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Excessive salt consumption has been found to cause many negative effects on human health. To date, many researches have been conducted to reduce the sodium content of the diet. This study focused on the comparison of saltiness intensity and other parameters in time-intensity curves of four commercial grain salts in four regions of Viet Nam (Bac Lieu, Thanh Hoa, Sa Huynh, Vung Tau), one flower salt in Sa Huynh and a control sample with two particle sizes of 1-2 mm and 2-3 mm to find out their taste perception characteristics. A modified sensory evaluation technique focusing on time-intensity was used to train a panel to evaluate the temporal profile of saltiness of salt crystals. The results showed a significant difference in the perception ability and time intensity of saltiness in salt products by region and particle size. Sensory measures exhibited the differences in the specificity of salt samples by region and a strong correlation with their physical properties. Sa Huynh flower salt and sea salt showed different characteristics compared to other salt samples with higher intensity of salty taste, faster time to reach the maximum intensity, and shorter duration of salt taste intensity. These results demonstrated that flower salt could reduce the level of sodium intake while maintaining the saltiness perception in products, which is a potential ingredient in food, spices, etc.

125 rice samples of 10 rice varieties (Daithom8, IR50404, Jasmine85, DS1, OM4900, OM5451, OM6976, OM7347, ML202, Glutinous rice) collected from 10 provinces in the Mekong Delta were not different in grain length ranging from medium to long and were mainly tapered in shape. Except for DS1, because of the Japonica variety, it is round in shape. Their chemical ingredients slightly differed between varieties, but there was a clear difference in amylose content, according to which these rice samples were divided into 4 groups: samples with very low amylose content ranging from 3 to 9 %, accounting for 3 % of the total samples and belonging to the Glutinous rice variety; samples with medium amylose content (20 - 25 %), accounting for 29 % of the total samples and mainly belonging to varieties Jasmine85 and OM5451; samples with high amylose content (≥ 25 %), accounting for 20 % of the total samples and belonging to varieties IR50404, ML202, and OM6976; and samples with low amylose content (9 - 20 %), accounting for 48 % of the total samples and belonging to the remaining varieties. Based on physical and chemical properties, the rice varieties of 125 survey samples were classified into 3 groups with specific characteristics. In group 1, samples were characterized by particle size, particle shape, moisture, lipid and ash content; in group 2, samples were characterized by properties such as starch and amylose content; group 3 was characterized by width, protein and amylopectin. In addition, rice samples were divided into 3 groups based on growing location and physicochemical properties.

Wheat germ oil (WGO) in water emulsion is increasingly being used in a variety of fields due to its outstanding nutritional and health benefits. To enhance WGO composability, emulsification should be performed to allow them to dissolve more easily in the food matrix or active packaging. Membrane emulsification is a promising advanced homogenization technology that has recently been developed. This research focused on application of membrane emulsification for homogenization of WGO-in-water emulsion polyether sulfone (PESU) membrane with 0.45 µm of pore size, operating pressure from 5 to 9 bar, with WGO fraction in range 10 – 20% w/w and lecithin ratio in range 0 – 0.2% w/v were evaluated on the mean of particle diameter, distribution of particles diameter, stability of emulsion, and permeate flux. Higher operating pressure led to smaller mean particle diameters, higher homogenization efficiency and permeate flux. However, increasing the WGO fraction showed the opposite trend. Notably, increasing lecithin ratio from 0 to 0.2%, the mean particle diameter increased from 3.36 to 7.72 µm, homogenization efficiency decreased from 98.54 to 97.68%, and permeate flux decreased from 105.95 to 77.45 L.h-1.m-2. The results showed the advantage of using PESU membrane in WGO-in-water homogenization, that produce emulsions with small particle size (50% of particle volume was less than 5µm), high emulsion stability (greater than 95%) and lower emulsifier usage. Results imply premix membrane emulsification is potential to apply homogenization WGO-in-water emulsion.

Polysaccharide monooxygenases (PMOs) use a type-2 copper center to activate O

The paper proposes a new method to control external device in real-time using electroencephalography-based brain signals. The brain signals of a healthy female student at F7 and F8 channels are recorded from Emotiv Epoc+. They are filtered using a combination of wavelet approach and recursive least square estimation to remove unwanted noises. Open and closed eyes states are extracted from filtered brain signals. The support vector machine approach is applied to classify two states of eyes (open and closed). The classified eyes states are utilized to generate the on and off commands, respectively. Those commands are sent to an Arduino control board to control on and off states of the light. Experimental results showed that the average accuracy of two control commands is 81.6%. The obtained results promise for extraction of more commands that can be utilized for applications in daily life.

