Mineral Profile of Some Dried Fruits

The aim of this work was to determine the content of 16 elements in the seven samples of dried fruits: plums (Prunus domestica), figs (Ficus carica), apricots (Prunus armeniaca), white and black raisins (Vitis vinifera), dates (Phoenix dactylifera) and cranberries (Vaccinium oxycoccus), which are available in local markets. Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) was used after wet digestion method. Potassium is the most common macroelement while boron and zinc are the most common microelements. As, Cd and Hg were not detected while the content of Pb is below the MAC. The obtained results were statistically analyzed and compared with the literature values

Optimization and Kinetic Modelling of Total Phenols and Flavonoids Extraction from Tilia cordata M. Flowers

The main goal was to optimize and establish the kinetics and the thermodynamics of the extraction process. An investigation into the effects of ethanol  concentration (0–100 %), liquid to solid ratio (30–60 mL g–1), extraction temperature (25–65 °C), and extraction time (40–200 min) on the extraction of total  phenols (TP) and total flavonoids (TF) from linden (Tilia cordata M.) flowers was performed using single-factor experiments. Experimental results  showed that extraction conditions had a significant effect on the extraction of phenolic compounds. The optimized conditions were 50 % ethanol, liquid  to solid ratio 60 mL g–1 for 120 min at 55 °C, with values of 17.05 mg GAE g–1 dry weight (d.w.) for TP and 13.32 mg CE g–1 d.w. for TF. Extracted phenolic  compounds were analyzed by HPLC. The antioxidant activity of the extracts was evaluated by DPPH and ABTS assays. The applicability of different  mathematical models (model based for the unsteady diffusion through the plant material, model based on the film theory and model of Ponomaryov) to  describe the kinetics of the extraction process of TP and TF from linden flowers was studied as well. The mathematical models applied showed a good  agreement with the experimental results, which allows their application in modelling and optimizing the solid/liquid extraction process to extract TP and  TF from linden flowers.&nbsp

Kinetika ekstrakcije vanilinske kiseline iz semena bundeve

In this sdudy, the extraction of vanillic acid from pumpkin seeds, using the maceration process, were investigated. The influence of temperature (25-45oC) and time (10-100 min) on the content of vanillic acid in extracts was confirmed. Based on the experimental results of the extraction of kinetics, a modeling of pumpkin seeds-40% ethanol (v/v) extraction system was performed using hyperbolic model. Also, based on the average values of the RMS, SD and R2, it was found that the hyperbolic model show acceptable agreement.U ovom radu proučena je ekstrakcija vanilinske kiseline iz semena bundeve primenom postupka meceracije. Ispitan je uticaj temperature (25-45oC) i vremena (10-100 min) ekstrakcije na sadržaj vanilinske kiseline u ekstraktima. Na osnovu eksperimentalnih rezultata kinetike ekstrakcije izvešeno je modelovanje ekstrakcionog sistema seme bundeve-40% etanol (v/v) primenom hiperbolnog modela. Takođe, na osnovu srednjih vrednosti RMS, SD i R2 modelovanih i eksperimentalnih vrednosti sadržaja vanilinske kiseline, utvrđeno je da hiperbolni model pokazuje prihvatljivo slaganje

THE DYEING PROCESS OF KNITTED FABRICS AT DIFFERENT TEMPERATURES USING ULTRASOUND

The dyeing of knitted fabrics made from 100 % cellulose using on-line procedure vinyl sulfonic reactive dye, with or without ultrasound energy, is carried out in this paper. The impact of temperature has been observed. The dye exhaustion is monitored using the method of absorption spectrophotometry, and the quality control of the coloration is monitored using color measurements. The acting of ultrasound on coloration consistency, as well as on some mechanical characteristics has also been examined. All examples of the ultrasound dyeing process show greater dye exhaustion in comparison to the conventional procedure. In addition, all the samples, which have been dyed with the ultrasound energy at 40°C, are significantly darker and have deeper color in comparison with the referent sample. The temperature has a great influence on kinetic energy of the dye molecules, and therefore on the diffusion processes in the dyeing system. The exhaustion chart indicates that when the temperature is lower the exhaustion degree drops. However, all the samples dyed with the ultrasound energy have bigger exhaustion. Besides that, ultrasound energy contributes to warming up the processing environment, so the additional warm up with the electricity is unnecessary, unlike the conventional way of dyeing. Since the reactive dyes chemically connect themselves with the cellulose substrate and in that way form covalent connection, the dyed fabrics have good washing consistency. Analysis results indicate that the consistencies are identical regardless the applied dyeing procedure. In other words, the dyeing method using the ultrasound energy produces the dyed fabric of the same quality. After analyzing the results of breaking force and elongation at break of knitted fabrics, it is noticeable that there is no degradation of previously mentioned knitted fabrics features (horizontally and vertically) during the ultrasound wave’s activity

