Movement of boron from ulexite and colemanite minerals in sapwood and heartwood of Cryptomeria japonica

This study evaluated boron diff usion from raw boron minerals ulexite and colemanite with low water solubility in comparison to disodium octaborate tetrahydrate(DOT).Tests were conducted using sugi(Cryptomeria japonica(L.)f.D.Don)sapwood and heartwood blocks conditioned to 30,60,and 90%target moisture content.The blocks were fi lled with the boron compounds through treatment holes and diff usion was observed at three assay zones across the blocks after 7,30,60 or 90-day incubation period at room temperatures.For comparison,ethylene glycol was also introduced into the holes to elevate boron diff usion.As expected,diff usion increased with increased moisture content and levels were higher at the 60%and 90%moisture levels compared to the 30%level.With some exceptions,boron levels did not follow consistent gradients with distance away from the treatment hole.Incorporation of ethylene glycol helped increase boron levels,even in heartwood blocks.Boron levels were higher from the ulexite source than from colemanite;however,DOT treatments resulted in the highest boron diff usion rates as a result of greater water solubility compared to both raw boron minerals.The results suggest that ulexite together with ethylene glycol may be useful in both sapwood and heartwood materials when kept at high moisture levels for extended periods.

Accurate and sensitive determination of hydroxychloroquine sulfate used on COVID-19 patients in human urine,serum and saliva samples by GC-MS

A rapid,accurate,and sensitive analytical method,ultrasonication-assisted spraying based fine droplet formationeliquid phase microextractionegas chromatographyemass spectrometry(UA-SFDF-LPME-GCMS),was proposed for the determination of trace amounts of hydroxychloroquine sulfate in human serum,urine,and saliva samples.To determine the best extraction strategy,several liquid and solid phase extraction methods were investigated for their efficiencies in isolation and preconcentration of hydroxychloroquine sulfate from biological matrices.The UA-SFDF-LPME method was determined to be the best extraction method as it was operationally simple and provided accurate results.Variables such as the extraction solvent,spraying number,sodium hydroxide concentration and volume,sample volume,mixing method,and mixing period were optimized for the proposed method using the onevariable-at-a-time approach.In addition,Tukey’s method based on a post hoc comparison test was employed to evaluate the significant difference between the parameters inspected.After the optimization studies,the limit of detection(LOD)and limit of quantification(LOQ)were determined to be 0.7 and 2.4 mg/kg,respectively.The sensitivity of the GC-MS system based on the LOD was enhanced approximately 440-fold when the UA-SFDF-LPME method was employed.Spiking experiments were also conducted for the human serum,urine,and saliva samples to determine the applicability and accuracy of the proposed method.Recoveries for the human serum,urine,and saliva samples were found to be in the ranges of 93.9%-101.7%,95.2%-105.0%,and 93.1%-102.3%,respectively.These results were satisfactory and indicated that the hydroxychloroquine sulfate level in the above biological samples could be analyzed using the proposed method.

Investigation of the effects of radial clearance on the screw conveyor performances for different inclinations

Screw conveyors are widely used for bulk material transportation.This study investigates the critical role of radial clearance,the gap between the screw and the conveyor body,on performance across various inclination angles.The Discrete Element Method(DEM)is employed to analyze the effects of different radial clearances on conveyor performance for concrete aggregate and sand as bulk materials.Volumetric efficiencies and capacity losses serve as key performance indicators,quantitatively assessed for each radial clearance and inclination combination.Experimental validation is conducted to corroborate the findings.In the study,the optimal radial clearance was identified as 1.5 to 3 times of the particle size.This optimal clearance minimizes the material jamming and increases the performance for screw conveyors with different inclinations and bulk material types as a result.

Comparative evaluation of boron distribution from ulexite,colemanite and DOT rods in Scots pine wood

This study evaluated boron diff usion from rods made of raw boron minerals,ulexite and colemanite with low water solubility,in comparison with di-sodium octaborate tetrahydrate(DOT).Scots pine(Pinus sylvestris L.)sapwood and heartwood blocks were conditioned to target moisture contents of 30%,60%,and 90%.The rods were inserted into the blocks through treatment holes and boron diff usion was observed at three assay zones across the blocks after 7,30,60 and 90-day-incubation at room temperature.Ethylene glycol was also inserted into the holes to improve boron diff usion.Boron levels increased with increased wood moisture content.With some exceptions,boron in the assay zones did not tend to follow consistent amount gradients with distance from the treatment hole.Boron levels from ulexite rods were higher than those from colemanite rods,with DOT rods with the highest diff usion rates as a result of higher water solubility of DOT than ulexite and colemanite.The results suggest that ulexite-based rods may be useful inthe presence of ethylene glycol in sapwood when wood is at high moisture content for extended periods.