This study has shown for the first time the antimicrobial, antioxidant and cytotoxicity of 3 fractions of acetone extract, including hexane, chloroform and ethyl acetate from flowers of Dipterocarpus intricatus. Antibacterial test using disc diffusion method showed that the chloroform and ethyl acetate fractions inhibited the growth of all the tested bacteria, including Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella enteritidis, Salmonella typhimurium, Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus while the hexane fraction showed the antibacterial activity against B. cereus and S. enteritidis. Antioxidant activity and cancer cell resistance of those extracts were conducted using DPPH and MTT methods respectively. As a result, the DPPH radical scavenging activity of the hexane, chloroform and ethyl acetate fractions were determined with the IC50 values of 0.508, 0.22 and 0.075 mg/mL respectively while the cytotoxicity to HepG2 cell line of those fractions was 163.3 ppm, 106.7 ppm and 459.3 ppm. These results suggested the potential application of these fractions isolated from D. intricatus flowers as the natural antimicrobial, antioxidant and cytotoxic agents for medicine.

Nowadays, the use of freight robots in factories will help people reduce their labor force and move into difficult and dangerous places more easily. Only smart robots will help people move equipment, goods to destinations that have been designed to own lanes in factories or remotely control these cargo robots to move following the demands of the controller. Goods will be delivered to the right place, helping to reduce labor costs for factories, increase productivity, thereby increasing the profits of businesses. Understanding the necessity of the design of transport robot and the development of artificial intelligence field along with the development of some types of embedded computers, the research team proposed a method to use convolutional neural networks deployed on the embedded computer platform to design a smart robot model to transport goods in the factory.

The present study, twenty-five chemical compounds of acetone extract from the Helicteres hirsuta leaves have been investigated for the first time using GC–MS, in which neophytadiene, palmitic acid methyl ester, palmitic acid, phytol, linolenic acid and octadecanoic acid were identified as the major constituents. By using disk–diffusion assay, the results showed that the extract was resistant against 6 studied bacterial strains, including Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella enteritidis, Salmonella typhimurium, Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus. Furthermore, the DPPH and MTT methods were used to identify the antioxidant and cytotoxic activities of the studied extract. As a result, the cytotoxicity of the extract against the Hepatoma (Hep-G2) cell line was indicated with the IC50 of 381.8 ppm whereas this value was 1.223 mg/mL in DPPH inhibition.

This study examined the biodegradation of natural rubber (NR) and deproteinized natural rubber (DPNR) by bacterial consortia enriched from a rubber-processing factory's waste in Vietnam. The results reveal the degradation in both NR and DPNR, and the DPNR was degraded easier than NR. The highest weight loss of 48.37% was obtained in the fourth enrichment consortium with DPNR, while 35.39% was obtained in the fifth enrichment consortium with NR after 14 days of incubation. Nitrogen content and fatty acid content determined by Kjeldahl method and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), respectively, were decreased significantly after being incubated with the consortia. Structure of degraded rubber film analyzed by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy showed the presence of aldehyde group, a sign of rubber degradation. Bacterial cells tightly adhering and embedding into NR and DPNR films were observed by scanning electron microscopy. There were differences in the bacterial composition of the consortia with NR and DPNR, which were determined by metagenomic analysis using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The phyla Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria may play a role in the degradation of non-isoprene compounds such as protein or lipid, while the phylum Actinobacteria plays a crucial role in the degradation of rubber hydrocarbon in all consortia.

A novel 3,4-dihydroisocoumarin, lindermyrrhin (1), along with three known compounds, quercetin (2), northalifoline (3) and N-formyl-laurolitsine (4) were isolated from the roots of Lindera myrrha. The structure of compound 1 was identified by interpretation of their spectroscopic data as well as comparison with those reported in the literature. The novel compound 1 represents the first 3,4-dihydroisocoumarin bearing a 2-hydroxyisopropyl substituent at C-3.

