Purification of Moringa oleifera Leaves Protease by Three-Phase Partitioning and Investigation of Its Potential Antibacterial Activity

One of plant-based products for dental care is plant-based proteolytic enzymes which are principally proteases. In order not to damage the protein and bioactive content, an efficient method should be employed for their purifications. As such, three-phase partitioning (TPP) was used to purify protease from moringa (Moringa oleifera). TPP is an emerging, promising, non-chromatographic and economical technology which is simple, quick, efficient and often one-step process for the separation and purification of bioactive molecules from natural sources. It involves the addition of salt (ammonium sulphate) to the crude extract followed by the addition of an organic solvent (butanol). The protein appears as an interfacial precipitate between upper organic solvent and lower aqueous phases. The various conditions such as ammonium sulphate, ratio of crude extract to t-butanol and pH which are required for attaining efficient purification of the protease fractions were optimized. Under optimized conditions, it was seen that, 35% of ammonium sulphate saturation with 1:0.75 ratio of crude extract to t-butanol at pH 7 gave 4.94-fold purification with 96.20% activity yield of protease in the middle phase of the TPP system. The purified enzyme from Moringa oleifera has no antimicrobial effect on the pathogenic bacteria tested. However, this purified enzyme, can be considered as a promising agent, cheap, and safe source which is suitable for using in various industries.

Hybrid Strategy of Partitioned and Monolithic Methods for Solving Strongly Coupled Analysis of Inverse and Direct Piezoelectric and Circuit Coupling

The inverse and direct piezoelectric and circuit coupling are widely observed in advanced electro-mechanical systems such as piezoelectric energy harvesters.Existing strongly coupled analysis methods based on direct numerical modeling for this phenomenon can be classified into partitioned or monolithic formulations.Each formulation has its advantages and disadvantages,and the choice depends on the characteristics of each coupled problem.This study proposes a new option:a coupled analysis strategy that combines the best features of the existing formulations,namely,the hybrid partitioned-monolithic method.The analysis of inverse piezoelectricity and the monolithic analysis of direct piezoelectric and circuit interaction are strongly coupled using a partitioned iterative hierarchical algorithm.In a typical benchmark problem of a piezoelectric energy harvester,this research compares the results from the proposed method to those from the conventional strongly coupled partitioned iterative method,discussing the accuracy,stability,and computational cost.The proposed hybrid concept is effective for coupled multi-physics problems,including various coupling conditions.

Partitioning characteristics of gas channel of coal-rock mass in mining space and gas orientation method

In order to research the influence of coal-rock mass morphology of mining space on the flow law of gas,the laboratory physical model and numerical computation methods were adopted to simulate coal mining activities.The simulation results indicate that,after coal seam mining,the loose rock accumulation body of free caving,ordered rock arrangement body of plate damage rich in longitudinal and transverse fractures and horizontal fissure body formed by rock mass deformation imbalance are formed from bottom to top in the mining space.For these three types of accumulation bodies,there are essential differences in the accumulation state,rock size and gas breakover characteristics.According to this,the coal-rock mass in the mining space is classified into gas turbulence channel area,gas transitional flow channel area and gas seepage channel area.In the turbulence channel area,the gas is distributed transversely and longitudinally and gas diffuses in the form of convection with Reynolds number R_e more than100;in the transitional flow channel area,one-way or two-way gas channels are crisscross and gas is of transitional flow regime with R,.between 10 and 100.In the seepage channel area,there are a few vertical gas channels with R,.less than 10.In this paper,the researches on the gas orientation method in different partitions were further carried out,gas orientation methods of low-level pipe burying,middle-level interception and high-level extraction were determined and an on-site industrial test was conducted,achieving the effective diversion of gas and verifying the reasonableness of gas channel partition.

