Mathematical models for use in planning regional water resources and energy systems

Existing and projected energy facilities will, in the near future, place major demands on the country's water resources. These demands compete with many other uses of the resources, including municipal and industrial uses, navigation, irrigation, and water quality maintenance. The possible development of coal conversion facilities presents another potential water demand. Complex public sector problems such as: 1) the extent and development of coal conversion capacity, 2) interbasin transfer of water, 3) cooling technologies for large energy facilities, 4) diversion of Lake Michigan water, and 5) allowable withdrawal and consumptive uses of river water, all arise from the interlocking nature of the water resources-energy system. Although mathematical models cannot solve these problems directly, they can be useful in gaining insight into major issues associated with policy alternatives. With the aid of such models, quantitative trends such as costs and water development patterns associated with each decision alternative can be more readily identified. In this report, mathematical models are presented for use in planning a regional allocation of water for energy facilities as well as for other water uses. These models include components for the interrelated water and energy subsystems. The use of these models in conjunction with other existing models in order to provide a better picture of the overall system is discussed. Since the models use widely available computer codes, they are practical and easy to utilize. Example applications are presented, with a discussion of computational results.U.S. Geological SurveyU.S. Department of the InteriorOpe

Anti-gout potential of selected Malaysian local fruits

This study aimed to investigate the in vitro xanthine oxidase (XO) inhibitory activity and phytochemical content of guava, water rose apple, Malay gooseberry, pineapple and ambarella. The xanthine oxidase inhibitory activity was measured spectrophotometrically at 295 nm. The phytochemical analysis tested were total phenolic, total flavonoid and total anthocyanin contents of each methanolic extract of the fruits. The highest amount of phenolic was found in ambarella (0.245 mg GAE/g) while guava had the highest amount of flavonoid (0.472 mg RE/g). Meanwhile, water rose apple had the highest anthocyanin content (5.001 mg c-3-gE/g). For the XO inhibitory activity, water rose apple displayed the lowest IC50 value (26.86 μg/mL), showing better anti-gout activity as compared to that of other fruit samples. Positive correlation between total phenolic content and XO inhibitory activity was also observed in this study. Further study on the isolation of bioactive compounds from the fruit samples that act as XO inhibitor is greatly needed in the future

Detecting Hate Speech in Memes Using Multimodal Deep Learning Approaches: Prize-winning solution to Hateful Memes Challenge

Memes on the Internet are often harmless and sometimes amusing. However, by using certain types of images, text, or combinations of both, the seemingly harmless meme becomes a multimodal type of hate speech -- a hateful meme. The Hateful Memes Challenge is a first-of-its-kind competition which focuses on detecting hate speech in multimodal memes and it proposes a new data set containing 10,000+ new examples of multimodal content. We utilize VisualBERT -- which meant to be the BERT of vision and language -- that was trained multimodally on images and captions and apply Ensemble Learning. Our approach achieves 0.811 AUROC with an accuracy of 0.765 on the challenge test set and placed third out of 3,173 participants in the Hateful Memes Challenge.Comment: Presented at NeurIPS (2020

Effect of lactarius piperatus fruiting body maturity stage on antioxidant activity measured by several biochemical assays

The effects of fruiting body maturity on antioxidant activity and antioxidants production of the wild mushroom, Lactarius piperatus, were evaluated. Several biochemical assays were used to screen the antioxidant properties: reducing power, 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging capacity, inhibition of erythrocytes hemolysis mediated by peroxyl radicals and inhibition of lipid peroxidation using the b-carotene linoleate model system. The amounts of phenols, flavonoids, ascorbic acid, b-carotene and lycopene present in the immature, mature and degraded fruiting bodies were also determined. The highest antioxidant contents and the lowest EC50 values for antioxidant activity were obtained in the mature stage with immature spores

Use of attenuated total reflectance—Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy in combination with multivariate methods for the rapid determination of the adulteration of grape, carob and mulberry PEKmez

