Aparecido Junior de Menezes^1,3,*, Elson Longo², Fábio Lima Leite¹, Alain Dufresne³

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.2, No.4, pp. 306-313, 2014, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2014.634121

Abstract In the work presented in this article surface chemical modifi cation was applied to ramie cellulose nanocrystals by grafting organic acid chlorides presenting different lengths of the aliphatic chain. The objective of this surface chemical treatment was to enhance the nonpolar nature of the grafted nanocrystals and improve their dispersibility in a nonpolar polymeric matrix. The occurrence of the chemical modifi cation was evaluated by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, the degree of crystallinity by X-ray diffraction, and the morphology by scanning electron microscopy with fi eld emission gun (FEG-SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The morphology and crystallinity provided… More >

Rosa Della Monica^*1, Mariella Cuomo^*†1, Roberta Visconti^‡, Annabella di Mauro^§, Michela Buonaiuto^*, Davide Costabile^*†, Giulia De Riso^†, Teodolinda Di Risi^*, Elia Guadagno^¶, Roberto Tafuto^#, Sabrina Lamia^**, Alessandro Ottaiano^††, Paolo Cappabianca^#, Maria Laura Del Basso de Caro^¶, Fabiana Tatangelo^§, Juergen Hench^‡‡, Stephan Frank^‡‡, Salvatore Tafuto^**, Lorenzo Chiariotti^*†

Oncology Research, Vol.28, No.9, pp. 837-845, 2020, DOI:10.3727/096504021X16214197880808

Abstract Unresectable neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) often poorly respond to standard therapeutic approaches. Alkylating agents, in particular temozolomide, commonly used to treat high-grade brain tumors including glioblastomas, have recently been tested in advanced or metastatic NENs, where they showed promising response rates. In glioblastomas, prediction of response to temozolomide is based on the assessment of the methylation status of the MGMT gene, as its product, O6 -methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase, may counteract the damaging effects of the alkylating agent. However, in NENs, such a biomarker has not been validated yet. Thus, we have investigated MGMT methylation in 42 NENs of different grades and from… More >

ANA M. CÁRDENAS^1,*, LUCIANA I. GALLO², FERNANDO D. MARENGO^2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.8, pp. 1867-1873, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.019086

Abstract The cortical actin network is a mesh of filaments distributed beneath the plasmalemma that dynamically reacts in response to stimuli. This dynamic network of cortical filaments, together with motor myosin partners, adjusts the plasmalemma tension, organizes membrane protein microdomains, remodels the cell surface and drives vesicle motion in order to fine-tune exocytosis, endocytosis and recycling of secretory vesicles. In this review, we discuss how these mechanisms work in secretory cells. More >

Sunil Dhankhar^1,*, Mukesh Kumar Gupta¹, Fida Hussain Memon^2,3, Surbhi Bhatia⁴, Pankaj Dadheech¹, Arwa Mashat⁵

Computer Systems Science and Engineering, Vol.43, No.1, pp. 397-412, 2022, DOI:10.32604/csse.2022.024059

Abstract In today’s digital era, the text may be in form of images. This research aims to deal with the problem by recognizing such text and utilizing the support vector machine (SVM). A lot of work has been done on the English language for handwritten character recognition but very less work on the under-resourced Hindi language. A method is developed for identifying Hindi language characters that use morphology, edge detection, histograms of oriented gradients (HOG), and SVM classes for summary creation. SVM rank employs the summary to extract essential phrases based on paragraph position, phrase position, numerical data, inverted comma, sentence… More >

MARGARIDA LORIGO^1,2, ELISA CAIRRAO^1,2,*

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.6, pp. 1383-1389, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.018895

Abstract Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The knowledge and understanding of CVD are based on the study of vascular physiology and how the smooth muscle cells and tissues perform their different functions. Exposure to endocrine disruptors (EDCs), such as phytoestrogens, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, flame retardants, plasticizers, pesticides, and cosmetics, is an integral and fundamental part of human exposure. Humans are exposed to EDCs by multiple pathways including air, food, water, and consumer products. However, this exposure can lead to several adverse effects on human health, including on the cardiovascular (CV) system. The negative impact… More >

Mohammad Jawaid¹, Lau Kia Kian¹, Hassan Fouad², Ramzi Khiari^3,4,5,*, Othman Y. Alothman⁶, Mohamed Hashem⁷

