There is an increasing concern over the impact of human-related emissions on the acid precipitation in China. However, few measurements have been conducted so far to clarify the acid-neutralization of precipitation on a regional scale. Under a network of 10 sites across Northern China operated during a 3-year period from December 2007 to November 2010, a total of 1118 rain and snow samples were...

BACKGROUND During pretreatment, hemicellulose is removed from biomass via proton-catalyzed hydrolysis to produce soluble poly- and mono-saccharides. Many kinetic models have been proposed but the dependence of rate on proton concentration is not well-defined; autohydrolysis and dilute-acid hydrolysis models apply very different treatments despite having similar chemistries. In this work, evolut...

HCO(3)(-) secretion, which is believed to neutralize acid within the mucus gel, is the most studied duodenal defense mechanism. In general, HCO(3)(-) secretion rate and mucosal injury susceptibility correlate closely. Recent studies suggest that luminal acid can lower intracellular pH (pH(i)) of duodenal epithelial cells and that HCO(3)(-) secretion is unchanged during acid stress. Furthermore,...

The poor water solubility and bioactivity of lipophilic phytochemicals can be potentially improved by delivery systems. In this study, a low-cost, low-energy, and organic solvent-free encapsulation technology was studied by utilizing the pH-dependent solubility properties of curcumin and self-assembly properties of sodium caseinate (NaCas). Curcumin was deprotonated and dissolved, while NaCas w...

An alkaline agent, namely food additive grade calcium hydroxide (FdCa (OH)2) in the powder form, was evaluated for its bactericidal efficacies in chicken feces at pH 13. The point for this evaluation was neutralization of the alkaline agent's pH at the time of bacterial recovery, since otherwise the results are substantially misleading. Without neutralization of the FdCa (OH)2 pH, the spiked ba...

The uptake of simian virus 40 (SV40) virions to the nucleus, the site of viral replication, proceeds via engulfment at the cytoplasmic membrane and transport in monopinocytotic vesicles through the cytoplasm to the nuclear membrane. In the case of Semliki Forest virus and poliovirus which undergo primary endocytosis in a similar manner, neutralization of the acid pH in these vesicles abolishes ...

A nonlinear experimental pH neutralization plant is controlled using a neural networks based Approximate Predictive Control (APC) strategy. First a closed-loop identification is performed, further, using neural networks, a black-box modeling of the experimental plant is conducted. Then the approximate predictive controller is realized, where a linear model of the plant is extracted at each samp...