Identification of Soybean Lipoxygenase Products by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (Ge-Ms)

Lipoxygenases (LOXs) are enzymes which catalyze peroxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids containing at least one cis, cis 1, 4-pentadiene moiety to form conjugated diene-hydroperoxides. Soybean seeds contain three LOX isoenzymes while at least five different isoenzymes are in the vegetative tissue. Lipoxygenases have been related to several functions i.e. plant growth, defense mechanisms against pathogens and pests, and lipid metabolism. Given the proposed roles of LOX isoenzymes and the presence of multiple LOX isoenzymes in soybean vegetative tissue, it is likely that individual isoenzymes play specific functions. Do the isoenzymes show differences in which products they form? The basic goal of this project was to develop a GC-MS assay to determine the product formed by soybean LOX, and determine the preferred products formed by the different isoenzymes. The complete characterization and comparison of products can give clues about the physiological roles of specific isoenzymes. In this research, linoleic acid and linolenic acid were used as substrates for LOX enzymes to analyze the primary reaction products of LOX in order to see which end of the 1, 4-pentadiene section is used in the reaction. The peroxidation of linoleic acid can take place either at Carbon atom 9 or the carbon atom 13 to form 9 hydroperoxylinoleic acid (9-HPOD) and 13-hydroperoxylinoleic acid (13 HPOD), respectively. Other reactants such as linolenic acid, which has three double bonds, can yield even more products. A GC-MS assay was developed and implemented for analysis of reaction products of LOX

Role of Effective Feed Back in Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) Designing for Faculty Development

errors in multiple choice questions (MCQs) designing by the faculty members and to obtain need assessment feedback for faculty development for MCQ designing. Methods: In this study, all MCQs submitted by faculty members of Islamic International Medical College (IIMC) over a period of one year and three months from January 2009 to April 2010 were reviewed from time to time by the assessment committee. A total of 922 MCQs were reviewed. The reviews were compiled and analyzed to find out the frequency and types of errors made inadvertently in the structure and design of MCQs. Results: During the study period, the faculty members submitted a total of 922 MCQs. Spectrum of errors in MCQs ranged from spellings to complex questions to question cues. A total of 40% items qualified for being included in final assessment Conclusion: Review process is very important in improving the quality of items

Mechanical and Microstructural Analysis of Waste Ceramic Optimal Concrete Reinforced by Hybrid Fibers Materials: A Comprehensive Study

Combining different types of fibers inside a concrete mixture was revealed to improve the strength properties of cementitious matrices by monitoring crack initiation and propagation. The contribution of hybrid fibers needs to be thoroughly investigated, considering various parameters such as fibers type and content. The present study aims to carry out some mechanical and microstructural characteristics of Waste Ceramic Optimal Concrete (WOC) reinforced by hybrid fibers. Reinforcement materials consist of three different fiber types: hook-ended steel fiber (HK), crimped steel fiber (CR) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers and the effect of their addition on the waste ceramic composites’ mechanical behaviour. Furthermore, a microstructural analysis was carried out to understand the waste ceramic matrix composition and its bonding to hybrid fibers. Results showed that the addition of hybrid fibers improved the strength characteristics of the ceramic waste composites. For instance, the existence of PVA-CR increased the tensile and flexural strength of the waste ceramic composite by 85.44% and 70.37%, respectively, with respect to the control sample (WOC). As well as hybrid fiber exhibits improved morphological properties as a result of increased pore filling with dense and compact structure, as well as increased C–H crystals and denser structure in pastes as a result of the incorporation of hybrid fibers into the concrete mix. The present experimental research shows the choice of using steel fiber with PVA as a reinforcement material. The idea of adding hybrid fiber is to prepare the economic, environmental, and technological concrete. Moreover, it offers a possibility for improving concrete’s durability, which is vital. Finally, it was concluded that steel fiber is more durable, and stiffer and provides adequate first crack strength and ultimate strength. In contrast, the PVA fiber is relatively flexible and improves the post-crack zone’s toughness and strain capacity

Literature survey about elements of manufacturing shop floor operation key performance indicators

In the era of globalisation, manufacturing industries are compelled to continuously monitor their manufacturing operations to maintain competitiveness. As a result, manufacturers have integrated several measurement models to inspect their manufacturing operations. These models comprise of a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which are capable to enumerate the effectiveness, competence, efficiency and proficiency of manufacturing operations. This paper presents a review of manufacturing shop floor operation KPIs that has been studied in the recent literature. Based on the reviewed literature author proposes various KPI elements such as: description, category, scope, formula, unit of measure, range, trend, mode of display, viewers and manufacturing approach. These elements can help manufacturers to better describe, classify, analyze and measure the appropriate KPIs for their shop floor operations. Thus, enabling manufacturers to accomplish and uphold great quality, increased productivity and throughput

Manufacturing enhancement through reduction of cycle time using time-study statistical techniques in automotive industry

Within the complex and competitive automotive manufacturing industry, manufacturing Cycle Time (CT) remains one of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Its reduction is of strategic importance as it contributes to time-to-market shortening, faster bottleneck detection, achieving throughput targets and improving production-resource scheduling. This paper presents a case study on CT analysis for early stage identification of the bottleneck stations and the processes in a manual assembly line that is responsible for increased manufacturing CT. The case study is conducted on an automotive seat manufacturing plant in the UK. For detailed CT analysis, CT of each station is recorded. Results of the case study shows that bottlenecks identification at an early stage can significantly enhance the overall performance of the production line

Fetal bone as a foreign body in the urinary bladder: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>A wide range of objects have been inserted into the urinary bladder posing a challenge to urologists for diagnosis and management. Most cases are associated with psychiatric disorders, senility, intoxication or autoerotic stimulation. The frequency of such cases renders them important medical conditions of the genitourinary system.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>Our case is an unusual one since fetal bone as a foreign body in the urinary bladder has not been reported in the literature. During dilatation and curettage, fetal bone migrated into the bladder wall of a 37-year-old woman and was endoscopically removed 7 years later.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A foreign body in the urinary bladder is rare and in most cases are self-inserted. Iatrogenic insertion is relatively rare especially during gynecological intervention. The presence of a foreign body in the bladder should be kept in mind when dealing with unusual cases of lower urinary tract symptoms.</p

MUST: A Multilingual Student-Teacher Learning approach for low-resource speech recognition

Student-teacher learning or knowledge distillation (KD) has been previously used to address data scarcity issue for training of speech recognition (ASR) systems. However, a limitation of KD training is that the student model classes must be a proper or improper subset of the teacher model classes. It prevents distillation from even acoustically similar languages if the character sets are not same. In this work, the aforementioned limitation is addressed by proposing a MUltilingual Student-Teacher (MUST) learning which exploits a posteriors mapping approach. A pre-trained mapping model is used to map posteriors from a teacher language to the student language ASR. These mapped posteriors are used as soft labels for KD learning. Various teacher ensemble schemes are experimented to train an ASR model for low-resource languages. A model trained with MUST learning reduces relative character error rate (CER) up to 9.5% in comparison with a baseline monolingual ASR.Comment: Accepted for IEEE ASRU 202