Consumers' pursuit to a healthy lifestyle has promoted people to develop new technologies that can prolong the shelf life of food without the use of preservatives. Compared with other types of ...preservation, edible microcapsules containing essential oils (EOs) are becoming more and more popular especially the starch microcapsules containing essential oil (EOs-starch microcapsules) because of their environmentally friendly, healthier characteristics and the ability to carry active ingredients. In addition, the EOs-starch microcapsules can also reduce the flavor influence and prolong the action time of essential oil on food through its slow release effect, which can promote the use of EOs in food. Understanding the different collocation of edible starch microcapsules and EOs and the related antibacterial mechanism will be more effective and targeted to promote the application of EOs in the real food system. The review focus on the contribution of EOs-starch microcapsules to prolong the shelf life of food products, (1) binding characteristics of EOs-starch microcapsules were analyzed, (2) systematically summarizing the main materials and methods for preparing the EOs-microcapsules, (3) specifically addressing the action mechanisms of EOs-starch microcapsules on microorganism, (4) discussing the applications of EOs-starch microcapsules in specific food.
Scope
Urolithin A (UA), a gut‐microbiota‐derived metabolite of ellagic acid, presents various benefits to intestinal microecology. The presence of “gut‐muscle axis” regulating the onset and ...progression of exercise‐related physical frailty and sarcopenia has been recently hypothesized. This study aims to explore the underlying mechanism of gut‐muscle axis by which UA enhances muscle strength and fatigue resistance of sleep‐deprived (SD) mice.
Methods and results
UA is gavaged to C57BL/6 mice (50 mg kg−1 bw) before 48‐h SD. The results indicate that pretreatment of UA significantly enhances motor ability and energy metabolism. The inflammation is suppressed, and intestinal permeability is improved after prophylactic treatment with UA. The decreased level of serum lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is concomitant with augmentation of the intestinal tight junction proteins. 16s rRNA analysis of colonic contents reveals that UA significantly reduces the abundance of Clostridia_UCG‐014 and Candidatus_Saccharimonas, and upregulates Lactobacillus and Muribaculaceae. UA probably influences on gut microbial functions via several energy metabolism pathways, such as carbon metabolism, phosphotransferase system (PTS), and ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters.
Conclusions
The dietary intervention of UA helps to create a systemic protection, a bidirectional communication connecting the gut microbiota with muscle system, able to alleviate SD‐induced mobility impairment and gut dysbiosis.
Urolithin A (UA) is a major gut‐derived metabolite from foods rich in ellagitannins and ellagic acid, such as pomegranate, berries, and nuts. It probably enhances the muscle strength and muscular endurance of sleep deprived mice by restoring intestinal barrier function and gut microbiota homeostasis from the perspective of the gut‐muscle axis.
Hardware implementation in resource-efficient reservoir computing is of great interest for neuromorphic engineering. Recently, various devices have been explored to implement hardware-based ...reservoirs. However, most studies were mainly focused on the reservoir layer, whereas an end-to-end reservoir architecture has yet to be developed. Here, we propose a versatile method for implementing cyclic reservoirs using rotating elements integrated with signal-driven dynamic neurons, whose equivalence to standard cyclic reservoir algorithm is mathematically proven. Simulations show that the rotating neuron reservoir achieves record-low errors in a nonlinear system approximation benchmark. Furthermore, a hardware prototype was developed for near-sensor computing, chaotic time-series prediction and handwriting classification. By integrating a memristor array as a fully-connected output layer, the all-analog reservoir computing system achieves 94.0% accuracy, while simulation shows >1000× lower system-level power than prior works. Therefore, our work demonstrates an elegant rotation-based architecture that explores hardware physics as computational resources for high-performance reservoir computing.
Aromatic essential oils (EO) are important plant extracts that have attracted great interest for their various biological activities and their potential to replace chemical preservatives in the field ...of food preservation. Moreover, the volatility of EOs has further expanded their applications in antibacterial packaging (AP) systems.
This review focuses on the contributions of EOs to food packaging by (1) introducing the antibacterial activity of EOs; (2) summarizing the implementation of EO-APs; (3) analyzing the applications of EO-APs in food preservation; and (4) assessing the safety of EOs.
Understanding the different combinations of EOs and food packaging will help improve the effectiveness of EO-APs in food preservation and better target their use, which will promote their application in food systems. By combining them with packaging materials, the adverse flavor of EOs can be reduced and their action time prolonged, which will greatly improve their effective utilization rate in food preservation.
•Essential oils can be used as ingredients of active food packaging.•Introduced the main active ingredients and antibacterial effects of EOs commonly used in food preservation.•Focused on summarizing the implementation of EOs-AP.•Analyzed the application of EOs-AP in food preservation.
Analog RRAM with hundreds of resistance levels is an attractive device for neuromorphic computing. However, it is still very challenging to realize good analog behavior in filamentary RRAM cells. In ...this letter, we developed a novel methodology to improve the analog switching in filamentary RRAM. The impact of local temperature on analog switching behavior is elucidated. The transition from abrupt switching to analog switching is found at higher temperature. Based on this result, a thermal enhanced layer (TEL) is proposed to confine heat in switching layer for realizing analog RRAM. The HfO x /TEL RRAM shows analog switching characteristics with more than ten times window using 50-ns pulses. Finally, a 1-kb analog RRAM array is demonstrated with uniform analog switching, fast speed, excellent resistance window, and excellent retention properties.
