Background. Palm oil is commonly consumed in Asia. Repeatedly heating the oil is very common during food processing. Aim. This study is aimed to report on the risk of atherosclerosis due to the reheated oil consumption. Material and Methods. Twenty four male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into control, fresh-oil, 5 times heated-oil and 10 times heated-oil feeding groups. Heated palm oil was prepared by frying sweet potato at 180°C for 10 minutes. The ground standard rat chows were fortified with the heated oils and fed it to the rats for six months. Results. Tunica intima thickness in aorta was significantly increased in 10 times heated-oil feeding group (P < 0.05), revealing a huge atherosclerotic plaque with central necrosis projecting into the vessel lumen. Repeatedly heated oil feeding groups also revealed atherosclerotic changes including mononuclear cells infiltration, thickened subendothelial layer, disrupted internal elastic lamina and smooth muscle cells fragmentation in tunica media of the aorta. Conclusion. The usage of repeated heated oil is the predisposing factor of atherosclerosis leading to cardiovascular diseases. It is advisable to avoid the consumption of repeatedly heated palm oil.
Silicene has attracted remarkable attention in the semiconductor research community due to its silicon (Si) nature. It is predicted as one of the most promising candidates for the next generation nanoelectronic devices. In this paper, an efficient non-iterative technique is employed to create the SPICE models for p-type and n-type uniformly doped silicene field-effect transistors (FETs). The current-voltage characteristics show that the proposed silicene FET models exhibit high on-to-off current ratio under ballistic transport. In order to obtain practical digital logic timing diagrams, a parasitic load capacitance, which is dependent on the interconnect length, is attached at the output terminal of the logic circuits. Furthermore, the key circuit performance metrics, including the propagation delay, average power, power-delay product and energy-delay product of the proposed silicene-based logic gates are extracted and benchmarked with published results. The effects of the interconnect length to the propagation delay and average power are also investigated. The results of this work further envisage the uniformly doped silicene as a promising candidate for future nanoelectronic applications.
Phytoremediation is one of the green technologies that is friendly to nature, utilizes fewer chemicals, and exhibits good performance. In this study, phytoremediation was used to treat diesel-contaminated sand using a local aquatic plant species, Scirpus mucronatus, by analyzing the amount of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs). Optimization of diesel removal was performed according to Response Surface Methodology (RSM) using Box-Behnken Design (BBD) under pilot-scale conditions. The quadratic model showed the best fit to describe the obtained data. Actual vs. predicted values from BBD showed a total of 9.1 % error for the concentration of TPH in sand and 0 % error for the concentration of TPH in plants. Maximum TPH removal of 42.3 ± 2.1 % was obtained under optimized conditions at a diesel initial concentration of 50 mg/kg, an aeration rate of 0.48 L/min, and a retention time of 72 days. The addition of two species of rhizobacteria (Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus licheniformis) at optimum conditions increased the TPH removal to 51.9 ± 2.6 %. The obtained model and optimum condition can be adopted to treat diesel-contaminated sand within the same TPH range (50-3000 mg/kg) in sand.