Pekmez, a traditional Turkish food generally produced by concentration of fruit juices, is subjected to fraudulent activities like many other foodstuffs. This study reports the use of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) in combination with chemometric methods for the detection of fraudulent addition of glucose syrup to traditional grape, carob and mulberry pekmez. FTIR spectra of samples were taken in mid-infrared (MIR) range of 400–4000 cm?1 using attenuated total reflectance (ATR) sample accessory. Partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and PLS chemometric methods were built for qualitative and quantitative analysis of pekmez samples, respectively. PLS-DA models were successfully used for the discrimination of pure pekmez samples and the adulterated pekmez samples with glucose syrup. Sensitivity and specificity of 100%, and model efficiency of 100% were obtained in PLS-DA models for all pekmez groups. Detection of the adulteration ratio of pekmez samples was also accomplished using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy in combination with PLS. As a result, it was shown that ATR-FTIR spectroscopy along with chemometric methods had a great potential for determination of pekmez adulteration with glucose syrup. © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Free-radical scavenging capacity and reducing power of wild edible mushrooms from northeast Portugal: individual cap and stipe activity

The antioxidant properties of two wild edible mushroom species from the northeast of Portugal, Lactarius deliciosus (L.) Gray and Tricholoma portentosum (Fr.) Que´l., were evaluated. Methanolic extracts from the entire mushroom, the cap and the stipe, separately, were screened for their reducing power and free radical scavenging capacity by chemical assays. The total phenolic content was determined, in order to assess its effect on the extract’s antioxidant activity. Both two species showed antioxidant potential; but L. deliciosus proved to be more active. The portion of the mushroom used had an influence on the results obtained, with the cap methanolic extracts exhibiting the greatest antioxidant effect

Mudanças nos compostos bioativos e atividade antioxidante de pimentas da região amazônica.

A Embrapa Amazônia Oriental possui um Banco Ativo de Pimenteira com diferentes genótipos do gênero Capsicum, os quais ainda não foram analisados, quanto às suas características funcionais e capacidade antioxidante. Este estudo objetivou determinar os teores de ácido ascórbico, compostos fenólicos, carotenoides totais e a atividade antioxidante total, em frutos imaturos e maduros de genótipos de pimentas Capsicum spp. As concentrações de vitamina C (100,76-361,65 mg 100 g-1 nos frutos imaturos e 36,70-157,76 mg 100 g-1 nos maduros) decresceram com a maturação dos frutos. Carotenoides totais não foram detectados nos frutos imaturos, porém, nos frutos maduros, observaram-se valores de 73,80-1349,97 mg g-1, em função do genótipo. Os teores de compostos fenólicos aumentaram nos frutos maduros (147,40-718,64 mg GAE 100 g-1), para oito dos nove genótipos avaliados. Os frutos de pimenteira apresentaram significativa atividade antioxidante (55,02-92,03 mM trolox g-1 nos frutos imaturos e 39,60-113,08 mM trolox g- 1 nos maduros). Concluiu-se que o grau de maturação dos frutos influenciou nos teores de compostos bioativos dos genótipos estudados. Destacaram-se, como genótipos promissores com potencial para serem utilizados em programas de melhoramento genético, IAN-186301 e IAN-186324, pelos altos teores de carotenoides totais; IAN-186301, IAN-186311, IAN-186312 e IAN-186313, com relação às altas concentrações de ácido ascórbico; IAN-186304 e IAN-186311, pelos altos teores de compostos fenólicos; e IAN-186311, para atividade antioxidante

Effects of Harbor Shape on the Induced Sedimentation; L-Type Basin

Tsunamis in shallow water zones lead to sea water level rise and fall, strong currents, forces (drag, impact, uplift, etc.), morphological changes (erosion, deposition), dynamic water pressure, as well as resonant oscillations. As a result, ground materials under the tsunami motion move, and scour/erosion/deposition patterns can be observed in the region. Ports and harbors as enclosed basins are the main examples of coastal structures that usually encounter natural hazards with small or huge damaging scales. Morphological changes are one of the important phenomena in the basins under short and long wave attack. Tsunamis as long waves lead to sedimentation in the basins, and therefore, in this study, the relation to the current pattern is noticed to determine sedimentation modes. Accordingly, we present a methodology based on the computation of the instantaneous Rouse number to investigate the tsunami motion and to calculate the respective sedimentation. This study aims to investigate the effects of the incident wave period on an L-type harbor sedimentation with a flat bathymetry using a numerical tool, NAMI DANCE, which solves non-linear shallow water equations. The results showed that the corner points on the bending part of the basin are always the critical points where water surface elevation and current velocity amplify in the exterior and interior corners, respectively

Can macroalgae provide promising anti-tumoral compounds? A closer look at Cystoseira tamariscifolia as a source for antioxidant and anti-hepatocarcinoma compounds

