Kiwifruit Actinidin: A Proper New Collagenase for Isolation of Cells from Different Tissues

Actinidin is a cysteine protease abundant in Kiwifruit. This enzyme is known as a meat-tenderizing protease. In this project, actinidin was purified from kiwifruit by salt precipitation and ion exchange chromatography. Collagenolytic effect of the purified enzyme was tested in four different buffer systems. Thereafter, the enzyme was used for isolation and culture of cells from three different tissues: endothelial cells from human umbilical vein, hepatocytes from rat liver, and thymic epithelial cells from rat thymus. Our results revealed that actinidin can hydrolyze collagen types I and II at neutral and alkaline buffers. Furthermore, actinidin compared with type II or IV collagenase isolated intact human umbilical vein endothelial cells, hepatocytes, and thymic epithelial cells with viability more than 90%. These results address a novel and valuable collagenase, which can be used efficiently for hydrolysis of collagen and isolation of different cell populations from various solid tissues.     

Nanoneedle method for high-sensitivity low-background monitoring of protein activity

We describe a new method for measuring the activity of protein in miniscule quantities using a carbon nanotube nanoneedle. The unique features of this new method are (a) the immobilization of a few molecules; (b) subsequent translocation and isolation of them near the tip of a position-actuated nanoneedle; and (c) a fixed, defined, and unhindered molecular position to allow rapid real-time sensing and monitoring. The kinetic bioactivity of immobilized alkaline phosphatase (AP) molecules was measured as test model. Results show no decrease in enzymatic activity compared to that of the solution-phase enzyme reaction, suggesting that the immobilization provided unhindered access for ligand binding and minimal conformational modulation caused by undesired surface interactions.     

Magnetic solid-phase extraction of warfarin and gemfibrozil in biological samples using polydopamine-coated magnetic nanoparticles via core-shell nanostructure

Herein, polydopamine-coated Fe₃O₄ spheres were synthesized using a very simple, easy, cost-effective, efficient, and fast method. First, magnetic nanoparticles (Fe₃O₄) were synthesized and were followed by accommodating polydopamine on the surface of the prepared Fe₃O₄. The prepared polydopamine-coated Fe₃O₄ spheres were utilized as a sorbent in magnetic solid phase extraction of gemfibrozil and warfarin (as the model analytes). The extracted model analytes were desorbed by a suitable organic solvent and were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography. Under optimized condition, the linearity of the method was in the range of 0.1–200.0 μg/L for the selected analytes in water. The limits of detection were calculated to be in the range of 0.026–0.055 μg/L for warfarin and gemfibrozil, respectively. The limits of quantification were calculated to be in the range of 0.089–0.185 μg/L. The inter-day and intra-day relative standard deviations were determined to be in the range of 1.4%–3.3% in three concentrations in order to calculate the method precision. Furthermore, the enrichment factors were found to be 78 and 81 for warfarin and gemfibrozil, respectively. Moreover, the calculated absolute recoveries were between 78% and 81%. The obtained recoveries indicated that the method was useful and applicable in complicated real samples.     

On the global convergence rate of the gradient descent method for functions with Hölder continuous gradients

The gradient descent method minimizes an unconstrained nonlinear optimization problem with \({\mathcal {O}}(1/\sqrt{K})\), where K is the number of iterations performed by the gradient method. Traditionally, this analysis is obtained for smooth objective functions having Lipschitz continuous gradients. This paper aims to consider a more general class of nonlinear programming problems in which functions have Hölder continuous gradients. More precisely, for any function f in this class, denoted by \({{\mathcal {C}}}^{1,\nu }_L\), there is a \(\nu \in (0,1]\) and \(L>0\) such that for all \(\mathbf{x,y}\in {{\mathbb {R}}}^n\) the relation \(\Vert \nabla f(\mathbf{x})-\nabla f(\mathbf{y})\Vert \le L \Vert \mathbf{x}-\mathbf{y}\Vert ^{\nu }\) holds. We prove that the gradient descent method converges globally to a stationary point and exhibits a convergence rate of \({\mathcal {O}}(1/K^{\frac{\nu }{\nu +1}})\) when the step-size is chosen properly, i.e., less than \([\frac{\nu +1}{L}]^{\frac{1}{\nu }}\Vert \nabla f(\mathbf{x}_k)\Vert ^{\frac{1}{\nu }-1}\). Moreover, the algorithm employs \({\mathcal {O}}(1/\epsilon ^{\frac{1}{\nu }+1})\) number of calls to an oracle to find \({\bar{\mathbf{x}}}\) such that \(\Vert \nabla f({{\bar{\mathbf{x}}}})\Vert <\epsilon \).     