Automatic measurement of three-phase contact angles in pore throats based on digital images

With the help of digital image processing technology, an automatic measurement method for the three-phase contact angles in the pore throats of the microfluidic model was established using the microfluidic water flooding experiment videos as the data source. The results of the new method were verified through comparing with the manual measurement data.On this basis, the dynamic changes of the three-phase contact angles under flow conditions were clarified by the contact angles probability density curve and mean value change curve. The results show that, for water-wetting rocks, the mean value of the contact angles is acute angle during the early stage of the water flooding process, and it increases with the displacement time and becomes obtuse angle in the middle-late stage of displacement as the dominant force of oil phase gradually changes from viscous force to capillary force. The droplet flow in the remaining oil occurs in the central part of the pore throats, without three-phase contact angle. The contact angles for the porous flow and the columnar flow change slightly during the displacement and present as obtuse angles in view of mean values, which makes the remaining oil poorly movable and thus hard to be recovered. The mean value of the contact angle for the cluster flow tends to increase in the flooding process, which makes the remaining oil more difficult to be recovered. The contact angles for the membrane flow are mainly obtuse angles and reach the highest mean value in the late stage of displacement, which makes the remaining oil most difficult to be recovered. After displacement, the remaining oils under different flow regimes are just subjected to capillary force, with obtuse contact angles, and the wettability of the pore throat walls in the microfluidic model tends to be oil-wet under the action of crude oil.

Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Target Space Partitioning Method

Considering the defects of conventional optimization methods, a novel optimization algorithm is introduced in this paper. Target space partitioning method is used in this algorithm to solve multi-objective optimization problem, thus achieve the coherent solution which can meet the requirements of all target functions, and improve the population's overall evolution level. The algorithm which guarantees diversity preservation and fast convergence to the Pareto set is applied to structural optimization problems. The empirical analysis supports the algorithm and gives an example with program.

Symplectic partitioned Runge-Kutta method based onthe eighth-order nearly analytic discrete operator and its wavefield simulations

We propose a symplectic partitioned Runge-Kutta （SPRK） method with eighth-order spatial accuracy based on the extended Hamiltonian system of the acoustic waveequation. Known as the eighth-order NSPRK method, this technique uses an eighth-orderaccurate nearly analytic discrete （NAD） operator to discretize high-order spatial differentialoperators and employs a second-order SPRK method to discretize temporal derivatives.The stability criteria and numerical dispersion relations of the eighth-order NSPRK methodare given by a semi-analytical method and are tested by numerical experiments. We alsoshow the differences of the numerical dispersions between the eighth-order NSPRK methodand conventional numerical methods such as the fourth-order NSPRK method, the eighth-order Lax-Wendroff correction （LWC） method and the eighth-order staggered-grid （SG）method. The result shows that the ability of the eighth-order NSPRK method to suppress thenumerical dispersion is obviously superior to that of the conventional numerical methods. Inthe same computational environment, to eliminate visible numerical dispersions, the eighth-order NSPRK is approximately 2.5 times faster than the fourth-order NSPRK and 3.4 timesfaster than the fourth-order SPRK, and the memory requirement is only approximately47.17% of the fourth-order NSPRK method and 49.41% of the fourth-order SPRK method,which indicates the highest computational efficiency. Modeling examples for the two-layermodels such as the heterogeneous and Marmousi models show that the wavefields generatedby the eighth-order NSPRK method are very clear with no visible numerical dispersion.These numerical experiments illustrate that the eighth-order NSPRK method can effectivelysuppress numerical dispersion when coarse grids are adopted. Therefore, this methodcan greatly decrease computer memory requirement and accelerate the forward modelingproductivity. In general, the eighth-order NSPRK method has tremendous potential value forseismic exploration and seismology research.

PARTITION OF UNITY FINITE ELEMENT METHOD FOR SHORT WAVE PROPAGATION IN SOLIDS

A partition of unity finite element method for numerical simulation of short wave propagation in solids is presented. The finite element spaces were constructed by multiplying the standard isoparametric finite element shape functions, which form a partition of unity, with the local subspaces defined on the corresponding shape functions, which include a priori knowledge about the wave motion equation in trial spaces and approximately reproduce the highly oscillatory properties within a single element. Numerical examples demonstrate the performance of the proposed partition of unity finite element in both computational accuracy and efficiency.

