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The determinants and incentives of corporate greenhouse gas emission reduction

Liu et al. | Jun 04, 2021

The determinants and incentives of corporate greenhouse gas emission reduction

This study used hand-collected Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and aimed to understand the determinants and incentives of GHG emissions reduction. It explored how companies’ financials, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation, and corporate governance affected GHG emissions. Results showed that companies reporting GHG emissions were wide-spread among the 48 industries represented by two-digit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes.

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Detection and Control of Spoilage Fungi in Refrigerated Vegetables and Fruits

Chari et al. | May 16, 2021

Detection and Control of Spoilage Fungi in Refrigerated Vegetables and Fruits

Food spoilage leads to a significant loss in agricultural produce each year. Here, the authors investigate whether certain essential oils can protect against fungus-mediated spoilage of fruits and vegetables. Their results suggest that the compounds they tested might indeed inhibit fungal growth, at various temperatures, a promising result that could reduce food wasting.

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Comparative singlet oxygen photosensitizer efficiency of berberine, rose bengal, and methylene blue by time course nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) monitoring of a photochemical 4+2 cycloaddition endoperoxide formation

Su et al. | May 14, 2021

Comparative singlet oxygen photosensitizer efficiency of berberine, rose bengal, and methylene blue by time course nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) monitoring of a photochemical 4+2 cycloaddition endoperoxide formation

Berberine, a natural product alkaloid, has been shown to exert biological activity via in situ production of singlet oxygen when photo irradiated. Berberine utilizes singlet oxygen in its putative mechanism of action, wherein it forms an activated complex with DNA and photosensitizes triplet oxygen to singlet oxygen to specifically oxidize guanine residues, thereby halting cell replication and leading to cell death. This has potential application in photodynamic therapy, alongside other such compounds which also act as photosensitizers and produce singlet oxygen in situ. The quantification of singlet oxygen in various photosensitizers, including berberine, is essential for determining their photosensitizer efficiencies. We postulated that the singlet oxygen produced by photoirradiation of berberine would be superior in terms of singlet oxygen production to the aforementioned photosensitizers when irradiated with UV light, but inferior under visible light conditions, due to its strong absorbance of UV wavelengths.

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A comparative analysis of machine learning approaches for prediction of breast cancer

Nag et al. | May 11, 2021

A comparative analysis of machine learning approaches for prediction of breast cancer

Machine learning and deep learning techniques can be used to predict the early onset of breast cancer. The main objective of this analysis was to determine whether machine learning algorithms can be used to predict the onset of breast cancer with more than 90% accuracy. Based on research with supervised machine learning algorithms, Gaussian Naïve Bayes, K Nearest Algorithm, Random Forest, and Logistic Regression were considered because they offer a wide variety of classification methods and also provide high accuracy and performance. We hypothesized that all these algorithms would provide accurate results, and Random Forest and Logistic Regression would provide better accuracy and performance than Naïve Bayes and K Nearest Neighbor.

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