In recent decades, functional foods with ingredients comprising probiotics, prebiotics and postbiotics have been gaining a lot of attention from scientists. Probiotics and postbiotics are usually ...applied in pharmaceutical formulations and/or commercial food-based products. These bioactive agents can be associated with host eukaryotic cells and have a key role in maintaining and restoring host health. The review describes the concept of postbiotics, their quality control and potential applications in pharmaceutical formulations and commercial food-based products for health promotion, prevention of disease and complementary treatment. Despite the effectiveness of probiotic products, researchers have introduced the concept of postbiotic to optimize their beneficial effects as well as to meet the needs of consumers to provide a safe product. The finding of recent studies suggests that postbiotics might be appropriate alternative agents for live probiotic cells and can be applied in medical, veterinary and food practice to prevent and to treat some diseases, promote animal health status and develop functional foods. Presently scientific literature confirms that postbiotics, as potential alternative agents, may have superiority in terms of safety relative to their parent live cells, and due to their unique characteristics in terms of clinical, technological and economical aspects, can be applied as promising tools in the drug and food industry for developing health benefits, and therapeutic aims.
This study proposes an efficient data collection strategy exploiting a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor and collect the data of a large distributed sensor network usually used for ...environmental monitoring, meteorology, agriculture, and renewable energy applications. The study develops a collaborative mission planning system that enables a team of UAVs to conduct and complete the mission of sensors’ data collection collaboratively while considering existing constrains of the UAV payload and battery capacity. The proposed mission planner system employs the differential evolution optimization algorithm enabling UAVs to maximize the number of visited sensor nodes given the priority of the sensors and avoiding redundant collection of sensors’ data. The proposed mission planner is evaluated through extensive simulation and comparative analysis. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness and fidelity of the proposed mission planner to be used for the distributed sensor network monitoring and data collection.
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DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Purpose
Reinforcement learning methods have shown promising results for the automation of sub-tasks in robotic surgery systems. With the development of these methods, surgical robots have been able ...to achieve good performances, so that they can be used in complex and high-risk environments such as surgical pattern cutting to reduce stress and pressure on the surgeon and increase surgical accuracy. This study has aimed at providing a deep reinforcement learning-based approach to control the gripper arm when cutting soft tissue in a continuous action space.
Methods
Surgical soft tissue cutting in this study is performed by controlling the gripper arm in a continuous action space and a grid observation space. In the proposed method using deep reinforcement learning, we find an optimal tensioning policy in the continuous action space that increases the cutting accuracy of the predetermined pattern.
Results
The simulation results demonstrated that in the cutting of many complex patterns, the proposed method works better than the methods in which the tensioning was performed in a discrete action space and the observation space was modeled as a partial and random representation.
Conclusion
We introduced a deep reinforcement learning-based method for obtaining the optimal tensioning policy in a continuous action space when cutting a predetermined pattern. We showed that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art method in the soft pattern cutting task with respect to accuracy.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Sulfur-based polymers are unique renewable materials that are receiving a growing attention. The utilization of elemental sulfur with a variety of monomers in their preparation in the absence of ...solvents using the inverse vulcanization are granting them green nature and unique properties. Several characterization techniques have been used to evaluate the properties of sulfur-based polymers. However, the complex structure and lack of solubility undermine the applicability of some standard characterization techniques in the usual manners. This article reviews the characterization methods used for the evaluation of various properties of sulfur-based polymers such as chemical, morphological, structural, thermal, rheological and mechanical properties, all of which vary depending on the type of comonomer involved in the reaction and heat treatment conditions. The successful applications of different characterization techniques including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), scanning electron microscopy/X-ray energy dispersion (SEM-EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), mechanical tester, rheometer, thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) are discussed. The challenges to the evaluation of the properties of sulfur-based polymers and the innovative applications of the conventional techniques to overcome them are also deliberated.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Silicon does not emit light efficiently, therefore the integration of other light‐emitting materials is highly demanded for silicon photonic integrated circuits. A number of integration approaches ...have been extensively explored in the past decade. Here, the most recent progress in this field is reviewed, covering the integration approaches of III‐V‐to‐silicon bonding, transfer printing, epitaxial growth and the use of colloidal quantum dots. The basic approaches to create waveguide‐coupled on‐chip light sources for different application scenarios are discussed, both for silicon and silicon nitride based waveguides. A selection of recent representative device demonstrations is presented, including high speed DFB lasers, ultra‐dense comb lasers, short (850nm) and long (2.3μm) wavelength lasers, wide‐band LEDs, monolithic O‐band lasers and micro‐disk lasers operating in the visible. The challenges and opportunities of these approaches are discussed.
