Independent component analysis of 2-D electrophoresis gels

We present a novel application of independent component analysis (ICA), an exploratory data analysis technique, to two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) gels, which have been used to analyze differentially expressed proteins across groups. Unlike currently used pixel-wise statistical tests, ICA is a data-driven approach that utilizes the information contained in the entire gel data. We also apply ICA on wavelet-transformed 2-DE gels to address the high dimensionality and noise problems typically found in 2-DE gels. Also, we use an analysis-of-variance (ANOVA) approach as a benchmark for comparison. Using simulated data, we show that ICA detects the group differences accurately in both the spatial and wavelet domains. We also apply these techniques to real 2-DE gels. ICA proves to be much faster than ANOVA, and unlike ANOVA it does not depend on the selection of a threshold. Application of principal component analysis reduces the dimensionality and tends to improve the performance by reducing the noise.     

Investigation of boiling heat transfer coefficients of different refrigerants for low fin,Turbo-B and Thermoexcel-E enhanced tubes using computational smart schemes

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - The design and manufacture of highly efficient evaporators and heat exchangers in cooling machinery need an accurate estimation of the boiling heat...     

A PVC-membrane bulk optode for gallium(III) ion determination

An optical probe responsive to gallium(III) ion has been developed. The gallium sensing system was prepared by incorporating 4-(p-nitrophenyl azo)-pyrocatechol (NAP) as ionophore in a plasticized PVC membrane containing tributylphosphate (TBP) as plasticizer. The sensing membrane in contact with gallium ion at pH 3.5, changes color from yellow-brown to pink-brown. Under optimum conditions, the proposed membrane displayed a linear range of 5-83 μM with a limit of detection of 4 μM. The response time of the membrane was within 10-15 min depending on the concentration of Ga³⁺ ions. The selectivity of the probe towards gallium determination was found to be very good. Experimental results showed that the probe could be used as an effective tool in analyzing the gallium content of water samples.     

Artificial neural networks for simultaneous spectrophotometric differential kinetic determination of Co(II) and V(IV)

A method for simultaneous analysis of V(IV) and Co(II) has been developed by using artificial neural network (ANN). This method is based on the difference of the chemical reaction rate of V(IV) and Co(II) with Fe(III) in the presence of chromogenic reagent, 1,10-phenanthroline. The reduced product of the reaction, Fe(II), can form a colored complex with 1,10-phenanthroline and make a visible spectrophotometric signal for indirect monitoring of the V(IV) and Co(II) concentrations. Feed forward neural networks have been trained to quantify considered metal ions in mixtures under optimum conditions. The networks were shown to be capable of correlating reduced spectral kinetic data using principal component analysis (PCA) of mixtures with individual metal ion. In this way an ANN containing three layers of nodes was trained. Sigmoidal and linear transfer functions were used in the hidden and output layers, respectively, to facilitate nonlinear calibration. Both V(IV) and Co(II) were analyzed in the concentration range of 0.1-4.0 μg ml⁻¹. The proposed method was also applied satisfactorily to the determination of considered metal ions in several synthetic and water samples.     

Electrochemical Sensors,a Bright Future in the Fabrication of Portable Kits in Analytical Systems

Analysis of food, pharmaceutical, and environmental compounds is an inevitable issue to evaluate quality of the compounds used in human life. Quality of drinking water, food products, and pharmaceutical compounds is directly associated with human health. Presence of forbidden additives in food products, toxic compounds in water samples and drugs with low quality lead to important problems for human health. Therefore, attention to analytical strategy for investigation of quality of food, pharmaceutical, and environmental compounds and monitoring presence of forbidden compounds in materials used by humans has increased in recent years. Analytical methods help to identify and quantify both permissible and unauthorized compounds present in the materials used in human daily life. Among analytical methods, electrochemical methods have been shown to have more advantages compared to other analytical methods due to their portability and low cost. Most of big companies have applied this type of analytical methods because of their fast and selective analysis. Due to simple operation and high diversity of electroanalytical sensors, these types of sensors are expected to be the future generation of analytical systems. Therefore, many scientists and researchers have focused on designing and fabrication of electroanalytical sensors with good selectivity and high sensitivity for different types of compounds such as drugs, food, and environmental pollutants. In this paper, we described the mechanism and different examples of DNA, enzymatic and electro‐catalytic methods for electroanalytical determination of drug, food and environmental compounds.     

