Exploring Cold plasma technology: Enhancements in Carob seed germination, phytochemical Composition, and antioxidant activity.

The cultivation of carob tree does not need many climatic and ecological requirements. The main limit to its large-scale cultivation is the defects for propagation with seeds. Addressing this, our study evaluated the effect of cold plasma pretreatment on carob seed germination. Impressively, cold plasma showcased beneficial effects by significantly increasing water uptake in seeds (CS: 1.71 ± 0.59; PS/3.99 ± 1.56) and decreasing the contact angle from 80.7° to 57.9°, enhancing the seed surface's hydrophilicity. While the germination rate enhancement was subtle, the treatment presented an innovative route to modifying the seed's physiochemical properties. Specifically, storage proteins like albumin, globulin, and prolamin were notably reduced (Albumin (from 7.67 to 4.95 mg/g DW), Globulin (from 8.52 to 5.80 mg/g DW) and Prolamin (from 3.53 to 1.66 mg/g DW)). Additionally, there was a decline in the overall content of polyphenols (from 846.88 to 760.94 mg GAE/100g DW) and flavonoids (from 790.93 to 502.95 mg GAE/100g DW) and a decrease in the ferric reducing power (from 34.48 to 26.39 mg AAE/g DW). However, radical scavenging activity remained consistent. Intriguingly, FTIR-ATR spectral analysis post plasma treatment indicated oxidative alterations in the seed coat, marked by a distinctive intensity at 1732 cm⁻1. This investigation suggests that the application of eco-friendly technology could provide improvements in seed surface's hydrophilicity, but appropriate conditions could be chosen to increase germination efficiency.

Review on inactivation of airborne viruses using non-thermal plasma technologies: from MS2 to coronavirus.

Although several non-thermal plasmas (NTPs) technologies have been widely investigated in air treatment, very few studies have focused on the inactivation mechanism of viruses by NTPs. Due to its efficiency and environmental compatibility, non-thermal plasma could be considered a promising virus-inactivation technology. Plasma is a partly or fully ionized gas including some species (i.e., electrons, free radicals, ions, and neutral molecules) to oxidize pollutants or inactivate harmful organisms. Non-thermal plasmas are made using less energy and have an active electron at a much higher temperature than bulk gas molecules. This review describes NTPs for virus inactivation in indoor air. The different application processes of plasma for microorganism inactivation at both laboratory and pilot-scale was also reviewed This paper reports on recent advances in this exciting area of viral inactivation identifying applications and mechanisms of inactivation, and summarizing the results of the latest experiments in the literature. Moreover, special attention was paid to the mechanism of virus inactivation. Finally, the paper suggests research directions in the field of airborne virus inactivation using non-thermal plasma.

PVC arrhythmia classification based on fractional order system modeling.

It is well known that many physiological phenomena are modeled accurately and effectively using fractional operators and systems. This type of modeling is due mainly to the dynamical link between fractional-order systems and the fractal structures of the physiological systems. The automatic characterization of the premature ventricular contraction (PVC) is very important for early diagnosis of patients with different life-threatening cardiac diseases. In this paper, a classification scheme of normal and PVC beats of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is proposed. The clustering features used for normal and PVC beats discrimination are the parameters of the commensurate order linear fractional model of the frequency content of the QRS complex of the ECG signal. A series of tests and comparisons have been performed to evaluate and validate the efficiency of the proposed PVC classification algorithm using the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. The proposed PVC classification method has achieved an overall accuracy of 94.745%, a specificity of 95.178% and a sensitivity of 90.021% using all the 48 records of the database.

A new approach for the design of fractional delay by an FIR filter.

Fractional delay filters modeling non-integer delays are digital filters which ideally have flat group delays. In this letter, a new, simple, accurate and efficient FIR filter design to implement the digital ideal fractional delay is presented. The design technique is based on the MacLaurin series expansion formula which is applied to a given function to obtain a closed form FIR digital filter approximation of the digital ideal fractional delay operator z-α. The obtained FIR filter approximation formula of the digital ideal fractional delay operator z-α is similar to the well known Grünwald-Letnikov FIR digital filter approximation formula of the ideal analog fractional differentiator sα. Some examples have been presented to illustrate the performance and the effectiveness of this new design method. Some comparisons results show that the proposed design yields better performances than the existing designs in the literature.

Factors influencing accuracy and reproducibility of body resistance measurements by foot-to-foot impedancemeters.

The electronics of a BodySignal V2 (Tefal, France) foot-to-foot impedancemeter (FFI) was modified to display the foot-to-foot resistance instead of body fat. This device was connected to electrodes of different sizes mounted on a podoscope permitting photographs of subjects feet soles and electrodes in order to calculate the contact area between feet and electrodes. The foot-to-foot resistance was found to decrease when the contact area of feet with current and voltage electrodes increased. It was also sensitive to feet displacement and a backward move of 5 cm increased the mean resistance by 37 Ω. The resistance reproducibility was tested by asking the subject to repeat measurements 10-times by stepping up and down from the podoscope. The mean SD of these tests was 0.88% of mean resistance, but it fell to 0.47% when feet position was guided and to 0.29% with transverse voltage electrodes. For good reproducibility, it is important that voltage electrodes be small and that the scale design facilitates a correct position of heels on these electrodes.