Synergistic cellulose-based nanocomposite packaging and cold plasma decontamination for extended saffron preservation.

Sterilization of saffron packaging and maintaining the quality of saffron content are the main priorities in saffron preservation. Common modalities do not offer lasting saffron preservation and it is urgent to develop novel packaging approaches from renewable resources and prevent packaging waste. Here, simultaneous decontamination and quality maintenance of saffron is demonstrated, for the first time, through the synergistic application of nano-clay-loaded carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanocomposites (CNCs) and cold plasmas (CP). Compared to the separate uses of CP and CMC/PVA/nano clay, our results confirm the synergies between CP and CMC/PVA/nano clay cause complete inactivation of Escherichia coli bacteria, while not significantly affecting the concentrations of the essential saffron components (safranal, crocin, and picrocrocin). Overall, the CP-treated CMC/PVA/nano clay fosters saffron preservation, through contamination removal and quality maintenance of the food product. The synergistic application of CP and CMC/PVA/nano clay thus represents a promising strategy for packaging, sterilization, and preservation of high-value food products.

Tendon repair by plasma jet treatment.

OBJECTIVE: In recent years many researchers applied cold plasma for wound healing. The cold plasma is irradiated on the surface of wound. In this paper the effect of irradiation of cold plasma on the skin for healing of injured tissue which is located inside body, such as tendon, is evaluated. METHODS: The male, white New Zealand, (20-week-old) were selected. Aloxan injection induced for diabetes induction and a week later the blood glucose level was measured. The standard tendon injury was created. The rabbits was divided in 3 groups. Control group, Plasma treated group at 5 kv, plasma treated group at 10 kv. Cold plasma was applied to the rabbits for 21 days. RESULTS: After 21 days the tendon tissue were considered histologically. The results show that inflammatory cells were significantly lower in the tendon treated with cold plasma at 10 kv than the others, which confirms that cold plasma treatment reduce the inflammation phase. Cold plasma treatment led to increase neovascularation and collagen production. CONCLUSION: The results of this study confirm that the cold plasma treatment of skin has positive effect on healing of tissue inside body.

Probability distributions of turbulent energy.

Probability density functions (PDFs) of scale-dependent energy fluctuations, P[deltaE(l)] , are studied in high-resolution direct numerical simulations of Navier-Stokes and incompressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. MHD flows with and without a strong mean magnetic field are considered. For all three systems it is found that the PDFs of inertial range energy fluctuations exhibit self-similarity and monoscaling in agreement with recent solar-wind measurements [Hnat, Geophys. Res. Lett. 29, 86 (2002)]. Furthermore, the energy PDFs exhibit similarity over all scales of the turbulent system showing no substantial qualitative change of shape as the scale of the fluctuations varies. This is in contrast to the well-known behavior of PDFs of turbulent velocity fluctuations. In all three cases under consideration the P[deltaE(l)] resemble Lévy-type gamma distributions approximately Delta;{-1} exp(-|deltaE|/Delta)|deltaE|;{-gamma} The observed gamma distributions exhibit a scale-dependent width Delta(l) and a system-dependent gamma . The monoscaling property reflects the inertial-range scaling of the Elsässer-field fluctuations due to lacking Galilei invariance of deltaE . The appearance of Lévy distributions is made plausible by a simple model of energy transfer.