Background Cancer is one of the most considerable concerns because of increasing the death rate all over the world. Recent studies have disclosed that plant extracts exhibit anticancer activity through various mechanisms. Xanthium strumarium has been used by Vietnamese in herbal medicines to support the medication of infirmities. This study is to consider the secondary metabolites, antioxidant and anticancer capacities of extract from the aerial parts (stems and leaves) of X. strumarium (AP-XS). Methods AP-XS was analyzed for the presence of phytochemicals via qualitative chemical tests and determined total polyphenol and flavonoid contents. DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) quenching assay and sulforhodamine B (SRB) assay were selected to investigate antioxidant capacity and anti-proliferative activity, respectively. Besides, acridine orange-ethidium bromide (AO-EB) dual staining was applied to evaluate the ability to induce apoptosis on HepG2 cancer cells. Results Results of present study indicated that AP-XS contains the main phytochemicals such as flavonoids, tannins, saponins, alkaloids, and triterpenes. Ethanol extract had highest content of polyphenol (84.86 mg gallic acid equivalent/g dry mass), and exhibited the great total antioxidant property (IC50 = 184.13 μg/mL) and anti-proliferative activity on HepG2 cancer cells (IC50 = 81.69 μg/mL). Furthermore, the characteristics of apoptosis including shrinkage of the cell and apoptotic bodies were found following 60 h of AP-XS extract treatment through AO-EB dual staining. Conclusion The data suggest that AP-XS extract had antioxidant potential and anti-proliferative effect. The anti-proliferative property was considered to have an association with a rising of apoptosis. These results were reliable for further research on X. strumarium as a source of phytochemicals with anticancer activity potential for cancer therapeutics.

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) have emerged as a promising technology for energy-efficient wastewater treatment. The feasibility of integrating biological nitrogen removal into MFC systems has been reported. However, better pollutant removal efficiency and power production need to be achieved at a lower cost for a sustainable wastewater treatment system. The objective of this paper is to critically review the nitrogen removal process in various MFC configurations, factors that influence this process, and challenges that should be overcome in future studies. Based on the results of the review, shortcut nitrification-autotrophic denitrification in an MFC is an option as it minimizes the aeration energy and C/N ratio requirement; however, it is necessary to evaluate the N2O emission further. Another attractive option is the heterotrophic anodic denitrification process as it demonstrates the potential for free-buffer MFCs, but the nitrogen removal efficiency at low C/N ratios needs improvement. Bacteria population in MFC system also plays an essential role in both contaminant removal and electricity generation. It can be concluded that MFCs can be a low cost, sustainable solution for the treatment of wastewater and removal of nitrogen. Moreover, selection of MFC configuration will depend on the nature of the wastewater.

Estimating the steering angle is a fundamental but challenging problem for autonomous vehicles. The main challenges come from different road conditions and capturing sensors. In this paper, we first present an autonomous vehicle prototype for different tasks in small and narrow indoor environment. We then perform a comparative study on two approaches for vision based steering angle estimation to drive the designed vehicle. One approach bases on conventional image processing techniques such as edge detection and Hough transform while the other one bases on advanced deep learning (convolutional neural network). We evaluate both methods on a common dataset. Experimental results show that in the scenario with simple and static background, image processing techniques give lightly faster and more precise steering angle. However, deep learning based approach is well generalized to background changes. We applied and integrated our proposed methods on the designed vehicle and show their capacity to drive the vehicle accurately.

BackgroundNovel coronavirus COVID-19 has caused significant global outbreaks outside China. Many countries have closed their borders with China and performed obligate protective procedures, however, this disease was still rising worldwide. In this report, we aim to identify transmission patterns from China to other countries, along with describing the disease control situation of countries.MethodsWe retrospectively collected information about infected cases with COVID-19 from WHO situation reports, official notification websites of health ministries and reliable local newspapers from each country. Descriptive and cluster analysis was performed to describe the transmission characteristics while the logistic regression test was used to estimate the risk factors for the occurrence of an infected individual with an unknown source.ResultsA total of 446 infected cases were recorded from 24 countries outside China until 12 February 2020, with the number of reported infected cases were doubled every 3.08 ± 0.35 days (range from 2.6 to 3.9). Besides the spread from China, the transmission was originated from sub-endemic countries (Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, France, German). Out of 6 countries got occurrence of an infected individual with unknown source and possible potential factors contributed to this occurrence was a time of epidemic circulating, number of patients and number of clusters when the occurrence still has not happened, and notably, the unreported situation of Chinese tourists’ information.ConclusionsThe situational reports of each country about COVID-19 should be more detailed mentioning the transmissions routes with keeping contact tracing of the unknown cases to increase the control of this disease.

Two new lindenane sesquiterpenes were obtained from the roots of Lindera myrrha. These compounds were structurally elucidated by HRMS data, extensive NMR analyses, and comparison between experimental and theoretical 13C-NMR data. Myrrhalindenane A is the first monomeric seco-d lindenane displaying a non-rearranged, cyclohexanic C-ring. Myrrhalindenane B is the second occurrence of an angular lindenane-sesquiterpene related to a C6-C7 lactonization.