DYEING OF KNITTED MICRO-VISCOSE IN THE PRESENCE OF ULTRASOUND WITH DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES

In dyeing process, the object is to transport or diffuse dyes and chemicals into the fibre. Various novel processes, including ultrasound, are being introduced and studied as more environmentally friendly alternatives. Encouraging results have been reported for the use of ultrasound energy in dyeing processes of micro-viscose. The recent studies revealed major ultrasound applications advances: savings of processing time, energy, chemicals, as well as environmental protection. Influence of various ultrasound frequencies (40, 200 and 400 kHz) on dyeing of micro-viscose knitted fabrics, by a reactive dye has been reported in this work. A method of reflection spectrophotometry has been employed to record reemission curves of the colored compounds. A software packet has been employed to calculate CIELab colored coordinates. Then, a comparison has been made with samples colored by conventional procedure according to CIELab76 and CMC (2:1) criteria. The use ultrasound in textile dyeing processing offers many potential advantages. The results prove better dye exhaustion by ultrasound and consequently the better fixing. The exhaustion for the bifunctional dye (containing two vinylsulphone groups) reaches 71.75 % without ultrasound, and 83.69 % with 400 kHz ultrasound. The 40 kHz, 150 W ultrasound causes a cavitation of higher intensity, compared to 200 and 400 kHz ultrasounds. In this particular case, destruction of cavitation bubbles is very intensive. That is why a large amount of cavitation energy is being transformed into a heat, yielding the additional bath heating. The ultrasounds with higher frequencies (200 and 400 kHz) cannot use such a strong power. The applied powering this case reaches 0.6 W. The cavitation bubbles are now smaller the cavitation disintegration is not so strong, and the energy loss is much smaller, i.e. a smaller amount of energy has been transformed into a heat. An ultrasound of an equal power, but of higher frequency contributes to the somewhat higher exhaustion and fixing. The ultrasound dyeing produces much obscured colours, compared the standard. The differences are evident and not negligible. The comparison of the samples treated ultrasound of different frequencies during dyeing revealed the higher coulours intensities with the increase of ultrasound frequencies of the equal power (200 and 400 kHz). However, the increase is not so expressed

Content of Trace Metals in Medicinal Plants and their Extracts

The heavy metals (Fe, Cu, Zn and Mn) contents of selected plant species, grown in Southeast region of Serbia, that are traditionally used in alternative medicine were determined. Among the considered metals, iron content was the highest one and varied from 137.53 up to 423.32 mg/kg, while the contents of Cu, Zn and Mn were remarkably lower, and ranged from 8.91 to 62.20 mg/kg. In addition, an analysis of plants extracts showed a significant transfer of heavy metals during extraction procedure; therefore, the corresponding extraction coefficients reached values up to 88.8%. Those were especially high in the ethanol based extracts. Moreover, it is was established that such coefficients mostly depend on the solvent nature and also on the treated plant species. The obtained results impose that medicinal plants from Southeast region of Serbia due to rather low content of heavy metals are appropriate for preparation of teas and medicinal extracts

Phenolic Profile and Antioxidant Activity of Pulp and Peel from Peach and Nectarine Fruits

Peach (Prunus persica L.) is a fruit of high nutritional and economic value. Carbohydrates, dietary fibers, minerals and organic acids are among the major constituents of peach fruit, which contribute to the nutritional quality of both fresh fruits and juice. Polyphenolic compounds found in peach may play an important role in physiological functions related to human health. Different polyphenolics may have varied biological activities including antioxidant activity. In this study antioxidant characteristics between peel and pulp of different peach cultivars (‘RadmilovÄanka’, ‘June Gold’, ‘Blake’, ‘Hale’, ‘Vesna’, ‘Adria’) and one of nectarine (‘Fantasia’) were investigated. The peel and pulp extracts showed a huge amount of total phenolics (TP), total flavonoids (TF), total hydroxycinnamates (TH) and total flavonols (TFL), ranging from 42.7-211.4, 11.1-128.5 mg GAE/100 g fresh weight (f.w.) (TP), 21.9 -94.9, 5.0-58.9 mg CE/100 g f.w. (TF), 28.4-389.2, 8.5-165.8 mg kg-1 f.w. (TH) and 17.3-54 mg kg-1 f.w. (TFL). High contents of phenolic compounds were significantly correlated with high antioxidant capacities. Peach pulp and peel differ significantly in their phenolic profiles: the pulp contains mainly chlorogenic, neochlorogenic and p-coumaric acids, whereas the peel possesses chlorogenic, neochlorogenic and p-coumaric acids together with several flavonol glycosides in huge amounts. Our results indicate that cultivar and extraction solvent play important roles in phenolic compositions and antioxidant properties of peach and nectarine extracts, which was shown using statistical analysis (ANOVA). There are high correlations between extracted phenolic compounds and peach and nectarine cultivars, and used solvent and part of the fruit (peel and pulp)