A nested partitioning-based solution method for seru scheduling problem with resource allocation

This paper investigates the production scheduling problems of allocating resources and sequencing jobs in the seru production system(SPS).As a new-type manufacturing mode arising from Japanese production practices,seru production can achieve efficiency,flexibility,and responsiveness simultaneously.The production environment in which a set of jobs must be scheduled over a set of serus according to due date and different execution modes is considered,and a combination optimization model is provided.Motivated by the problem complexity and the characteristics of the proposed seru scheduling model,a nested partitioning method(NPM)is designed as the solution approach.Finally,computational studies are conducted,and the practicability of the proposed seru scheduling model is proven.Moreover,the efficiency of the nested partitioning solution method is demonstrated by the computational results obtained from different scenarios,and the good scalability of the proposed approach is proven via comparative analysis.

Partition method for impact dynamics of flexible multibody systems based on contact constraint

The impact dynamics of a flexible multibody system is investigated. By using a partition method, the system is divided into two parts, the local impact region and the region away from the impact. The two parts are connected by specific boundary conditions, and the system after partition is equivalent to the original system. According to the rigid-flexible coupling dynamic theory of multibody system, system＇s rigid-flexible coupling dynamic equations without impact are derived. A local impulse method for establishing the initial impact conditions is proposed. It satisfies the compatibility con- ditions for contact constraints and the actual physical situation of the impact process of flexible bodies. Based on the contact constraint method, system＇s impact dynamic equa- tions are derived in a differential-algebraic form. The contact/separation criterion and the algorithm are given. An impact dynamic simulation is given. The results show that system＇s dynamic behaviors including the energy, the deformations, the displacements, and the impact force during the impact process change dramatically. The impact makes great effects on the global dynamics of the system during and after impact.

Partition method and experimental validation for impact dynamics of flexible multibody system

The impact problem of a flexible multibody system is a non-smooth, high-transient, and strong-nonlinear dynamic process with variable boundary. How to model the contact/impact process accurately and efficiently is one of the main difficulties in many engineering applications. The numerical approaches being used widely in impact analysis are mainly from two fields： multibody system dynamics （MBS） and computational solid mechanics （CSM）. Approaches based on MBS provide a more efficient yet less accurate analysis of the contact/impact problems, while approaches based on CSM are well suited for particularly high accuracy needs, yet require very high computational effort. To bridge the gap between accuracy and efficiency in the dynamic simulation of a flexible multibody system with contacts/impacts, a partition method is presented considering that the contact body is divided into two parts, an impact region and a non-impact region. The impact region is modeled using the finite element method to guarantee the local accuracy, while the non-impact region is modeled using the modal reduction approach to raise the global efficiency. A three-dimensional rod-plate impact experiment is designed and performed to validate the numerical results. The principle for how to partition the contact bodies is proposed： the maximum radius of the impact region can be estimated by an analytical method, and the modal truncation orders of the non-impact region can be estimated by the highest frequency of the signal measured. The simulation results using the presented method are in good agreement with the experimental results. It shows that this method is an effec-rive formulation considering both accuracy and efficiency. Moreover, a more complicated multibody impact problem of a crank slider mechanism is investigated to strengthen this conclusion.

Effective electroelastic constants for three-phase confocal elliptical cylinder model in piezoelectric quasicrystal composites

A three-phase confocal elliptical cylinder model is proposed to analyze micromechanics of one-dimensional hexagonal piezoelectric quasicrystal （PQC） compos- ites. Exact solutions of the phonon, phason, and electric fields are obtained by using the conformal mapping combined with the Laurent expansion technique when the model is subject to far-field anti-plane mechanical and in-plane electric loadings. The effective elec- troelastic constants of several different composites made up of PQC, quasicrystal （QC）, and piezoelectric （PE） materials are predicted by the generalized self-consistent method. Numerical examples are conducted to show the effects of the volume fraction and the cross-sectional shape of inclusion （or fiber） on the effective electroelastic constants of these composites. Compared with other micromechanical methods, the generalized self- consistent and Mori-Tanaka methods can predict the effective electroelastic constants of the composites consistently.