Southeast Asia (SEA) is a region affected by landslide and wildfire; however, few studies on susceptibility modeling for the two hazards together have been conducted for this region, and the ...intersection and the uncertainty of the two hazards are rarely assessed. Thus, the intersection of landslide and wildfire susceptibility and the spatial uncertainty of the susceptibility maps were studied in this paper. Reliable landslide and wildfire susceptibility maps are necessary for disaster management and land use planning. This work used three advanced ensemble machine learning algorithms: RF (Random Forest), GBDT (Gradient Boosting Decision Tree) and AdaBoost (Adaptive Boosting) to assess the landslide and wildfire susceptibility for SEA. A geo-database was established with 2759 landslide locations, 1633 wildfire locations and 18 predictor variables in total. The performances of the models were assessed using the overall classification accuracy (ACC), Precision, the area under the ROC (receiver operating curve) (AUC) and confusion matrix values. The results showed RF performs superior in both landslide (ACC = 0.81, Precision = 0.78 and AUC= 0.89) and wildfire (ACC= 0.83, Precision = 0.83 and AUC = 0.91) susceptibility modeling, followed by GBDT and AdaBoost. The overall superiority of RF over other models indicates that it is potentially an efficient model for landslide and wildfire susceptibility mapping. The landslide and wildfire susceptibility were obtained using the RF model. This paper also conducted an overlay analysis of the two hazards. The uncertainty of the susceptibility was further assessed using the coefficient of variation (CV). Additionally, the distance to roads is relatively important in both landslide and wildfire susceptibility, which is the most important in landslides and the second most important in wildfires. The result of this paper is useful for mastering the whole situation of hazard susceptibility and proves that RF is a robust model in the hazard susceptibility assessment in SEA.
Brain‐inspired neuromorphic computing has attracted considerable attention due to its potential to circumvent the “von Neumann bottleneck” and mimic human brain activity in electronic systems. The ...key to developing high‐performance and energy‐efficient neuromorphic computing systems lies in the realization of electronic devices that can closely mimic biological synapses. Resistive random‐access memory (RRAM) has shown some important properties for implementing synaptic functions, including analog weight storage and analog switching. Herein, the recent progress in analog‐type RRAM is reviewed. The mechanisms underlying the analog switching behavior in RRAM and different types of synaptic plasticity based on the analog switching behavior are discussed. Methods to improve the analog switching behavior and synaptic plasticity are then illustrated. Finally, a summary and a perspective on future research are presented.
Chemical synthesis of amino acids directly from biomass feedstock is rare. Reported here is a one‐step protocol to convert crude glycerol, from the biodiesel industry, into 43 % alanine over a ...Ru1Ni7/MgO catalyst. The multifunctional catalytic system promotes glycerol conversion into lactic acid, and then into alanine. X‐ray absorption spectroscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy revealed the existence of bimetallic RuNi species, whereas density‐functional theory calculations suggested Ni‐doped Ru substantially decreased the Ea of C−H bond dissociation of lactate alkoxide to form pyruvate, which is the rate‐determining step. The catalytic route established in this work creates new opportunities for glycerol utilization and enriches the substrate scope of renewable feedstock to access value‐added amino acids.
Direct conversion: 43 % alanine was achieved from crude glycerol over a Ru1Ni7/MgO catalyst. Ni‐doped Ru remarkably promoted lactic acid amination, a key step in the reaction. The catalytic route creates new opportunities for glycerol utilization and enriches the substrate scope of renewable feedstock to access value‐added amino acids.
Surface where microwaves reach firstly is significantly important on microwave shielding. However, the construction of surface multiple structure to enhance microwave shielding property is still a ...great challenge. Herein, conductive micro-cracks and micro-wrinkles are designed on surface of flexible copper/polydimethylsiloxane-carbon nanotubes to enhance excellent shielding performance. The surface microstructures can be tuned by controllably tailoring the carbon nanotube (CNT) concentration, substrate thickness, and pre-stretching strain before copper sputtering deposition. At the same thickness and CNT content, the amount of micro-cracks and micro-wrinkles grows as pre-stretching strain increases, which effectively boosts specific surface area and micro-capacitance effect on the surface, thus enhancing the electromagnetic wave shielding effectiveness of the composites. Meanwhile, the micro-cracks can cause the surface conductivity to be considerably orientated, which in turn severely affected the field distribution and conduction losses on the surface of the composites. Furthermore, the experimental and simulation results are consistent concerning the effect of surface micro-cracks and micro-wrinkles on microwave shielding performance.
Display omitted
•Surface micro-wrinkles and micro-cracks tune EMI shielding properties.•Proportion and size for micro-cracks and micro-wrinkles can be well regulated.•More micro-wrinkles and micro-cracks gives higher EMI SE and lower R values.•Surface micro-cracks affect distributions of electric field and current density.•Micro-cracks enhance interfacial polarization and endow micro-capacitance effect.
HfOx‐based memristor has been studied extensively as one of the most promising memories for the excellent nonvolatile data storage and computing‐in‐memory capabilities. However, the resistive ...switching mechanism, relying on the formation and rupture of conductive filaments (CFs) during device operations, is still under debate. In this work, the CFs with different morphologies after different operations—forming, set, and reset—are clearly revealed for the first time by 3D reconstruction of conductive atomic force microscopy (c‐AFM) images. Intriguingly, multiple CFs are successfully observed in HfOx‐based memristor devices with three different resistive states. CFs after forming, set, and reset exhibit the typical morphologies of hourglass, inverted‐cone, and short‐cone, respectively. The rupture location of CFs after the reset operation is also observed clearly. These findings reveal the microscopic behaviors underlying the resistive switching, which could pave the road to design and optimize oxide‐based memristors for both memory and computing applications.
Conductive filaments (CFs) with different morphologies after forming, set, and reset operations are clearly revealed in HfOx‐based memristors by the 3D reconstruction of c‐AFM technique. Multiple conductive filaments are successfully observed in the devices with three different resistive states. The rupture location of CFs after reset is also observed clearly.
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