Multiple bioactive guar gum/pullulan based composite films incorporated co-stabilized nanoemulsions of melatonin and carvacrol for mangoes preservation.

Active films displayed substantial prospects to maintain quality of tropical fruits during storage and transportation. This study developed multifunctional composite films loaded with melatonin/carvacrol nanoemulsions (MCNE) in guar gum/pullulan polysaccharide (GP) matrixes. The SEM analysis showed that MCNE was uniformly dispersed in GP film matrixes, and formed dense and continuous phase structure.

Crosslinked starch/konjac glucomannan active films containing encapsulated thymol for cherry tomatoes preservation.

Active films attracted growing interest due to environmental protection and safety of food packaging materials. In this study, we developed cross-linking corn starch/konjac glucomannan active films by incorporating thymol microcapsules (TMs). FTIR, XRD and SEM results indicated the formation of molecular interactions and good compatibility between cross-linking matrixes and TMs.

Exogenous p-coumaric acid treatment improves phenolic compounds biosynthesis of postharvest cherry tomatoes by regulating physiological metabolism.

To investigate the effect of p-coumaric acid (p-CA) on postharvest cherry tomatoes, breaker stage fruits were treated with p-CA to analyze the physiological metabolism during storage. The results showed that exogenous p-CA treatment improved the sensory quality of tomato fruits. Transcriptomics results indicated that 782 genes (339 up-regulated and 443 down-regulated) were differentially expressed between p-CA treated and control fruits.

Dual-Use Strain Sensors for Acoustic Emission and Quasi-Static Bending Measurements.

In this paper, a MEMS piezoresistive ultrathin silicon membrane-based strain sensor is presented. The sensor's ability to capture an acoustic emission signal is demonstrated using a Hsu-Nielsen source, and shows comparable frequency content to a commercial piezoceramic ultrasonic transducer. To the authors' knowledge, this makes the developed sensor the first known piezoresistive strain sensor which is capable of recording low-energy acoustic emissions.

Development of a Flexible Integrated Self-Calibrating MEMS Pressure Sensor Using a Liquid-to-Vapor Phase Change.

Self-calibration capabilities for flexible pressure sensors are greatly needed for fluid dynamic analysis, structure health monitoring and wearable sensing applications to compensate, in situ and in real time, for sensor drifts, nonlinearity effects, and hysteresis. Currently, very few self-calibrating pressure sensors can be found in the literature, let alone in flexible formats. This paper presents a flexible self-calibrating pressure sensor fabricated from a silicon-on-insulator wafer and bonded on a polyimide substrate.

Effect of pulsed electric field on soybean isoflavone glycosides hydrolysis by β-glucosidase: Investigation on enzyme characteristics and assisted reaction.

This work aimed to investigate how pulsed electric field (PEF) technology as an alternative to enhance the enzymatic hydrolysis of soybean isoflavone glycosides (SIG). To achieve it, the effect of PEF treatment on the activity, kinetics, thermodynamics and structure of β-glucosidase (β-GLU) were evaluated. The parameters for PEF-assisted hydrolysis of soybean isoflavone glycosides were optimized by response surface methodology.

[Effects of temperature increase on zooplankton size spectra in thermal discharge seawaters near a power plant, China].

Utilizing the plankton 1 (505 Μm), 2 (160 Μm), 3 (77 Μm) nets to seasonally collect zooplankton samples at 10 stations and the corresponding abundance data was obtained. Based on individual zooplankton biovolume, size groups were classified to test the changes in spatiotemporal characteristics of both Sheldon and normalized biovolume size spectra in thermal discharge seawaters near the Guohua Power Plant, so as to explore the effects of temperature increase on zooplankton size spectra in the seawaters. The results showed that the individual biovolume of zooplankton ranged from 0.

Crawling wave detection of prostate cancer: preliminary in vitro results.

Purpose: The focus of this article is to develop signal and imaging processing methods to derive an accurate estimation of local tissue elasticity using the crawling wave (CrW) sonoelastography method. The task is to reduce noise and to improve the contrast of the elasticity map.

Methods: The protocol of the CrW approach was first tested on heterogeneous elastic phantoms as a model of prostate cancers.