Oxidation of dextran using H2O2 and NaClO/NaBr and their applicability in iron chelation.

The structural modification of polysaccharides directly affects their physicochemical properties and applications. Dextran, a chained polysaccharide, consists of multiple d-glucose molecules with repetitive structures. In this study, the physicochemical properties of oxidized dextran (DO) at different concentrations of NaClO/NaBr and H2O2 were compared. The results showed that NaClO/NaBr oxidation is more conducive to the formation of carboxyl groups. Oxidized dextran with NaClO/NaBr (DOB) showed good iron (III) chelating ability, and the DOB­iron (III) complex (DOBIC) had an iron content of 28.31%. According to structural analysis, NaClO/NaBr (2 g/100 g of active chlorine) and H2O2 (4 g/100 g), respectively, oxidize the C1 and C2 hydroxyl groups of dextran to carboxyl groups and open the ring when DO and iron have the strongest chelation ability. The complex is indeed a chelate iron complex, and iron core is composed of iron oxyhydroxide or the ß-FeOOH mineral polymorph. These results indicate that DOBIC is expected to be a good iron supplement or food additive to strengthen iron.

Assessment of signature handwriting evidence via score-based likelihood ratio based on comparative measurement of relevant dynamic features.

This paper extends on previous research on the extraction and statistical analysis on relevant dynamic features (width, grayscale and radian combined with writing sequence information) in forensic handwriting examinations. In this paper, a larger signature database was gathered, including genuine signatures, freehand imitation signatures, random forgeries and tracing imitation signatures, which are often encountered in casework. After applying Principle Component Analysis (PCA) of the variables describing the proximity between specimens, a two-dimensional kernel density estimation was used to describe the variability of within-genuine comparisons and genuine-forgery comparisons. We show that the overlap between the within-genuine comparisons and the genuine-forgery comparisons depends on the imitated writer and on the forger as well. Then, in order to simulate casework conditions, cases were simulated by random sampling based on the collected signature dataset. Three-dimensional normal density estimation was used to estimate the numerator and denominator probability distribution used to compute a likelihood ratio (LR). The comparisons between the performance of the systems in SigComp2011 (based on static features) and the method presented in this paper (based on relevant dynamic features) showed that relevant dynamic features are better than static features in terms of accuracy, false acceptance rate, false rejection rate and calibration of likelihood ratios.