Ultra high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight analysis for the identification and the determination of resveratrol and its metabolites in mouse plasma

Resveratrol is a polyphenol that has numerous interesting biological properties, but, per os, it is quickly metabolized. Some of its metabolites are more concentrated than resveratrol, may have greater biological activities, and may act as a kind of store for resveratrol. Thus, to understand the biological impact of resveratrol on a physiological system, it is crucial to simultaneously analyze resveratrol and its metabolites in plasma. This study presents an analytical method based on UHPLC-Q-TOF mass spectrometry for the quantification of resveratrol and of its most common hydrophilic metabolites. The use of ¹³C- and D-labeled standards specific to each molecule led to a linear calibration curve on a larger concentration range than described previously. The use of high resolution mass spectrometry in the full scan mode enabled simultaneous identification and quantification of some hydrophilic metabolites not previously described in mice. In addition, UHPLC separation, allowing run times lower than 10 min, can be used in studies that requiring analysis of many samples.     

New discrimination method combining hit quality index based spectral matching and voting

A new discrimination method, called hit quality index (HQI)-voting, that uses the HQI for discriminant analysis has been developed. HQI indicates the degree of spectral matching between two spectra as known. In this method, a library sample yielding the highest HQI value for an unknown sample was initially searched and a group containing this sample was chosen as the group for the unknown sample. When overall spectral features of two groups are quite close to each other, many library samples with similar HQI values could be available for an unknown sample. In this situation, the simultaneous consideration of multiple votes (several library samples with close HQI values) for final decision would be more robust. In order to evaluate the discrimination performance of HQI-voting, three different near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopic datasets composed of two sample groups were used: (1) domestic and imported sesame samples, (2) domestic and imported Angelica gigas samples, and (3) diesel and light gas oil (LGO) samples. For the purpose of comparison, principal component analysis–linear discriminant analysis (PCA–LDA), partial least squares–discriminant analysis (PLS–DA) as well as k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) were also performed using the same datasets and the resulting accuracies were compared. The discrimination performances improved with the use of HQI-voting in comparison with those resulted from PCA–LDA and PLS–DA. The overall results support that HQI-voting is a comparable discrimination method to that of existing factor-based multivariate methods.     

The Calculus of HLB Values of Polyoxyethylene Fatty Acid Esters from Quality Control Data

In this article, we obtained equations that permit us to calculate the hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB) value of polyoxyethylene esters from quality control data of the raw materials (fatty acids and polyethylene glycol) and the finished product (surfactant). These data include the acid value of the fatty acid, the hydroxyl value of the polyethylene glycol, and the hydroxyl value of the surfactant. These calculations permit us, moreover, to know the mean molecular masses of fatty acids, of polyethylene glycol, of monoester and diester, and the proportion of polyoxyethylene monoester and polyoxyethylene diester.     

Impact of Various Parameters Over the Stability of Water-in-Vegetable Oil Emulsion

Theory regarding emulsification, its coalescence and impact of emulsifier over its stability has been updated. For the verification of the proposed theory, water-in-oil emulsion was prepared by mixing water and soybean oil in the presence and absence of emulsifier, monoglyceride. The effect of different parameters like emulsification time, contents of water, and concentration of emulsifier has been investigated on the emulsification and coalescence process of the emulsion. It was noted that the emulsion quality was highest if the mixture was homogenized for about 15 minutes and the water contents were 40% v/v. The addition of monoglyceride up to 0.5% w/v gave the most stable emulsion having higher quality than other composition. The results obtained were compared with the proposed theory and found to have good compositions.      

A Quality Assurance Study for the Analysis of Hydrocarbons in Sediments

Abstract

Two exercises (MEDCAL I and II) were conducted in our Department during November 1984 and October 1986, with participants from the Mediterranean region, for testing the IOC Manual for the determination of petroleum hydrocarbons in sediments (IOC, Manuals and Guides, No. 11).

The gas chromatographic analysis of the saturated hydrocarbon fraction provided, at the best, a precision of 60% (relative standard deviation RSD) for n-alkanes (mean conc. 0.89 μg/g) and 56 % for the unresolved complex mixture (UCM) (mean conc. 16μg/g). The CPI and the pristane/phytane ratio provided better results (13% RSD). The aromatic fractions, analysed by UV-fluorescence, yielded in total a mean concentration of 10μg/g of chrysene equivalents with a 49% RSD.

The extraction-partition step was confirmed to be the main source of error in the analysis because when the results were corrected for recoveries, the RSD were reduced to 17, 30 and 6% for n-alkanes, UCM and total aromatics, respectively. Our reference intra-laboratory precision was, respectively, 18, 14 and 14%.     