A rapid and reliable determination of doxycycline hyclate by HPLC with UV detection in pharmaceutical samples

An accurate, sensitive and reproducible high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the quantification of doxycycline hyclate in pharmaceutical samples has been developed and validated. The drug and the standard were eluted from a Lichrosorb RP-8 (250 mm´4.6 mm, 10 mm particle size) at 20 °C with a mobile phase consisting of methanol, acetonitrile and 0.010 M aqueous solution of oxalic acid (2:3:5, v/v/v). The flow rate was 1.25 ml min-1. A UV detector set at 350 nm was used to monitor the effluent. Each analysis required no longer than 4 min. The limits of detection and quantification were 1.15 and 3.84 μg ml-1, respectively. Recoveries for different concentrations ranged from 99.58 to 101.93 %

Hyperlactatemia and the Outcome of Type 2 Diabetic Patients Suffering Acute Myocardial Infarction

Background. Increased lactate production is frequent in unregulated/complicated diabetes mellitus. Methods. Three groups, each consisting of 40 patients (type 2 diabetics with myocardial infarction, DM+AMI, nondiabetics suffering myocardial infarction, MI, and diabetics with no apparent cardiovascular pathology, DM group), were tested for pH, serum bicarbonate and electrolytes, blood lactate, and CK-MB. Results. Blood lactate levels were markedly higher in AMI+DM compared to MI group (4.54±1.44 versus 3.19±1.005 mmol/L, p<0.05); they correlated with the incidence of heart failure (ρ=0.66), cardiac rhythm disorders (ρ=0.54), oxygen saturation (ρ=0.72), CK-MB levels (ρ=0.62), and poor short-term outcome. Lactic acidosis in DM+AMI group was not always related to lethal outcome. Discussion. The lactate cutoff value associated with grave prognosis depends on the specific disease. While some authors proposed cutoff values ranging from 0.76 to 4 mmol/L, others argued that only occurrence of lactic acidosis may be truly predictive of lethal outcome. Conclusion. Both defective glucose metabolism and low tissue oxygenation may contribute to the lactate production in diabetic patients with acute myocardial infarction; high lactate levels indicate increased risk for poor outcome in this population comparing to nondiabetic patients. The rise in blood lactate concentration in diabetics with AMI was associated with increased incidence of heart failure, severe arrhythmias, cardiogenic shock, and high mortality rate

Primena disperzivne mikroekstrakcije čvrstom fazom kao tehnike pripreme uzoraka za GC – MS analizu PAU u vodi

The aim of this paper is to determine the efficiency of D-µ-SPE with application of novel sorbents as a technique for sample preparation of water samples for the analysis of 16 priority PAHs by GC-MS. The sample preparation technique proved to be very fast, efficient and economical. The results of the proposed method demonstrate that this technique can be applied for routine analysis of PAHs in water. The advantages of this method are characterized by low values of limit of detection (from 0.147 ppb for benzo [a] anthracene to 0.784 ppb for naphthalene) and the limit of quantification (0.717 ppb for naphthalene to 9.459 ppb for benzo [k] fluorantene.Ciljevi istraživanja ovog rada su određivanje efikasnosti disperzivne mikroekstrakcije čvrstom fazom (D-µ-SPE) kao tehnike pripreme uzoraka vode za analizu 16 prioritetnih PAU gasnom hromatografijom sa masenom spektrometrijom, primenom novih sorbenasa. Tehnika pripreme uzoraka pokazala se kao veoma brza, efikasna i ekonomična. Rezultati predložene metode dokazuju da se ova tehnika može primeniti kao tehnika pripreme uzoraka za rutinsku analizu PAU u vodi. Prednosti ovakovog načina analize odlikuju se niskim vrednostima granice detekcije (od 0.147 ppb za benzo[a]antracen do 0.784 ppb za naftalen) i granice kvatifikacije (0.717 ppb za naftalen do 9.459 ppb za benzo[k]fluoranten)