fresh weight). Sea buckthornleaves were richest in phenolic compounds (7856 mg/100 g f.w.) with ellagitannins as the dominant compoundclass. Sea buckthorn berries contained mostly isorhamnetin glycosides, whereas quercetin glycosideswere typically abundant in most samples investigated. Anthocyanins formed the dominating groupof phenolics in most dark-colored berries but phenolic acid derivatives were equally abundant in saskatoonand chokeberry berries. Caffeoylquinic acids constituted 80% of the total phenolic content(1664 mg/100 g f.w.) in bilberry leaves. B-type procyanidins and caffeoylquinic acids were the major phenoliccompounds in hawthorn and rowanberry, respectively. Use of leaves of some species with prunasin,tyramine and b-p-arbutin, may be limited in food applications.</p

Deep eutectic solvents enable the enhanced production of n-3 PUFA-enriched triacylglycerols

Efficient synthesis of n‐3 PUFA‐enriched triacylglycerol (TAG) by the esterification of glycerol with n‐3 PUFA in deep eutectic solvents (DES) is reported. There was a 1.2‐fold increase of TAG yield in DES compared with that in the solvent‐free system. Adsorption of the produced water by DES during esterification contributed to enhance the conversion efficiency by changing the reaction equilibrium. DES also served as an effective solvent for enriching the n‐3 PUFA of TAG in the upper layer of reaction media. A TAG yield of 55% was achieved under the optimal condition. Practical Applications: Enzymatic synthesis of n‐3 PUFA‐enriched triacylglycerol (TAG) is challenged by low yields. Here, deep eutectic solvents show great potential for enhancing the production of n‐3 PUFA‐enriched TAG

Revealing the missing expressed genes beyond the human reference genome by RNA-Seq

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The complete and accurate human reference genome is important for functional genomics researches. Therefore, the incomplete reference genome and individual specific sequences have significant effects on various studies.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>we used two RNA-Seq datasets from human brain tissues and 10 mixed cell lines to investigate the completeness of human reference genome. First, we demonstrated that in previously identified ~5 Mb Asian and ~5 Mb African novel sequences that are absent from the human reference genome of NCBI build 36, ~211 kb and ~201 kb of them could be transcribed, respectively. Our results suggest that many of those transcribed regions are not specific to Asian and African, but also present in Caucasian. Then, we found that the expressions of 104 RefSeq genes that are unalignable to NCBI build 37 in brain and cell lines are higher than 0.1 RPKM. 55 of them are conserved across human, chimpanzee and macaque, suggesting that there are still a significant number of functional human genes absent from the human reference genome. Moreover, we identified hundreds of novel transcript contigs that cannot be aligned to NCBI build 37, RefSeq genes and EST sequences. Some of those novel transcript contigs are also conserved among human, chimpanzee and macaque. By positioning those contigs onto the human genome, we identified several large deletions in the reference genome. Several conserved novel transcript contigs were further validated by RT-PCR.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings demonstrate that a significant number of genes are still absent from the incomplete human reference genome, highlighting the importance of further refining the human reference genome and curating those missing genes. Our study also shows the importance of <it>de novo </it>transcriptome assembly. The comparative approach between reference genome and other related human genomes based on the transcriptome provides an alternative way to refine the human reference genome.</p

SIW-Based Devices

With the development of microwave wireless communication technology, microwave passive frequency selectivity circuits are developing toward multi-function and miniaturization. Substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) devices have good development prospects in miniaturization and integration. The research on devices based on SIW is lack unified theoretical combing. This chapter describes the novel circuits based on substrate-integrated waveguide, including filter, power divider, switch, phase shifter, diplexer, and crossover. This chapter describes the design methods and special properties of these circuits. The display of these circuits is expected to give some inspiration to your research

Path Planning Strategy for Vehicle Navigation Based on User Habits

Vehicle navigation is widely used in path planning of self driving travel, and it plays an increasing important role in people's daily trips. Therefore, path planning algorithms have attracted substantial attention. However, most path planning methods are based on public data, aiming at different driver groups rather than a specific user. Hence, this study proposes a personalized path decision algorithm that is based on user habits. First, the categories of driving characteristics are obtained through the investigation of public users, and the clustering results corresponding to the category space are obtained by log fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm (LFCM) based on the driving information contained in the log trajectories. Then, the road performance personalized quantization algorithm evaluation is proposed to evaluate roads from the user’s field of vision. Finally, adaptive ant colony algorithm is improved and used to validate the path planning based on the road performance personalized values. Results show that the algorithm can meet the personalized requirements of the user path selection in the path decision

The evolution of LPSO phase and its influence on grain size during cooling free forging

In this paper, the deformation behavior of the LPSO phase of Mg-Gd-Y-Zn-Zr and its influence on the grain size are studied during the cooling free forging deformation. Studies have shown that cooling free forging can refine different forms of LPSO phases. The lamellar and block LPSO phases are kinked and broken during the deformation process. The kink angle and the number of kinks of the lamellar phase are greater than that of the block phase. With the increase of the cooling pass, the fragmentation of the lamellar phase is more violent. The kink and broken of the LPSO phase significantly refined the grain size by dividing the grains and promoting dynamic recrystallization. The grain size has dropped significantly from 113 μ m in one pass to 12 μ m in three passes. Uniform fine structure improves alloy mechanical properties through the Hall-Petch principle. The ultimate tensile strength of three-pass alloy reaches 323.2 MPa, the yield strength reaches 239.9 MPa, and the elongation reaches 17.1%