PARTITION OF UNITY FINITE ELEMENT METHOD FOR SHORT WAVE PROPAGATION IN SOLIDS

A partition of unity finite element method for numerical simulation of short wave propagation in solids is presented. The finite element spaces were constructed by multiplying the standard isoparametric finite element shape functions, which form a partition of unity, with the local subspaces defined on the corresponding shape functions, which include a priori knowledge about the wave motion equation in trial spaces and approximately reproduce the highly oscillatory properties within a single element. Numerical examples demonstrate the performance of the proposed partition of unity finite element in both computational accuracy and efficiency.

DFT and Position of Cl Substitution (PCS) Methods Studies on n-Octanol/water Partition Coefficients (lgK_(ow)) and Aqueous Solubility (–lgS_w) of All PCDD Congeners

Optimized calculations of 75 PCDDs and their parent DD were carded out at the B3LYP/6-31G＊ level by density functional theory （DFT） method. The structural parameters were obtained and significant correlation between the C1 substitution position and some structural parameters was found. Consequently, the number of C1 substitution positions was taken as theoretical descriptors to establish two novel QSPR models for predicting lgKow and -lgSw of all PCDD congeners. The two models achieved in this work contain two variables （Na and Nβ）, of which r = 0.9312, 0.9965 and SD = 0.27, 0.12 respectively, and t values are all large. The variation inflation factors （VIF） of variables in the two models herein are both less than 5.0, suggesting high accuracy of the lgKow and -lgSw predicting models, and the results of cross-validation test also show that the two models exhibit optimum stability and good predictive power. By comparison, the correlation and predictive ability of the present work are more advantageous than those obtained using semi-empirical AM1 and GC-RI methods.

Prediction of Blood-to-Brain Barrier Partitioning of Drugs and Organic Compounds Using a QSPR Approach

The purpose of this study was to develop a quantitative structure–property relationship(QSPR) model based on the enhanced replacement method(ERM) and support vector machine(SVM) to predict the blood-to-brain barrier partitioning behavior(log BB) of various drugs and organic compounds. Different molecular descriptors were calculated using a dragon package to represent the molecular structures of the compounds studied. The enhanced replacement method(ERM) was used to select the variables and construct the SVM model. The correlation coefficient, R^2, between experimental results and predicted log BB was 0.878 and 0.986, respectively. The results obtained demonstrated that, for all compounds, the log BB values estimated by SVM agreed with the experimental data, demonstrating that SVM is an effective method for model development, and can be used as a powerful chemometric tool in QSPR studies.

GALERKIN MESHLESS METHODS BASED ON PARTITION OF UNITY QUADRATURE

Numerical quadrature is an important ingredient of Galerkin meshless methods. A new numerical quadrature technique, partition of unity quadrature （PUQ）,for Galerkin meshless methods was presented. The technique is based on finite covering and partition of unity. There is no need to decompose the physical domain into small cell. It possesses remarkable integration accuracy. Using Element-free Galerkin methods as example, Galerkin meshless methods based on PUQ were studied in detail. Meshing is always not required in the procedure of constitution of approximate function or numerical quadrature, so Galerkin meshless methods based on PUQ are “truly” meshless methods.

Partitioned Method of Insect Flapping Flight for Maneuvering Analysis

This study proposed a partitioned method to analyze maneuvering of insects during flapping flight.This method decomposed the insect flapping flight into wing and body subsystems and then coupled them via boundary conditions imposed on the wing’s base using one-way coupling.In the wing subsystem,the strong coupling of the flexible wings and surrounding fluid was accurately analyzed using the finite element method to obtain the thrust forces acting on the insect’s body.The resulting thrust forces were passed from the wing subsystem to the body subsystem,and then rigid body motion was analyzed in the body subsystem.The rolling,yawing,and pitching motions were simulated using the proposed method as follows:In the rolling simulation,the difference of the stroke angle between the right and left wings caused a roll torque.In the yawing simulation,the initial feathering angle in the right wing only caused a yaw torque.In the pitching simulation,the difference between the front-and back-stroke angles in both the right and left wings caused a pitch torque.All three torques generated maneuvering motion comparable with that obtained in actual observations of insect flight.These results demonstrate that the proposed method can adequately simulate the fundamental maneuvers of insect flapping flight.In the present simulations,the maneuvering mechanisms were investigated at the governing equation level,which might be difficult using other approaches.Therefore,the proposed method will contribute to revealing the underlying insect flight mechanisms.