Marine organisms are a prolific source of drug leads in a variety of therapeutic areas. In the last few years, biomedical, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries have shown growing interest in novel compounds from marine organisms, including macroalgae. Cystoseira is a genus of Phaeophyceae (Fucales) macroalgae known to contain bioactive compounds. Organic extracts (hexane, diethyl ether, ethyl acetate and methanol extracts) from three Cystoseira species (C. humilis, C. tamariscifolia and C. usneoides) were evaluated for their total phenolic content, radical scavenging activity against 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2'- azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) (ABTS) radicals, and antiproliferative activity against a human hepatocarcinoma cell line (HepG2 cells). C. tamariscifolia had the highest TPC and RSA. The hexane extract of C. tamariscifolia (CTH) had the highest cytotoxic activity (IC50 = 2.31 mu g/mL), and was further tested in four human tumor (cervical adenocarcinoma HeLa; gastric adenocarcinoma AGS; colorectal adenocarcinoma HCT-15; neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y), and two non-tumor (murine bone marrow stroma S17 and human umbilical vein endothelial HUVEC) cell lines in order to determine its selectivity. CTH strongly reduced viability of all tumor cell lines, especially of HepG2 cells. Cytotoxicity was particularly selective for the latter cells with a selectivity index = 12.6 as compared to non-tumor cells. Incubation with CTH led to a 2-fold decrease of HepG2 cell proliferation as shown by the bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation assay. CTH-treated HepG2 cells presented also pro-apoptotic features, such as increased Annexin Wpropidium iodide (PI) binding and dose-dependent morphological alterations in DAPI-stained cells. Moreover, it had a noticeable disaggregating effect on 3D multicellular tumor spheroids. Deme boxy cystoketal chromane, a derivative of the meroditerpenoid cystoketal, was identified as the active compound in CTH and was shown to display selective in vitro cYtotoxicitY towards HepG2 cells

Polyphenolic compounds and anthocyanin content of Prosopis nigra and Prosopis alba pods flour and their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory capacities

The aim of this study was to determine the content of total free and bound phenolic, free and bound flavonoid, anthocyanin, alkaloid and the profiles of polyphenols of the edible ripe pods of Prosopis alba and Prosopis nigra. P. alba flour showed significantly higher total (sum of Free- and Bound) phenolic content and total flavonoid compounds than P. nigra (P < 0.05) while P. nigra had higher concentrations of anthocyanins than P. alba (P < 0.05). The P. nigra flour shows a pattern characterized by the occurrence of anthocyanins (principally cyanidin-3-glucoside) as well as 14 flavonoid glycosides, with higher chemical diversity than P. alba, who shows 8 flavonoid glycosides as relevant constituents. The main compounds were quercetin O-glycosides and apigenin-based C-glycosides. The phenolic composition of two South American algarrobo pod flour is presented for the first time. The colour of the algarrobo pods is related to the content of anthocyanins. P. nigra pods having higher content of anthocyanins are darker (purple) than those of P. alba (light brown). Furthermore, the free sugar polyphenolic extracts of P. nigra and P. alba (phenolic-enriched Amberlite-retained fraction) as well as anthocyanins enriched extracts from P. nigra showed free radical scavenging activity. The P. nigra polyphenolic extracts showed activity against a pro-inflammatory enzyme (cyclooxygenase). In conclusion, algarrobo pods meal differing in colour contained biologicall active polyphenols, with possible positive impact in human health.Fil: Perez, Maria Jorgelina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán. Instituto de Quimica del Noroeste; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Cuello, Ana Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán. Instituto de Quimica del Noroeste; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Zampini, Iris Catiana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán. Instituto de Quimica del Noroeste; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Ordóñez, Roxana Mabel. Universidad Nacional de Tucuman. Facultad de Cs.naturales E Instituto Miguel Lillo. Catedra de Quimica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán. Instituto de Quimica del Noroeste; ArgentinaFil: Alberto, Maria Rosa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán. Instituto de Quimica del Noroeste; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Quispe, Cristina. Universidad de Talca; ChileFil: Schmeda Hirschmann, Guillermo. Universidad de Talca; ChileFil: Isla, Maria Ines. Universidad Nacional de Tucuman. Facultad de Cs.naturales E Instituto Miguel Lillo. Catedra de Quimica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán. Instituto de Quimica del Noroeste; Argentin