Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (Alabama A&M) is a public historically black land-grant university in Normal, Alabama. Founded in the 1875 as a normal school, it took its present name in 1969. AAMU is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University Historic District, also known as Normal Hill College Historic District, has 28 buildings and four structures listed in the United States National Register of Historic Places..
Engineering salt particle structure to fabricate hollow salts has emerged as a promising strategy for enhancing saltiness perception, with potential applications in sodium reduction. However, fabrication of bioactive-loaded hollow salts generally relies on oil-phase-assisted routes. Herein, an oil-free strategy was developed for preparing capsaicin (CAP)-loaded hollow salts (HS) via ethanol-assisted pre-dispersion of CAP in a conjugate solution, followed by high-shear dispersion, ultrasonication, and spray drying. Conventional oil-containing hollow salts (HS-Oil) were included as a reference system for comparative evaluation. Compared with HS, HS-Oil exhibited increased D3,2 and D4,3 values (from 13.90 to 16.55 mu m to 17.95 and 20.08 mu m, respectively), along with an increased specific surface area (from 2.09 to 2.68 m2 m-3). In terms of powder properties, HS exhibited poorer flowability and higher hygroscopicity than HS-Oil, whereas both samples exhibited comparable NaCl release behavior. Sensory evaluation showed that HS-Oil achieved the highest saltiness and salty aftertaste, but also exhibited more pronounced off-odor and slightly lower overall acceptability than HS, consistent with its greater accumulation of lipid oxidation-related volatiles after heating. An ex vivo formulation retention assay on porcine tongue further supported the sensory results. Overall, this study establishes an oil-free fabrication route for CAP-loaded hollow salts and clarifies the structural and saltiness-related differences between oil-free and oil-containing systems.
Fine-grained species classification under severe class imbalance poses a fundamental challenge in computer vision, particularly for biological research where rare species carry disproportionate scientific importance for conservation efforts. We present an integrated framework for fungi classification using the Split Mind Funga data-set, which comprises 14,200 samples spanning 509 species with an imbalance ratio of 158:1. Our approach combines DINOv2 visual encoding with CLIP-aligned text embeddings, processing ecological metadata through Q-Former-style cross-modal attention mechanisms. This systematic approach achieves 54.3% macro-F1 with complete class coverage, outperforming standard CNN baselines by 67.6% relative improvement. We provide detailed evaluation across multiple performance tiers, calculate Expected Calibration Error, and conduct statistical testing using McNemar's test across five random seeds. Our work establishes the first comprehensive benchmark for fungi classification under severe long-tail distributions while demonstrating how combining established methods yields practical improvements for biological species identification.
Iron oxide nanoparticles are utilized as a novel iron supplement due to their low irritancy and high bioavailability. In this study, FeCl2·4H2O and FeCl3·6H2O (3,1, 2,1, 1,1, 1,2, and 1:3) were dissolved in a whey protein isolate amyloid fibrils (WPF) solution, followed by reaction under alkaline conditions at 60 °C for 50 min to form an iron oxide-WPF complex (Fe-WPF) with high bioavailability. The WPF binds to iron oxide via van der Waals forces, and iron oxide predominantly existing in the ferrous state. And, in vitro digestion indicated that the fibril of the Fe-WPF remained intact and the release of free Fe2+ was only 2.0 μg/mL, which effectively increased the bioavailability of iron and reduced the irritation of Fe2+ to the gastrointestinal mucosa. Fe-WPF prepared at a 1:1 ratio of FeCl2·4H2O and FeCl3·6H2O exhibits better bioavailability than FeSO4 in vitro without observable cytotoxicity. Therefore, the Fe-WPF composite can become a novel iron oxide delivery system with high loading capacity and bioavailability.
This study aimed to evaluate how shifts in land use and climate extremes have jointly shaped long-term water quality trends in the Sacramento River watershed in California between 1985 and 2023. We integrated satellite-derived land use maps, daily climate indices, and monthly water quality records for six parameters (hardness, pH, specific conductance, total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), and turbidity). Analyses included seasonal trend assessments, spectrogram analysis of periodicity, and Random Forest models to identify key drivers of water quality trends. Three modeling cases were compared: climate-only, land use-only, and combined (climate + land use). A 10-fold cross-validation framework was implemented, and differences among models were assessed using the Friedman test with Wilcoxon signed-rank post-hoc comparisons. The combined model integrating climate and land use variables best explained long-term water quality variability, followed by land use alone and climate alone. Seasonal analysis further highlighted a dual stress regime: winter storms drove sediment and turbidity peaks, while summer droughts intensified salinity and pH. Water quality deterioration peaked during 2002-2012, with elevated salinity (conductance, TDS) and sediment-related parameters (TSS, turbidity). Land use predictors explain more site-to-site variation in water quality than climate predictors (median absolute ΔR2 LU - Clim ≈ 0.18; LU outperforms Clim for 5/6 variables). Persistence of elevated salinity underscores the need for long-term management, while the partial recovery of sediment indicators highlights opportunities for targeted erosion control. These findings show the interacting influence of land use transitions and climate extremes, offering a transferable framework for adaptive watershed management.
Nanolayered molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2) thin films were synthesized by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) using molybdenum pentachloride (MoCl5) and diethyldiselenide (C4H10Se2) precursors. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy revealed horizontally stacked nanolayers near the substrate and vertically oriented nanosheets at the surface of the film. X-ray diffraction confirmed the (002), (100), and (110) reflections of crystalline MoSe2, while X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed relative atomic concentrations of 33.5% Mo and 66.5% Se, consistent with stoichiometric MoSe2. Raman spectra exhibited characteristic E 1g, A 1g, and E 1 2g vibrational modes. Field-effect transistors incorporating PE-ALD-grown MoSe2 as the channel material displayed p-type behavior, demonstrating the potential of nanolayered MoSe2 for nanoelectronic applications. This work demonstrates the feasibility of low-temperature, stoichiometric growth of nanolayered MoSe2 by PE-ALD and its direct integration into transistor architectures.