Istanbul’s Resilience in Question:Resilience,Decision-Making Process,Planning Politics

An important environmental issue related to planning is created by the political orientation of the government in Turkey.Especially in the new millennium,the government has focused on achieving economic growth and avoiding the global economic crises as its primary targets.These priorities resulted in efficiency-oriented planning policies in which the metropolitan city of Istanbul is the main field of operation because of its capacity to become a regional centre of finance in the global economy.In this respect,Istanbul is regarded to have the capacity of fuelling the economic boost because of its historic,strategic and environmental assets.The city has become a dynamic bundle of urban operations.Existing public areas such as parks,forests,seashores are subjected to land development;renewal projects transform deteriorated poor neighbourhoods into high income neighbourhoods or inner-city attractions for tourism or globally marketed business areas with high quality offices.Vacant land which is reserved as potential green space for new developments in the plan is given new functions with high densities.This paper attempts to present how local government is pursuing these ends and legitimizing its means by abusing the earthquake risks,and how planning regulations are bent in order to pave the road for foreign and domestic capital.These actions are discussed in relation to the typology of planning approaches and the question of resilience.

A comparative analysis of text representation, classification and clustering methods over real project proposals

Purpose-When a large number of project proposals are evaluated to alocate available funds,grouping them based on their simiarites is benefciaL.Current approaches to group proposals are primarily based on manual matching of similar topics,discipline areas and keywordls declared by project applicants.When the number of proposals increases,this task becomes complex and requires excessive time.This paper aims to demonstrate how to ffctively use the rich information in the titles and abstracts of Turkish project propsals to group them atmaially.Design/methodology/approach-This study proposes a model that effectively groups Turkish project proposals by combining word embedding,clustering and classification technigues.The proposed model uses FastText,BERT and term frequency/inverse document frequency(TF/IDF)word-embedding techniques to extract terms from the titles and abstracts of project proposals in Turkish.The extracted terms were grouped using both the clustering and classification techniques.Natural groups contained within the corpus were discovered using k-means,k-means++,k-medoids and agglomerative clustering algorithms,Additionally,this study employs classification approaches to predict the target class for each document in the corpus.To classify project proposals,var ious classifiers,including k nearest neighbors(KNN),support vector machines(SVM),artificial neural networks(ANN),cassftcation and regression trees(CART)and random forest(RF),are used.Empirical experiments were conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method by using real data from the Istanbul Development Agency.Findings-The results show that the generated word embeddings an fftvely represent proposal texts as vectors,and can be used as inputs for dustering or casificatiomn algorithms.Using clustering algorithms,the document corpus is divided into five groups.In adition,the results demonstrate that the proposals can easily be categoried into predefmned categories using cassifiation algorithms.SVM-Linear achieved the highest prediction accuracy(89.2%)with the FastText word embedding.method.A comparison of mamual grouping with automatic casification and clutering results revealed that both classification and custering techniques have a high sucess rate.Research limitations/implications-The propsed mdelatomatically benefits fromthe rich information in project proposals and significantly reduces numerous time consuming tasks that managers must perform manually.Thus,it eliminates the drawbacks of the curent manual methods and yields significantly more acurate results.In the future,additional experiments should be conducted to validate the proposed method using data from other funding organizations.Originality/value-This study presents the application of word embedding methods to eftively use the rich information in the titles and abstracts of Turkish project proposals.Existing research studies focus on the automatice grouping of proposals;traditional frequency-based word embedding methods are used for feature extraction methods to represent project proposals.Unlike previous research,this study employs two outperforming neural network-based textual feature extraction techniques to obtain termns representing the proposals:BERT as a contextual word embedding method and F astText as a static word embedding method.Moreover,to the best of our knowledge,there has been no research conducted on the grouping of project proposals in Turkish.

A block-based selection method for road network generalization

When road symbols are shown in a size proportionate to the reduced scale,several problems of legibility may arise concerning the urban blocks.By the method proposed in this paper,in order to overcome these problems,urban block areas are enlarged through amalgamation and the intervening roads in the amalgams are eliminated.This method includes two new approaches for computation of threshold used in determination of important roads based on the connectivity measure,and for definition of minimum block space and area requirements based on graphic limits.A block life cycle was designed for amalgamation of blocks.For the amalgamation process,a new algorithm was developed.The experimental testing indicates that important roads and the roads surrounding the urban area have been preserved.A simpler and more legible road network has been acquired.This method can be described as a more holistic approach as the buildings are taken into account.The problems arising in the experimental testing indicate that the cartographic selection/elimination process is not sufficient by itself for road network generalization,which can be assumed as one of the integral parts of Digital Earth.As well as the selection/elimination,processes such as displacement and caricaturizing are also needed.

