The southwest monsoon, which may be idealized as the northward movement of the intertropical convergence zone in the Indian Ocean associated with differential heating of land and ocean, brings a seasonal reversal of currents and winds in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. Atmospheric convection from monsoon activity...
About 48 million cases of Foodborne illnesses (FBIs) are estimated to occur every year in the US. These are diseases caused by contamination of foods with bacteria, viruses, protozoa, parasites and toxic chemicals. Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) are an important health-care and community associated problem. Since C. difficile spores have...
Miniaturized and portable microfluidic analytical platforms have been widely explored in the broad field of chemical analysis. The concept of microfluidics offer a number of important advantages, including low reagent consumption, low-cost detection, high sample throughput, and shorter analysis time. Semiconductor nanocrystals or quantum dots have been extensively utilized in...
The effect of bactericidal UV-C treatments (254 nm) on E. coli O157:H7 suspended in apple juice increased synergistically with temperature up to a threshold value. The optimum UV-C treatment temperature was 55 °C yielding a 58.9% synergistic lethal effect. Under these treatment conditions, the UV-heat (UV-H[subscript 55 °C]) lethal variability...
The concept of reducing laboratory operations into microfluidic devices has been an attractive area of research for several decades. Due to several advantages of porous-media microfluidic devices including low mass, portability, power-free fluid transport, and the ability to store dried reagents in the porous structures, these devices show great promise...
A simple Janus-type membrane-based wicking microfluidic device fabricated on a polycaprolactone-filled glass microfiber membrane enables separation and collection of blood plasma or serum from whole blood. This device bridges the wicking and cut-capillary-based solution transport mechanisms in a single membrane. The initial portion of the device is fabricated using selective...
Consumer demand for improved-quality and fresh-like food products have led to the development of new non-thermal preservation methods. High pressure processing (HPP) is currently the novel non-thermal technology best established in the food processing industry. However, many potential HPP applications would require long treatment times to ensure an adequate inactivation...
High hydrostatic pressure (HHP) is the most-widely adopted novel non-thermal technology for the commercial pasteurization of foods. However, HHP-induced inactivation of bacterial spores remains a challenge due their resistance to the treatment limits of currently available industrial HHP units (i.e., ~650 MPa and 50°C). Several reports have demonstrated that high...
Repurposing internal combustion engines as petrochemical reactors (i.e., Reactor engines) could offer a smaller, scalable alternative to traditional full scale chemical processing facilities. For many chemical processes, incorporating catalyst particles in fluidized beds is expected to result in superior performance over both monoliths and packed beds. Conversion of ethane into...
Global recognition of the need for ecosystem restoration and revegetation following natural and anthropogenic disturbances has been growing in recent years. Successful programs often depend on the use of nursery-grown seedlings and appropriate mitigation of limiting factors on outplanting sites. Nursery production of high-quality native plants for restoration can be...