On the Stability of a k-Cubic Functional Equation in Intuitionistic Fuzzy n-Normed Spaces

In this paper, we investigate some stability results concerning the k-cubic functional equation f(kx + y) + f(kx?y) = kf(x + y) + kf(x?y) + 2k(k²?1)f(x) in the intuitionistic fuzzy n-normed spaces.     

Roller bearing acoustic signature extraction by wavelet packet transform,applications in fault detection and size estimation

Continuous online monitoring of rotating machines is necessary to assess real-time health conditions so as to enable early detection of operation problems and thus reduce the possibility of downtime. Rolling element bearings are crucial parts of many machines and there has been an increasing demand to find effective and reliable health monitoring technique and advanced signal processing to detect and diagnose the size and location of incipient defects. Condition monitoring of rolling element bearings, comprises four main stages which are, statistical analysis, fault diagnostics, defect size calculation, and prognostics. In this paper the effect of defect size, operating speed, and loading conditions on statistical parameters of acoustic emission (AE) signals, using design of experiment method (DOE), have been investigated to select the most sensitive parameters for diagnosing incipient faults and defect growth on rolling element bearings. A modified and effective signal processing algorithm is designed to diagnose localized defects on rolling element bearings components under different operating speeds, loadings, and defect sizes. The algorithm is based on optimizing the ratio of Kurtosis and Shannon entropy to obtain the optimal band pass filter utilizing wavelet packet transform (WPT) and envelope detection. Results show the superiority of the developed algorithm and its effectiveness in extracting bearing characteristic frequencies from the raw acoustic emission signals masked by background noise under different operating conditions. To experimentally measure the defect size on rolling element bearings using acoustic emission technique, the proposed method along with spectrum of squared Hilbert transform are performed under different rotating speeds, loading conditions, and defect sizes to measure the time difference between the double AE impulses. Measurement results show the power of the proposed method for experimentally measuring size of different fault shapes using acoustic emission signals.     

Sonochemical syntheses of xanthene derivatives using zeolite-supported transition metal catalysts in aqueous media

An efficient green method for the syntheses of biologically active xanthene derivatives by use of zeolite-supported transition metal catalysts is described. A Fe-Cu/ZSM-5 heterogeneous catalyst has the highest activity in the one-pot syntheses with a wide range of aldehydes and cyclic 1,3-diketones, under ultrasonic irradiation in water at ambient temperatures. The three-component condensation in the presence of supported metal catalysts is operationally simple, requires no expensive or toxic reagents, and gives high yields in short reaction times.     

Temperature-assisted ionic liquid-based dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction with following back-extraction for HPLC/UV–Vis determination of 3-indole acetic acid in pea plants

In this work, the ionic liquid (IL)[C₆mim][PF₆] was used as IL-based extractant for dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction, followed by back-extraction and HPLC/UV–Vis determination of 3-indole acetic acid (IAA) in pea plant. The effects of some crucial factors such as chemical structure and volume of IL, pH adjustment, dissolution temperature, extraction time, centrifugation time, and ionic strength of aqueous sample were studied. The linear range of the HPLC method for IAA quantification was 17.5 × 10^?2–36.8 mg L^?1. LOD, LOQ, method recovery, and preconcentration factor values were 0.170 mg L^?1, 0.175 mg L^?1, 98.3, and 40 %, respectively. The RSD for the suggested method was calculated as 0.93 % at 35.04 mg L^?1 of IAA and each IL phase was able to be reused for at least four DLLME/back-extraction cycles. To evaluate the applicability of the suggested method, IAA was determined in pea plant samples.