Kinetic spectrophotometric determination of traces of sulfide

A method for the determination of sulfide based on the addition reaction of sulfide with magenta at pH 7 and 25 degrees C is described. The decrease in absorbance of magenta at 540 nm, its lambda(max), over a fixed time is proportional to the concentration of sulfide over the range of 25-2500 ng ml(-1). The limit of detection was found to be 15 ng ml(-1). Ten replicate analysis of a sample solution containing 1.5 mug ml(-1) sulfide gave a relative standard deviation of 0.8%. The effects of various cations and anions on sulfide determination have been reported and procedures for removal of interferences have been described.     

Direct Electrochemistry and Electrocatalytic Properties of Hemoglobin Immobilized on Carbon Nanotubes Ionic Liquid Electrode

Hemoglobin (Hb) was directly immobilized on a multiwalled carbon nanotubes ionic liquid electrode by immersing this electrode in a solution consisting of Hb and 1‐octyl‐pyridinium chloride as an ionic liquid. The immobilized Hb displayed a pair of well‐defined cyclic voltammetric peaks with a formal potential of ?0.187 V in acetate buffer solution, pH 5.0. This modified electrode exhibits fast response, a long linearity range, a low detection limit, high stability and excellent sensitivity through hydrogen peroxide detection with a detection limit (3σ) of 3.18 µM. The electrode was also used for electrocatalysis and voltammetric determination of oxygen and trichloroacetic acid.     

Active methods to control periodic acoustic disturbances invoking Q-learning techniques

This paper presents a new solution to the Active Noise Control problem based on the Q-learning algorithm. Unlike other common methods, this feedback method does not require any additional information about the primary and secondary transfer functions and it is fully robust to subsystems dynamics changes. The basic method is addressed for periodic acoustic disturbances at first. A number of challenges such as the need for the large memory block and long convergence time have led to the establishment of some new suggestions. These modifications have improved the system performances and decreased the computational burden. It is shown by simulation that these methods are robust not for in the subsystems dynamics changes but also at the presence of measurement noise.     

Silver‐Palladium Nanoalloys Modified Carbon Ionic Liquid Electrode with Enhanced Electrocatalytic Activity Towards Formaldehyde Oxidation

Electrocatalysis of the oxidation of formaldehyde on silver‐palladium‐modified carbon ionic liquid electrode (AgPd/CILE) was investigated in 0.1 M NaOH. The electrochemical performance of the AgPd/CILE was compared with those of Pd/CILE and Ag/CILE. Ag plays an important role in the catalytic performance of AgPd nanocatalyst and yields an excellent antifouling effect. Amperometric measurements showed that AgPd/CILE is a promising sensor for the detection of formaldehyde in the range of 10.0 µM–70.0 mM with a sensitivity of 240.6 µA mM^?1 cm^?2 and a detection limit of 2 µM. The method is free from interference of methanol, ethanol and formic acid.     

Wide range pH measurements using a single H(+)-selective chromoionophore and a time-based flow method

A hydrophilic transparent triacetyl cellulose membrane was adopted as a pH optode by immobilizing highly selective and sensitive Nile blue indicator on the membrane. Contrary to the common procedure for determinations using optodes, in which a steady state response is measured, a new approach is introduced in which the dynamic response of the optode is used as the analytical signal. While in common procedures, pH optodes exhibit limited linear dynamic range (often 2–4 pH units only), it is shown that in a time-based flow method, an optode with only one acid-base indicator can be used for measurement in the pH range of 0–10. The procedure is simple, inexpensive and rapid.