Phytochemical analysis of flower from Pandanus odorifer (Forssk.) Kuntze for industrial application

Pandanus odorifer (Forssk.) Kuntze is an economically important aromatic plant. The essential oil from male flowers is widely used in aromatherapy, cosmetics and as food flavouring agent. Phenylethyl methyl ether (PEME), the major constituent of essential oil, gives the chief characteristic fragrance to the oil. In the present study, 180 samples from 12 different regions were collected and hydrodistilled for essential oil isolation. The oil was then subjected to GC and GC-MS analysis to find out the percentage of the constituents. The results revealed PEME as the major constituent ranging from 58.03 to 81.86% and terpinen-4-ol, the second major constituent ranging from 7.81 to 21.46%. Soil nitrogen was found to be the most influential factor for oil yield and PEME content. The flowers containing high essential oil yield and PEME content could be used as elite chemotypes with enough potential for large-scale commercial cultivation to meet the demand of kewda industries.     

Conversion of hydrogen sulfide to elemental sulfur byChlorobium thiosulfatophilum in a CSTR with a sulfur-settling separator

Chlorobium thiosulfatophilum may be used for the bioconversion of hydrogen sulfide to elemental sulfur or sulfate. Sulfur is the preferred product because of problems in the disposal of sulfate. A CSTR with a sulfur-settling separator has been used to preferentially produce and recover elemental sulfur. The simple nutritional requirements of the bacterium and differences in densities and average cell and sulfur particle sizes make a CSTR with a sulfur-settling separator attractive. A bench-scale study has been carried out to determine the optimum process conditions to maximize H₂S conversion, cell growth, elemental sulfur production, and to minimize sulfate production. The liquid effluent typically contained about 425–550 mg/L elemental sulfur. The sulfate concentration was maintained at levels below 100 mg/L. It was possible to remove up to 57 Μmol min⁻¹ L⁻¹ of H₂S from the gas stream. An experiment over a period of 392 h showed stable performance. For Presentation at the Fifteenth Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, Colorado Springs, CO.     

Quantum Integrability in Systems with Finite Number of Levels

We consider the problem of defining quantum integrability in systems with finite number of energy levels starting from commuting matrices and construct new general classes of such matrix models with a given number of commuting partners. We argue that if the matrices depend on a (real) parameter, one can define quantum integrability from this feature alone, leading to specific results such as exact solvability, Poissonian energy level statistics and to level crossings.     

The role of hydrogen bonding in water-metal interactions

The hydrogen bond interaction between water molecules adsorbed on a Pd <111> surface, a nucleator of two dimensional ordered water arrays at low temperatures, is studied using density functional theory calculations. The role of the exchange and correlation density functional in the characterization of both the hydrogen bond and the water-metal interaction is analyzed in detail. The effect of non local correlations using the van der Waals density functional proposed by Dion et al. [M. Dion, H. Rydberg, E. Schr?der, D. C. Langreth and B. I. Lundqvist, Phys. Rev. Lett., 2004, 92, 246401] is also studied. We conclude that the choice of this potential is critical in determining the cohesive energy of water-metal complexes. We show that the interaction between water molecules and the metal surface is as sensitive to the density functional choice as hydrogen bonds between water molecules are. The reason for this is that the two interactions are very similar in nature. We make a detailed analogy between the water-water bond in the water dimer and the water-Pd bond at the Pd <111> surface. Our results show a strong similarity between these two interactions and based on this we describe the water-Pd bond as a hydrogen bond type interaction. These results demonstrate the need to obtain an accurate and reliable representation of the hydrogen bond interaction in density functional theory.     

Rounded multi-level microchannels with orifices made in one exposure enable aqueous two-phase system droplet microfluidics

Exposure of a negative photoresist-coated glass slide with diffused light from the backside through a mask with disconnected features provides multi-level rounded channels with narrow orifices in one exposure. Using these structures, we construct microfluidic systems capable of creating aqueous two-phase system droplets where one aqueous phase forms droplets and the other aqueous phase forms the surrounding matrix. Unlike water-in-oil droplet systems, aqueous two-phase systems can have very low interfacial tensions that prevent spontaneous droplet formation. The multi-level channels fabricated by backside lithography satisfy two conflicting needs: (i) the requirement to have narrowed channels for efficient valve closure by channel deformation and (ii) the need to have wide channels to reduce the flow velocity, thus reducing the capillary number and enhancing droplet formation.     

Presence detection under optimum fusion in an ultrasonic sensor system

Reliable presence detection is a requirement in energy-efficient occupancy-adaptive indoor lighting systems. A system of multiple ultrasonic sensors is considered for presence detection, and the performance gain from optimum fusion is studied. Two cases are considered wherein an individual sensor determines presence based on (i) local detection by processing echoes at its receiver, and (ii) the optimum Chair-Varshney fusion rule using multiple sensor detection results. The performance gains of using optimum fusion over local detection are characterized under different sensor system configurations and it is shown that improved detection sensitivity is obtained over a larger detection coverage region.     

Speech enhancement using a generic noise codebook

Although single-microphone noise reduction methods perform well in stationary noise environments, their performance in non-stationary conditions remains unsatisfactory. Use of prior knowledge about speech and noise power spectral densities in the form of trained codebooks has been previously shown to address this limitation. While it is possible to use trained speech codebooks in a practical system, the variety of noise types encountered in practice makes the use of trained noise codebooks less practical. This letter presents a method that uses a generic noise codebook for speech enhancement that can be generated on-the-fly and provides good performance.     

Do current-density nonlinearities cut off the glass transition?

Extended mode-coupling theories for dense fluids predict that nonlinear current-density couplings cut off the singular "ideal glass transition" present in the standard mode-coupling theory where such couplings are ignored. We suggest here that, rather than allowing for activated processes as sometimes supposed, contributions from current-density couplings are always negligible close to a glass transition. We discuss in schematic terms how activated processes can nonetheless cut off the transition by causing the memory function to become linear in correlators at late times.     

Exact solution of a large class of interacting quantum systems exhibiting ground state singularities

We demonstrate how to construct a large class of interacting quantum systems for which an exact solution may be found for the ground state wave function and ground state energy for some range of interaction parameters. It is shown that the ground state exhibits singularities in these cases, and in some simple instances the exact ground state phase diagram and critical indices are also found.