基于ARM11的热力站远程水质监控系统设计

为实现对循环水水质的远程监测,设计并开发了一种基于嵌入式技术的热力站远程水质监测系统的监测终端。监测终端由水质传感器、GPRS模块、通信转换模块及嵌入式开发板组成。嵌入式开发板以ARM11系列的Tiny6410为硬件基础,并嵌入WinCE系统作为软件平台,同时加入SQLite数据库以实现将水质传感器采集到的氯离子、PH值、溶解氧等参数的本地存储、查询及图表显示。最后监测终端通过GPRS模块与数据中心建立无线连接,接收数据中心的配置命令,并将现场测得数据发送到远端数据中心。调试结果表明：远程监测终端实现了循环水水质远程监测的功能要求,对于实现水质自动化监测具有一定的理论意义和实用价值。     

Quality by Design Approach for Development of W/O Type Microemulsion-Based Transdermal Systems for Atenolol

The objective of the present investigation was to develop microemulsion-based transdermal systems of highly water soluble drug, Atenolol, by quality by design technique. Atenolol-loaded W/O microemulsions were optimized using D-optimal design with concentrations of oil, surfactants mixture, and water as independent variables, which was converted into microemulsion-based gel (MBG). The results of in vitro permeation of the optimized batch of Atenolol-loaded MBG revealed significant increase in permeability parameters as compared to its convention gel. All results suggested suitability of W/O type MEs as carriers for transdermal delivery of highly water soluble drug, Atenolol.     

Optimization of sampling frequency for routine river water quality monitoring

Sampling frequency is an important factor to be considered during the design of a water monitoring network,and the cost-effective selection of possible ways and means for the optimization of sampling frequency is still needed.This paper introduces water pollution index deviation ratio comparison(WPI DRC),a procedure for the optimization of sampling frequency for a routine river water quality monitoring system.Sampling frequency optimized using WPI DRC at monitoring station X5 in the mainstream of Xiangjiang River is compared with that established using the traditional Statistical Algorithm method.The result of comparison indicates that WPI DRC is more feasible than the traditional one.And then,the sampling frequencies for other 16 monitoring stations also have been optimized,and the results show the sampling frequencies of all the stations except that X4 are reduced,and there is no unacceptable difference between water quality evaluation results at 17 stations before and after the optimization.Therefore,it is concluded that WPI DRC is an effective optimization process with operable results,which can be used to fulfill the requirement of practical monitoring work.     

Graph‐based resource allocation algorithms for multiuser downlink MIMO‐OFDMA networks

Multiuser multiple‐input multiple‐output orthogonal frequency division multiple access (MIMO‐OFDMA) is considered as the practical method to attain the capacity promised by multiple antennas in the downlink direction. However, the joint calculation of precoding/beamforming and resource allocation required by the optimal algorithms is computationally prohibitive. This paper proposes computationally efficient resource allocation algorithms that can be invoked after the precoding and beamforming operations. To support stringent and diverse quality of service requirements, previous works have shown that the resource allocation algorithm must be able to guarantee a specific data rate to each user. The constraint matrix defined by the resource allocation problem with these data rate constraints provides a special structure that lends to efficient solution of the problem. On the basis of the standard graph theory and the Lagrangian relaxation, we develop an optimal resource allocation algorithm that exploits this structure to reduce the required execution time. Moreover, a lower‐complexity suboptimal algorithm is introduced. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the computational and system‐level performance. It is shown that the proposed resource allocation algorithms attain the optimal solution at a much lower computational overhead compared with general‐purpose optimization algorithms used by previous MIMO‐OFDMA resource allocation approaches. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MQBV: multicast quality of service swarm bee routing for vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are witnessing in recent years a rapid development for road transmissions and are considered as one of the most important types of next generation networks, in which drivers can have access anywhere and anytime to information. However, vehicles have to deal with many challenges such as the links failures due to their frequent mobility as well as limited degrees of freedom in their mobility patterns. In this paper, we propose a new quality of service multicast and multipath routing protocol for VANETs, based on the paradigm of bee's communication, called multicast quality of service swarm bee routing for VANETs (MQBV). The MQBV finds and maintains robust routes between the source node and all multicast group members. Therefore, the average end‐to‐end delay and the normalized overhead load should be reduced, while at the same time increasing the average bandwidth and the packet delivery ratio. Extensive simulation results were obtained using ns‐2 simulator in a realistic VANET settings and demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed protocol. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.