Testing for Nonlinearity in Dynamic Characteristics of Vertical Upward Oil-Gas-Water Three-phase Bubble and Slug Flows

Based on the conductance fluctuation signals measured from vertical upward oil-gas-water three-phase flow experiment, time frequency representation and surrogate data method were used to investigate dynamical characteristics of oil-in-water type bubble and slug flows. The results indicate that oil-in-water type bubble flow will turn to deterministic motion with the increase of oil phase fraction f o and superficial gas velocity U sg under fixed flowrate of oil-water mixture Q mix . The dynamics of oil-in-water type slug flow becomes more complex with the increase of U sg under fixed flowrate of oil-water mixture. The change of f o leads to irregular influence on the dynamics of slug flow. These interesting findings suggest that the surrogate data method can be a faithful tool for characterizing dynamic characteristics of oil-in-water type bubble and slug flows.

An efficient adaptive space partitioning algorithm for electromagnetic scattering calculation of complex 3D models

The space partitioning algorithm based on the rounding and addressing operations has been proved to be an efficient space partitioning algorithm with the potential for real-time calculation.An improvement on this kind of space partitioning algorithms for solving complex 3D models is presented.Numerical examples show that the efficiency of the improved algorithm is better than that of the original method.When the size of most target elements is smaller than the size of spatial grids,the efficiency of the improved method can be more than four times of that of the original method.An adaptive method of space partitioning based on the improved algorithm is developed by taking the surface element density or the curvature as the threshold for deep partitioning and conducting the deep partitioning using the octree method.A computer program implementation for applying the method in some typical applications is discussed,and the performance in terms of the efficiency,reliability,and resource use is evaluated.Application testing shows that the results of the adaptive spacing partitioning are more convenient for the follow-up use than that of the basic uniform space partitioning.Furthermore,when it is used to calculate the electromagnetic scattering of complex targets by the ray tracing(RT)method,the adaptive space partitioning algorithm can reduce the calculation time of the RT process by more than 40%compared with the uniform space segmentation algorithm.

Risk Assessment Framework and Algorithm of Power Systems Based on the Partitioned Multi-objective Risk Method

针对平均风险指标无法区分高损失-低概率事件及低损失-高概率事件的缺点,提出了电力系统的分割多目标风险分析框架。该框架将电力系统的风险状态细分为低损失、中等损失和高损失3个风险范围,并提出3个损失范围条件风险函数和条件风险概率的概念。采用经典的容量停运表模型,建立了这些条件期望指标的计算方法。对IEEE-RTS及TH-RTS2000系统进行了分割多目标风险评估,研究不同负荷水平下系统风险在3个损失范围的分布及转移情况,并分析损失分割点对系统风险的影响。通过分割多目标风险分析,风险分析者和决策者可以权衡系统的平均风险以及高、中、低损失范围的条件期望风险,从而对系统的风险状况有一个全面和深入的了解。

Research on resonance parameters matching based on partitioned operation method of atmospheric pressure plasma reactor array

Matching optimization of resonant parameters among the high power inverters,low power transformers and plasma reactors have significant effects on the performance and output of the reactor array when applying the partitioned operation method.In this paper,the Matlab/Simulink electrical model was established based on the method of partitioned operation.The matching relation between resonant parameters is analyzed on the basis of experimental result.As a consequence,transformer leakage inductance and working frequency are the important parameters influencing the operational efficiency of system,leakage inductance of transformer should be adjusted based on the equivalent capacitance of plasma reactor to realize the matching optimization of resonant parameters.