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.10, No.6, pp. 1459-1470, 2022, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2022.018415

Abstract Cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) is a biomaterial derived from plant lignocellulosic components, widely applied in various industrial fields. Concurrently, with the growth of awareness in developing green nanomaterial, the explored Washingtonia fibre could be alternative biomass for obtaining CNC products. In the present work, different acid concentrations of 5%, 15%, and 25% hydrochloric solutions were employed to produce CNCs from Washingtonia fibre. With the chemical treatments, the yield of the CNC product was successfully retained at 21.6%−25.1%. Individually separated and needle-shaped CNC particles could be observed under the microscopic viewing with the increased acid concentrations. From elemental analysis, a relatively pure… More > Graphic Abstract

Kang Xu, Tong Li, Gaofei Guan, Jianlong Qu, Zhen Zhao, Xinsheng Xu^*

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.130, No.2, pp. 987-1002, 2022, DOI:10.32604/cmes.2022.018128

Abstract By means of the local surface nanocrystallization that enables to change the material on local positions, an innovative embedded multi-cell (EMC) thin-walled energy absorption structures with local surface nanocrystallization is proposed in this paper. The local surface nanacrystallization stripes are regarded as the moving morphable components in the domain for optimal design. Results reveal that after optimizing the local surface nanocrystallization layout, the specific energy absorption (SEA) is increased by 50.78% compared with the untreated counterpart. Besides, in contrast with the optimized 4-cell structure, the SEA of the nanocrystallized embedded 9-cell structure is further enhanced by 27.68%, in contrast with… More >

Samah Ibrahim Alshathri^1,*, Desiree Juby Vincent², V. S. Hari²

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.71, No.1, pp. 1371-1386, 2022, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2022.022458

Abstract Invoice document digitization is crucial for efficient management in industries. The scanned invoice image is often noisy due to various reasons. This affects the OCR (optical character recognition) detection accuracy. In this paper, letter data obtained from images of invoices are denoised using a modified autoencoder based deep learning method. A stacked denoising autoencoder (SDAE) is implemented with two hidden layers each in encoder network and decoder network. In order to capture the most salient features of training samples, a undercomplete autoencoder is designed with non-linear encoder and decoder function. This autoencoder is regularized for denoising application using a combined… More >

KATARINA BARALIć^1,*, KATARINA ŽIVANčEVIć¹, DRAGICA BoŽIĆ¹, DANYEL JENNEN², ALEKSANDRA BUHA DJORDJEVIC¹, EVICA ANTONIJEVIć MILJAKOVIć¹, DANIJELA ĐUKIć-ĆOSIć¹

BIOCELL, Vol.46, No.2, pp. 519-533, 2022, DOI:10.32604/biocell.2022.018271

Abstract This in silico toxicogenomic study aims to explore the relationship between phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) co-exposure and obesity, as well as its comorbid conditions, in order to construct a possible set of genomic biomarkers. The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD; http://ctd.mdibl.org) was used as the main data mining tool, along with GeneMania (https://genemania.org), ToppGene Suite (https://toppgene.cchmc.org) and DisGeNET (http://www.disgenet.org). Among the phthalates, bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and dibutyl phthalate (DBP) were chosen as the most frequently curated phthalates in CTD, which also share similar mechanisms of toxicity. DEHP, DBP and BPA interacted with 84, 90 and 194 obesity-related genes/proteins, involved in… More >

Trinh Tan Dat¹, Le Tran Anh Dang^1,2, Nguyen Nhat Truong^1,2, Pham Cung Le Thien Vu¹, Vu Ngoc Thanh Sang¹, Pham Thi Vuong¹, Pham The Bao^1,*

Computer Systems Science and Engineering, Vol.40, No.2, pp. 539-555, 2022, DOI:10.32604/csse.2022.019064

Abstract This paper proposes an enhancement of an automatic text recognition system for extracting information from the front side of the Vietnamese citizen identity (CID) card. First, we apply Mask-RCNN to segment and align the CID card from the background. Next, we present two approaches to detect the CID card’s text lines using traditional image processing techniques compared to the EAST detector. Finally, we introduce a new end-to-end Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN) model based on a combination of Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) and attention mechanism for Vietnamese text recognition by jointly train the CTC and attention objective functions together. The… More >