Conjugated linoleic acid rich vegetable oil production using heterogeneous catalysis

The invention is directed to CLA-rich vegetable oil production from linoleic rich oils by heterogeneous catalysis. The process produces conjugated PUFA in triglyceride form, preferably at least 20% CLA-rich, by isomerization of a non-conjugated PUFA in vegetable oils using a heterogeneous transition metal catalyst promoted by an organic acid and/or thiol-containing compound. The heterogeneous catalysis isomerization process can use steam/vacuum distillation, hydrogenation unit and/or deodorization to produce CLA-rich soy oil. After processing, any catalyst residue may be removed by filtration, beaching, deodorizing, adsorbents or centrifugation to obtain high quality, CLA-rich oils

Rapid and automated electrochemical method for detection of viable microbial pathogens

Describes a method for in situ detection of viable pathogenic bacteria in a selective medium by measuring cathodic peak current of oxygen on cyclic voltammograms during bacterial proliferation with an electrochemical voltammetric analyzer. The rapid oxygen consumption at a time during the growth of bacteria resulted in a sharp decline of the cathodic peak current curves. The detection times (threshold values) obtained from the cathodic peak current curve were inversely related to the concentrations of the pathogenic bacteria in the medium. This method for detection of pathogenic bacteria is more sensitive than nucleic acid-based polymerase chain reaction methods and any of antibody-based methods such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technology, electrochemical immunoassays, immunosensors, and it has a sensitivity similar to conventional culture methods and impedimetric methods but is more rapid than both of them. A calibration curve was obtained by plotting initial cell concentrations (CFU/ml) determined by conventional plate counting, as a function of the detection time

Microblog Sentiment Analysis Using User Similarity and Interaction-based Social Relations

Microblog Sentiment Analysis has become a popular research topic extensively examined in the literature. However, microblogging messages are usually short, unstructured, contain less information and much noise, creating a significant challenge for the application of traditional content-based methods. In this study, we propose a novel method, MSA-USSR, where user similarity information and interaction-based social relations information are combined to build sentiment relationships between microblogging data. We employ these microblog–microblog sentiment relations to train the sentiment polarity classifier. The experimental results on two Sina-Weibo datasets show that our model has a better sentiment classification accuracy and F1-score than the Support Vector Machine method and the state-of-the-art supervised model called SANT. In addition, it was proven that the improvement in accuracy brought by interaction-based social relations information is greater than the user similarity information, but MSA-USSR achieved the best performance when incorporating both user similarity information and users’ interaction-based social relations

A Sentinel Sensor Network for Hydrogen Sensing

A wireless sensor network is presented for in-situ monitoring of atmospheric hydrogen concentration. The hydrogen sensor network consists of multiple sensor nodes, equipped with titania nanotube hydrogen sensors, distributed throughout the area of interest; each node is both sensor, and data-relay station that enables extended wide area monitoring without a consequent increase of node power and thus node size. The hydrogen sensor is fabricated from a sheet of highly ordered titania nanotubes, made by anodization of a titanium thick film, to which platinum electrodes are connected. The electrical resistance of the hydrogen sensor varies from 245 Ω at 500 ppm hydrogen, to 10.23 kΩ at 0 ppm hydrogen (pure nitrogen environment). The measured resistance is converted to voltage, 0.049 V at 500 ppm to 2.046 V at 0 ppm, by interface circuitry. The microcontroller of the sensor node digitizes the voltage and transmits the digital information, using intermediate nodes as relays, to a host node that downloads measurement data to a computer for display. This paper describes the design and operation of the sensor network, the titania nanotube hydrogen sensors with an apparent low level resolution of approximately 0.05 ppm, and their integration in one widely useful device