This article reviews the most recent progress of the field of silicon integrated light sources. Novel integration approaches of III‐V‐to‐silicon bonding, transfer printing, epitaxial growth and the use of colloidal quantum dots are discussed and recent representative demonstrations are presented. The challenges and perspectives of these approaches are also discussed.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
A two-wheeled mobile robot, namely Kian-I, is designed and prototyped in this research. The Kian-I is comparable with Khepera-IV in terms of dimensional specifications, mounted sensors, and ...performance capabilities and can be used for educational purposes and cost-effective experimental tests. A motion control architecture is designed for Kian-I in this study to facilitate accurate navigation for the robot in an immersive environment. The implemented control structure consists of two main components of the path recommender system and trajectory tracking controller. Given partial knowledge about the operation field, the path recommender system adopts B-spline curves and particle swarm optimization algorithm to determine a collision-free path curve with translational velocity constraint. The provided optimal reference path feeds into the trajectory tracking controller enabling Kian-I to navigate autonomously in the operating field. The trajectory tracking module eliminates the error between the desired path and the followed trajectory through controlling the wheels’ velocity. To assess the feasibility of the proposed control architecture, the performance of Kian-I robot in autonomous navigation from any arbitrary initial pose to a target of interest is evaluated through numerous simulation and experimental studies. The experimental results demonstrate the functional capacities and performance of the prototyped robot to be used as a benchmark for investigation and verification of various mobile robot algorithms in the laboratory environment.
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DOBA, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
In this study, we examined the effects of seven different sulfur treatments on safflower seeds. The treatments included: no sulfur application (S0), 25 kg/ha of pure bulk sulfur (S25), 50 kg/ha of ...pure bulk sulfur (S50), 25 kg/ha of sulfur phosphate (Sp25), 50 kg/ha of sulfur phosphate (Sp50), 25 kg/ha of zinc sulfate (Zs25), and 50 kg/ha of zinc sulfate (Zs50). Our evaluation covered various seed quality attributes, including ash percentage (ASH), oil percentage (OIL), and protein percentage (PRO). Additionally, we analyzed the fatty acid composition, including palmitic acid 16 : 0 (PAL), stearic acid 18 : 0 (STE), oleic acid 18 : 1 (OLE), linoleic acid 18 : 2 (LINL), arachidic acid 20 : 0 (ARA), and linolenic acid 18 : 3 (LINN). The vector-view of the biplot illustrated positive associations among the fatty acids STE, PAL, and OLE, whereas ASH exhibited negative associations with OIL, LINL, and LINN. The polygon-view graph was divided into four sectors, with the genotype S50 emerging as the top performer for attributes such as OIL, PRO, LINL, ARA, and LINN. Treatment Zs50 occupied the vertex of another sector and displayed the highest values for palmitic acid PAL, STE, and OLE, while treatment S0 was positioned at the vertex of the next sector, characterized by its high ASH content. By utilizing the ideal tester tool of treatment by trait biplot, we identified OIL as the desirable trait that most effectively represented the data. The qualitative properties of safflower oil were notably influenced by sulfur application, with treatment S50 proving to be the most effective in enhancing these properties.
Heracleum persicum Desf. ex Fischer seeds are a rich source of essential oils (EOs) with high antimicrobial and antioxidant effects. In order to determine the phytochemical variability in various ...Iranian H. persicum populations, seed samples were collected from 10 different climatic locations. The current study indicated that hexyl butyrate (20.9–44.7%), octyl acetate (11.2–20.3%), hexyl-2-methylbutyrate (4.81–8.64%), and octyl 2-methyl butyrate (3.41–8.91%) were the major components of the EOs. The maximum (44.7%) and the minimum (20.9%) content of hexyl butyrate were obtained from Kaleibar and Sari populations, respectively. Moreover, the octyl acetate content ranged from 2% (in Mahdasht) to 20.3% in Torghabeh population. The CA and PCA analysis divided the 10 Iranian H. persicum populations into three major groups. Populations from Khanghah, Kaleibar, Shebeilo, Showt, Mahdasht, and Amin Abbad showed a distinct separation in comparison with the other populations, having high contents of hexyl butyrate (39.8%) and low contents of octyl acetate (13.5%) (Chemotype II). According to correlation analysis, the highest correlation coefficient was among habitat elevation and hexyl butyrate content. In addition, the mean annual precipitation was negatively correlated with the content of hexyl butyrate. Although octyl acetate content showed high correlation with soil EC and mean annual temperature, it was not statistically significant. In general, in order to have plants with a high content of hexyl butyrate, it is recommended to harvest these plants from regions with high altitude and low rainfall such as Kaleibar.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
We demonstrate the integration of waveguide-coupled germanium photodiodes onto passive silicon waveguide circuits by means of transfer printing. This involves the release of the photodiodes from the ...silicon-on-insulator source wafer by underetching the buried oxide layer while protecting the back-end stack. Tethers were formed to keep the released photodiode coupons in place. Coupons were then transfer printed to a silicon photonic target wafer with an alignment accuracy better than ±1 μm. 0.66 A/W waveguide-referred photodiode responsivity at 1550 nm was obtained. High-speed measurements yielded open eye diagrams at 40 Gb/s.
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