Characterisation and functional roles of a highly branched dextran produced by a bee pollen isolate Leuconostoc mesenteroides BI-20

Lactic Acid Bacteria(LAB)from different niches can be responsible for the production of distinct exopolysaccharides(EPS)that might possess important structural and technological features.In this respect,the aim of this study was to isolate an EPS producer LAB strain from bee pollen environment.Leuconostoc mesenteroides BI-20 with a slimy-mucoid colony morphology was identified from bee pollen and the structural,technological and functional characteristics of EPS produced by this strain were determined.EPS BI-20 was a highly branched dextran containing 20%(1→3)-linked α-D-glucose branches determined by ^(1)H and ^(13)C NMR analysis.The presence of(1→6)/(1→3)-linkedα-D-glucose linkages in dextran BI-20 was also confirmed by FTIR analysis.Dextran BI-20,with a molecular weight of 1×10^(8) Da,possessed strong thermal properties,amorphous nature and highly branched and fibrous microstructural characteristics determined by DSC,TGA,XRD and SEM analysis,respectively.In terms of functional roles,dextran BI-20 demonstrated strong antioxidant capacity detected by ABTS and CUPRAC tests.Finally,no digestion was observed in dextran BI-20 under simulated gastric conditions.Results of this study unveiled techno-functional characteristics of dextran BI-20 produced by a bee pollen isolate LAB strain.

Prevalence of Clostridium spp.,in Kashar cheese and efficiency of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Lactococcus lactis subsp.lactis mix as a biocontrol agents for Clostridium spp.

Clostridium sporogenes and Clostridium tepidium strains were detected in traditional Kashar cheese samples with late blowing characteristics.To control Clostridium spp.,in Kashar cheese,dairy originated Lactic Acid Bacteria(LAB)strains were tested under in vitro conditions and during Kashar production.Two strains,Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Lactococcus lactis subsp.lactis demonstrated anticlostridial activity in vitro and the co-inoculum of these two strains(107 cfu g^(-1))were tested during the challenge test on Kashar cheese production in which a contamination ratio of 10^(4) cfu g^(-1) with spores of Cl.sporogenes were applied.Kashar samples were stored at 4℃ and 25℃ during 40 days of storage period and microbiological and physicochemical properties of Kashar samples were determined during this period.A decrement of nearly 1 log cfu g^(-1) in Cl.sporogenes numbers was observed in Kashar samples produced with co-inoculum of Lb.plantarum and L.lactis subsp.lactis stored at 4℃ but this was not the case for the Kashar samples stored at 25℃.This study revealed the potential of distinct LAB strains to control Cl.sporogenes spores in semi-hard cheese samples as biocontrol agents at 4℃ storage.

Solving vehicle routing problem with time windows using metaheuristic approaches

Purpose-Drugs are strategic products with essential functions in human health.An optimum design of the pharmaceutical supply chain is critical to avoid economic damage and adverse effects on human health.The vehicle-routing problem,focused on finding the lowest-cost routes with available vehicles and constraints,such as time constraints and road length,is an important aspect of this.In this paper,the vehicle routing problem(VRP)for a pharmaceutical company in Turkey is discussed.Design/methodology/approach-A mixed-integer programming(MIP)model based on the vehicle routing problem with time windows(VRPTW)is presented,aiming to minimize the total route cost with certain constraints.As the model provides an optimum solution for small problem sizes with the GUROBI®solver,for large problem sizes,metaheuristic methods that simulate annealing and adaptive large neighborhood search algorithms are proposed.A real dataset was used to analyze the effectiveness of the metaheuristic algorithms.The proposed simulated annealing(SA)and adaptive large neighborhood search(ALNS)were evaluated and compared against GUROBI®and each other through a set of real problem instances.Findings-The model is solved optimally for a small-sized dataset with exact algorithms;for solving a larger dataset,however,metaheuristic algorithms require significantly lesser time.For the problem addressed in this study,while the metaheuristic algorithms obtained the optimum solution in less than one minute,the solution in the GUROBI®solver was limited to one hour and three hours,and no solution could be obtained in this time interval.Originality/value-The VRPTW problem presented in this paper is a real-life problem.The vehicle fleet owned by the factory cannot be transported between certain suppliers,which complicates the solution of the problem.

Comparison of the probiotic characteristics of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) isolated from sourdough and infant feces

Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms with certain characteristics such as survival under gastrointestinal conditions,adhesion to intestinal surface and different functions which result in several health benefits to host.With this regards,this study aimed to isolate Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) from sourdough and human feces as two different environments and to test their potential probiotic functions.In total nine distinct isolates were assessed with several probiotic functions such as in vitro adhesion to human colon cells,antimicrobial activities and survival under harsh gastrointestinal conditions.In general,distinct strains showed strong antimicrobial activity against the pathogenic and fungal strains tested in this study.Importantly,the adhesion levels to HT29 cells were determined between 0.29 % and 9.54% and Lactobacillus paracasei F7B showed the highest adhesion.All isolates tolerated the bile salt after 24 h and the infant feces isolates showed good survival characteristics at pH 4.